516 JOURNAL OF I'OKI-S'rKV 



had been under way for four years under the same management. One 

 would suppose that any lumberman would have become convinced by 

 that time that the brush disposal clauses in his contract had teeth in 

 them. Also one would suppose that he would have worked out an 

 efficient method of burning softwood brush and lopping hardwood tops, 

 especially when he had had the advice and example of the entire 

 Forest personnel for the previous years. 



This contractor hadn't done so and probably never will. He tried 

 for two years to evade the requirements of his contract and then 

 yielding in fact, he never did grant in spirit the necessity or the 

 desirability of brush disposal. Every time a forest officer spent the 

 night at his camp he thrashed the w^hole matter over again and would 

 end up by declaring brush disposal an expensive and a useless nuisance. 

 All this in the presence of the men who had the actual work to do. 

 Also these men were paid by the day. 



The observer found that crews from this camp made the poorest 

 showing of any on the operation. The man who did the burning for 

 one crew was nearly 65 years old, the idea being that any one could 

 burn brush and the less money he would work for the better. This 

 man was continually getting behind the choppers and piles of spruce 

 slash were frequently snowed under. The cost! of burning such slash 

 is materially more than for fresh slash. It is pertinent here to say 

 that the observer is of the opinion that one good live man can easily 

 burn the slash for two crews of two or three men each when the oper- 

 ation is in a mixed hardwoods and spruce stand as in this case. It is, 

 of course, essential that there be co-operation between the choppers 

 and the burner. 



Other crews were working on the same area and under the same 

 conditions, except that they were paid by the thousand feet of timber 

 cut. All crews were supposed to load the teams hauling their logs. 

 Two French Canadians composed a certain crew. They had accepted 

 the idea that the slash must be taken care of and they had worked out 

 methods which were efficient and the results acceptable. They were 

 average men and were paid by the thousand. Besides fitting the timber 

 and taking care of the slash, they had to load a four-horse drag team 

 twice a day, the loads averaging better than a thousand feet board 

 measure per load ; yet these men were always ahead of their team. 

 The observed costs for this crew ran as low as 50 cents per thousand 

 for burning softwood brush and 70 cents per thousand for lopping 



