The Spruce Production Division was a unit of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

established in 1917 to produce high-quality

Sitka spruce ''Picea sitchensis'', the Sitka spruce, is a large, coniferous, evergreen tree growing to almost tall, with a trunk diameter at breast height that can exceed 5 m (16 ft). It is by far the largest species of spruce and the fifth-larg ...

timber and other wood products needed to make aircraft for the

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' efforts in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. The division was part of the

Army Signal Corps The United States Army Signal Corps (USASC) is a branch of the United States Army that creates and manages communications and information systems for the command and control of combined arms forces. It was established in 1860, the brainchild of Ma ...

's Aviation Section. Its headquarters were in

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, and its main operations center was at

Vancouver Barracks Established in 1849, the Vancouver Barracks was the first U.S. Army base located in the Pacific Northwest. Built on a rise 20 feet (6 m) above the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) trading station Fort Vancouver. Its buildings were formed in a line adjac ...

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. Workers in the division were members of the

Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (LLLL), commonly known as the "Four L" (4L), was a company union found in the United States during World War I in 1917 by the War Department as a counter to the Industrial Workers of the World. History ...

, a union specifically established to support the army's wood production operations. The division produced nearly of spruce in just 15 months, halting work almost as soon as the war ended. Col.

Brice Disque General Brice Pursell Disque (July 19, 1879 – February 29, 1960) was a U.S. Army officer and businessman. He is best remembered for having headed the Spruce Production Division during World War I, for conceiving the idea of sending military tr ...

was then put on trial for accusations that he had wasted millions of tax dollars. He was found not guilty of malfeasance. The division had a large impact on logging in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

. Logging companies adopted working conditions similar to those the division had, and they took advantage of new logging roads and rail lines that the division had built to access more timber.

Activation

From the beginning of

, wood products were in great demand for war production.

was the most important tree species because its combination of lightness, strength, and resiliency was ideal for aircraft production. In addition, its long, tough fibers did not splinter when struck by bullets. Even before the United States entered the war, the

had become the main supplier of spruce for aircraft production in

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, and

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. Northwest lumber mills, however, were never able to meet Europe's demand for spruce.
This is based on a paper by Gail E. H. Evans that was presented at the Washington State History Conference held at Camp Murray, Washington, on 30 March 1984. The government wanted a monthly production of of spruce, but before the division was activated, only were produced monthly. When the United States entered the war in 1917, General

John J. Pershing General of the Armies John Joseph Pershing (September 13, 1860 – July 15, 1948), nicknamed "Black Jack", was a senior United States Army officer. He served most famously as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Wes ...

sent Brice P. Disque, a former army captain, to the Pacific Northwest to determine if local labor issues within the forest products industry could be quickly resolved. Disque met with mill owners and representatives of the

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines genera ...

, the union that was trying to organize loggers and sawmill workers in the Pacific Northwest. After studying the situation for several months, Disque determined that the long-standing labor management dispute could not be resolved without direct intervention by the army. Based on Disque's report, the United States Army Signal Corps was given the job of reorganizing the forest products industry in the Pacific Northwest to support United States war production. On 29 September 1917, Disque was brought back into the army as a lieutenant colonel and was assigned to develop plans for an army unit to produce wood products for the war effort. On 6 November, Disque was promoted to colonel and given command of the newly formed Spruce Production Division, a part of the United States Army Signal Corps. The headquarters of the new unit were in

Downtown Portland Downtown Portland is the city center of Portland, Oregon, United States. It is on the west bank of the Willamette River in the northeastern corner of the southwest section of the city and where most of the city's high-rise buildings are found. ...

, which was "the centre of the great spruce area of the Pacific Northwest," while the division's induction, training, and operations center was established at Vancouver Barracks across the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

in Vancouver, Washington, where it employed about 19,000 soldiers.

Production

Originally, the Spruce Production Division was authorized to induct 10,317 troops, including both officers and enlisted men. The Spruce Production Division quickly recruited several thousand experienced loggers and mill workers, many of whom were above the military draft age of 40. In May 1918, the division was authorized to grow to 28,825 personnel. Initially, both the mill owners and local unions were against the army's takeover of lumber production. The mill owners disliked having the army overseeing their businesses, and the unions saw soldiers' labor as a form of

strikebreaking A strikebreaker (sometimes called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the str ...

. Disque, however, called on everyone to support war production. He was also careful not to favor either owners or unions as he increased production, helping both sides achieve their goals. For the mill owners, military manpower kept mills open and running at full capacity; in addition, it prevented radicals from sabotaging facilities or equipment. The unions benefited because military rules stabilized wages and improved working conditions for loggers and sawmill workers throughout the Pacific Northwest. Among the improved conditions was a standard

eight-hour day The eight-hour day movement (also known as the 40-hour week movement or the short-time movement) was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses. An eight-hour work day has its origins in the 16 ...

