LIFE WITH THE “JACK” IN THE NORTHERN WOODS.
Correspondence of The Journal.
By Thomas H. Moodie.
BEMIDJI, MINN. Feb. 5. [1904]—The lumbermen of northern Minnesota have never had a more favorable winter for logging operations than this year. Two hundred logging camps are cutting pine in Beltrami county alone. Besides, there are numerous tie, cedar and wood camps. It will be a money-making winter for the contractor. Nearly all the camps have landed a third of their winter’s cut, and it is estimated that another third is on the skids. This is a condition quite unusual for the first of February.
Labor is cheap and easily obtainable; and the contractor who does not come out of the woods on April 10 with neat sum to his credit, over and above his winter's expenses, is not worthy the name of lumberman. The cut in this vicinity will be but a little over half what it was last winter, us contractors have been compelled to turn their attention to the reservation pine and let the free pine belts of this vicinity wait until they may be more conveniently taken.
The Camp and the Logger.
A northern Minnesota lumber camp of the present day is a place well worth a visit. This will make it easier to comprehend how one of the richest pine belts in the world is fast disappearing. A lumber camp has a character not without picturesque features, but withal it is a very busy place, conducted under a perfect system that turns to the best advantage both brain and brawn. Every minute of the winter day is improved by the lumberman. Forty below zero he optimistically characterizes as “logging weather.” It means the best roads at the least expense, and he is happy in the realization. Work In the woods is never suspended for a cold or a stormy day. When the sun shines and the air is crisp and bracing, the lumberman smiles, and when the north wind drives the sleet and ice into his face he grins and bears it. But he “logs.” Areas of the monarch pine melt before his energy, and each season finds the scene of his labors removed to a spot more distant from the centers of settlement than the last. He “skins off” the best timber and leaves the jackpine and smaller hardwood growths to be subdued by the man to whom he refers with lofty contempt as “the farmer.” He knows the farmer is the man who holds up his drives in the summer to claim damages for an inundated meadow, a thorn in his side, who is content to toil and grub into field and garden the acres which he has abandoned as worthless.
Winter Home of the Jack.
The winter home of the lumberjack, the healthy, happy, hearty, care-free, rollicking rowdy, athlete and character is nothing if not picturesque and it well suits the man who inhabits it. Deep in the heart of the pine belts the group of log shacks is reared far in advance of the winter. Men prematurely aged by the rigors of the life potter about [pleasantly preoccupied] during the summer, put up the hay to feed the stock and arrange the details for the beginning of the winter’s work, and when the first breath of winter finds the lumberjack working at the threshing in North Dakota, and the longing for the woods overtakes him, everything is comfortably arranged for a cordial welcome at his winter home.
His fall’s wages spent in the saloon and the resorts of cheap and gaudy sin, he shoulders his “tussick” [tow sack, burlap bag] and scans the signs before the Minneapolis employment offices which tell of the demand for his services in the land of pine and plenty. The glib and garrulous [dishonest, fast-talking] employment agent is interviewed. He is hailed to answer whether he is a sawyer, a swamper, a “four hoss” [hoss = horse] teamster or a handy man. He quibbles with the agent, but the latter beguiles him with soft speech and flattery and on the first outgoing train he sits radiant in mackinaw and cruiser’s boots, with a “jag” due and becoming the occasion, ticketed to the camp where he is to be employed during the winter.
That night he sleeps in the poorest room in the hotel of the lumbering town and pays double price for it.
Next morning he walks over the “tote road” [road for hauling timber; skidway] to the camp, turns his tickets over to the clerk and becomes an employe. In the interval between this and his going to work, never over a day, he sits by the bunk stove and swaps yarns with the camp employes. A moral man from this time on is he. He recites the old story of a big fa’l’s wages squandered, loads his pipe and laconically announces that he is going to “stay in” till “she breaks up” in the spring and that he has spent his last cent for red liquor. Then he raises a horny [calloused, rough] hand to his face, draws it thoughtfully across his mouth and expectorates [hack up; loudly dispell phlem from the lungs] against the wind.
His First Day’s Work.
Next morning he hears the cookee [cook’s helper] softly arouse the teamsters at 5 o’clock. He turns in his bunk and sleeps another half hour until the cook’s sonorous blast on the camp horn awakens him to the fact that this is the day he goes to work for $26 a month. He eats a hearty breakfast of bacon, fried potatoes and cakes [pancakes], cooked in a manner that would appal a less vigorous digestion, shoulders his axe and trudges of to the woods. He is happy.
