The following extract from a document entitled "The Lumber Industry," by
the Honorable Herbert Knox Smith and published by the U.S. Department of
Commerce (Bureau of Corporations) will give some idea of the holdings and
influence of the lumber trust:
"Ten monopoly groups, aggregating only one thousand, eight hundred and two
holders, monopolized one thousand, two hundred and eight billion eight
hundred million (1,208,800,000,000) board feet of standing timber--each a
foot square and an inch thick. These figures are so stupendous that they
are meaningless without a hackneyed device to bring their meaning home.
These one thousand, eight hundred and two timber business monopolists held
enough standing timber; an indispensable natural resource, to yield the
planks necessary (over and above manufacturing wastage) to make a floating
bridge more than two feet thick and more than five miles wide from New
York to Liverpool. It would supply one inch planks for a roof over France,
Germany and Italy. It would build a fence eleven miles high along our
entire coast line. All monopolized by one thousand, eight hundred and two
holders, or interests more or less interlocked. One of those interests--a
grant of only three holders--monopolized at one time two hundred and
thirty-seven billion, five hundred million (237,500,000,000) feet which
would make a column one foot square and three million miles high. Although
controlled by only three holders, that interest comprised over eight
percent of all the standing timber in the United States at that time."
The above illuminating figures, quoted from "The I.W.A. in the Lumber
Industry," by James Rowan, will give some idea of the magnitude and power
of the lumber trust.
[Illustration: "Topping a Tree"
After one of these huge trees is "topped" it is called a "spar tree"--very
necessary in a certain kind of logging operations. As soon as the
chopped-off portion falls, the trunk vibrates rapidly from side to side
sometimes shaking the logger to certain death below.]
Opposing this colossal aggregation of wealth and cussedness were the
thousands of hard-driven and exploited lumberworkers in the woods and
sawmills. These had neither wealth nor influence--nothing but their hard,
bare hands and a growing sense of solidarity. And the masters of the
forests were more afraid of this solidarity than anything else in the
world--and they fought it more bitterly, as events will show. Centralia is
only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and worker. But
let us see what this hated and indispensable logger-the productive and
human basis of the lumber industry, the man who made all these things
possible, is like.