CHAPTER I THE INDUSTRY Many of the problems with which the union has had to deal have grown directly out of the nature of the industry itself. This fact will justify a consideration of the industry with the view of setting forth the field claimed by the union, and of understanding some of the problems which the union has had to solve in organizing the trade. If one should follow the maufacture of wood from the tree in the forest to the finished products sold on the market, there would be found two large groups of industries, each of which has a number of fairly distinct branches. These two groups, as they appear in the United States Census, are the lumber industry, including the felling of the trees, logging, and the manufacture of lumber in the saw-mills; and the remanufacture of lumber, the most important subdivisions of which are the manufacture of house-hold furniture, agricultural implements, musical instruments, carriages and wagons, and ship-building.1 The union does not presume to organize all of the laborers engaged in all of these branches, but it claims for its own jurisdiction, roughly speaking, the laborers engaged in factory manufacture of wood products,-in other words, all "indoor woodworkers." The limitation thus set would include all the laborers employed in factories from those who receive the lumber as it comes from the saw-mill to those who place some finished product upon the market,-from the planing-mill on the one side to the furniture factory, as a type on the other. However, no hard and fast lines can be drawn separating these trades on account of the constant change in the methods of production, 1 Ship-building is classed in the census as a separate group. which has transferred work from one trade to another. This fact alone has been a potent cause in shifting the lines of jurisdiction, some of which are still very much unsettled. Then, organization did not proceed from a comprehensive point of view to separate industries into their logical divisions, but, rather, the union, having undertaken to remedy conditions in some particular branch, has developed from small beginnings and has extended its jurisdiction as it grew in strength and as occasion arose. This accounts for the existence in the past of so many unions in closely allied trades, as for example, unions for carvers, for wood turners, for cabinet-makers, for furniture workers, for machine wood-workers, for piano and organ workers, for box-makers, etc. It also explains why the union does not control all the workmen in all branches of the industry, and furthermore, why in some cases the union has organized other than strictly wood workers. This overlapping of the branches and their subdivisions, then, is a problem in specialization of industry, and can be studied to best advantage by an examination of the wood working industry as a whole. For sake of ease in presenting the subject the history of the wood working industry may be divided into three periods: (1) The period prior to the development of specialized tools and processes, ending about 1815; (2) the period of the invention and application of improved machinery and the beginning of specialization, ending about 1840; (3) the modern period, the period of factory production. Before proceeding further it should be stated that these dates have been chosen more or less arbitrarily, although not without some justification in the conditions existing in the industry. By 1815 evidence began to appear of the existence of both specialized tools and specialization in production. The year 1840 is chosen as a dividing line for two reasons; first, this was the first year that anything like reliable statistics of manufactures were published; second, the Woodworth rotary planer became a real success by the invention of the chip-breaker in 1842, thus greatly stimulating every branch of the trade. THE PERIOD PRIOR TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIALIZED TOOLS AND PROCESSES Historical records show that the wood working industry in some of its forms was one of the first occupations to engage the early inhabitants of every colony, located in the forest covered sections of the country. The building of a house, the making of rude furniture, the felling of trees in preparation for the cultivation of the land-these were the beginnings of the wood working industry. During this period, the pioneer settler had to be the architect of his own home, his own carpenter and builder,in short, he had to be self-sufficient in this as in all other lines of his activities. The tools at his command were at first few and crude. He had to depend on the "axe and broad axe" to supply himself with lumber, until the saw-mill relieved him of that burden. Before the power saw-mill had been introduced, boards were made by "pit-sawing" in accordance with the method then in use in England. But this process was so simple that it could never have given rise to any extended organization or development, so that it need require in this connection only mere mention. Saw mills run by water power were introduced in very early colonial times. William F. Fox, in his "History of the Lumber Industry in the State of New York," has shown from the old records that "in 1623, nine years after the first house was built in New Amsterdam, saw mills were erected there by the Dutch West India Company." The machinery used was shipped from Holland, and was constructed to run by water power or by wind-mill. While there seems to have been a large number of mills erected during the next century, Mr. Fox concludes that "for the first two hundred years the mills were crude constructions and of small capacity, being limited to a single upright saw.' The power used was an "over-shot water wheel," and in different sections of the country, especially in New England, the desirable mill-sites were let to individuals by charters, as special privileges or monopoly grants, on condition William F. Fox "History of Lumber Industry in the State of New York." Bureau of Forestry Bulletin 34, p. 12. |