Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest

by Jason L. Newton

290 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2024

Reviews

[Angus McGregor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read Newton's study of lumberjacks in the northeast for an honours book review assignment. Reading an academic monograph in full was a humbling reminder of how much research goes into professional history.

Through an exhaustive study of scientific reports, government investigations, newspapers, letters, oral histories, business records, and folklore, Newton paints a grim picture of how what he calls 'cutover capitalism' transformed the forest environment and the bodies of the workers cutting down the trees.

A great strength of Cutover Capitalism is the description of the work itself. How workers scouted, cut, sorted, and transported logs across entire states was, at times, mesmerizing.

While Newton spends a lot of time thinking about how industrial capitalism shifted how the loggers saw and performed their class, missing from this study is how contested the takeover of the forests was.

Scattered across the chapters are mentions of protests, squatters, and arrests without much analysis of how resistance from workers shaped the economic and social trajectory of the industry.
This bugged me because the sources were there, and Newton makes an effort to demonstrate the knowledge and agency loggers displayed in their work.

Thanks also to my wonderful boyfriend's thesis for helping me better grasp the theoretical basis of environmental labor history!

[Sandra Collins · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was drawn in by the premise of Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest, but the execution was disappointing. The prose is dense, repetitive, and poorly structured, with the author circling the same points without adding new insight. Rather than telling an engaging environmental or social history, it reads like an academic analysis that’s difficult to stay engaged with. This may work for researchers or forestry historians, but for a general reader it’s a slog. Surprised it made it through the publishing process.