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The Troubling, Hidden History of Turpentine · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
0:30
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. I am Ben. I am joined
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Speaker 1: with our super producer Casey Pegram our guest producers Andrew
0:40
Speaker 1: Howard and Max Williams. I'm pointing at them, but they're
0:45
Speaker 1: not in the room. I'm just I'm trying to be
0:47
Speaker 1: a visual thinker. Uh, you know you guys. You guys
0:51
Speaker 1: know me by now if you don't know me, but well,
0:54
Speaker 1: whatever my writer died Nol, as I said previously, is
0:58
Speaker 1: off on some advent yours. So I've been immensely fortunate
1:03
Speaker 1: to gather some guest host You previously heard my pal
1:07
Speaker 1: h Matt Frederick on a weird history of pointy shoes
1:11
Speaker 1: that was ruined by the Quisters spoiler alert. But today
1:15
Speaker 1: we're trying something is something different. This is fantastic journey
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Speaker 1: and I think it's an important one to know about
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Speaker 1: that doesn't get as much attention in the modern days
1:26
Speaker 1: it should. It is a topic that I was not
1:30
Speaker 1: going to explore on my own. I reached out for
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Speaker 1: some help from some of the experts and fellow Ridiculous Historians.
1:38
Speaker 1: I am proud to announce you know her, you love her.
1:42
Speaker 1: Today we're joined by the one and only Eve's Jeff
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Speaker 1: Code Eves. The crowd goes wild. Wow, what an introduction.
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Speaker 1: I love that. Yes, I am here, and I'm honestly
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Speaker 1: very happy to be here because this topic is something
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Speaker 1: I've honestly been dying to talk about it rather than
2:00
Speaker 1: just like being in my own little stylo with it,
2:02
Speaker 1: because it's something that I like have a personal connection
2:05
Speaker 1: to that I knew nothing about before I realized that
2:08
Speaker 1: I had a small personal connection to Um, which look
2:11
Speaker 1: into in a second, I imagine get you know, Eaves,
2:14
Speaker 1: We're always looking for excuses to work on stuff together.
2:19
Speaker 1: You are a well known podcast, you're an executive producer
2:22
Speaker 1: now you also write frequently for The Bitter Southerner, which
2:26
Speaker 1: is a fantastic literary magazine down here in the Southeast.
2:31
Speaker 1: And when we were talking off air, we're saying, well,
2:34
Speaker 1: you know, we're hanging out, what kind of story do
2:37
Speaker 1: we want to explore together? Peek behind the curtain, folks.
2:41
Speaker 1: Eaves always has the best topics. So usually it's true.
2:47
Speaker 1: Usually when we're talking about collaborating on something, I UM
2:51
Speaker 1: and Eves I hope you don't think I'm lazy for
2:53
Speaker 1: doing this. I just defer to you, and I'm like, well,
2:55
Speaker 1: what should we what? What are you? What's on your mind?
2:59
Speaker 1: And you came with this idea which, again, as we
3:02
Speaker 1: had said, it's something that I and and probably many
3:06
Speaker 1: other people maybe no a little bit about, like the
3:11
Speaker 1: first paragraph of Wikipedia level or the headline level. But
3:14
Speaker 1: what what is our story today and and what what
3:18
Speaker 1: inspired you to look into it? Well, first off, I
3:21
Speaker 1: don't want I want to say that that is not
3:22
Speaker 1: lazy of you, because I mean, I think we're most
3:25
Speaker 1: well attuned to talking about the things we actually care about.
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Speaker 1: So I feel like it's better for everybody for me
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Speaker 1: to come with something that I'm actually interested in. So
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna roll it back, roll
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Speaker 1: that stuff self deprecation back for you, and gonna say
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Speaker 1: that it's not lazy. Um, but we're gonna be talking
3:41
Speaker 1: about turpentine today and my connection to it. Okay, I
3:45
Speaker 1: feel like I worked it up a bit by saying
3:47
Speaker 1: I have a personal connection. It's not that deep. It's
3:49
Speaker 1: just that my mom told me one day that my
3:51
Speaker 1: grandmother who's now passed, but she used to give my
3:54
Speaker 1: mom turpentine like to ingest it. And I was asking
3:57
Speaker 1: my mother a little bit more about it, and she said, oh, well,
4:00
Speaker 1: I think it was you know, she would give it
4:02
Speaker 1: to me when I felt sick or down, are are
4:05
Speaker 1: ill in some way, And I really don't know much.
4:08
Speaker 1: I don't know much more about how and why my
4:11
Speaker 1: grandmother gave my mom's turpentine. But I was like, hmmm,
4:15
Speaker 1: turpin tine. I mean, I think we all have those
4:18
Speaker 1: those families stories where we hear about the folk remedies
4:22
Speaker 1: and the specific to family remedies, and we know that
4:25
Speaker 1: herbal medicine was big for a lot of people today still,
4:29
Speaker 1: but specifically within black families, herbal medicine is something that's
4:33
Speaker 1: pretty important because it's like what we had access to
4:35
Speaker 1: and the things and because of government distrust and so
4:38
Speaker 1: many other things um in that vein. But that's where
4:41
Speaker 1: I got into it. So I was like, there has
4:43
Speaker 1: to be more to this story, because there's always more
4:46
Speaker 1: to the story, and I was just curious, and to
4:50
Speaker 1: be quite frank, I was kind of ashamed that I
4:54
Speaker 1: didn't know more about the history of turpentine in the
4:56
Speaker 1: South because I'm from the South. I was born and
5:00
Speaker 1: Carolina raised in Georgia, some very southern girl, and I
5:04
Speaker 1: was like, I should know more about his history. But
5:07
Speaker 1: I'm being hard on myself, of course, because there's so
5:09
Speaker 1: much that we don't know in this world, and whenever
5:11
Speaker 1: we get an opportunity to learn more about it than
5:13
Speaker 1: than we do, we do that that is inspirational, Eaves,
5:17
Speaker 1: and I would agree, I think you are being a
5:20
Speaker 1: little hard on yourself because I can tell you this, I,
5:24
Speaker 1: like many people in the audience today, after our initial conversation,
5:30
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, I remember this, and then I was
5:32
Speaker 1: excited about our story today, and then it occurred to me,
5:36
Speaker 1: I was like, what is turpentine? You know? Like I like,
5:41
Speaker 1: I've heard of it and I remember it being referenced
5:44
Speaker 1: in things, and I know it has a number of
5:47
Speaker 1: different industrial uses. But you're absolutely right. I love the
5:51
Speaker 1: point you're bringing up to um. A lot of people
5:54
Speaker 1: don't acknowledge that in historically oppressed and this enfranchised communities,
6:01
Speaker 1: there's a synthesis or almost a syncretism of known, established
6:09
Speaker 1: natural remedies for things meeting with institutional racism, like the
6:16
Speaker 1: systemic discrimination against black populations that occurs in the medical
6:20
Speaker 1: community today. Even so, it's funny because I didn't know
6:26
Speaker 1: that your personal experience as a folk remedy, it's not
6:29
Speaker 1: It's not an uncommon one back in the day. And
6:32
Speaker 1: I just so you don't feel alone in the grandmothers
6:35
Speaker 1: and fulk remedies things. I'll confess to you. My grandmother,
6:39
Speaker 1: one of my grandmother's, My family hails from Appalachia, so
6:43
Speaker 1: I'm Southern by root as well. One of my grandmothers,
6:46
Speaker 1: who is a teetotaler, kept whiskey around in the house
6:50
Speaker 1: as a medicinal thing, and one more than once I
6:54
Speaker 1: had an earache and she put whiskey in my ear. Wow,
6:59
Speaker 1: how do you think that? How do you think that
7:01
Speaker 1: affected you? Do you think that there are any side
7:03
Speaker 1: effects you can point to later in life? Now, well,
7:07
Speaker 1: I'm probably going to our number one bar and chicken
7:10
Speaker 1: wings spot the local after this. I'll probably drink whiskey,
7:14
Speaker 1: but I'll try with my mouth this time. That's funny,
7:18
Speaker 1: um No. But also to be clear, I'm not denigrating
7:22
Speaker 1: folk remedies at all. Like, of course, there's a lot
7:25
Speaker 1: of breath of folk remedies, and some of them work
7:27
Speaker 1: for some things. Some of them don't work for other
7:30
Speaker 1: Some of them are probably things you shouldn't do, period,
7:32
Speaker 1: but there is validity to a lot of them legitimacy.
7:35
Speaker 1: And I am a big proponent of making sure that
7:38
Speaker 1: we honor that kind of secondary knowledge that we have,
7:41
Speaker 1: you know, and also remember to think about who studied,
7:45
Speaker 1: who was doing the studying. When it comes to things
7:47
Speaker 1: that are actually verified by you know, longitudinal studies and mainstream,
7:53
Speaker 1: you know, widely accepted science, it's like, who was studied
7:56
Speaker 1: in those studies and and how are they being legitimized?
