orn his master's adventitious claim to exclusive ownership.
The circumstances of his daily occupation show him the need of class
solidarity. His strong body clamours constantly for the sweetness and
comforts of life that are denied him, his alert brain urges him to
organize and his independent spirit gives him the courage and tenacity to
achieve his aims. The union hall is often his only home and the One Big
Union his best-beloved. He is fond of reading and discussion. He resents
industrial slavery as an insult. He resented filth, overwork and poverty,
he resented being made to carry his own bundle of blankets from job to
job; he gritted his teeth together and fought until he had ground these
obnoxious things under his iron-caulked heel. The lumber trust hated him
just in proportion as he gained and used his industrial power; but neither
curses, promises nor blows could make him budge. He knew what he wanted
and he knew how to get what he wanted. And his boss didn't like it very
well.

The lumber-jack is secretive and not given to expressed emotion--excepting
in his union songs. The bosses don't like his songs either. But the logger
isn't worried a bit. Working away in the woods every day, or in his bunk
at night, he dreams his dream of the world as he thinks it should be--that
"wild wobbly dream" that every passing day brings closer to
realization--and he wants all who work around him to share his vision and
his determination to win so that all will be ready and worthy to live in
the New Day that is dawning.

In a word the Northwestern lumber-jack was too human and too stubborn ever
to repudiate his red-blooded manhood at the behest of his masters and
become a serf. His union meant to him all that he possessed or hoped to
gain. Is it any wonder that he endured the tortures of hell during the
period of the war rather than yield his Red Card--or that he is still
determined and still undefeated? Is it any wonder the lumber barons hated
him, and sought to break his spirit with brute force and legal cunning--or
that they conspired to murder it at Centralia with mob violence--and
failed?

Why the Loggers Organized

The condition of the logger previous to the period of organization beggars
description. Modern industrial autocracy seemed with him to develop its
most inhuman characteristics. The evil plant of wage slavery appeared to
bear its most noxious blossoms in the woods.

The hours of labor were unendurabl