Figure 1.-- Here we see a scene at a logging camp in Wisconsin during 1899. Logging at the time was a major industry in Wisconsin. According to the 1890 U.S. census, more than 23,000 men worked in Wisconsin's logging industry and another 32,000 worked at the sawmills that turned timber into boards. Each winter, the lumberjacks occupied nearly 450 logging camps. The forestry industry is now centered in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The sign says '114 logs 16860 feet'. Notice that there was no concern with the childen's safety. We suspect that the children involved were not workers, but the children of the loggers.

Forests have been important since the dawn of humanity. In fact, humanoids developed when apes responding to environmental changes descebded from trees on to the African savana. Stone Age humans developed many ues for wood, not the least firewood. Evidence for other use is more limited because unlike stone tools, wood is perishable. With the rise of civilization, wood became an important trade good. This was in part because three early civilizations developed in arid river valleys without forrests (Tigris-Eupgrates, Nile, and Indus). Forrests were immensily important in Europe. The pre-industrial age has been called The Wooden Age. [Sombart] Wood was the basic resource for energy, construction, and housing. Europe's maritime expansion create another major demand for timber. Western Europe began to deplete the forrests that once dominated the Continent. This was especiall true of the English which had to cut down much of the ancient oak forests to build ships and supply building materials. Nelson's HMS Victory required 6,000 oak trees to build. A normal shipm-of-the-line wold require 3,000-4,000 trees. The British had to import timber from the Baltic area and Russia. It was one of the drivers for colonization. The forests of North America developed for eons evolved according to nature’s rhythms. This began to change with the arrival Siberia groups who mbecame proto-Native mericans (about 10,000 BC). Native Americans began significant manipulation. The English colonists encountered the Eastern Woodlands with copios native forests. As the frontier moved westward, forrests werev cut down and converted to farming. Today the American fprestry is concentrated in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The 'timber famine' that Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot so stridently forecast in the early twentieth century never occurred. He shows that logged lands have come back, either through natural processes or human effort, unless converted to agricultural or urban use. Also, many species of wildlife-once diminished-are again abundant, forested watersheds are better protected, and the number of forest acres that burn each year has been dramatically reduced. [MacCleery] The new forests are different from the native forests which existed with the arrival of Europeans. , And while some wildlife species thrive under the new conditions, others do not. Appreciation of the forest as an ecosystem increase. A major debate exists between enviromental groups opposed to cutting and industry groups as well as forestry management groups which maintain that resistance to cutting is a fact in the deadly California forrest fires.

Sources

MacCleery, Douglas W. American Forests: A History of Resiliency and Recovery (2012, originally published in 1992).

Sombart, Werner. Sombart was a influential German economist and sociolgist. In his later years he turned toward nationlism and eventually NAZIism. He was distinctly ant-Semetic, but a cultural anti-Semyism, not the NAZI biological version.

Created: 4:16 AM 3/17/2019
Last updated: 10:54 PM 3/17/2019