DESTRUCTIVE LUMBERING 819 



ing marital condition of all males over 15 years of age in the State of 

 Washington, which shows 46.7 per cent of this age class to be married. 

 It is thus evident that one of the most outstanding evils of the transient 

 character of destructive lumbering on labor is the denial of the family- 

 life. The average laborer entering this industry inevitably ends his 

 family line. The repression of his normal sex life also in most in- 

 stances introduces vagaries of various kinds into his character which 

 when combined with a continued sense of injustice, due to the uncer- 

 tain character of his job, and its attendant conditions, makes his mind 

 fertile ground for freak economic and political theory, to such an 

 extent that masses of men subjected to such conditions are shaking 

 the foundations of organized society. 



Due then to the denial of family life, nomadic industry tends to 

 exterminate whatever class of labor engages in it, unless this labor is 

 willing to attempt carrying on the family life in temporary shacks. 

 Thus the old New England stock of lumbermen, unwilling to bring a 

 family into such conditions, has passed for the most part into oblivion. 

 The negro of the South, and the nondescript races now appearing in 

 the camps of the Northwest, may not universally meet such a fate, 

 because they and their families accept low standards of living with 

 but feeble protest. Good citizens cannot be reared under such con- 

 ditions. 



The high percentage of turnover in the industry cannot be charged 

 entirely to destructive lumbering as a policy. However, the policy of 

 exploitation without reforestation contributes directly to this result. 

 Under this policy new tracts are continually being opened up, while 

 cutting on other tracts is continually being completed. Under these 

 conditions the employer has come to feel no responsibility to furnish 

 continuous employment and, indeed, it is usually impossible for him 

 to do so. Continuous forest production, on the other hand, renders 

 continuous employment easily possible where intelligent business man- 

 agement is practiced. The many varieties of work provided by con- 

 tinuous forest production under sustained yield can be made to pro- 

 vide employment in some line continuously. 



Neither can the impairment of the instinct of workmanship be en- 

 tirely charged to the exploitation system of handling forests, but it is 

 a contributing cause. We have only to compare the average condi- 

 tions in agriculture with those in forest industry to see how much is 

 being missed in the latter as regards pride of workmanship. On the 

 farms we have millions of men planning and carrying out plans for 



