Currently we have education programs preparing people to work in the woods. Back in the 1940s they had the same kind of problem, and fixed it with… training POWs.
Thanks to the Cowboy State Daily and author Dick Perue for this one.
Worth reading, but this reminded me that some things haven’t changed much in the last 80 years..
Political and Otherwise
“Last week’s issue of the Saratoga Sun related that 150 war prisoners from the camp at Douglas are at work for the R. R. Crow Timber company in Carbon county. Inquiry in Cheyenne revealed that the number of war prisoners to be so “employed” is to be increased to 300.
“What’s funny about that? Nothing at all except that this is an educational project authorized and supervised by the state department of education.
“The educational feature of the project is supposed to derive from the fact that these war prisoners who recently were engaged in the business of shooting down American soldiers in North Africa are being educated in the art of logging—through the beneficence of the state department of education with benefit of a grant from the federal treasury.
“The logs will be ‘processed’ in the sawmills of R. R. Crow company at or near Saratoga.
“(Mr. Crow is a staunch Republican—[and] twice was a candidate for the nomination for the U. S. senate in the Republican primaries).
“And who are the teachers? Well10or 11 of the Crow Lumber company’s employees have been put on the payroll of the department of education. They are the faculty, as it were.
“These loggers turned teachers, however, do not suffer the financial handicaps of school teachers who teach Wyoming youth in Wyoming schools. Not at all.
“These Crow employees who have switched to the department of education payroll are paid $1.50 per hour for a 44-hour week. We can imagine that many Wyoming district school teachers that is fancy wages. And we believe there are members of the University of Wyoming faculty who willing would trade their pay checks for one of the pay checks that will go to the state department of education’s ‘teachers”’ at or near Saratoga.
“This project no doubt is strictly on the up-and-up. But we never heard of the state department of education paying $1.50 an hour for teachers to teach American youth how to chop down a tree or any other kind of a trade. And if the department of education were staffed by Democrats, we can imagine the nasty things the Republicans would be saying about the waste of federal funds in the timber near Saratoga. They will continue to sob about federal expenditures, but they will not mention the steady flow of federal funds through the department of education—as long as that department is staffed by Republicans.
“For this ‘logging school’ near Saratoga is only one of a number of projects engaged in by the department of education which in the eyes of the taxpayers who pay the bill are of questionable value.”
As was the case in 1943, a reply from the timber company is necessary. If you read the entire Cowboy State article, they explain that the government was paying costs of the project that were over and above what the timber company would have incurred using local instead of POW labor. This was a win-win situation, because local labor was almost impossible to obtain during WW2, and the timber produced was essential to the war effort.
Another aspect not discussed is the probable positive effect of providing POWs something constructive to do during their captivity. That had long-term positive consequences for everyone.
In the 1930s, much reforestation work was done by the CCCs. In the 1940s, POWs and Oregon school kids did much of this work. For the next 30 years this work was expertly done by local tax-paying businesses (including my own). Then, in the early 1980s, right before the depression, the USFS started designing short-term contracts that favored migrant labor — much of which was illegal, including some of the contractors. A few District Rangers (Deschutes NF is an example) began counting these foreign workers as favored DEI employees. Even some of the contractors being hired were illegal. The early 80s, economic depression coupled with cheap migrant labor (some legal) pretty much ended the reforestation industry in its prime. The industrial forests said they would never hire migrant crews, but then they did, with Weyco in the lead. The rest of us were told to learn programming or another job skill.
Last month the Oregon Department of Forestry gave an award to a 100% Mexican crew hired by Weyerhaeuser for several years to complete a major reforestation contract. Some of the workers were likely legal, and some of the money likely remained local, or at least in the US. In addition to these award-winning efforts, Oregon is luring illegal workers with Driver’s Licenses, food stamps, formerly illicit drugs, and taxpayer-subsidized housing.
Modern day slave labor and long past the time we returned to local businesses and higher quality work. Or are today’s foresters more comfortable doing computer modeling while working from home? If we honestly can’t do the work because the current generation of US citizens is too soft, then these folks should be given full-time employment, a local address, English lessons, a path to citizenship and be assimilated into the community. Otherwise, this is nothing more than modern-day slave labor and citizens won’t do it if they have to live in a slave camp and receive crap wages, which has become the norm — and maybe why the perps are warmly recognized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EbIQO6AkuU
Note: When I pointed out this serious problem at a presentation to 200 foresters (1/2 USFS) in northern California two years ago, I was dismissed as a “racist.” Easier to call someone a name than consider the problem, and these folks should have been educated enough to know that Mexico and Guatemala aren’t “races.” The Pelosi effect.
I hate acronyms. For the 1940s I should have had Conscientious Objectors (not POWs), prisoners, and school kids doing the work.