April 10, 1922 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



19 



heathens may well call each other brother. Their unselfishness 

 puts civilized man to the blush. The smallest and yount;est will 

 share with his mates the least scrap of food that may be g.ven to 

 him. Among the many small boys that have served as house boys 

 and table waiters, no women are employed for this work, not one 

 ever has been known to fail to share any gift of eatables, no mat- 

 ter how tempting or how small a portion. Often a boy will carry 

 his tidbit all day and many weary miles and never so much as 

 nibble at it, waiting to join his brothers at the end of the journey. 

 "There ain't goin' to be no core" has no place in the heart of these 

 heathen children. 



After twelve years of logtiinf; with, at times, fifteen hundred 



should be able to know to a nicety the amount of work in each 

 division that may be accomplished, not tomorrow or next day, but 

 today. Knowing the size of the trees to be felled, the measurement 

 of the logs to be hauled and the length and condition of the log- 

 ging road, each set of workmen must be given its task for the day. 

 The axmen and the sawyers know how many trees must be felled 

 and how many logs cross-cut, and the hauling teams the number 

 of logs each team must haul to the banking ground. Careful ob- 

 servation with experience, soon teaches the foreman the amount 

 of work of each kind the crew will do, working the full day with 

 everything favorable and the men all seeming to be working with 

 a will. After a few weeks of pushing them for a record, it is 

 generally a wise move to meet any indications of a 

 feeling that they are working too hard or too 

 long hours, by a suggestion that tasks or stunts 

 will be given out and that when these are finished 

 for the day, the day's work is done. It will be 

 safe to add to the average day's work as much 

 work as ten per cent and, on occasion, even more 

 tlian this and as a rule the stunts will be finished 

 and the men ' in camp long before the ordinary 

 (|uitting time. The point is that they are men 

 and not brutes, and as each one is desirous of do- 

 ing something for himself, he puts into the work 

 not only his strength but his will power. He is 

 .ilsd, as he says, "a free man," even while at 



CROSS-CUTTING A MAHOGANY TREE, 

 WEST AFRICA 



people at work, there are now many old hands who 

 understand our work well, and whether felling trees, 

 cross-cutting logs, hauling, driving the streams or 

 rafting, are competent and efficient. To get from 

 this labor the best results, whether Liberians, na- 

 tives of the Coast or from the far interior border- 

 ing on the desert, requires patience, tact and expe- 

 rience. Flogging is practiced in some quarters but 

 this we do not permit. Kind treatment, patience to 

 listen to grievances, firmness, justice in deciding all 

 matters, but never yielding one jot or tittle to im- 

 portunities or demands, give satisfactory results. 



It often is the case that the native has not under- 

 stood the white man's order and this may cause 

 him to hesitate and so seem guilty of disobedience. 

 To knock the man down with fist or club, and 

 perhaps beat him unmercifully, an unresisting crea- 

 ture, without a word of explanation, is the practice 

 in places on this Coast, but less so in the British protectorate than 

 elsewhere. Neither as manager nor as a man can I look upon the 

 assaulting of one who is certain not to resist, as other than cowardly 

 and brutal. When one of our laborers fails to do his duty or his 

 work in a satisfactory manner, after a fair trial he is dismissed 

 and paid. Plenty to eat, prompt payment, with a certain dismissal 

 for cause, are forces in the control of black labor, requiring no 

 aid from violence. No difficulty has yet arisen with our labor that 

 one word from "Big Massa" did not settle without argument, 

 nor any disturbance among themselves that a word from the same 

 authority did not quell and this without threats of punishment 

 or show of arms. 



In West Africa the success of logging in all its branches depends 

 to an unusual degree on the tact and good judgment, as well as 

 skill, of the camp foreman in immediate charge of the men. He 



By oourtesy of the American ForeatiT Ma«azlne. WaBhington, D. C. 



TYPICAL HOME OF WHITE LUMBERMAN IN MAHOGANY REGION OF 

 WEST AFRICA 



work. After the work of the day is done, he certainly is free to 

 till his little patch of ground, visit his traps set in the creek for 

 crabs or his bush-trap set for dryland meat; to bathe, chop, dance 

 or sleep; and in order to enjoy these privileges he goes at the 

 work with his shoulder well up in the collar, doing the work not 

 like the unthinking horse, but with intelligence and vim. The 

 method is not free from its problems required to be understood and 

 solved. Should the task prove to be lighter than the foreman esti- 

 mated, the crafty ones on the team are too wise to finish the job 

 too early, lest the foreman considerably increase future tasks, so 

 they dally and put in the time, only appearing at camp at a reason- 

 able hour. The Liberian laborers live on rice. This is boiled in 

 large iron pots and served by pouring out into basins the size of a 

 large washbowl. This rice is supplemented, when circumstances 

 permit, with a mixture of palm oil, pepper pods pulled from the 



