A recent visit to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site took me to the museum inside the former airplane hangar at Pearson Airfield. This, one of the early hubs of military aviation in the Pacific Northwest. Besides the airplanes on display, there is a magnificent model of what was the world’s largest sawmill in 1918. On the wall surrounding the model are panels explaining the unique story of the Spruce Production Division. This unit encompassed over 100,000 men by the end of WW1 in one of the lesser remembered episodes of the war. Hanging on the wall is the haunting portrait of the commander of the Division – one Brice Disque.
Brice Disque was one of the many officers seeing rapid advancements in rank during WW1. He moved from captain to brigadier general in a under a year. After spending fourteen years as a captain, the rise dizzying. His energy and ability to accomplish extremely difficult tasks were equal to the meteoric journey.
BEGINNINGS
Brice Disque was born in California, Ohio just east of Cincinnati in 1869. As a young clerk working in a wholesale grain business, Disque enlisted in the newly expanded US Army in 1899.
splendid little war
The Spanish American War fought the year previously. That war had been fought mostly with State volunteers augmenting the regular army. Volunteers from the Western States comprised most of the expedition sent out in three little fleets to the Philippines during the summer of 1898. The force needed to follow up Commodore Dewey’s defeat of the Spanish Philippine fleet of 1 May.
The American force went on to occupy Manila in August when the Spanish surrendered in August. An equal force in size of Filipino insurrectionists were kept outside the city while politicians a world away decided what to do with the archipelago next.
one war to another
A native insurrection against Spanish government had been ongoing in the Philippines since 1896 led eventually by a local landowner from Cavite, Emiliano Aguinaldo. Spanish gold and amnesty bought a truce in 1897. Aguinaldo decamped with several of his lieutenants to Hong Kong under the terms of the truce to await better times.
Those better times came, supposedly, with the Americans. When McKinley decided to keep the islands rather than let some other country intervene. By doing so, he set up the storm to come. Fighting between the American and Filipino forces broke out 5 February 1899 leading to the Philippine-American War which would last until 1902.
Most of the initial fight fought by volunteers from the different States – Oregon, Washington, California, Minnesota, Colorado, Kansas, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, Montana, Utah and Pennsylvania with a couple of regular regiments thrown in for good measure – 4th Cavalry, 14th Infantry and some artillery units. The little American army pushed the Filipino army away from Manila, but the war was far from over still by the time the one-year date was up for the volunteers to go home.
a new army
President McKinley realized that if the United States was going to stay in the Philippines for the long haul, he would have to expand the forces from their current pre-Spanish American levels – 2,143 officers and 26,040 enlisted men. The regular army was brought up to nearly 65,000. Another 125,000 volunteers signed up from the States for a period of one year or until the end of hostilities. Supposedly, the volunteers were part of the State militia, but most were inexperienced in all aspects military.
To address the problem, the Army Act of March 1899 created twenty-five new federal volunteer regiments to create a new army of 65,000 serving a two-year enlistment – increase of 35,000 – until July 1901 – the increase solidified with another Army Act at that time. While the additional volunteers were not to come from state forces, many of those men signed up when their militias released them back in the US. Many more were new recruits who had missed out on the last war, wanting to get in on the new one. One of those men was young Brice Disque.
PHILIPPINE ADVENTURE
Disque enlisted as a private in the new 47th Infantry Regiment. After initial training, he went, now as a second lieutenant in Company E, to Sorsogon in the province of Bicol in the far southeastern part of the island of Luzon. His platoon was responsible for the capture of Filipino Colonel Emeterio Funes who surrendered 21 February 1901 along with 200 of his soldiers.
As a reward, Brice Disque mustered out of the 47th – a volunteer federal unit – to take a regular army commission as a second lieutenant in the 5th Cavalry and a little over a year later – September 1903 – he transferred to the 3rd Cavalry where there was a first lieutenant billet. Disque would serve as a first lieutenant for the next thirteen years.
Before leaving the Philippines, he served during 1902 in charge of a military prison with around 1,500 Filipinos and some 50 court-martialed American soldiers. He kept the prisoners busy working making bamboo and rattan products for sale. His experience would come in handy fourteen years later in Michigan.
CAREER OFFICER
He spent 1904-1905 at the Infantry and Cavalry School where he graduated with distinguished honors. Next, in 1905-1906, Disque completed the Staff Course writing his thesis on The Suspension of the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus in the United States. He spent much of his time as a lieutenant training National Guard units.
1915 saw Disque back in the Philippines in charge of a facility responsible for manufacturing and repairing equipment such as wagons and harnesses. He introduced cost accounting and worker bonuses while expanding his work force by recruiting prisoners from nearby prisons and stockades. The work force went from 100 to 2,000 and the increase in production was quickly greater than what the Army needed. By contracting his force for civilian jobs, Brice Disque gained profits for the government. Returning to the US, he spent time with his regiment patrolling the US-Mexican border in Texas.
