FORESTRY AND LABOR 

 By F. a. Silcox 



The definition of forestry must be broad and inclusive enough to 

 cover all of those correlated factors which determine the practicability 

 of making a "timber cropping" vs. "timber mining" program effective. 

 It is almost like arguing an axiom to argue this point. Surely forestry 

 must concern itself with something more than a study of parenchyma- 

 tous tissue in trees. 



Some analysts have said that 85 per cent of all business processes 

 are the same and that about 15 per cent is technique, w*hich means that 

 any technical profession in order to fully redeem the responsibilities 

 must recognize and operate in the general field of business and utilize 

 those structures common to all groups — the banking, legislative, labor 

 production, distribution and the like. 



Labor is most certainly vitally affected by the economic condition of 

 the lumber industry and the character of forest exploitation growing 

 out^of it. The "womanless, voteless, and part of the year workless," 

 "blanket stiff" lumberjack is just as much a product of forest exploita- 

 tion by devastation as the community, home-owning citizen is of forest 

 conservation. Every industry must certainly come to realize that 

 among its products are men who are good citizens as well as materials 

 whicn are saleable, if it is to measure up to its responsibilities. Partic- 

 ularly does this apply to such a basic industry as lumbering, which has 

 in its trusteeship great areas of virgin timberland inherited by all of 

 the people with the continent they occupy as commonwealth. 



Perhaps no industry in the country has had and is continuing to have 

 more "labor trouble" than the lumber industry. The L W. W. organi- 

 zation has flourished in the logging camps and their destructive type of 

 radicalism is in many cases the direct result of the failure of forestry 

 to lay the foundation for permanent communities, with home life, and 

 because of the archaically feudalistic conception of the industry gener- 

 ally as to the right of the employees to organize and share with capital 

 and management a voice in the councils of the industry — particularly 

 concerning those immediately vital things that affect directly the 

 workers' interests. 



The organization of councils of operators and labor equally repre- 

 sentative of both employers and employees is in direct line with what is 

 being done under the so-called Whitley councils in England, and in the 

 most progressive industries in this country, notably printing, bituminous 

 and anthracite coal, stove, clothing, and others. Is the lumber industry 

 going to adopt democratic industrial relations policies voluntarily, or 

 is it going to continue to challenge the democratic forces of the country 

 to see that it does? 



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