Notes

Introduction

1. Humboldt Times, January 3, 1884.

2. There is a brief autobiography of Keller’s early life in the Kaweah Collection, Folder C. F. Keller, CA 302, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

3. Democratic Standard, May 29, 1880.

4. See Robert V. Hine, California’s Utopian Colonies (San Marino: Henry E. Huntington Library, 1953).

5. For one of the best review articles on how community studies have contributed to our knowledge of American history, see Kathleen Neils Conzen, “Community Studies, Urban History, and American Local History,” in Michael Kammen, ed., The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 270–291.

6. Steven Hahn and Jonathan Prude, eds., The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation: Essays in the Social History of Rural America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 3.

7. Melvyn Dubofsky, “The Origins of Western Working Class Radicalism, 1890–1905,” Labor History 7 (Spring 1966): 131–154. See also Carlos A. Schwantes, “The Concept of the Wageworkers’ Frontier: A Framework for Future Research,” Western Historical Quarterly 18 (January 1987): 39–55. Schwantes has written a useful review on the labor history of an important subregion of the American West: “The History of Pacific Northwest Labor History,” Idaho Yesterdays 28 (Winter 1985): 23–35. Among other things, Schwantes notes the preoccupation of social historians with the region’s most violent episodes, the overall neglect of the labor history of the Pacific Northwest, and a “time lag” by the historians of the region in using the conceptual insights and frameworks of the new social history.

8. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturing, 1905 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1907), pt. 1, p. clix.

9. Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1945), p. 7.

10. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 211 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1917), p. 8.

11. Charlotte Todes, Labor and Lumber (New York: International Publishers, 1931), p. 80.

12. The best of the very few studies of lumbering communities is Norman H. Clark, Mill Town: A Social History of Everett, Washington, from Its Earliest Beginnings on the Shores of Puget Sound to the Tragic and Infamous Event Known as the Everett Massacre (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970). William G. Robbins has also published several articles that prefigure his forthcoming book on Coos Bay, Oregon. Among them are “Timber Town: Market Economics in Coos Bay, Oregon, 1850 to the Present,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 75 (October 1984): 146–155; and “The Social Context of Forestry: The Pacific Northwest in the Twentieth Century,” Western Historical Quarterly 16 (October 1985): 413–427.

13. Howard Brett Melendy, “One Hundred Years of the Redwood Lumber Industry, 1850–1950,” doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1952, p. 15.

14. Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983), especially “Rethinking Chartism,” chap. 3, pp. 90–178. The important works of Sean Wilentz, Bruce Palmer, Alan Dawley, and Leon Fink, notwithstanding, in recent years British social historians have attached more importance to political ideology and the “language of class” than their American counterparts. As Michael Frisch and Daniel Walkowitz observed in their introduction to a recent collection of essays in American working class history: “Interest in political ideas and activity has not generally characterized labor history; this interest was patronized as utopian and immature in the most traditional works and dismissed as superficial and tangential by recent historians more concerned with social structure.” Michael H. Frisch and Daniel J. Walkowitz, eds., Working-Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. xiii–xiv.

15. Melvyn Dubofsky says that “loggers were perfect IWW recruits” in his We Shall Be All: A History of the 1 WW (New York: Quadrangle, 1967), p. 129. Philip Foner writes of the lumber industry as “an ideal field for the IWW” in his The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905–1917 (New York: International Publishers, 1965), p. 218, although he confronts the failure of the IWW to obtain a large following among the lumber workers more directly than most authors. For a recent book celebrating the supposed militancy of lumber workers, see Jerry Lembcke and William M. Tattam, One Union in Wood: A Political History of the International Woodworkers of America (New York: International Publishers, 1984).

16. George Bain and Robert Price, Profiles of Union Growth: A Comparative Statistical Portrait of Eight Countries (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1980), p. 95.

17. Many articles and essays could be cited. Among the most recent and important are Thomas Bender, “Wholes and Parts: The Need for a Synthesis in American History,” Journal of American History 73 (June 1986): 120–136; William E. Leuchtenburg, “The Pertinence of Political History: Reflections on the Significance of the State in America,” Journal of American History 73 (December 1986): 585–600; and Spencer C. Olin, Jr., “Toward a Synthesis of the Political and Social History of the American West,” Pacific Historical Review 55 (November 1986): 599–611. David Brody has addressed the problems of arriving at a synthesis in the field of labor history in a number of essays, among them “The Old Labor History and the New: In Search of an American Working Class,” Labor History 20 (Winter 1979): 111–126; and “Working-Class History in the Great Depression,” Reviews in American History 4 (June 1976): 262–267. For a provocative and interesting attack on the clarion call for synthesis, see Eric H. Monkkonen, “The Dangers of Synthesis,” American Historical Review 91 (December 1986): 1146–1157.

Chapter 1

1. The best account of Humboldt County’s early history is Owen C. Coy, The Humboldt Bay Region, 1850–1875 (Los Angeles: California State Historical Association, 1929). See also, W. W. Elliott & Co., History of Humboldt County, California (San Francisco: W. W. Elliott, 1881); Leigh H. Irvine, History of Humboldt County, California, with Biographical Sketches (Los Angeles: Historic Record, 1915); Lynwood Carranco, ed., The Redwood Country: History, Language, Folklore (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall & Hunt, 1971).

2. For the history of the lumber industry in Humboldt County, see Coy, Humboldt Bay Region; Lynwood Carranco and John T. Labbe, Logging the Redwoods (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1979); Lynwood Carranco, Redwood Lumber Industry (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1982); Howard Brett Melendy, “One Hundred Years of the Redwood Lumber Industry, 1850–1950,” doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1952.

3. Coy, Humboldt Bay Region, pp. 107–110.

4. The following contain many biographical sketches of early Humboldt County pioneers: John Carr, Pioneer Days in California (Eureka, Calif.: Times Publishing, 1891); Elliott, History of Humboldt County. The Humboldt Historian, published by the Humboldt County Historical Society since 1953, is a good source for biographical sketches, as is the Redwood Researcher, published by the Redwood Genealogical Society.

5. Coy, Humboldt Bay Region, pp. 107–110.

6. Statistics compiled from the Manuscript Census of Population for Humboldt County, 1860.

7. Humboldt Times, August 8, 1857. The Humboldt Times was the county’s first newspaper and commenced publication in September 1854 at Eureka as a weekly. In December 1854 it moved to Arcata, but in 1858 returned to Eureka. It became a daily publication on January 1, 1874.

8. Humboldt Times, January 26, 1861, and June 7, 1862.

9. Ibid., September 5, 1863.

10. Ibid., September 13, 1856.

11. Ibid., November 19, 1859.

12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the U.S., 1900, Statistics of Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1901), vol. 1, pt. 1, table 5, p. 75.

13. Reports of the California Surveyor General, 1879–1881.

14. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the U.S., Statistics of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1902), vol. 5, pt. 1, table 44, p. 592.

15. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturing, 1905 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1908), pt. 111, pp. 644–645.

16. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of the U.S., 1870, Statistics of Wealth and Industry (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1872), vol. 3, table 11, p. 639; Statistics of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1872), vol. 3, table 4, p. 104.

17. Humboldt Times, January 1, 1891.

18. Report of the California Surveyor General, 1870, p. 84. The size of the lumber workforce was calculated from the Manuscript Census Schedules of Population for Humboldt County, 1870.

19. Humboldt Times, June 8, 1878.

20. Report of the California Surveyor General, 1880–1881, p. 69. The appendix to Carranco, Redwood Lumber Industry, contains a chronological list of the major mills established in Humboldt County.

21. J. M. Eddy, In the Redwood Realm (Eureka: Times Publishing, 1893), p. 37, cites one estimate of 190 million feet of logs sawn in the 1887 season. Even after the California State Board of Harbor Commissioners began keeping statistics on the export of lumber from Humboldt Bay in 1889, estimates of lumber exports from the county varied according to source. Estimates of the lumber workforce appeared in Humboldt Standard, December 24 and August 2, 1887; Times-Telephone, April 20, 1888.

22. Thomas R. Cox, Robert S. Maxwell, Phillip Drennon, and Joseph Malone, This Well-Wooded Land: Americans and Their Forest from Colonial Times to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), p. 115. This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date general survey of American forest history and contains a useful bibliographical essay.

23. Eddy, In the Redwood Realm, pp. 34–41; Melendy, “One Hundred Years of Redwood Lumber,” pp. 275–315. The county press invariably provided statistics on annual lumber production and the amount shipped to a specific port. See also, Thomas R. Cox, Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).

24. According to the 1880 Manuscript Census Schedules for Humboldt County, 211 lumber workers resided in Eureka and 231 in Arcata and the Arcata Precinct.

25. Carranco, Redwood Lumber Industry, p. 138; Eddy, In the Redwood Realm, p. 31.

26. This was true of most large lumber companies in the Pacific Coast states by the late nineteenth century. Cox, Mills and Markets, pp. 128–129.

27. Melendy, “One Hundred Years of Redwood Lumber,” p. 305. On the history of the U.S. lumber industry and its failure to achieve order and stability, see William G. Robbins, Lumberjacks and Legislators: Political Economy of the U.S. Lumber Industry, 1890–1941 (College Station, Tex.: Texas A & M University Press, 1982); and Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1945).

28. The available studies indicate that a majority of America’s leading lumbermen in the nineteenth century came from relatively humble origins. An interesting source is American Lumberman, American Lumberman: The Personal History and Public and Business Achievements of One Hundred Eminent Lumbermen of the U.S., 3 vols. (Chicago: American Lumberman, 1905). See also Frederick W. Kohlmeyer, “Northern Pine Lumbermen: A Study in Origins and Migrations,” Journal of Economic History 16 (December 1956): 529–538; and Kohlmeyer, “Social Origins of Lumbermen,” in Encyclopedia of American Forest and Conservation History, ed. Richard C. Davis (New York: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 610–612.

29. Irvine, History of Humboldt County, pp. 607–610; Humboldt Standard, February 20 and 27, 1912; Humboldt Times, February 28, 1912.

30. Irvine, History of Humboldt County, pp. 1167–1169.

31. Elliott, History of Humboldt County, p. 143.

32. Irvine, History of Humboldt County, pp. 314–316.

33. Humboldt Times, October 23, 1889. Howard Libby, who worked in the Humboldt County lumber industry for many years, states that “many of the resident managers of the various companies are men who came up through the ranks.” Interview with Howard Libby, 1953, transcript, Bancroft Library, P-W, vol. 3, p. 5.

34. Calculated from Manuscript Census of Population for Humboldt County, 1860, 1870, 1880. For a detailed breakdown of the nativity of the Humboldt County lumber workforce, see Daniel Cornford, “Lumber, Labor, and Community in Humboldt County, California, 1850–1920,” doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1983, pp. 67–69.

35. Some women worked as cooks at logging camps and in mill towns, but most cooks were male. By the early twentieth century, and perhaps before, several mills employed women as clerical workers.

36. Frontier Journal (Calais), July 17, 1851.

37. Alan A. Brookes, “The Exodus: Migration from the Maritime Provinces to Boston during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” doctoral dissertation, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, 1979; Brookes, “Out-Migration from the Maritime Provinces, 1860–1900: Some Preliminary Considerations,” Acadiensis 5 (Spring 1976): 26–55.

38. Brookes, “The Golden Age and the Exodus: The Case of Canning, Kings County,” Acadiensis 11 (Autumn 1981): 57–82; Jon Humboldt Gates, Falk’s Claim: The Life and Death of a Redwood Lumber Town (Eureka: Pioneer Graphics, 1983), pp. 39–42.

