Naval Stores Become Chemicals 



GENERATIONS of Northern visitors in the South have 

 thrilled at their first sight of a primitive little still, 

 roofed over with some rough pine planks on four posts 

 and surrounded by a litter of wooden barrels. "Aha," 

 they think, "genuine 'white mule' in the making; a real 

 moonshiner's set-up!" 



They are romantically wrong. That is a chemical 

 plant, a representative of the oldest American industry, 

 an industry distinctively of the South. Theirs is a for- 

 givable mistake, for that little iron retort with its twisted 

 copper neck is also a still. However, into it is fed not 

 a fermented mash of ground cornmeal, but a sticky, 

 pungent, grayish gum collected from pine trees. The 

 distilled liquid that drips from the end of its wormlike 

 condenser is not corn whisky, but turpentine. 



This elementary chemical business was started by 

 Captain John Smith of Jamestown, Virginia. The Com- 

 modity Credit Corporation all but ended the days of 

 the little backwoods "turps still." 



By peremptory decree to assure supplies for her 

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