Urban Homesteads

Labor and Environmental History

An analysis of the common ground between these fields

American labor historians have long addressed the impact of workers on their environment and environmental historians have acknowledged the influence of nature on workers lives. However, these two fields of history only recently started to portray workers and nature as reciprocal historical agents. This historiographical article will attempt to outline the roots of an emerging hybridization of the two fields and offer an outlook on how this process is likely to develop in the near future.

Introduction

Lumber Workers, Lower Columbia, OR c.1905 (Photo: J. F. Ford, Oregon Historical Society #37858)

• Environmental and labor histories of early American history, which traditionally alternated between triumphant and declensionist narratives of westward expansion, are aided by a renewed understanding of the role of Amerindians in these histories.

• Secondly, both fields of history tend to locate their modern roots within a period of marked transformation to an industrial, consumer economy after the end of the nineteenth century. The rise of "republicanism"was a crucial element of thissocietal shift.

• Finally, an analysis of various coalitions between the labor and environmental movements in the twentieth centuryoffers insight intowhy historians of these movements are finding a great deal of explanatory power through the incorporation of both approaches to history.
  

Amerindian Labor and the Environment

One of the more notable aspects of this type of history is the theme of what Richard White calls the first white man.[7] He observes that, although recent histories have appeared that expressly avoid this construct of the white man as bringing labor to the wild, it still persists in even contemporary environmentalist accounts of history.[8] For example, Bill McKibbens The End of Nature (1989) recounts the lives of some of these Western white explorers, who had the fortune of viewing surroundings unpolluted even by the knowledge that someone had been there before.[9] These stories of European penetration into the West straddle both sides of conventional environmental history. Whereas Turner renders an account of the white mans conquest of the untamed wilderness, more current authors like McKibben lament the passing of a golden era into the destruction of modern life. The relatively more recent turn towards histories that describe an Eden or a cornucopia that awaited the American pioneer are often employed as an explanation for American exceptionalism.[10]

"Prairie on Fire" lithograph by Henry Lewis (1857) Collection of the State Historical Society of Iowa

An expandedview of "American" history

Work and Nature in the Progressive Era

The rapidly changing socioeconomic and cultural landscapes through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century forms the basis for much of the environmental and labor histories of this period. Many new labor historians place a special emphasis on the advent of the Progressive Era as a transformational shift in the terrain upon which labor competed with the forces of capital. In a similar manner, most environmental historians locate the roots of the modern environmental movement within the debate over conservationism that arose during this same time period. Both groups argue -- in several ways -- that this period was a reaction to the changes in human and ecological relations that were formed by the introduction of corporate industrialism into the American scene.

The explanatory power of republicanism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century labor movement has long been a feature of the new labor history that began with E. P. Thompson. Sean Wilentzs Chants Democratic (1984) is notable for its ability to show that a potent republican ideology, which emphasized freedom and equality, acted as an organizing principle during the development of the emerging ruling and working classes in America.[22] Robert Johnston (2003) continues this theme in his history of Portland, Oregon class dynamics, noting that a model of republican political economy reveals that an evenly matched struggle over whether large scale, centralized industrial corporationsor a flourishing and innovative smallholder economy would become the prevailing type of society in nineteenth century America.[23] He argues that the late nineteenth-century labor movement suffered from an ideological divide between republicans such as the Knights [of Labor] and others, such as the nascent American Federation of Labor (AFL), which organized around a class-based system of capitalist wage labor.[24] Johnston refers to Victoria Hattams contention that a producers vision guided the forces behind the Knights of Labor and others who sought to secure a middle-class independence through small-scale property ownership.[25]

Seal, American Federation of Labor, 1900

The role of race

While historians such as David Roediger (1991) suggest that this type of herrenvolk republicanism encouraged the formation of alliances between the leisurely ruling classes and the lower classes (which, at the time, included blacks and other marginalized groups) against the middle producing classes, some evidence suggests that republican ideology motivated even those who were less-enfranchised than the skilled, white workers that often made up this middle group.[26] William P. Jones insightful history of southern black lumber workers, The Tribe of Black Ulysses (2005), notes that many of these workers had managed to purchase farmland during Reconstruction in the spirit of establishing a Republican style of independence.[27] As jobs began to open for them in the lumber industry by the turn of the century, these workers initially maintained a primary focus on their lives as family farmers, with the industrial jobs functioning as a sort of supplemental public work.[28] Jones book is especially compelling in light of its capacity to engage issues of class, race, worker power and environmental change through the lens of a shift from a republican-oriented economic culture towards a heavily industrialized economy. It is valuable because it allows the reader to see how adjustments in a communitys ideology of work and socioeconomic circumstances led to drastic changes in that communitys non-human natural environment.