39. Interview with Frank Fraser, 1953, transcript, Bancroft Library, P-W 57, vol. 3, p. 4.

40. Eugene F. Fountain, “The Story of Blue Lake” (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), vol. 2, p. 204, available at the Humboldt Room, Humboldt State University Library.

41. Stewart Holbrook, Holy Old Mackinaw: A Natural History of the American Lumberjack (New York: Macmillan, 1938), pp. 71–72 and 152.

42. Graeme Wynn, Timber Colony: A Historical Geography of Early Nineteenth Century New Brunswick (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981); David C. Smith, A History of Lumbering in Maine, 1861–1960 (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1972).

43. Statistics compiled from the Manuscript Census of Population for Humboldt County, 1860, 1870, and 1880.

44. Arcata Union, April 12, 1917.

45. Ibid.

46. Labor Enquirer (Denver), September 18, 1886.

47. For a fuller description of logging, see Carranco and Labbe, Logging the Redwoods; and Carranco, Redwood Lumber Industry. For a good general description of technological changes in the West Coast lumber industry during the late nineteenth century, see Cox, Mills and Markets, pp. 227–254. Logging terminology differed according to region, with significant differences between the redwood lumber industry and that of the Pacific Northwest. For example, the men who worked in the woods were called “loggers” in Oregon and Washington but “woodsmen” in Humboldt County.

48. Descriptions of sawmilling in the Humboldt County lumber industry are not nearly so detailed and frequent as those of logging, but see Melendy, “One Hundred Years of Redwood Lumber,” pp. 56–64; Humboldt Times, November 3, 1889; Gates, Falk’s Claim, pp. 85–87. As Cox et al. note in their bibliographical essay in This Well-Wooded Land, p. 309, there are very few studies of sawmill technology for the post-1850 years.

49. Wynn, Timber Colony, p. 78; Smith, A History of Lumbering in Maine, pp. 21, 225–226; Jensen, Lumber and Labor, pp. 39–40; Ninth Biennial Report, California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1899–1900 (Sacramento: State Printer, 1900), pp. 57–63.

50. Dolbeer and Carson Records, Bancroft Library, C-G 164, vols. 1 and 12.

51. This was particularly evident from an examination of the census, Special Schedules of Manufactures for Humboldt County, 1880.

52. U. S. Bureau of the Census, Report on Manufacturing Industries, Eleventh Census of the U.S., 1890 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1895), vol. 6, pt. 1, table 3, pp. 624–625. Most Humboldt County lumber company records indicate that few mills operated for more than 250 days a year.

53. Humboldt Times, November 20, 1889.

54. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vols. 1 and 12.

55. Melendy, “One Hundred Years of Redwood Lumber,” pp. 326–329.

56. See Joseph Conlin, “‘Old Boy, Did You Get Enough of Pie’: A Social History of Food in Logging Camps,” Journal of Forest History 23 (October 1979): 165–185.

57. W. H. Wilde, “Chronology of the Pacific Lumber Company, 1869 to 1945” (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), p. 24, available at Bancroft Library; Ben Shannon Allen, “From the Penobscot to the Eel” (unpublished manuscript, 1949), available at Humboldt State University Library.

58. Humboldt Times, January 12, 1897.

59. The Eureka City Census of 1904 was reprinted in Humboldt County Souvenir (Eureka: Times Publishing, 1904), pp. 199–201.

60. Western Watchman (Eureka), September 24, 1887, July 7, 1888, April 25, 1891. Typescript, “History of the Pacific Lumber Company as Told by the Late George Douglas,” Pacific Lumber Company files at Scotia, unmarked folder. See also Allen, Penobscot to the Eel, chap. 14, pp. 7–8.

61. According to the 1880 Manuscript Census Returns, 41.2 percent of millmen were married and 32.6 percent of woodsmen.

62. Holbrook, Holy Old Mackinaw, p. 87.

63. Humboldt Standard, July 6, 1896.

64. On the occupational hazards of lumber work, see Andrew M. Prouty, More Deadly than War: Pacific Coast Logging 1827–1981 (New York: Garland, 1985).

65. Strikes by lumber workers were relatively rare in the nineteenth century. There was little effective organization among lumber workers until the coming of the Knights of Labor in the mid-1880 s, and the Knights only succeeded in organizing lumber workers briefly. The first major recorded strike of American lumber workers occurred in 1872 in Pennsylvania. Nancy Lee Miller, “Sawdust War: Labor Strife in Lumber-Mills,” Pennsylvania Forests 72 (March–April 1982): 6–8, 13. Federal government statistics indicate that there were only 275 strikes involving 73,626 workers in the “lumber and timber products” industry between 1881 and 1905; Florence Peterson, Strikes in the United States, 1880–1936 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Labor Bulletin 651, 1938), p. 30. The number of strikes and workers involved in them was far greater in such industries as coal, iron and steel, boots and shoes, the building trades, tobacco, and textiles.

66. Humboldt Times, October 29, 1881.

67. For recent studies on the inequalities of wealth in post–gold rush California, see Ralph Mann, After the Gold Rush: Society in Grass Valley and Nevada City, California, 1849–1870 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1982); and Robert A. Burchell, “Opportunity and the Frontier: Wealth-Holding in Twenty-Six Northern California Counties, 1848–1880,” Western Historical Quarterly 18 (April 1987): 177–196.

Chapter 2

1. Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor in American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 26. In an important review essay, David Montgomery stressed the prominence of independent political activity in the Gilded Age and the need for further work in this field. David Montgomery, “To Study the People: The American Working Class,” Labor History 21 (Fall 1980): 485–512.

2. Among the more important of these studies are Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Paul G. Faler, Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution: Lynn, Massachusetts, 1780–1860 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981); Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Bruce Laurie, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800–1850 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980); Edward Pessen, Most Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1967); Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (New York: New York University Press, 1979). Alan Dawley’s Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976) spans the antebellum and postbellum period till the early twentieth century.

3. Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America (New York: Knopf, 1976). On Gutman’s secondary concern with explicit political ideology and activity, see David Montgomery, “Gutman’s Nineteenth Century America,” Labor History 19 (Summer 1978): 416–429, especially pp. 426–427.

4. Valuable contributions to our understanding of Gilded Age labor and radical politics before the advent of the Populists have been made in the following books, although they differ in the degree to which they focus on politics: David Montgomery, Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York: Knopf, 1967); Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Richard J. Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982); Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy.

5. Faler, Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution, p. 186.

6. Wilentz, Chants Democratic, pp. 14–15, 61–103, 157–167, 182–216, 237–254, 271–286; Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, pp. 39–41, 88–102, 123–124, 134–138.

7. Historians of nineteenth-century America, especially the Gilded Age, are divided as to the relative degree to which local, state, or national politics were people’s major frame of reference. Eric Foner’s Free Soil, Free Men, Free Labor: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) was deservedly highly acclaimed. Besides having much to say about the roots and nature of the democratic–republican tradition, Foner demonstrates the extent to which politics had been “nationalized” by the 1850s. Yet the consensus of most social and political historians is that people were animated mainly by local political issues during the Gilded Age. In the oft-quoted phrase of Robert Wiebe, they inhabited “island communities” in terms of their political frame of reference. Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967). In reviewing the historical literature, Thomas Bender reflects this consensus while trying to reconcile it with contradictory evidence. Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1978), pp. 86–120.

8. Humboldt Times, December 13, 1863.

9. Letter Book of James Beith, February 19, 1857, p. 13, Bancroft Library.

10. Ibid., February 4, 1861, p. 52.

11. Humboldt Times, February 27, 1858.

12. Ibid., August 7, 1858.

13. Ibid., January 14, 1860.

14. Ibid., March 26, 1864.

15. Letter Book of James Beith, January 24, 1862, p. 162.

16. Rowland Berthoff, “Writing a History of Things Left Out,” Reviews in American History 14 (March 1986): 1–16.

17. Letter Book of James Beith, January 24, 1862, p. 162.

18. Humboldt Times, July 13, 1861.

19. Diary of James Beith, vol. 5, July 9, 1881, p. 166.

20. Humboldt Times, December 21, 1867, and January 4, 1868.

21. Ibid., January 11 and 18, 1868.

22. Ibid., November 14, 1868.

23. Ibid., January 8, 1868.

24. Ibid., July 15, 1871.

25. Northern Independent (Eureka), July 13, 1871.

26. Ibid., August 26 and September 1, 1869.

27. Ibid., August 19, 1869.

28. Humboldt Times, March 11, 1871.

29. Ibid., April 15 and August 26, 1871.

30. West Coast Signal (Eureka), July 9, 1873.

31. This party is sometimes referred to as the Independent party or the Dolly Vardens. The secondary literature on it is sparse, but see Curtis E. Grassman, “Prologue to Progressivism: Senator Stephen M. White and the California Reform Impulse, 1875–1905,” doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1970, pp. 17–22; and Walton E. Bean, California: An Interpretive History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), p. 261.

32. West Coast Signal, August 6, 1873.

33. Humboldt Times, August 30, 1873.

34. Ibid., July 5, 1873.

35. Ezra Carr, The Patrons of Husbandry on the West Coast (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1875).

36. Humboldt Times, September 20, 1873.

37. West Coast Signal, September 24, 1873. The local press printed official election returns about two weeks after an election. Local and state election returns are also available at the California State Library, Sacramento. Returns for 1849 to 1916 are on microfilm at the University of California, Berkeley Library.

38. Biographical information on Sweasey was obtained from T. J. Vivian and D. G. Waldron, Biographical Sketches of the Delegates to the Convention (San Francisco: Francis & Valentine, 1878), pp. 29–30; West Coast Signal, September 24, 1873; Democratic Standard, January 1, 1879; Humboldt Times, October 1, 1893; Western Watchman, October 7, 1893; and Nerve, October 7, 1893.

39. Humboldt Times, January 24, 1874.

40. Ibid., January 6, 1877.

41. Ibid., January 20, 1877.

42. Pacific Coast Wood and Iron, a trade journal of the Pacific lumber industry, published a review of redwood lumber prices for the previous thirty years in 1899, which was reprinted in the Humboldt Standard, December 13, 1899.

43. Humboldt Times, February 10, 1877.

44. Daily Evening Signal, July 3, 1877; Humboldt Times, July 7, 1877.

45. Mendocino Democrat, March 2, 1878.

46. Humboldt Times, July 21, 1877.

47. Ibid., July 21 and October 13, 1877, March 2, 1878.

48. Ibid., March 2, 1878.

49. Democratic Standard, November 3, 1877.

50. Humboldt Times, August 25, 1877.

51. Daily Evening Signal, August 18, 1877.

52. Eugene F. Fountain, The Story of Blue Lake (n.p., n.d.), vol. 3, pp. 589–592.

53. The study named all landholders possessing 500 acres or more in every California county. The San Francisco Chronicle began serializing the findings of the Sacramento Daily Record on October 28, 1873, and the findings for Humboldt County were published in the Humboldt Times, November 8, 1873.

54. Humboldt Times, November 8, 1873. See also obituary of Joseph Russ, Times-Telephone, October 10, 1886.

55. San Francisco Chronicle, October 28, 1873.

56. Ibid., November 1, 1873.

57. On the concentration of land ownership in California, see Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939); and Cletus E. Daniel, Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981).

58. See E. B. Willis and P. K. Stockton, Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention, 3 vols. (Sacramento: J. D. Young, Superintendent of State Printing, 1880).

