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Critical Issue
The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River
The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.
In this pioneering study, White explores the relationship between the natural history of the Columbia River and the human history of the Pacific Northwest for both whites and Native Americans. He concentrates on what brings humans and the river together: not only the physical space of the region but also, and primarily, energy and work. For working with the river has been central to Pacific Northwesterners' competing ways of life. It is in this way that White comes to view the Columbia River as an organic machine--with conflicting human and natural claims--and to show that whatever separation exists between humans and nature exists to be crossed.
In this pioneering study, White explores the relationship between the natural history of the Columbia River and the human history of the Pacific Northwest for both whites and Native Americans. He concentrates on what brings humans and the river together: not only the physical space of the region but also, and primarily, energy and work. For working with the river has been central to Pacific Northwesterners' competing ways of life. It is in this way that White comes to view the Columbia River as an organic machine--with conflicting human and natural claims--and to show that whatever separation exists between humans and nature exists to be crossed.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
41 people are currently reading
613 people want to read
About the author
Richard White
222 books131 followersRichard White is the author of many acclaimed histories, including the groundbreaking study of the transcontinentals, Railroaded, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and lives near Palo Alto, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
May 7, 2009
Salmon are fucked.
November 20, 2023
Really skimmed the last half of it but it has been really impactful as someone who lives in this region and relies on the rivers heavily from day to day (more than I had even realized)
May 27, 2014
This was probably my favorite of the short "river histories" I just got from the library. Probably I liked it best because it is by a historian I already enjoy, and so a little more up my alley, professionally. White's gist here is that the Columbia has always been an organic machine, from the days before white settlement of its watershed through the present era of hydroelectric dams and nuclear installations. When Native Americans controlled the river it was basically a salmon machine, the fish being pumped out to sea and then flowing back into the river, providing energy to the people who caught the fish every year, with different levels of food energy based on the fat the fish burned swimming up the river. When canneries took over, the river remained a salmon machine, but over time the take grew smaller. Today, the river is still a machine that produces fish, just different fish...it is no longer fit for salmon. Over time the energy produced by the river became hydroelectric energy from the dams, which provided power for the aluminum industry, and also water for irrigation, which fed a whole new agricultural regime. And so on and so on, the energy from the organic system of the river feeding into different regimes of power in the Pacific Northwest. White wants to emphasize that human activity on the river isn't unnatural - it's not like when it was producing salmon the river was an organic machine but when it is producing electricity it is no longer organic. The story always involves human interaction with the natural system of the river, the interaction just changes over time. White very effectively points out the crazy irony of human beings remaking the Columbia into a different river, unfit for its old salmon delivering system, and then spending enormous sums of money trying unsuccessfully to force the old salmon system back into a river that they had (quite consciously!) changed permanently.
February 5, 2018
This is an extended review of this important book of Pacific Northwest environmental history.
The first unusual thing the reader notices about Richard White’s book The Organic Machine is its size, just 130 pages. Equally unusual, but considerably more important, is the argument White puts forward in those 130 pages. Citing a fascination with both salmon and dams, White examines the history of both on the Columbia River through the lens of energy and work. In so doing, he attempts to bridge the gap between humans and nature in writing environmental history, consciously rejecting the reductionist philosophy of seeing nature in terms of property and human action in terms of discourse.
The story begins with a justification for using energy and work to describe the history of people, salmon, and dams on the Columbia. This is critical because in much of the world sees little connection in the relationship between humans and nature; most people rarely think of the power of nature except in cases of emergency and natural disaster. As befits the original inhabitants of the river, the story of the American Indians appears early in The Organic Machine. They connect to the Columbia through energy based on their use of the salmon. Exception for kokanee, salmon are anadromous, living most of their lives in the ocean where they feed and grow before returning to the Columbia to spawn and die. Because of this unusual life cycle, salmon provide a net gain in energy to the Columbia River system. They accumulate energy while feeding in the Pacific Ocean and transfer it to the Columbia by storing it as fat and muscle in their bodies. For several millennia, Indians living on or near the Columbia took advantage of this opportunity for energy gain, making salmon a primary part of their subsistence strategies.
With the arrival of traders and later settlers from the United States in the first half of the 1800s, this system of energy transfer did not change all that much. For these people, the connection between humans, the river, and energy was obvious. Traveling the Columbia took significant energy and understanding the patterns and flow of the river was just as important as the quality of the boat in terms of travel efficiency. Energy from salmon was also valuable to these newcomers. They took advantage of this resource, often appropriating the space of native people in the process, sometimes violently but more often after Indian numbers declined drastically due to disease epidemics for which they had no immunity.
By the 1860s, entrepreneurs from the United States had already begun to envision new ways of putting the river to work. They accomplished this first through the fish canneries erected on the banks of the Columbia. As humans increased their ability to store the salmon’s energy over long periods through canning, the benefits of this energy transfer spread further from the Columbia itself. By using steam engines and other mechanical devices to perform much of the work of canning, cannery operators dramatically increased the scale of energy use on the Columbia, substituting machine power for human work. The catching and slaughter of the fish became mechanized and impersonal with the advent of such devices as fish wheels. Soon, even fish propagation would come under human control as fish hatcheries arose on various tributaries of the Columbia because science viewed artificial propagation as more efficient than nature.
Man’s separation from nature on the Columbia was not yet total, however. Proof came from the intimate relations between the Columbia, the salmon, and gillnet fishermen who depended on the river for their livelihood. From the 1880s forward, as the runs of spring Chinook declined the canneries began canning all types of salmon. This increased the importance of the gillneters, who could now make a living almost year-round from their interactions with the river.
Ultimately, however, the manipulations of the canners and fishermen on the Columbia paled beside those of the dam builders. The first calls for federally built dams on the Columbia arose in the 1920s, and the final goal was the transformation and remaking of nature for the benefit of society. By harnessing control of the Columbia’s energy through hydroelectricity, dams would transform potential energy flowing “uselessly” into the ocean into a valuable addition to the human capacity to do work. The result would be “maximum utilization” of the river, in Herbert Hoover’s words.
