Nature's Economy
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Ali Dozier Top
Within the first few pages of this text, the author
refers to the idea that the area south of the Great Lakes was created by
God as a manifest destiny. The people who built their homes and lives in
this area were given, by God a land that was forested ? or we could say
timbered ? to the north and prairied to the south. And along this stretch
of land ran a river and system of lakes that made homestead harvesting
prosperous in both regions.
It is easy to see why the people thought this.
How perfect God, Mother Nature, or whoever had created this land for human
use. As stated in the reading, prairie land is perfect for agricultural
crops, forestland is not. Forestland is better at producing…wood, a commodity
unknown to prairie dogs. As logs float, the river was the last ingredient
in the ingenious recipe of God et al, as a method for moving massive amounts
of timber from the forests to the prairies and also as a pathway for agricultural
goods from the prairie to the forest.
So would it then be constructive to assume that
God et al. created their own source of molestation? Not only was this region
perfect for humans, but it was also perfect for the destruction of forests
and cultivation of potentially environmentally destructive farmlands.
Although the reading has some more important points,
it is important to note that what happened south of the Great Lakes stemmed
from an idea that is similar to the ones happening now: rainforests are
perfect places to cultivate pharmaceuticals for diseases we create, clear
cutting forests encourages salmon spawning (yeah, that one is ridiculous,
glad we caught it), or maybe the idea that the only way to save the Everglades
is by destroying some of what already exists.
Amy Robertson
Top
Economic well - being and hardship during the time-span
of the article was very similar to modern day prosperity and problems.
The main difference was transportation problems prior to the implementation
of railroads. As with today, the timber industry was limited by the
availability of natural resources, the fluxuation of the economy and the
lack of knowledge regarding the reality of the sites of production of the
business people who ran the operations.
Many problems ensued because "The greatest threats to a lumber firm’s economic well-being were…ironically also the fount of its prosperity." The industries saved money by building mills with wood but they were then vulnerable to fire. Due to the companies spend thriftiness many workers were laid off and disgruntled former employees often set fire to the mills to get back at the owners. Also before the railroads they faced many seasonal problems with shipment. The waterways were inhospitable in the winter. They froze over and many of the ships that tried to traverse them before the complete freeze were shipwrecked losing entire shipments of timber. In addition, the supply could never meet the demand during these months making it difficult to pay employees and keep operations running. Therefore, loans were taken out, further increasing the company debt. As the paper stated, "The risks of the lumber trade were indeed a disease lying ‘next to the most vital parts’".
Today the timber industry also has the problem of dependence on what could be called an inhospitable environment. The forest regeneration cannot keep up with the extraction of the industry. Therefore, companies feel compelled to continually move their operations exhausting resource after resource. There is frustration that there are never enough resources to keep up with changing economic demands. Hence, companies borrow money and further compound their debt, which forces them to cut more rapidly and resources are further stressed. These problems with the natural cycles and supply and demand mirror the problems of the past. The essential problem comes down to the lack of sustainability of greed.
In addition, there is a problem of disassociation of those in control. The company owners in the article rarely, if ever, saw the destruction at the harvest sites and the same is true today. These business people sat in their offices with their graphs and calculations and made decisions based on theory not practice. The same is true today. It is also important to take into account the lack of compassion for labor, which is also present today. This lead to the fires in the mills in the past and today leads to union strikes. More direct involvement by company owners and executives would lead to more sustainable, profitable businesses.
Hence, one could conclude that the natural world was not
made for business. That in fact ecology and capitalism are in direct
conflict. To utilize natural resources as a business one must
be both forward thinking and creative. Companies must begin to think
of the long term to survive in the long term or else the battle with the
natural world will continue and when the resources are gone, capitalism
will lose.
Andrew Marr Top
No Paper Submitted
Anna Constance Top
I was excited to see this chapter on our syllabus because I have wanted to read this book for a while. It was one of the books used in a class that I was going to take at my old school. I was disappointed; however, that I didn’t get to read is as carefully as I wanted cause I had so much to do this weekend, but I was still pleased to get a taste of it and found the article really interesting.
One reason I was so excited to read it is because it talks about the Midwest and I am really homesick for Minnesota, so every time I come into contact with someone or something from Minnesota I get really excited.
One thing that really struck me was the mentality of people to make as much money as possible. People were only satisfying their own self-interests and it seemed everyone was out for themselves. I am completely perplexed as to how European settlers in America interacted with their world and fellow humans in such a selfish and careless manner. I don’t understand how this mentality developed. In comparison many native tribes cared for the whole group and the land and shared what ever they had with each other. In this article as in Annie Dillard’s novel The Living there is such a deep and stark difference between how the Native Americans and the settlers dealt with their land. The Native Americans had more free time, not as many of their people died from disease, until the Europeans brought illness, and they worked with the land instead of against it. Why didn’t the European settlers catch on to an easier way of life? That is, why didn’t they learn from example of the Native Americans?
In "Nature’s Metropolis" I was most perplexed and horrified by the actions
of the lumberperson Mears. He laid off and traded people as if they
were meaningless. I guess that’s the whole idea of the commodification
of labor. But without any thought about making a humane decision
he caste aside the contracted men who would cost him more in order to hire
cheaper labor. Furthermore, he wouldn’t even let husbands bring their
wives unless they worked also and he tried to get away from paying them
nothing. But as the article said, "Mears was a typical lumberman,"
inferring other lumbermen acted in this way, giving Mears no other option
if he wanted to stay in the market. But I don’t understand how people
can make such heartless decisions.
Ben Shryock
Top
By some definitions the city of Chicago was sustainable
during the late nineteenth century. This, of course, was not in any
ecological sense, but only in the realm of economics. As the forests
were flowing down Lake Michigan to the docks of Chicago, the hinterlands
were becoming barren wastelands. This practice was anything but sustainable
in my view, but to an economist it makes the cut. The lumber was
being transformed into farmhouses, barns, acres of fencing, chicken coops,
corn cribs, plows, and wagons. Technically, this meets the definition
of economic sustainability because we are taking natural capital and turning
it onto another form of capital. If the farms can make a profit for
a long enough time to repay all the capitol lost from harvesting the lumber,
they will indeed be more than sustainable, at least in this very narrow
sense. The Hartwick rule states that if the amount of capitol stock
accumulated during the transformation of resources is greater than the
cost of extracting the non-renewable resource, then we are acting in a
sustainable way, even in the face of constant consumption. The farms,
in theory, can produce crops and raise animals for many consecutive years,
whereas trees can only be harvested once every fifty or sixty years.
It seems to me that farms are using the natural capitol in a more efficient
way than logging operations.
At first glance, the idea of logging the lands north of
Chicago to destruction was a very, very bad idea, and obviously it had
detrimental effects on the natural environment, but investing the lost
capitol into something that could keep producing was the most prudent course
of action. Even today the Great Plains are producing grains and produce,
but I’m sure they are not using the same materials that each of the farms
was built with. Once they tear down the original structures on the
farm and replace them with new metal fence posts and metal siding, or use
timber that was cut from farther west, they loose their sustainable status.