59. Humboldt Times, April 27, 1878.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid., May 11, 1878.

63. Democratic Standard, November 23, 1878.

64. Humboldt Times, May 9, 1874; Pacific Rural Press, July 14, 1877.

65. Humboldt Times, October 21, 1876.

66. Ibid., November 18 and December 2, 1876.

67. Daily Evening Signal, March 15, 1878.

68. The fullest account of the California Workingmen’s party is provided by Ralph Kauer, “The Workingmen’s Party of California,” Pacific Historical Review 13 (September 1944): 278–291. An important book on the California labor movement and reform politics in the late nineteenth century is Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). Also useful on the history of the California Workingmen’s party are Royce D. Delmatier, Clarence F. Mcintosh, and Earl G. Walters, The Rumble of California Politics, 1848–1970 (New York: Wiley, 1970), pp. 70–98; and Ira B. Cross, A History of the Labor Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935), pp. 88–129. These studies, however, focus mainly on the San Francisco Workingmen’s party and the anti-Chinese agitation.

69. Humboldt Times, September 22, 1877.

70. Delmatier et al., Rumble of California Politics, p. 83.

71. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census of the U.S., Statistics of Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1883), vol. 1, table 14, p. 498; idem, Ninth Census of the U.S., Statistics of Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1872), vol. 1, table 3, p. 90.

72. Evening Star (Eureka), January 17, 1877.

73. Lynwood Carranco, “The Chinese Expulsion from Humboldt County,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (November 1961): 329–340; idem, “The Chinese in Humboldt County, California: A Study in Prejudice,” Journal of the West 12 (January 1973): 139–162.

74. Statistics compiled from the Manuscript Census of Population for Humboldt County, 1880.

75. Humboldt Times, June 4, 1878; Democratic Standard, June 1, 1878; Ferndale Enterprise, June 1, 1878.

76. Humboldt Times, May 11, 1878.

77. Democratic Standard, May 25, 1878.

78. Humboldt Times, July 6, 1878. In 1878, the bulk of lumber workers, as well as laborers, artisans, and businessmen, resided in Eureka and, to a lesser extent, Arcata. Farmers constituted the majority of the electorate outside these precincts. Unfortunately, even later in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, there were no clearly identifiable “lumber worker precincts,” which limits the utility of precinct analysis per se to gauge the voting behavior of lumber workers. Unquestionably, farmers constituted a larger proportion of the registered voters in relation to their numbers than lumber workers and most other occupational groups. Nevertheless, lumber workers made up a significant proportion of registered voters. The geographic stability of a sizable core of lumber workers, and the relative leniency of residency requirements imposed by California law, both before and after the 1879 constitution, facilitated this. While farmers tended to “persist” longer on the voting registers than most other occupational groups, they too were fairly transient. On the above issues, see Robert A. Burchell, “Opportunity and the Frontier: Wealth-Holding in Twenty-Six Northern California Counties 1848–1880,” Western Historical Quarterly 18 (April 1987): 189–190.

79. Willis and Stockton, Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 2, p. 1144.

80. Democratic Standard, May 3, 1879.

81. Ibid., May 24, 1879.

82. Ibid., April 5, 1879.

83. Ibid., May 10, 1879.

84. Ibid., June 7, 1879.

85. Ibid., April 12 and June 28, 1879.

86. Ibid., July 5, 1879.

87. Biographical sketches of the men on the Workingmen’s party ticket appeared in the Democratic Standard, July 19, 1879.

88. Democratic Standard, August 16, 1879.

89. Ibid, July 5, 1879.

90. Ibid., September 6, 1879.

91. Saxton, Indispensable Enemy, p. 152.

92. Democratic Standard, March 13, 1880.

93. Ibid., April 24, 1880.

94. Ibid., May 15, 1880.

95. Ibid., April 17, 1880.

96. Ibid., January 8, 1881.

97. For critical responses to Sweasey’s land-reform proposals, see the Humboldt Times, May 4, 11, and 18, 1878. Sweasey strongly defended his proposal in the Daily Evening Signal, June 12, 1878.

98. Arcata Union, August 14, 1886.

Chapter 3

1. Michael B. Katz, Michael J. Doucet, and Mark Stern, The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 130.

2. Robert Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959), p. 197.

3. In addition to Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party, for accounts of national monetary and economic policy in the immediate post–Civil War years, see Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964); Walter K. Nugent, Money and American Society, 1865–1880 (New York: Free Press, 1968); Allen Weinstein, Prelude to Populism: Origins of the Silver Issue, 1867–1878 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). For a good discussion of the interest of labor leaders in currency reform, see David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York: Knopf, 1967).

4. Quoted in Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party, p. 195.

5. See, however, John D. French, “‘Reaping the Whirlwind’: The Origins of the Allegheny County Greenback Labor Party in 1877,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 64 (April 1981): 97–119. For a brief but important overview article on the relationship between the labor movement and the state, see David Montgomery, “Labor and the Republic in Industrial America: 1860–1920,” Le Mouvement Social 3 (April–June 1980): 201–215.

6. Democratic Standard, June 1, 1878.

7. Ibid., May 29, July 3 and 31, 1880.

8. Ibid., July 24, 1880.

9. Reports of the California Surveyor General, 1879–1882.

10. Democratic Standard, February 28, 1880.

11. Reports of the California Surveyor General, 1879 and 1880.

12. Arcata Leader, August 7, 1880.

13. Reports of the California Surveyor General, 1880–1882.

14. Democratic Standard, September 27, 1879.

15. Ibid., July 10, 1880.

16. Humboldt Times, September 24, 1881.

17. Ibid., December 25, 1880.

18. Kaweah Collection, CA 302, Bancroft Library, C. F. Keller Folder.

19. Democratic Standard, May 29, 1880.

20. This view is well developed in one of the most sophisticated critiques of the Populists’ ideology: Bruce Palmer, “Man Over Money”: The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).

21. Democratic Standard, September 13, 1879.

22. Ibid., March 19, 1881.

23. Ibid., July 22, 1882.

24. The occupation of most delegates can be established by the 1880 Manuscript Census of Population for Humboldt County or L. M. McKenney & Co., Eight County Directory of Humboldt, Napa, Marin, Yolo, Lake, Solano, Mendocino and Sonoma Counties (San Francisco: L. M. McKenney, 1885). Data for this directory were collected in 1883.

25. Democratic Standard, May 15, 1880.

26. Ibid., September 25, 1880.

27. Humboldt Times, September 11, 1880.

28. Ibid., March 26, 1881.

29. Ibid., November 20, 1880.

30. Ibid., November 25, 1882.

31. Humboldt Times, October 22, 1881.

32. Democratic Standard, August 19, 1882.

33. Ibid., August 26, 1882.

34. Ibid.

35. Humboldt Times, August 26, 1882.

36. Ibid., September 2 and 9, 1882.

37. Democratic Standard, March 27, 1880.

38. Ibid., May 29, 1880.

39. Ibid., October 2, 1884.

40. Truth, March 25, 1882.

41. Truth, March 25, 1882; Industrial Worker, June 21, 1924.

42. Humboldt Times, March 11, 1882.

43. Democratic Standard, May 8, 1880; Arcata Leader, May 22, 1880.

44. Democratic Standard, August 26, 1882.

45. Humboldt Times, June 17, 1882.

46. Ibid., October 28, 1882.

47. For an account of the issues surrounding the Debris Bill, see Robert L. Kelley, Gold Versus Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California’s Sacramento Valley (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1959)

48. Democratic Standard, March 12 and 26, 1881.

Chapter 4

1. On the history of the California labor movement from the gold rush to the early twentieth century, see Ira B. Cross, A History of the Labor Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935). On the origins of the labor movement in the Pacific Northwest, see Carlos A. Schwantes, Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885–1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979); and Harry W. Stone, “Beginning of the Labor Movement in the Pacific Northwest,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 47 (June 1946): 155–164.

2. On the industrialization of the American West and the rise of a militant labor movement, see Melvyn Dubofsky, “The Origins of Western Working Class Radicalism, 1890–1905,” Labor History 7 (Spring 1966): 131–166.

3. The Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1879–1880 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880) asserted that “much trespassing is reported upon the redwood pine found on the public lands of Humboldt and Mendocino Counties” (p. 577). Many lumber companies acquired land and timber by getting people to file “dummy” entries under existing homestead laws or by simply cutting on the public domain. The Annual Reports of the United States Commissioner of the General Land Office are replete with accounts of such practices in California and elsewhere. The abuses of federal land law by lumber interests are examined in Harold H. Dunham, Government Handout: A Study in the Administration of Public Lands, 1875–1891 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edward Brothers, 1941); and John Ise, United States Forest Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920).

4. S. A. D. Puter, Looters of the Public Domain (Portland: Portland Printing House, 1908).

5. Ferndale Enterprise, April 7, 1882.

6. The fullest account of this episode is in House Executive Documents, 50th Cong., 1st sess., Exec. Doc. 282, pp. 1–21. See also Annual Reports of the United States Commissioner of the General Land Office for the following years: 1885, pp. 59–60; 1886, pp. 94–95; 1887, pp. 79–81.

7. Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of the General Land Office, 1886, p. 95.

8. House Exec. Doc. 282, p. 2.

9. Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of the General Land Office, 1886, p. 95.

10. New York Times, April 20, 1886.

11. Democratic Standard, January 13, 1883.

12. Ibid., March 24, 1883.

13. Kaweah Collection, CA-302, Keller folder, Bancroft Library. Hereinafter cited as Keller Autobiography.

14. On the general problem faced by lumber entrepreneurs in acquiring timberlands, see Thomas R. Cox, Robert S. Maxwell, Phillip Drennon Thomas, and Joseph J. Malone, This Well-Wooded Land: Americans and Their Forests from Colonial Times to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), pp. 138–142. The authors state that there was “a considerable measure of both public support and official understanding—even sympathy—for lumbermen who had to break the law” (p. 141).

15. Democratic Standard, March 3, 1883.

16. Ibid., March 31, 1883.

17. Ibid., March 24, 1883.

18. Intermittent references to Ayres’s involvement appeared in the county press from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s. Ayres’s involvement was most fully exposed by C. F. Bergin, who served as a special agent for the General Land Office investigating the California Redwood Company, in an article in the Berkeley Daily Advocate, May 23, 1892.

19. Times-Telephone, May 5, 1883.

20. Ferndale Enterprise, August 3, 1883.

21. Herbert G. Gutman, “The Workers’ Search for Power,” in The Gilded Age, ed. H. Wayne Morgan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1970), pp. 31–53.

22. Keller Autobiography, p. 3.

23. General Land Office Report, 1886, p. 95.

24. Ise, United States Forest Policy, p. 76.

25. Democratic Standard, August 11, 1883.

26. For more details on the history of the IWA, see Cross, History of the Labor Movement in California.

27. Democratic Standard, August 11, 1883.

28. IWA Records, CA 306, Bancroft Library, unmarked folder, Keller to Moore.

29. Democratic Standard, September 1, 1883.

30. IWA Records, unmarked folder, Keller to Haskell, October 9, 1883.

31. Truth, August 25, 1883.

32. IWA Records, Amelia Jones to Haskell, October 5, 1883.

33. IWA Records, Keller to Burgman, October 9, 1883; Keller to Haskell, October 9, 1883.

34. IWA Records, unmarked folder.

35. Ibid.

36. Cross, History of the Labor Movement in California, p. 161.

37. In an analysis of 147 IWA members in San Francisco, Bruce Dancis concluded that the organization was unsuccessful in attracting unskilled and semiskilled workers. Bruce Dancis, “Social Mobility and Class Consciousness: San Francisco’s International Workingmen’s Association in the 1880s,” Journal of Social History 1 (Fall 1977): 75–98.

38. IWA Records, unmarked folder, Keller to Haskell, October 9, 1883.

39. Democratic Standard, May 29, 1883.

40. Truth, September 1884, pp. 228–231.

41. Ibid.

42. Keller Autobiography, p. 3.

43. For an account of the Kaweah Cooperative Colony and the respective roles of Keller and Haskell, see Robert V. Hine, California’s Utopian Colonies (San Marino: Henry E. Huntington Library, 1953).

