timber workers

The Fallacy of Craft Unionism

All wealth is produced by labor being applied to the natural resources of the earth. Wherever labor and natural resources come together, there industry springs up--a job comes into existence. The wealth produced on the job is divided in two ways. Part goes to the workers in the form of wages and part to the capitalists in the form of profits. The share of each is determined by the amount of control they exert over the job. On every job there are two conflicting interests. The capitalist wants to make the biggest possible profits in the shortest possible time.

OWING to the nature of the industry conditions for loggers differ considerably from those of most workers. Situated in thinly settled forest regions, lumber camps are, to a great extent, cut off from civilization. The resulting conditions are a peculiar mixture of capitalism and feudalism, civilization and barbarism. Each camp is a community by itself--a unit in the industrial empire of the Lumber Trust--and is ruled by a foreman who has the powers of a petty czar. The company not only plays the part of employer but also that of hotel and store keeper.

SOME idea of the waste and destruction of the forests of the U. S. can be gained from the following extracts from the report by the Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, June 1, 1920, entitled "Timber Depletion, Lumber Prices, Lumber Exports, and Concentration of Timber Ownership."

"The outstanding facts reported by the Forest Service are:

OWING to lack of space it is impossible to deal under this heading with more than a few examples. The history of the crimes committed by big capitalists in getting possession of the natural resources of the country would fill many volumes. The few cases mentioned are only typical examples of the methods by which all the big timber interests acquired their stolen property.

The only thorough canvass ever made of the amount and ownership of standing timber in the United States was that made in 1910 by the Bureau of Corporations, U. S. Department of Commerce and Labor. The findings of this investigation are given in the report known as "The Lumber Industry, Part 1, Standing Timber." Some extracts from this report follow and they convey some idea of the degree of centralized control that exists in the lumber industry.

Letter of Submittal - Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Corporations, Washington, Feb. 13, 1911:

The facts given in this chapter were obtained from an article entitled "A History of the Logging Industry in the state of New York," by Wm. F. Fox, Superintendent of Forests in that state, and a collaborator of the Bureau of Forestry. This article was published in 1902 as Bulletin 34 by the US Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Forestry.

Logging

The facts given in this chapter were obtained from an article entitled "A History of the Logging Industry in the state of New York," by Wm. F. Fox, Superintendent of Forests in that state, and a collaborator of the Bureau of Foresty. This article was published in 1902 as Bulletin 34 by the US Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Forestry.

From the light that science projects into the obscurity of the remote past we have every reason to believe that not only the progress but the very existence of the human race was dependent on timber. The trees provided a refuge for our ape-like ancestors and thus saved them from destruction by the monstrous beasts and reptiles that then inhabited the earth. The first weapon of primitive man was a wooden club. Without wood the discovery of fire, which started man on the road of civilization, would have been impossible.

A Job