In reality, the result of the dams was contradiction. Boosters billed public power as a “weapon against monopoly and political corruption.” (66) Instead the region ended up with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), “a public agency that exists to transmit electricity to markets and to create markets to which it can transmit electricity.” (60) The aluminum industry became the chief market for the BPAs power, using 40% of the energy produced by the Columbia system’s 26 dams by the 1970s. The effort to rationalize the Columbia even became international after the 1964 Columbia River Treaty with Canada. With the intertie connecting Columbia power distribution with California and dams producing power in Canada, the river became part of an organic machine extending from the Canadian Rockies to southern California.
Even this level of manipulation was not enough. The Hanford Nuclear Power Plant, begun during World War II, was the next step in harnessing the energy of the Columbia. Using the river to cool its nuclear reactors, Hanford used as much water as a city of 1 million people. Though primarily used to produce plutonium, the reactors at Hanford did generate electricity eventually. Unfortunately, they also generated toxic pollution that affected the environment in ways that planners did not foresee and could not control. Seeking to expand the ability of the Columbia to do work, Hanford complicated the organic machine in a way that was beyond man’s ability to completely control.
White concludes his story by returning to where it began, with people and salmon. Though salmon retained their symbolic importance, their role as energy producers on the Columbia declined to a negligible percentage. Grand Coulee Dam, completed in 1941, cut off 70% of all spawning grounds on the Columbia system. The inability of salmon to bypass this and other dams on the river ensured their decline. Yet, as White points out, the river itself had changed as well. “Today, the Columbia River system is no longer particularly suitable for salmon. What was once cool water has become warm; what was fast water has become stilled; what was once clean has become fouled; what was reasonably free of predators of young salmon has become full of them.” (90) Because of their symbolic value, society continues with efforts to help salmon, yet continually fails. White argues this is because “it was useless to appropriate millions to save the fish while hundreds of millions were appropriated for dams to destroy them. But, essentially, this was what would be done.” (96-97) Originally a central part of the Columbia’s organic machine, by 1940 the salmon became victims of the machine.
The greatest strength of The Organic Machine is its ability to look at a familiar subject in a new way. Other authors have written capably about the Columbia River and salmon, but White’s approach adds new scholarship and a new way of considering this topic. Readers in search of the role of politics, legislation, and individuals should probably look elsewhere because they are not the focus of the book. These things appear in the story from time to time, but throughout White sticks with his theme of seeing the Columbia in terms of energy. White is more interested in the big picture, seeing the river as a whole instead of examining its components singly. He has a strong argument. As American society moved towards greater technical efficiency and increased productivity it forced the Columbia to do the same despite the undesirable side effects like the loss of salmon. Throughout The Organic Machine, White writes in a clear style, and successfully explains some complex scientific processes such as how the water in the Columbia moves at different speeds based on depth, width, and elevation change.
Criticisms for The Organic Machine are minor, but a few are relevant. As is often the case, American Indians feature prominently in the opening chapter, but after disease thins their numbers and whites largely displace them as fishers, they quickly fade from view. While the point of the book is to consider the Columbia in terms of energy, more background information in certain areas, especially the Hanford Nuclear Plant, would be useful. Finally, the single and rather small map is insufficient for displaying the complexity of the river system; other maps showing topography or outlining the dispersal of the Columbia’s energy would have been appropriate. Despite these few criticisms, readers with an interest in environmental history, salmon, or the Pacific Northwest will likely enjoy The Organic Machine.
The first unusual thing the reader notices about Richard White’s book The Organic Machine is its size, just 130 pages. Equally unusual, but considerably more important, is the argument White puts forward in those 130 pages. Citing a fascination with both salmon and dams, White examines the history of both on the Columbia River through the lens of energy and work. In so doing, he attempts to bridge the gap between humans and nature in writing environmental history, consciously rejecting the reductionist philosophy of seeing nature in terms of property and human action in terms of discourse.
The story begins with a justification for using energy and work to describe the history of people, salmon, and dams on the Columbia. This is critical because in much of the world sees little connection in the relationship between humans and nature; most people rarely think of the power of nature except in cases of emergency and natural disaster. As befits the original inhabitants of the river, the story of the American Indians appears early in The Organic Machine. They connect to the Columbia through energy based on their use of the salmon. Exception for kokanee, salmon are anadromous, living most of their lives in the ocean where they feed and grow before returning to the Columbia to spawn and die. Because of this unusual life cycle, salmon provide a net gain in energy to the Columbia River system. They accumulate energy while feeding in the Pacific Ocean and transfer it to the Columbia by storing it as fat and muscle in their bodies. For several millennia, Indians living on or near the Columbia took advantage of this opportunity for energy gain, making salmon a primary part of their subsistence strategies.
With the arrival of traders and later settlers from the United States in the first half of the 1800s, this system of energy transfer did not change all that much. For these people, the connection between humans, the river, and energy was obvious. Traveling the Columbia took significant energy and understanding the patterns and flow of the river was just as important as the quality of the boat in terms of travel efficiency. Energy from salmon was also valuable to these newcomers. They took advantage of this resource, often appropriating the space of native people in the process, sometimes violently but more often after Indian numbers declined drastically due to disease epidemics for which they had no immunity.
By the 1860s, entrepreneurs from the United States had already begun to envision new ways of putting the river to work. They accomplished this first through the fish canneries erected on the banks of the Columbia. As humans increased their ability to store the salmon’s energy over long periods through canning, the benefits of this energy transfer spread further from the Columbia itself. By using steam engines and other mechanical devices to perform much of the work of canning, cannery operators dramatically increased the scale of energy use on the Columbia, substituting machine power for human work. The catching and slaughter of the fish became mechanized and impersonal with the advent of such devices as fish wheels. Soon, even fish propagation would come under human control as fish hatcheries arose on various tributaries of the Columbia because science viewed artificial propagation as more efficient than nature.
