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Voluntary Cooperation vs. Regulatory Paternalism: The Lumber Trade in the 1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

William G. Robbins
William G. Robbins
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Oregon State University
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Abstract

In the 1920s, leaders of the lumber business tried to bring stability to their industry through vigorous trade association activity conducted with the encouragement of then Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. Despite the optimism of association spokespeople and publicists, the hoped for stability was not attained because the associations were incapable of relieving the intra- and inter- industry competition lumbermen confronted. Nevertheless, the efforts of those involved threw into sharp relief attitudes in business and government about the nature of the political economy of the “New Era.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1982 , pp. 358 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982

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References

1 For an informal, yet informative history of the North American lumber industry, see Holbrook, Stewart, Holy Old Mackinaw: A Natural History of the American Lumberjack (New York, 1938).Google Scholar

2 Revisionist studies that address these issues, either directly or indirectly, are Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959)Google Scholar; Richardson, Elmo, The Politics of Conservation: Crusades and Controversies, 1897–1913 (Berkeley) 1962)Google Scholar; Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism; A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Wiebe, Robert H., The Search For Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State (Boston, 1968)Google Scholar, Hawley, Ellis W., The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, A History of the American People and Their Institutions (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

3 I am indebted to Professor Ellis W. Hawley, University of Iowa, for clarifying many of these issues. Also see Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal, x; Galambos, Louis, Competition and Cooperation: The Emergence of a National Trade Association (Baltimore, 1966), 3, 10Google Scholar; Himmelberg, Robert F., The Origins of the National Recovery Administration: Business, Government, and the Trade Association Issue, 1921–1933 (New York, 1976), 1–2Google Scholar; Arnold, Peri Ethan, “Herbert Hoover and the Continuity of American Public Policy,” Public Policy, 20 (Fall 1972), 528–529.Google Scholar

4 For the conventional view of the Clarke-McNary legislation, see Greeley, William B., Forests and Men (New York, 1951), 103–114Google Scholar; Dana, Samuel Trask, Forest and Range Policy (New York, 1956), 216–217Google Scholar; Morgan, George T. Jr, William B. Greeley, A Practical Forester (St. Paul, 1961), 45–58Google Scholar; Steen, Harold K., The U. S. Forest Service. A History (Seattle, 1976), 185–195.Google Scholar

5 Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal, 252. Louis Galambos, Competition and Cooperation, is a study of the cotton textile industry but with broader implications. Cox, John H., “Trade Associations in the Lumber Industry of the Pacific Northwest, 1899–1914,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 41 (1950), 285.Google Scholar The best general discussion of the relation between trade associations and the antitrust issue is in Himmelberg, Origin of the National Recovery Administration. The antitrust issue in the lumber industry is treated in Cox, “Trade Associations in the Lumber Industry,” 294–296.

6 Cox, “Trade Associations in the Lumber Industry,” 285, 288–289; Compton, Wilson. “The Price Problem in the Lumber Industry,” American Economic Review, 7 (1917), 583.Google Scholar An excellent discussion of lumber trade association activity on the Pacific Coast in the nineteenth century is in Cox, Thomas R., Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900 (Seattle, 1974), 255–283.Google Scholar For other accounts of early lumber trade association activity, see Brown, Nelson Courtlandt, The American Lumber Industry, Embracing the Principal Features of the Resources, Production, Distribution and Utilization of Lumber in the United States (New York, 1923), 232–254Google Scholar, and Gillett, Charles A., “Citizen and Trade Associatone Dealing with Forestry,” in Winters, Robert K., ed., Fifty Years of Forestry (Washington, D.C., 1950), 285–298.Google Scholar

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8 Highlights of a Decade of Achievement (n.p., 1929), 8–12, 30, 41.

9 The expanded activities of the Department of Commerce under Herbert Hoover are reviewed in Hawley, Ellis W., “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative State,’ 1921–1928”, Journal of American History, 61 (June 1974), 116–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11 Lumber, 67 (May 27, 1921), 23.

