694 



Yearbook of Agriculture 1949 



usually outweigh disadvantages. Pulp 

 companies can trade high-grade veneer 

 logs for two to three times as much 

 wood suitable for their mills. At the 

 same time the veneer mills can aug- 

 ment their dwindling and increasingly 

 expensive supply of raw materials. 



Modern logging machinery and 

 methods make possible delivery of tree- 

 length logs to the landing or even to 

 the mill, where a trained crew can buck 

 out and segregate the various qualities 

 of material that are needed by different 

 industries. Truck logging over public or 

 private roads enables industries to ob- 

 tain their raw material from lighter 

 and more selective cuts over a wider 

 area. 



THE OLD RACE OF LOGGERS,, proud of 

 their skill with loggers' hand tools and 

 contented to live a rough life, is dying 

 out. It is almost impossible these days to 

 find a crew that will be satisfied to live 

 in a rough lumber camp, 20 miles back 

 from a hard road, working from dawn 

 to dark all winter, and then proudly 

 bringing down the drive "walking 

 down the middle of the river" the old 

 loggers used to call it for a brief pe- 

 riod of roistering in town in the spring. 

 Such methods were picturesque, but 

 they wasted timber and manpower. 

 Mills cannot get their full quota of logs 

 that way any more. 



The introduction of modern ma- 

 chinery and the trend toward perma- 

 nence of logging operations on tracts 

 managed for sustained timber pro- 

 duction are beginning to bring a new 

 breed of loggers into the woods. Young 

 men who once would have shunned 

 logging now see better opportunities in 

 woods work. Operators, alarmed by 

 the advancing age of the old-time 

 loggers who were willing to lead single 

 lives in remote camps, see the need for 

 change. In every region one can now 

 find examples of the new logging com- 

 munity with comfortable homes for 

 families, with schools, churches, elec- 

 tric light plants, and waterworks. Log- 

 ging is still one of the most dangerous 

 major occupations in American indus- 



try, but operators, unions, insurance 

 companies, State industrial accident 

 commissions, and other agencies are 

 engaged in a concerted accident-pre- 

 vention program, in which they are 

 achieving substantial progress. 



All in all, it is a new day and a better 

 day for the loggers who want a normal 

 home life, good working conditions, 

 steady work, year-round employment 

 at good wages, and modern personnel 

 policies that pay attention to the log- 

 ger's capabilities for advancement and 

 to safety and training for the job. 



FRED G. SIMMONS is a specialist in 

 logging and primary processing at the 

 Northeastern Forest Experiment Sta- 

 tion. He has worked with northeastern 

 logging operators and wood-using in- 

 dustries in improvement of their prac- 

 tices since 1944. He is the author of 

 The Northeastern Loggers 3 Handbook 

 and numerous articles that have ap- 

 peared in trade journals and technical 

 publications. Mr. Simmons earned de- 

 grees in forestry from Cornell and Yale 

 Universities and has been engaged in 

 logging work since 1923, when he went 

 to work on a primitive operation in the 

 Adirondack^ of his native New York. 

 Since then he has worked on and 

 around logging operations in the Pa- 

 cific Northwest, Arkansas, the South, 

 and the Northeastern States. 