8:00
Speaker 1: And so I think there's just a lot of depth
8:02
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like giving your children turpentine
8:05
Speaker 1: and whiskey. And it's not to say that that the
8:07
Speaker 1: people who were doing these things were ignorant. They weren't stupid,
8:11
Speaker 1: they weren't even misguided necessarily. It's just, you know, a
8:13
Speaker 1: matter of what work for them, and what they had
8:15
Speaker 1: access to and what they had knowledge of. So I
8:18
Speaker 1: think that's the case in turpentine. And I'm not completely
8:21
Speaker 1: clear on this and my specific family history, but I
8:24
Speaker 1: just felt I was like, well, turpentine was huge in
8:26
Speaker 1: the South. There must be some sort of convenience element here.
8:29
Speaker 1: Where it was like, that's what my grandmother gave my mother.
8:31
Speaker 1: Because it was still prevalent. You know, people always heard
8:34
Speaker 1: about it, people heard about The one thing that came
8:36
Speaker 1: up when it to its medicinal use was having purgative qualities,
8:40
Speaker 1: which is like, that's something that you know you often
8:43
Speaker 1: need to do, is purge when you're sick. So yeah,
8:46
Speaker 1: it's just it was there, and so that's something that
8:48
Speaker 1: I wonder about, and it kind of let me deeper
8:51
Speaker 1: into this hole of just wondering how it moved through
8:54
Speaker 1: the South and what its effect was and and how
8:57
Speaker 1: that came to be. So yeah, it has plenty of
8:59
Speaker 1: function too, like outside of medicinal remedies. And also from
9:05
Speaker 1: what I understand, it's not just ingested orally for medicinal purposes, right,
9:11
Speaker 1: It's also it's almost like a vixed vapor rub sometimes. Yes,
9:15
Speaker 1: So when I was taking notes on it, when I
9:17
Speaker 1: was reading about all the things it's been used for,
9:18
Speaker 1: I was like, it's kind of like an all like
9:20
Speaker 1: all purposes baking soda, because I used baking soda for
9:23
Speaker 1: everything in my house. I'm like, oh my god, I
9:25
Speaker 1: love baking, so I've been give it to me. But
9:28
Speaker 1: it's kind of seems like people treated turpentine in that way. Um. So,
9:31
Speaker 1: some of the things that it's been used in is paint, center, varnishes, furniture, wax,
9:37
Speaker 1: lamp oils. The list really goes on and on when
9:40
Speaker 1: it comes to the person has been used externally and
9:43
Speaker 1: internally for things like hemorrhages, epilepsy, yellow fever, tapeworm, rheumatism,
9:51
Speaker 1: respiratory disease, so so many different things. Also has been
9:55
Speaker 1: described as having been used rectily for people with worms,
9:59
Speaker 1: hemorrhages and stuff your gas. So it wasn't it wasn't
10:01
Speaker 1: just topical and ingested through the mouth as well, So
10:03
Speaker 1: there was a lot of variation in how it was
10:06
Speaker 1: taken into the body. So yeah, household items, you know,
10:10
Speaker 1: in an industrial processes and in medicinal practices. It's just
10:15
Speaker 1: kind of like an all encompassing thing. And when I
10:18
Speaker 1: was looking it up, ingesting turpentine was in the news
10:21
Speaker 1: a few years ago because Tiffany Hattish brought it up saying,
10:25
Speaker 1: I put it on sugar cubes or something, and I
10:26
Speaker 1: take it. It's great. I use it for the cold colds,
10:29
Speaker 1: I use it for all these things. And it was
10:31
Speaker 1: a rash of like you know, cautionary articles that came
10:34
Speaker 1: up after that saying don't do it. You know, turpentine
10:37
Speaker 1: or turpentine can be like, you know, terrible for you,
10:42
Speaker 1: especially particularly in large doses. It has side effects and
10:46
Speaker 1: smaller doses as well though, So yeah, it can you know,
10:50
Speaker 1: lead to things like bleeding in the lungs, kidney damage,
10:54
Speaker 1: and I don't think death is that common, but of
10:56
Speaker 1: course anything not in moderation, you know, it can can
10:59
Speaker 1: be it. And that's the case with turpentine. So when
11:03
Speaker 1: you and I were looking into the history of this substance,
11:08
Speaker 1: you know, just to be clear when for anyone wondering
11:11
Speaker 1: what is turpentine, it's a form of distilled resin right
11:17
Speaker 1: from tree shap. Yes, yes it is. So there's a
11:20
Speaker 1: whole process um that we can get into when it
11:23
Speaker 1: comes to actually describing how turpentine is extracted from trees.
11:28
Speaker 1: But it comes from pine trees and the work can
11:31
Speaker 1: be pretty laborious, but it does take skill to do it,
11:34
Speaker 1: Like there's specialized knowledge that you kind of need to
11:36
Speaker 1: have to be able to work in it, as are
11:39
Speaker 1: so many things. You know, you do something for a
11:41
Speaker 1: long time and you're immersed in it. Then you have
11:43
Speaker 1: this knowledge that seems very easy to the people who
11:46
Speaker 1: are doing it for so long, but outside of it,
11:49
Speaker 1: it's it's not. That's not necessarily the case. So you
11:52
Speaker 1: extract it from trees. They have different parts of the
11:55
Speaker 1: process called boxing, where you cut a hole in the
11:59
Speaker 1: tree and then cornering and then the sap kind of
12:03
Speaker 1: bleeds or not staff excuse me, the gum bleeds from
12:06
Speaker 1: the tree, and it's collected in those boxes. And then
12:09
Speaker 1: the workers would go and collect that from the trees
12:12
Speaker 1: in buckets, and then they would take the buckets and
12:15
Speaker 1: they would dump those into barrels, and then it would
12:18
Speaker 1: be transported off and turned into other things from there.
12:21
Speaker 1: So the tree is an amazing resource for so many things.
12:25
Speaker 1: You know. Once more, the thing that we're really you know,
12:28
Speaker 1: exploiting the tree for turns into so many other things
12:31
Speaker 1: that have so many uses for us in our cushy existences. Yes, yes,
12:37
Speaker 1: so I love that you're talking about the process of finding, collecting, distilling,
12:44
Speaker 1: creating turpentine, because our story today is not just I
12:50
Speaker 1: want to be candid, this is a story that like
12:53
Speaker 1: I knew almost nothing about. I knew that turpentine was
12:58
Speaker 1: made in the South. Like I knew the American South
13:01
Speaker 1: is one of the places that would create turpentine. But
13:05
Speaker 1: other than that, I was tabu larassa. I had no.
13:09
Speaker 1: I had no idea that there is such a long
13:12
Speaker 1: and deep story that you know, you could argue has
13:16
Speaker 1: ripple effects here in the modern day in one, especially
13:20
Speaker 1: in our neck of the global woods. So what you know,
13:24
Speaker 1: when we say, when we say this story, I feel
13:26
Speaker 1: like I'm beating beating around the pine tree here. So
13:30
Speaker 1: we know turpentine, it's been produced in the American South,
13:34
Speaker 1: and it's like our story is a little bit more
13:35
Speaker 1: about that than it is about turpentine the substance. So
13:39
Speaker 1: do you want to kick us off here? Eves? Where
13:41
Speaker 1: where are we traveling to? Back in time? Okay, so
13:44
Speaker 1: picture this? No, I'm just kidding U. Though. The history
13:50
Speaker 1: is very long and very rich, long sect relatively obviously,
13:54
Speaker 1: because the US is you know, the history of the
13:57
Speaker 1: US as a quote unquote nation is pretty sure in
14:00
Speaker 1: the history of the South, you know, goes back only
14:02
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, but within that time span
14:05
Speaker 1: since we started, since we became a nation, since the
14:07
Speaker 1: American Revolution, the whole history of turpentine in the US
14:11
Speaker 1: South goes back to before then, so to the seventeen
14:13
Speaker 1: hundreds and went up to today. It still has effects.
14:17
Speaker 1: So there's a whole history which we don't need to
14:19
Speaker 1: get into, of how turpentine was produced here. It was
14:24
Speaker 1: often very low quality. But we when we were in colonies,
14:27
Speaker 1: you know, we would we had a whole setup. We
14:29
Speaker 1: were shipping back to Europe because their whole situation over
14:32
Speaker 1: there wasn't the best where they were getting their supply from.