CAREER CHANGE – THE NEW WARDEN
In late 1916, finally a captain but stuck now in the Quartermaster’s Corps, Disque resigned his commission to become warden of the Michigan State Prison with the help of National Guard officers with whom he worked with earlier. His main emphasis there was to get prisoners – some 1,200 men – working enough to have the prison making a profit without needing financial aid from the state. To give the prisoners incentive, Disque improved their living conditions.
His plans at the prison brought into contact with local labor unions – labor unions were in general hostile to prison labor. He hoped to start a foundry to serve needs both in and out of the prison. Disque was able to get the local union to go along with his plan. At the same time, he got an invitation from AFL president Samuel Gompers to present his plans at the next AFL convention.
TROUBLE BREWS OUT WEST
His career as a jailer was not long though with the United States joining WW1 in April. Brice Disque volunteered to rejoin the army looking to go to Europe with a field command. His application came across the desk of James Harbord, the chief of staff for General John Pershing. Pershing saw Disque as the perfect man to help solve an industrial problem in the Northwest stymying the allied war effort. Pershing’s urgings persuaded Disque to stay as a civilian, educating and monitoring labor strife in the Pacific Northwest.
TREE OF FLIGHT
For aircraft production in the early 20th century, Sitka Spruce was seen as the best product to use, light and strong. Sitka Spruce grows in a thin strip 50 miles inland from the sea from northern California to the panhandle of Alaska. Before WW1, it was not seen as a primary target for the local timber industry. The trees normally grow in mixed stands. Sitka Spruce has to grow fast and high to survive. They can grow to great size. Quick growth – after the initial years of slow growth – leads to little branching lower down which equals less knotting. Being a specialty wood and the few pure stands easy to get to, the stands of Sitka Spruce were not seen as important – before WW1.
With entrance into the war, the Council of National Defense spun off the Aircraft Production Board in August 1917. In charge of a native development of military aircraft – the US entered the war with only 132 obsolete aircraft – they put out a quota of 10 million board-feet of spruce lumber needed per month. Due to labor strikes and timber companies cutting other trees easier to access and of higher value, with only a fifth of the quota reached.
In the meantime, Charles Sligh, a furniture manufacturer from Michigan, came out, sent by the Army to the Northwest to investigate and further report on the problems with labor and difficulties in obtaining Sitka Spruce. He spent most of his time in his office at the War Department in Washington, DC, but ventured west on occasion.
DISQUE GOES TO WAR
After spending at fretful summer at Jackson, Michigan, orders finally came for Brice Disque to report to Washington, D.C. as a newly commissioned lieutenant colonel. On 1 October, Disque reported to the War Department where War Secretary Newton Baker officially sent him to the Northwest to re-open the flow of aircraft-grade spruce lumber for factories in the east.
Disappointed not getting a combat assignment in France, Disque later wrote, “Nothing less than a great national emergency could have persuaded me to undertake a duty in time of war six thousand miles from the battlefront.”
LABOR AND LUMBER
By 10 October, Disque was in Seattle to tour logging camps and mills to better understand the problems he was facing. He became more sympathetic towards working conditions deciding a new approach needed to increase spruce output.
Two labor organizations had been involved in negotiations and strikes in the Northwestern forests. The Industrial Workers of the World, IWW also known as the Wobblies, threw the most weight as opposed to the American Federation of Labor, AFL. The IWW aimed at being “One Big Union” as opposed to the more skilled job category of unions who were part of the AFL movement. Many of the founders of the IWW – people such as Eugene Debs – also pushed ideas of socialism forward as opposed to the AFL which accepted capitalism.
The IWW was very successful with their branch, Lumber Workers Industrial Union, in the forests and mills of the Northwest. An IWW-led strike in the summer of 1917 shut down the timber industry, scaring the lumber barons into calling for government intervention.
ENTER THE SPRUCE PRODUCTION DIVISION
Brice Disque called for a new Army unit – the Spruce Production Division, SPD – to increase spruce output. Troops with forest or mill experience would augment civilians in getting out the spruce and also for use to suppress radicals if necessary. In concert, Disque would push employers for better working conditions – food, safety, housing, health care. He was amenable to creating an eight-hour working day, an important item which led to the IWW 1917 strike. Some lumber capitalists were wary of some of what Disque called for thinking he leaned to far too the IWW.
The newly promoted colonel also pushed for the creation of an organization – the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen or 4L – combining employers and employees under an Army umbrella to diminish the shine of the IWW. Secretary Baker wanted Disque to clear his idea of an SPD with Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL. Gompers hoped Washington would mandate an eight-hour day on the lumber industry in order to dim the appeal of the IWW. Gompers already knowing a bit about Disque saw the SPD as a way to forward AFL interests. There was also a promise to promote his grandson, a private, to second lieutenant. So, he agreed to an SPD where soldiers working in civilian companies would get the same pay as civilians minus their Army pay. And soldiers would only be used when there were not enough civilians to be found.
