Nineteen hundred and seventeen was an eventful year. It was then the
greatest strike in the history of the lumber industry occurred-the strike
for the eight hour day. For years the logger and mill hand had fought
against the unrestrained greed of the lumber interests. Step by step, in
the face of fiercest opposition, they had fought for the right to live
like men; and step by step they had been gaining. Each failure or success
had shown them the weakness or the strength of their union. They had been
consolidating their forces as well as learning how to use them. The lumber
trust had been making huge profits the while, but the lumber workers were
still working ten hours or more and the logger was still packing his dirty
blankets from job to job. Dissatisfaction with conditions was wider and
more prevalent then ever before. Then came the war.
As soon as this country had taken its stand with the allied imperialists
the price of lumber, needed for war purposes, was boosted to sky high
figures. From $16.00 to $116.00 per thousand feet is quite a jump; but
recent disclosures show that the Government paid as high as $1200.00 per
thousand for spruce that private concerns were purchasing for less than
one tenth of that sum. Gay parties with plenty of wild women and hard
drink are alleged to have been instrumental in enabling the "patriotic"
lumber trust to put these little deals across. Due to the duplicity of
this same bunch of predatory gentlemen the airplane and ship building
program of the United States turned out to be a scandal instead of a
success. Out of 21,000 feet of spruce delivered to a Massachusetts
factory, inspectors could only pass 400 feet as fit for use. Keep these
facts and figures in mind when you read about what happened to the
"disloyal" lumber workers during the war-and afterwards.
[Illustration: Mrs. Elmer Smith and Baby Girl
Mrs. Elmer Smith is the cultured daughter of a Washington judge. Since
Elmer Smith got into trouble many efforts have been made to induce his
wife to leave him. Mrs. Smith prefers, however, to stick with her rebel
lawyer whom she loves and admires.]
Discontent had been smouldering in the woods for a long time. It was soon
fanned to a flame by the brazen profiteering of the lumber trust. The
loggers had been biding their time--rather sullenly it is true--for the
day when the wrongs they had endured so patiently and so long might be
rectified. Their quarrel with the lumber interests was an old one. The
time was becoming propitious.
In the early summer of 1917 the strike started. Sweeping through the short
log country it spread like wild-fire over nearly all the Northwestern
lumber districts. The tie-up was practically complete. The industry was
paralyzed. The lumber trust, its mouth drooling in anticipation of the
many millions it was about to make in profits, shattered high heaven with
its cries of rage. Immediately its loyal henchmen in the Wilson
administration rushed to the rescue. Profiteering might be condoned,
moralized over or winked at, but militant labor unionism was a menace to
the government and the prosecution of the war. It must be crushed. For was
it not treacherous and treasonable for loggers to strike for living
conditions when Uncle Sam needed the wood and the lumber interests the
money? So Woodrow Wilson and his coterie of political troglodytes from the
slave-owning districts of the old South, started out to teach militant
labor a lesson. Corporation lawyers were assembled. Indictments were made
to order. The bloodhounds of the Department of "Justice" were unleashed.
Grand Juries of "patriotic" business men were impaneled and did their
expected work not wisely but too well. All the gun-men and stool-pigeons
of Big Business got busy. And the opera bouffe of "saving our form of
government" was staged.