14:34
Speaker 1: And so they said, we have colonies, you know, why
14:37
Speaker 1: don't we just get them to do it. Look at
14:38
Speaker 1: all these forests that are there. So that's kind of
14:40
Speaker 1: where the industry started, and then it picked up a
14:43
Speaker 1: lot from there. It peaked in the later eighteen hundreds
14:46
Speaker 1: to the early nineteen hundreds. But that, like I said,
14:50
Speaker 1: that history spanned from like the seventeen hundreds on up
14:53
Speaker 1: to the nineteen sixties and seventies, and then the remnants
14:57
Speaker 1: of those things are still in place today when comes
15:00
Speaker 1: to what the population looks like and what the land
15:02
Speaker 1: looks like. And I think the story the larger story
15:05
Speaker 1: here and that what you know, I think you're trying
15:07
Speaker 1: to get at is that there is so much wrapped
15:09
Speaker 1: up in in it in the history of turpentine in
15:13
Speaker 1: the US South, because it was related to race, the
15:17
Speaker 1: story was related to economics, the still the story was
15:20
Speaker 1: related to the social and cultural history of the region
15:24
Speaker 1: and of the land itself. You know, you have to imagine,
15:28
Speaker 1: I mean, if if we're telling a story about a
15:30
Speaker 1: natural resource in the South, that those things will be
15:33
Speaker 1: wrapped up into it. So I think when we first
15:35
Speaker 1: started talking about this, people are probably like, yeah, I
15:39
Speaker 1: could imagine there's probably gonna there's probably gonna be some
15:42
Speaker 1: sort of history of all those things in there, because
15:44
Speaker 1: that's just what the era and the region lends itself to.
15:48
Speaker 1: And then that is the case. Um. So just to
15:53
Speaker 1: kind of set up the definition in the beginning here,
15:56
Speaker 1: is that there were naval stores, is what they call them.
16:00
Speaker 1: And they called them naval stores, and you know that's
16:04
Speaker 1: related to the history of the turpentine camps um. But
16:07
Speaker 1: they call them naval stores because they were products that
16:09
Speaker 1: were used in ship building, and they came from the
16:12
Speaker 1: long leaf and slash pine trees. Those were the best
16:16
Speaker 1: trees that they could work from, and really the long
16:17
Speaker 1: leaf was the preferred tree that people would like to
16:20
Speaker 1: use for these naval stores, but the term naval kind
16:23
Speaker 1: of just did relate to that industry, even though the
16:27
Speaker 1: products were used in different industries, because it was used
16:30
Speaker 1: so much in ship construction and maintenance and that was
16:33
Speaker 1: kind of the focus of where those supplies were being
16:35
Speaker 1: sent at the time, and that included tar, raw turpentine,
16:40
Speaker 1: and then their derivatives, which is spirits of turpentine and
16:43
Speaker 1: then rosen and pitch. This does tie into, as you said,
16:49
Speaker 1: some complex sociocultural things that have to be addressed and
16:54
Speaker 1: should be given i think more space and conversation. So
16:58
Speaker 1: when we're looking at like as as you said, here,
17:01
Speaker 1: we're we're picturing ourselves as England back in the day
17:05
Speaker 1: for a world concrete empire. They definitely needed a lot
17:09
Speaker 1: of foreign resources. So a lot of the stuff that
17:12
Speaker 1: England was doing as an empire was based on resource extraction,
17:16
Speaker 1: was based on being able to you know, control colonial
17:20
Speaker 1: populations to bring to England the stuff that they didn't
17:24
Speaker 1: have on their archipelago. So if we imagine the time
17:29
Speaker 1: period we're describing, and we're looking at the South in particular,
17:34
Speaker 1: then we see a huge agricultural industry and it's often
17:39
Speaker 1: mono agricultural, right. We've got some like plantation owners who
17:44
Speaker 1: are focusing entirely on using forced labor to grow like
17:50
Speaker 1: a single crop, you know, whether that is cotton, whether
17:55
Speaker 1: that is like in the Caribbean, it might be sugarcane,
17:58
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And several of these plantation owners, from
18:03
Speaker 1: what I understand, around the time there were improvements in
18:07
Speaker 1: the distillation process in the eighteen thirties, several of those
18:11
Speaker 1: folks started looking at or those institutions started looking at
18:16
Speaker 1: the demand for what was known as naval stores and thinking,
18:20
Speaker 1: you know, pardon my French, Holy pine trees are everywhere. Yes, absolutely, yeah,
18:32
Speaker 1: So pine trees are everywhere. If you're not familiar with
18:35
Speaker 1: the US South, there's a bunch of pine forests in
18:37
Speaker 1: the coastal plain of what were the Southern Colonies are
18:40
Speaker 1: the U s South States now, and there was a
18:42
Speaker 1: lot of long leaf pine. As I said, that was
18:44
Speaker 1: a preferred species. So it stretched through the forest in Virginia,
18:48
Speaker 1: through North and South Carolina, through the Florida Panhandle and
18:53
Speaker 1: the northern Peninsula of Florida, and through southern Alabama and
18:57
Speaker 1: Mississippi and parts of Louisiana and Texas. So this whole
19:00
Speaker 1: kind of if you just draw that backwards ill along
19:03
Speaker 1: the coast of the eastern and southern United States, that's
19:08
Speaker 1: where a lot of the long leaf pine was and
19:10
Speaker 1: a lot of those forces were great for just exploiting
19:12
Speaker 1: for the purposes of naval stores. And as you said, well, okay,
19:18
Speaker 1: let me let me first say this is an aside,
19:21
Speaker 1: but honestly, one thing that I liked about digging into
19:24
Speaker 1: this is that I despise pine trees. So so like,
19:29
Speaker 1: as you said, we have a lot, and there are
19:31
Speaker 1: a lot in my backyard, and when I moved to
19:33
Speaker 1: this place, I had like five of them cut down.
19:35
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh, you know, because they were, um,
19:40
Speaker 1: this sounds very privileged and it is, but like you know,
19:42
Speaker 1: if they're very tall, and so their hazards as well.
19:45
Speaker 1: But they just shed so much. So one aside of
19:49
Speaker 1: like digging into this was me really gaining a greater
19:51
Speaker 1: appreciation for the pine. But that just leads into me saying,
19:55
Speaker 1: we have a lot of them here. And the naval
19:57
Speaker 1: stores industry first dive looked on a large scale in
20:01
Speaker 1: North Carolina the abundance of naval stores that were produced
20:04
Speaker 1: in this day is the thing that gave it his nickname,
20:06
Speaker 1: the tar Hill state um and the first to the
20:09
Speaker 1: workers who were covered in tar and pitch. So yes,
20:13
Speaker 1: there was a lot of overlap between well. Slaves were
20:17
Speaker 1: involved in in the naval stores industry highly highly heavily
20:21
Speaker 1: before the Civil War they made up most of the workforce.
20:25
Speaker 1: But yes, plantation owners also play a big role in it,
20:28
Speaker 1: so they controlled a large portion of the naval stores industry.
20:31
Speaker 1: In the South, a significant percentage of the manufacturers owned
20:35
Speaker 1: more enslaved people than the average slave owner did. And
20:40
Speaker 1: in a book called Tapping the Pines by Robert Outland
20:44
Speaker 1: the third he says that of all manufacturers owned more
20:49
Speaker 1: enslaved people than average slave owners, and many on two
20:52
Speaker 1: to three times as many. So they were very intertwined.
20:57
Speaker 1: And in South Carolina and in North Carolina especially league
21:00
Speaker 1: conditions were perfect for profiting from tar making because in
21:04
Speaker 1: North Carolina there weren't many other export commodities that could
21:08
Speaker 1: compete with enaval stores, and lumber wasn't as profitable there,
21:12
Speaker 1: and naval stores could also there were this thing that
21:14
Speaker 1: could be worked throughout the year, so conditions were just perfect.
21:17
Speaker 1: In North Carolina for that being a successful production space
21:21
Speaker 1: for them, and it just you know, blew up in
21:24
Speaker 1: the South from there kind of moved south and west
21:28
Speaker 1: as they the destruction. You know, imagine like just a
21:34
Speaker 1: path of destruction from North Carolina and down when it
21:37
Speaker 1: came to the pine forests, because once they ran out,
21:40
Speaker 1: they went to the next place. And it's like, we
21:42
Speaker 1: gotta make more money, we gotta we gotta continue this industry.
21:44
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna, you know, do it where we
21:46
Speaker 1: can just keep keep moving. So it's like economically driven
21:51
Speaker 1: natural disaster. Yes, I mean yes, and it's and it
21:55
Speaker 1: has still you know, shows its effects today. There were
21:57
Speaker 1: things that happened, like for us that in grow back
22:00
Speaker 1: and towards the end of it, they had to use
22:02
Speaker 1: younger pines which weren't as great for the industry, and
22:05
Speaker 1: so many things like that. But that is some of
22:08
Speaker 1: the background of the like you know, the way that
22:10
Speaker 1: it started and it and it continued to move throughout
22:13
Speaker 1: the South. One thing I did want to go back
22:15
Speaker 1: to because I want you to know, I'm a big
22:18
Speaker 1: nature lover. Ye, I wanted to from that perspective. I
22:23
Speaker 1: wanted to reassure you there's nothing wrong with hating. Okay,
22:28
Speaker 1: thank you, not one. It just needs to be said aloud,
22:32
Speaker 1: like especially the really tall ones. Yes, if you've ever
22:36
Speaker 1: if you've ever been in the south there lived near
22:38
Speaker 1: a pine forest, and seeing those things in a storm
22:41
Speaker 1: or implement weather, it's not cool. Yeah, they wave everywhere,
22:45
Speaker 1: They're very bendy, and they also have a really instead
22:48
Speaker 1: of a really deep root system that's more vertical, they
22:51
Speaker 1: have a really shallow, a comparatively shallow roots system that
22:55
Speaker 1: goes across so you can see. So if you hit
22:58
Speaker 1: the wrong kind of storm and down here you can
23:01
Speaker 1: see a pine tree, just move from vertical the horizontal
23:04
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, take a little bit of dirt with it,
23:07
Speaker 1: and just say, hey, I'm glad my car wasn't there.