The farms in Europe are built to last a few hundred years, while in America
anything over 50 years old might be worth replacing. If the farmers
can learn to build farms that last, we might still have a chance at reaching
our yet unattainable sustainability. This leads directly to the idea
that reducing our demand on the environment can help us reach the goal
of sustainability.
Beth Belanger Top
Clearly, capitalism has had a hand in the destruction
of our national natural resources. Case in point, the timber exploitation
in the developing Chicago area during the 19th century. Without the
timber industry, Chicago might have never risen to its’ metropolitan notoriety.
Unfortunately, the prosperity of this city came at the expense of irreplaceable
forests. Whether necessity or greed drove this process, it is clear
that the result was the virtual disappearance of the white pine.
While capitalism remains the backbone of our society, we must assess the
social and ecological damage that occurs because of it.
A major problem of a capitalistic society is the
unequal distribution of wealth. Many people suffer from inadequate
wages and poor working conditions, while just a few others profit substantially.
In Natures Metropolis, Mear’s workers did not receive payment if there
was no capital. It is appalling to know that laborers, who signed
contracts with Mears, were often not paid for the services rendered.
According "to Mears, it seemed that the men should be grateful just to
have jobs, even if they did not receive cash for their work" (p.165).
This reasoning of thought is just ludicrous. Here we have a case
of an individual getting rich, while many others become less financially
stable. The people that do all the work receive little compensation,
while the owner/operator does less in exchange for large sums of money.
It goes back to the old cliché--the rich get richer while the poor
get poorer. One may argue that our society thrives on competition
for resources and this makes for a better economy. In part this is
true, however I see capitalism as a wedge that ultimately leads to a wider
separation of the classes.
Capitalism is not good from an ecological standpoint
either. We often see faceless corporations considering only their
profit margins. Meanwhile they totally disregard the damages that
their actions trigger in the environment. Corporate greed routinely
destroys our natural economies, yet we rarely hold them responsible.
Are we such a complacent society that we believe it is okay for these companies
to do this? Surely that is not the case. Maybe we let it continue
because we fear our individual capitalistic rights would then be taken
away from us. Possibly we are not willing to give up the cheap conveniences
that most of these companies offer us. Or better yet, we as consumers
are so far removed from the source of the product, that we do not give
ecological damage much of a consideration. Working individuals hardly
have time to stay informed about every product they buy. Therefore
the industry can pull the wool over the consumer’s eyes and sell them products
that consistently damage the environment.
While capitalism will probably never completely
go away, we must reevaluate the social and ecological ramifications it
causes. We should start questioning why a few corporate leaders get
ahead substantially, while the majority of the hired help suffer greatly.
We also need to ask why our natural resources are so rapidly squandered
away, without considering future implications.
Blake Kownacki Top
Natures’ metropolis as represented in the article was extremely intriguing. In particular, it was very interesting for me to learn more about the logging practices that took place in Michigan and the north woods in the 1800’s. I grew up in the state of Michigan and have seen first hand the effects of the devastating logging practices that took place. Michigan was once a land that was covered from shore to shore with a grand forest; now that forest is seriously diminished and only a minute amount of old growth is left standing.
I was shocked to read that the majority of the wood went to Chicago, not Detroit, but that is another article. The men that were chiefly responsible for the devastation, or the guys in charge, were all suits living in Chicago. That shocked me. I was under the assumption that the states themselves were receiving numerous financial benefits from the timber not just money received from land purchases. It would seem to me that the states that were being harvested could have had more control in regulation and receiving of benefits that were coming from it’s own natural resources.
The concept of preservation was completely ignored in this portion of economic and ecological history. They were merely trading and cutting all in the name of profit. How stupid these individuals were to assume that their crops were virtually inexhaustible. Their practices were self-defeating. The insatiable greed of these men led to their own demise, however it was at the expense of some major forest ecosystems.
In summation, my favorite part of this article may also
be the theme of the chapter. It is that the capital that is accumulated
and manipulated are all gifts of nature. Men did not create the city
of Chicago. The sun, dirt and water did. We merely manipulated the
earths’ resources and shaped them into the image of a city. If it
weren’t for the abundance of natural resources that occur in this gorgeous
country, we would be only a fraction as strong and powerful as we and the
world perceive us to be.
Brian Mc Elfresh Top
No Paper Submitted
Brooke Smith Top
Chicago - 1870’s
"The greatest grain market, the greatest cattle
market, the greatest hog market, the greatest lumber market in the world."
The hub
The leader
"A lumber metropolis"
"A city located in one of the nations most treeless
landscapes."
Docks, ships, railroads, clutter of lumber, and big money/business
Hard to believe one place could rule so much during that time period and that the whole "great west" would follow so closely for so long. I was happy to see that eventually Chicago lost some of its hype and the private businessmen stepped in.
Gee, that Mears fellow was a jerk or so today he would be labeled that. What a philosophy toward choosing workers in terms of having wives. Its just baffling to think things had to be that way to keep business going. I myself would never want to own a business now, yet alone back then. To not have no money, to rely on credit, or have to be the one who distributes credit seems like some hard times. But I don’t understand why as a businessman to continue business when times are down is smart. Just keep cutting down trees when there’s no demand and there’s no money to pay for the labor or product seems ludicrous. Then the flip side of shipping when not even dry or the best product and doing a half as job. I don’t understand that either. I guess getting that "liquid" cash was the way of life and consequences didn’t matter.
What frustrates me the most is that we’ve been cutting tress down for so long. Where in the book of how to survive and make money did it say slaughter all the trees? How did we skip the chapter on respecting and conserving the land you live on? Why did the Native Americans know that and the pioneers didn’t? Reading this high volume consumption of trees and wood production along w/ "The Living" bring questions to my mind that I have no answers for. It’s this reality and vivid picture painting that I can’t believe I have been so oblivious to. To understand the present it is necessary to understand the past. But I still don’t understand how this huge lumber production started and why it is still so huge. Well other than the fact we as a society have made ourselves dependent upon wood.
The reading for me helped the continuation to open up my eyes. Our society has been wasting and over consuming for a long time. I’m not sure if reading this gives me hope for a new way of life for the future of which I dream of but instead shows me the harsh reality that has existed for so long and made me sad and pissed off.
This was a long read but easy to interpret and consume.
My main question regarding the reading is what did pages 156 and 157 say?
I seemed to be missing those pages.
Bubba Rush Top
No Paper Submitted
David Bell Top
No Paper Submitted
David Jacobson
Top
The underlying argument of this reading seemed to be
an argument against a generally Marxist view of economics. Cronon claims
that such a view would consider human labor to be the source of value in
goods when in reality, it is the wealth of nature that provides value.
He goes on to describe the timber industry of the Great Lakes area to support
his case. The question that this raised for me was how his argument related
to topics of sustainability that had been discussed in class.
