SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



is in Russia and Swethland, where the woods are proper 

 for naught else, and though there be the help both of 

 man and beast in the ancient commonwealth which 

 many a hundred years ago has used it; yet thousands 

 of those poor people can scarce get the necessities to 

 live by from hand to mouth." 



Undoubtedly the old swashbuckler had a very feeble 

 business instinct. He would much prefer to go exploring 

 than laboriously to sweat tar out of pine wood. However, 

 his wordy excuses were prophetic. Throughout the 

 colonial era, and afterward, the production of pitch 

 and tar, rosin and turpentine grew until American 

 naval stores dominated world markets. As a gray- 

 bearded Georgian, veteran- of many seasons of "turps 

 farming," phrases it: "It alluz was a bizness fuller of 

 troubles than dollars." 



When a live pine tree is wounded it secretes a heal- 

 ing, protective gum. By chipping the bark in a succes- 

 sion of V-shaped cuts, one above the other, the flow 

 of this rich, aromatic oleoresin is stimulated and con- 

 tinued so that it can be gathered in cups fastened be- 

 neath to the trunk. From the Carolinas to Louisiana 

 some fifteen hundred Americans engage in this enter- 

 prise between March and August. Some work their 

 own trees as a sideline of farming; others are profes- 

 sional operators who rent "gum rights" on the basis of 

 a "crop" of ten thousand "cut faces." The work is done 

 by some twenty thousand Negroes who make the 



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