23:11
Speaker 1: So I think you're I think you're doing all to day.
23:13
Speaker 1: I think you're spot on. And then and the sap,
23:16
Speaker 1: the sap or the gum or whatever you call it,
23:19
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, it's everywhere. The needles are insane. And yeah,
23:24
Speaker 1: so I too, am a nature lover, but I like
23:26
Speaker 1: to respect them from a distance. You know, I'm kind
23:28
Speaker 1: of like halst nature. I'm still half city girl because
23:31
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Atlanta area, So it's like
23:33
Speaker 1: in my backyard. Cool. But I love hiking. I love
23:36
Speaker 1: like being entrenched in the forest. So I'm like, yeah,
23:38
Speaker 1: y'all are great there, but here, you know, we can
23:41
Speaker 1: we can love each other at a distance. That's how
23:44
Speaker 1: I feel. Yeah, I'd like it. Uh yeah, that's that's
23:47
Speaker 1: how I prefer possums for instance. Also, it's very common here.
23:51
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, it's awesome that you're alive over there, bro,
23:55
Speaker 1: It's awesome, awesome. So what we're seeing is a pattern
23:59
Speaker 1: that has occurred with multiple other industries that occurs today
24:05
Speaker 1: with things like the palm oil industry, right, which is
24:08
Speaker 1: going through huge swaths of wilderness and back in the
24:13
Speaker 1: period of time in the area of the world that
24:15
Speaker 1: you're describing, we see. I love that you describe as
24:18
Speaker 1: that backwards l because that's really that really is how
24:22
Speaker 1: it how the pattern seems to expand. This occurs concurrently
24:27
Speaker 1: with the rise of what we would call turpentine labor camps,
24:32
Speaker 1: like turpentine camps, meaning that these are populations people entirely
24:38
Speaker 1: dedicated to the turpentine naval stores industry. Like it's not
24:44
Speaker 1: like something where the workers live at a camp seasonally,
24:47
Speaker 1: because as you said, this is a year round business.
24:49
Speaker 1: People and their families are living at a main camp
24:54
Speaker 1: until the resources exhausted. Is that correct, Yes, that is correct,
24:58
Speaker 1: and then once those resource is exhausted, they would just
25:01
Speaker 1: kind of move on to the next place. And there
25:04
Speaker 1: were it was a little bit a little bit different
25:07
Speaker 1: before the Civil War and then after the Civil War
25:09
Speaker 1: because of emancipation specifically, but it wasn't that different. Um.
25:13
Speaker 1: There were things that changed, like technology and the way
25:16
Speaker 1: production happened, but a lot of as we know within
25:20
Speaker 1: in general, you know, we know about the direct line
25:23
Speaker 1: from slavery to mass incarceration. Um, So a lot of
25:26
Speaker 1: the practices that were done under enslavement still happened after emancipation.
25:31
Speaker 1: And that was the case in the turpentine industry. So
25:34
Speaker 1: just to kind of describe the way it was for
25:37
Speaker 1: a second. And as you said, the turpentine camps, which
25:40
Speaker 1: were these camps that were specifically dedicated to extracting the
25:44
Speaker 1: gum from the trees and so they weren't really involved
25:47
Speaker 1: in the distillation process. They would send those that raw
25:50
Speaker 1: turpentine away for other people to deal with. The also,
25:54
Speaker 1: you know, in their own ways terrible and grueling and
26:00
Speaker 1: laborious and hazardous, often processes that came with working in
26:03
Speaker 1: the stills. But yes, so at the camps themselves, the
26:08
Speaker 1: conditions were pretty poor and before the Civil War there
26:13
Speaker 1: were a lot of enslaved people who were um, I
26:17
Speaker 1: was gonna say employed, but they were not employed because
26:19
Speaker 1: they were not paid. The enslaved people who worked the camps,
26:23
Speaker 1: and there were also more impoverished white people who worked there,
26:26
Speaker 1: and there were also immigrants, specifically Eastern European immigrants that
26:30
Speaker 1: would work the camps, but it was largely enslaved people,
26:34
Speaker 1: and it was also very largely men versus women and children.
26:39
Speaker 1: Women and children really weren't super involved at the Turpentine camps,
26:43
Speaker 1: but you know, there were workers would go through this process.
26:48
Speaker 1: They would have long days of doing the boxing and
26:51
Speaker 1: doing the cornering and doing the scraping and all of
26:53
Speaker 1: the various processes that came along with the actual work
26:57
Speaker 1: of laboring with the trees. And housing was crude because
27:03
Speaker 1: it was meant to be temporary, because you know, like
27:05
Speaker 1: we talked about, the production was just open move after
27:08
Speaker 1: one place was exploited, and there were a couple of
27:13
Speaker 1: different systems that were used when it came to life
27:16
Speaker 1: and working in the camps, well in under slavery in general,
27:20
Speaker 1: which was the task system and the gang system. So
27:23
Speaker 1: in the gang system, enslaved people were just kind of
27:25
Speaker 1: assigned work and they were expected to do it as
27:27
Speaker 1: a group. And then under the task system, which is
27:30
Speaker 1: what happened mostly at Turpentine camps, individual enslaved people worked
27:35
Speaker 1: at and it got an assigned job because you have
27:37
Speaker 1: to imagine, you know, we know what the forces are
27:39
Speaker 1: like today, their dents, they're huge, and they were even
27:43
Speaker 1: more so then, and they were very isolated. And people
27:48
Speaker 1: worked in those in the Turpentine camps under that task system,
27:52
Speaker 1: which gave them relative keyword, relative relative autonomy versus how
27:59
Speaker 1: it was under the sang system because they were assigned
28:02
Speaker 1: the task individually and they worked in more of a
28:05
Speaker 1: spread out way than they would do so where they
28:07
Speaker 1: have more close communication under something like a gang system.
28:11
Speaker 1: So just imagine these people working the trees, using their tools,
28:15
Speaker 1: having their gallon buckets, being out here in a very
28:18
Speaker 1: socially isolated way, and you know, being subject of course
28:23
Speaker 1: to the things that happened under enslavement in other industries,
28:27
Speaker 1: like there was a gross, a very gross and calculated
28:31
Speaker 1: balance of punishment and reward for work. So punishments of
28:37
Speaker 1: physical pain would be the ones that made them increase
28:41
Speaker 1: their effort but did not promote carefulness. And then when
28:44
Speaker 1: it came to rewards, they were the things that increased
28:47
Speaker 1: care rather but reduced efforts. So these same sort of
28:50
Speaker 1: mental manipulative things that happened under enslavement also happened ends
28:56
Speaker 1: the turpentine camps. And then the overseers were called woods rider,
29:00
Speaker 1: which is honestly a great word. It's just not like
29:04
Speaker 1: I love that word itself, but everything else that it
29:07
Speaker 1: entails and that is underneath that word is not great.
29:10
Speaker 1: But woods Riders sounds like, I don't know, something out
29:12
Speaker 1: of a fantasy novel, I think is why big vibes like.
29:19
Speaker 1: It's like I was thinking the same thing, you know
29:22
Speaker 1: what I mean, where it would not be out of
29:26
Speaker 1: place in song device and the woods Riders arrive at
29:32
Speaker 1: exactly send the woods Riders, but yes, um, but less cool.
29:39
Speaker 1: They were overseers. They rode through the forest on horses,
29:42
Speaker 1: and they were see to it that workers were doing
29:44
Speaker 1: their jobs. So yeah, um, I could go on and
29:47
Speaker 1: on about the conditions there, but I won't, but just
29:51
Speaker 1: as an example of what they had to deal with
29:55
Speaker 1: and indoor because of the labor that they were doing
29:59
Speaker 1: and it the way it was set up is that,
30:02
Speaker 1: for instance, there was it was hard to get clean
30:04
Speaker 1: running drinking water in the forests, especially during draw spills.
30:09
Speaker 1: The stuff that was there was stagnant obviously, stuff you
30:11
Speaker 1: don't want to get like dysentery and time and like
30:15
Speaker 1: other things that are bad that come from um drinking
30:18
Speaker 1: bad water. I don't even know if dysenterry is one
30:19
Speaker 1: of those things, uh, parasites whatever, um. So they didn't
30:23
Speaker 1: have clean running water, so sometimes they would use straws
30:26
Speaker 1: that they brought in didn't drink the water that was
30:29
Speaker 1: collected in turpentine boxes, the boxes that were in the trees,
30:33
Speaker 1: which as we know, can Ingesting turpentine can lead to
30:36
Speaker 1: intestinal and abdominal issues, so it's likely that this caused
30:40
Speaker 1: some sickness in them, but was probably not fatal. But
30:43
Speaker 1: there were other hazardous conditions that came with working in
30:46
Speaker 1: the camps and later the stills, because fires and explosions
30:51
Speaker 1: were common in the stills, because of the type of
30:53
Speaker 1: work that it was, because of what they were dealing with.
