| I argue in my dissertation, "The Battle for the Body: Work and Environment in the Pacific Northwest Lumber Industry, 1800--1940," that conceptions of both the body and ecological change were central to how loggers and timber companies constructed ideas of working-class identity, masculinity, and proper interactions between humans and nature. I examine the changing ways people thought about ecology and their lives in the forest. Workers lamented how logging transformed the forest, fretting over wildlife destruction and trying to protect habitat. Ultimately, loggers could do little to stop environmental change as timber companies controlled both the forests and workers' lives. Loggers' working and living environments reached a nadir in the early twentieth century. In response, loggers turned to the Industrial Workers of the World to assist with their fight for better conditions. I.W.W. organizers defined loggers as ideal specimens of masculinity in nature to build labor solidarity against the timber industry. They claimed that tall trees and unspoiled nature created anti-capitalist men who could defeat the corporations. Companies also constructed ideas about forests and bodies to attack worker activism by claiming that laboring in the woods molded American men who valued hard work over radicalism. From the creation of worker solidarity to strategies for defeating the I.W.W., the interplay between the forest and the body frames this story. The key event in this battle was the establishment of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (4-L) in 1918, a government-sponsored company union. The 4-L destroyed the I.W.W. in the woods while eliminating the environmental conditions that led to worker radicalism. In the mid-1930s, timber workers successfully organized into AFL and CIO unions, but environmental concerns had fallen from the table due to the reforms of the past two decades. The battle for the body was over. |
