_REVIEWS WORKERSAND THE WILD: CONSERVATION, CONSUMERISM, AND LABOR IN OREGON, 1910-30 byLawrenceLipin University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2007. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 248 pages. $25.00 paper. $60.00 cloth. Workers and theWild explores the evolving conception of nature embraced by the twenti eth century laboring class, using Oregon as an exemplar. Lawrence Lipin discovers thatviews of nature among the social classes mirrored differencesof ideology and that,in many ways, the long running conflictover theenvironment thathas occupied somuch of the contempo rarypolitical discourse has been not justa story ofpolicy differences. Rather, ithas been in large measure a function of class politics rooted in early-twentieth-centuryvalues associated with theconflictingperspectives of the working and affluent middle and upper classes. Wealthy Oregonians of the early-twentieth century were fightinga rearguardaction against the encroachment of economic demand on their recreational preserves. Lipin quotes Portland banker Abbott L. Mills's 1919 letter to the state game commissioner, warning that a recent outing to theBend area revealed that his favorite trout lakewas under siege from new, cheap resorts catering to timber workers who fished with bait. The lake, he asserted, must remain a paradise for the discriminat ing (upper class) "men who love fly casting," meaning that it would be necessary "to close it tobait fishing"or, inotherwords, to members of theworking class (p.i). Meanwhile, the "producerist" ethic of the lower classes was atwork during theProgres sive era, relentlesslyattempting to subvert the dreams ofmen like Mills. The small produc ers ? workers, lower-middle-class artisans, farmers,fishermen, businessmen ? believed that theyshould own the fruitsof their labors and that thepolitical process should be open, egalitarian, and fair for all. This meant that nature and its resources, the basis of concentra tionsofwealth and power, should be accessible to themas theirbirthright.Lipin focuses on the struggle ofOregon s union movement under theOregon State Federation of Labor (OSFL) and ruralorganizations liketheGrange, aswell as fishermen and otherswho eked out a living innature, to achieve the dream of a "Produc ers' Republic." In time, however, he notes a sea change in the attitude of the producers toward nature and itsuses. Lipin describes the transformation in the values of the laborite organizations, their members, and unaffiliated workers that animated an evolving view of nature and what todo with it in the 1910sand 1920s. It was thistransformation,hewrites, that eventuated in the embrace by the labormove ment of a consumerist attitude toward nature, an attitude not unlike that of the capitalists theyopposed, as itbecame clear thatthere were economic aswell as social benefits to exploiting nature for recreational purposes. The strategylabor and itsfriendsfirstpur sued concerning theenvironment during those decades was based on the assumption that a more just economic order could be achieved by breaking the stranglehold land specula torshad on rural and urban spaces. Opening land and resources to development would lead to increased exploitation of resources which, in turn,would result in an increased demand for labor, thus ending the periodic plague of unemployment while also lifting wages. A chief allywas William S.U'Ren, who campaigned energetically forHenry George's single tax ? where the only taxwould be on land, because profits from renton it resulted from no labor of the owner ? a core idea 330 OHQ vol. 109, no. 2 for the vision of a producers' republic. Over time, U'ren's crusade lost its power to move workers, but not because they lost sightof the ideal it represented. Rather, risingwages and the introduction of new technologies during the 1920s, especially the automobile, margin alized it. Workers particularly esteemed the liberating effectofHenry Ford's automobiles. Ford's revolutionary ideas about assembly-line production and employee relations combined scientific management with Progressivevalues, setting wages high enough for workers tobuy his efficiently manufactured cars. Buying cars led tomore leisure,which, in turn,opened up the possibility that the lower classes would have themeans and time to relate tonature in somewhat thesameway thattheaffluentalways had.Now, nature truly would be accessible and, at themargins at least, itneed not be totally dedicated toproduction. This isa generally excellentbook, imagina tive,well documented, and clearly written. Lipin has shone a bright lighton the mechanics of a key aspect in thedecline of theProgressive impulse...