Man’s separation from nature on the Columbia was not yet total, however. Proof came from the intimate relations between the Columbia, the salmon, and gillnet fishermen who depended on the river for their livelihood. From the 1880s forward, as the runs of spring Chinook declined the canneries began canning all types of salmon. This increased the importance of the gillneters, who could now make a living almost year-round from their interactions with the river.
Ultimately, however, the manipulations of the canners and fishermen on the Columbia paled beside those of the dam builders. The first calls for federally built dams on the Columbia arose in the 1920s, and the final goal was the transformation and remaking of nature for the benefit of society. By harnessing control of the Columbia’s energy through hydroelectricity, dams would transform potential energy flowing “uselessly” into the ocean into a valuable addition to the human capacity to do work. The result would be “maximum utilization” of the river, in Herbert Hoover’s words.
In reality, the result of the dams was contradiction. Boosters billed public power as a “weapon against monopoly and political corruption.” (66) Instead the region ended up with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), “a public agency that exists to transmit electricity to markets and to create markets to which it can transmit electricity.” (60) The aluminum industry became the chief market for the BPAs power, using 40% of the energy produced by the Columbia system’s 26 dams by the 1970s. The effort to rationalize the Columbia even became international after the 1964 Columbia River Treaty with Canada. With the intertie connecting Columbia power distribution with California and dams producing power in Canada, the river became part of an organic machine extending from the Canadian Rockies to southern California.
Even this level of manipulation was not enough. The Hanford Nuclear Power Plant, begun during World War II, was the next step in harnessing the energy of the Columbia. Using the river to cool its nuclear reactors, Hanford used as much water as a city of 1 million people. Though primarily used to produce plutonium, the reactors at Hanford did generate electricity eventually. Unfortunately, they also generated toxic pollution that affected the environment in ways that planners did not foresee and could not control. Seeking to expand the ability of the Columbia to do work, Hanford complicated the organic machine in a way that was beyond man’s ability to completely control.
White concludes his story by returning to where it began, with people and salmon. Though salmon retained their symbolic importance, their role as energy producers on the Columbia declined to a negligible percentage. Grand Coulee Dam, completed in 1941, cut off 70% of all spawning grounds on the Columbia system. The inability of salmon to bypass this and other dams on the river ensured their decline. Yet, as White points out, the river itself had changed as well. “Today, the Columbia River system is no longer particularly suitable for salmon. What was once cool water has become warm; what was fast water has become stilled; what was once clean has become fouled; what was reasonably free of predators of young salmon has become full of them.” (90) Because of their symbolic value, society continues with efforts to help salmon, yet continually fails. White argues this is because “it was useless to appropriate millions to save the fish while hundreds of millions were appropriated for dams to destroy them. But, essentially, this was what would be done.” (96-97) Originally a central part of the Columbia’s organic machine, by 1940 the salmon became victims of the machine.
The greatest strength of The Organic Machine is its ability to look at a familiar subject in a new way. Other authors have written capably about the Columbia River and salmon, but White’s approach adds new scholarship and a new way of considering this topic. Readers in search of the role of politics, legislation, and individuals should probably look elsewhere because they are not the focus of the book. These things appear in the story from time to time, but throughout White sticks with his theme of seeing the Columbia in terms of energy. White is more interested in the big picture, seeing the river as a whole instead of examining its components singly. He has a strong argument. As American society moved towards greater technical efficiency and increased productivity it forced the Columbia to do the same despite the undesirable side effects like the loss of salmon. Throughout The Organic Machine, White writes in a clear style, and successfully explains some complex scientific processes such as how the water in the Columbia moves at different speeds based on depth, width, and elevation change.
Criticisms for The Organic Machine are minor, but a few are relevant. As is often the case, American Indians feature prominently in the opening chapter, but after disease thins their numbers and whites largely displace them as fishers, they quickly fade from view. While the point of the book is to consider the Columbia in terms of energy, more background information in certain areas, especially the Hanford Nuclear Plant, would be useful. Finally, the single and rather small map is insufficient for displaying the complexity of the river system; other maps showing topography or outlining the dispersal of the Columbia’s energy would have been appropriate. Despite these few criticisms, readers with an interest in environmental history, salmon, or the Pacific Northwest will likely enjoy The Organic Machine.
October 22, 2024
A slim volume (at only around 100 pages, it's more like an essay) that deeply rethinks the relationship between humans and nature.
April 28, 2008
The transformation of the Columbia River, from Lewis and Clark to the nuclear age, is documented with precision and insight in Richard White’s The Organic Machine. Although it is only 113 pages in length, White utilizes every word for maximum impact. The result is a brief but compelling look at the geographic, economic and social impacts that humans brought to the Columbia River. White argues that the relationship between humans and nature is far more ambiguous and complex than we can foresee, resulting in unexpected changes to the entire ecosystem.
White begins his examination with the arrival of Euro-Americans to the region, and the startling displays of nature they encountered. This is an effective introduction, as it reminds the reader of the power and majesty of the Columbia. In this modern age of dams and hatcheries, one can forget what an awesome force nature holds. This theme continues throughout Machine’s pages with great effect, reminding the reader not only of the majesty of the Columbia, but also its unpredictability.
But the taming of these forces—not an uncommon theme in environmental history—is only part of White’s story. He recounts how this river came to be utilized for human purposes with much more detail than engineering feats. White recognizes the role that labor played in the construction of dams, and what they cost in human lives. He also shows great historical understanding by citing the philosophies of Emerson and Mumford that drove nationwide endorsement of these projects. It was these shifting notions of the use of nature and it’s energy shaped national optimism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Fittingly, this is not just a book about humans, but the consequences of their actions on the entire ecosystem. The historical depth White uses to chronicle declining Salmon populations, not just in the river proper but all the way to Alaska, is downright impressive. It also provides a compelling argument about how interconnected humans are to nature through energy systems. As humans changed the river, the river changed how they lived and worked, and ultimately limited the energy that flowed through the Columbia. The reactions to these realizations are the most startling part of Machine, as White pays special attention to Nuclear power and its ramifications, from declining fish populations to human casualities.
