The Oregon American Lumber Company

This is a lavishly illustrated history of the Oregon-American Lumber Company, during its heyday one of the most important lumber firms in the Pacific Northwest. Operating from 1922 until its closure in 1957, the company provides an illuminating example of the history of lumbering in the region, showing in detail both the opportunities and problems encountered by firms seeking to exploit the area’s rich natural stands of Douglas fir. The story is enhanced by the inclusion of 285 illustrations, most of which are previously unpublished, that depict logging, railroading, and sawmilling activities, and 17 period-specific maps that give the reader a unique perspective on the growth of the company. The lumbering industry was pivotal to America’s settlement and development, reaching its zenith in the period covered by this book, which shows how Oregon-American’s survival depended on successfully adapting to great changes in market forces and in industry structures, to natural disasters, and to economic crises like the Great Depression. Essential to the company’s objective of supplying lumber to markets in the Midwest farm belt was its relationship with the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads; accordingly, the book provides much information on the railroad networks that made timber extraction possible. The study is based on fifteen years of archival and on-the-ground research and draws heavily on the extensive collection of Oregon-American records, notably the correspondence files of Judd Greenman, the company president who conceived and executed most of the company’s operating policies. It also includes, as sidebars, engaging oral histories related by employees, which enrich the text and provide a vivid contrast between management and employee viewpoints.

This book integrates class, environmental, and political analysis touncover the history of clearcutting in the Douglas fir forests of B.C.,Washington, and Oregon between 1880 and 1965. Part I focuses on the mode of production, analyzing thetechnological and managerial structures of worker and resourceexploitation from the perspective of current trends in labour processresearch. Rajala argues that operators sought to neutralize thevariable forest environment by emulating the factory model of workorganization. The introduction of steam-powered overhead loggingmethods provided industry with a rudimentary factory regime by 1930,accompanied by productivity gains and diminished workplace autonomy forloggers. After a Depression-inspired turn to selective logging withcaterpillar tractors timber capital continued its refinement ofclearcutting technologies in the post-war period, achieving completemechanization of yarding with the automatic grapple. Driviing thisprocess of innovation was a concept of industrial efficiency thatresponded to changing environmental conditions, product and labourmarkets, but sought to advance operators' class interests byroutinizing production. The managerial component of the factory regimetook shape in accordance with the principles of the early 20th centuryscientific management movement. Requiring expertise in the organizationof an expanded, technologically sophisticated exploitation process,operators presided over the establishment of logging engineeringprograms in the region's universities. Graduates introducedrational planning procedures to coastal logging, contributing to a rateof deforestation that generated a corporate call for technical forestryexpertise after 1930. Industrial foresters then emerged from theuniversities to provide firms with data needed for long-rangeinvestment decisions in land acquisition and management. Part II constitutes an environmental and political history ofclearcutting. This reconstructs the process of scientific researchconcenring the factory regime's impact on the ecology of theDouglas fir forest, assessing how knowledge was utitized in theregulation of cutting practices. Analysis of business-governmentrelations in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon suggests that thereliance of those client states on revenues generated by timber capitalenouraged a pattern of regulation that served corporate rather thansocial and ecological ends.