44. Truth, January 12, 1884.

45. IWA Records, unmarked folder, August Glatt to Haskell, April 16, 1885.

46. Diary of Bumette Haskell, California Historical Society Library, Ms. 952, January 2, 1885.

47. Times-Telephone, February 3, 1884.

48. Humboldt Standard, February 7, 1884.

49. Times-Telephone, February 15, 1884.

50. Industrial Worker, December 7, 1911.

51. Times-Telephone, February 20, 1884.

52. Humboldt Standard, May 12, 1884.

53. Labor News, June 27, 1914.

54. Times-Telephone, August 15, 1884.

55. Industrial Worker, December 7, 1911.

56. Humboldt Standard, July 23, 1884.

57. Truth, August 1884, pp. 193–194.

58. Times-Telephone, August 15, 1884.

59. Labor News, June 27, 1914.

60. As noted, Sweasey joined Robert Owen in New Harmony, Indiana, in the 1840s. Speed, like Keller, was a founding member of the Kaweah Cooperative Colony. Cronin, after a colorful career in the labor movement in Oregon and Washington in the mid-1880 s, lived out his life on a commune in Oregon. See Carlos A. Schwantes, “Protest in a Promised Land: Unemployment, Disinheritance, and the Origin of Labor Militancy in the Pacific Northwest, 1885–1886,” Western Historical Quarterly 13 (October 1982): 373–390. Alfred Cridge was an IWA member and for a time in the early 1870s was a member of a colony in Riverside, California. He edited the Humboldt Knights’ organ, the Western Watchman from 1884 to 1886. The Star (San Francisco), January 18, 1902.

Chapter 5

1. Only in recent years have the Knights begun to receive the scholarly attention commensurate with their importance. Before the late 1970s, the most important works dealing with the Knights were Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1890 (New York: Knopf, 1929); and Gerald N. Grob, Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1961). Among the most important recent studies of the Knights of Labor are Melton McLaurin, The Knights of Labor in the South (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978); Bryan D. Palmer and Gregory S. Kealey, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983); Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinatti, 1788–1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Richard J. Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); David Brundage, “The Making of Working-Class Radicalism in the Mountain West: Denver, Colorado, 1880–1903,” doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1982; Richard Schneirov, “The Knights of Labor in the Chicago Labor Movement and in Municipal Politics, 1877–1887,” doctoral dissertation, Northern Illinois University, 1984. On the Knights of Labor in the Pacific Northwest, see Carlos A. Schwantes, Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885–1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979).

2. Jonathan Garlock, comp., Guide to the Local Assemblies of the Knights of Labor (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 22–23. Reference was found in the county press to two assemblies not listed by Garlock. Membership data are based on recollections of Millard Gardner, Humboldt Times, December 31, 1909; and George Speed, Industrial Worker, June 21, 1924.

3. Times-Telephone, August 9, 1884.

4. Pacific Coast Wood and Iron 32 (December 1899):209, reprinted in Humboldt Standard, December 13, 1899.

5. Humboldt Standard, April 15, 1885.

6. Times-Telephone, April 24, 1885.

7. San Francisco Chronicle, May 1, 1885.

8. Humboldt Standard, April 27, 1885.

9. Times-Telephone and Humboldt Standard, May 8, 1885.

10. Humboldt Standard, May 11, 1885.

11. According to the Labor Enquirer of Denver, the paper began as “a six column folio, all home print.” Labor Enquirer, November 8, 1884. Unfortunately, no issues of the Western Watchman are extant before September 18, 1886.

12. Diary of James Beith, vol. 7, p. 149, May 10, 1885.

13. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 11, July 18, 1886.

14. Times-Telephone, May 23, 1886.

15. Western Watchman, October 9, 1886.

16. Ibid., October 2, 1886.

17. Ibid., September 25, 1886.

18. Labor Enquirer, April 18, 1886.

19. Ferndale Enterprise, September 2, 1887.

20. The Knights of Labor records, although they contain an abundance of correspondence and records of proceedings, do not contain membership lists. Because of the fear of blacklisting and reprisals, Knights in Humboldt County and elsewhere often did not sign their names to correspondence. Most of the names of the leading Knights in Humboldt were obtained from their correspondence with Powderly and the recollections of Gardner and Speed; some came from the county press. Furthermore, in the mid-1880s, an increasing proportion of the local assemblies were designated as “mixed,” even if they were composed primarily of one occupational group.

21. Labor Enquirer, January 24, 1885.

22. Humboldt Standard, October 11, 1886.

23. Thus Point 7 of the Declaration of Principles stated that the Knights sought “the recognition by incorporation of trades’ unions . . . to improve their condition and protect their rights.” Point 21 asserted that it was the goal of the Knights “to shorten the hours of labor by a general refusal to work for more than eight hours.”

24. The first two planks of the Knights’ Declaration of Principles stated that the aim was “to make industrial and moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and National greatness” and to “secure to the workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they create, sufficient leisure in which to develop their intellectual, moral, and social faculties.” And the last point stated that the Order sought “to persuade employers to agree to arbitrate all differences which may arise between them, in order that the bonds of sympathy may be strengthened and that strikes may be rendered unnecessary.”

25. Mrs. W. S. Johnson to Powderly, March 25, 1886, Powderly Papers, Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.

26. Industrial Worker, June 21, 1924. McClaurin, Knights of Labor in the South, stresses the pervasiveness of factionalism within the Knights and the extent to which the Order attracted people of different occupational backgrounds (pp. 40–42). Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy, agrees that the Knights were often very inclusive in terms of their composition, but does not see this as a source of weakness or of ideological confusion.

27. Charles Devlin to Powderly, September 26, 1886, Powderly Papers.

28. Labor Enquirer, April 10, 1886.

29. Industrial Worker, June 21, 1924. Cronin played an active role among the Knights in Oregon after leaving Humboldt. Powderly received a stream of letters from Oregon Knights complaining that he was a socialist and an anarchist using the Knights as a vehicle to expand the influence of the IWA. Powderly wrote a succession of letters to Cronin in mid-1886 asking him to respond to the charges. Cronin was a leading figure in fermenting anti-Chinese riots in Oregon and Washington. See Schwantes, “Protest in a Promised Land.”

30. Arcata Union, September 25, 1886.

31. Diary of James Beith, vol. 7, pp. 156–157, May 31, 1885.

32. Humboldt Standard, February 15, 1886.

33. Millard Gardner to Powderly, July 20, 1886, Powderly Papers.

34. Western Watchman, December 18, 1886.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., March 19, 1887.

37. Ibid., June 4, 1887.

38. Ferndale Enterprise, June 17, 1887.

39. Western Watchman, June 18, 1887.

40. Ibid., June 4, 1887.

41. Labor News, June 27, 1914.

42. Western Watchman, June 4, 1887.

43. Garlock, Guide to the Local Assemblies of the Knights of Labor, p. 23.

44. Western Watchman, October 1, 1887.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid., December 18, 1887.

47. Ibid., March 19, 1887.

48. Ibid., November 27, 1886.

49. Times-Telephone, January 23, 1887.

50. Western Watchman, January 8, 1887.

51. Ibid., November 20, 1886, and March 5 and April 30, 1887.

52. In a letter to the Times-Telephone, “Citizen” ridiculed the idea and stated that an initial capital of $50,000 would be required. Times-Telephone, January 27, 1887.

53. On the Knights and temperance, see Samuel Walker, “Terence V. Powderly, the Knights of Labor and the Temperance Issue,” Societas 5 (Autumn 1975): 279–293; and David Brundage, “The Producing Classes and the Saloon: Denver in the 1880s,” Labor History 26 (Winter 1985): 29–52.

54. Western Watchman, December 11, 1886.

55. Ibid., February 19, 1887.

56. Ibid., March 19, 1887.

57. Times-Telephone, July 21, 1886.

58. Ferndale Enterprise, August 7, 1886.

59. Western Watchman, July 9, 1887.

60. Hyman Weintraub, Andrew Furuseth: Emancipator of the Seamen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959). On the organization of sailors and longshoremen on the West Coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see also Paul S. Taylor, The Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (New York: Ronald Press, 1923); and Stephen Schwartz, Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1986). The CSU merged with the Steamshipmen’s Union in 1891 to form the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific.

61. Humboldt Standard, November 3, 1885.

62. Times-Telephone, September 14, 1886.

63. Coast Seamen’s Journal, November 2, 1887; Third Biennial Report, California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1886–1888 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1888), p. 665.

64. Marcelle Ann Olsen, “The Scandinavian Immigrants in Humboldt County” (unpublished Ms., December 1973), copy in possession of author.

65. Humboldt County Historical Society Newsletter 8 (January 1960): 3.

66. Industrial Worker, September 16, 1922, and June 25, 1924.

67. Humboldt Standard, September 2, 1886.

68. Arcata Union, October 2, 1886.

69. Labor Enquirer, November 20, 1886.

70. Arcata Union, September 25, 1886.

71. Labor Enquirer, November 20, 1886.

72. Industrial Worker, June 25, 1924.

73. Western Watchman, June 25, 1887.

74. Labor Enquirer, March 6, 1886. Cridge was not opposed to electoral participation per se by the labor movement, but he did believe that for it to be effective and meaningful, a more representative electoral system should be devised. Animated by the failure of the California Workingmen’s party to secure better representation in the late 1870s, he became an influential advocate of electoral reform. His ideas were discussed quite often by the western labor press. His original work, Voting Not Representation: A Demand for Definite Democracy and Political Evolution (San Francisco: published by author, 1880) went through several editions. Cridge was born in Newton, England, in 1824, and emigrated with his family to Canada in 1836. By the 1840s, he was active in the Abolitionist movement in Ohio and continued to be throughout the 1850s. During the Civil War, he worked for the U.S. Secret Service, but later became chief clerk of the Inspection Division of the Quartermaster-General’s office. He refused to become an American citizen until the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1877, he came to San Francisco, where he spent most of the remainder of his life as a journalist. Before his death in 1902, he spent stints in Eureka, Stockton, and San Jose as a journalist and editor. The Star (San Francisco), January 18, 1902.

75. Humboldt Times, June 15, 1886.

76. Arcata Union, August 14, 1886.

77. Humboldt Standard, August 10, 1886.

78. Arcata Union, August 14, 1886.

79. J. W. Timmons to Powderly, July 20, 1886; E. C. Bonstell to Powderly, July 26, 1886; George Georgeson to Powderly, July 28, 1886; Powderly Papers.

80. Arcata Union, August 28, 1886.

81. Humboldt Times, October 7, 1886.

82. Western Watchman, December 25, 1886.

83. Ibid., May 26, 1888.

84. Ibid., July 9, 1887.

85. Ibid., June 25, 1888.

86. Ibid., December 17, 1887.

87. Ibid., March 17, October 25, and November 8, 1890.

88. Calculated from Garlock, Guide to the Local Assemblies of the Knights of Labor. This undoubtedly understates the scope and number of lumber workers who joined the Knights, since many joined mixed assemblies.

89. Ibid.

90. Western Watchman, January 8, 1887.

91. Diary of James Beith, vol. 8, pp. 67–68, August 25, 1887.

92. Coast Seamen’s Journal, December 4, 1889.

Chapter 6

1. The role of paternalism and deference in shaping labor relations has received relatively little attention from American social historians. The subject has been treated in depth in studies of North American slavery, notably Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon, 1974). Among the works dealing with the topic of paternalism and deference are Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Melton McLaurin, Paternalism and Protest (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971); Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale, The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978); Jonathan Prude, The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory in Rural Massachusetts, 1810–1860 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967); Philip Scranton, “Varieties of Paternalism: Industrial Structures and the Social Relations of Production in American Textiles,” American Quarterly 36 (Summer 1984): 235–257. British social historians have studied paternalism and deference in more depth. Especially notable for their breadth and depth are Howard Newby, The Deferential Worker: A Study of Farm Workers in East Anglia (London: Penguin, 1977), and Patrick Joyce, Work, Society, and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (London: Harvester Press, 1980).

