Without wishing to disparage the ultimate worth of either; it might be
well to contrast for a moment the factory worker of the East with the
lumber-jack of the Pacific Northwest. To the factory hand the master's
claim to the exclusive title of the means of production is not so
evidently absurd. Around him are huge, smoking buildings filled with
roaring machinery--all man-made. As a rule he simply takes for granted
that his employers--whoever they are--own these just as he himself owns,
for instance, his pipe or his furniture. Only when he learns, from
thoughtful observation or study, that such things are the appropriated
products of the labor of himself and his kind, does the truth dawn upon
him that labor produces all and is entitled to its own.
[Illustration: Logging Operations
Look around you at the present moment and you will see wood used for many
different purposes. Have you ever stopped to think where the raw material
comes from or what the workers are like who produce it? Here is a scene
from a lumber camp showing the loggers at their daily tasks. The lumber
trust is willing that these men should work-but not organize.]
It must be admitted that factory life tends to dispirit and cow the
workers who spend their lives in the gloomy confines of the modern mill or
shop. Obedient to the shrill whistle they pour out of their clustered grey
dwellings in the early morning. Out of the labor ghettos they swarm and
into their dismal slave-pens. Then the long monotonous, daily "grind," and
home again to repeat the identical proceeding on the following day. Almost
always, tired, trained to harsh discipline or content with low comfort;
they are all too liable to feel that capitalism is invincibly colossal and
that the possibility of a better day is hopelessly remote. Most of them
are unacquainted with their neighbors. They live in small family or
boarding house units and, having no common meeting place, realize only
with difficulty the mighty potency of their vast numbers. To them
organization appears desirable at times but unattainable. The dickering
conservatism of craft unionism appeals to their cautious natures. They act
only en masse, under awful compulsion and then their release of repressed
slave emotion is sudden and terrible.
Not so with the weather-tanned husky of the Northwestern woods. His job
life is a group life. He walks to his daily task with his fellow workers.
He is seldom employed for long away from them. At a common table he eats
with them, and they all sleep in common bunk houses. The trees themselves
teach him to scorn his master's adventitious claim to exclusive ownership.
The circumstances of his daily occupation show him the need of class
solidarity. His strong body clamours constantly for the sweetness and
comforts of life that are denied him, his alert brain urges him to
organize and his independent spirit gives him the courage and tenacity to
achieve his aims. The union hall is often his only home and the One Big
Union his best-beloved. He is fond of reading and discussion. He resents
industrial slavery as an insult. He resented filth, overwork and poverty,
he resented being made to carry his own bundle of blankets from job to
job; he gritted his teeth together and fought until he had ground these
obnoxious things under his iron-caulked heel. The lumber trust hated him
just in proportion as he gained and used his industrial power; but neither
curses, promises nor blows could make him budge. He knew what he wanted
and he knew how to get what he wanted. And his boss didn't like it very
well.
The lumber-jack is secretive and not given to expressed emotion--excepting
in his union songs. The bosses don't like his songs either. But the logger
isn't worried a bit. Working away in the woods every day, or in his bunk
at night, he dreams his dream of the world as he thinks it should be--that
"wild wobbly dream" that every passing day brings closer to
realization--and he wants all who work around him to share his vision and
his determination to win so that all will be ready and worthy to live in
the New Day that is dawning.
In a word the Northwestern lumber-jack was too human and too stubborn ever
to repudiate his red-blooded manhood at the behest of his masters and
become a serf. His union meant to him all that he possessed or hoped to
gain. Is it any wonder that he endured the tortures of hell during the
period of the war rather than yield his Red Card--or that he is still
determined and still undefeated? Is it any wonder the lumber barons hated
him, and sought to break his spirit with brute force and legal cunning--or
that they conspired to murder it at Centralia with mob violence--and
failed?