Second presentation

Richard White’s The Organic Machine breaks from traditional approaches to Environmental history, providing the reader with a unique account of the interdependent relationships that affect the Columbia River. White organizes his work into the four key elements that coincide to shape the lives of the people who have interacted with the river for centuries. Labor, work, power and salmon are these elements but they are not distinct in their roles. Rather they intersect and overlap in their relationships to each other. The Organic Machine provides an extensive history of the river from its thriving salmon population and native American inhabitants, to the dwindling numbers of salmon that exist today and the many technological advances that indirectly led to their demise. White explores the Columbia from social, cultural, political and scientific standpoints offering an extremely thorough look at its history. The author does not seek to glorify the past like many declensionist environmentalists before him, instead he offers an objective and value-neutral history. In doing so, White maintains credibility allowing him to change his tone and take a subjective and passionate stance in the final chapter.
The interdependent relationships between human history and nature as well as those between the rivers major elements illustrate the central thesis of the book. While White reinforces his thesis through out the work, one need not look further than the title itself. The title, The Organic Machine, speaks of the correlation between energy and work or nature and machines. The chapters themselves are organized as labor, power, work and
salmon, but each element is discussed in the other chapters showing a sort of dependency. White establishes that work is dependent on energy, which in turn dictates the organization of labor. The author later goes on to define labor through its relationship to energy and work; that of energy to the power of the river, work to the salmon through solar energy and labor to the humans who catch and eat the salmon and construct fisheries.
To further strengthen his thesis, the author introduces Ralph Waldo Emerson’s approach to the relationship between humans and technology. Emerson called for people to see technology and nature not as being parasitic to one another, but instead sharing a favorable relationship in which each benefits from dependency. Emerson argued that new technology such as steamboats and railroads would not destroy nature, instead they would provide new opportunities for labor in building machines and doing manual labor.
Steamships would also be the first technology that had the power to counter the river and in conjunction with the construction of canneries, salmon would be preserved for extended periods of time and could be shipped around the world. Emerson’s argument fit in a world dominated by capitalism stressing the dependency of nature on technology and vice versa. White thesis is made stronger through his providing the reader with the Emersonian view of the relationships between nature and human labor.
In the final chapter, White’s analytical lens is discarded in exchange for a moral lens. The reader trusts and may be persuaded by the author because he has been so value-neutral and is so well-informed on the subject. Because White has gained this credibility, it gives much more weight to the argument he now makes in the final chapter. Although White has proven that salmon play an instrumental role in labor, work and power, he devotes an entire chapter to them. The tone in this chapter is very different; the author lists possible threats, failures of humans and technologies, and seeks to make the reader more aware of the seriousness of the situation. White’s tone is powerful and appeals to the reader on an emotional level when he demands that the situation is seen not from an economic standpoint but rather from a moral standpoint. salmon face in the future. What the reader thought was a completely neutral history book, is in reality a discussion of the consequences of human actions and an appeal to the audiences conscience on a moral level. The Organic Machine explores the full scope of the forces acting on the Columbia. The author’s extremely thorough thesis in addition to the persuasiveness of his argument work together to shape his research methodology and contribute to its success.