Towards a synthesis

This brief synopsis of republicanism and resistance to monopolization -- as salient themes of both environmental and labor histories of the period between the Civil War and World War I -- highlights a key area where a more integrated awareness of the two fields can address the dynamics between work and nature during this era. Before discussing some works that are consistent with this approach, it will be useful to trace the roots of labor historys attempts to incorporate environmental issues into its realm of discussion. Starting with the more narrowly defined environment of the shop floor and worker resistance to safety hazards, toxins and industrial pollution, this analysis will progress to look at histories of agricultural work as bringing non-human nature more fully into the compendium of labor history. Finally, a return to the extractive industry of logging will be offered as a contemporary example of a well-integrated labor and environmental history.

Common Ground in the Twentieth Century

In his account of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) walkout and boycott of Shell Oil in 1973, which assisted in the consolidation of an alliance between mainstream environmentalist groups and unions, Robert Gordon posits that there is no inherent conflict between jobs and the environment.[33] Despite the fact that worker pressure from OCAW and other unions like the United Auto Workers combined with legislative advocacy from environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth to help catalyze political support behind the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the enactment of several major pieces of workplace safety and anti-pollution legislation, Gordon outlines the ways in which inter-movement class and racial differences eventually undercut the movements longevity later in the 1970s.[34]

It is fair to suggest that labor historians began to address the role of the environment through their narratives of occupational safety movements precisely because these were the first workers to openly confront environmental issues as environmental issues in their actual lives. The historical reality of cooperation between the labor and environmental movements during the 1960s and 1970s compelled labor and environmental historians to start attending to the thematic and methodological links between their two fields of research. Reacting to this trend, Gunther Peck (2006) criticizes historians who restrain their analyses of the interactions between work and labor to workplace safety issues, because they do not address nonhuman nature beyond the shop floor.[35] Nature needs its agency, too.

"Unidentified workers in a cotton field near Moorefield, Independence County" (Arkansas, c. 1900)

Courtesy, Central Arkansas Library System, Butler Center Special Collections

Treating the South as an underdeveloped colony of the United States, Daniel tells a story of the introduction of mechanization into the various farming routines, which homogenized their production cycles and reduced the role of nature as a determinant in their interactions with non-human nature.[39] For Daniel, the arrival of machines was the main thrust of the federal governments singleminded pursuit of higher production [which] warped agriculture and alienated it from tradition as part of a technocratic plan to force all farmers into commercial agriculture.[40] This argument mirrors the one put forth by Samuel P. Hays (1959) in that it rests on the governments proselytization of scientific efficiency, while holding to the (supposedly contradictory) theme of increasing corporatism at the turn of the century. Daniels narrative of farmers losing their harmony with nature also reflects the aforementioned concept of a fall from grace in environmental histories.[41] Thus, Daniels work can be seen as a declensionist narrative that glorifies those groups that struggled to retain their traditional ways (e.g., the Amish and Luddites) against a process of government intrusion that was, nevertheless not inevitable.[42] Richard White (2003) criticizes the propensity of some historians demonization of modern machines and the sentimentalization of archaic forms of labor, particularly in agricultural histories, as a dangerous denigration of the ability to know nature through modern forms of labor.[43] White sees this inclination, which is more pronounced in environmental history, as an unnecessary conjectural obstacle to the unification of environmental and labor history, as well as the actual social movements that they respectively inform.[44]

Western labor history - A promising area for further synthesis

The field of western labor history offers perhaps the most fertile ground for the infusion of the environment into the new labor history. Returning to the arena of the Pacific Northwest labor movement, Lawrence M. Lipins Workers and the Wild (2007) offers a response to Richard Whites (2003) provocative juxtaposition of labor and environmental interests in the logging industry.[45] Lipins remarkable integration of labor and environmental history is built upon the work of Robert Buntings (1997) environmental history of the Douglas fir logging industry in the Pacific Northwest and Robert Johnstons (2003) innovative study of class relations in the Portland area.[46] Bunting asserts in his study that a culture of capitalism compelled federal and corporate bureaucracies to advance a conservationism that furthered the drive toward modern, centralized, large-scale organizational structures of power, and a rationalized environmental and economic landscape.[47] Bunting has deftly constructed an argument that links the corporate wing of conservationism with the shift away from a republican ideological structure, towards a monopolistic form of capitalism that explains the simultaneous and dramatic transformations of the political, economic and physical landscapes of both work and nature in the Pacific Northwest.[48]