Organic Machine’s brevity makes it an ideal read for undergraduates, and its depth will lend itself to graduate students also. Style is lacking, but only at the expense of clarity of White’s argument. But with only 113 pages, it’s curious why Machine lacks footnotes, which would act as excellent primary source material for graduate students. Also, illustrations could have added visual clarity to the images White conveys. But these are minor criticisms. The Organic Machine is a brilliant telling of how humans effected one ecosystems. But with just a little more, it could be a masterpiece.
White begins his examination with the arrival of Euro-Americans to the region, and the startling displays of nature they encountered. This is an effective introduction, as it reminds the reader of the power and majesty of the Columbia. In this modern age of dams and hatcheries, one can forget what an awesome force nature holds. This theme continues throughout Machine’s pages with great effect, reminding the reader not only of the majesty of the Columbia, but also its unpredictability.
But the taming of these forces—not an uncommon theme in environmental history—is only part of White’s story. He recounts how this river came to be utilized for human purposes with much more detail than engineering feats. White recognizes the role that labor played in the construction of dams, and what they cost in human lives. He also shows great historical understanding by citing the philosophies of Emerson and Mumford that drove nationwide endorsement of these projects. It was these shifting notions of the use of nature and it’s energy shaped national optimism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Fittingly, this is not just a book about humans, but the consequences of their actions on the entire ecosystem. The historical depth White uses to chronicle declining Salmon populations, not just in the river proper but all the way to Alaska, is downright impressive. It also provides a compelling argument about how interconnected humans are to nature through energy systems. As humans changed the river, the river changed how they lived and worked, and ultimately limited the energy that flowed through the Columbia. The reactions to these realizations are the most startling part of Machine, as White pays special attention to Nuclear power and its ramifications, from declining fish populations to human casualities.
Organic Machine’s brevity makes it an ideal read for undergraduates, and its depth will lend itself to graduate students also. Style is lacking, but only at the expense of clarity of White’s argument. But with only 113 pages, it’s curious why Machine lacks footnotes, which would act as excellent primary source material for graduate students. Also, illustrations could have added visual clarity to the images White conveys. But these are minor criticisms. The Organic Machine is a brilliant telling of how humans effected one ecosystems. But with just a little more, it could be a masterpiece.
October 3, 2012
I great little book, it covers the whole spectrum of the Columbia River basin and its history. Salmon, Labor, the nature of rivers, the history of dams, dreams of American equality, greed, mismanagement, and hubris on a massive man made scale.
December 26, 2024
Read on recommendation from U.S. on my flights to China basically. It’s supposedly about the Columbia River but more specifically about the salmon fisheries on it over the centuries, posed first through some metaphors about energy and then examined through the lens of an “organic machine” (ideas compounded by essays/writings by Emerson, Mumford, Guthrie, etc.). Feels novel to me, but very accessible. What was particularly poignant to me was seeing how the salmon fishing encapsulated way of life, a node on the web of culture and politics surrounding the region — but as the development of the river continued with the 19th century drive toward progress, 20th century economic and technological initiatives (such as nuclear power), salmon was neglected / became more of an abstract “resource” rather than a concrete, sustaining thing to me. Some amount of intellectual history in here. What struck me was that these conflicts were all about people preserving their own interests, and some issues sprung from genuinely good intentions. So it goes.
I was a little iffy about the energy metaphor but it’s actually really effective in capturing just the vibes and flow of the movement around the river. Visual and visceral.
I was a little iffy about the energy metaphor but it’s actually really effective in capturing just the vibes and flow of the movement around the river. Visual and visceral.
June 27, 2019
This succinct environmental history details human engagement with the Columbia River from the first contact of White people to the damming of the river to modern day conservation efforts. I was assigned it as part of a Sophomore College course I took at Stanford where we visited the Columbia River and made an effort to understand the interconnecting water and power systems, as well as their social, political, and environmental contexts. Although the book is a little dry and effusive, I finally went back and finished it last week.
I was inspired by White's ability to bring together the politics (New Deal, conflicting views on labor control and development), economic conditions (power and fishing industries), and philosophy (Emersonian naturalism, Lewis Mumford's ideas on technology) of the river. White also made efforts to bring in the plight of Native Americans (and the destruction of their traditions, lands, livelihoods, and rights), but his treatment often felt cursory.
The essential ideas of 1) work being the basis of human connection with nature and 2) environmental debates as theaters for social/political questions to be debated will stick with me.
I was inspired by White's ability to bring together the politics (New Deal, conflicting views on labor control and development), economic conditions (power and fishing industries), and philosophy (Emersonian naturalism, Lewis Mumford's ideas on technology) of the river. White also made efforts to bring in the plight of Native Americans (and the destruction of their traditions, lands, livelihoods, and rights), but his treatment often felt cursory.
The essential ideas of 1) work being the basis of human connection with nature and 2) environmental debates as theaters for social/political questions to be debated will stick with me.
Read
November 7, 2025Oh Richard White the man you are
Read
February 8, 2021i had to read for uni so no rating 😌
Read
August 5, 2022White's writing still annoys me but this one was alright.
Never trust a historian who's in love with his own metaphors.
Never trust a historian who's in love with his own metaphors.
January 9, 2024
literary masterpiece that just happens to be a history book.