The implications of his argument seem to converge
around the notion that an economic sustainability would have to become
ecologically sustainable as well. People obviously can’t have a sustainable
timber industry if there are no more logs to be cut. Even if the façade
of economic sustainability was created by transferring the timber industry
of Michigan into the agricultural industry of the plains, eventually the
soil fertility of the farmlands is going to run out. This brought interest
back to the economic assumption that natural capital or resource capital
can be harvested as long as there is a gain in social capital to even things
out. Resource based economies at least, seem doomed without ecologic sustainability.
Dawn Curran Top
ôThe habitual weakness of the American people is
to assume that they have made themselves great, whereas their greatness
has been in large measure thrust upon them by a bountiful providence which
has given them forests, mines, fertile soil, and a variety of climate to
enable them to sustain themselves in plentyà.ö Isaac Stephenson
This quotation sums up the key points of the article. It reflects on how the land was mistreated, and how Americans thought they were living so prosperous when they were actually creating more harm for themselves in the future.
I feel passionate towards what Stephenson wrote. We Americans feel that we have created for ourselves a better economic system and a better style of living since the 19th century. In reality Americans have done very little for ourselves. Instead, we have torn down the natural beauty around us and made it more suitable for our present moment. The earth is not going to stay suitable for Americans if we keep treating the world in the manor that we currently are.
The logging industries in Chicago started out prospering better than ever before, but they were cutting down all of the white pines in site and not thinking of the future. The logging industries in the city of Chicago economically deteriorated when the White Pines were all cut down and ôas the loggers finished their work in the forests they had consumed, they left behind a literal wasteland.ö (202) What happened to the economic infrastructure in Chicago is just like what is going to happen to Americans when the pollution we have created catches up to us.
There is a lesson that Americans can learn from our mistakes that we are not paying attention to. History shows us how the logging industry created a beautiful city and then destroyed it. Americans feel that they are economically much better off than almost ever before, but we do not realize the harm that we are creating for ourselves with pollution, and living standards for the future.
American life in the 19th century was identified as being
different from the nativesÆ lifestyle through the need of economic
growth. ôIndeed, the buying and selling of wage labor was among
the most important innovations that distinguished Chicago and the lands
around it form the Indian landscape that preceded it.ö (149)
AmericansÆ values are like the safety standard, which is a set of
directives with the key objective being to minimize public health risk
unless it is economically not beneficial. The struggle to be better
economically than our predecessors is an American trait that has always
been with us, and will most likely be the end of our existence.
Debra Joie Top
No Paper Submitted
Elise Sanders Top
No Paper Submitted
Elliott Ridgway Top
No Paper Submitted
Geoff MacIntyre Top
According to Nature’s Metropolis, The wealth that helped
make
Chicago the metropolis that it is today was largely due to the destruction
of the white pine forests of the North Woods.
The settlement and growth of agriculture
in the fertile great plains required more of it’s settlers than fertile
soil and a mind for farming. Second only to fertile soil, wood was
the most important resource required to build working farms and towns.
It was used for the construction of homes, barns, fences, corncribs, wagons,
plows, as well as the railroads that would help move the raw agricultural
products to market. However, few trees grew on the great plains.
The lack of crucial building materials on the grasslands created
a problem that the city of Chicago grew wealthy in solving.
While Chicago was built on relatively
treeless grasslands, it supplied most of the lumber materials used
to populate and farm the great plains. Chicago was ideally situated
on the margin of a huge timber supply, the northern forests, and huge
lumber demand in the treeless plains to the south. It could
easily ship or receive by water lumber from any region that
drained to the Great Lakes, or the Mississippi river, and it’s railroad
yards gave it’s lumber merchants access to markets anywhere in the
country. This combination of rails, canals, and access to cargo ships
on the great lakes, plus yards to sort, stack, dry and store huge amounts
of lumber, made Chicago the greatest lumber trading center
that ever existed.
Demand for wood in the great plains was so
high that Chicago lumber merchants could buy and sell
any amount of lumber, in any degree of quality, and pay cash for it the
same day. Chicago was a city that could turn raw materials like lumber
into cash on the same day. This made it an ideal market for lumber
suppliers and it’s large supply of lumber made it an ideal market
for lumber buyers. Chicago was also a source of lumber supplies and
a market for agricultural products from the Great Plains. Therefor,
cargo ships and traincars that carried lumber to and from Chicago
need not return empty from the Great Plains or the north woods after
unloading their lumber shipments . This created an incentive
for shipping companies to work form Chicago, rather than other markets
. Because of this Chicago benefited from discounted rates on shipping.
All of this made Chicago a great shipper and
receiver of forest products. As abundant natural resources
were "cashed in" through timber harvesting and farming, the products
flowed to Chicago, and wealth was created from them. Nature was being
sold in the raw, to the highest bidder, and demand for her products was
insatiable, especially timber.
As a result, Chicago grew prosperous and
wealthy, and the northern forests disappeared. Prosperity in the
rest of the United States followed this model closely, and this process
continues today.
This unsustainable economic growth based
on the exploitation of nature is one reason that America has grown to be
the world’s most wealthy and powerful nation. Even today, we still
reap the benefits of "cashing in" on an entire continent’s
worth of unexploited natural resources. We have very little of what
we started with left. What will we do when our land will no longer
support the economy that has grown because of the unsustainable harvest
of our natural resources? Who will benefit? Who will
be wealthy? The ultimate question is, in the end, will
we be better off because we sold our natural heritage to the highest bidder?
Glenn Burkhart Top
The Wealth of Nature by Cronon was an insightful and informative piece of writing. I learned a lot about Middle American trade around the turn of the century. I had now idea that Chicago was once a booming lumber town responsible for most of the development during this era, spreading its wealth as far west as Wyoming and east to Connecticut. Today when I think of Chicago I relate it to baseball and blues. I truly hadn’t envisioned the Great Lakes forests being so expansive and full of natural capital. I suppose I figured that the settlers just built houses made of sod and cornhusks, but then again, I’ve seen Little House on the Prairie, they had a framed house and barn.
I was a bit disturbed to hear that the early travelers viewed their trees as a commodity, as lumber and nothing more. All they could see was more houses and dollar bills in their future. They couldn’t really perceive the life giving qualities and the pleasing aesthetics of the massive white pines. Well I guess they could, but those life-giving qualities were in the form of cash and lumber. They didn’t realize that when their gone their gone. The problem was that they didn’t use these resources wisely. They plundered it all away without using any foresight on their part. It seems that they could have reduced production of the lumber and remained a viable market for a great many years to come. Although with any resource it wouldn’t last forever. I suppose that they were economically sustainable in the fact that they built a great city for which people to live in comfortably and have jobs. They transformed their natural capital into human capital. But what really made that possible? In order to transform the land into a city they first had to exploit the natural resources of the area. The resources produced jobs, houses, money, railroads and business opportunities that attracted more people. The resources, white pine in this case, made that city not the people.
My question, is have we considered Michigan and Wisconsin
scenarios as an example, and apply it to our own timber harvest techniques?
The northwest timber industry was just getting under way when the Chicago
lumber market collapsed on itself. They cut too much too fast and
paid the price for it. Overstocked lumberyards had to sell cheap
and sell more to keep up with overhead. What was our situation
like here? Did we suffer the same fate or are we going to?
