The Cost of the Company’s Growth

This flow traces how the company’s expansion creates wealth while repeatedly transferring risk and loss to workers, communities, and forests.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

A Profitable Clearing

A Profitable Clearing Markets Reward Cutting Timber sales, shipbuilding, and naval contracts reward companies for turning standing forests into commodities. Costs Hidden From Buyers The financial accounts rarely include destroyed habitat, lost food sources, or displaced communities.

Workers Bear the Risk

Workers Bear the Risk Dangerous Delivery River drivers navigate rolling logs, cold water, and jams to get timber to mills and markets. Unequal Exposure Indigenous workers are especially assigned to the most dangerous river jobs because employers consider them naturally suited to the work.

The Land Is Burned

The Land Is Burned Fire Clears the Way Settlers and timber operators use fire to clear land and dispose of waste, sometimes losing control of the flames. Catastrophe Spreads Major fires destroy forests, homes, and camps, while the industry resumes cutting as soon as it can.

The Market Expands

The Market Expands New Uses for Wood Railroads, housing, pulp, and paper create new outlets for trees previously treated as waste. Extraction Deepens Each technological or market innovation provides another reason to cut more forest rather than slow production.

Repair After the Cut

Repair After the Cut Restoration as Labor The tree project hires people to replant degraded sites and monitor the effects of earlier damage. Responsibility Reframed The labor that once removed forests is partly redirected toward restoring them, without erasing the original losses.

During the first generations of timber expansion

During the river-driving generations

During the expansion into western timberlands

After the Civil War and into industrial growth

Near the novel’s ending