February 20, 2025
"In treating the Columbia as a machine we have literally and conceptually disassembled the river. It has become to its users a set of separate spaces and parts. Fishermen see habitat. Irrigators see water. Power managers, utility operators, and those who run aluminum factories see reservoirs necessary to turn turbines. Barge owners see channels with certain depths of water. Environmentalists see brief stretches of free-flowing water. All stake a social claim to their part of the machine. None of them are concerned with the river as a whole. This is not simply a commodification of the river; our treatment of the Columbia has moved well beyond that. The river is not just water flowing through its original bed that has been divided up and apportioned among many users. Because the river has become an organic machine, a partial human creation, each of the groups claiming the river has created part of what they claim." (110)
"Mumford’s jeremiad against the megamachine recognizes that we treat nature as if it were literally a machine that can be disassembled and redesigned largely at will, as if its various parts can be assigned different functions with only a technical relation to other parts and functions. But the Columbia is not just a machine. It is an organic machine. Our tendency to break it into parts does not work. For no matter how much we have created many of its spaces and altered its behavior, it is still tied to larger organic cycles beyond our control." (111-2)
"As the century comes to an end, the river we have partially created changes before our eyes, mocking our supposed control. It changes, and as it changes, it makes clear the insufficiencies of our own science, society, and notions of justice and value. The Columbia runs through the heart of the Northwest in ways we have never imagined. It flows along the borders of the numerous divisions in our fractured society. To come to terms with the Columbia, we need to come to terms with it as a whole, as an organic machine, not only as a reflection of our own social divisions but as the site in which these divisions play out. If the conversation is not about fish and justice, about electricity and ways of life, about production and nature, about beauty as well as efficiency, and about how these things are inseparable in bur own tangled lives, then we have not come to terms with our history on this river." (113)
"Mumford’s jeremiad against the megamachine recognizes that we treat nature as if it were literally a machine that can be disassembled and redesigned largely at will, as if its various parts can be assigned different functions with only a technical relation to other parts and functions. But the Columbia is not just a machine. It is an organic machine. Our tendency to break it into parts does not work. For no matter how much we have created many of its spaces and altered its behavior, it is still tied to larger organic cycles beyond our control." (111-2)
"As the century comes to an end, the river we have partially created changes before our eyes, mocking our supposed control. It changes, and as it changes, it makes clear the insufficiencies of our own science, society, and notions of justice and value. The Columbia runs through the heart of the Northwest in ways we have never imagined. It flows along the borders of the numerous divisions in our fractured society. To come to terms with the Columbia, we need to come to terms with it as a whole, as an organic machine, not only as a reflection of our own social divisions but as the site in which these divisions play out. If the conversation is not about fish and justice, about electricity and ways of life, about production and nature, about beauty as well as efficiency, and about how these things are inseparable in bur own tangled lives, then we have not come to terms with our history on this river." (113)
April 16, 2013
Rather than following the declensionist narrative that had dominated earlier environmental history writing, The Organic Machine focuses on the energy flowing through the river, and how humans have interacted with it differently over time. The energy from the sun evaporated water from the Pacific Ocean, which when it falls on Cascades creates the physical force of the river. The salmon spawn in the river, then swim to the ocean where their feeding accumulates the energy rising through the food chain from the sunlight. Storing that energy as calories, the salmon return up river, sunlight as struggling animal contesting against sunlight as rushing water. Tapping into these sources of energy was as key to the human occupation of the river in the fifteenth century as it was in the twentieth. “By intercepting the salmon and eating them, other species, including humans, in effect capture solar energy from the ocean” wrote White. The Salmon were thus “a virtually free gift to the energy ledger of the Columbia. They bring energy garnered from outside the river back to the river.” Invoking Ralph Waldo Emerson’s vision of machines as tools that enmesh humans more fully into the natural world, and his concept of labor as a way of knowing nature, White’s history of the Columbia embedded the river in human history as a source of prosperity and conflict whose challenges illuminated the structure of the different societies attempting to use it.
From the communal fishing of early Indian societies based on the Salmon, some the densest populations in North America until the early nineteenth century, to the industrial processing of the fish by socially marginal immigrants in water powered factories that use the energy going up and down the river, the character of the human occupants was laid bare. In a conceptually sophisticated scene involving Rudyard Kipling’s visit to a fish processing factory, White amplified his the arguments of his essay in Uncommon Ground. Marveling at the fish wheel which scooped fifty pound salmon by the hundreds from the water in a brutal, mechanical harvest, Kipling reflected on the Chinese workers of the cannery, “blood-smeared yellow devils” who were living parts of the slaughtering machine. Then he stepped outside to the “thick growing pines and the immense solitude of the hills,” of what he considered a more authentic nature, and employed his leisure by fishing recreationally with line, hook and net as white tourists did.
The sophisticated machines that increasingly mediated human use of the river tended, to render the connection to the environment invisible. Where the first European visitors were, after many an agonizing attempt, unable to best the powerful current of river and proceed westward into the interior by water at all, steam powered transportation enabled more thoroughgoing use. “They took coal . . . stored energy captured by plants from the sun millions of years before, and used it to carry loads the river had once carried” White wrote. Despite being in some ways more intensely connected to the sun and the earth for that, both the natural elements that drove the engines, and the labor that connected humans to their operation, sank from sight. “Humans no longer rowed, towed, and hauled their way upriver; sweat and aching muscles remained, but they vanished below decks with the boiler crew” White argued. “Labor became obvious only at the points where nature was becoming machine or when nature halted the progress of machines” at rapids or the tidewater where cargo needed to be loaded and unloaded. “In this world of steam and white water it was human labor that sutured together the steam engines on the water and the steam engines on the rail.” Issues of whose interests the larger system was working in would dominate the twentieth century as more capital was invested in machines to tap the Columbia.
