NAVAL STORES BECOME CHEMICALS 



gone across because three men as different as A, M, and 

 Z, put their heads together and evolved a couple of 

 brand-new, extremely simple ideas. 



In their little shack of an office tucked away in the 

 big plant near Jacksonville, these three told me their 

 true fairy tale. Like the three genii in the Arabian 

 Nights, each of this trio has distinctive gifts. E. W. 

 Colledge, the general manager, is a wise old naval stores 

 merchant who knows that tricky game as only years of 

 rough-and-tumble play can teach it. McGarvey Cline, 

 who was trained at the famous Forest Products Labora- 

 tory, has uncanny skill in handling sticky gum, compli- 

 cated apparatus, and human beings. Joseph Paul Bain, 

 Ph.D. from the University of Florida, is a silent sci- 

 entist, well versed in the new chemical techniques. 



"The plausible idea of centralized processing plants 

 always bogged down," began Colledge, "because, like 

 the fire-stills, they operated on a seasonal basis. Our 

 idea was to take in crude gum, store it, and process 

 throughout the year to fill current orders. If we could 

 do this, we would at one stroke smash the bottleneck 

 and cut out expensive financing by creating a spot 

 market when collectors could sell their crude gum 

 for cash." 



'We did just that," interjected McGarvey Cline. 

 "Gum sinks in water and in those tanks" he pointed 

 out the window to a row of big, shiny, aluminum- 

 painted tanks "under a blanket of water, it is kept safe 



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