"The Work Ethic" (1996-04-09)

              THE WORK ETHIC*
On the western slope of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, a
recent confrontation raised again the question of the work ethic.
A new logging law, typical of those passed in the last few years of
total deference to corporate interests, has made available for
cutting one of the few last stands of ancient trees. Many stands
already have been clear cut since the election of 1980 closed the
door on the great environmental tradition set by Theodore
Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and John Muir.
In the confrontation, a logger put the issue squarely. He was
representing the public opposition to clear cutting the remnant
stand.  He had grown up and spent his life working in the old
trees, and now he represented the preservation agencies. He wanted
selective cutting to preserve enough of the growth to secure the
interests of coming generations.  He spoke sympathetically of the
company loggers - many of them his boyhood friends - in a recent
interview:
"A lot of their identity and pride was tied
up with working in the woods, and timber's
been a part of the Northwest for a long time.
That was, in my mind, something that was
supposed to go on for generations."
Then he made - referring to those company loggers who were going
ahead to clear cut the area - the critical point in respect to the
work ethic:
"People tell me they've got to do their jobs.
I've got a job to do, too, but there are some
jobs you just don't take."
I
*By Franklin H. Littell, Union (M.Th., 1940), Yale (Ph.D., 1946),
an elder in the United Methodist Church and a retired Professor of
Religion at Temple University