Hannah Snyder
Top
I thought this was a good article and was glad that we
had read The Living first as it helped me imagine the whole picture a lot
better. It was easier for me to think about the economics of logging
in the nineteenth century when I could relate it to the images I gained
from reading The Living. The most interesting part I got out of this
article was what a capitalist man Charles Mears was and what a hard life
it was to be a logger in this time period. Logging camps were full
of men, mostly immigrants from New England who were in need of work.
These men worked no less that eleven hours a day and lived in "crude log
structures" sharing bunk beds. The article goes on to explain their
daily life but unfortunately a page is missing from my copy. From
what I gather, being a logger was hard, risky and unpleasant work.
There were many ways to get hurt or killed.
Charles Mears was described as "a difficult, driven man
whose moods swung back and forth between obsessive enterprise and depressed
inertia." He arrived in Michigan in 1836 to run a store with his
brother but ended up leaving that and gaining 40,000 acres of Michigan
pine land and constructed and operated 15 saw mills. It seemed to
me that he took advantage of people as much as he could. One of the
worst things he did was occasionally hire a man along with his wife who
would do the mill’s cooking and laundry with no wage for anyone but the
man. He sought out men with childless wives who wouldn’t waste their
time child-rearing. Another crooked thing Mears did was pay off men
who were willing to leave their contract early when it turned out that
he would be paying them higher wages according to their contracts than
the average wage rates in Chicago. On top of that, when his business
was no longer profitable and he couldn’t pay his workers, he offered them
the materials he had such as his land to log, but if he couldn’t
make money logging, how could his workers?
Ian Kirouac Top
Unlike our homesteading friends in Annie Dillards, "The living," Chicago lumber companies didn’t have to look far to find able bodies to assist their massive regional clear cuts. What couldn’t be floated down streams, rivers, and across lakes could be moved with the complex ever expanding railroads with the windy city at its epicenter. This easy access to labor, timber, transportation, and markets provided Chicago with all the incentive it needed to have the equivalent of a small forest lying on its piers at any given time, and within the span of a few decades complexly depleted the white pine forests.
Markets would ebb and flow with the economic panics of the time, mills would come and go, but forests would take a one-way trip downstream. Even after confirmation that earlier predictions of using up the forests had been true, mills simply found new forests or closed and opened up new mills in new forests. They would evolve from white pines on local shores to distant southern yellow pines and hardwoods with little regard for anything but profit. The limitations of winter logging and spring floating no longer played a major role as the railroad supplied year around access to supply and demand.
All of this makes me ask, what role do I play in
the current depletion of our forests? If there was not a market for timber
product loggers would not cut them down, mills would not turn them into
boards, and wholesalers and retailers would not distribute them. Can we
buy our lumber from a mill or supplier that is conducting a sustainable
business? Our firewood? Are we willing to pay a little more and be inconvenienced
now in order to protect our forests for future generations? Can we ask
the manager on duty at Home Depot where the sustainable forest products
are? And when he returns us a confused glassy eyed stare will we go and
support a business that is in keeping with our beliefs? Capitalism = your
dollar = your vote!
Jacob Wilson Top
This reading was a potent case study of the development
and demise of a specific resource based economy, in a specific place.
The processes of, and reasons for the changes effecting this economy are
interesting because of their relevance to the present on a practical level
and because they give a conceptual understanding of the excitement and
the fragility of that era. I found myself drawn into the story in
this history, understanding a little more what life might have been like
then. It seems to me a shifty mix of trying times and intermissions
of prosperity. I visualize the development of the structure of the
economic system like a ball bouncing around in a room, experimenting, always
moving around and adapting to new territory or obstacles, no one knowing
how or when it will settle.
A concept that makes complete sense when exposed in the
context of this reading is how the economic structure, if allowed, strictly
dictates the way resources are used. The way the economy was set
up, there was for the most part only superficial options on how, for example,
the forests would be managed, as long as they were liquefied as quickly
as possible. One action lead to another and another, while peoples
livelihood hung by threads. The simplest example is how the fierce
competition created by the efficient wholesale system in Chicago forced
lumber workers to over-cut. The wholesalers depended on this "infinite"
supply. A chain of processes and actions created the complex, dynamic
market, and as long as there was no other option or the market transformed,
its need would be filled, until the supplies were exhausted. It is
an attitude or principle central to capitalism: A free market will
create what is best for the people.
A great example of the wild oscillation of the economic
structure was in the successful organization of retailers, against the
work of drummers who sold direct to customers from wholesalers, destroying
the market retailers fed their families with. It seems naturally
capitalistic to me, drummers using their ingenuity and creating a prosperous
niche. But I guess another liberty of the time was the majority of
influence granted right, to develop competitive strategies besides winning
customers in different ways, which shaped the way trade was to operate.
I actually find it a beautiful process of experimentation.
It’s like evolution, new ideas come along and are tried out, some of them
work, some might bloom elegantly only to die come the first real challenge,
and many don’t get of the ground at all, or into our history books.
Regardless of the value I put on the end result, I think the process is
very interesting. In a related way; it seems the economic prosperity
remained steady, who had money was what wavered and bounced. Wholesalers
in Chicago went out of business, and mill operators flourished. The
part of this I’m very curious about is how that total prosperity changes
in total as it changes hands. It went from the forests to the cities,
once it comes here does it float around bouncing off of people as long
as they’re around? And if it fades away and is lost, where does it
go?
Keegan Murphy
Top
found this reading to provide a lot of specific
and interesting facts about the lumber market in the late 1800’s.
A few of the figures that drew my attention were as follows.
By the 1880’s the minimum diameter of logs cut in the logging process had
dropped ten inches. From sixteen to eighteen all the way down to
six or eight inches. To me this represents how naive the lumber companies
were, could they not see that cutting a mass a of trees as large as they
did would eventually lead to complete exhaustion?
There are few quotes in the reading that support the ideology lumber companies held toward the seemingly endless supply forests. Here is an example of this ideology, "We say no. None of our generation will see our pine forests decimated." But some foresaw what was happening, here is what James S. Little wrote in an article in 1876. "The Great Lakes loggers are not only burning the candle at both ends but cutting it in two, and setting the match to the four ends to enable them to double the process of exhaustion."
There is another aspect about this topic of awareness that I have thought about, they probably were aware that our forests weren’t endless and that at some point in the future they would no longer bare the fruits they wished to harvest (though I believe the total exhaustion care much sooner then they assumed it would), but they didn’t care. The owners of the lumber companies were money hungry. And probably thought if they didn’t cut it down someone else would and make a profit from it. Also I think that during the nineteenth century people didn’t understand the implications of cutting down every in sight.
Another fact that got my attention was the amount of lumber
that was transported by rail. The numbers are staggering. By
1880 the annual shipments totaled over a billion board feet. I almost
find that hard to believe. I would like to know how many trees it
actually takes to get a billion board feet. Overall I enjoyed this
reading, it was the sheer numbers that enthralled me. At one point
in the early 1900’s it must have nearly impossible to find a White Pine
in the great lakes region.
