Editor's Column

Abstract

In an industry cursed by periodic overproduction, the employers may be pleased to have their workers go on strike. This is one of the major conclusions of Anita Shafer Goodstein's study of labor relations in the lumber industry of the Saginaw Valley, Michigan, 1865-1885. Mrs. Goodstein, by careful use of the business correspondence of a large lumber producer, illuminates the lumber magnate's attitudes on labor questions. To these executives, the conditions of employment were determined by stern economic laws, which were to be interpreted by the employers themselves. Any employee unwilling to accept the results of this procedure could look elsewhere for work. Mrs. Goodstein shows the numerous influences playing on wages and hours in the Saginaw Valley: competition in the lumber markets with Canadian producers who had lower labor costs than the American firms; the significance of seasonal and cyclical fluctuations in business; the inevitable appearance of company towns in a rapidly expanding frontier region; the removal of the industry elsewhere as the timber resources of the Saginaw Valley were exhausted.