Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1911-03-02
WHERE THEY MAKE THINGS
HUM.
A Spicy Writeup of Laquinn and
It's Industries.

It's Industries.
No, you won't find it in the geogra-
ply or in your atlas, either, unless it
was compiled very recently. But it's
there, just the same. What we are
driving at is that, nestled among the
hills of Bradford county, on the Sus-
quehanna and New York railroad, 81
miles from Williamsport on one side
and Is miles from Towanda on the
other, is the pleasantly located lumber
ing town of Laquin, where the La
quin Lumber Company cuts and man
ufactures into lumber and its by-pro-
ducts for the Central Pennsylvania
Lumber Company, who own the land
and the timber in that vicinity, not
less than twenty-five million feet of
logs every year.
Laquin is only about nine years old,
but it's an extremely lively youngster.
Among the Industrial assets of the
place are splendid up-to-date double
saw-mill, some chemical works, hub
and veneering factory and railroad
equipment, including five or six loco
motives, three steam log leaders and
lot of log and other cars, owned and
operated by the Laquin Lumber Com
pany. Then big stave and heading
factory, owned and run by the Sugar
Trust, managed by another company,
all help to boom the town and make
things lively all the time.
The saw-mill in its way is cracker
jack, with all modern equipments and
machinery. What used to be called
hard work is done automatically by
skillfully-contrived machinery. In
stead of heaving and tugging at the
big logs the sawyer or other operator
touches lever and presto the work
is done, before you know it. Can't
hooks and pike-levers are out of date.
A cast-iron "nigger" bobs up from the
floor and with jolt that would knock
Jack Johnson gally-west puts the big
gest log in shape on the saw carriage
in jiffy, and with almost human in
telligence. You can almost hear the
words: "Stay there now, where you
belong, or Pll give you another
punch" The log is good to mind and
when you look that way again in a few
minutes it will be ripped up into lum-
ber%hich is taken away, trimmed,
sorted and piled, partly by machinery
and partly by skilled workmen, as fast
as it leaves the saw. It's no trick at
all to make 1000 feet of hemlock
lumber day at Laquin. 5000 feet
is nearer the daily output of the big
mill.
Anyone watching the workmen
! around the saw-mill will be impressed
with the quick motions they make.
They probably have to "get there,
Eli" to keep pace with the saw. To
an old-timer like the writer, who used
to think the fashioned up.and-
down mnley-saw run by water wheel
was 'some pumpkins" it is a revela-
ton, almost startling, to see one of
these keen band saws, like they have
at Laquin, go through the length of
the biggest log in less than no time,
like hot knife through butter.
Large quantities of lath and kindl-
ing wood made out of slabs and odds
and ends of lumber are important and
profitable by-products of hemlock logs
manufactured in big saw mill. The
kindling-wood business, as we said be-
fore, is conducted by a separate firm
in Laquin. Edgings or any other bits
of Lumber are cut up into pieces two
inches long. Then, with the help of
specially contrived fixtures, these
pieces are ''corded up" into oval shap-
ed bunches five by ten inches diameter,
securely tied with tarred rope and put
on the market, to be retailed at the
rate of two punches for five cents.
The employees, many of them women,
get something like 16 or II cents
hundred for putting up the punches of
kindling wood.
In the hub and veneer mill they take
beech logs and literally cut them up
into ribbons; the product being then
cut into suitable length and packed in
neat punches ready for market These
"brewer's chips" so-called, are used
somehow to clarity and color the ice
cool lager beer that tastes 80 good on a
hot summer day-if you like that sort
of thing. Most any kind of hard wood
is grist for the mill at the chemical
works, where charcoal, wood alcohol
and acetate of lime are manufactured.
A car loaded with wood is run into a
smoke-tight compartment or retort
where the heat is so intense that the
car (the car itself being all of iron, of
course) is burned into charcoal with
out coming in contact with fire.
In the operation of making charcoal
the resultant smoke is condensed into