Kelly Cannon Top
Parts of this article interested me and gave me a way
to apply some of the ways of life in Chicago and hinterland to terminology
used in ecology. One examples of this is feedback relationships.
The trade set up between prairie lands and timberlands through Chicago
allowed for a mutualistic relationship of work and trade. For the
people living in the prairie, timber is what was needed to get through
cold winters in the forms of shelter mad fuel. For the forested areas,
the growing of produce was limited by time to grow and harvest and by the
lack of sufficient land to farm so a feedback relationship developed.
This relationship also occurred in the work force. The main time
for logging was during the winter just after harvest time on the farms
therefore, men who labored as farmers during the spring and summer could
supplement their income by logging in the winter.
Another interesting aspect of this article is the
"Business of Lumber" (p159). I enjoyed reading the life history of
Nathan Mears and grasping an understanding of where he is coming from.
The fact that he was "typical of a Lake Michigan Lumberman"(160) in that
he traveled and resided more outside of Michigan (his home) than in it
or with his mills sets a pace of life I never really think about for people
living during the 1800s. It is also interesting that Mears could
find the information he needed to acquire land in Michigan by going to
Chicago. Chicago as the hub for lumber makes sense but the fact that
even over 100 years ago, it was important to be in the central location
to get business done. Another aspect of life in Chicago and surrounding
areas that sticks out to me is the poor quality of life people had to inure.
The whole part about wanting to hire a married man with no kids for the
same rate as a single man but get the woman to do the cooking and laundry
without and stipend seems terrible. Also, that fact that the average
salary was $100-$200 a year is crazy!
The last interesting point I got out of this article
and relating to ecology terminology is the autotoxisity of the lumber industry
in Chicago. The way mass production, shipping, and selling in chicago
raped the landscape to the north is devastating. Also, the way workers
were the last priority in payment when times were hard was just a bad practice
and led to a lot of dissatisfaction. The railroad which was once
so supportive of the Chicago market soon grew and allowed for fierce competition
of sales. Then, the railway standardization of charging for shipment
led to a nother toll on Chicago. Basically, what I am trying to get
at is this: Chicago business men set themselves up for a fall. Greed
and narrow sightedness led to a demise of the Chicago lumber industry from
the inside out. With sustainability in mind, we might still think
of Chicago as the lumber capitol of the world.
Kelly Stoddard Top
No Paper Submitted
Kevin Long Top
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Kevin Reis Top
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Kevin Smith Top
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Lara Boyd Top
I think its good for me to begin just with an overall
viewpoint of the reading and how much I got out of it. Some of the
other readings we’ve done have been especially difficult for me, example:
last weeks. This one, however, I could understand completely and
enjoyed all the information and ideas expressed in it. The language
was not over my head and the key concepts were something I could understand
and debate with myself.
A key focus I noticed throughout this reading was the
issue of greed in itself. How could greed possibly go so far as to
eliminate a resource we pretended would never run out? That question
involves so much, because we don’t exactly know what people like Mears
were thinking about as their industry progressed at such a rapid rate.
I want to know why it wasn’t recognized sooner, they had to have seen fluxes
in the supply and demand, but not one constant rate of decrease on either
end. I just don’t understand how that possibly could be overlooked.
In fact it could have been looked at and perhaps ignored in the self-interest
fashion industry people were propelling themselves in during the late 1800’s.
It seemed the initial problem with the industry is that
a lot of it functioned solely on credit. Credit to replace pay for
loggers when liquid funds were non-existent, credit for machinery for the
mills, credit for banks that can tap the liquid assets. All these
credits and loans and debts in themselves would be way too much pressure
for an industry. The leaders of this industry owned everything involved
almost, signing contracts to workers, some better if wives had children,
why? Because there’s more work opportunities to utilize out
of a wife and child, not the husband alone. It almost seems like
these people were signing contracts for their lives, to make money.
Money is the driving interest in all of this. That’s why our author
makes very clear that we had no interest in the natural capital, which
is where all the money was stemming from. We used and used until
there was nothing left to use in the north woods, because once the industry
started, it wasn’t going to stop.
This particular area was different because early on,
waterways were a premier mode of transportation of timber around the northern
Midwest. These rivers were chutes to drive the logs down to the destination
and of course there were going to be difficulties, as in logjams that were
miles long. There were ways around that though, because the railroad
started putting up the business. By the 1890’s, the waterways had
been readily replaced by railroad as transportation of the timber.
Just in that we know one of the main components of making Chicago a timber
hub has been replaced by faster and more far reaching methods, and timber
had been so overly harvested there that it wasn’t worth sticking around.
By then southern wood like the yellow pine had been discovered and holding
much of the same qualities as it’s cousin the white pine known for quality,
it was beginning to be shipped everywhere and white pine of northern forests
were not in the interest of lumber business around Chicago because they
were almost all gone.
This all happened for a reason though and now getting
the opportunity to learn about past mistakes should help pioneer the path
for conservation tactics concerning lumber to be greatly reviewed.
Although the northwest forests have been devastated, industry is now realizing
that this resource is diminishing and of course they’re still cutting away,
but not to the extremes they were in the mid to late 1800’s. Hopefully
as the years go by, there won’t be a wipeout such as the one in the upper
Midwest, but in fact a learning process of how we can do better with our
wonderful trees.
Laura Garber Top
After reading Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon, I had a few questions. The first one was after the lumber monopoly in Chicago, did the stock yards of the 1900s replace the lumber yards? Did the immigrants that came to work in the stock yards replace the lumbermen that worked in the yards and at cutting down the trees? I think that this might have been so. The lumber industry, as Cronon illustrates, made Chicago the large, wealthy city that it is and was at the time. With the fall of the lumber yards, the rise of the stock yards must have taken place creating another industry that Chicago could be supported on and also another use for the railroads and shipment of good across the nation.
One thing that was interesting to me in the reading was the way that society so quickly looked at trees as timber and profit. "People visiting the Great Lakes forest at the middle of the nineteenth century rarely expressed such romantic sentiments about the tree, but they almost invariably noted it" (Cronon 152). The tree was a source of money and shelter, people did not want to live in the forests, they wanted to civilize and build houses out of trees. "To perceive the forest as this traveler did through the lens of that word ‘timber’ was already to shift into the domain of resources, commodities, and second nature" (Cronon 152).
Another thing that occurred to me while reading Cronon,
was that most large, profitable cities throughout history and even today
are right on large water ways, either the ocean or in Chicago’s case, Lake
Michigan. Think about it, New York, on the Atlantic, Chicago, on
Lake Michigan, San Fransisco, on the Pacific, Seattle, on Puget Sound.
Water was the main way of transporting goods from one place to the other
and it was water that helped the lumber trade and that still aides it today
like up in British Columbia and even here in Washington on the Sound.
Leif Wywadis
Top
Assuming something is usually an easy way to a
letdown. Throughout history the
assumption that are natural resources will never run out has led to over exploitation.