30:55
Speaker 1: And then there was a wildlife like just what we
30:58
Speaker 1: you know, what we would all deal with in the forests,
31:01
Speaker 1: like the snakes and the ticks, um. And then there
31:03
Speaker 1: was the heat and the humidity of the region. And
31:06
Speaker 1: then there was the expansiveness of the forest, which meant
31:08
Speaker 1: that the people would get lost sometimes. There were stories
31:10
Speaker 1: of workers getting lost in the woods, and you know
31:14
Speaker 1: there there was a story of one guy who got
31:16
Speaker 1: lost in then he eventually died because he had hunger
31:20
Speaker 1: and thirst. So yeah, um, not great conditions at all.
31:25
Speaker 1: And you're also being exploited in so many other ways
31:28
Speaker 1: beyond just the condition of the work itself. Yeah, and
31:33
Speaker 1: this so I have to say, eaves that the description
31:38
Speaker 1: and I don't know why, but especially the idea of
31:41
Speaker 1: someone being lost lends itself well to a horror story plot.
31:48
Speaker 1: You know. Yes, I am like this is like, this
31:55
Speaker 1: is something that I'm working on right now, honestly, Like
31:57
Speaker 1: I I don't know about horrors per se, but I
32:00
Speaker 1: think about this a lot because I also um for
32:03
Speaker 1: people who don't know. But I know, you know, Ben,
32:05
Speaker 1: I camp and I backpack, so I do spend a
32:08
Speaker 1: lot of time in the woods and like reckoning with
32:10
Speaker 1: fear that comes with being in the woods, especially as
32:12
Speaker 1: a person who is like largely sheltered because I live
32:17
Speaker 1: such a privileged life. You know, I have a house. Um,
32:20
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't have that. You know, I
32:22
Speaker 1: have food and the half of the table, and so
32:26
Speaker 1: it's just like it throws you out of your element
32:28
Speaker 1: and then you realize that this is just people's day
32:30
Speaker 1: to days, still today and was in the past in
32:33
Speaker 1: so many different ways, under so many different circumstances, and
32:36
Speaker 1: so yes, it's it's like a horror. It's it's it's horror,
32:40
Speaker 1: it's terror because as the horror of the landscape to
32:44
Speaker 1: the terror of society that was being you know, you
32:48
Speaker 1: were being affected at um affected by at the time,
32:51
Speaker 1: and it's just yeah, brutal and horrifying. So yes, that
32:56
Speaker 1: is a good way to describe it. Yeah, it's it's
32:58
Speaker 1: a it's a harrowing experience. And you know, earlier you
33:02
Speaker 1: hit on something that I always love to bring up
33:06
Speaker 1: on the show. We're talking about just like full remedies,
33:10
Speaker 1: the idea. You know, it's it's tempting for people in
33:15
Speaker 1: one or the modern era to look back at events
33:19
Speaker 1: of yesteryear and look kind of a skance at them
33:21
Speaker 1: or down their noses at the people involved. But the
33:24
Speaker 1: people who are alive in these times and centuries in
33:28
Speaker 1: millennia past were no different from us. They were just
33:32
Speaker 1: as intelligent, and they were just as fallible. They were
33:35
Speaker 1: worked like us. They were working with the information they have.
33:37
Speaker 1: So whenever I hear somebody say something like, oh, it's
33:41
Speaker 1: dumb that people didn't know insert fact here and blah
33:45
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah, but my question is what is
33:48
Speaker 1: always what dumb stuff are we doing right now? Or
33:50
Speaker 1: what stuff are we doing that future historians will look
33:53
Speaker 1: back on as ridiculous. One of my nominees is neckties.
33:58
Speaker 1: I know this might not affect you as much as
34:00
Speaker 1: it affects me, but it's just why are we still
34:03
Speaker 1: doing this? Why are we insisting upon this charade? But anyway,
34:07
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with it. And I do
34:09
Speaker 1: know the history. I think it's like certain Bosnian soldiers, Yeah,
34:13
Speaker 1: they're like, what do you call the vestigial organs or
34:15
Speaker 1: you know, like those things that that that we still have.
34:18
Speaker 1: We're like, I don't need those like um, So I
34:22
Speaker 1: have to think about that a little bit longer because
34:24
Speaker 1: I feel like there are a lot of things that
34:25
Speaker 1: I ball at. Then I'm like, this makes no sense,
34:27
Speaker 1: like why are we doing this this way? But I
34:29
Speaker 1: would definitely have to think about that. I know one thing.
34:31
Speaker 1: I don't think this is that related, but I always
34:35
Speaker 1: think about batteries. I just feel like we're never moving
34:37
Speaker 1: fast enough with batteries and people are And if you're drinking,
34:41
Speaker 1: I'm like, why are you? Why are you still plugging
34:43
Speaker 1: things in with chords? Why are you? Why are we
34:46
Speaker 1: still here? Why does it take an hour for you?
34:48
Speaker 1: You know? I feel like maybe that's kind of related,
34:51
Speaker 1: But I have to think about that a little bit more,
34:53
Speaker 1: and I'll come back to you. That we live in
34:55
Speaker 1: a world of wires, you and me, especially right now,
34:59
Speaker 1: just because we're we have our homes setups, and I
35:01
Speaker 1: think about that too. I'm like, you know what's gonna
35:04
Speaker 1: stand out in films that are set in this time period.
35:08
Speaker 1: It's gonna be the wires, It's gonna be everything. Like
35:11
Speaker 1: another thing. Um, I don't want to guess too far
35:13
Speaker 1: off topic, but another example that I think you might
35:16
Speaker 1: enjoy or might terrify you next time you're driving is
35:20
Speaker 1: future historians are going to think, I'm not going to
35:24
Speaker 1: overuse this word, but are going to think it is
35:27
Speaker 1: ridiculous and cartoonish that we hopped in these metal machines
35:32
Speaker 1: that can go over eighty miles an hour and we're
35:35
Speaker 1: within like three feet of each other going at this
35:39
Speaker 1: speed and it's all supposed to be fine because there's
35:43
Speaker 1: this honor system of painted lines on the road. And
35:46
Speaker 1: if you try to explain this to someone from the future,
35:49
Speaker 1: the first question would be like, oh, that's crazy. How
35:52
Speaker 1: did it stop people from hitting each other? And your
35:54
Speaker 1: answer has to be he didn't. Human error still existed. Yeah,
36:01
Speaker 1: I've one feel you on that. And also not to
36:03
Speaker 1: go too much on a tangent, but it's something that
36:05
Speaker 1: I think about a lot because I think about how
36:09
Speaker 1: okay this is, this is very deep into my my
36:12
Speaker 1: personal thought world. But okay, but how how much we feel,
36:17
Speaker 1: say I feel like as human beings, as human humanity,
36:21
Speaker 1: Like sometimes in society we can a lot of times
36:22
Speaker 1: say that we don't trust people, but like every day
36:25
Speaker 1: we wake up and step outside of the house, we
36:27
Speaker 1: have to infinitely trust everybody else that we come in
36:30
Speaker 1: contact with to not destroy us. Like the one thing
36:33
Speaker 1: that we can say we have in this life, I
36:35
Speaker 1: think is trust, because otherwise we will be in a
36:38
Speaker 1: corner all day long. And even that like this can
36:41
Speaker 1: be fuzzy. So I actually think about you know, I
36:45
Speaker 1: think about stuff like that a lot. Like we yes,
36:47
Speaker 1: we do have to rely on other people just doing
36:50
Speaker 1: the right thing and making a mistake, just buy their
36:53
Speaker 1: own valiability, not not even on purpose. And when we
37:03
Speaker 1: take when we take this back to the idea of
37:05
Speaker 1: the Turpentine camps, even after you know, I feel like
37:09
Speaker 1: it's something that thankfully everybody can acknowledge now, even after
37:16
Speaker 1: the legal passage of emancipation, I would argue, even in
37:20
Speaker 1: areas of the South where people knew it was coming,
37:24
Speaker 1: you know, people who were like had the reigns of
37:26
Speaker 1: society at the time when they knew it was coming,
37:29
Speaker 1: even before it had passed, they were already working assiduously
37:33
Speaker 1: to create laws that made the day to day situation
37:38
Speaker 1: still the same. And you know, for anyone who doesn't know,
37:42
Speaker 1: it's heartbreaking that there were there were many, many communities,
37:46
Speaker 1: communities of people who were enslaved who did not learn
37:50
Speaker 1: about emancipation until years and years after the fact, because
37:54
Speaker 1: that information was withheld from them. This happens like this
37:59
Speaker 1: is uh something that has to be acknowledge. We're talking
38:03
Speaker 1: about this turpentine story because as you said, Eves, so
38:06
Speaker 1: their emancipation happens, right, And there are people in communities,
38:11
Speaker 1: some some very large camps. But like imagine you're a worker,
38:16
Speaker 1: you work at a turpentine camp and you've been there
38:20
Speaker 1: for years. As you said, this is a very not