With the conceptual groundwork thus prepared, Lipin arranges his history of the Oregon labor movements political engagement with nature around the more nuanced idea that, while these workers contained both producerist and consumerist predispositions within their identities, a fundamental reorientation towards the consumption of both consumer products and nature gradually occurred by the arrival of the New Deal.[49] Whereas a solid spirit of republicanism had once united urban skilled laborers with rural farmers against the exploitation of nature by elites such as their initial aversion to ruling class and government efforts to preserve an unspoiled nature for tourist consumption the gradual shift towards a market economy and the agitation of racial tensions exploited fault lines within the coalition.[50] As the wage system slowly enriched the urban working class, they dropped their support for a producerist single tax system (which would have supposedly established a Jeffersonian-style republic) and took advantage of their newfound ability to afford cheap cars to tour the countryside.[51] This put them at odds with farmers and gilnetter fisherman who retained producerist attitudes towards public lands.[52] Hal Rothman presented Western tourism in his Devils Bargains (1998) as a dual process of both the eventual shift from locally-owned to externally-controlled tourist markets and the objectification of the local identity, which understandably causes those who are toured to become resentful of it.[53] Thus, the democratization of tourist leisure paradoxically alienates the tourist from nature while bringing her in direct physical contact with it. Lipins dynamic combination of class issues and environmental behaviors may well become regarded as a seminal work in a new field of history.

Andrew Hurleys significant work Environmental Inequalities (1995) used class to explain the existence of competing environmental agendas in his history of the rise of post-WWII environmental movements in Gary, Indiana.[60] This history of Gary is valuable for its ability to demonstrate that a strong labor movement and a black political power movement presented environmental agendas that sometimes did and did not parallel with the emerging mainstream environmental movement during this period.[61] Ultimately, Hurleys analysis of the divisive tendencies of inter-class relations exposes the fragility and limitations of the postwar, liberal capitalist order.[62] Peck cautions historians to avoid relying on the theme of alienation from work and nature as a common ground, because the term can hold different meanings for both subjects.[63] Peck prefers the use of geographies of labor as a unifying, transnational theme to describe both the conceptual ideals and material realties of nature and work.[64] Lissa Wadewitzs regional history of salmon fishing in the Pacific Northwest is notable for its capacity to analyze the relative permeability of the land and water boundary between Cananda and the U.S. as an instrument of class competition.[65] The salmon certainly did not stop swimming at the international border. Peck ultimately offers that, the challenge for historians of nature and labor should not be to find identical or overlapping stories of declension or alienation, but to understand the many seams and dialectics between nature and labor that geographies of labor bring to light. In the final analysis, even the incompatibilities between environmental and labor histories are relevant to the attempt to forge a common bond.

Conclusion

Contemporary labor and environmental historians are capable of integrating their fields of research because they have produced common theoretical approaches to historical concepts and events concerning work and nature. The impetus to forge these links arose from actual historical alliances between the labor and environmental movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Even though this effort has begun recently, the commonalities between these two fields existed in a more muted form in environmental and labor histories that preceded this period. Likewise, many powerful yet invalid notions from these earlier eras persist both explicitly and implicitly in contemporary histories. Nevertheless, it is remarkable to note that several salient themes emerge from an analysis of the respective historiographies of these fields. An overwhelming majority of these histories, for example, treat the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as extraordinary turning point. Starting with the convincing notion that republican producerist working class and environmentalist inclinations gave way to an increasingly powerful capitalist system of consumption during this period, it would be helpful if one of the new integrations of labor and environmental history could address this time frame in depth. It is also important to tackle the impact of class and social marginalization upon the movements of these histories. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the Amerindians, Karl Marx and the recent author Richard White all saw man as an aspect of nature. Environmentalists should be wary of the impact that their views can have on their environmental histories, just as labor activists ought to exercise caution when they set out to write labor histories. The persistence of regionalism (especially in the emerging transnational form) as a methodological construct is both valuable and potentially limiting. Few of these integrated histories have managed to make solid national or global generalizations. Nevertheless, it is appears that the American West has been and will continue to be the natural home of efforts to find cohesion between labor and environmental history. Lawrence Lipins Workers and the Wild is especially promising.

