LUMBER, LABOR, AND COMMUNITY IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, 1850-1920

Humboldt County is situated in northwestern California approximately 250 miles north of San Francisco in the heart of the redwood lumber region. Historically, Humboldt County has been one of the most important lumber-producing counties in America. From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century the lumber industry was among the most important industries in America. The new social history, however, has neglected the history of the lumber industry and its workers.;Part III examines the county's labor movement in the period 1900-20. The AFL was progressive and attained considerable power. The IWW found itself virtually pre-empted. In 1906, Humboldt's lumber workers established the first international union of lumber workers. After a pivotal strike in 1907, the county's labor movement was put on the defensive. The final chapters examine the wide range of strategies used by the lumber employers, including repression, scientific management, and welfare capitalism, that ultimately undermined the Humboldt labor movement.;The principal sources used in this study were: local and regional newspapers, lumber company records and lumber employer convention proceedings, the records of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing, the Powderly papers, manuscript census schedules of population, 1860-1910, county tax and voter registration lists, and reports of the California and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.;Part I of this study examines the social, political, and economic setting in which the lumber industry became the county's principal source of livelihood between 1850 and 1900. Part II focuses on the emergence of a strong radical movement in Gilded Age Humboldt County. In the political sphere this tradition was represented by electoral successes for a Workingmen's party in the late 1870s, strong support for the Greenback Labor party in the early 1880s, and a vibrant Populist movement in the 1890s. Under the umbrella of the Knights of Labor, the county's lumber workers were among the first lumber workers in America to organize during the 1880s. A mix of local, state, and national events and the pervasiveness of a set of values derived from a radical antebellum democratic-republican tradition sustained these movements.