2. Humboldt Times, February 11, 1882.

3. Ibid.

4. Humboldt Standard, June 26, 1908.

5. Western Watchman, July 18, 1896.

6. Humboldt Standard, September 2, 1890; Humboldt Times, September 2, 1890.

7. Coast Seamen’s Journal, September 10, 1890.

8. Industrial Worker, June 25, 1924.

9. Western Watchman, June 11, 1892.

10. Humboldt Standard, August 27, 1890.

11. Ibid., September 2, 1890.

12. Western Watchman, September 6, 1890.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., September 2, 1881.

15. Eugene B. Fountain, The Story of Blue Lake (n.p., n.d), vol. 2, p. 228.

16. J. C. Blake, “Pioneers I Remember,” Humboldt County Historical Society Newsletter 11 (July–August 1963): 5–7.

17. On the important and integrative role played by fraternal orders, see Don H. Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825–1870 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), and his article, “The Social Functions of Voluntary Associations in a Nineteenth-Century American Town,” Social Science History 1 (Spring 1977): 333–355.

18. Times-Telephone, December 1, 1883: Humboldt Times, September 14, 1889, and September 9, 1895; Humboldt Standard, July 25, 1893.

19. Humboldt Times, September 14, 1889.

20. Humboldt Standard, April 26, 1919.

21. Ibid., June 23, 1899.

22. Ibid., August 6, 1907.

23. Ibid., September 2, 1899.

24. Ralph C. Frost, “Boyhood Memories of the Elk River,” Humboldt County Historical Society Newsletter 13 (March–April 1965): 5–7.

25. Roy Rosenzweig concludes that in Worcester, Massachusetts, although Independence Day was an occasion for the working class to affirm the values of mutuality, reciprocity, collectivity, and community, it was also an event at which workers affirmed their ethnic and religious autonomy and behaved in a boisterous and unruly fashion. Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983). There is no evidence that this was the case in Humboldt County.

26. Democratic Standard, May 29, 1880.

27. Humboldt Times, May 2, 1881.

28. Western Watchman, June 1, 1889.

29. Ibid., July 5, 1890.

30. Humboldt Times, July 11, 1874.

31. Humboldt Standard, July 2, 1898.

32. Arcata Union, September 22, 1888.

33. Humboldt Standard, June 16, 1899.

34. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll.

35. Humboldt Standard, June 16, 1899.

36. Dolbeer and Carson Records, Bancroft Library.

37. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 27, p. 229, letter of Milton Carson, December 20, 1913.

38. Humboldt Standard, December 24, 1904.

39. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 31, p. 20; letter of William Carson, December 23, 1903.

40. Ibid., vol. 26, p. 3, letter of William Carson, October 12, 1909.

41. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 140, letter of Milton Carson, February 21, 1911.

42. Humboldt Standard, February 20, 1912.

43. Ibid., February 20 and 27, 1912.

44. Fountain, Story of Blue Lake, vol. 4, pp. 665–666.

45. Humboldt Times, October 15, 1897.

46. Ibid., December 2, 1897.

47. Ibid., May 6, 1904.

48. Western Watchman, July 30, 1892.

49. Humboldt Standard, September 12, 1890.

50. Humboldt Times, April 30, May 6, 1892.

51. Western Watchman, May 7, 1892.

52. Ibid.

53. Nerve, April 27, 1892.

54. Western Watchman, May 21, 1892.

55. Humboldt Times, May 15, 1892.

56. Western Watchman, May 21, 1892.

57. Ibid.

58. Coast Seamen’s Journal, May 25, 1892.

59. Humboldt Times, January 26, 1893.

60. Stephen Mallory White Papers, Stanford University, Ms. 35, Folder 35, F. A. Cutler to White, October 28, 1890.

61. John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 255.

Chapter 7

1. There is relatively little published work on California Populism in spite of the fact that the Populists attained considerable support in the state, electing several congressmen and more than 20 representatives to the state legislature between 1892 and 1896. The two major works are unpublished: Harold Francis Taggart, “The Free Silver Movement in California,” doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1936; and Donald E. Walters, “Populism in California,” doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1952. Two books on California history and politics contain useful chapters on California Populism: Royce D. Delmatier, Clarence F. Mcintosh, and Earl G. Waters, The Rumble of California Politics, 1848–1970 (New York: Wiley, 1970); and Michael P. Rogin and John L. Shover, Political Change in California: Critical Elections and Social Movements, 1890–1966 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1969). By contrast, a host of studies of the national Populist movement and in various states, too numerous to cite in full, have been published. Among the most recent and useful studies published are Robert C. McMath, Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Bruce Palmer, “Man Over Money”: The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). For a critical review of the recent literature on American Populism, see James Turner, “Understanding the Populists,” Journal of American History 67 (September 1980): 354–373.

2. California contained between one-third and one-half of the Nationalist Clubs in America. In May 1889, 48 of the 113 Nationalist Clubs in the nation were in California. See Walters, “Populism in California,” p. 20.

3. Arcata Union, January 11, 1890.

4. Western Watchman, January 18, 1890.

5. Coast Seamen’s Journal, December 4, 1889, and February 12, 1890.

6. Western Watchman, June 21, 1890.

7. Ibid., November 29, 1890.

8. Ibid., January 10, 1891.

9. Humboldt Times, February 14, 1891; Western Watchman, February 21, 1891.

10. Nerve, April 16, 1892.

11. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Report on Real Estate Mortgages in the United States at the Eleventh Census, 1890 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1895), vol. 12, table 56, p. 135.

12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Report on Farms and Homes: Proprietorship and Indedtedness in the United States at the Eleventh Census, 1890 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1896), vol. 13, table 108, p. 432.

13. In 1880, however, in a similar journey through the county, Ayres regaled his readers with tales of the farmers’ hardships.

14. Western Watchman, August 13, 1892; February 23 and May 18, 1895.

15. E. J. Wickson, “Dairying in California,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 14 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1896).

16. Transactions of the California State Agriculture Society During the Year 1895 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1896), p. 20.

17. Humboldt Times, January 3, 1895.

18. Humboldt County Souvenir (Eureka: Times Publishing, 1904), p. 96.

19. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise, p. 541.

20. For an article critical of Goodwyn’s thesis, see Stanley B. Parsons et al., “The Role of Cooperatives in the Development of the Movement Culture of Populism,” Journal of American History 69 (March 1983): 866–885.

21. Western Watchman, June 20, 1891.

22. Ibid., July 16, 1891.

23. Ibid., January 2 and May 7, 1892.

24. Ibid., December 19, 1891.

25. Ibid., January 16, 1892.

26. Ibid., February 16, 1895.

27. Ibid., June 20, 1891.

28. Ibid., April 22, 1893.

29. All four essays were reprinted in the Western Watchman, February 13, 1892.

30. Western Watchman, April 16, 1892.

31. Ibid., June 2, 1894.

32. Ibid., July 21, 1894.

33. Alexander B. Callow, “The Legislature of a Thousand Scandals,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 9 (December 1957): 332–344.

34. Pacific Rural Press, October 24, 1891.

35. Western Watchman, July 23, 1892.

36. Besides Willsie and Ayres, several Greenbackers occupied leadership positions in the county Alliance and People’s party.

37. A biographical sketch of all Populist candidates appeared in the Western Watchman, August 20, 1892.

38. Western Watchman, July 30, 1892; Nerve, October 29, 1892.

39. The official election results were published in the Western Watchman, November 19, 1892. Voting statistics for other California counties were calculated from data in Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955).

40. Western Watchman, December 28, 1889.

41. Ibid., January 11, 1890.

42. Nerve, October 29, 1892.

43. Humboldt Times, December 28, 1893.

44. Nerve, July 9, 1892.

45. Western Watchman, April 30, 1892.

46. Ibid., August 5, 1893.

47. Humboldt Standard, August 2, 1893.

48. Arcata Union, August 5, 1893.

49. Humboldt Standard, May 4, 1894.

50. Western Watchman, November 28, 1896, and June 16, 1897; Humboldt Times, July 1, 1896.

51. Western Watchman, May 12, 1894.

52. Ibid., August 19, 1893.

53. Humboldt Standard, January 15, 1895.

54. Ibid., December 21, 1894.

55. Western Watchman, July 14, 1894.

56. Humboldt Times, July 13, 1894; Humboldt Standard, July 12, 1894.

57. Western Watchman, July 14, 1894.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., November 10, 1894.

60. Ibid., January 27, 1894.

61. Ibid., August 18, 1894.

62. Ibid., September 1, 1894.

63. Ibid., April 1, 1893.

64. Delmatier et al., Rumble of California Politics, p. 115.

65. Walters, “Populism in California,” p. 299.

66. Western Watchman, January 19, 1895.

67. Ibid., February 22, 1896.

68. Ibid., January 21, 1893.

69. Humboldt Times, October 7, 1892.

70. Times-Telephone, August 22, 1888.

71. Ibid., April 4, 1888.

72. Ibid., September 1, 1888.

73. Ibid., October 13, 1888.

74. Humboldt Times, December 31, 1893 and November 2, 1894.

75. Ibid., August 28, 29; October 1, 10, 11, and 17, 1896.

76. Ibid., September 24, 1896.

77. Ibid., October 15, 1896.

78. The Humboldt County Republicans broke with the California Republican party by opposing free silver. All three parties in California favored free silver. See Harold F. Taggart, “California and the Silver Question in 1895,” Pacific Historical Review 6 (September 1937): 249–269.

79. Western Watchman, August 29, 1896.

80. Ibid., October 31, 1896.

81. Humboldt Times, August 14 and 22, 1896; Humboldt Standard, October 5, 1896.

82. Humboldt Standard, September 12, 1896.

83. Humboldt Times, September 22, 1896.

84. Ibid., September 24, 1896.

85. Ibid., October 15, 1896.

86. Ibid., September 1, 1896.

87. Humboldt Standard, September 11, 1896.

88. Western Watchman, November 14, 1896.

89. Ibid., February 27, 1897.

Chapter 8

1. Between 1897 and 1904, membership in American trade unions increased from 440,000 to 2,067,000. The growth of the California labor movement was even more spectacular. Between 1900 and 1904 alone, the number of unions in California increased from 217 to 805, and union membership went from 30,000 to an estimated 110,000. Tenth Biennial Report, California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1901–1902 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1902), pp. 77–78; Eleventh Biennial Report, California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1902–1904 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1904), p. 48. Studies of California labor history have focused primarily on San Francisco and Los Angeles, although in recent years a significant amount of work on California agriculture and related industries has appeared, often in unpublished form. Much work remains to be done on California’s labor movement outside its two great metropolises. On the San Francisco labor movement in the twentieth century, see Robert Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); Michael Kazin, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987). On the Los Angeles labor movement, see Richard S. Perry, A History of the Los Angeles Labor Movement, 1911–1941 (Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, 1963); and Grace H. Stimson, Rise of the Labor Movement in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955). For a recent article focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the history of the labor movement in San Francisco and Los Angeles, see Michael Kazin, “The Great Exception Revisited: Organized Labor and Politics in San Francisco and Los Angeles, 1870–1940,” Pacific Historical Review 55 (August 1986): 371–402.

2. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Statistics of Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1901), vol. 1, table 4, p. 11.