A final thought

Finally, it is important to analyze historians themselves as workers. Although most historians might not prefer to admit it, their studies are biased towards a concern for the evolving present. After all, they either want to sell a book, stay employed or at the very least, remain relevant to the times. Fortunately for labor and environmental historians, the future appears to be favorable to these varying interests. Indeed, the forces of globalization will continue to radically change both the practice and the very concept of labor over the coming century. Perhaps even more imperatively, the almost certain advent of the serious (if not fatal) ramifications of global climate change will create a growing market for both environmentalists and environmental ideas. The integration of labor and environmental history may ultimately be a flawed union, but both the challenges and rewards of this effort will open up a world of historical possibilities that will only become ever more pertinent in the light and shadows of our impending future.

In an effort to encourage Americans to utilize renewable energy, President Carter ordered workers to install solar panelson the roof of theWhite House in 1979. President Reagan removed them in 1986. (Photo Source Unknown)

This knol was adapted from a term paper that I presentedin Professor Joseph McCartin's graduate seminar, entitled"U.S. Labor and Social History, "at Georgetown University in 2007. Donot reproduce this work, in whole or in part, without citing me as the source and providing a link to this page. None of the intellectual property on this page may be reproduced for commercial purposes without express written permission from the author.

Works Cited

Andrews, Richard N. L. Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History ofAmerican Environmental Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

Berman, Daniel M. Death on the Job: Occupational Health and Safety Struggles in theUnited States. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978.

Bunting, Robert. The Pacific Raincoast: Environment and Culture in an AmericanEden, 1778-1900. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997.

Daniel, Pete. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and RiceCultures since 1880. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985.

Dubofsky, Melvyn. Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865-1920. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1996.

Gordon, Robert. Shell No! OCAW and the Labor-Environmental Alliance.Environmental History 3(4) (Oct 1998): 460.

Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the AmericanEnvironmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993.

Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The ProgressiveConservation Movement, 1890-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.

Hurley, Andrew. Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race and Industrial Pollution inGary, Indiana, 1945-1980. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Jones, William P. The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workersin the Jim Crow South. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Johnston, Robert D. The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Questionof Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2003.

Lipin, Lawrence M. Workers and the Wild: Conservation, Consumerism, and Labor inOregon, 1910-30. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York: Random House, 1989.

Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. Forge Village, MA: MurrayPrinting, 1973

Peck, Gunther. The Nature of Labor: Fault Lines and Common Ground inEnvironmental and Labor History. Environmental History 11 (Apr 2006): 212.

Robbins, Roy. Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1942.

Rothman, Hal K. Devils Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998.

Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the AmericanWorking Class. New York: Verso, 1991.

Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962.

Wadewitz, Lissa. Pirates of the Salish Sea: Labor, Mobility, and Environment in theTransnational West. Pacific Historical Review. 75(4), (2006): 587.

White, Richard. Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?: Workand Nature. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature."William Cronon, Ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. NewYork: Hill & Wang, 1995.

White, Richard and William Cronon. Ecological Change and Indian White RelationsHistory of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb Washburn, vol 4 of Handbookof North American Indians, ed. William Sturtevant. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1988. 417-429.

Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American WorkingClass, 1788-1850.New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Endnotes

[1] Robert Bunting. The Pacific Raincoast: Environment and Culture in an American Eden, 1778-1900. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997. Page 1.

[2] Bunting 20. This work will be analyzed further in a later discussion of recent trends in the history of the Pacific Northwest.

[3] Roderick Nash. Wilderness and the American Mind. Forge Village, MA: Murray Printing, 1973. Page 264

[4] Nash 31. Winthrop spoke these words in 1629.

[5] Frederick Jackson Turner. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962. Page 3 (This chapter was originally presented as a paper in an 1893 meeting of the American Historical Association). He goes on to say that, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness (page 4). Although Turner clearly equates Indians with the wilderness, the imagery of following in their footsteps oddly prefigures more recent works that attempt to resituate environmental history within a broader context that includes the Amerindian.

[6] Turner 316-317.

[7] Richard White. Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?: Work and Nature. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. William Cronon, Ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. Pages 176-177.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Bill McKibben. The End of Nature. New York: Random House, 1989. Page 53.