SPD BECOMES REALITY
The SPD became a reality late in 1917 – Sligh by this time was back in charge of furniture. Brioce Disque got the industry to voluntarily agree on an eight-hour day and allow him to improve working conditions by setting living standards within the camps, as well as, set wage rates within the industry. His Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumberman, 4L, acted another counterpoise to the IWW. The 4L was a patriotic organization open to both employer and employee where those involved swore an oath of loyalty to the government while promising to do all they could to help the war effort.
Success bred more. In the spring and summer of 1918, the SPD expanded its production of spruce production greatly. In November 1917, under three million board-feet were being produced. By October 1918, the figure mushroomed to twenty-two million with some 30,000 military men and another 100,000 civilians involved.
EXPANSION
The largest cut-up lumber plant in the world at the time was built in 45 days over 40 acres on grounds below Vancouver Barracks, milling the ever-increasing amounts of spruce being taken out of ancient forests along the Northwest coast. Other mills were built at Yaquina – near Toledo – Oregon and Port Angeles.
The Vancouver mill was also the main operational center for the SPD. Eventually over a hundred thousand men would be involved with the SPD in either the forests or the mills. Men with experience were in short supply – many had already been drafted into the two forestry regiments of the AEF (the 10th and 20th Engineering Regiments). Many who went out into the woods had little or no experience.
New large cost-plus timber contracts were made. To access the trees, a vast railroad construction program was begun. The 4L changed from a patriotic organization to more of a company union – even IWW members could join if they desisted in pushing IWW ideas. This led to a deterioration in relations between Disque and Gompers. Gompers had hoped AFL would swoop into the void left by the IWW’s demise in the forests. Disque saw the 4L as a longer-term alternative to any unions.
FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD TO …
Working from his downtown Portland office in the Yeon Building, Disque was at the top of his world. Just as the SPD was rolling, it all came to a halt on 11 November 1918. The next day, all contracts were cancelled; tools laid down in the woods; railway construction stilled; saws in the giant mills silenced.
Disque, promoted again to brigadier general in the National Army in September 1918, faced Congressional angst, brought on in part by disgruntled labor, with the abrupt end to the war. He faced questions about wasteful costs spent by the SPD especially with $4 million spent on a railway in Clallam County of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. The railway just completed at war’s end, but not a log had yet passed over it.
The large mill in Port Angeles, only 70% complete, never cut up a log. There were questions about possible corruption. Disque was able to prove all of the charges were trumped up, based on personal prejudices.
OUT OF ACTIVE DUTY
But Disque thought avenues within the Regular Army were closed to him, the result of his lack of combat experience. Resigning his active-duty commission in 1919, he would stay on in the Organized Reserves and would command a couple of Reserve Cavalry Brigades based in New York State from 1922-1939.
CONNECTIONS LEAD TO OTHER AVENUES
Using connections, he had made during his service, and John Ryan, an industrialist formerly serving on the Aviation Board during the war, helped him become chairman of the board for G. Amsinck & Co. Inc of New York, along with two of its Latin American affiliates for $30,000 a year doubling his Michigan warden’s salary. He went on to a variety of corporate positions leaving him comfortable financially. There was a 400-acre farm in upstate New York in addition to a comfortable home in the city. His son was able to attend Dartmouth.
With the 1930’s, Disque involved himself in the coal industry working as a management consultant to Pittston Coal Company as well as working at a number of executive positions for Pittston subsidiaries. He took the lead position for the Anthracite Institute, as well, the trade association for Pennsylvania’s hard coal producers.
During the Thirties, Disque also objected to the growth of government through the New Deal. This, a position in complete contrast to how he had used the government to push through the huge outputs of the SPD.
WORLD WAR 2 INTRUDES
In September 1941, recalled to active duty by the Army, Disque serve shortly as head of the Army Exchange System. He left active service soon after Pearl Harbor in response to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes request for him to be an associate director with the Office of Solid Fuels Coordination, in charge of assuring adequate supplies of coal for civilian and military purposes. Disque and Ickes never got along, however, and not as politically savvy as he was during the first war, he was asked to resign after fifteen months.
His last job was as head of the Coal Consumers Protective Association, the New York-area coal dealers trade association. He held that position adding charge of a group representing area oil distributors, a couple years later, until he retired in 1957.
RETROSPECT
Disque became more anti-union after his experiences with both the SPD and with the coal industry. But he also tampered those anti-union feelings with ideas of reconciliation in working with the leaders of organized labor. He saw himself more and more as against the vast expansion of federal power developing after WW2 in response to the Cold War. Joshua Freeman ends his excellent piece on Brice and his career, Militarism, Empire and Labor Relations: The Case of Brice P. Disque (International Labor and Working-Class History No. 80 (Fall 2011) pp 103-120).
“Having made at least modest contributions to the creation of the most powerful corporate-military-imperial complex in human history, Disque – in a way not all that dissimilar to Dwight Eisenhower – came to see that creation as a threat to the very values that he professed to have spent his lifetime defending.”