The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1916-04-15

when Drive Boss Fred Gilmore brought
down 120,0G0,000 logs for the Mount
Tom. Holyoke and Hartford mills at
time when Asa Smith was head Of tie
syndicate.
Danger Never Removed.
But whether the logging interests of
the Connecticut We're merged or not,
life was always very much the same
on the drives. Modern science, which
has revolutionized industry after in
dustry, has left the log drive pretty
much as it was. You can blow jam
loose with dynamite, at such risk to
valuable timber that nobody cares to
use it except as 4 last resort, but aside
from that very little can be done to
drive that the lumberjacks did not
know about on that first drive to
Brattleboro. When a jam comes, the
whole camp must turn out and pick
and pick and pick for the "key log. y
The ''key log IS the trunk which to
the Jam is as q keystone to an arch
: All the forces of the great mass be
hind it are SO curiously disposed that
if the "key log is picked, that is,
ierked out of the mass and sent slid
ing down the river, the deadlock in
the entire floating forest will give
way. Picking for it combines the diff
fculties of looking for a needle in a
haystack with good deal of the dan
ger that would impend if the needle
and each wisp of hay were capable of
infiicting q death wound. If the cur
rent is Slow and the jam starts easily
after it is picked, the experience is
not necessarily thrilling; but if a sec
ton of it starts with even q slight
rush, getting back to shore may not be
easy.
1t was q life full Of danger, but il
is hard to get any old logger to admit
that it is especially dangerous. Al
Patrick, who has seen as many as IL
men killed on a single drive, insists
that every man whom he has even
known to come to his death on the
Connecticut has come to it through
'carelessess. The point is that the
/ logger has to be careful with such
, nerve-straining alertness. At the same
time he has almost every day OF his
. life to walk into places where no or
, binary careful man would go except II
q mood of unall0ved reckiessncss. II
, q boom broke and they have broker
{ MANY times on the Connecticut, The
r strongest men in the camp had to e
= out in a rowboat and stretch a chair
f stirring 10 move onward down the
2 stream. Now there is no known
: chance for a boat, even a tiny scow
q hemmed in by a log drive that can b'
0 counted in millions, and there IS NJ
' chance for the men in it either, un
e less they can jump just at the RICH
e minute. land just at the right spo
s., where the logs viii bear man with
/ out turning, and from where there i
2 safe passage with no lanes of waite
: intervening to the shore.
: Lives Lost in Water Lanes.
t These lanes of water have been tn
= death of many q good logger on tn
I Connecticut The drive doesn I al
+ ways float as a solid mass Queer lit
tie quirks in the current viii spread i
out where the river is broad and
D workman who has not been 100 pc
Y cent careful, who has not while al
!; tending strictly to his own work an
8 20 the immediate problem OF keepin
c his footing on the round slipper
d trunks, kept a weather eye abroad 70
I the larger movement OF the pack, ha
Il found himself many a time cut Of
: from the bank with the little cluste
Ii of logs under his feet scattering
WIZ luck the niue CLl'Stti may liol
n together like raft, until it touche
the main drive again. But this
IS with very good luck, indeed. The o
/, binary laws of chance and of ph%sic
0, would cause it TO drift apart by re;
= son of the marooned logger s very e
o. forts to keep his footing. And one
', down in the river with the log jam =
II man has a chance. Hard as a lumbe
y jack s body may be, it is a soft thin
n, to fight for place with logs in a swi1
c current eft don t do q logger niue
lie good to know how to swim,'' says I
Patrick.
lie The loggers have come down Il
le Connecticut every year praying again'
a low water, and yet by reason of h
y peril of being caught too far fro
Is shore, the high water season is Il
I, time of greatest danger. Then tn
III drive floats most easily, but it all
re drifts apart more easily and drift
III faster than at any other time. II
at hard seasons, when progress has bee
IL most tedious, when jams have con
ne that required month of pickin
Is when millions of logs sometimes ha,
st had to be left on dry bottoms of Il
at upper river to be sent down i'll the ia
Is freshets, have been the seasons of Il
sc hardest work, but of the fewest f
Ut talities. But such work as it hi
II been! The situation has always be-
such in the mills that the drive won
be welcome in the spring, was nee