3. Ibid., table 34, pp. 738–739.

4. Eureka City Census. Findings reprinted in the Humboldt Times, January 13 and February 3, 1904.

5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, Statistics of Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1921), vol. 1, table 12, pp. 123–124.

6. Eureka City Census, 1904.

7. Humboldt Times, July 7, 1903.

8. Eureka City Census, 1904; Humboldt Standard, January 1, 1907.

9. Leigh H. Irvine, History of Humboldt County, California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Co., 1915), p. 113.

10. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Statistics of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1902), vol. 5, table 44, p. 592; idem, Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1913), vol. 5, p. 823.

11. Humboldt Standard, October 6, 1902. Seventeen unions were founded by early October 1902. At least three more unions formed by the end of 1902.

12. Humboldt Times, August 24, 1902.

13. Oakland Enquirer, September 23, 1902.

14. Labor News, October 27, 1906.

15. Humboldt Times, February 20, 1903.

16. Ibid., July 28, 1901, and July 31, 1902.

17. Ibid., October 11, 1902.

18. The reports of the California Bureau of Labor Statistics during the early twentieth century are a good source for comparing wage rates by occupation in different California localities.

19. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 24, p. 407, letter of William Carson, July 20, 1906.

20. Elk Hiver Mill and Lumber Company Records, vol. 25, p. 218, letter of Irving Harpster, July 20, 1906.

21. Humboldt Standard, February 26, 27 and March 1, 3, 1903.

22. Ibid., January 16, 1903; Humboldt Times, April 2, 1903; January 26 and October 25, 1904. Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, provides examples of similar practices.

23. There are two good articles, however, analyzing the role of republican ideology in the Homestead strike of 1892: Linda Schneider, “The Citizen Striker: Worker Ideology in the Homestead Strike of 1892,” Labor History 23 (Winter 1982): 47–66; Paul Krause, “Labor Republicanism and ‘Za Chlebom’: Anglo-American and Slavic Solidarity in Homestead,” in “Struggle a Hard Battle”: Essays on Working-Class Immigrants, ed. Dirk Hoerder (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), pp. 143–169.

24. Humboldt Times, March 29, 1903.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Arcata Union, March 21, 1906.

28. Labor News, July 7, 1906.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., October 7, 1905.

32. Ibid., July 7, 1906.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., December 15, 1906.

35. Ibid., December 1, 1906.

36. Ibid., January 20, 1906.

37. Humboldt Standard, July 11, 1906.

38. Labor News, May 12, 1906.

39. Ibid., December 29, 1906.

40. Ibid., December 23, 1905.

41. Ibid., October 28, 1905.

42. Humboldt Times, September 5, 1905; Labor News, September 9, 1905.

43. Labor News, May 6, 1905. Labor News reported that by May 1905, 1,500 lumber workers were union members “with 1,102 obligated.” In 1906, there is little doubt that the IBWSW increased its membership.

44. A good example of such a contract was reprinted in Labor News, June 9, 1906.

45. Humboldt Times, July 3, 1903; Labor News, June 9, 1906.

46. Humboldt Times, August 2, 1901.

47. Labor News, April 1, 1905.

48. Humboldt Times, September 23, 1902.

49. Humboldt Standard, August 3, 1906; Labor News, August 4, 1906.

50. Humboldt Standard, January 9, 1905.

51. Ibid., December 21, 1903.

52. Humboldt Times, June 28, 1904.

53. Ibid., December 28, 1902.

54. Humboldt Standard, June 13, 1904.

55. Labor News, December 29, 1906.

56. Ibid., March 3, 1906.

57. Ibid., March 10, 1906.

58. Humboldt Standard, September 9, 1903.

59. Minutes of the Eureka Trades Council, June 3, 1909.

60. Humboldt Times, January 4, 1905; Labor News, February 25, November 25, and December 30, 1905.

61. Labor News, July 22, 1905.

62. Ibid., April 15 and November 25, 1905.

63. Ibid., November 25, 1905.

64. Ibid.

65. Humboldt Times, August 24, 1902.

66. Ibid., October 5 and 9, 1902.

67. Ibid., January 13, 1903.

68. Ibid., February 20, 1903.

69. Humboldt Standard, April 20, 1903.

70. Humboldt Times, May 6, 1903.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., May 8 and June 27, 1903.

73. Humboldt Standard, June 9, 1903.

74. Humboldt Times, June 16, 1905.

75. Labor News, June 24, 1905.

76. Ibid., September 4, 1906.

77. Labor News, November 11, 1905.

78. Ibid.

79. Humboldt Times, April 3, 1906.

80. Ibid., October 17, 1906.

Chapter 9

1. This does not include the narrow-based International Shingle Weavers Union of America, which was chartered on March 3, 1903.

2. The historical literature on American lumber unionism and workers is comparatively limited in view of the industry’s importance, and much of it is dated. Among the most important monographs are Ruth A. Allen, East Texas Lumber Workers: An Economic Picture, 1870–1950 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961); Charlotte Todes, Labor and Lumber (New York: International Publishers, 1931); Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1945); Jerry Lembcke and William M. Tattam, One Union in Wood: A Political History of the International Woodworkers of America (New York: International Publishers, 1984); Norman H. Clark, Mill Town: A Social History of Everett, Washington, from Its Earliest Beginnings on the Shores of the Puget Sound to the Tragic and Infamous Event Known as the Everett Massacre (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970). The tendency of books and articles on lumber workers has been to romanticize them (especially in histories of the IWW) and to portray them as both militant and excellent union material while ignoring the overall weakness of lumber trade unionism and the reasons for it. For data on the number of lumber workers organized between 1897 and 1934, see Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975), pt. 1, p. 178. In this period, the total number of lumber workers organized in any one year never exceeded 52,000 (1904), while the number employed annually, until at least the mid-twentieth century, exceeded 500,000. Even in 1940, after the renaissance of the American labor movement during the New Deal, and some gains by both AFL and CIO lumber unions, only 11.5 percent of the total lumber workforce was organized. George Bain and Robert Price, Profiles of Union Growth: A Comparative Statistical Portrait of Eight Countries (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1980), p. 95. On the incidence of strikes in the lumber industry itself, and in comparison to other industries, see Florence Peterson, Strikes in the United States, 1880–1936 (Washington D.C.: Department of Labor Bulletin 651, 1938) and the Postcript of this book.

3. On company towns, see James B. Allen, The Company Town in the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966).

4. Estimates of the size of the lumber workforce in Humboldt County during the early twentieth century vary from 4,000 to 5,000. An article in the Portland Oregonian, reprinted in the Humboldt Times, October 10, 1903, put the figure at 5,000, as did the Oakland Enquirer, September 23, 1902. The Humboldt Standard, in a major feature edition on the county’s lumber industry, put the number at closer to 4,000. Humboldt Standard, January 1, 1907.

5. Humboldt Standard, January 1, 1907.

6. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturing, 1905 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1908), pt. 111, pp. 644–645.

7. Statistics compiled from Humboldt County Souvenir (Eureka: Times Publishing, 1904). Howard Brett Melendy, “One Hundred Years of the Redwood Lumber Industry, 1850–1950,” doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1952, pp. 100–117, has a good account of the consolidation of the industry.

8. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 23, p. 125, letter of William Carson, December 30, 1904.

9. The most comprehensive work on Hammond and the Hammond Lumber Company is Lowell S. Mengell, “A History of the Samoa Division and Its Predecessors, 1853–1973” (unpublished manuscript, 1974, Humboldt State University Library). See also Gage McKinney, “A. B. Hammond, West Coast Lumberman,” Journal of Forest History 28 (October 1984): 196–203. Additional information on Hammond, the early years of the Hammond Lumber Company, and Samoa was obtained from Humboldt Times, August 31, 1900, May 17, 1902, October 28, 1903, and a series of articles on Samoa in January 1904; Humboldt Standard, July 16 and September 23, 1901; Arcata Union, May 4, 1901; American Lumberman 73 (January 9, 1904): 18–20; ibid., 74 (May 21, 1904): 22–23.

10. American Lumberman 73 (February 20, 1904): 19–21.

11. Useful descriptions of the Pacific Lumber Company and its operations in the early twentieth century were obtained from the following sources: Ben Shannon Allen, “From the Penobscot to the Eel” (unpublished ms., 1949, Humboldt State University Library); W. H. Wilde, “Chronology of the Pacific Lumber Company, 1869–1945” (unpublished ms., n.d., Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley); Pacific Coast Wood and Iron 34 (November 1900): 169–170; American Lumberman 73 (February 20, 1904): 19–21; Humboldt Times, January 15, 1909. See also Hugh Wilkerson and John Van Der Zee, Life in the Peace Zone: An American Company Town (New York: Collier Books, 1971); Jack Held, “Scotia: The Town of Concern,” Pacific Historian 16 (Summer 1972): 76–92.

12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890, Report on Population of the United States (Washington, D.C.: 1895), vol. 1, pt. 1, table 5, p. 70; idem, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1921), vol. 1, table 53, p. 353.

13. Humboldt Times, March 26, 1913.

14. For general descriptions of the operations of the Northern Redwood Lumber Company and the town of Korbel, see Humboldt Times, February 3 and November 26, 1903; American Lumberman 73 (March 5, 1904): 16: Pacific Coast Wood and Iron 48 (August 1907): 11: “Korbel: The Way It Was in 1912,” Humboldt Historian 24 (September–October 1976): 1, 4.

15. Humboldt Times, September 16, 17, 19, 23, and 30, 1902; Humboldt Standard, September 22 and October 20, 1902.

16. Humboldt Times, September 19 and October 15, 1902.

17. Labor News, September 18, 1909.

18. Humboldt Times, February 14, 1904.

19. Ibid., October 24, 1903.

20. Ibid., January 14, 1904.

21. Ibid., February 16, 1904.

22. Labor News, September 18, 1909.

23. Ibid., February 25, 1905.

24. Humboldt Times, January 4, 1905.

25. Labor News, June 17, 1905.

26. Arcata Union, April 19, 1905.

27. Labor News, April 22, 1905.

28. Elk River Mill and Lumber Company Records, vol. 23, p. 192, unsigned letter, April 15, 1905.

29. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 23, p. 141, letter of William Carson, January 11, 1905.

30. Labor News, March 4, 1905.

31. Ibid., April 22, 1905.

32. Ibid., March 25, 1905.

33. Ibid., April 29, 1905.

34. Ibid.

35. Humboldt Times, April 20, 1905.

36. Labor News, April 1, 1905.

37. Ibid., December 30, 1905.

38. Ibid., April 29, 1905.

39. Humboldt Standard, June 12, 1905.

40. Labor News, April 21 and May 19, 26, 1906.

41. Ibid., June 2, 1906.

42. Ibid., December 5, 1905; February 3 and August 4, 1906.

43. Ibid., September 15, 1906.

44. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Convention of the California State Federation of Labor, 1906, p. 54; Labor News, January 13, 1906.

45. Labor News, August 26, 1905.

46. Ibid., September 2, 1905.

47. Ibid., May 16, 1906.

48. Ibid., June 16, 1906.

49. Ibid., March 9, 1907.

50. Ibid., April 13, 1907.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., April 27, 1907.

53. Ibid., August 4, 1906.

54. Ibid., September 22 and 29, 1906.

55. Ibid., November 3, 1906.

56. Humboldt Standard, July 24 and 25, 1906; Humboldt Times, July 25 and 28, 1906; Labor News, July 28, 1906.

57. Labor News, August 4, 1906.

58. Ibid., December 15, 1906.

59. American Federationist 14 (February 1907): 107.

60. Labor News, November 17, 1906.

61. Humboldt Standard, February 11, 1907.

62. Labor News, February 23, 1907.

63. Hammond resided in San Francisco and was a leading member of the city’s antiunion San Francisco Citizens’ Alliance.

64. Labor News, April 14, 1906.

65. Ibid., November 17, 1906.

66. Ibid., November 10, 1906.

67. For a good narrative account of the strike, see Richard G. Willis, “The Labor Movement in Humboldt County, 1883–1910: Its Origins, Character, and Impact,” master’s thesis, Humboldt State University, 1970.

