TERRY
PETTUS

IN compiling a roster of the

Northwest’s sawdust aristocra-
cy, you start with a name that
puzzled many a reporter and copy
editor 15 years ago when the
family burst into national promi-
nence as the victim of a $200,000
kidnapping.

“How the hell do you spell it?”
This was always the first question
from the out of town reporters
who invaded Tacoma to cover the
smatch of nine-year-old George
Weyerhaeuser, member of one of
the nation’s wealthiest but least
known families.

In newspaper offices throughout
. the country, there was a. frantic
and futile search of morgues and
libraries for scraps of information
about a clan which dominates the
lumber industry of the U.S. ~ Edi-
tors found that James W. Gerard,
former ambassador to Germany,
wasn’t kidding when he wrote in
1930 that though the Weyerhaeu-
sers are among the 64 men who
“rule the United States,” there is
a “dearth of published information
regarding the annals of that fa-
mily.”

At the time of the kidnapping
the “published information” was
confined principally to a 1934 issue
of the swank, one-buck a copy.
‘business magazine, Fortune. It,
did a gushy article on the first
Frederick Weyerhaeuser, who
came to the U.S. from Germany
in 1852. It billed him as “the
brewer’s apprentice who made
More millions from the woods
than any other man and founded
a family which is so retiring that
few people east of the Twin Cities
have ever heard of the Weyer-
haeusers (pronounced Warehou-
Ser), and built a business struc-
ture unique in the U.S, and lar-
Sest in its industry.”

The Weyerhaeusers are so “re-
tiring”, Fortune said, that as a
Consequence “not very many of
the Weyerhaeuser companies even
bear their name.” That was more
the case in 1934 than today, when
the family is coming out from
behind a maze of corporate whis-
kers,

Such outfits as Willapa Harbor
and White River lumber compa-
nies now bear the name Weyer-
The family is openly

haeuser,

given

taking over the Pacific Coast Dir-

ector Line, which has long served
as an operating company for the
Weyerhaeuser-owned vessels in
the inter-coasta] trade. And the
Weyerhaeusers are making a bid
for even tighter control of the in-
dustry by multiple producing
units.

These ultra-modern plants com-
bine sawmills, plywood, pulp and
paper and by-product manufac-
ture in one operation. Thanks to
modern technology, the Weyer-
haeusers have been able to go the
meat packers one better. The
well-worn joke about using every-
thing about the pig but the squeal

Timbe
wolf

has been realized in lumber, Saw-.

dust goes into presto-logs, while
all other “waste” finds utilization
in wall board manufacture and
other saleable products.

These huge multiple operations
get their raw material from the
trees on the 2,201,115 acres owned
openly by the Weyerhaeuser cor-
poration and its known subsidi-
aries. It does not include what
is owned by individual members
of the family, their close business
associates, or the “control” exer-
cised through a myriad of inter-
locking directorships in banks,
railroads, chemical and other in-
dustries. ;

e

In the early nineties, Weyer-
haeuser was a rich and powerful
man. His mansion in St. Paul,
Minn., adjoined that of James J.
Hill, head of the Northern Pacific
railroad, Weyerhaeuser’s close
friend and business associate. It
was through Hill that the Weyer-
haeusers made their way west-
ward — by private railway car.
And the family “homesteaded”, so
to speak, on 900,000 acres of the
finest timber land in Western
Washington. Through Hill the

SS

‘land grant railroads” were added
to “homesteaders” who could make
such swaps. Hill lost no time
in making trades which were to
be so profitable for Northern Paci-
fic and his pal, Weyerhaeuser.

This was not the only timber
deal between Hil] and Weyerhaeu-
ser. By 1911 the U.S. Commissio-
ner of Corporations reported that
the Weyerhaeusers owned 1,945,-
000 acres of land, “four-fifths of
which were obtained from the
Northern Pacific.”

It is not surprising that at the
time of his death, old Frederick
was a director of both Northern
Pacific and Great Northern Rail-
roads. His fortune was estimated
at $300,000,000, but this was ad-
mittedly a guess,

(The family has always been
sensitive on the question of his ac-
tual wealth and holdings. At the
time of the kidnapping, inspired
stories were planied in the news-
papers to the effect that the family
was down to its lasi sack of saw-
dust, and would have plenty of
trouble raising the $200,000 ran-
som. The paper for which I was
working at the time arranged an
interview with the young victim's
father, John Phillip Weyerhaeuser
Jr. . Before I wrote the story, the
managing editor asked hopefully,
“Did you notice how frayed his
coat sleeves were?’ I hadn't.)

Today, grandsons of old Freder-
ick call the tune for the North-
west’s basic industry. How impor-
tant is lumber, for example, to
the economy of Washington state?
The U.S. Census of Manufacturers

for 1947 (the last year for which >

figures are available) reported 911
lumber and processing plants, ex-

their logs at monopoly-fixed prices
from their gigantic “competitors”
such as Weyerhaeuser, Crown-Zel-
lerbach, St. Regis and Rayonier.

As far as the administration of
Washington’s Governor Arthur
B. Langlie is concerned, Weyer-
haeuser does not even pretend to
operate behind the scenes. The
roster of key “cabinet” posts un-
der Langlie reads like a Weyer-
haeuser executive pay roll, Par-
ticular attention is paid to such
departments as labor and indus-
tries, employment security and
social security.

