Hard Times in Paradise

William G. Robbins is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History at Oregon State University. He is the author of Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800-1940 and Landscapes of Conflict: The Oregon Story, 1940-2000, among other books.

• Map 1 Coos County, Oregon Map 2 Coos Bay area Prologue to the Revised EditionPreface to the Original EditionIntroduction1) Poor Man's Paradise2) An Empire Itself3) The "Big Mill" and Its World4) Logging the Coos Timber5) Getting By6) Surviving the Great Depression7) The Second World War8) Lumber Capital of the World9) Timber Fever10) Bosses and Workers11) Hard Times and SurvivorsPost Mortem: Reflections on the Present ConditionEpilogue to the Revised EditionNotesIndex

"Relying heavily on interviews with residents of the Oregon coast, Robbins focuses on the social history of a community and the impact on it of outside forces. He examines workers, work and living conditions, technologies, unemployment, and ways of surviving joblessness. He explores the rise and decline of labor unions and writes of mills--as well as of woods and of small firms (the "gyppos") and the giants such as Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific." Richard S. Kirkendall, Western Historical Quarterly "Historians will find this study useful in its survey of the southern Oregon timber industry, in its indictment of the unwise exploitation of resources in the West, and ... as a model for a study that can be read and appreciated by those who matter most--the people who are the history." Allan Kent Powell, American Historical Review "Both scholars and general readers will find this book a cogent microcosmic chronicle of Oregon's leading industry told in very human terms." Craig Wollner, Oregon Historical Quarterly