68. Humboldt Times, February 28 and April 28, 1907; Labor News, March 9, 1907.

69. Labor News, March 23 and 30, 1907; Humboldt Times, April 4, 1907.

70. Labor News, April 20, 1907.

71. Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 47, p. 384, extract from Blue Lake Advocate, March 30, 1907.

72. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 25, p. 19, letter of William Carson, April 27, 1907.

73. Ibid.

74. Elk River Mill and Lumber Company Records, vol. 26, p. 323, letter of Irving Harpster, May 2, 1907.

75. Ibid., vol. 26, p. 299, letter of Irving Harpster, April 22, 1907.

76. Humboldt Standard, April 29, 1907.

77. Labor News, May 4, 1907. The failure of the union movement to take root at the pioneer lumbering concerns was noted as early as 1905. Labor News, April 17, 1905.

78. Humboldt Times, May 2, 1907; Arcata Union, May 4, 1907.

79. Humboldt Times, May 2, 1907.

80. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 25, p. 32, letter of William Carson, May 22, 1907.

81. Humboldt Times, May 3, 1907.

82. Coast Seamen’s Journal, May 22, 1907.

83. Humboldt Times, May 23, 1907.

84. On the IWW in Humboldt County, see Jerry Willis, “The Story of the IWW in Humboldt County, 1905–1924” (unpublished ms., 1969, Humboldt State University Library).

85. Labor News, May 4, 1907.

86. Industrial Union Bulletin, May 25, 1907.

87. Ibid., June 15, 1907. For a biography of Williams, see Warren R. Van Tine, “Ben H. Williams, Wobbly Editor,” master’s thesis, Northern Illinois University, 1967.

88. Humboldt Times, May 22, 1907; Humboldt Standard, May 22, 1907.

89. Humboldt Times, May 24, 1907; Labor News, May 25, 1907.

90. Humboldt Times, May 26, 1907; Industrial Union Bulletin, June 15, 1907.

91. Humboldt Times, May 23, 30, 1907; Humboldt Standard, May 23, 1907; Labor News, May 25 and June 1, 1907.

92. Humboldt Times, May 23, 1907.

93. Industrial Union Bulletin, May 25, 1907.

94. Ibid., June 15, 1907.

95. Labor News, June 1, 1907.

96. Labor News, May 11, 1907.

97. Humboldt Times, May 9, 1907; Labor News, May 25, 1907.

98. Labor News, June 1, 1907.

99. Humboldt Times, May 29, 1907.

100. Labor News, June 8, 1907.

101. Humboldt Times, June 5, 1907.

102. Ibid.

103. Labor News, June 29, 1907.

104. Ibid., July 20, 1907.

105. Ibid., September 7, 1907.

106. Ibid.

107. Ibid., September 18, 1909.

108. Gary M. Fink, Labor Unions (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), p. 390.

Chapter 10

1. Labor News, June 8, 1907.

2. Ibid., September 7, 1907.

3. Ibid., November 9, 1907.

4. Ibid., September 28, 1907.

5. Leigh H. Irvine, History of Humboldt County (Los Angeles: Historic Record Co., 1915), p. 113.

6. Ibid.

7. Labor News, February 15 and March 7, 1908; Humboldt Standard, March 23, 1908.

8. Labor News, February 15, 1908.

9. Ibid., May 2 and June 13, 1908.

10. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 25, p. 218, letter of William Carson, February 19, 1908.

11. Ibid., vol. 25, p. 228, letter of William Carson, March 5, 1908.

12. Labor News, August 31 and September 7, 1907.

13. Ibid., August 28, 1909.

14. The Pacific Lumber Company announced it would build its own hospital, while the Hammond and Northern Redwood companies offered an insurance plan using the county’s existing hospital facilities.

15. Dolbeer and Carson Records, vol. 25, p. 228, letter of William Carson, March 5, 1908.

16. Humboldt Times, May 1, 1908; Labor News, November 19, 1910. In spite of the decision, the Union Labor Hospital flourished for many years.

17. Labor News, July 3, 1909.

18. Arcata Union, September 9, 1920.

19. Labor News, May 30, 1908; July 23, 1910; September 30, 1911.

20. Ibid., September 30, 1911.

21. Industrial Worker, May 15, 1913.

22. Ibid., September 17, 1910; July 20, 1911; and December 26, 1912.

23. Labor News, April 30, 1910.

24. Ibid., March 12, 1910.

25. Ibid., January 8, 1910, and July 12, 1913; Arcata Union, April 22, 1910.

26. American Federationist 14 (September 1907): 691.

27. Industrial Worker, November 16, 1911; January 4 and August 11, 1912; May 1 and 15, 1913.

28. Ibid., January 4, 1912.

29. Labor News, October 8, 1910.

30. Ibid., July 12, 1913.

31. Ibid., March 19, 1910. Unfortunately, there are no data on money wage rates in the Humboldt County lumber industry in the twentieth century. Wage increases and cuts were sometimes reported in the local press. There are no reports of general increases in lumber workers’ wages before 1917. Given the steady rate of inflation in the Progressive era, it seems almost certain that real wages declined.

32. Labor News, January 16, 1909.

33. Ibid., May 30, 1908.

34. Ibid., July 29, 1911.

35. Ibid., May 2 and 16, 1908; July 10, 1909; August 20 and October 1, 1910; January 7 and April 15, 1911.

36. Eureka’s population grew from 7,327 in 1900 to 11,111 in 1904, and to 12,147 by 1908. The population of Eureka in 1904 and 1908 was determined by city censuses. The results were published in the Humboldt Times, January 13, 1904, and January 15, 1908.

37. Labor News, May 9, 1908.

38. Ibid., May 22, 1909.

39. Ibid., May 15, 1909.

40. Humboldt Times, June 1, 2, 3, and 4, 1909.

41. Ibid., June 2, 1909.

42. Labor News, July 10, 1909; Humboldt Times, July 4, 1909.

43. Humboldt County Souvenir (Eureka: Times Publishing, 1904), pp. 194–198.

44. Humboldt Times, July 4, 1909; Labor News, July 10, 1909.

45. Labor News, August 21, 1909.

46. Eureka Herald, September 7 and 10, 1909.

47. Humboldt Times, October 5, 1909.

48. Eureka Herald, February 25, 1910.

49. Labor News, January 29, 1910.

50. Ibid., July 23, 1910.

51. Minutes of the Eureka Trades Council, July 15, 1909.

52. Labor News, July 10, 1909.

53. Ibid., September 11, 1909.

54. Ibid., December 18, 1909.

55. Humboldt Times, January 5, 1911.

56. Ibid., January 6, 1911.

57. Ibid., January 8, 1911.

58. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the California State Federation of Labor, 1912, pp. 85–86.

59. On California politics in the Progressive era, see Michael Rogin and John L. Shover, Political Change in California: Critical Elections and Social Movements, 1890–1966 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), 35–89; Royce Delmatier et al., The Rumble of California Politics, 1848–1970 (New York: Wiley, 1970), pp. 165–191; Michael Kazin, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

60. Labor News, September 12, 1908.

61. Ibid., October 31, 1908.

62. Ibid., October 29 and November 5, 1910.

63. In tabulating the Socialists by occupation, more than 100 occupational categories were listed in the Register of Voters, most of them working-class occupations. The table, therefore, understates the number of working-class people who registered as Socialists.

64. Besides strong branches of the Socialist party in Eureka, Arcata, and Fortuna, reference was found to branches in the rural townships of Loleta, Falk, Petrolia, and Shower’s Pass.

65. Eureka Herald, January 19, 1910.

66. Industrial Worker, September 28, 1911.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid., November 2, 1910.

69. Humboldt Standard, May 14, 1914.

70. Labor News, September 23, October 28, and December 2, 1911.

71. Humboldt Times, December 5, 1911.

72. Humboldt Standard, June 23, 1909.

73. Humboldt Times, June 21, 1911.

74. Labor News, April 20, 1912.

75. Ibid., May 18, 1912.

76. Ibid., March 4, 1911.

77. Ibid., December 17, 1910.

78. Ibid., June 15 and July 27, 1912.

79. Ibid., January 6, 1912.

80. Humboldt Times, April 4, 1912.

81. Ibid., August 7, 1912.

82. Ibid., October 16, 1912.

83. Ibid., July 10, 1912.

84. Humboldt Beacon, June 28, 1912.

85. Labor News, October 5, 1912.

86. Ibid., November 30, 1912.

87. For a biographical sketch of Elijah Falk, see Irvine, History of Humboldt County, pp. 339–340.

88. Labor News, July 17, 1915.

89. Ibid.

90. Humboldt Standard, April 10, 1915.

91. Ibid., April 15, 1915.

92. Labor News, December 1, 1916.

Chapter 11

1. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the California State Federation of Labor, 1912, p. 82.

2. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Convention of the California State Federation of Labor, 1913, p. 67.

3. Labor News, May 24, 1913.

4. Ibid., March 6, 1915.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., October 16, 1915.

7. Industrial Worker, August 27, 1910.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., October 8 and November 2, 1910.

10. Ibid., January 5, 1911.

11. Ibid., February 2, 1911.

12. Ibid., July 6, 1911.

13. Ibid., December 26, 1912.

14. Ibid., May 29, 1913.

15. According to the Industrial Worker, the largest response to the strike call came from 1,000 paper mill workers in Oregon. Elsewhere, isolated groups of a few hundred lumber workers struck. The strike was called off on July 3, 1913. See Industrial Worker, July 10, 1913. Philip Foner, who at one point describes the lumber industry as “an ideal field for the IWW” (p. 218), acknowledges that the strike was a failure. Philip S. Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905–1917 (New York: International Publishers, 1965), pp. 219–227.

16. Labor News, August 2, 1913.

17. Humboldt Standard, March 20, 1903; Humboldt Times, May 21, 1904.

18. Manuscript Census, Humboldt County Census of Population, 1910. Lumber workers residing in Hydesville and Cuddeback towns were excluded, as they almost certainly were outside the geographical orbit of the Pacific Lumber Company.

19. Archives of the Georgia-Pacific Lumber Company, Portland, Oregon, unmarked folder.

20. Humboldt Times, January 8, 1911.

21. Hans C. Palmer, “Italian Immigration and the Development of California Agriculture,” doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1965, p. 155.

22. Industrial Worker, June 15, 1911.

23. James J. Hudson, “The McCloud River Affair of 1909: A Study in the Use of State Troops,” California Historical Quarterly 35 (March 1956): 29–35.

24. Sixteenth Biennial Report of the California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913–1914 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1914), pp. 74–76.

25. Pioneer Western Lumberman (San Francisco) 56 (July 15, 1911): 21.

26. Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Convention of the California State Federation of Labor, 1911, pp. 64–65.

27. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the California State Federation of Labor, 1912, p. 61.

28. Sixteenth Biennial Report of the California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913–1914, p. 74.

29. Labor News, January 8, 1910.

30. Hudson, “The McCloud River Affair of 1909.”

31. Edwin Fenton, Immigrants and Unions, a Case Study: Italians and American Labor, 1870–1920 (New York: Arno Press, 1975); Steve Fraser, “Dress Rehearsal for the New Deal: Shop Floor Insurgents, Political Elites, and Industrial Democracy in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union,” in Working Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society, ed. Michael H. Frisch and Daniel J. Walkowitz (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. 212–255. Despite the fact that the San Francisco labor movement was among the most powerful in the nation in the first decade of the twentieth century and that Italians were a significant segment of the population, they do not appear to have joined the labor movement in very large numbers. See Robert Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); Dino Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco: The Immigrant Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982).