[10] Bunting 4.

[11] Richard White and William Cronon. Ecological Change and Indian White Relations. in History of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb Washburn, vol 4 of Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William Sturtevant. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988. 417-429.

[12] White and Cronon 418.

[13] Bunting 15. This cross-cultural, cross-generational transfer of labor becomes even more ironic as Bunting notes that these fires promoted the propagation of the Douglas fir, which emerged as a staple of the eventual lumber industry.

[14] White and Cronon 423.

[15] Lissa Wadewitz. Pirates of the Salish Sea: Labor, Mobility, and Environment in the Transnational West. Pacific Historical Review. 75(4), (2006): 597. The value of Wadewitzs account as a transnational labor history of the environment will be addressed later in this essay.

[16] Roy M. Robbins. Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1942. Page 301.

[17] Samuel P. Hays. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. Page 262.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Hays 2-3. Here, he refers to it as the Theodore Roosevelt conservation movement to underline his point.

[20] Nash 163. This land use could be either produerist or capitalist in form.

[21] Richard N. L. Andrews Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Pages 104-105. This important act repealed some gratuitous, pro-lumber timber statutes and allowed the President to set aside forested lands for preservation.

[22] Sean Wilentz. Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Page 92.

[23] Robert D. Johnston. The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Page 74. The internal quotes come from Gerald Berk.

[24] Johnston 74-75.

[25] Johnston 75. He says that it was an alliance between small manufacturers and skilled workers [that] lay at the heart of the producers vision. He is again referencing Hattams words.

[26] David R. Roediger. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso, 1991. Pages 59-60.

[27] William P. Jones. The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Page 15.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Melvyn Dubofsky. Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865-1920. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1996. Page 92.

[30] Robert Gottlieb. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993. Pages 48-50.

[31] Daniel M. Berman. Death on the Job: Occupational Health and Safety Struggles in the United States. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978. Pages 4-5.

[32] Berman 6, 10.

[33] Robert Gordon. Shell No! OCAW and the Labor-Environmental Alliance. Environmental History 3(4) (Oct 1998): 461.

[34] Gordon 461, 462, 478, 479.

[35] Gunther Peck. The Nature of Labor: Fault Lines and Common Ground in Environmental and Labor History. Environmental History 11 (Apr 2006): 217. For Peck, Nature in [these stories is] not a dynamic ecosystem or a set of relationships within the nonhuman world, but a thing, a commodity with toxic power. The story of nature, as of labor, [is] largely one of alienation and degradation in these histories. Pecks rejection of alienation as a common theme between the two fields will be addressed later.

[36] Pete Daniel. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Pages xii, 3.

[37] Daniel 6-11.

[38] Daniel 9-11.

[39] Daniel xiii, 290-291.

[40] Daniel 291. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) acts as the main agent of this plan.

[41] Daniel 290.

[42] Daniel 295-296.

[43] White (2003) 178.

[44] Ibid. He goes on to declare (page 182): Environmentalists need to come to terms with modern work.

[45] Lawrence M. Lipin. Workers and the Wild: Conservation, Consumerism, and Labor in Oregon, 1910-30. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Page ix. Here, Richard Whites Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living? (2003) is referenced.

[46] Lipin x-xi. The referenced works are Robert Buntings The Pacific Raincoast (1997) and Robert Johnstons The Radical Middle Class (2003). Earlier, Johnstons basic theme of a shift from producerism to consumerism was laid out.

[47] Bunting 2, 157-158.

[48] Nash 163 and Bunting 157.

[49] Lipin 154 and xiii.

[50] Lipin 118 and 151-152. The Ku Klux Klan fomented some of this racial tension.

[51] Lipin 21-22, 151-152.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Hal K. Rothman. Devils Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998. Pages 11-12. Lipin accepts the plausibility of both of these tendencies (Lipin ix).

[54] White (2003) 172.

[55] White (2003) 182-184.

[56] White (2003) 183.

[57] Peck 214. This quote is of Marx.

[58] Peck 213.

[59] Richard White. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. New York: Hill & Wang, 1995. Pages ix, 44, 46.

[60] Andrew Hurley. Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Page 12.

[61] Hurley 13-14.

[62] Hurley 181-182. He finishes the book with an intriguing quote from the British philosopher, C. S. Lewis: what we call Mans power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

[63] Peck 214.

[64] Peck 214, 222.

[65] Wadewitz 590.