Political and economic battles between laborers and small time fishermen on the one hand and the owners of factories in the 1920s produced what, from a bird’s eye view appeared to be incoherent outcomes in river use. When over fishing and the closing down of the higher reaches of the river with small dams diminished salmon populations, businesses invested in special breeding facilities and regulators began shutting down fishing at certain times and places along the river. Small fishermen took to the ocean in small boats to catch salmon in the ocean, beginning to breaking a basic pattern that had held for centuries. The previous pattern had been one of regularity and bounty, indeed, “It was as if seed wheat left home in April to return as a field of grain in September. It was as if deer came walking through town every November . . . Each step of the process that led to this result was logical. It was only the result that was mad.” Such ironies, sometimes grimly, attended development. The system of dams built during the New Deal was supposed to make possible a democratic manufacturing society and an irrigation system for small farms through, in Woodie Guthrie’s words, “electricity runnin’ all around, cheaper than rainwater.” Well some of the dream was realized, the bulk of the electricity flowed to aluminum mills that employed comparatively few people. During World War II the electricity powered the shipyards of Portland, Vancouver and Seattle, and the secret project facilities at Hanford enriching plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, seeming to protect the citizens of the Northwest and their democracy. But the same Hanford facilities also spread nuclear toxins in the region under the veil of government secrecy, while within the vast secured perimeter that defended it from prying eyes a thriving de facto wildlife preserve came into being.
The lessons drawn from such developments depend ultimately on perspective, and it is amid the fragmentation of conflicting interests that White concludes his study. The salmon that previously provided the river with an economic base and cultural identity, which still served as a symbol of its “nature” prior to the dam construction, were severely diminished. “Today, the Columbia River system is no longer particularly suitable for salmon” White notes. But to say that there should be thousands of wild salmon passing upriver is to miss the point. The river the salmon evolved in no longer exists. This new river produces species like carp and shad instead, as a result of use of the river to produce lumber, cattle, fruit, aluminum and electricity. “Some would reduce the consequences to a cautionary tale of the need to leave nature alone” he wrote, “but to do so is to lose the central insight of the Columbia: there is no clear line between us and nature.” Accepting that the Columbia was and always had been an organic machine, the question was how to see it and direct it as a coherent whole. The river had become to its users “set of separate spaces and parts.” Fishermen saw habitat, farmers saw water for irrigation, those with a stake in electricity saw reservoirs, barge owners saw channels and environmentalists saw pockets of conserved riverfront, but no one was looking at the river as a united system. The machine, White argued, needed to be viewed in its totality before questions of its use could be properly decided.
From the communal fishing of early Indian societies based on the Salmon, some the densest populations in North America until the early nineteenth century, to the industrial processing of the fish by socially marginal immigrants in water powered factories that use the energy going up and down the river, the character of the human occupants was laid bare. In a conceptually sophisticated scene involving Rudyard Kipling’s visit to a fish processing factory, White amplified his the arguments of his essay in Uncommon Ground. Marveling at the fish wheel which scooped fifty pound salmon by the hundreds from the water in a brutal, mechanical harvest, Kipling reflected on the Chinese workers of the cannery, “blood-smeared yellow devils” who were living parts of the slaughtering machine. Then he stepped outside to the “thick growing pines and the immense solitude of the hills,” of what he considered a more authentic nature, and employed his leisure by fishing recreationally with line, hook and net as white tourists did.
The sophisticated machines that increasingly mediated human use of the river tended, to render the connection to the environment invisible. Where the first European visitors were, after many an agonizing attempt, unable to best the powerful current of river and proceed westward into the interior by water at all, steam powered transportation enabled more thoroughgoing use. “They took coal . . . stored energy captured by plants from the sun millions of years before, and used it to carry loads the river had once carried” White wrote. Despite being in some ways more intensely connected to the sun and the earth for that, both the natural elements that drove the engines, and the labor that connected humans to their operation, sank from sight. “Humans no longer rowed, towed, and hauled their way upriver; sweat and aching muscles remained, but they vanished below decks with the boiler crew” White argued. “Labor became obvious only at the points where nature was becoming machine or when nature halted the progress of machines” at rapids or the tidewater where cargo needed to be loaded and unloaded. “In this world of steam and white water it was human labor that sutured together the steam engines on the water and the steam engines on the rail.” Issues of whose interests the larger system was working in would dominate the twentieth century as more capital was invested in machines to tap the Columbia.
Political and economic battles between laborers and small time fishermen on the one hand and the owners of factories in the 1920s produced what, from a bird’s eye view appeared to be incoherent outcomes in river use. When over fishing and the closing down of the higher reaches of the river with small dams diminished salmon populations, businesses invested in special breeding facilities and regulators began shutting down fishing at certain times and places along the river. Small fishermen took to the ocean in small boats to catch salmon in the ocean, beginning to breaking a basic pattern that had held for centuries. The previous pattern had been one of regularity and bounty, indeed, “It was as if seed wheat left home in April to return as a field of grain in September. It was as if deer came walking through town every November . . . Each step of the process that led to this result was logical. It was only the result that was mad.” Such ironies, sometimes grimly, attended development. The system of dams built during the New Deal was supposed to make possible a democratic manufacturing society and an irrigation system for small farms through, in Woodie Guthrie’s words, “electricity runnin’ all around, cheaper than rainwater.” Well some of the dream was realized, the bulk of the electricity flowed to aluminum mills that employed comparatively few people. During World War II the electricity powered the shipyards of Portland, Vancouver and Seattle, and the secret project facilities at Hanford enriching plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, seeming to protect the citizens of the Northwest and their democracy. But the same Hanford facilities also spread nuclear toxins in the region under the veil of government secrecy, while within the vast secured perimeter that defended it from prying eyes a thriving de facto wildlife preserve came into being.
