The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-08-08

| 900 900 yards of thread every year, and
the spools upon which it is wound come
| from single mill. Checkers, chessmen
wooden sleds, bicycle rims, bicycle
stands and all sorts of wooden toys and
trlnkets are made in the same factories
Last year one firm sold S,OOO,Ooo sets Oh
checkers-almost one for every family
in the United States.
But the slicer is the most curious ana
useful of all the new inventions fef
working up the birch logs of Maine, ana
| it's products are seen in every house
hold and in every grocery and butcher
shop in the United States When we
| purchase a pound of butter or quart
| of berries or a basket of grapes we take
! them home in dish made of thin Wood.
| The invention of the "slicer" made them
| possible, and now millions upon millions
| of these useful receptacles are maufac-
| tured in the novelty mills" of Maine.
! The same mills turn out a similar num-
Der Of fruit baskets.
| When you buy five pounds of grapes
the basket is thrown in, and sometimes
you wonder how it happens that no
charge is made. A few years ago peo-
pie were required to return baskets TO
the grocery, and We're given rebate.
The grocer tied them together IN
punches and sent them back to the Vlne-
yard. He also collected the empty
berry boxes and returned them to the
farmers to be used again, often five or
six times before they had accomplished
their destiny; but nowadays the grape
baskets and the berry boxes go into the
woodbox, and finally feed the fire, be-
cause the 'slicer" has made their man
facture so easy and so cheap that "
doesn't pay to send them back.
| think it would interest our French
friends and the rest of the world If DR..
Bean could transport one of the nov
city mills to Paris as an illustration OF
Yankee ingenuity. They use nothing
but birch logs which are worthless for
other purposes. After the logs are cut
and barked in the woods they are
shipped to the mills on cars and then
boiled in hot water or steamed for
twenty four hours. The process softene
the fibre SO that it will not split, and
makes it more tough and pliabe While
they are still hot the logs are carried by
a crane to sawmills with broad and
keen knife blades, some Of them several
feet long and very sharp. AS the roller
slowly shoves the log toward the sharp
edge there Is a sudden whr; wide,
thin ribbon of wood rolls up over the
knife, while the log is rolled back and
placed back for a second operation.
This ribbon is sometimes two or three
feet wide, eighteen or twenty feet long
and not more than quarter or some
times a sixteenth of an inch thick. AS
it falls from the log it is laid upon pile
of sisters, and then carried on tram
into the next room to another set of
knives, which cuts 1t into proper lengths
for baskets, boxes and crates. Then it
passes on through another set of inge-
NOUS machinery, which bends and
creases it into the proper shapes for
berry boxes, grape baskets, peach bas-
kets, butter trays, and the various pur
poses for which it is used. 1t is next
taken in hand by quick fingered girls,
who fasten the slips together in the
shapes desired with little clasps Of tin
or small tacks, but most of the work is
done by machinery.
There Is a curious apparatus known |
as a "stapling machine which is fed |
with a coil of copper wire and forms |
staple after staple, which 1t thrusts into |
the wood, clinches and cuts off faster |
than the human mind can count them.
A girl stands before the machine and
holds the box or crate so that the ma
chine can get at it, and it will fasten
boxes and baskets a fast as she can
handle them. Sometimes expert opera
tors turn out four thousand and five
baskets and berry boxes a day. |
The berry boxes and the grape and
peach baskets are sold by the thousand,
and cost from Traction of cent up to
two or three cents each for the largest
ones. The wooden plates that you take
to picnics can be turned out for so or so
cents thousand. Orange and lemon
crates which are shipped to Florida and
California, are worth about 10 cents
each Butter dishes and other wooden
rays sell fromA25 cents to 81 thousand,
and they run UP into the millions every
year. Nothing like this industry can be
'ourd in any other part of the world. 1t
s unique and peculiar to the State of
Maine. -Correspondence Of the Chicago
Record.