The Case for Decentralizing the Timber Industry
An 1870s editorial argues that Snohomish County loggers are being exploited by giant corporations and proposes a localized milling model to ensure economic independence.
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.
Last spring, there were upwards of twenty logging camps on this river, its tributaries and sloughs alone; to say nothing of many more in the northern part of the county. The outfit for a logging camp, in teams, tools, boom chains, etc., cannot average less than $3,000 to the camp. Here is $60,000 invested in logging outfits. There are no less than twenty good water mill sites for small mills in the county, and the number of sites for small portable steam mills are without limit. The limits of logging for the various large mill companies on the Sound are overdone. The class of lumber these mills prefer is long stuff of large size. In getting it, they are compelled to take more small and short lumber than they can handle with profit. Hence they cannot afford, in averaging their lumber, to pay such a price as they would be willing to pay, provided they could get just the dimensions they want. There is no opportunity for our loggers who have money invested in teams and a general logging business to invest in local neighborhood mills, and in cedar, maple, alder, bearberry, ash, and small fir lumber. By utilizing more of the waste timber and building a few portable mills, the chains of lumber now wasted could be hurried up, resulting in a source of profit, give labor for a man with small means, without coming in competition with large mills; give employment to laboring men all the year round; whereas there are so many logging for the large establishments now, that by the middle of the logging season, the mills are all supplied, the camps forced to shut down with a surplus of logs on hand, which they are compelled to get rid of at any price, and the men have to remain idle till the next season.
“The limits of logging for the various large mill companies on the Sound are overdone... there are no less than twenty good water mill sites for small mills in the county.”
This critique of corporate dependency mirrors modern discussions about the 'gig economy' and the loss of local economic control to distant, consolidated industries. The article highlights the historical tension between independent tradespeople and the massive, extractive industrial conglomerates that define the economic history of the Pacific Northwest.
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