The lessons drawn from such developments depend ultimately on perspective, and it is amid the fragmentation of conflicting interests that White concludes his study. The salmon that previously provided the river with an economic base and cultural identity, which still served as a symbol of its “nature” prior to the dam construction, were severely diminished. “Today, the Columbia River system is no longer particularly suitable for salmon” White notes. But to say that there should be thousands of wild salmon passing upriver is to miss the point. The river the salmon evolved in no longer exists. This new river produces species like carp and shad instead, as a result of use of the river to produce lumber, cattle, fruit, aluminum and electricity. “Some would reduce the consequences to a cautionary tale of the need to leave nature alone” he wrote, “but to do so is to lose the central insight of the Columbia: there is no clear line between us and nature.” Accepting that the Columbia was and always had been an organic machine, the question was how to see it and direct it as a coherent whole. The river had become to its users “set of separate spaces and parts.” Fishermen saw habitat, farmers saw water for irrigation, those with a stake in electricity saw reservoirs, barge owners saw channels and environmentalists saw pockets of conserved riverfront, but no one was looking at the river as a united system. The machine, White argued, needed to be viewed in its totality before questions of its use could be properly decided.
August 26, 2020
Chapter 1 gives some intriguing connections between the work done by the river, and the work done by men to navigate the river, and the social organization necessary to perform the work. Work is the defining force.
This environmental history crams a great deal of social activity and conflict into it’s 113 pages of text. (The rest of this 130 page print edition is back matter.) It chronicles the change of the Columbia River from a salmon spawning and fishing ground, into what it is now, highly altered by man over the course of decades into something quite different, but still organic in ways we can only partially control and only partially understand.
The parties involved, their interests, understanding, and conflicts are identified. Results were quite different from what they claimed and expected.
Table of Contents
1. Knowing Nature through Labor
2. Putting the River to Work
3. The Power of the River
4. Salmon
* Biographical Essay
* Index
“The building of a dam did not produce a better world. The machine made new modes of life possible, but unless humans were already ‘better than the machine,’ they would be reduced to its level: ‘dumb, servile, abject, a creature of immediate reflexes and passive unselective responses.’” (Page 68)
“WPPSS was an astonishing failure, an amazing exercise in irresponsibility. But ... there was apparently no such thing as responsibility for failure. Donald Hodel, the head of the BPA, having left the agency in financial shambles and the power system in chaos, went on to become Secretary of Energy in the Regan administration.” (Page 80-81)
“The thyroid gathers up iodine 131. Arsenic 76, chromium 51, copper 64 and neptunium 239 gravitate to the lower large intestine. Manganese 56 goes to the upper large intestine. phosphorus 32 to bone marrow, sodium 24 to the bone surface in particular and the whole body in general; zinc 65 too, goes to the whole body.” (Page 87)
As always, man in his economic interest often does things that have unintended consequences that are quite different than the expectations of the conflicting parties. We don’t know what we are doing, but we do it with great passion anyway.
This environmental history crams a great deal of social activity and conflict into it’s 113 pages of text. (The rest of this 130 page print edition is back matter.) It chronicles the change of the Columbia River from a salmon spawning and fishing ground, into what it is now, highly altered by man over the course of decades into something quite different, but still organic in ways we can only partially control and only partially understand.
The parties involved, their interests, understanding, and conflicts are identified. Results were quite different from what they claimed and expected.
Table of Contents
1. Knowing Nature through Labor
2. Putting the River to Work
3. The Power of the River
4. Salmon
* Biographical Essay
* Index
“The building of a dam did not produce a better world. The machine made new modes of life possible, but unless humans were already ‘better than the machine,’ they would be reduced to its level: ‘dumb, servile, abject, a creature of immediate reflexes and passive unselective responses.’” (Page 68)
“WPPSS was an astonishing failure, an amazing exercise in irresponsibility. But ... there was apparently no such thing as responsibility for failure. Donald Hodel, the head of the BPA, having left the agency in financial shambles and the power system in chaos, went on to become Secretary of Energy in the Regan administration.” (Page 80-81)
“The thyroid gathers up iodine 131. Arsenic 76, chromium 51, copper 64 and neptunium 239 gravitate to the lower large intestine. Manganese 56 goes to the upper large intestine. phosphorus 32 to bone marrow, sodium 24 to the bone surface in particular and the whole body in general; zinc 65 too, goes to the whole body.” (Page 87)
As always, man in his economic interest often does things that have unintended consequences that are quite different than the expectations of the conflicting parties. We don’t know what we are doing, but we do it with great passion anyway.
November 10, 2025
White presents a thought provoking treatise on the Columbia River and the allocation (or perhaps more accurately competition) between its various users and uses and issues over the years. Salmon. Native Americans. Commercial Fishermen. Sport fishermen. Irrigation and farmers. Flood control. WWII and the Manhattan Project, Nuclear weapons and the Cold War. Power Generation and the BPA. The energy intensive aluminum industry and it's importance in WWII and beyond. Growing public demand for electricity. Barge transportation of goods. The list goes on.
White refers to The Columbia as an organic entity. He also considers mankind to be an organic entity of various uses, needs, traditions, beliefs, inventions, and intermingling politics surrounding the river. In his view, it's a complex web with no truly dominant part. The river and mankind are BOTH part of "nature." Together they are an "organic machine," or at least that's how I interpret it as I'm writing this.
5 stars for the concept, overall argument, and information presented. 3 (maybe 2) stars for the endlessly repetitive nature of his thesis. Others could summarize this book much better than I just did, but in my view it needed to be edited down considerably to improve its readability and clarity.
AS IS, the book proved to be an excellent bed time read because it put me to sleep fast while also being a book I'd continue reading the next night! That's a good thing. 🙂
White refers to The Columbia as an organic entity. He also considers mankind to be an organic entity of various uses, needs, traditions, beliefs, inventions, and intermingling politics surrounding the river. In his view, it's a complex web with no truly dominant part. The river and mankind are BOTH part of "nature." Together they are an "organic machine," or at least that's how I interpret it as I'm writing this.
5 stars for the concept, overall argument, and information presented. 3 (maybe 2) stars for the endlessly repetitive nature of his thesis. Others could summarize this book much better than I just did, but in my view it needed to be edited down considerably to improve its readability and clarity.
