The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 18??-1882, 1881-12-02
Off For the Woods.


are men now waiting for transporta-
ton to the camps, or hanging around
looking for jobs. They are not bur-
dened with Saratoga trunks, and few
of them have even white shirts. Their
days are merry ones when they are So
journing in places of civilization, and
after they have all departed the saloon
keeper will detect material decrease
in his receipts. 1t would be strange
if at some places special policemen
have not been appointed to hold in
check the strangers who are stopping
among them. 1t would be somewhat
out of the natural order of events if
some of these strangers have not slept
in the calabOose over night, and per-
haps occasionally some one of them has
asked of citizen for little money to
enable him to pay his board bill day
or two longer or until he can strike a
job. These favors, however, are never
asked as gift, but are accompanied
by promise that the money will be
returned Immediately after the first
pay day, and it might be possible to
find better dressed, and more polished
men who would not remember their
debts as well.
We do not infer by this description
that these loggers are really bad men.
Many a good man has worn wooden
shirt, and been enabled to carry his en-
tire wardrobe in "a big handkerchief.
Noble-hearted fellows, many of them
are, who would share their last dollar
with a companion disabled by falling
tree, or Frustrated by sickness in camp,
and the hat that is passed among them
for a suffering comrade would often
make the contribution plate, that CIR
cles around among many an elegant
church for the cause of charity, look
mighty sick. The men in the woods
will swear at one another, fight often,
and are always ready to beat fellow
workman out of his last cent at poker,
but when it comes to helping the UNI
fortunate their hearts are in the right
place.
The majority of the men who 60 in
10 the pineries do not leave behind
them pleasant homes. In fact, many
of them are homeless, and, virtually,
wanderers-in the mills in summer, on
the drives in the spring, and in the
woods in the winter They float from
Maine to Canada and from Canada to
the Northwest, ready at any season to
travel in any direction where inclina-
tiOns or promise of increased pay
may lead them. They can WELD an
AK, "yank" saw, flourish an ox-gad,
or hold pair of reins, and feel that
these qualifications will earn them a
living anywhere in the lumber regions.
Their stock in trade is easily carried,
and they tramp, tramp, but always
with an object in view. - -
The dangers of camp are many.
The giants of the forests will crush
many man the coming winter under
their heavy bodies and spreading limbs,
as they 60 down before the AK that
year after year is cutting them away.
The treacherous binder will sweep
scores of drivers from their loads into
eternity, and often, when loading and
unloading, a log will roll over the man
or men in it's way, breaking limbs, or
destroying life. The AK will go amiss,
and instead of being imbedded in the
| wood, will strike some poor fellow
standing in it's course. The men are
subjected to these dangers, and others
as well. The wages they obtain would
be little inducement for others than
habitual woOdsmen to chance the risk,
but they go into the woods i'm a mood
that tells little of thought that befor
i .InI oe
manned, will, with blankets thrown
over them, be carried to the nearest
hospital, and the bodies of others drawn
on OK sleds to the nearest settlement
and thence forwarded to their friends
or buried in graves that will never be
wept over, or even sought. They prob
ably think little of this phase of the
life they are entering upon afresh, and
it is just rs well they do not.
These men possess an enviable virtue
the virtue of good health. No weak.
chested consumptive, no one debilitated
by any disease, can be included in this
great army. Every member of it must
have muscle and endurance adequate
to the work that must be performed.
If he does not, nothing is surer than
that the law regulating the survival of
the fittest will force him to abandon
his position to be filed by some one else.
They must be men who can eat pork
and beans and mOlasses, who can get
along without butter and the delicacies
of the table. and who can work in the
snow, sleet and cold, from daylight UNI
Til dark, for six days in the week month
after month. The business in which a
logger is engaged calls for more endur-
ance than that of Il soldier, for in addi-
ton to exposure, the logger is called
upon to do severe manual labor Dur
ing the civil war many of the most en-
during men i'm the army, and us brave
men as ever faced agun, came from the
pineries of the three great numbering
states.
1t need not be supposed that, because
of the hard work in the woods, and a
lack of so many of those privileges
which are commonly supposed to make
up civilized life, the loggers 60 dread
ingly to their tasks. They gravitate to
their forests as naturally as small
footed belle seeks the ballroom. 1t is
their life. They are used to work and
do not expect to live without it. They
feel at home under the great trees, and
in the camps, where Of an evening they
tell their stories through clouds of
smoke. The fashions and ambitions
that agitate the outside world, if known
to them, cause them no unrest. In a
certain sense they are happy, insomuch
that they eat heartily and sleep soundly.
They are doing more important work