38:23
Speaker 1: to be too liam neesent about it, but it's a
38:25
Speaker 1: very specific set of skills. Like if you're listening to
38:28
Speaker 1: this and you don't have experience trying to do this,
38:32
Speaker 1: then you're going to have a bad time for your
38:35
Speaker 1: first like year. And I don't know exactly, I don't
38:41
Speaker 1: know exactly how the apprenticeship worked because something that I
38:44
Speaker 1: was thinking about as I was reading how they did that,
38:47
Speaker 1: this was like what was the first once the ax
38:50
Speaker 1: or you know the book it was handed to you, Like,
38:53
Speaker 1: how did that look? How did you you know there
38:55
Speaker 1: was There had to be a first time that you
38:56
Speaker 1: did this thing, and it required skill and pract just
39:00
Speaker 1: so I just wonder about that. But yes, um, it
39:03
Speaker 1: looked very different before and after the Civil War, and
39:06
Speaker 1: some of these practices continued, and some of those things
39:09
Speaker 1: that they did was debt, peonage and convicts leasing. Well,
39:13
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a better way to say that,
39:15
Speaker 1: but the leasing of people who were considered convicts because
39:19
Speaker 1: they have been convicted of a crime. So that developed
39:22
Speaker 1: in the wake of emancipation, and the practices and the
39:25
Speaker 1: people that were under them were subject to abuse. And
39:29
Speaker 1: the link here and I always love when things are
39:32
Speaker 1: like they have some link to me, even if they're
39:35
Speaker 1: not great. It just makes history feel more real, you know,
39:38
Speaker 1: And for me, that was that the leasing of people
39:40
Speaker 1: who were convicted of crimes was very, very prevalent in Georgia. Well, okay,
39:46
Speaker 1: it wasn't as prevalent as debt peonage was, but as
39:49
Speaker 1: far as the places in the South, they happened a
39:51
Speaker 1: lot in Georgia and Florida. So there were of course
39:55
Speaker 1: other industries that relied on peonage as well. There were
39:59
Speaker 1: past laws outlining outlawing it in the eighteen sixties, but
40:03
Speaker 1: it continued in practice, as so many things do. Just
40:06
Speaker 1: because something is outlawed doesn't mean that that the processes
40:10
Speaker 1: and institutions just disappear all of a sudden. So it
40:13
Speaker 1: was kind of you can think of as a continuation
40:15
Speaker 1: of enslavement ponages when laborers have to pay off a
40:19
Speaker 1: debt with work, and then sometimes those debts were paid
40:22
Speaker 1: off quickly, and more often than not, workers got stuck
40:25
Speaker 1: in that debt servitude when they couldn't repay the debt,
40:28
Speaker 1: and then the ponage happened when they couldn't leave the
40:31
Speaker 1: company the job because the producer was stopping them from
40:35
Speaker 1: doing that. In some way, I was waiting for this
40:37
Speaker 1: party is because this is this is coming up. You know,
40:40
Speaker 1: history may not always repeat, but it rhymes. I was
40:43
Speaker 1: thinking about company towns recently because there was some legislation
40:47
Speaker 1: being floated in Nevada to create what they called innovation
40:52
Speaker 1: zones and they were going to let tech companies fill
40:54
Speaker 1: the role of local government. And I was I was
40:58
Speaker 1: one of the hopefully many people just trash talking in
41:02
Speaker 1: on the internet like there's no one remember the songs
41:06
Speaker 1: like sixteen tons, like this is a bad look. And
41:10
Speaker 1: what you've described here beautifully is this this horrific system.
41:14
Speaker 1: It's like you're trapped in a Dave and Busters or
41:17
Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese, but instead of playing games and getting
41:21
Speaker 1: paid in tokens. You do backbreaking labor and you still
41:25
Speaker 1: get paid in tokens, and that's not real money. It's specie.
41:29
Speaker 1: Your script. We've talked about the back we've talked about
41:32
Speaker 1: in back episodes. But imagine like so, from what I understand,
41:37
Speaker 1: and this is some of the research use, it means,
41:38
Speaker 1: from what I understand, you would get a small living space.
41:43
Speaker 1: It would not be a very well constructed living space.
41:46
Speaker 1: You would get paid in whatever your fake currency was
41:50
Speaker 1: on a monthly basis, and you would I think in
41:53
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds the amount you got paid was
41:57
Speaker 1: based on how many trees you have. But the only
42:02
Speaker 1: way you could buy things you needed, like the only
42:05
Speaker 1: way you could buy Maybe in some cases the labor
42:08
Speaker 1: camps actually provided you know, the turpentine related tools, but
42:13
Speaker 1: as far as like your clothing, as far as your food,
42:17
Speaker 1: other materials you would buy or other resources, you had
42:20
Speaker 1: no choice because that isolation you talked about. You had
42:23
Speaker 1: no choice other than the company store. It was not
42:25
Speaker 1: a Walmart. It wasn't like you couldn't take a bus somewhere.
42:29
Speaker 1: Um and those company stores specifically ad prices structured to
42:33
Speaker 1: encourage debt peonage, so that it was too in the
42:38
Speaker 1: mind of those what you call them producers, the system
42:41
Speaker 1: is broken if people are able to get out of it,
42:44
Speaker 1: which is insidious. It is honestly absurd. You know. It's
42:49
Speaker 1: like it's like the bucket with a hole in the bottom.
42:51
Speaker 1: It's like it's just it makes no sense, but it
42:55
Speaker 1: makes sense to them because the producers are the ones
42:57
Speaker 1: who profit, and that's all the other concerned about. And
43:00
Speaker 1: they don't care who gets exploited in the process. And
43:03
Speaker 1: you know, from from the smallest exploitation to you know,
43:06
Speaker 1: fatality um. And so the debt would actually you explain
43:10
Speaker 1: that perfectly by the way ben and the debt would
43:13
Speaker 1: start as soon as people were hired through things like
43:16
Speaker 1: advanced wages. So, like I said earlier, some of those
43:19
Speaker 1: people were immigrants who were coming from places like New York,
43:22
Speaker 1: and so there was a whole exploit exploitative system there too.
43:25
Speaker 1: And the way that they recruited these people and they
43:27
Speaker 1: set them up to go to the South and they're
43:29
Speaker 1: like these people coming from a strange, stranger's land, you know,
43:33
Speaker 1: coming to the United States, and they're like, I get
43:35
Speaker 1: this opportunity, you know, just put yourself in their place.
43:37
Speaker 1: And so you know, they would be like, Okay, you know,
43:41
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go do this work, and it will be
43:43
Speaker 1: a total reversal when you got there and realized how
43:46
Speaker 1: situation the situation actually was. So they would get these
43:49
Speaker 1: advanced wages. Mind you, these these immigrants who were coming
43:52
Speaker 1: would have to pay things like the transportation would have
43:55
Speaker 1: to be paid for like, so the indebtedness started even
43:58
Speaker 1: there um. But for people who weren't immigrants, who are
44:01
Speaker 1: already in the area and didn't necessarily have to go
44:04
Speaker 1: through that route, they would be set up with advanced
44:06
Speaker 1: wages as well. So they would use to get food
44:09
Speaker 1: from the commissary. So it would start off like that
44:12
Speaker 1: and it would continue like that. So they would continue
44:14
Speaker 1: to use debt to keep these workers underneath their thumbs.
44:17
Speaker 1: So in the book I was talking about earlier, that
44:19
Speaker 1: kind of explained as this line between freedom and and
44:22
Speaker 1: un freedom, you know, between freedom and enslavement. Because of
44:26
Speaker 1: the way it was set up, it was like, yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: you're in debt, and maybe you're you're just constantly in debt.
44:32
Speaker 1: There were oftentimes that the workers would owe the producers
44:36
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars and so they would continue on their
44:39
Speaker 1: work in that debt, so it was just a rolling cycle.
44:42
Speaker 1: So the workers would get these tokens you would talk
44:44
Speaker 1: about to purchase supplies, and then the account was debited
44:47
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the month, the wages
44:49
Speaker 1: were applied to the accounts. Okay, you get the wages,
44:51
Speaker 1: and then maybe the wages were more than the debit,
44:54
Speaker 1: so maybe you got that difference, but you would get
44:57
Speaker 1: in in commissary screw you know, the fig money. But
45:00
Speaker 1: if it was even you know, if there was no
45:02
Speaker 1: credit on your part, you would have to borrow again
45:04
Speaker 1: to pay for the next month's expenses. So they owe
45:08
Speaker 1: their employers, you know, it can be hundreds of dollars.
