CHAPTER VII 

 NAVAL STORES 



GENERAL 



The naval stores industry is one of the most important of all forest 

 industries, excepting lumbering, measured in terms of the value of its 

 products. It is also one of the oldest of the forest industries in this coun- 

 try. The value of the products turpentine and rosin, in 1910, was over 

 $35,000,000. The industry has been closely identified with the economic 

 development of the South. The earlier colonists depended to a large 

 degree on the products of the industry for their livelihood, particularly 

 in North Carolina and South Carolina. The primary products of the 

 earlier development of the industry, pitch and tar, were among the first 

 exports from this country and were extensively used in wooden sailing 

 vessels; hence the name naval stores. This name is still applied to the 

 present products of the industry, which are confined to turpentine and 

 rosin. 



The production of naval stores is a waning industry, due to the rapid 

 depletion of the virgin timber supply and the failure to perpetuate the 

 industry either by providing for the reproduction of the forests or by con- 

 servative methods of tapping, which would at least continue to an appre- 

 ciable extent the life of the industry. Until about 1890, lumbermen con- 

 sidered timber bled for turpentine unfit for manufacturing into lumber 

 and literally billions of board feet of valuable timber have been allowed 

 to go to waste by windfall, insects and fire, especially in Georgia and the 

 Carolinas, after the bleeding process had been completed. 



Until the introduction of various forms of cups in which to collect the 

 resinous exudation from the trees, the method of boxing has been prac- 

 tically the same for the past two hundred years. 



The gummy exudation from the tree is called crude turpentine or 

 resin, and the final products of the industry as marketed are called spirits 

 of turpentine or turpentine, which is the distillate of the resin, while the 

 residue after distillation is called rosin. 



165 



