SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



Association Cooperative, whose members pay assess- 

 ment dues of ten cents a barrel on their crude gum. So 

 long as market price was below loan value, the Com- 

 modity Credit Corporation continued to accumulate 

 stocks until it had one million five hundred thousand 

 barrels of rosin. The war boosted the price, baling out 

 the Commodity Credit Corporation and cutting down 

 the membership in the turpentine cooperative by half. 

 This, too, is right on the beam of human nature, but 

 again it waves the red flag, warning how dangerous it 

 is to try by legislation to revise the law of supply and 

 demand. 



Wartime price controls, frankly adopted to benefit 

 the gum farmers even at the expense of the wood in- 

 dustry, have backfired. The attempt to maintain an 

 artificially high price for gum turpentine has resulted 

 in enhancing the chemical values of wood naval stores. 



For a century turpentine has been the number one 

 product of the naval stores industry. The chief use has 

 long been as a solvent in the paint industry, but for 

 several years turpentine has been losing this market to 

 mineral spirits. These solvents prepared from petroleum 

 have steadily improved in quality and lowered in price. 

 Gradually they have replaced turpentine as an essential 

 ingredient in paint manufacture, banishing it to the 

 secondary market as a thinner used by painters and 

 householders. As J. H. McCormack, Newport's veteran 

 president, put it, "Twenty years ago, we sold turpentine 



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