[Sidenote: COOPERAGE] Cooperage is no longer a handicraft in America; the inventive genius of our people, to which we owe the greater part of the progress that has placed us at the head of civilized nations in point of machine-building, has virtually wiped out the cooper’s handicraft, and given us, in its stead, a half-dozen enormous manufacturing establishments, in which nearly all the barrels required by brewers and distillers are made by machine. There was a time when nearly every brewer had at least a smattering of the cooper’s art, and when the cellar men, employed in breweries, had to produce satisfactory evidence of having passed through the regular course of training prescribed for apprentices and journeymen by the ancient and honorable guild of coopers. Although this is now all changed, yet in so large an establishment as the one we are describing, the employment of a considerable force of coopers is indispensable. The large casks and vats, ranging in capacity from 50 to 800 barrels, which fill the cellars of the brewery, number about 1,500, and there are about 100,000 packages—_i.e._, barrels of thirty-one gallons, and half, quarter and sixth barrels—in constant use; and a considerable reserve stored away for emergencies. The coopers keep an accurate account of these packages and vessels, examine them from time to time, and make such repairs as their condition may require. The pitching of barrels, which serves the two-fold purpose of facilitating the process of cleaning and preventing the beer from acquiring a smell of the wood, is performed periodically, with such methodical regularity that not a single package can escape this fiery ordeal. The pitching yard, enclosed by a wall, is the scene of this part of the cooper’s task; here, too, manual labor forms only an adjunct to steam power. Four large cask-rollers, and many smaller ones, all driven by a steam engine of ten-horse power, a pitch oven and a pitch cauldron take the place of the single implements with which, in former days, the cooper used to perform this work. After the liquid pitch has been poured into the casks, the latter are placed upon the moving rollers and continually rotated, by which process the pitch is evenly spread over the inner surface of the barrels and kegs. The manufacture of brewers’ pitch yields a considerable income to an important industry, and is of no small benefit to the producers of the raw material. A number of substitutes for pitch have been offered in the market, and some of them, especially one made of the residuary substances obtained in the process of refining petroleum, possess many qualities lacking in pitch; but here the conservative spirit of the brewers prevails against innovation, for none of the substances have that peculiar, although exceedingly faint, flavor for which the ordinary pitch is so highly prized by both the brewer and the drinker.