]

Opposing this colossal aggregation of wealth and cussedness were the
thousands of hard-driven and exploited lumberworkers in the woods and
sawmills. These had neither wealth nor influence--nothing but their hard,
bare hands and a growing sense of solidarity. And the masters of the
forests were more afraid of this solidarity than anything else in the
world--and they fought it more bitterly, as events will show. Centralia is
only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and worker. But
let us see what this hated and indispensable logger-the productive and
human basis of the lumber industry, the man who made all these things
possible, is like.

The Human Element--"The Timber Beast"

Lumber workers are, by nature of their employment, divided into two
categories--the saw-mill hand and the logger. The former, like his
brothers in the Eastern factories, is an indoor type while the latter is
essentially a man of the open air. Both types are necessary to the
production of finished lumber, and to both union organization is an
imperative necessity.

Sawmill work is machine work--rapid, tedious and often dangerous. There is
the uninteresting repetition of the same act of motions day in and day
out. The sights, sounds and smells of the mill are never varied. The fact
that the mill is permanently located tends to keep mill workers grouped
about the place of their employment. Many of them, especially in the
shingle mills, have lost fingers or hands in feeding the lumber to the
screaming saws. It has been estimated that fully a half of these men are
married and remain settled in the mill communities. The other half,
however, are not nearly so migratory as the lumberjack. Sawmill workers
are not the "rough-necks" of the industry. They are of the more
conservative "home-guard" element and characterized by the psychology of
all factory workers.

The logger, on the other hand, (and it is with him our narrative is
chiefly concerned), is accustomed to hard and hazardous work in the open
woods. His occupation makes him of necessity 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
liv