railroads began to cut through the coastal pine forests in the 1840s, became widespread 1870s to 1890s

So this is a different period, after the Civil War

• What labor is going to replace slaves?
• skilled African-American laborers were hired from North Carolina
• workers were paid in script and bought from a company commissary
• workers were trapped by debt
• operators kept them in camps by armed force

large scale business:

• capital: buy or lease the land, pay for tools, pay workers or at least provide food--you need to pay for all those things months before any money comes in from sales
• labor: find people with necessary skills, pay them, and keep them from leaving for better opportunities
• get your product to market--improved transportation means that more forests can be exploited with acceptable transportation costs to market, increasing supply
  
• sell it for the best price you can get, but as more people get into the business and try to produce more you get oversupply and the price goes down (this is a particular problem when demand is not elastic, as in food, or in the case of turpentine when demand is going down due to oil wells coming into production)
  

The factor system: Factors loaned capital for tools and supplies and sold the products on commission

• operators often ended up in debt to the factors
• this meant pressure to exploit the forest more to make enough money to pay off the debt
  
• forests yielded less over time so operators moved to new areas
  
• turpentine camps had an increasing reputation as being rough and lawless

These negative views of turpentiners made it easier to notice the destruction of the forest

• careless turpentining killed trees
• weakened trees were vulnerable to hurricanes and more easily killed by fire
  
• to make money as prices went lower operators moved on to new forest areas in 2-4 years

Technological improvements