FORESTRY: Troubled Turpentiners

To the easygoing town of Valdosta on the edge of Georgia’s great Okefenokee swamp one day last week went some 2,000 uneasy turpentiners & friends for the annual gathering of the American Turpentine Farmers Association Cooperative. Munching barbecued chicken carefully nurtured for the occasion, they saw Mary Newton, 17, a redheaded, brown-eyed Georgia Peach, crowned Miss Turpentine of 1940, stood by for the cutting of a virgin pine—symbol that a new turpentine year was on.

Because Englishmen in the 17th Century first exploited Southern pine forests for pine tar & pitch (for calking ships’ hulls, tarring rope), pine products are called naval stores. Three hundred years later the same timberlands (from North Carolina to Texas) yielded 80% of the world’s turpentine (for thinning paint) and rosin (for soap, paper making, varnishes), still called naval stores. By 1900 this industry was turning out annually 600,000 bbl. of turpentine, 2,000,000 bbl. of rosin, hit $63,500,000 in 1921. Of that lush business, some 60% was in exports. In all those years turpentiners had but one worry: to keep ahead of the logging crews. Cheap Negro labor ($4-$6 a week today) slit the trees, drew the sap. Hundreds of individual distillers boiled it down, sold turpentine and rosin to factors who stored them until purchasers came to buy. It was almost too good to be true.

Depression I put an end to the halcyon days. Turpentine prices slumped from better than 50¢ a gallon to 31¢ in 1931, rosin from $8.50 a barrel to $2.95. By 1933 the housing collapse and a shrunken export market reduced the naval stores industry to a pauperish $13,792,000. In March 1936 producers met at Jacksonville, formed the American Turpentine Farmers Association Cooperative to cut excess production, get rid of surplus stocks, undertake conservation.

Chosen to drag the industry out of the woods was a big, burly, hardheaded, quail-hunting Valdosta judge named Harley Langdale. No. 1 U. S. turpentiner, he and his associates grossed better than $500,000 last year from 70,000 owned, 300,000 leased acres of Southern pine. As president and manager of A. T. F. A. he has: 1) borrowed $21,500,000 (1938-39) to tide member producers (over 90% of production) over the industry’s rehabilitation; 2) encouraged the building of central stills; 3) produced a standard product, to be marketed in uniform turpentine cans bearing the A. T. F. A. seal and pine tree symbol; 4) cut gum turpentine production 25%; 5) sought new uses for turpentine and rosin.

But the naval stores industry was still worried last week. On its chief market (Savannah, Ga.) turpentine was selling for 29¢ a gallon, rosin from $4-$6.10 a barrel. World War II had crimped exports to a point where factors figured they would be lucky to ship 250,000 bbl. of rosin (50% of ’39), 7.000,000 gallons of turpentine (75% of ’39) abroad this year. Although surplus stocks of turpentine are down, warehouses groaned with a staggering 1,200,000 bbl. of rosin. Main hope is for a better market in the U. S.

A. T. F. A. also, worried last week over a rival coop, Gum Turpentine Farmers Cooperative Association, formed last year at Vidalia, Ga., by small Georgia producers, to buck the influence of factors in the A. T. F. A. Headed by mild, sandy-haired William Capers Rice, 38, mayor of Vidalia, Gum Turp. last year won an estimated $1,000,000 reduction in factorage interest rates and handling charges. It aims now to get rid of small stills dependent on factors, pool output in a central still system.