Businessmen who see dollars in trees never think of the forests someday might run out.
They "assume" they will last forever or they will take their money elsewhere and
continue to assume the same routine.
In Chicago in the 1800’s the lumber industry meant the forest was a natural capital which
suffered for the price of human wealth. Almost everything imaginable revolved around
the white pine forests from houses, jobs, to different forms of transportation. The more
harvesting went on the better off society became. The business end of the lumber industry was cutthroat and workers were just another expense. While lumberjacks slaved to survive for meager wage.
For a few decades Chicago businessmen who had a hold on some of the market in the
lumber industry they must have lived high on the hog. The Chicago timber trade was a
budding industry for a while but not until the railroad came did they form a monopoly.
Once the transportation of the railroad became involved the ability to move lumber
increased . One phrase used in the text is that "not only were the Great Lakes Loggers
burning the candle at both ends….but cutting it in two, and setting the match to the four
ends to enable them to double the process of exhaustion." This saying is as good today as
it was back then.
The importance of the railroad to the demise of White Pine forests are hand in hand.
While greed drove the industry it was the transportation of the railroad that opened things
up for massive harvests. Also innovations in mill machinery and different methods of
building homes. I feel that the same way the Northern timber fell so will or has the
Western. I never new until reading the text that there was ever such a logging boom in the
eastern United States. After reading this and other material you would assume that we
learned are lesson and would build from are mistakes.
With the comings and goings of many different industries over time the overall trends
seem to continue. Money creates greed that creates a demand for more and more. In this
pursuit the natural environment around us seems to be held responsible. Finally I have
two questions "What is enough?" & "Will this
ever end?".
Linda Gibson
Top
I found chapter 4 of Nature’s Metropolis, by William
Cronen, to be a very satisfying and relevant insight to the past as it
applies to logging and the lumber industry. I was slightly disconcerted
that I could not take more time in reading it and plan to read the whole
book at some point in the future.
Cronen’s style of writing is wonderfully engaging and through much of the reading, I was able to visualize the setting and the characters. I tend not to habitually dwell on the hardships that people went through in history; hardships that have gotten us to where we are now, with a great deal of comfort and safety standards. So reading about the loggers that risked their lives in a logjam brings to mind the reality of how much safer our workplaces are now.
According to the book, the lumber industry made quite an impact on the Chicago area. Not only from the labor and business standpoints, but also in making land more useable by the increasing the availability of lumber in the prairie area. Prior to the commercialized logging and floating of logs down the river, families would have to build on the edge of the forests, which would restrict the local economy since there was only a set amount of available land there.
I enjoyed reading the accounts of the logging industry, such as the hazards involved. I thought it incredible that the logs were hauled out in the winter, on ice, and that extra care had to be taken with the frozen skids so that on steep grades the logs didn’t careen out of control over the tops of the horses, oxen or men. Also, the idea of breaking the last hold of a logjam and having to be pulled out quickly by a rope to avoid being crushed or drowned, does not sound like a job that I would ever take, especially for the paltry amount being paid, if you got paid.
The book makes much of the business problems associated
with the lumber industry. It seems to remain unbiased and lets the readers
form their own opinions, while examining the effects a declining economy
and poor resource management have on the business and how it greatly affects
the worker and the surrounding community.
Lisa Fredrickson Top
No Paper Submitted
Mary Warner
Top
I thought that this article was well written in the fact
that it gave many real quotes and really conveyed the thinking of the time.
Previously, I didn’t really know much about the start of the timber business
or really to what scale it was first operated on. The physical descriptions
in this piece were incredible. It is almost impossible for me to
imagine seeing mile upon mile of city blocks filled with timber for sale.
I have never been up to the great lakes area but the author paints a very
clear picture of what this area looked like during this time, before, and
after.
The first point I would like to comment on is the whole idea of the north supplying all the lumber for the more southern prairie lands. This just makes me think of sustainability and other ways that the dilemma could have been dealt with. If there was a lack of timber in the prairie- first of all, why was this? Was this due to natural forces, or was it due to previous deforestation? Whichever one, how great would it have been if the people could have started at the beginning using their own local resources that were available to sustain them? No timber to build a house? Try adobe or sod. Can you imagine the difference of this companies make up if the transportation of would was just so expensive that it wasn’t profitable for anyone to use in the first place and we all had to come up with alternatives?
Another kind of interesting point is the idea of autotoxicity
with in human ecology. We look at autotoxicity with in the natural
environment as something that plants and animals due to themselves to make
their own environments less inviting- well, what about humans? Is
it possible for us to include ourselves in this definition as well?
This is not only true if we look at it on a larger ecological level (we
are cutting down one of the major life forces of our planet and therefore
hurting ourselves), but also if you look at it in term of the timber industry.
The events, competition, marketing, and actual cutting of the trees all
worked against each other to eventually create very undesirable terms and
ways of living. It seems that during this time period, Chicago epitomized
this process. As the author writes, " If anything proved the centrality
of Chicago’s role in the western lumber trade, this was it: a Chicago-based
journal seeking to unite dealers in Chicago’s hinterland to resist the
power of Chicago wholesalers in Chicago’s market." They were all
just trying to sell wood better than anyone else in order to feed their
families and they were all hurting themselves in the process of all of
this competition.
Matt Crawford Top
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Meagan Robison Top
The most important aspect of this article was how the ecology and economics we are studying were connected. This article finally brought the two together, and I finally got a chance to see how they work together. Particularly, how the supply and demand for the eastern white pine were incorporated.
By reading this article I realized how a "business" is run. The demand for the pine is year round and the supply is harder to keep up with the demand, which is why the business people had to cut corners. By either not paying the workers or by harvesting and selling rotten or green wood.
I guess I do not understand how a business works because I do not understand how there was no money to pay the workers. Obviously, the demand for the pine was high and from what I understand so was the supply, so how did they not have enough money to go around? Maybe their profits declined due to the fact that they were not selling top quality wood after some time, and no one wanted to by it.
I also noticed a lot of similarities between how
the workers were treated and how workers are treated today, for example
sweat shop workers. I do not know for sure, but possibly these types
of things started unions and laws that protected the workers. I do
not really understand it, but maybe the people were so poor that even if
they were not getting paid it did not matter because they had food to eat
and a place to sleep that was warm and dry. This is exactly what
it is like for sweatshop workers. They are just so poor that it does
not matter that they are only working for one penny a day
Patrick Coleman
Top
I would like to start off by saying that I did not realize
that there was such a large timber/lumber industry in the Great Lakes region
as there was in the mid to late 19th century. It was completely new
to me that Chicago was once a major hub for the distribution of lumber
to the Midwest, and a financial center for the whole timber industry of
the northern forests.
