f the East with the
lumber-jack of the Pacific Northwest. To the factory hand the master's
claim to the exclusive title of the means of production is not so
evidently absurd. Around him are huge, smoking buildings filled with
roaring machinery--all man-made. As a rule he simply takes for granted
that his employers--whoever they are--own these just as he himself owns,
for instance, his pipe or his furniture. Only when he learns, from
thoughtful observation or study, that such things are the appropriated
products of the labor of himself and his kind, does the truth dawn upon
him that labor produces all and is entitled to its own.
[Illustration: Logging Operations
Look around you at the present moment and you will see wood used for many
different purposes. Have you ever stopped to think where the raw material
comes from or what the workers are like who produce it? Here is a scene
from a lumber camp showing the loggers at their daily tasks. The lumber
trust is willing that these men should work-but not organize.]
It must be admitted that factory life tends to dispirit and cow the
workers who spend their lives in the gloomy confines of the modern mill or
shop. Obedient to the shrill whistle they pour out of their clustered grey
dwellings in the early morning. Out of the labor ghettos they swarm and
into their dismal slave-pens. Then the long monotonous, daily "grind," and
home again to repeat the identical proceeding on the following day. Almost
always, tired, trained to harsh discipline or content with low comfort;
they are all too liable to feel that capitalism is invincibly colossal and
that the possibility of a better day is hopelessly remote. Most of them
are unacquainted with their neighbors. They live in small family or
boarding house units and, having no common meeting place, realize only
with difficulty the mighty potency of their vast numbers. To them
organization appears desirable at times but unattainable. The dickering
conservatism of craft unionism appeals to their cautious natures. They act
only en masse, under awful compulsion and then their release of repressed
slave emotion is sudden and terrible.
Not so with the weather-tanned husky of the Northwestern woods. His job
life is a group life. He walks to his daily task with his fellow workers.
He is seldom employed for long away from them. At a common table he eats
with them, and they all sleep in common bunk houses. The trees themselves
teach him to sc
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