32. Julio J. Rovai, Rio Dell–(Wildwood): As I Saw It in the Early Twenties (published by author, 1979), pp. 5–7. Aileen Kraditor has argued forcefully that many American immigrant groups accepted employer hegemony in return for “relative autonomy” in their ethnic enclaves. Insofar as the argument has merit, it may fit the Italians better than most immigrant groups. Aileen Kraditor, The Radical Persuasion, 1880–1917: Aspects of the Intellectual History and Historiography of Three American Radical Organizations (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).

33. Labor News, May 3, 1913; Industrial Worker, May 15, 1913.

34. Industrial Worker, November 25, 1922.

35. Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco, p. 63.

36. Labor News, January 8 and July 23, 1910; July 12, 1913; February 28, 1914. Sixteenth Biennial Report of the California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913–1914, p. 66.

37. Pioneer Western Lumberman 56 (July 15, 1911): 21.

38. Pioneer Western Lumberman 62 (December 15, 1914): 16–17.

39. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1914, p. 3. Labor historians have given relatively little attention to the introduction of incentive and piece-rate systems of wage payment in the 1910s and 1920s. See, however, Ronald W. Schatz, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. 22–23. The contemporary literature on these new bonus plans is fascinating: J. K. Louden, Wage Incentives (New York: Wiley, 1944); Stewart M. Lowry, Harold B. Maynard, and G. J. Stegemerten, Time and Motion Study and Formulas for Wage Incentives (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1927); Financial Incentives: A Study of Methods for Stimulating Achievement in Industry (New York: National Industrial Conference Board, 1935).

40. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1916, pp. 9–10.

41. Ibid., p. 31.

42. Labor News, July 20, 1918.

43. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1923, p. 35.

44. Labor News, July 20, 1918; Labor Clarion, August 16, 1918.

45. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1923, pp. 35–36.

46. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1912, p. 5.

47. The secondary literature on welfare capitalism is sparse, but see Stuart D. Brandes, American Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); and David Brody, “The Rise and Decline of Welfare Capitalism,” in John Braeman et al., Change and Continuity in Twentieth Century America (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1968), pp. 147–178. On the subjects of welfare capitalism, ethnic clannishness, and the brittleness of trade unionism, see Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach, Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (New York: Pantheon, 1978).

48. Proceedings of the Second Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1910, p. 28.

49. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1912, p. 18.

50. Edwin Van Sycle, They Tried to Cut It All: Grays Harbor—Turbulent Years of Greed and Greatness (Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1980), p. 77.

51. Pioneer Western Lumberman 72 (November 15, 1919): 17.

52. Pioneer Western Lumberman 62 (November 15, 1914): 25.

53. Industrial Worker, January 30, 1913.

54. Pioneer Western Lumberman 56 (July 15, 1911): 21.

55. Ibid.

56. Records of the Pacific Lumber Company, Bancroft Library, C-G 95, carton 4, “Calendar of Events in the History of the Pacific Lumber Company.”

57. Collier’s National Weekly 50 (March 15, 1913): 28.

58. Humboldt Beacon, September 8, 1916.

59. Pacific Lumber Company, Scotia: The Model Town (Pacific Lumber Company, Scotia, 1929).

60. Humboldt Times, April 1, 1909.

61. Eureka Herald, March 3, 1910; Records of the Pacific Lumber Company, Carton 3, Folder 2.

62. Humboldt Beacon, December 8, 1911.

63. Pioneer Western Lumberman 65 (April 1, 1916): 15.

64. American Lumberman 73 (January 9, 1904); Humboldt Times, October 28, 1903, and January 7, 12, 16, 17, and 26, 1904.

65. Recollections of Elsie Miller, 1953, transcripts, Bancroft Library.

66. Humboldt Standard, January 13, 1921.

67. Humboldt Beacon, August 8, 1913.

68. Humboldt Times, July 6, 1914.

69. Ibid., November 23, 1917.

70. Ibid., March 13, 1918.

71. One study estimated that it cost $75 per replacement. Four L Bulletin, February 1922 et seq., F. B. Gibson, “What Does Labor Turnover Cost.” Cited in Cloice R. Howd, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Industry, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 349 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1924), p. 39.

72. In the late 1910s and the 1920s, labor turnover became an increasing concern of employers. This is partially reflected in the secondary-source literature written on the subject: Paul F. Brissenden and Emil Frankel, Labor Turnover in Industry: A Statistical Analysis (New York: Macmillan, 1922); Sumner H. Slichter, The Turnover of Factory Labor (New York: Appleton, 1919).

73. Sixteenth Biennial Report of the California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913–1914, p. 64.

74. Howd, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Industry, p. 38.

75. Harold M. Hyman, Soldiers of Spruce: Origins of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, 1963), p. 112.

76. Humboldt Beacon, June 28, 1918.

77. Claudia Wood, “History of the Pacific Lumber Company, 1862–1955” (unpublished ms., 1956, Humboldt State University Library); Ben Shannon Allen, “From the Penobscot to the Eel” (unpublished ms., 1949, San Francisco), chap. 26, p. 7.

78. Industrial Worker, November 25, 1922.

79. Proceedings of the Third Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1911, pp. 50–51.

80. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Session, Pacific Logging Congress, 1912, p. 18.

81. Humboldt Times, July 18, 1913; Labor News, July 19, 1913.

82. Humboldt Times, July 6, 1919.

83. Ibid., June 18, 1920.

84. Ibid., May 13, 1920.

85. Ibid., January 4, 1921.

86. Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: The Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), p. 137.

87. The Camp Sanitation Act of 1913 stated that bunkhouses, tents, and other sleeping places were to be kept in a “cleanly state,” free from vermin “and matter of an infectious and contagious nature.” Every bunkhouse had to be well ventilated and the bunks made of iron or canvas.

88. Sixteenth Biennial Report of the California Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913–1914, pp. 53–54.

89. Ibid., pp. 138–139.

90. Ibid., p. 140.

91. The records of the Commission are housed at Bancroft Library.

92. American Federationist 25 (October 1918): 891–893.

93. Humboldt Times, March 17, 1920.

94. Letter from Director of Camp Sanitation (unsigned) to H. W. Cole, December 19, 1921, Records of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing, carton 18, folder 12.

95. Ninth Annual Report of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1923), pp. 32–33.

96. Ibid.

97. Humboldt Times, March 17, 1920.

98. Fifth Annual Report of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1919), p. 31.

99. Humboldt Times, March 17, 1920.

100. See Samuel E. Wood, “The California Commission of Immigration and Housing: A Study of Administrative Organization and the Growth of Function,” doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1942.

101. American Federationist 25 (October 1918): 891–893.

102. Hyman, Soldiers of Spruce; Robert Ficken, “The Wobbly Horrors: Pacific Northwest Lumbermen and the IWW, 1917–1918,” Labor History 24 (Summer 1983): 325–341.

103. On the IWW’s efforts to organize the lumber workers of the Pacific Northwest, see Robert L. Tyler, Rebels of the Woods: The IWW in the Pacific Northwest (Eugene: University of Oregon Books, 1967). The repression of the IWW is well described in Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW (New York: Quadrangle, 1967); William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); Robert J. Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America: 1870 to the Present (New York: Schenkman, 1978). Virtually nothing has been written about the activities of the IUTW in this period.

104. Julio Rovai, Wildwood–Rio Dell: After the 1928 Fire (published by author, 1981), pp. 3–4.

105. David M. Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

106. Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, “Industrial Recreation, the Second World War, and the Revival of Welfare Capitalism, 1934–1960,” Business History Review 60 (Summer 1986): 232–257.

Postscript

1. Labor News, May 5, 1917.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., September 8, 1917.

4. The World War I shipbuilding venture of James Rolph alone employed 1,000 workers. Lynwood Carranco, Redwood Lumber Industry (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1982), p. 99. In addition, Andrew Hammond expanded his shipbuilding labor force during the war by several hundred men.

5. Humboldt Times, April 30, 1917.

6. Northern California Union Labor Gazetteer (Eureka: Labor News Press, 1918). Copy in Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

7. See Valerie Jean Conner, The National War Labor Board: Stability, Social Justice and the Voluntary State in World War I (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).

8. Industrial Worker, July 30, 1917.

9. Humboldt Standard, March 1, 1918.

10. American Federationist 25 (June 1918): 498.

11. Labor News, March 15, April 26, and May 3, 1919.

12. Ibid., June 28, 1919.

13. Labor News, Humboldt Times, and Humboldt Standard provided detailed accounts of the strike.

14. Humboldt Times, January 1, 1920.

15. Labor News, February 3, 1920.

16. In the early 1920s, eight Wobblies were convicted and sent to prison by the Humboldt County courts and others were arrested and tried. On the persecution of the IWW there, see Jerry Willis, “The Story of the IWW in Humboldt County, 1905–1924” (unpublished ms. at Humboldt State University Library, 1969).

17. Industrial Worker, July 29, 1922.

18. Ibid., October 6, 1923.

19. Industrial Pioneer 4 (April 1924): 19–21.

20. Ibid. (June 1924): 23 and 26.

21. Industrial Worker, July 29, 1922.

22. Ibid., November 22, 1924.

23. Florence Peterson, Strikes in the United States, 1880–1936 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Labor Bulletin 651, 1938), p. 38.

24. Ibid., p. 95.

25. Frank Onstine, The Great Lumber Strike of Humboldt County 1935 (Arcata: Mercurial Enterprises, 1980).

26. The information on labor relations in Humboldt and Mendocino counties in the 1930s is from Howard Brett Melendy, “One Hundred Years of the Redwood Lumber Industry, 1850–1950,” doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1952, pp. 331–352.

27. The fullest accounts of the IWA and the STWU’s organizing efforts are to be found in Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945); and Jerry Lembcke and William M. Tattam, One Union in Wood: A Political History of the International Woodworkers of America (New York: International Publishers, 1984).

28. See William G. Robbins, “Timber and War: An Oral History of Coos Bay, Oregon, 1940–1945,” Journal of the West 25 (July 1986): 35–43.

29. For a brief account of the 1946–1948 strike, see Melendy, “One Hundred Years of Redwood Lumber,” pp. 353–362.

30. George S. Bain and Robert Price, Profiles of Union Growth: A Comparative Statistical Portrait of Eight Countries (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1980), p. 95. In a frequently cited article, Clark Kerr and Abraham Siegel, “The Interindustry Propensity to Strike—An International Comparison,” in Industrial Conflict ed. A. Kornhauser, R. Budin, and A. M. Ross (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954), pp. 189–212, the authors put the U.S. lumber industry in the “medium-high” category for the propensity to strike in the period from 1927 to 1941 and 1942 to 1948. This assessment must be treated with some caution. The 1927 to 1941 time frame was broad and did not distinguish between the propensity to strike from 1927 to the mid-1930s and the later years when strike activity undoubtedly increased. Furthermore, Kerr and Siegel used man-days lost due to strikes as their statistical criterion. The potential for one or several major strikes to distort the picture using this criterion is obvious. It would be useful to know both the absolute number of strikes in an industry and especially the number of days lost in relation to the number of workers employed in the industry. Paul Edwards, in his book, Strikes in the United States, 1881–1974 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), uses a variety of indices to measure the incidence of strikes between 1950 and 1972. With respect to the lumber industry, of the four indices established by Edwards, only in one, the number of days lost per worker involved in strikes, could the industry be described as ranking in the “medium-high” category. See pp. 192–193.