Then the day’s work begins. The undercutter marks the trees to be felled. The sawyers follow him and the monarch of perhaps a century [old tree] is laid low. Then comes the swamper. He swamps [cuts, clears] a road to the tree for the skid team, bark marks it, removes the protruding limbs and proceeds to the next. The skid teamster clucks to his patient horses [or oxen]. They swing mechanically into position. The chains are adjusted and the log gets its first start on a long journey towards the market. Later it is skidded to position in the skid pile [inclined loading platform]. After that come the loaders and the bunk sleighs to haul it to the landing [leveled area with river access].
Then begins the journey to the landing. Several hundred thousand feet tower on the huge logging sleighs and here the ‘four-hoss” teamster’s skill is, shown. If he is a good teamster, he has his horses well in hand. They feel instinctively every touch of the reins and “take advantage” of the road. The teamster never swears at his horses, but when he comes to a “down hill haul,” where the “road monkey” [overseer and maintainer of the skidway] has failed to look well after the little matter of putting hay on the road to prevent the sleighs from going down with a greater impetus than is desirable, he curses him to a faint and fleeting whisper and “teams” his way out of the difficulty.
At the landing, the landing-man helps him remove the load, stamps the logs at least six times so that when they are in the water one of the marks will always show; ties the reins to the bunk stake and plods back to the skidway. If the haul is a long one he arrives just in time to find the “road monkey” building a fire around which the noontime repast [meal] is to be served. He unhitches his team, feeds them and repairs to the rendezvous where the “bull cook,” the errand boy, butt of the camp and man of all work, has just arrived with the steaming dinner. Tin plates are passed. Hot potatoes, juicy roasts and numerous delicacies are served. He eats enough for three ordinary men and complains that he is losing his appetite.
Night and the Same Old Appetite.
Then comes the afternoon’s work. Nights begins to settle. The axeman feels the air grow chillier. He puts on his mackinaw jacket and his lusty blows [axe falls] ring out until the last faint ray of light passes into the night. Then he turns into the road and walks to camp, tired.
Supper is served at long tables over which lamps and lanterns flicker and sputter. And such a supper! It would tempt the appetite of the veriest gourmand. Steaming potatoes with the jackets on or off, to suit his lordship’s fancy, fried salt pork with cream gravy, baked beans, brown bread, white bread—mounds of it disappearing. He eats until he is tired and then he eats some more. The cookee pours his third can of coffee, real coffee, and advises him that a tonic and something to stimulate the appetite is what he needs. Perhaps he remarks that it is strange that the men who do the least work eat the most, or perpetrates some other equally threadbare and time-honored joke, at which his nearest neighbors laugh their loudest. At length the meal is finished and he repairs to the bunk shanty.
It is a cosmopolitan gathering. The swarthy Indian [sic], often the colored man [sic], the Frenchman who tells of the palmy days [good times] of the “h’Ottawa,” when “Fred Beauteau, she’s the bes bully on the reever” the Irishman, who reveres the name of Jerry Howe of Brainerd, and “man, but he was a logger”; the quiet Norwegian and the industrious Swede—all are there and all are equal at the later supper smoke social.
The “Sky Pilot’s” Visit.
Sometimes the lumberjack sky pilot [preecher] is present to talk to them. He brings with him his little portable organ, and holds service. In spite of a show of irreverence they all join with the greatest good will in singing the gospel hymns which he announces. He preaches to them a sermon full of homely truths. The gambler and the saloonman, he says, will respect him more if he does not patronize him. There is good in trying to do the square thing [right thing], he says. Sometimes it’s hard logging, but it pays in the long run. Perhaps, then, there is an audible murmur of approval.
The services finished. the men quietly repair to their bunks, and the snores of healthy slumber that follow often shake the bunk shanty. The next day the jack begins the routine again and until the warm suns of the last days of March begin to make the roads impassable, and the teamsters come in at night and tell how the leaders “tore in the breechin’” to get a good jag out of some tight place in the woods, he toils in the timber. Then he begins to figure out how much wages he has coming and quibbles much with the camp clerk regarding his time. At length comes the last day in camp.
Days of Riotous Living.
He is off to the haunts of men, with his winter’s wages in his pocket. He arrives, gets his time check cashed, feels strangely out of place, takes a drink, lives riotously and sings, “Come all ye’s” till the village marshal takes him in tow and quarters him at the “bat cave.” [holding cell for intoxicated persons].The next morning the police judge frowns, tells him he is a lobster, an unmitigated fool, and fines him, suspends the sentence, and orders him out of town. He goes down the street, meets the missionary who held services in the camp, tells a hard-luck story, begs a quarter from him, and next day starts to wander over the northwest until the short November days tell him that the pine harvest is ripe again. He is a bird of peculiar instincts; he gets the worst of it and gives it to himself, and he takes it all uncomplainingly.
However, he is necessary. For his virtues he should be honored; for his shortcomings he should not be too severely condemned. He lives in a social environment that is individual in its type, and it is not strange that he sometimes falls.