45:11
Speaker 1: And then what happened was and this is where the
45:13
Speaker 1: pianage comes in, when they would try to leave. That's
45:16
Speaker 1: when the worker could be like, Okay, maybe I'll let
45:18
Speaker 1: you leave, but your new employment has to pay me
45:21
Speaker 1: and they'll be fine. And then the other option was
45:24
Speaker 1: that they were like, uh, you need to stay and
45:27
Speaker 1: if you leave, I'm gonna bring you back, and then
45:29
Speaker 1: not do it and not follow up on that, and
45:31
Speaker 1: then they could follow up on that. It's like the
45:33
Speaker 1: third thing that would happen is that they would be like,
45:35
Speaker 1: you're not leaving, and I'm going to physically keep you
45:37
Speaker 1: from leaving, and if you do leave, I'm gonna forcibly
45:40
Speaker 1: bring you back, just like you know, back in the
45:42
Speaker 1: days of enslavement, where they would send people off to
45:45
Speaker 1: bring enslaved people back. So it was, it was it's
45:50
Speaker 1: just gross, like it's growth. Like, there's not really another
45:53
Speaker 1: way to describe it. Yeah, it's just really disgusting. I agree,
45:59
Speaker 1: And we see, you know again, we see that pattern
46:02
Speaker 1: where you know, there are protective laws written at a
46:06
Speaker 1: federal state level in different places, but these laws, as
46:12
Speaker 1: well intentioned as they may sound on paper, they don't
46:16
Speaker 1: seem to have a lot of heft or teeth when
46:19
Speaker 1: it comes to these historically disadvantaged communities, these rural areas
46:25
Speaker 1: where corruption is it's a stereotype, but it's it's a
46:30
Speaker 1: true stereotype. Unfortunately, corruption is endemic like it is. It
46:35
Speaker 1: would be weird for the local law enforcement not to
46:39
Speaker 1: just follow the lead of the richest guy in town,
46:43
Speaker 1: right because they work together as fingers on a hand,
46:47
Speaker 1: they're part of this system that uh, the vultron is up.
46:51
Speaker 1: And then if someone from outside, like if someone from
46:53
Speaker 1: d C says, uh, you know, I like, hey, we
46:56
Speaker 1: wrote a law about this. Then they'll just say, oh, yeah, no, totally,
47:00
Speaker 1: that's absolutely what we're doing. And then they'll just wait
47:03
Speaker 1: until that contention is gone and they'll be back to
47:05
Speaker 1: their same unclean business. One thing that you set up
47:10
Speaker 1: perfectly is at the top of this episode, you know,
47:12
Speaker 1: you said, we see the effects of this in the
47:17
Speaker 1: modern day. Could we maybe talk a little bit about
47:21
Speaker 1: how these naval stores and turpentine camps declined, uh, and
47:26
Speaker 1: and like why why you You probably won't know a
47:31
Speaker 1: bunch of people working at one today for sure. Okay.
47:34
Speaker 1: So I guess I kind of start at the place
47:36
Speaker 1: where you mentioned the laws that were happening. So there were,
47:41
Speaker 1: like you said, laws that were like, okay, I'm gonna
47:43
Speaker 1: try to keep you from doing this. As we move
47:45
Speaker 1: into the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds,
47:48
Speaker 1: there was more movement when it came to people challenging debt, peonage,
47:53
Speaker 1: challenging the fact that this was forced labor, that that
47:55
Speaker 1: was the thing that was keeping the naval stores industry alive,
47:58
Speaker 1: and there were people who were speaking up about it
48:00
Speaker 1: and the treatment of people in these camps and the
48:02
Speaker 1: brutality that was happening, because we didn't even get much
48:05
Speaker 1: into that, but it's like, you know, you know, just
48:07
Speaker 1: imagine there were terrible things that happened when it came
48:09
Speaker 1: to the types of torturing and brutality. So all of
48:12
Speaker 1: these things were kind of boiling up, like the consciousness
48:15
Speaker 1: was happening there where it was Okay, this is this
48:18
Speaker 1: is wrong, and we should probably try to do something
48:21
Speaker 1: to stop it. And so that that had a hand
48:23
Speaker 1: in the decline of the industry. A lot of the
48:26
Speaker 1: producers were investigated for violating the thirteenth Amendment. Forced labor
48:30
Speaker 1: was challenged, like I said, and so was the leasting
48:33
Speaker 1: of people who were convicted of crimes. And at the
48:36
Speaker 1: same time, the forces were being exploited and depleted. And
48:41
Speaker 1: that was the case. But there were also some people
48:43
Speaker 1: who were like, yeah, that's fine, you know, it's just
48:46
Speaker 1: a sinus civilization. This is what's gonna happen. This is
48:48
Speaker 1: what comes along with people developing the land and progressing
48:51
Speaker 1: and things like that. But at the same time as that,
48:55
Speaker 1: there were also technological advancements and production methods, and then
48:59
Speaker 1: there was greater research and then there was more federal
49:01
Speaker 1: assistance in the industry. So in that earlier kind of transition,
49:06
Speaker 1: a lot of the federal stuff benefited the producers. But
49:10
Speaker 1: then they're also came a point where it was like, okay,
49:12
Speaker 1: like this is declining. You're losing your labor force. You
49:15
Speaker 1: you're losing your your forced labor. You know. A lot
49:18
Speaker 1: of the black people who were in the area were like,
49:21
Speaker 1: there are all these other things that are happening that
49:24
Speaker 1: would be way better for me than working in this horrifying,
49:29
Speaker 1: low paying, exploitative debt servitude, you know, go on and
49:35
Speaker 1: go on and so forth of a condition that you
49:38
Speaker 1: don't want to work and live in. UM, it's not
49:40
Speaker 1: really doing anything for you. So they found other alternatives
49:43
Speaker 1: and other industries like timber. So there was a lot
49:46
Speaker 1: of competition as well for the people who could do
49:49
Speaker 1: this kind of work. And we're willing to do this
49:50
Speaker 1: kind of work and we're forced or not. I don't
49:53
Speaker 1: want to use the work force because it wasn't forced labor.
49:55
Speaker 1: But this is the opportunities that were available to them.
49:58
Speaker 1: So the industry really strull during the Great Depression, as
50:01
Speaker 1: many industries did UM and they did get some economic
50:04
Speaker 1: assistance from the government. Also of note related to this,
50:08
Speaker 1: but the smallest side is that you can go on
50:11
Speaker 1: the Library of Congress's website and look up some of
50:14
Speaker 1: the posters and the audio that was related to the
50:18
Speaker 1: turpentine workers in the turpentine industry. There was actually UH
50:23
Speaker 1: federal theater project put on by the Works Progress Administration.
50:28
Speaker 1: They had a play that was called Turpentine by a
50:30
Speaker 1: guy named J. A. Smith and Peter Moral or Morale Yeah,
50:34
Speaker 1: And on a poster for it, it says a tale
50:36
Speaker 1: of the Florida Pine Forest and it was a three
50:38
Speaker 1: act play in ten scenes that depicted the mistreatment of
50:41
Speaker 1: black workers in turpentine southern labor camps. I know that
50:44
Speaker 1: because of a summary. I have not seen the play.
50:47
Speaker 1: Of course it was like the nineteen thirties, but I
50:51
Speaker 1: am very interested in what that play was like. Like
50:53
Speaker 1: I just when I saw that poster, I was like, oh,
50:56
Speaker 1: like what I wish I could see that play, but um, yeah.
51:00
Speaker 1: So just the point is that the effects of the
51:02
Speaker 1: industry were such that they were even part of these
51:05
Speaker 1: kind of representative and artistic conversations, Like people were talking
51:09
Speaker 1: about the conditions of the camps in that consciousness was
51:12
Speaker 1: rising and on more towards the decline. In the nineteen
51:17
Speaker 1: thirties and forties, conditions were still bad and the gum
51:21
Speaker 1: naval stores industry specifically suffered, while the wood naval stores
51:26
Speaker 1: industries were kind of on the uprise, which was a
51:28
Speaker 1: different mode of processing the would they would break the
51:31
Speaker 1: stumps down and extract the resident from it in a
51:35
Speaker 1: different way that was more focused on the machinery. It
51:39
Speaker 1: didn't require as much human labor um and specialization of
51:43
Speaker 1: labor to do that kind of work that was done
51:46
Speaker 1: with the gum naval stores. The process that we talked
51:49
Speaker 1: about and extracting from the trees very very arduous, very
51:53
Speaker 1: intensive for the actual labor. So on top of that,
51:57
Speaker 1: another hand in the decline was that the export market diminished,
52:03
Speaker 1: So there were exports that were coming out of the
52:05
Speaker 1: South and going to Europe. That market diminished, and so
52:09
Speaker 1: on top of all, all of that mixed together is
52:13
Speaker 1: what led to the decline. And so, like I said,
52:17
Speaker 1: the production peaked in the late eighteen hundreds, in the
52:19
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds and then continue to like sixties and seventies,
52:25
Speaker 1: but after that point it was really it was basically
52:28
Speaker 1: non existent, like you could find you know, a couple
52:31
Speaker 1: here there, but it wasn't worth it. So there was
52:35
Speaker 1: nothing that could be done there. And so today you
52:37
Speaker 1: won't really see people who are working in gum naval
52:40
Speaker 1: stores and working the land in this kind of way.
