Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 147, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1911 — THE TURPENTINING OF PINE TIMBER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE TURPENTINING OF PINE TIMBER

THE naval stores industry is one of the oldest industries in the United States, derivipg its name from the fact that in the early days pitch from' pine trees was commonly used to make wooden vessels water-tight. The term has persisted to this day, though the products long ago found other and more important uses. The turpentining of pine timber began in New England with the “pitch,” or yellow pine, of that region, but it was in North Carolina that the first extensive development of th# naval stores industry occurred. The records show that from 1768 to 1770 the average exports of naval stores to England included 88,111 barrels of crude turpentine, 20,646 barrels of pitch and 88,366 barrels of tar. Most of the crude was shipped to England for filiation through the ports of Wilmington and Newbern. The supplanting of the iron retort by the copper still in 1834 greatly increased the output of volatile oil and gave much impetus to the industry. However, previous to 1844 not over one-half of the production in North Carolina was distilled at home. Then, because of the poor market for resin, the stills were transferred from the ports to the woods, and a heavy onslaught upon long-leaf pine forests of the south began. North Carolina reached its maximum in naval stores production in 1879-80, with an exportation of 6,279-, 250 gallons of turpentine, and 663,967 barrels of resin. A comparison of this great exportation with a total production in North Carolina in 1908 of 732,000 gallons of turpentine and 131,900 barrels of rosin tells the story of the exhaustion of the long-leaf pine in that state. South Carolina attained its maximum output of naval stores in 1882, only two years after that of North Carolina. The invasion of new forests of virgin timber thought Georgia to the front a few years later, but recently that state has been surpassed by Florida, which is producing nearly one-half of-the total value of the yearly output of the naval stores

industryt After following the longleaf pine forests to their southern limits, turpentining swung to the westward across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the latter state having become a considerable , producer only within the last seven years. Until recently naval stores were entirely produced by one of the crudest and most destructive systems of forest exploitation ever devised. Great damage by fire and storm has always followed the turpentine box. Thousands* of acres of splendid long-leaf pine forests have been abandoned and destroyed after three or four years of turpentining, and the valuable timber which they contained not utilized. The

earlier operations of the turpentiner were comparable in their destructiveness only to those which swept the buffalo from the western plains. The buffalo was killed for the hide and horns; the long-leaf pine tree for a gallon or two of turpentine and a few pounds of resin. The destructiveness of the box system at last became so apparent and widespread that to perpetuate their industry the operators were forced to turn to other methods. Various substitutes were proposed, and experimental work of the forest service in methods of conservative operation dates from 1901, when Dr. Herty un-

dertook the studies with whose results you have long been familiar. The efforts of Dr. Herty and other experimenters have demonstrated conclusively that improved inethods, in which a cup is used to catch the crude turpentine and the box done away with, result in the production of a larger quantity of turpentine and rosin, high grades of the latter, longer life to the timber and greatly lessened damage from fire and wind. The introduction of these methods is the first step in conservative turpentining. Because of the increased initial cost of the equipment such methods have not appealed to the smaller operators, who have little capital, and whose operations extend over only two or three years in a given locality. They are unquestionably profitable to the larger operators and especially to those who, working upon their own timber, have the most Inducement to handle it carefully. Only within the last five years have these Improved methods been introduced upon a commercial scale. Yet the fact that alreaedy one-sev-enth of the entire output of nayal stores is by those methods, and that in the newer fields and most up-to-date operations they are used most largely demonstrates that they have passed far beyond the experimental stage. R. 8. KELLOGG.