AS IS, the book proved to be an excellent bed time read because it put me to sleep fast while also being a book I'd continue reading the next night! That's a good thing. 🙂
October 25, 2025
In the absence of a comprehensive tome on the history of Columbia basin, this brief book had to do.
However, it is not a book in which you learn about the Columbia basin, it is a book in which you learn to philosophize about the Columbia basin. The good part is, it got me motivated enough for a big dose of collateral reading and now I actually feel like I learned something about the basin. For the bad part, if I relied only on the book, it would be all quite confusing and incomplete. The included bibliographical essay was probably great in 1994, and it is still valuable today; on the other hand, it is 30 years old and most of my side reading did not come from it.
As for the (Emersonian?) philosophical approach, I do not have a particularly high opinion about the arguments presented (if indeed we are to embrace human large-scale construction as a part of natural processes, why is the book basically only about salmon etc), efforts to improve or counter them were a part of my motivation. I probably expected more from this well-known author, but at the end of the day I left with a fairly intense learning experience.
However, it is not a book in which you learn about the Columbia basin, it is a book in which you learn to philosophize about the Columbia basin. The good part is, it got me motivated enough for a big dose of collateral reading and now I actually feel like I learned something about the basin. For the bad part, if I relied only on the book, it would be all quite confusing and incomplete. The included bibliographical essay was probably great in 1994, and it is still valuable today; on the other hand, it is 30 years old and most of my side reading did not come from it.
As for the (Emersonian?) philosophical approach, I do not have a particularly high opinion about the arguments presented (if indeed we are to embrace human large-scale construction as a part of natural processes, why is the book basically only about salmon etc), efforts to improve or counter them were a part of my motivation. I probably expected more from this well-known author, but at the end of the day I left with a fairly intense learning experience.
Read
August 6, 2023This book was pretty interesting. It goes over a history of the Columbia River, and how it has changed in purpose and function over the years. It talks about how everything is ultimately a matter of energy transfer: the sun powers the river, salmon eat plants powered by sun, humans catch and eat salmon, humans build dams on river, humans build nuclear plants by river... It was interesting to see how these energy relations have changed over time. One of the main ideas of the book is that humans are not separate from nature, that the river has not become "unnatural" as work has been done on it over the years, because humans are nature and everything we do leads back to this. Native Americans who worked the river, and earlier white fishermen, understood this connection. Even though it seems more disconnected now in the age of dams and salmon hatcheries and mechanized processes, this is all happening because of nature, and it is worthless to have this arbitrary division between humans and nature.
May 20, 2022
The fifth star of this review comes largely from the proximity this book's subject matter has to me- i grew up along a major tributary of the Columbia, and in the range of its influence, therefore the subject matter was extremely compelling to me. While it is perhaps not as ecologically radical in its treatment of the river as i find myself to be, this is far from some bland middle-of-the-road analysis, and in the sweep of its survey has information and conclusions that are jarring and novel even now, leaving me having to reconsider and contemplate my approaches to environmentalism, historical materialism, and even living itself as relates to the web i am entangled in. This is the effect i would hope any good book achieves. The depth of study here is enthralling and i hope i can one day visit the UW library and read the fully annotated version of this text as well. Highly recommended for both denizens of the upper left united states as well as any ecologically compelled readers.
January 27, 2018
A cool materialist look at the Columbia River, foregrounding energy and work done by both humans and natural processes. As a humanities trained reader, I liked the way scientific concepts were explained. I did not like the way human issues (e.g., indigenous people vs. white settlers, gender) were treated.
November 27, 2018
Looks to be a great little environmental and aquacultural history of the Collllumbia! How fun. Fascinating to see places I traveled to this summer described in detail throughout the decades from the 19th to 21st centuries, I only got halfway through for Animal Biocapital but this was a great resource.
September 18, 2021
A masterclass in micro-history. White's stylings are dry but well put together and well written. Through using multiple lenses of observation, it is informative, interesting, and beautifully composed. This is absolutely one of my favorite pieces of environmental history, as well as an example of micro-history.
September 16, 2022
This is an amazing book and the story of the Columbia River is compelling. Richard White is a world class historian and writes like a good fiction writer, clear, excellent style and completely enthralling, no bland history this. I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a mild interest in the Columbia River or in the general issue of how humans impact nature.....
March 14, 2025
So fantastic, actually groundbreaking read that literally reshaped the way academics write environmental history. Honestly a masterpiece. That being said, I was sooooooooo borrreeeedddddd. I don't care about dams or salmon or labor; I know they are incredibly important I just don't like reading about them. I am so so sorry Mr. White.
August 29, 2019
A quick reason that tells a bit of the back story of the dams of the Columbia river and the author's view about all the competing interests (electricity demands, shipping, fishing, environmentalists) have waxed and wanted to create this Organic Machine we have today.
April 1, 2021
Detailed, intensive environmental history of the Columbia River - I knew nothing about the Columbia River before this, and I appreciated the thorough background. Still digesting the author's arguments about the "organic machine" and the relationships between humans, nature, labor, energy, etc.
May 18, 2022
This is a book! Plenty of relevance for the human-environment interaction throughout human history, was the river 'domesticated'? Plenty of good research and inspiration for us working in environmental archaeology.
October 5, 2023
Concise, but for me what made it a good history book was its introduction and its careful attention to language. Work and power kind of sum up the whole book and White knows it. Got lost here and there but overall worth a reading.
August 28, 2024
excellent research
I loved this book so much even though the outcome of man’s destructive ego is sad. I think about the extreme difficulty restoring the Klamath basin is proving to be. And the reality is the mighty Columbia is no more.
I loved this book so much even though the outcome of man’s destructive ego is sad. I think about the extreme difficulty restoring the Klamath basin is proving to be. And the reality is the mighty Columbia is no more.
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