Milford chronicle. [volume] (Milford, Del.) 1878-1974, 1885-10-23
A SHORT CORK CHAPTER.
= Light Subject, and Yet One
Full OF Interest.
Where Cork Bark Comes From, and How
tits Utilized in Various Ways.

"Its funny what prejudice win do"
said a weli-xnown cork merchant
we are compelled to import every
year several thousand dollars worth
IF hand-cut corks. These come chiefly
from Germany. They are not SO good
IS the machine-cut corks of our own
'ountry. as they vary in size and are
out approximately round. A machine
cut cork win always ct the bottle it is
made for. Yet some of our old Ger
man bottlers and druggists, are so
preiudiced in favor of the products Of
fatherland that they will buy hand
cut cOrks every time. OF course, price
may have something to do with it, for
tits a peculiar fact, and one showing
how cheap labor can get, that those
corks cut one by one by hand in Germa-
ny are brought over here, tariff paid,
and then sold a little cheaper than our
machine-cut corks. The cork bust
ness is growing very rapidly. This is a
great country for bottled goods, and bot
ties must be corked with something.
There are twenty three cork factories in
the country, but the onein Pittsbur gh
of which we are the branch, works up a
little more than one-half of all the
bark imported every year.
Cork, you know, is the bark, not
the wood, of the cork oak. All our
banks come from Spain and Portugal.
There they keep cork woods. It
doesn't kill the tree to take its bark
away, and it can be skinned every six
Or eight years. About 100000
worth of the raw bark is brought to
this country every year. There is no
tariff on it, but tariff of 25 per cent,
on the manufactured product. The
importations of manufactured corks
run about $4,000 a year. The cork
has to be steamed up before it is cut,
COrks are made in thousands of sizes
and grades, from the sizes of a pin
head up to four meters in diameter.
We keep 600 sizes and grades in stock.
There's a little cork that sells at g
cents a gross. and yet every cork has to
be handled three times in the manufact-
ure-once in cutting, once in tapering,
and the last time in asserting one
grade from the other.
"None of the bark that comes over
in the ships goes to waste. We used
to burn the refuse, but we know bet
ter now. Up between the joints, right
under the roof of this building we
have packed fifteen inches of granula-
ted cork. Last summer this upper
floor was as cool as any floor in the
building. The heat can't get through
that cork protector. The palace car
| builders use the same stuff to pack I'M
der the floors Of their cars to deaden
the sound and under the roof to keep
D
the heat out I sold fifty car loads of
granulated bark to a certain gentle
man to pack under the roofs of his re-
frigerator cars as a non-conductor of
heat. He has saved thousands Of dol
lors in ice by the use of that substance,
and has hoped that none Of his compet-
itors would catch onto the scheme.
But he hoped in vain.
"The finest of the refuse is used by
pieture-frame makers in decorations.
They sprinkle it on their bronzed or
iapanned frames. See that picture?
Well this old castle along the Rhine,
the rocks, hills, trees, vineyard, fow-
ers and birds-an exquisite landscape e,
is it not Pare all made from cork,
pressed like papier mache. 1t is a
German novelty, and a neat one.
Fruit and egg cases, ice houses and
ice machines, are often packed with
granulated cork, which cost only two
cents pound. Chicago Herald.