| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.2

Book Review

Tapping the Pines: The Naval Stores Industry in the American South. By Robert B. Outland III. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. xii + 352 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $47.95.
Naval stores production is one of the American South's oldest industries. It is as deep-rooted in the region's culture as the piney woods themselves. Southern industrialization usually is described by historians in terms of finished goods like furniture and textiles. Robert B. Outland uses the naval stores industry to provide an alternative picture of the process. "It thus serves as a superior vehicle through which to explore several broad issues regarding the area's development both before and after the Civil War—industrial growth, the transition from slave to free labor, environmental change, twentieth-century reform efforts, changes in the rural countryside, and the extent of change from the antebellum to postbellum years" (p. 2). The industry was not a minor one in the South; in the late nineteenth century it ranked as a top five industry from North Carolina to Florida.	1
The naval stores industry involved the extraction of raw turpentine, pitch, and tar from southern pines (mainly longleaf pine) and the manufacture of derivative products like spirits of turpentine and rosin. These products originally were used to caulk or seal wooden ships, hence the name. Industry development is mapped from its colonial beginnings in North Carolina, to the antebellum turpentine boom, to the "suicidal harvest" of the South's pine forests and the emergence of scientific forestry, to a final transition from a gum-based to a wood-based industry, and eventually a chemical industry. "The demise of the gum naval stores industry in the post-World War II South ultimately represents the defeat of a poorly capitalized, technologically primitive, and labor-intensive business by a well-funded, sophisticated, and highly mechanized one" (p. 313). The context of the industrial transition is also the transition of the post-Civil War South into the New South and Outland provides fascinating depth into the everyday lives of the South's lower social classes during this period.	2
The naval stores industry was labor intensive and forest intensive. It had a harsh impact on the forest and the laborer. First, it brutally wore out the forest and then it brutally wore out the labor force. This is the story of an industry that was forced to move geographically across the South as it destroyed the forest and one that never could maintain a stable, free workforce. Chapter 1 covers the origins of the naval stores economy and describes the longleaf pine forest and its fire ecology. It illustrates the thoroughness of the book. Complicated forest ecology is succinctly described in accurate and well-documented detail.	3
The book contains ample and interesting detail on the technical aspects of the industry. Everything you ever wanted to know about turpentine operations is there: boxing, cornering, chipping, dipping, scraping, coopering, and distilling. There is an absorbing examination of living conditions, labor organization, incentives, and punishments at the turpentine camp level. The "suicidal harvest" of the longleaf pine forests is traced from the destruction of North Carolina's forests to the relocation of the industry south to Florida and west to Louisiana. Industry development is intertwined with the expansion of the railroads, the lumber industry's southward migration, the development of industry trade organizations and standards, the role of factors in financing the industry, and finally with the development of a new American wood naval stores industry.	4
The heart of the book, the perturbing and enthralling part, deals with "labor, forced and free," or the industry's reliance on forced labor even after the Civil War. Turpentine work was too severe to exaggerate and free labor nearly impossible to maintain in number. Turpentine producers benefited from newly passed vagrancy, enticement, emigrant agent, and false-pretenses laws. Wage advances and forced use of the camp commissary (with higher prices than in-town stores and looser credit) served to encourage worker indebtedness to the producer and the new laws required the worker to remain at the camp until all debts were paid. It was not uncommon for the employer to physically prevent the worker from leaving camp. This constituted peonage, even though the federal peonage statute of 1867 outlawed all debt slavery. During Reconstruction state treasuries were low and convict leasing was seen as a solution to rising prison populations. Like the rest of the naval stores industry labor force, leased convicts tended to be black. Camp control was maintained by simple brutality. The turpentine producers were a small but powerful group that used undue power to secure its labor force. Federal investigations and indictments did little to diminish the peonage system and it continued into the 1940s. The labor-issues chapters were gripping reading; many times I could not put the book down. Few southern foresters know this disturbing aspect of forest history.	5
Another major theme is government: government research that strengthened the industry, government-sponsored conservation, government legislation (Naval Stores Act of 1923), government intervention into labor problems (peonage and convict labor), federal economic assistance programs, and exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Government research proved valuable to the turpentine producers; techniques improved and the industry became more involved with the new scientific forestry developing in the South.	6
A wonderful aspect of the book is the use of stories. Outland acquaints the reader with turpentine producers, wives of turpentine producers, industrial slaves, and all the other ingredients of the industry with illustrative sketches of normal, regular people engaged in turpentining. What better way to include intricate detail, than to tell a story about someone who participated in the industry? Another aspect I really enjoyed was the inclusion of everyday detail. How the tallyman worked. Use of a "hang-up tree." Woodsriders. "Timber carpetbaggers." Forestry jargon is misused in a couple of places. Stumpage is standing timber, not stumps. Forestry Service is used in places instead of U.S. Forest Service or USDA Forest Service. I have heard of roundwood, but not round timber.	7
The book is well written with excellent documentation. While the main focus is the post-Civil War labor organization of the industry with its emphasis on forced labor, Outland provides abundant background on the industry from its beginnings to today. His choice of focus was wise and made for very interesting reading. I suspect most readers, like me, will page through the book to gauge coverage and become captivated by the middle chapters. This is a book that many readers will start at the middle.	8
Tapping the Pines is engaging reading, carefully crafted with many stories of people involved in the industry, and with sufficient detail so that the reader gains an understanding of the fundamental workings of the industry. It is primarily about the gum naval stores industry, and with thorough research does cover that industry from its very beginnings in America all the way to the "demise of an obsolete industry," but it also covers the transition to the wood naval stores industry. Outland has authored a valuable contribution to both southern labor history and forest history. I doubt there is a forester in the South who would challenge my description of the book as "absolutely fascinating."	9
Thomas J. Straka is professor in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.