The Centralia Conspiracy | Page 5

migratory. The
camp, following the uncut timber from place to place, makes it
impossible for him to acquire a family and settle down. Scarcely one
out of ten has ever dared assume the responsibility of matrimony. The
necessity of shipping from a central point in going from one job to
another usually forces a migratory existence upon the lumberjack in
spite of his best intentions to live otherwise.

What Is a Casual Laborer?

The problem of the logger is that of the casual laborer in general.
Broadly speaking, there are three distinct classes of casual laborers:
First, the "harvest stiff" of the middle West who follows the ripening
crops from Kansas to the Dakotas, finding winter employment in the
North, Middle Western woods, in construction camps or on the ice
fields. Then there is the harvest worker of "the Coast" who garners the

fruit, hops and grain, and does the canning of California, Washington
and Oregon, finding out-of-season employment wherever possible.
Finally there is the Northwestern logger, whose work, unlike that of the
Middle Western "jack" is not seasonal, but who is compelled
nevertheless to remain migratory. As a rule, however, his habitat is
confined, according to preference or force of circumstances, to either
the "long log" country of Western Washington and Oregon as well as
California, or to the "short log" country of Eastern Washington and
Oregon, Northern Idaho and Western Montana. Minnesota, Michigan,
and Wisconsin are in what is called the "short log" region.
[Illustration: A Logger of the Pacific Northwest
This is a type of the men who work in the "long log" region of the West
coast. His is a man's sized job, and his efforts to organize and better the
working conditions in the lumber industry have been manly
efforts--and bitterly opposed.]
As a rule the logger of the Northwest follows the woods to the
exclusion of all other employment. He is militantly a lumberjack and is
inclined to be a trifle "patriotic" and disputatious as to the relative
importance of his own particular branch of the industry. "Long
loggers," for instance, view with a suspicion of disdain the work of
"short loggers" and vice versa.

"Lumber-Jack" The Giant Killer

But the lumber-jack is a casual worker and he is the finished product of
modern capitalism. He is the perfect proletarian type--possessionless,
homeless, and rebellious. He is the reverse side of the gilded medal of
present day society. On the one side is the third generation idle
rich--arrogant and parasitical, and on the other, the actual producer,
economically helpless and denied access to the means of production
unless he "beg his lordly fellow worm to give him leave to toil," as
Robert Burns has it.

The logger of the Northwest has his faults. He is not any more perfect
than the rest of us. The years of degradation and struggle he has
endured in the woods have not failed to leave their mark upon him. But,
as the wage workers go, he is not the common but the uncommon type
both as regards physical strength and cleanliness and mental alertness.
He is generous to a fault and has all the qualities Lincoln and Whitman
loved in men.
In the first place, whether as faller, rigging man or on the "drive," his
work is muscular and out of doors. He must at all times conquer the
forest and battle with the elements. There is a tang and adventure to his
labor in the impressive solitude of the woods that gives him a steady
eye, a strong arm and a clear brain. Being constantly close to the great
green heart of Nature, he acquires the dignity and independence of the
savage rather than the passive and unresisting submission of the factory
worker. The fact that he is free from family ties also tends to make him
ready for an industrial frolic or fight at any time. In daily matching his
prowess and skill with the products of the earth he feels in a way, that
the woods "belong" to him and develops a contempt for the unseen and
unknown employers who kindly permit him to enrich them with his
labor. He is constantly reminded of the glaring absurdity of the private
ownership of natural resources. Instinctively he becomes a rebel against
the injustice and contradictions of capitalist society.
Dwarfed to ant-like insignificance by the verdant immensity around
him, the logger toils daily with ax, saw and cable. One after another
forest giants of dizzy height crash to the earth with a sound like thunder.
In a short time they are loaded on flat cars and hurried across the
stump-dotted clearing to the river, whence they are dispatched to the
noisy, ever-waiting saws at the mill. And always the logger knows in
his heart that this