BARTERTOWN

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 117, 13 November 1935, Page 22

BARTERTOWN

THE RISE OF COOXSAW

LABOUR FOR COMMODITIES

Up in the high Sierra country, 200 miles from San Francisco, lies the only community of its kind in the country —a lumber camp in which everyone is earning an interest for which no worker has paid out a cent, and where every worker receives the same wage, though paydays are unknown (writes Tom White in the "New York Times"). There are 120 persons, half of them men, the balance women and children, who in a geographic, social, and economic sense are living in a world apart; yet, strangely enough, their feet are squarely on the ground. They are not concerned with sharing the wealth, production for use, or 200 dollars a •month after sixty. They are concerned with the job of turning trees into lumber, and lumber into a hundred and one kinds of other goods and ai variety of services. To this end the forest is ringing to the rhythm of the cross-cut saw and the metallic whine of the log-eaters in the mill. ; This - community is called Coonsaw. The camp is the largest of several projects operated in Northern California by the Unemployment Exchange Association, known as UXA, and is now one year old. Most important to^ the UXA is the fact that the mill is now oh a production basis. To reach that point many brand-new ideas and a vast amount of economic pioneering had to be resorted to in order to provide food, shelter, clothing, and medical attention meantime, and to supply the countless items grouped under each classification —all on the basis of exchange. Born of the depression, UXA experienced a bitter struggle in its first year. Then the lumbering project was devised, and with it came certain modest ■grants of Government funds. The 44.,000-acre tract of pine, fir, and cedar was owned by a private lumbering concern that had had to suspend operatioris eight years ago. The timber was there, so was a camp, of sorts, and a twenty-six-mile railroad and equipment; but no mill. . j j OUTPUT RISES. First, a deal was made whereby UXA was to exploit the tract and turn over to the owners as their pay an agreed proportion of the cut. Then work started. Government funds having been earmarked for certain basic equipment, the money was spent for steam engines, sawing machinery and the like. At present the mill is cutting from 10,000 to 12,000 feet daily. With-the addition, last summer, of a pony-saw and gang-saw, the output will be stepped up threefold—and with it the organisation's trading power. Co.onsaw is an industrial ¥ centre where one's labour is measured and paid for in points, at the rate of 100 I per hour for every man, regardless of his duties. On an eight-hour basis a worker is credited with 800 points, from which is deducted 200 points daily for board, room, electricity, and fuel. Four hundred points monthly go to sustain the camp doctor and nurse. The balance is equivalent to a savings account. There are many ways of cashing in. For instance, if a man needs surgical attention or hospital treatment he is sent to Oakland, the home-office city, where" the UXA has set up credits— purely on an exchange basis —with certain physicians and surgeons whose homes have been painted, papered, or otherwise modernised, if not actually built, by competent UXA craftsmen; and these physicians and surgeons, many of whom have written off thousands of dollars in bad debts sines 1929, are indeed happy to effect an exchange of services for labour which, under any system, sirounts to the same thing in the end. LUMBER FOR COMMODITIES. Lumber in a variety of forms is a commodity for which a demand is constant; therefore the output at Coonsaw ; finds a ready exchange market. A potato grower in Stockton wants enough lumber to build a warehouse; an Orovills farmer needs fence posts; a cattle man must have two-by-fours and one-by-twelves for a new barn; and to mention only two of the larger exchange deals, a big San Francisco packing concern is willing to take a consignment of box shooks, and a sardine cannery is in need of lumber for plant extensions. In each case a deal is made on the basis of ths dollar-for-dollar value, figured at the ruling price—so much lumber at so much a thousand feet, for potatoes, onions, > beans, apricots, beef cattle, staple groceries, and canned sardines, at so much per unit. In the case of perishable foods received in excess of immediate requirements, the women "put up" the food for winter consumption, and for each canning work the women also receive 100 points an hour. Just as some nations have been forced to barter with others, so have UXA members whose status has been disturbed by . unemployment been forced to exchange their labour for life's necessities and a comfortable margin of points. Just as international barter frequently involves three and four countries before all demands' are satisfied, so barter in the UXA may fee far-reaching. RENT FOR DENTIST. Not long ago a dentist agreed to perform an extensive bit of work for an association member; but it was not until a contact man had evolved a plan with the owner for modernising two suites in the building in which the dentist's office was situated that the d,eal was consummated. The dentist received a receipt for rent paid three months in advance, which more than wiped out his bill against the UXA man for dental services. The cabins at Coonsaw are of the rough-and-ready type, but there are more than enough to go around. Wood stoves provide heat, and there is no limit to the fuel supply. Hot and cold showers are available twenty-four hours a day. Cooking and baking are carried on in the cook shack, and all meals are served in the community dining-room. Like the cabins, the fare is rough and ready, but wholesome, abundant, and clean. Money being unknown on Coonsaw, values are referred to in terms of points when the men line up at the commissary on Sundays for their tobacco and snuff, and the same applies even in a quiet little game of stud. It is remarked that in this sort of a community conversation seldom drifts toi wards theories evolved by Karl Marx.