Secondly, the similarity of the processes that led to the collapse of the timber industries in both the Great Lakes region and here in the Pacific Northwest is, at least, to me remarkable. First, the people settled areas where they saw a seemingly endless supply of natural resources (timber) that was just waiting to be cut down, milled, and sold to the ever expanding population of settlers in the west. Second, there was an influx of "entrepreneurs", some more successful and long-lived than others, who were looking to profit from this exploitation of the timber and the people that made their living off harvesting and milling the timber. From this influx of suppliers there was a flooding of the market that drove prices down, where some of these more successful people could ride out the bad times and others could not. Third, there was a depletion of the resource to a point that quality of the product suffered because all the high quality trees had been harvested earlier and what is being milled is for lack of a better word, junk. This is the point at which I see the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest is at right now. Due to laws that regulate forest practices and require such things as replanting I see the Pacific Northwest staying at this level. Finally, in terms of the Great Lakes region an exhaustion of nearly all timber resources.
The third and final point I would like to comment on is
the temporal scale in which this all happened. The reading that we
read covered only about fifty years of the history of the Chicago lumber
trade. The fact that it took only half a century to completely deplete
the pine forests of that area just astonishes me.
Ray Gleason Top
This chapter was extremely interesting to me in partly
because I have an interest in the history of the timber industry, and also
because there seems to be some interesting similarities in the forestry
of the northwest. The way of timber companies and/or mills
undercut each others prices until the forest is being harvested even faster
and the profits are near zero, so the forest is not only being forfeited
by over harvest but also at a monetary loss. It is interesting to
see the way Chicagoís history is so intertwined with the timber
industry through its boom and bust.
It is interesting the way when the money can be found what society seems to do to get it. The way the mills began selling wood that hadnít been in the drying stacks as long as they had previously been drying because the turn over of wood wouldnít allow it with the facilities available. The wet lumber that was sent to the market would have warped leading to less than straight walls and possibly weakened structure.
As the market evolved and graders were needed to assure the customer of the quality of their purchase it seems that the industry would have changes to some extent to the effect of trying to make better use of the timber so the reduce the value loss of poorly milled wood or broken grain in the lumber. I would be nervous buying a boatload of lumber and pricing it by looking at the top layer of boards and the visible ends, I bet a lot of junk wood was sold in the center of some of the bundles. Regional grading schemes with effective enforcement did not appear in the lumber industry until the 1890s, and then they were related to the Mississippi Valley standards. During the 2 years that I worked at a lumber mill in Packwood WA it was common to see graders being trained to grade lumber sorting through bundles of lumber and estimating their rating/value.
The balloon frame type building that was brought to the states by Augustine D. Taylor seems to have left a mark on our types of house building, the current designs being similar to that of the original in Chicago. The only problem with the originals is that the seemed to burn quite well.
The focus of the chapter seemed to be the landscape of stacked lumber that covered a large part of the South Branch of the Chicago River. It was stated that no other city did so much lumber trade with customers from so large an area. By the 1870s people from Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming were buying much of Chicagoís lumber. Train to many of these areas did all of the major hauling; most of this timber came from forests north of the great lakes. The trees had died so far away that the people didnít even know that they had been there, that makes it easy to forget what it was that made Chicago a successful city.
After the lumber industry had evolved to have a large profit margin investors were drawn to the money, and made timber harvest investments this eventually saturated the market lowering prices. Eventually the mills began undercutting each other then the retail dealers who the sold wood to by sending drummers to make direct sales from the wholesaler. Eventually the retailers banded together to stop the undercutting by boycotting the wholesalers who were drumming up sales directly to compete with their retail pricing, by 1880 the undercutting had diminished. With the competition of the mills undercutting each other the lumber economy to become a buyers market with the saturated market many companies were liquefying their assets and taking as much timber to market as possible just making problems worse.
Eventually the mills had railroads built to their sites
and cut out the middleman who was reselling their wood in Chicago, but
this was just a temporary fix to a bigger problem. The bigger problem
being the saturated market and the over harvest that they likely didnÆt
even conceive for the most part. Then as the White Pine quality lowered
because the best had been harvested the yellow pine became a product that
was equally or more desirable. The competition became even stiffer
as Fredrick Weyerhaeuser built a consolidation of mills on the upper Mississippi
Valley. Railroad expansion was an obvious important cause of these
changes. Logging no longer was limited to the flood- water to drive
the logs down the river to a lake, so wood could be cut year round.
Also trees that could not float well (ex) ash, oak, hickory, maple, and
other hardwoods could now be harvested to take to a mill.
The lumber industry in Chicago was lost because of over
harvesting and lack of land management (ex) replanting. The mills
began cutting even the small trees that had been before just left, and
the hardwood market increased because of the lack of White Pine.
Noticing this change Fredrick Weyerhaeuser moved his chief field office
to Idaho and Washington (ôand that has sure left a markö).
In 1890 some sawmill operators in the Mississippi River Valley met to lower
lumber grading scales because it was getting hard to find wood that could
meet the standards that had been set with the previous harvesting.
White Pine had a hard knock by humans in their harvesting
practices to the point that there was not a lot left to hold a seed legacy,
then with the slash that burnt causing some large fires killing more and
followed by white pine blister rust the White Pine was devastated immensely.
People have since replanted a lot of White Pine but the original populations
will likely never again exist.
Rebecca Leach Top
The people in Chicago running the ‘timber’ businesses had no connection to the ‘forests’ from where their capital came. They couldn’t see that whole forests were being cleared and the results of that action. They only thought in terms of market, money, income, employees, debt, and so on. They weren’t cold evil people working only in their self-interest. (Well ok, they were working mostly in self-interest, but we all do; people trying to ‘save the environment’ are basically acting in self-interest.) This reading made me realize that in order for environmental policy and standards to change on a large scale, those people who just see trees from the ‘timber’ perspective need to be able to understand where their resources are coming from. And those who see only forests at least need to understand the point of view of the business folks.
It was interesting to me the way the market revolved around Chicago so much that Charles Mears could find out more in Chicago about his lands in Michigan, where he lived, than he could at home. Of course the same thing happens all the time now, as a standard, and even more widespread, but for some reason I had assumed that this was a more recent phenomenon.
I was wondering as I read this chapter, what were the
other options to wood for building. On page 153 is a list of all
the various things that wood was used for. On page 179, is a quote:
"Everything new is of wood." Of what was the ‘old’? Now there
are other options to wood, but if everyone decided to use one resource
as the base for all building and fuel, with the population being as high
as it is, we would probably run out of that too. Will we run out
of concrete soon? It seems impossible but that’s what people used
to think about trees too. Will all the concrete we are using for
building roads and other things affect the global cycles? It’s hard
to imagine but in the 1800s no one could imagine that cutting down vast
forests would wreak as much havoc as it seems to be wreaking.
Richard Dunn Top
No Paper Submitted
Sarah Lowry Top
The lumber industry of the northern Midwest during the
mid to late 1800s was a pell mell rush to turn natural capital into liquid
capital. It was fueled by greed and, paradoxically, while lumber-industry
entrepreneurs fully depleted the white pine forests of northern Michigan
and Wisconsin, they were barely able to keep themselves in business.