12 Ibid. (June 3, 1921), 11; Southern Lumberman, 99 (May 28, 1921), 28.

13 Department of Commerce memo, June 2, and Nathan B. Williams, President, National Association of Manufacturers, memorandum of a conversation with Hoover, July 7, 1921, “Trade Associations — 1921,” CPHP.

14 Southern Lumberman, 104 (December 24, 1921), 36; Lumber, 68 (December 30, 1921), 13.

15 Lumber, 69 (January 6, 1922), 21.

16 Ibid. 65 (February 23, 1920), 17.

17 Himmelberg, Origins of the Sational Recovery Administration, 16–21; Correspondence Between Department of Commerce and Department of Justice Upon Activities of Trade Associations, February 3, 1922, “Trade Associations,” CPHP; American Lumberman (February 18, 1922), 36, 40.

18 Montague to Hoover, February 15, 1922, “Trade Associations, Correspondence on Press Releases and Proceedings, Daugherty-Hoover Correspondence, February, 1922,” Montague News-Release, February 16, 1922, Mcllvaine to Hoover, February 27, 1922, “Trade Associations-1922,” CPHP.

19 Himmelberg, Origins of the National Recovery Administration, 17, 21, 26; American Lumberman (March 3, 1923), 31; Clapp is quoted in the National Lumber Bulletin, 2 (March 5, 1922), 5.

20 National Industrial Conference Board, Trade Associations: Their Economic Significance and Legal Status (New York), 1925), 89, 115.Google Scholar

21 American Lumberman (March 31, 1923), 52.

22 Ibid. (May 5, 1923), 38, 42–43; Robert B. Allen to National Association of Cost Accountants, February 8, 1924, Box 94, National Forest Products Association Records (hereafter NFPA Records), Forest History Society, Santa Cruz, California.

23 Compton to Stephen B. Davis, Solicitor, Department of Commerce, January 21, 1924, “National Lumber Manufacturers Association, 1921–1927,” CPHP; Compton to A. W. Cooper, July 11, 1923, Box 94, NFPA Records.

24 Compton to Earl Constantine, January 24, 1924, and Compton to J. N. Teal, January 16, 1924, Box 94, NFPA Records.

25 Compton to Hoover, January 19, 1924, and Compton to North Carolina Pine Association, January 19, 1924. Ibid.

26 Compton to Stephen B. Davis, January 21, 1924, “National Lumber Manufacturers Association, 1921–1927,” CPHP.

27 U. S. Department of Commerce, Annual Report (1924), 16–18; West Coast Lumbermens Associations, Annual Report (1924), 2, filed in folder 23, Box 1, West Coast Lumbermens Associations Records (hereafter WCLA Records), Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon.

28 Statement by Herbert Hoover to Chamber of Commerce of the United States, April 12, 1922. Box 94, NFPA Records; Compton, Wilson, “How Competition Can Be Improved Through Association,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 11 (January 1926), 32.Google Scholar

29 West Coast Lumbermens Association, Annual Report (1924), filed in folder 23, Box 1, WCLA Records; Allen to National Association of Cost Accountants, February 8, 1924, Box 94, NFPA Records.

30 U. S. Department of Commerce, Annual Report (1924), 18.

31 Himmelberg, Origins of the National Recovery Administration, 33–34, 43–47; Compton to Allen, February 28, 1924, Box 94, NFPA Records.

32 United States Supreme Court Sanctions Collection and Dissemination of Lumber Statistics (Chicago: Reprinted from American Lumberman, June 6, 1925), 37–38.

33 Lumber World Review, 48 (June 10, 1925), 33–34; Trade Associations, 115.

34 Compton, “National Lumber Problems and Prospects,” in National Lumber Manufacturers Association, Annual Report (1923), 12.

