The High Price of the Cedar Harvest
An 1876 editorial from Seattle critiques the 'disproportionately large pay' of loggers, blaming high wages for the financial instability of the industry.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The complaint generally is that logging does not pay in this country. It is said that the loggers are bankrupt. And yet there is no district where the yield per acre is greater, the facilities for floating timber are so cheap, provisions are so cheap and the climate is such that operations can be continued all winter. Whether the owners make anything or not, one thing is certain: there is money in the business. Choppers make money, teamsters make money, so do camp-men and other employees. If they do not, it is their own fault. $40 and $50 per month and board, which logging camp hands receive, is better pay than the average salary of school teachers, clerks, book-keepers, printers, ministers of the gospel, and other callings which require an outlay of time and capital in preliminary training. We don't like to see laboring men imposed upon as they are in some older countries or deprived of a fair share of the proceeds of industry. But when they get such disproportionately large pay as to break up everyone who employs them, evidently the boot is on the other foot. It would be better for the country if the whole system of logging were modified to some extent. The money earned in logging should be kept in the country to become living, producing capital, rather than having the region twice plundered: first for its natural wealth, its timber, and then for the equivalent for which that timber is exchanged.
“But when they get such disproportionately large pay as to break up everyone who employs them, evidently the boot is on the other foot.”
This 1876 editorial reflects a perennial tension in the Pacific Northwest economy, mirroring contemporary debates where rising costs of living and wage growth are often scapegoated by ownership against the backdrop of resource extraction. The 'plundering' of local capital remains a core issue in regional discussions about wealth inequality and the reliance on export-driven industries.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.