The problem was undercapitalization; "’so many men…striving to carry on
a larger business than their capital will warrant…the mill men are using
up their capital as it exists in the form of stumpage, for no other end
than simply to keep themselves in business." Mill owners were forced
to sell their timber harvests for cheap prices in Chicago because they
knew that they could sell it quickly there; they needed money quickly to
pay off their debts from the previous season. The money that supported
the lumber industry (credit) and the profits that resulted from it were
located, mostly, in Chicago, far from the actual forests. It seems
that the mills and the timber businesses that were located in the forests
were turning the wheel of the industry and struggling not to get crushed
by it at the same time, while all the benefits were going to Chicago’s
urban elite. The individual rationality of each of the business players
caused them to act in a way that, in retrospect, does not seem so sensible
after all. But at the time, with everyone acting in their individual
self-interest, it was the way things happened even though in the long run
the results were not in the collective best interest. It seems that
the same type of short sighted tunnel vision is happening regarding resource
use today. The third world today is roughly parallel to the northern
forests (site of resource extraction and exploitation) and the first world
is roughly parallel to Chicago and the prairies.
Si Bussmann Top
Timber to Steel: Architecture and Industry
The attitudes toward nature seen in this weeks reading are very similar
to those expressed in Annie Dillardís The Living. It is interesting,
in light of recent ìanti-American sentimentsî, to consider
that this might be the very attitude of exploitation of labor and resources
by Americans which terrorist attacks are aimed at counteracting.
This ôWar Against Terrorismö has a greater potential to promote
the American attitude toward resources and cheap labor than to change anyoneís
point of view in Capitalist countries. A war is usually followed
by an economic boom. Considering that the majority of damage is being
done on foreign soil, it wouldnít be surprising to see an economic
boom in the U.S. following the destruction of Afghanistan and we declare
ourselves victor. Likely we will make a large investment in whoever
holds power at this time also, as it might be profitable to maintain good
relations to make future resource extraction easier for U.S. corporations.
When living in Chicago, I found it odd that the city preserved almost
no remnants buildings from The Chicago Fire. Comically, there was
nothing left to preserve. As I later discovered, nearly the entire
city was destroyed by fire driven by lake winds. Without the fire,
it may be that modern skyscrapers would have developed much more slowly
and definitely not in the city of Chicago. I couldnÆt find
any information relating the ChicagoÆs strong steel industry and
the development of steel as a demanded building material. The amount
of steel required to create the superstructure of the Sears Tower and Hancock
Center might represent two of the largest volumes of steel used in any
project aside from the Golden Gate Bridge. The development of both
the timber and steel industries likely show many similarities in the Great
lakes region. Undoubtedly, the railroads around Chicago reaped high
rewards from the distribution of steel products down the Mississippi simultaneously
having a major effect on the history of architecture and home appliance
in the Midwest.
Stacey Godin Top
No Paper Submitted
T. J. Merrell Top
No Paper Submitted
Thomas Kolb Top
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Travis Loucks Top
No Paper Submitted
Tyler Knapp Top
The last line of this chapter strikes me: " Perhaps the greatest irony was that by surviving the forests that had nurtured its growth, Chicago could all too easily come to seem a wholly human creation" (206).
I think that he is pointing out that the growth of Chicago
was added to by the destruction of distant forests, so therefore it was
not created wholly by humans, but with the extraction of resources.
It seems like it was too easy for the wealthy lumber dealers, and
others in Chicago to be distant and unfeeling towards the forests that
had supplied them with their wealth. This can be related to present
day conditions, where we are distanced from the land, and don’t know what
the forests looked like or felt like from which our wood and paper products
come. I think that this disconnection makes it easier for large corporations
to destroy forests in large quantities.
If Chicago survived the destruction of the northern forests,
will the Pacific Northwest survive if all it’s forests are destroyed too,
or at least all of the unprotected native and old growth forest?
Did Chicago only survive because there was somewhere else to log?
Will there be anywhere left after the PNW, and Canada are logged?
The South?
The main problems with the over-extraction of forests
and the rest of the environment are the idea that forests are inexhaustible,
there will always be forests, just keep cutting and don’t ask questions.
The second is our disconnection from the land and the resources, and products
that we use every day.
V.J. Gomez Top
Aaaaaahhh….capitalism. What a wonderful thing.
To think that our entire nation was formed through the blood, sweat, and
tears of millions of men, women, and children in the name of the almighty
buck is oh so inspiring. Through rain, snow, sleet, and hail our
ancestors made this nation what it is today: a selfish, money-grubbing,
god-fearing, patriotic, blood-thirsty society controlled by an elite core
of wealthy scum-suckers who got to the top by profiting off of those who
tilled the land. How proud I am to be an American. But seriously,
it was very interesting to learn about the history of Chicago and the timber
trade. This quote pretty much sums it up: "The fertility of the prairie
soils and the abundance of the northern forests had far less to do with
human labor than with autonomous ecological processes that people exploited
on behalf of the human realm—a realm less of production than of consumption."
Amen. This nation would not be anywhere near as wealthy and affluent
as it is today had our great majestic lands not been here to be reaped
and raped. Time and again we contribute this great profit to the
hardworking people who turned natural resources into liquid capital, when
in reality we should be thanking Mother Nature. She is all too often
forgotten. Where the Native Americans worked around her, the white man
worked through her. Where there was profit to be had, there were
rats to run the race. It utterly baffles me how much misery and strife
was involved in the lumber trade. The article talks repeatedly about
how close most timber companies continuously were to bankruptcy.
Every winter was the race to pay workers, to keep heads above water, to
accrue credit upon credit. Why? Profit. Happiness.
Well-being. For the mill owners anyway. What about the workers?
What about the wives of the workers who were encouraged not to bear children
while working at the mill (for which they were not even paid) so that they
"would not waste the firm’s time in child-rearing". How absurd.
Mears is talked about throughout the article as one of the most affluent
of the timber trade. Though his workers were under contract and severe
penalties were inflicted upon them if they broke this contract, Mears repeatedly
refused to pay them when times were slow for fear that he should go bankrupt.
He told them they should just be happy to even have a job in these tough
times. He also believed that they should not be paid during these
tough times simply because they were not "earning" their wages, because
there was not much work to be done. Contract schmontract. Men
would risk their lives to dislodge logjams. Who in their right mind
would stand in the middle of a river on tons upon tons of logs with a rope
tied around his waist, trying to unclog the jam and, when finally succeeding,
having his coworkers pull him to the shore as quickly as possible so that
he wouldn’t get caught in the logs? Only someone who did not have
a choice. And these men didn’t. They were modern slaves.
And to think that this entire rat race of capitalism could have been avoided
had people just learned to live off of the land and sustain themselves
only to the point of having what they needed. All
of this misery and disutility and opportunity cost seen time and again
could have been avoided. But the almighty dollar was calling their
names, and the call was too enticing to ignore. It saddens me to
think that what most Americans think of as important and necessary in life
today i.e. money, cars, general material wealth was brought on by people
like Mears. This nation exists today because of evil selfish people
like him. It puts a definite catch-22 on the phrase "proud to be
an American". I for one am not so proud.
Will Dezan Top
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