35 Hoover is quoted in National Lumber Manufacturers Association, Annual Report (1924), 46–47.

36 For industry leaders views on standardization, see the testimony of Everett Griggs in Proceedings of the Fourth National Conservation Congress (Indianapolis, 1912), 187.Google Scholar Circular Distributed to Organized Consumers, Technical Experts, Distributors, and Manufacturers Interested in Lumber, December 23, 1923, “Conferences — Lumber,” CPHP.

37 Ibid.; Hoover's Address to the National Lumber Manufacturers Association, May 22, 1922, “National Lumber Manufacturers Association, 1921, 1927,” Memo on the Central Committee on Lumber Standards, July 22, 1922, “Lumber, 1921–1924,” Ibid.

38 Press Helease, “Keeping the Government out of the Lumber Business,” July 12, 1922, Box 144, NFPA Records.

39 Minutes of the General Standardization Conference on Lumber, December 12–13, 1923, “Conferences-Lumber, 1923–1928,” CPHP.

40 Ibid.

41 J. F. Martin, Secretary, Pennsylvania Lumbermens Association, to Hoover, September 8, 1924, “Lumber, 1921–1924,” John W. Blodgett, Chairman, Central Committee on Lumber Standards, to Hoover, April 23, 1925, “Lumber, 1925,” CPHP. Herbert C. Berckes, “Association Activities,” in the Report of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Subscribers to the Southern Pine Association, March 11–12, 1924, pp. 25–26, quoted in James C. Fickle, “Origins and Development of the Southern Pine Association,” chapter 6, p. 2 (manuscript in the Forest History Society); Blodgett to A. C. Goodyear, December 1, 1924, Box 74, NFPA Records.

42 Weyerhaeuser to Hoover, May 25, 1928, “Lumber, 1926–1928,” CPHP.

43 Wallace to Hoover, October 8, 1924, “Conferences — Wood Utilization, 1924–1925,” CPHP; Winters, Donald L., Henry Cantwell Wallace as Secretary of Agriculture (Chicago, 1970), 291Google Scholar; Coolidge's Address to the National Conference on Utilization of Forest Products, November 19, 1924, “Conferences — Wood Utilization, 1924–1925,” CPHP.

44 American Lumberman (November 22, 1924), 45–17.

45 Hoover to John W. Blodgett, March 28, 1925, “Conferences – Wood Utilization, 1925,” CPHP; U. S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Services Available to the Lumber Industry Through the Department of Commerce (Washingon, D. C, 1930), 14.Google ScholarAmerican Lumberman (May 1, 1926), 42.

46 E. C. Hole to Hoover, November 22, 1924, “Conferences — Wood Utilizatiion, 1924–1925,” CPHP; Southern Lumberman 122 (May 1, 19261, 20; William Nichols to Oxholm, July 13, 1927, “Lumber, 1926–1928,” CPHP.

47 Hoover to Frank Wisner, April 6, 1927, “Conferences — Wood Utilization, 1927,” National Lumber Manufacturers Association, News Release, May 7, 1927, “Lumber, 1926–1928,” CPHP.

48 Creeley to Axel Oxholm, January 25, 1928, “Conferences — Wood Utilization, 1928,” CPHP.

49 Hoover's speech was published after the election in the Lumber Manufacturer and Dealer, 81 (December 1928), 39.

50 Hoover to Lawrence, December 29, 1927, “Commerce, American Business Men,” CPHP.

51 Orion Howard Cheney, “The New Competition in the Lumber Industry,” in National Lumber Manufacturers Association, Annual Report (1927), 3.

52 For the Commerce Department's promotion of foreign trade, see Services Available to the Lumber Industry, 7–12.

53 For a discussion of Hoover's economic recovery initiatives, see Burner, David, Herbert Hoover: The Public Life (New York, 1978), 245–283Google Scholar; Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, 192–205; Wilson, Joan Hoff, Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975), 122–167Google Scholar; Hicks, John D., Republican Ascendancy, 1921–1933 (New York, 1960), 260–280.Google Scholar