THE WORK OF THE LUMBERMEN Why Lumbering is a Relatively Backward Industry.—In studying the people who depend upon animals and upon tropical agriculture we saw that the permanence of a community has much to do with its civili zation and progress. Almost no type of civilized community is more transitory than the lumbering community, and the standards of living are correspondingly low. This is because lumbering is not only an extractive but an exhaustive industry. Like hunting, fishing, farming, and mining, the lumbering industry extracts from nature a primary product. It also exhausts the supply of nature's gifts without making much effort to replace them. Thus for centuries the world has been growing poorer in forests almost as rapidly as in minerals, and far more rapidly than in animals, fish or soil.
The rapidity with which lumbering exhausts the supply of trees in a given region causes the industry to be highly transitory. As soon as the merchantable timber has been cut off within easy reach of a camp, the lumbermen must move on or be idle. The work of cutting the tim ber proceeds so rapidly that it is not worth while to build good houses, and the lumbermen live in rough shacks or log cabins. In many cases the men are housed in long bunk-houses, which arc not much more than closed sheds containing bunks along the sides where a score or more men can sleep in one room. Only when the policy of forest exhaustion gives place to conservation and slow steady use of the timber can the lumber industry become permanent and thus maintain high standards of living.
Because of the nature of the industry lumber camps are located in sparsely settled districts and the lumbermen are thus isolated from other communities. By reason of the rough life and transitory character of lumbering communities, women and children are rarely found in them and the social life frequently degenerates to the crudest types. Nevertheless the work in the lumber camps rarely attracts any but the strongest men, and their feats of prowess and endurance add romance to the industry. There is also a considerable percentage of high grade
men among the lumbermen—enough to keep the work going fairly steadily in spite of the great labor turnover among the less competent.
Many of these men are pioneer farmers who clear and till their farms in the summer, and work for the neighboring lumber companies in the winter. Many thrifty Scandinavian farmers in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota are lumbermen in this sense.
The More Attractive Side of it were not for its1 transitory and lonely nature, lumbering as carried on in the best camps I would be a wholesome and invigorating occupation. Few ways of I living are better for a man's health, or more appealing to one who is young and vigorous than to tramp through the forest with axe and saw; select the right tree; and fell it with mighty strokes so that it falls crashing to the ground in just the right spot. It is fascinating work to hook the log to a long rope and " snake " it out from where it fell, watching it as it bobs along among the bushes, steering it away from the trees, and finally rolling it onto the chute where it slides down to the valley bottom, or onto the little open cars which carry it to the mill. The work of the lumbermen is good not only for the health but for the brain. Some parts of the work demand very quick judgment, and quick action. The men in the mill must decide just how each log is to be cut, for no two logs are alike. Out in the forest each man is to a larg extent his own boss, and so learns self-reliance. Still more is this th case when a lumber drive is in progress and a jam must be broken ou where the logs have become together because of an obstructio in the river. This outdoor life where quick wits and strong muscle are at a premium makes the ordinary lumberman love his work, an would make the lumber industry an ideal place for training vigorous self-reliant young workers if only it were more permanent and les lonely.