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Book Review
| The People's Forests. By Robert Marshall. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002. (original 1933) 264 pp. 12 charts & tables, bibliography, index. Paper $14.95.
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| In 1933, in the nadir of the Great Depression, a young forester named Robert Marshall proposed a bold new socialist paradigm for managing the nation's timberlands. In The People's Forests, Marshall proclaimed that public ownership was "the only basis on which we can hope to protect the incalculable values of the forests" (p. 210). Private corporate greed and mismanagement had wrought only devastation, and the time had come at last "to acquire and administer the public forests for the benefits of all the citizens" (p. 219). Unfortunately, Marshall's warnings of the grave state of the nation's woods were largely ignored; Marshall himself died suddenly in 1939, on the eve of a war that would profoundly alter his country's relationship with its forests, and his provocative manifesto slipped out of print. Now, however, in this accessible and timely new edition, scholars, students, and activists once again have access to Marshall's passionate plea to protect "the infinitely complex, constantly changing forest" (p. 192). |
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In straightforward and compelling language, Marshall begins with an exegesis on the "unthinking" destruction of the nation's forests, mostly at the avaricious hands of private owners whose short-term profits had undermined the land's health and viability, and led to "forest bankruptcy." The "major values" of the forests, he argued, should not be calculated purely in timber dollars; instead, raw materials, water and soil resources, and recreation all contributed "intangible considerations" that countered "the nervous strain, the high pressure, and the drabness" of modern society (p. 64). Operating on the assumption that "the forests are essential to national welfare" (p. 77), Marshall outlined an aggressive nationalization program, accompanied by collective bargaining for government employees, complete rural reorganization (including the abandonment of inefficient towns and counties, and relocation of farms and farmers), and, remarkably, the elimination of local government. By modern standards, Marshall's socialism appears fairly radical, a Sagebrush Rebel's nightmare, but in the 1930s, this collectivism attracted more attention than during any other era in American history. The Great Depression, Marshall reasoned, was "the greatest godsend the American forests have known" (p. 105), for in wrecking the timber industry, the way had been paved for a post-capitalist management plan that could consider forest productivity, as well as the viability of the land, workers, consumers, and local community. What Marshall could not foresee, of course, was how World War II and ensuing suburbanization would transform the nation's forests into the most productive woodlots in the world, but at a terrible environmental cost. And in this harvest frenzy, the National Forest Service, which Marshall had praised as a "splendidly efficient" administrative model, proved just as culpable as any cut-and-run timber baron. |
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Even after seventy years, Marshall's words and ideas resonate, serving as an informative historical text as well as a provocative alternative vision. While some of his predictions may seem quaintly anachronistic, the major tenets of Marshall's argument endure as a stinging indictment of both private timber management and misguided Forest Service policy. Although The People's Forests is particularly suited to classroom use—with an introduction by former USFS Chief Mike Dombeck describing the "key public land challenges" of the twenty-first century, and a brief biography of Marshall by Douglas Midgett—it also remains an insightful read for environmental scholars and forest historians. |
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Reviewed by Sara Dant Ewert, assistant professor of history at Weber State University. Her recent scholarship has focused on the environmental politics of Senator Frank Church, and her forthcoming book, co-authored with Hal Rothman, is entitled Encyclopedia of American National Parks (M.E. Sharpe, Inc.). |
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