NAVAL STORES BECOME CHEMICALS 



by the tankcar to the paint industry; today, we will sell 

 it in five-gallon cans through the retail trade." 



The turpentine that now goes into paint is but a drop 

 in the bucket compared with what is being used in 

 making the new chemical products. War needs greatly 

 increased the demand for these chemicals, but the war- 

 time ceiling price of eighty cents a gallon failed to recog- 

 nize this switch in use. It utterly ignored the chemical 

 values in turpentine as a raw material for chemical 

 synthesis in competition with other solvents and chem- 

 icals. To make matters more complicated, the Office of 

 Price Administration seriously underpriced rosin at five 

 cents a pound. 



Any question of future prices calls forth a lot of 

 hemming and hawing, but the chemists figure that on 

 the cold-blooded basis of chemical values the new ratio 

 should be turpentine twenty cents, not more than 

 thirty, and rosin, ten cents. From eight and five to 

 twenty and ten will call for some pretty violent post- 

 war readjustments. 



As relief, the Government conservation-loan and 

 price control program served splendidly; as a remedy 

 for the deep-seated ills of the gum naval stores indus- 

 try it was about as useful as a teaspoonful of paregoric 

 in the treatment of bubonic plague. Yet the right cure 

 has long been recognized. 



During the past fifty years bold adventurers have 

 often tried to establish large, centralized gum-process- 



129 



