Author(s): | Hak, Gordon |
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Reviewer(s): | Marr, William |
Published by EH.NET (November 2000)
Gordon Hak, Turning Trees into Dollars: The British Columbia Coastal Lumber
Industry, 1858-1913. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. ix + 239
pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8020-4745-9; $22.95 (paper), ISBN: 0-8020-8305-6.
Reviewed for EH.NET by William Marr, Department of Economics, Wilfrid Laurier
University.
Whenever we turn our attention to the economic history of Canada in the late
nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the importance of raw
resources and their exploitation are key factors in any story of economic
growth and economic development. This is never truer than in the lumber
industry, which includes both logging and sawmilling. The availability of
markets both in the interior of Canada and in Australia, Mexico, Asia, and
South America provided a ready opportunity for the sale of lumber in a rapidly
changing environment. There were, of course, cyclical patterns to those sales,
but for the most part the trend was one of expanding opportunities with a
resultant increasing demand. While the lumber industry was growing elsewhere
in Canada, and indeed in North America, the growth of this industry was
perhaps best exemplified by the changes to it on Canada’s west coast — in
British Columbia. Here all the ingredients were in place by the middle of the
nineteenth century for sustained development and change; they awaited only the
appearance of entrepreneurial talents and a further expansion of markets that
would enable the “turning of trees into dollars.”
Gordon Hak, in the Department of History at Malaspina University-College, has
written a thorough, fascinating, and important book about that development and
change. In its totality, his book examines the changes and pressures that
influenced the coastal British Columbia lumber industry from about 1858 to
1913, covering both logging operations and sawmilling as two related yet
distinct activities. Hak’s time period begins with the first major excursions
into those coastal forests and ends with the year that the United States
changed its tariffs and removed the duties on wood imports, which did indeed
begin a new period in the history of the North American lumber industry and
trade. It is interesting to note that Hak sets out to place the changes in the
coastal lumber industry into a wider context than just the economic and
political circumstances of British Columbia, which would have been a very
narrow focus indeed. While he describes that industry, he consistently relates
his description to wider Canadian and United States development throughout the
time period. Those wider areas provided competition for British Columbia’s
coastal lumber industry and markets for its forest products. As with Canada’s
economic history in general, the lumber industry must be studied with one eye
always on conditions and circumstances outside of that region. It should be
noted that Hak also places the coastal lumber industry into the context of
British Columbia’s interior lumber industry, which was growing at the same
time. Both external and internal relationships are emphasised.
After an introduction to the general study of British Columbia’s coastal
lumber industry, the book’s chapters are organized by topic rather than by
chronological considerations. Separate chapters are devoted to the markets for
those lumber products, the major companies in this industry, the
entrepreneurs’ business strategies, government policies towards this industry,
the critics of management strategy and government policy, the logging
operations, the sawmill firms, the loggers, and the millworkers. This topical
approach makes it difficult for someone who wants to know, for example, all
about the industry in the 1890’s because reference has to be made to several
chapters. But Hak aids such reference by organizing each chapter in a roughly
chronological fashion, which makes it relatively easy to locate all
information on, say, the 1890’s. My preference is for his topical approach
since the historical material appears to fit very nicely into the general
structure of markets, firms, the government, and labor.
Because enough detail is provided in this book on those aspects of the coastal
lumber industry, the reader finishes with a sense of knowing the main
developments and changes that took place, and yet is not overwhelmed with
details about firms and people. This is a short book. But readers who want
that detail can explore the narrative more thoroughly on their own. This book
is not weighed down with long descriptions of the people and places that are
sometimes thought to be necessary in the study of one industry in one region.
Hak blends very appropriately the descriptive information about this industry
with broader and more abstract frames of reference. Two examples are his
reference to the staple thesis and his discussion of industrialization.
Following a brief outline of the staple thesis, he argues that it can be used
in a general way to inform certain aspects of the growth and development of
the coastal lumber industry. The reader can see in the book the general themes
of resources and exports that are the main tenets of the staple thesis. My
only comment is that Hak could have made more use from that thesis of
diversification around the staple base through linkages, which helps to
transform a region during a period when “staples” may be the main ingredient
in economic growth and economic development. Hak, in the chapter on
industrialization, very clearly relates his discussion of machinery,
technology, and the organization of production to conditions in markets and to
the relative cost of inputs. The model of choice under constraints and the
influence of relative factor costs clearly inform his discussion as well as
the changes that took place in this industry.
Gordon Hak has written an interesting and important book. It studies another
piece of the picture that was Canada’s economic history during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Bill Marr is a professor in the Department of Economics at Wilfrid Laurier
University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His current research interests
include nineteenth century agricultural change in Ontario and the use that
contemporary immigrants to Canada made of unemployment insurance.
Subject(s): | Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Extractive Industries |
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Geographic Area(s): | North America |
Time Period(s): | 20th Century: Pre WWII |