host of local people not directly connected to the industry, decried ‘‘over-
boxing’’ and wanton killing of longleaves. The predicted, calamitous col-
lapse of the North Carolina industry came soon enough, in a space of only
a couple of years at the end of the decade. Its suddenness seems unrea-
sonable, but the historian Robert Outland has provided a plausible com-
bination of factors that renders the sudden death of so many longleaves
understandable enough: boxing, certainly overboxing, strained the trees.
Boxes opened the trees to massive parasitic invasions that further weak-
ened them. Unfavorable weather, low numbers of bird predators of in-
vading insects, and other serendipitous elements finished off the long-
leaves. They never recovered, since longleaves almost always coexist with
another conifer, the loblolly, that regenerates easily and more rapidly, shad-
ing out grass-stage longleaves. So-called ‘‘old-field pines,’’ ubiquitous in
abandoned croplands, were almost certainly loblollies.
Beginning about , the North Carolina turpentiners simply went
south and restarted their businesses in South Carolina and especially in
Georgia and northern Florida, where they boxed slash pines as well as
longleaves. The Civil War was an inconvenience; mostly the new turpen-
tine groves underwent, in about the same amount of time, the disastrous
experience of the North Carolina longleaves. By the s the new groves
were ruined and dying, too, so the turpentiners spread westward along
the Gulf ’s sandy plains. The turpentine market had become weaker and
less enriching, though, with the appearance of competitors in the medical,
illumination, and chemical industries. The development of government-
sponsored research and professional forestry forced turpentiners to mod-
erate their wasteful ways. French turpentiners, meanwhile, had demon-
strated not only successful conservation of pines but a far more efficient
ceramic cup to catch resin. Charles Herty, Georgia-born chemist and entre-
preneur, modified and patented his own cup for manufacture and sale to
the southern industry. Still, the industry, now old and running out of re-
sources, was slowly dying.
One must say, in retrospect, good riddance. Much of the enormous ex-
panse of the piney-woods southern commons was compromised. And then
there was the industry’s cruel record with its laborers. After emancipation,
turpentiners became principal lessors, especially in Georgia and Florida, of
state and local prison populations. These men were overwhelmingly freed-
men and were treated, not unexpectedly, worse than slaves, since their
labor cost so little and was so easily and cheaply replaced. Other ‘‘free’’