THE INDIANA HARDWOOD INDUSTRY: A STUDY OF SMALL BUSINESS ENTERPRISE (ENTREPRENEURSHIP, LUMBER, MARKETING, LABOR)
Abstract
The development of the Midwestern hardwood lumber industry provides a model for a study of the survival of sawmill and lumber company enterprises in a sector of the economy that remained dominated by small firms throughout the preindustrial and the industrial eras. This study of small businesses demonstrates both the importance of the hardwood lumber industry to the growth of local and regional economies and the vitality of small-scale enterprises as hardwood lumber entrepreneurs struggled to adapt to the requirements of an emerging national market. As revealed in the accounts of numerous mill journals and through the census data for Wabash County, Indiana, sawmills were an essential component of community settlement and growth on the Midwestern frontier. With an abundant resource and minimal entry requirements, hardwood-related crafts became the basis for a thriving local economy of artisans' shops and businesses. Centered in Indiana in the 1870s and 1880s, the hardwood lumber industry became the foundation for the furniture, vehicle, agricultural implement, and numerous other small industries, contributing significantly to the economic growth of most Midwestern towns and cities. Entrepreneurs in the hardwood lumber industry were usually persons who had grown up working in sawmills or wood-related trades and who often recruited other family members as an additional source of capital and management skills. These family-owned small enterprises continue to dominate the industry to the present. While as many hardwood lumber companies failed as succeeded, the experiences of these hardwood lumber entrepreneurs illustrate the historical and economic significance of small businessmen. In the strains of industrialization, sawmill workingmen who had formerly been skilled and valuable employees lost much of the workplace autonomy. The workingman's reaction to industrialization was reflected in different patterns of protest and accommodation depending on his location in either a small rural village/commercial town or an industrialized urban milieu. Through their own informal network of business relationships, hardwood lumbermen throughout the country eventually were able to rationalize a national market. Their opposition to scientific standardization and successful avoidance of governmental regulation is evidence of the strength of both their "hardwood ethic" and their small-business orientation.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
American history
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