SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



ing plants. They dreamed of operations big enough to 

 justify the cost of modern apparatus, profitable enough 

 to pay a staff of experts. In such plants high-grade, 

 standardized rosin and turpentine could be produced 

 and at least the simpler chemicals of their wood-rosin 

 competitors might be duplicated. During the six months 

 of the gum-collecting season these visionaries worked 

 their larger, more costly plants day and night only to 

 land in the same boat with the owners of the cheap 

 little fire-stills. Both were left holding a full year's stocks 

 of finished rosin and turpentine. Unfortunately the 

 ambitious ones held larger stocks and their more deli- 

 cate, more elaborate stills deteriorated faster and ate 

 up more carrying charges. Usually these dreamers were 

 awakened by the sheriff nailing an auction notice on 

 their plant door. 



In spite of this long record of failure, whoever 

 thought the naval stores problem through could see 

 that the fire-still was as obsolete as the stagecoach and 

 that unless the new chemical values could be extracted 

 from gum, hundreds of gum farmers were simply out 

 of business. Only the centralized plant to process gum 

 in the modern style could save the oldest American 

 industry. 



At least, that is how the officers of the Glidden Com- 

 pany figured it out when, in 1935 at the zero hour of 

 naval stores distress, they determined to take one more 

 try at that oft- tried, oft-failed idea. This time it has 



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