NAVAL STORES BECOME CHEMICALS 



naval stores chemicals that the wood-rosin plants 

 eagerly took in gallons of low-grade turpentine recov- 

 ered from the pine-wood chips cooked to make pulp 

 in the Southern paper mills. They were even forced to 

 go out into the market and pay ceiling prices for gum 

 turpentine. The wood tail is not wagging the gum dog, 

 it has him by the nape of the neck, shaking as a terrier 

 thrashes a rat to and fro. 



Long since, the owners of the gum stills have ceased 

 to snicker at the elephantine wood chemical factories. 

 Scattered and disorganized from its very beginning, 

 their own business became more and more obsolete, and 

 there seemed to be just nothing they could do about 

 it. How could they join forces to put up a united front 

 against this scientific giant? What could possibly be 

 done to standardize the crude gum they took in from 

 scores of turps farmers? Where was the money coming 

 from to hire the technical brains to modernize their 

 plants and their products? Year after year the going 

 got tougher and tougher till suddenly the Great Depres- 

 sion came to block the way with a yawning chasm into 

 which plunged the dwindling demand for their prod- 

 ucts. 



If the little fire-stills disappeared, what would be- 

 come of the turpentine farmers? The crude gum they 

 collected from chipped trees was as valueless as a sand 

 pile in Sahara, if there were no stills to convert it into 

 rosin and turpentine. Fifteen hundred gum producers 



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