No Employment Offices Then. 



What of the lumberjack, that has been sung in story, his 

 deeds placed besides those of the coeur d'bois, the early 

 voyageur and the extinct frontiersman? This is what. Early 

 in the fall he packed his turkey and hiked. Yes, hiked. There 

 were no employment offices to ship him and his mates like 

 cattle. Forty or fifty miles he would go straight into the 

 heart of the pineries. He said goodbye to town and red water 

 for the winter. He picked his boss. Chances were it was the 

 same boss he had worked for for years before. But at any 

 rate he picked and once picked his loyalty was settled for all 

 time. To him the bosses ambitions and trials and drivings 

 became personal. The season's cut became the one goal he 

 would work for with the last drop of energy in his knotty 

 body. 



Poor Cooks Start Riots. 



Money? Oh, just the usual wages, maybe $25 a month, 

 wages and grub. Grub was really more essential than wages, 

 for if there was one thing the good old-time lumberjack de- 

 manded and would fight for quicker than anything else it was 

 good grub. A poor cook would start a riot and evacuation 

 where nothing else would pry a man loose till the last log 

 was on the landing in the spring. Twenty years ago, many 

 a bcss came out in the spring with the same crew he had 

 taken seven months before. Not a man flinched; not a man 

 quit. 



The Winter grind. 



Then the grind of the winter. There was the scrap among 

 the "sky-men" to see who could put the best peak on the load; 

 there was the scrap among the sawyers to see who could put 

 the best of logs on the skidways. There was the scrap among 

 the teamsters to see who could show up at the landing with 

 the biggest haul. Even the "road monkeys" were keen for 

 the slightest hint of the best piece of road on the job. There 

 was always the battle of red-blood and big tasks. 



All winter long and never a trip to town, did these scraggy 

 old scamps fight and tug and haul, full of the joy of their job 

 and the anticipation of the spring to come. 