Heading the latter is the notor-
ious Roderic Olzendam, former
Weyerhaeuser public relations di-
rector who is spearheading the
attack to wipe out all social legis-
lation dating back to 1911. And
as this is written, Governor Lang-
lie is continuing his fight to re-
place the present adjutant general
of the National Guard with Col.
Walter DeLong, a Weyerhaeuser
executive. Labor remembers the
strike-breaking part played. dur-
ing the 1935 lumber strike by the
guard under the then Clarence
D. Martin, millionaire flour miller
and pal of the Weyerhaeusers.

As befits its position on top of
the heap, Weyerhaeuser is playing
the key employer rol] in present
negotiations. While the demands
differ in details, both the CIO
International Woodworkers of
America and the AFL Lumber and
Sawmill Workers are out for
health and welfare funds, a pen-
sion, paid holidays and (in some
cases) wage increases equivalent
to an average of 10 cents an hour.

Throughout the Pacific Northwest, both in Canada and the U.S., big

struggles for wage increases are shaping up in the lumber industry,

40,000 workers are affected in the U.S., another 40,000 in B.C.

Weyerhaeusers obtained it from
the Northern Pacific for $6 an

acre.

The purchase price, $5,400,000,
ed a clear profit to Nor-
gal The timber didn't
cost the railroad & dime. Nor was
it part of the original land grant
Northern Pacific by Con-
uring railroad construction
days. Much of the original land
grant acres was then worthless
for farm or lumbering.

gress d

Prior to 1897, there was much
agitation to create federal “forest
reserves” and allow the poor,
struggling homesteaders to trade
poor and mountainous acres for
better land. But when Congress
passed the Jaw in 1897, the words

cept furniture. They employed
45,000 workers, or 35 percent of
all employes engaged in manufac-
ture.

Oregon is even more dependent
on lumber. The lumber workers
and union officials now engaged
in negotiations should ponder the
implications of the U.S, Census
report, Which says that in 1947
these 911 plants paid out in sala-
ries and executives’ wages a total
of $135,000,000 and that “their work
added $279,500,000 to the market
value of the goods they processed.”

It is unlikely that later figures
will show 911 plants. “Log buy-
ing” mills have folded by the score
since the war. They cannot stay
in business when forced to buy

With unity and determination,
the unions can win. The lumber
corporations will not say they can-
not afford to pay. Published pro-
fit figures belie any such excuse.
With a great show of “indepen-
dence”, Weyerhaeuser has with-
drawn from joint negotiations. In

reality, however, it is making a

heat end run for the employer
team, In adopting a lone wolf
role, the powerful corporation
dangled the bait of a “$100 a
month pension” which it blandly
says will cost ten cents an hour.

But examination revealed many
a knot in the Weyerhaeuser pen-
sion log. First, the company de-
manded that acceptance would
mean continuing present contracts
for another year with no benefits.

Secondly, the “pension” plan’ would
be administered solely by the
corporation. Its officers would
say who was to get a pension and
how much. The union could not
even use grievance machinery on
behalf of any member discrimin-
ated against.

The IWA asked and received
from Weyerhaeuser a breakdown
of its 10,000 employes on the basis
of age and seniority. Statisticians
went to work and came up with
the report that even if the cor-
poration was “liberal” and did not
take advantage of its arbitrary
position, the plan would not cost
more than 1% cents an hour.

Weyerhaeuser’s 1949 net profit
(after taxes and all the other de-
ductions big business uses to hide
its real earnings) is announced as
being $24,633,016, or about $2500
per employee. At 14% cents an hour
the “pension” plan would cost
about $30 a year per worker.

Stack this up against the 10
cent an hour package demand of
the unions, and you have the kind
of deal that would warm the heart
of old Frederick. But the real
danger remains that Weyerhaeu-
ser will be successful in using its
“pension plan” to create division
among union leadership and to
spread confusion among the rank
and file.

The Weverhaeusers have had
three generations of experience in
writing “contracts”. The foun-
der of the family, according to
one of scores of stories, was no
slouch at that game.

Oldtimers relate that in the
early days in Wisconsin, old Fred-
erick, then a young and ambiti-
ous man, (negotiated with the
owner of some timber land for
“about one acre”. Weyerhaeuser

-wrote the contract, which stipu-

lated a certain sum for the right
to cut “around an acre of land”.
The unsuspecting owner signed,
and Weyerhaeuser put his loggers
to work and for months they en-
ergetically cut “around” a _ cer-
tain acre of standing timber.

Today, things aren’t quite so
simple. The people see the tim-
ber resources of the Northwest
gutted and wasted, and are not
reassuréd by glib Weyerhaeuser
advertisements stating that “tim-
ber is a crop” and that meagre
reforestation projects are “tree
farms”,

And the lumber workers in in-
creasing numbers are refusing to
take the pension wooden nickel
as full payment for their 10-cent
an hour demand.

Terry Pettus, formerly editor
of the defunct Washington New
Dealer, is now Northwest editor
of the San Francisco Daily Peo-
ple’s World,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 7, 1950 — PAGE 6