Puget Sound Logging Camps Stay Shut as Mills Chew Through Log Surplus
Puget Sound logging camps, closed since June 18, likely won't reopen before September 1 as mills continue cutting into surplus log inventories; a meeting later this month may decide.
The story, cleaned up
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Puget Sound logging camps, which have been closed since June 18, will probably not reopen earlier than September 1. At a meeting of the Washington Logging Brokerage Company directorate held Saturday in Seattle, it was agreed that the question of reopening the camps should be discussed at a meeting to be called later. In the ordinary course of events this meeting would be held the last Saturday of August, and there is no immediate prospect of a special meeting being called to give an order to reopen. When the logging camps closed the supply of logs in the water owned by logging interests was smaller than ever known at that time of the year since the lumber industry began to assume important proportions. But many of the mills had a big surplus on hand, and since the shutdown the plants have been cutting on this supply. While the mills have consumed a part of the loggers' holdings, the decrease in the supply of logs on hand is not sufficient to justify any of the camps in reopening. Nor is it likely that steady work could affect the supply for some time.
“When the logging camps closed the supply of logs in the water owned by logging interests was smaller than ever known at that time of the year since the lumber industry began to assume important proportions.”
The 1904 logging shutdown foreshadowed the boom-and-bust cycles that have long defined Washington's timber industry. Then as now, workers and communities felt the pinch when the mills stopped cutting and the camps went quiet.
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