The Forest Industries 83 



lumber is done in the winter, as far as the pineries 

 of the North are concerned ; only hemlock is cut 

 in summer, because the bark, which is of more 

 importance than the lumber, must be handled at 

 this season. Work in the lumber camp is not an 

 easy matter ; it takes skill as well as strength and 

 endurance. When a tree has come to the ground, 

 it is at once cut into logs of the usual length, leav- 

 ing as waste the branches and so much of the 

 upper part of the main trunk as is below log size 

 in diameter. The logs are rolled on skids to be 

 hauled to the river bank or the railway track, as 

 the case may be. The animals used for hauling 

 are now mostly horses, but formerly oxen were al- 

 most universally employed. Very deep snow is 

 undesirable during the cutting operations, but ab- 

 sence of snow would be a calamity, because only 

 snow, or ice produced by flooding the road in cold 

 weather, can make the rough logging roads passa- 

 ble for the heavy loads. The men employed in 

 this work were in former years nearly all experi- 

 enced men who made lumbering a business. Since 

 the industry has assumed gigantic proportions, the 

 lumbermen have been obliged to hire numbers of 

 inexperienced laborers, whom they find in the large 

 cities and take into the woods in gangs. These 

 men do not get as high wages as experienced ones, 

 and a few of the latter, besides the foreman, are a 

 necessity in every crew. The commissary depart- 

 ment and the cook at the head of it are impor- 

 tant parts of every lumber camp. Work of this 



