Digital Bob Archive

The Great Depression was felt less in Alaska than in some parts of the country, but even in Alaska those were not good times except in the gold mining industry.
Sawmills were hard hit at first but recovered more rapidly than some other industries. The real blow to the three big sawmills of Southeastern Alaska, however, was the shift of the salmon canners from wooden to fiberboard boxes, made essentially of cardboard.

The Juneau Lumber Mills had entered the salmon box business in 1925 and averaged around 550,000 boxes a year with a high production of 750,000 boxes.
In 1931 the company started the year with an inventory of 155,000 boxes, according to Roy Rutherford, president and manager. He was able to sell 100,000 of these at below the cost of production, including 20,000 to the Libby, McNeill and Libby cannery at Taku Harbor.

The sawmill men did what they could to fight the paper box invasion and the Chambers of Commerce of Juneau, Wrangell and Ketchikan sent protests to the annual meeting of the canners' association. The Alaska Territorial Legislature adopted a resolution condemning the use of paper boxes and even toyed with the idea of passing a law prohibiting their use in Alaska.

It was futile. The depression had also hit the cannerymen, and the boxes were a matter of economics. The paper ones were cheaper in the first place, and it required less labor to prepare them.
Moreover, there was a saving of four pounds per case in weight, which added up on shipments of several thousand cases of salmon. The cannery people pointed out that they were getting only 85 cents a dozen cans for pink salmon and had to pinch every penny they could.

The Juneau sawmill employed only 50 men in 1931, ran for only 40 days instead of several months, and cut only two million board feet of lumber, the lowest production in nearly 20 years.

In 1933 C.T. \"Tom\" Gardner, one of the owners of the logging firm, Sawyer, Reynolds & Co., traded his interest in that firm for its stock in the Juneau Lumber Mills corporation. He became vice president of the company and its office manager. The following year Gardner bought an interest in the Juneau Logging Company, of which Roy Rutherford was already a part owner. The logging company supplied many of the logs for the Juneau mill.

Although the future of the Juneau sawmill appeared somewhat bleak in 1931, things brightened considerably in subsequent years. The canned salmon box business was gone, but tons of frozen halibut and salmon were still being shipped, in wooden boxes. The Alaska Railroad purchased a quantity of ties almost every year, and clear spruce was still in demand for airplane construction. Specifications for several new buildings in Alaska called for the use of Alaska lumber except for doors, sash and trim. The Matanuska project provided a big new market for lumber, starting in 1935, and that was soon followed by the beginning of the military build-up. By the end of the 1930s the Juneau Lumber Mills was receiving orders for about as much lumber as it could cut.