52:44
Speaker 1: So that was very long, long explanation, but there were
52:47
Speaker 1: a lot of things that led to it. Yeah, we
52:49
Speaker 1: had a lot to wrap up though. You you dealed it. Uh,
52:52
Speaker 1: you nailed it in amazingly concise way there, because you
52:56
Speaker 1: know we've said it before on the show. But one
52:59
Speaker 1: thing history really teaches us is that nothing exists and
53:03
Speaker 1: nothing occurs in a vacuum. Right there is always, like
53:08
Speaker 1: you said at the top, there's always more to the story.
53:11
Speaker 1: And history really is a palam sest. You know, we
53:15
Speaker 1: it's a conversation. We moved through it our day to
53:18
Speaker 1: day basis. There's something interesting I I learned that I
53:23
Speaker 1: wanted to use his way to to close our episode today, Eaves.
53:27
Speaker 1: I had been you know, like you, I'm a big
53:29
Speaker 1: fan of hiking. Give me a long weekend and just
53:33
Speaker 1: like a place to wander through, right and I'll try
53:36
Speaker 1: not to get lost too bad. But I was in
53:40
Speaker 1: an area of Florida, where I saw trees that had
53:43
Speaker 1: this very specific kind of vertical damage, as if something
53:47
Speaker 1: had gone in and just like scooped a straight line
53:50
Speaker 1: through it. And I didn't know what it was because
53:53
Speaker 1: I just figured, you I was in a place with
53:56
Speaker 1: creepy trees. I just accepted that because that's a is
54:00
Speaker 1: not super enterprising that endeavor. And I thought, you know,
54:04
Speaker 1: maybe some maybe it was the result of a natural event,
54:09
Speaker 1: like maybe there have been a fire that the tree survived,
54:12
Speaker 1: or maybe there have been years ago, like a lightning
54:15
Speaker 1: strike or some something of that nature, because it didn't
54:17
Speaker 1: look like an animal did it. But now when I've
54:19
Speaker 1: been looking at these pictures of old growth forest in
54:23
Speaker 1: Florida in particular, I'm starting to think maybe I had seen, um,
54:28
Speaker 1: maybe I had seen a tree that have been used
54:31
Speaker 1: as a turpentine tree. Is it possible that you can
54:35
Speaker 1: still find those trees today? I think it is possible
54:38
Speaker 1: because they left very very distinct marks on it. I've
54:42
Speaker 1: seen people talk about the v shapes that they would
54:44
Speaker 1: see near the bottom of the tree. That was the
54:48
Speaker 1: marks that were left of that tree being used in
54:51
Speaker 1: the turpentine process. And yeah, so I think that you
54:55
Speaker 1: can still find those marks on the trees that are
54:58
Speaker 1: these leftover remnants of a bygone time when they were
55:04
Speaker 1: used for that purpose. So that's that's the way, Like,
55:08
Speaker 1: that's a physical not just a physical, a living artifact
55:13
Speaker 1: of history. Those trees in particular, I was gonna just say,
55:17
Speaker 1: they're also also very living people you know who who
55:21
Speaker 1: have a connection to it, even if they didn't work
55:23
Speaker 1: in the industry specifically, you know, like I said, it's
55:26
Speaker 1: more so faded out, you know, in the sixties and seventies,
55:30
Speaker 1: but there were people who lived through it that are
55:34
Speaker 1: still alive. And there are people who knew people who
55:39
Speaker 1: lived through it, or were the family members of those
55:41
Speaker 1: who lived through it, and they are still alive. So
55:43
Speaker 1: if you do have the opportunity or know someone who
55:46
Speaker 1: did work in the industry, like talk to them because
55:49
Speaker 1: I'm sure they have a lot of stories. We didn't
55:52
Speaker 1: get into it today, but there are, like I said,
55:54
Speaker 1: there's audio, there are personal accounts and anecdotes of people
55:59
Speaker 1: who worked in it. So yes, there are living, tangible,
56:03
Speaker 1: physical remnants when it comes to the land um, when
56:07
Speaker 1: it comes to industry, and when it comes to the
56:10
Speaker 1: actual people who worked in it. I love that you
56:14
Speaker 1: mentioned this, because it's something that we often forget the
56:17
Speaker 1: importance of documenting experiences right of taking the lived and
56:25
Speaker 1: oral knowledge of our elders. This is something that also
56:30
Speaker 1: the federal government supported during the Great Depression to send
56:33
Speaker 1: people out to collect folk ways, for instance, was one
56:37
Speaker 1: of the specific projects, but there were many, many more. Uh,
56:40
Speaker 1: And there's much more to this story. Please if you'd
56:43
Speaker 1: like to learn more, check out Tapping the Pines the
56:46
Speaker 1: Naval stores industry in the American South by Robert b Outland.
56:50
Speaker 1: I believe, yes, that is it and eaves at this point,
56:55
Speaker 1: in addition to thanking you again for coming on the
56:59
Speaker 1: show and and classing us up a little bit, I've
57:01
Speaker 1: gotta I've gotta ask. I know, inquiring minds would would
57:06
Speaker 1: love to learn about your newest projects because it's been
57:10
Speaker 1: it's been so long since you were you were last
57:12
Speaker 1: with this on air. What's what's the scoop? What are
57:15
Speaker 1: you working on? Yeah? So I think the last time
57:18
Speaker 1: that I was here, I was hosting this Day in
57:21
Speaker 1: History class and I was also hosting Unpopular, which are
57:25
Speaker 1: two shows that are also about history. So you can
57:27
Speaker 1: still go back and listen to those and check out
57:30
Speaker 1: a lot of other cool events and people in history
57:34
Speaker 1: that I am interested in. I think you might find
57:36
Speaker 1: some interest in as well. But now I am an
57:40
Speaker 1: executive producer, so I'm working on a lot of cool projects.
57:44
Speaker 1: You can also today still catch me on stuff mom
57:47
Speaker 1: never told you, which I think a lot of y'all
57:49
Speaker 1: might be familiar with I am talking about. I'm also
57:53
Speaker 1: talking about history on their women in history, specifically who
57:57
Speaker 1: had first in history, so you can take me up
58:00
Speaker 1: fair Also eping some other coal projects that you can
58:04
Speaker 1: chick out, like Jill Scott Presents Data Ill the Podcast,
58:08
Speaker 1: and others that I won't name. But if you want
58:11
Speaker 1: to know anything else about me, you can check me
58:13
Speaker 1: out on Instagram or on Twitter. I'm at Eve Jeff
58:16
Speaker 1: Cote on Twitter and not apologizing on Instagram. And what's
58:20
Speaker 1: us about this outro moment felt ridiculous historians is that
58:23
Speaker 1: when Eve says she has upcoming projects that she can't
58:27
Speaker 1: really talk about, that's a hundred percent true. Like it's
58:30
Speaker 1: so true that if me or no where to say, hey,
58:34
Speaker 1: what's what's the scoop, then the very like diplomatic answer
58:38
Speaker 1: we would probably get is, oh, I can't wait to
58:40
Speaker 1: tell you in a few months, so you're you're a mastermind. Eves,
58:46
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show, and
58:49
Speaker 1: you can't wait to hear more about these upcoming projects.
58:53
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard Jay dot Ill in particular, I
58:56
Speaker 1: do recommend that you check that out. Also check out
58:59
Speaker 1: Eves Were and Stuff Mom Never told you, another fantastic
59:04
Speaker 1: show with some recurring guests of ours here on Ridiculous History. Eaves,
59:09
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave the last word to you. That's right.
59:12
Speaker 1: I'm doing the worst thing ever in improv. I've put
59:14
Speaker 1: the spotlight on you. It could be anything you watch.
59:18
Speaker 1: It can be you know. When I say the last word,
59:21
Speaker 1: I could just be a word. There's just a word
59:22
Speaker 1: you like, all right, Um, So I'll do a little
59:25
Speaker 1: bit longer than the word a word, and I will
59:27
Speaker 1: say that I really appreciate you having me here again today.
59:31
Speaker 1: I just want to reiterate that because I have been
59:34
Speaker 1: wanting to talk to somebody about this, and I am
59:37
Speaker 1: glad that this has been an out for that. But
59:39
Speaker 1: as a huge edit bonus, it's like a lot of
59:41
Speaker 1: other people get to listen to me spew things, and
59:46
Speaker 1: you got to like, we got to reflect that with
59:48
Speaker 1: each other and then so many people will hopefully learn things.
59:51
Speaker 1: So I'm just very appreciative that I get to share
59:53
Speaker 1: this history and that I get to be the mouthpiece
59:56
Speaker 1: for that. And I had a lot of fun too,
59:58
Speaker 1: which is always a place, So thank you always. Yeah,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: we're we're overdue, uh to go hang out post pandemic folks.
1:00:07
Speaker 1: If the spirit moves you so, please head over to
1:00:10
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Let us know some of your favorite folk
1:00:13
Speaker 1: remedies of old. That's all for this week. We'll see
1:00:17
Speaker 1: you next time.