Timber Industry
During the nineteenth century, American settlers devastated the forest, often with no
commercial returns. The land was worth more than the trees, and old-growth forests were
simply cleared and burned. Said the chief forester of the United States, "By the turn
of the century the greatest, swiftest, the most efficient, and the most appalling wave of
forest destruction in human history was .... swelling to its climax in the United States;
and the American people were glad of it!" (Pinchot, 1947:1). Michael Williams
(1988:211-215), in surveying the early history of the American forest, calculates
clearances in the range of 46 million hectares before 1850 and over 79 million hectares by
1909. He estimates an original volume of 5,200 billion board feet of standing timber
reduced to between 2,000 and 2,800 billion board feet by the end of the nineteenth
century. Biodiversity is another measure of change: Barr and Braden (1988:228) estimate
that the United States once contained some 1,100 species of trees, of which 647 remained
in 1970. Marchak, M. P. (1995). Logging the globe. Montreal
& Kingston, Jamaica: McGill-Queen's University Press, p. 56.
Frederick Weyerhaeuser purchased 364,225 hectares of prime forest land in Washington
State from the Northern Pacific Railroad at the turn of the century. He subsequently put
together nearly 800,000 hectares of timberland in Washington and Oregon, obtained at about
$3 per hectare (M. Williams, 1989). Forestry was neither preceded nor supplanted by
agricultural settlement in the Pacific region because of poor soils. Indeed, pioneer
American lumbermen were disappointed when they discovered that, having cut a stand, they
could not sell the land to farmers (Cox, 1983:21). Population density remained low, and
forestry, together with mining and fisheries, continued as central economic activities
into the late twentieth century. Even so, the last frontier was producing wood at such a
rate by 1920, production of lumber constituted some 30 percent of the national total.
Estimates of remaining reserves at that time indicated that cutting exceeded restocking in
Washington, and the industry moved more of its operations to Oregon. Marchak,
M. P. (1995). Logging the globe. Montreal & Kingston, Jamaica: McGill-Queen's
University Press, p. 58.
By 1900, forests in the upper Midwest were nearly exhausted, and the northern interior
Columbia basin became the focus of a new scramble for wood supplies. The rapid increase in
harvest was reflected in Idaho, where 65 million board feet of lumber were cut in 1899. By
1910, Idaho produced 745 million board feet and its markets had shifted from local to
national. Idaho employment of loggers, rafters, or sawmill workers increased from just
over 300 in 1880, to more than 8,000 in 1920, and to 14,900 in 1995.
Early harvesting concentrated on the largest trees of the more important commercial
species (ponderosa pine and western larch) because smaller stems could not be processed
efficiently. Eastern markets in particular demonstrated a preference for ponderosa and
Idaho white pine, leading to select cutting where other species in mixed forests were left
standing.
Growth of the timber industry continued in subsequent decades, driven by demand for
wood products in growing urban centers, especially in the Midwest and California.
Development of the skidder, caterpillar tractor, log truck, and chainsaw increased the
efficiency of the industry, lowered costs, and increased production dramatically. The
timber industry, like other industries, took many people on a roller coaster of fortune
and misfortune,
From 1945 to 1970, timber harvest on Federal lands in the (Columbia) Basin increased
about 5 percent per year or 50 percent faster than the growth of the national economy.
This increase was important to the expansion of softwood and plywood production in the
western United States, supporting many western communities. Nationwide, harvest volume
from F(orest) S(ervice) lands increased from 4 billion board feet in 1950 to 11.4 billion
board feet in 1970; 90 percent of this came from National Forests, and 41 percent from
Washington and Oregon. Pacific Northwest
Research Station (1996, November). Status of the interior Columbia basin: Summary of
scientific findings (General Technical Report PNW-GTR-385). Portland, OR: USDA Forest
Service, p. 55.
By the mid-twentieth century, large companies had integrated their operations, with
American companies straddling the Canadian border. Logging, sawmilling, and pulping were
typically undertaken by a single company or by subsidiary companies of a single parent.
Sawmills and pulpmills were generally located at the same site, thereby facilitating the
transfer of pulpwood chips.
The arguments in favor of large, integrated concerns are that they are more efficient
wood collectors, are better able than small operations to fund new investments, have
economies of scale and research and development capacities, have longer-term horizons and
more stable labour demands, and are better positioned to establish international markets
for their products. In the event of fibre shortages, they have built-in supplies. The
arguments against these corporations are that they require enormous and guaranteed
supplies of wood for their high-cost mills, they have such economic power that governments
are unable to develop independent forest policies in changing conditions, they do not
necessarily engage in research and development, they are capable of moving investments
elsewhere, they modernize operations so that labour demands are constantly declining, and
they dominate international markets. Arguments in favor of integrated mills won the day in
North America - or better stated, arguments were created after the fact by way of
justifying an organization that was designed by investors whose interests lay in large,
integrated facilities. Economies of scale were important for the production of
standardized long-run materials such as construction wood and pulp. Marchak,
M. P. (1995). Logging the globe. Montreal & Kingston, Jamaica: McGill-Queen's
University Press, p.
57.
Who is going to save the people who work in the woods and mills, their families, their
communities? If we as a country are deciding after five centuries of white-led cultural
and environmental rampage across North America to save the spotted owl and fragments of
its habitat, then we as a people need to be accountable to the people who will be
unemployed, possibly homeless and hungry, as a result. To turn away from this is to act as
if loggers and logging communities are more complicit with environmental destruction than
the rest of us. This excerpt is from an
article that originally appeared in Orion. 195 Main St. Great Barrington, MA, 01230.
