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Sawdust Empire: The Texas Lumber Industry, 1830–1940. By Robert S. Maxwell and Robert D. Baker. College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1983. Pp. 228. $24.95

Kaufman argues, Dew thus "elevates a precapitalist relationship to the level of theoretical necessity in guaranteeing the preservation of the 'natural'—that is, the capitalist—order" (p. 119). Dew's assumption that black slaves could never form the basis for an industrial working class was rejected by the final thinker that Kaufman analyzes, Cardozo. Pushing beyond Dew, indeed, Cardozo developed a defense of slavery that attempted to make the peculiar institution fully compatible with the longterm logic of capitalist development. He agreed fully with Dew that slavery was necessary to make American republicanism work—without it, the United States would be subject to the divisive struggle between capital and labor that could lead to attacks on property by a desperate, wage-earning majority—but differed from him in his reconciliation of slavery to the specific needs of industrial capitalism. The book comes to a regrettably abrupt and inadequate conclusion with Cardozo. Overall, its strengths outweigh its problems. The Marxist perspective lends a necessary coherence to the analysis that is refreshing, even if it does tend, at times, to limit the range of inquiry. Kaufman's decision to focus on a small group of selected individuals also contributes to the book's coherence, though here, too, one might wish that he had broadened just a bit his range of discussion. There are chapter epigraphs consisting of quotations from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison—whose thought is obviously relevant to the discussion—but no efforts to link their ideas to the antebellum dialogue. In the case of Madison, who wrestled in some depth with the problems that troubled Kaufman's subjects and who lived long enough (until 1836) to participate in the antebellum debate, the silence is especially frustrating. The restricted scope of the analysis underlines the point that this is an interpretive essay rather than a comprehensive monograph, but it is an essay that makes a valuable and stimulating contribution to our understanding of political economy in pre-Civil War America. One curious feature of the book: It is preceded by its first review, in the form of a lengthy—and rather pontifical—foreword.