Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 82, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1918 — Vast Amount of Cordwood Is Burned in Cook Stoves and Friendly Fireplaces [ARTICLE]

Vast Amount of Cordwood Is Burned in Cook Stoves and Friendly Fireplaces

Whenever a man builds a suburban home these days—and, happily enough, the number is relatively vast —a fairly large proportion of the plans contain a provision for an open hearth in which wood may be burned. These represent, observes a writer in the Cincinnati Enquirer, the pleasant memories of many of the builders Of their boyhood days when a crackling, aromatic wood fire lighted and warmed the living rooms of their homes. More often, though, It standi for the fascination of such a Are. Children of the city dearly delight in making and watching bonfires, and when they are afforded the joys of camping fairly revel in the blazing twigs and branches beneath the kettle. When they leave the city’s heart for its fringes the thought of an open hearth as a concomitant to the freer life they expect to lead always presents itself. Hence the surprisingly large demand for cordwood. It is of interest to state that in the United States last year, despite the increased production of coal, there were consumed 81,875,000 cords of wood, the value of which exceeded $225,000,000. It was the seventh crop in monetary value in 1917. Ahead of it were corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, hay and cotton. Much of this, indeed the greatest part of it, was burned on farms, the average consumption on each Ohio rural holding being 13 cords, valued at $3 a cord. Texas leads in wood consumption ; Michigan is next, then Ohio, and fourth is New York. In each of these four leaders the value of the wood is Over $10,000,000. Experts in these matters say that there is no better way of ventilating an apartment than through the means of a hearth or grate, so that there is a double blessing conferred as one sits in his easy chair and watches the ever-changing pictures that attend a reverie before a blazing log fire.