. To counter the influence of union radicals in the Industrial Workers of the World, Disque sponsored an alternative union based on patriotism and labor–management cooperation. The new union, the

, was established in 1917 and put under the leadership of Portland attorney Captain

Maurice E. Crumpacker Maurice Edgar Crumpacker (December 19, 1886 – July 24, 1927) was a Republican U.S. congressman from Oregon. Early life Crumpacker was born in Valparaiso, Indiana in 1886, where he attended the public schools until his father, Edgar D. Crumpacke ...

, who would later serve as a

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. The union was initially opposed by both labor and mill owners, but due to Disque's strong advocacy, within six months nearly all of the mill owners had agreed to support the union; by October 1918, it had 125,000 members. In fact, the union lasted 20 years longer than the Spruce Production Division. Spruce Production Division railroad

The Spruce Production Division established approximately 60 military logging camps throughout the Pacific Northwest, usually near existing sawmills. While privately owned, these mills were operated under the direction of the army. On 20 December 1917, Disque reported that the division was only meeting 40 percent of the demand for spruce. He said that the production must be increased from to to meet the demand. In early 1918, the division opened a sawmill at Vancouver Barracks, the largest spruce sawmill in the world, "producing more than one million feet of spruce lumber each day." The mill complex covered and was operated by 2,400 soldiers from the division. The army also built sawmills in Coquille and

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, and in

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. A 3,000-worker community in Washington was designed as a

company town A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and re ...

by architect

Carl F. Gould Carl Frelinghuysen Gould (24 November 1873 – 4 January 1939) also spelled Carl Freylinghausen Gould, was an architect in the Pacific Northwest, and founder and first chair of the architecture program at the University of Washington. As the lea ...

. The townsite was laid out with bunkhouses, and with dining and recreation halls styled after Adirondack lodges. The division also built 13 railroads with over of track to link logging areas to sawmills. At the peak of construction, there were 10,000 soldiers building railroads in Oregon and Washington forests. All wire rope manufactured in the west, as well as anything shipped in, was controlled by the spruce division per Colonel Disque. As the ''

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'' reported in February 1918, "There was a serious shortage of wire rope when Col. Disque took charge of the spruce production campaign." The division lasted only 15 months, during which it produced a total of of spruce. It produced nearly for aircraft construction from Oregon forests alone. Before the Pacific Northwest began logging spruce for the war, much of the lumber came from the eastern United States, where production amounted to just 15 percent of demand. Logging techniques in the east were not as advanced or as efficient with wood. The network of roads and railroads that the division had built allowed for future development of the forests, which facilitated the growth of the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest for the remainder of the 20th century.

Demobilization

The armistice that ended World War I was signed on 11 November 1918. The next day, all Spruce Production Division logging ended, most construction projects were stopped, and sawmill operations were curtailed. Government machinery and equipment from all over the Northwest was shipped back to Vancouver Barracks, and division personnel were quickly discharged from military service. Over $12 million worth of logging equipment, sawmill machinery, and other property was eventually sold in a government auction. While the Spruce Production Division was quickly demobilized after the war, there was some post-war controversy over the cost of its operations. Disque, by then a brigadier general, spent months answering to charges that his division had wasted taxpayers' money.

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was particularly critical of the $4 million spent on an unfinished railroad located in the

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the ...

of Washington. Disque responded that it was to be used for transporting spruce lumber. Eventually, the charges proved to be unfounded. Disque was discharged from the army in March 1919 to be "appointed chairman of the export and import branch of the American International Corporation with headquarters at New York."
This article ends abruptly after the quote cited above.

Legacy

Lt. Col. Cuthbert Stearns compiled a history of the Spruce Production Division, ''The Spruce Production Division, United States Army and Spruce Production Corporation'', that was published in 1919. This detailed record of the division's operations helped General Disque defend the cost of spruce production in his debate with members of Congress. The

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holds approximately of records related to the division, as well as "a complete roster of all military personnel in the Spruce Production Division as of 1 November 1918." The effects of the Spruce Production Division continued long after the unit was demobilized. Not only did the division dramatically increase the production of forest products for the war effort, but the transportation network that it built helped open up Pacific Northwest forests to greater use in the decades that followed. In addition, the division's work rules became the standard for logging and sawmill operations throughout the Pacific Northwest well into the 1930s.

Footnotes

External links