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Largely in the hands of small family companies, the beer barrel business is booming wherever and whenever whiteoak staves, air-dried for at least two years, can be obtained. Kiln-dried staves are disdained by some brewers though their makers assert they are in no way inferior. Meantime brewers are scouring Europe to make up the 6,000,000 kegs that the U. S. needs to bring its inventory to pre-Prohibition levels. In June alone $1,000,000 worth of kegs were imported from Germany. Using U. S. labor and fittings Dr. Hammer turns out 4,000 kegs a day at $9.25 each—cheaper than they can be imported.
†Grand Duchess Marie of Russia (now of Manhattan) walked into another Hammer exhibition of Romanov chattels one day last winter, claimed that some of the dishes were from her Petrograd home. When l'Ermitage Galleries, whose dishes they now are, refused to return them, Grand Duchess Marie sued for $10,000.