Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1889 — QUEER MAINE INDUSTRIES. [ARTICLE]

QUEER MAINE INDUSTRIES.

Wooden Toothpicks and Thread Spools, Compressed Sawdust and Moccasins. »■ , There is an industry which gives employment to hundreds of people in this section of the State which owes its origin to a whittler, writes a Pittsburg Dispatch correspondent from Maine. This is the making of wooden toothpicks. There is a factory in this town which turns them out at the rate of I know not Low many thousand per day, and there are many similar factories in a nqmber of neighboring villages. Aside from the men and boys directly employed in the production -of these useful little articles many qthers are bchefitted by the industry. The farmer who owns the trqes, the woodsman who them down, and the teamster who cuts hauls the timber to the factory, each* comes in fflr a share of the money paid out by the toothpick manufacturers. The wood sells for $3 to $4.50 per cord at the factory, aud as each factory takes from 600 to 1,500 cords per year, quite a respectable amount is paid for raw material alone. The wood used is white birch and poplar, and must be straight-grained and without knots, so there is necessarily a good deal of waste. It is estimated that enough toothpicks are made in Maine each year to load a freight train of fifty cars. In round numbers the toothpicks number 5,0u0,000,0J0, or about seventy-seven picks for each man, woman, and child in the United States. That would scarcely be enough; but the toothpick consumers need not be alarmed, for there are several factories devoted to this industry outside of Maine. The inventor of the- wooden toothpick is still living and still making toothpicks. He was in South America when he made the first box, and got the iflea from the natives, who seem also to have a penchant for whittling. Well, he employed his leisure time in whittling out a box of picks, which he sent home to his wife. She gavera part of them to a hotel-keeper, andihis guests liked them so .tfrellthat heat ence ordered a large quantity. The man in South America smiled when he got the letter, but at once engaged a number jf natives and set them to whittling. Next he returned to his native town in Maine and went to inventing. In due time he had a machine that would make picks about 10,000 times as fast as the swiftest South American whittler, and since 1860 he has been doing his best to supply the world with toothpicks. He has so perfected his machine that one operative can make 15,000 picks per minute. His business rivals are numerous and toothpicks are cheap in spite of the fact that, there is said to be a sort of toothpick trust controlling the production. Another peculiar industry which flourishes in Western Maine is the making of thread spools. They are cut from smooth, white birch timber, a wood which works easily, by various kinds of improved machines. There are numerous mills throughout the lumbering,region where the birch is sawed about 4 feet long and from 1 to 2 inches in width and thickness. These strips then go to the spool factories to be converted into spools. The processes are numerous, but. with one exception not darticularly interesting. The method of polishing the spools is novel and original. A barrel is filled nearly full of them and then revolved by means of machinery and Pelting until the spools are worn smooth by rubbing one against another. Spool manufaeturing is the most important industry in several of thv villages of Oxford couutv and will doubtless continue so until the supply of white birch timber gives out. i I can remember the time when Yankee shoe-makers cut their pegs themselves. They would saw off a white birch log, leaving it smooth and even, then plow little furrows across it in two directions with an instrument which I believe they called a peg cutter. Then enough of the wood was sawed off to make the pegs the right .length and the block was split np into pegs »by using a knife. I don’t suppose anybody makes pegs that way now. They are cut by machinery from white birch and maple and New England supplies the whole country. Pegs are worth from 35 to 95 cents a bushel at the factories. Up in Bangor there is a firm styling itself a ‘‘compress company” and its business is baling sawdust. Sawdust, shavings, etc., are taken from the sawmills and planing mills in tram-cars to the compressihg mill and there squeezed into an almost impregnable mass. Large quantities are used by Various manufacturers for different purposes. Turning from the wooden products of this woody region I will mention one distinctively Yankee industry and then conclude this letter. The making 'of leather moccasins is carried on in this State quite extensively. Now Maine has not a great many Indians, bat she has thousands of ltimbermen, and each lumberman wears moccasins in winter. The Indians, if they were all mocca-sin-makers. couldn’t begin to supply the market, so the moccasin factory takes hold and helps them ont. A moccasin, by the Way, is a sewed boot, made without sole leather, tue top and the bottom being off the same piece. The leather is tanned by a peculiar process which **. * ’■ ’ * ; : ' r ' ’ 7 ' ri ...

makes its color a yellowish white. It is soft and flexible and very easy on the feet. Each pair of boots is made large enough to hold the owner’s feet and two or three pairs of stockings, thus enabling the lumbermen to defy snow and cold. The moccasins are not of deer skin, but of leather made of the hides of cat le. They are cheaper than cowhide boots and the woodsmen greatly prefer them. There is not a country store in the whole State where they are not kept for sale. , ■