Naval Stores: The Industry 



289 



nished to the operator. In turn, the op- 

 erator would set up his own commis- 

 sary, from which he would dole out 

 rations to his woods and still workers. 

 The factors were protected by a blan- 

 ket mortgage and usually by an insur- 

 ance policy on the life of the operator. 

 The operator had to deliver all the 

 turpentine and rosin he produced to 

 the factor as his selling agent. The de- 

 liveries were usually made to a storage 

 yard, where the operator would get a 

 warehouse receipt to be turned over to 

 the factor. 



Although the factor charged a liberal 

 commission and initial storage and in- 

 surance charges, his services as sales 

 agent were often simply paper trans- 

 actions. Under this system the factors 

 had a controlling influence on the en- 

 tire gum naval stores industry. Their 

 profits were large, but the risks they 

 took were great and many bad-debt 

 losses were incurred. This feudalistic 

 pattern of financing was bitterly criti- 

 cized, but it seemed to be the only 

 system that could be devised under the 

 circumstances; without it, the industry 

 hardly could have survived. 



Tar burning, which was practiced in 

 New England, prevails in a few places 

 in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisi- 

 ana, the methods there being much the 

 same as in Colonial times. Lightwood 

 is stacked and covered with dirt (and 

 sometimes with sheet iron) to make a 

 kiln. A hole is dug in the firm ground, 

 or, sometimes, a concrete base is pro- 

 vided for catching the pine tar that 

 flows from the slowly burning timbers. 

 A residue of charcoal is left. 



The process has an improved, mod- 

 ern counterpart in destructive distilla- 

 tion, in which the wood pine stumps 

 and dead down lightwood is placed 

 in a retort. Heat applied to the retort 

 gives both a light oil distillate and a 

 heavy oil or pine tar oil distillate. The 

 light oil distillate is refined to make 

 DD wood turpentine, dipentene, and 

 pine oil; the heavy oil distillate is re- 

 fined to produce various types of oils 

 to meet specific needs for insecticides, 

 plasticizers, soaps, pharmaceuticals. 



802062 49 20 



In the steam-solvent process, the 

 stumps are hogged, or ground, and 

 placed in heated digesters. Live steam 

 is introduced and the more volatile 

 components are carried off and con- 

 densed. Later they are refined by frac- 

 tional distillation into steam-distilled 

 wood turpentine and pine oil. The 

 remaining shredded resinous wood is 

 treated with a mineral-oil solvent, 

 which dissolves the rosin and the high- 

 boiling liquid products. The solution 

 is clarified and the solvent is evapo- 

 rated, leaving a residue of wood rosin. 

 The extracted wood is used for fuel or 

 paper pulp. A variation of the steam- 

 solvent process consists of first extract- 

 ing the turpentine, rosin, and pine oil 

 with a suitable solvent, and then sepa- 

 rating those products by fractional dis- 

 tillation with steam. 



Sulfate wood turpentine is recovered 

 by condensing the vapors that are re- 

 leased from the pulping digesters in the 

 production of pulp from pine wood by 

 the sulfate process of making paper. 

 The crude byproduct is heavily con- 

 taminated with sulfur compounds, 

 which are removed by chemical treat- 

 ment and fractional distillation. The 

 refined byproduct is marketed as sul- 

 fate wood turpentine. The spent cook- 

 ing liquor obtained in this method of 

 making paper pulp, commonly called 

 black liquor, is treated to recover a 

 mixture of fatty and resin acids known 

 as tall oil or liquid rosin. 



OF 10,000-ODD PRODUCERS of gum, 

 more than 7,000 are small gum farmers 

 who work less than one crop of turpen- 

 tine faces on farm wood lots (a crop 

 consists of 10,000 faces). Fewer than 

 2 percent are commercial operators 

 who work more than 10 crops. In 1947 

 only 55 operated more than 20 crops. 



The old-time commercial operator 

 worked leased timber almost exclu- 

 sively; sometimes in the past a turpen- 

 tining operation would be made up of 

 leased timber from as many as 300 or 

 400 separate owners. Most of these 

 larger producers' operations are now 

 confined to large corporately owned 



