Logging

American logging companies during the 19th and early 20th centuries habitually practiced a “cut out and get out” policy that required continual fresh stands of timber. Migratory by nature, the timber industry has also relied on a large mobile labor pool. As the logging industry moved west in the 1890s and 1910s, so did its workers; some followed the only industry they had ever worked for, and others melded together a subsistence-level existence over the course of a year logging, mining, and working the harvest. With the development of the western timber industry, the number of workers employed steadily increased between 1899 and 1929. Many carried all their possessions in a bundle on their back as they traveled from job to job. Referred to as “bindlestiffs,” they became an unwanted if necessary commodity in the logging regions of the West. This labor pool consisted of recent immigrants to the United States as well as second-generation Americans.

Living conditions in the logging camps of the “short log” country (composed of western Montana, [Page 416]northern Idaho, and eastern Washington and Oregon) in 1909 and 1920 were considered nightmarish in many instances. Cabins with little or no ventilation were crammed with men who slept in muzzle-loader bunks lined with straw or pine boughs. The men endured humid heat in the winter months as they attempted to dry their wet clothing each evening by hanging shirts, pants, and socks from wires around the stovepipe. Denied the basic means of washing their clothes and themselves, they constantly battled lice and bedbugs. Logger Mark Watkins remembered, “when those wires were filled with lumberjacks' sox and underwear the place needed ventilation!” North Idaho logger Joe Halm concurred: “What a scramble for socks in the morning, first come first served.”

With these types of working conditions it became common to hear the phrase “three crews, one coming, one going, and one working.” When the mood struck them, loggers simply packed their bedrolls and moved on to the next camp. Before World War I, the rate of turnover in the western timber industry exceeded 600 percent annually. The desire of some companies to hire married men came as a direct result of this turnover problem. Bindlestiffs, immigrant and citizen alike, worked in an industry that marginalized their labor and existence.

Communities that relied on the timber companies for economic survival did not often embrace these migratory workers. For example, the Eureka Lumber Company in northwest Montana hired workers every year to bring logs down Grave Creek and the Fortine and Tobacco Rivers to their sawmill. These “river pigs” lived in jungle camps on the outskirts of town. Some Eureka residents were not above flaunting their “native” status as they ridiculed the immigrant workers. During one such discussion, Norwegian tie-hack Hobo Kanute declared hotly, “I is a better citizen of America as you is! I is a citizen by choice but you is a citizen by accident!”

Although the industry transplanted some of its workers when it moved west, the industry itself underwent significant changes as it attempted to adapt to the challenges of logging in this new area. With larger trees and rougher terrain, logging underwent rapid mechanization to deal with these issues. Logging railroads, donkey engines, and yarders replaced oxen and horses. Sawmills adapted to the larger logs by creating bigger and faster band saws. Mechanization also brought an increase in logging accidents. When accidents occurred in the woods, the victim many times had no immediate if any medical aid. If the accident proved fatal and happened early enough in the day, the men finished their shift before returning the body to the camp or town.

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