The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1926-07-16
GRADUATES OF
LUMBER CAMPS
Where is the Lumberiack and
the Cruiser of Days That
Are Gone.


in tie lumber camps and the saw
mills when Minnesota was harvesting
it's original crop of timber at the rate
rs two billion feet year, around the
lrner of the century, cut that has
Low dwindled to one-tenth its former
activity and will soon be finished en-
tirely.
They were a happy-go-lucky lot,
those lumberjacks who drifted from
Maine to Michigan and from Michi-
they were drifting from Minnesota to
Oregon. Not that they were always
drifters = sometimes they married
and settled down. But when woods
man settled down he was no longer
lumberjack-no more than the old
college graduate is freshman. The
lumberjack was a young fellow or at
least one with the spirit Of youth.
He was given to skylarking. He
was open handed. He would give his
last dollar to the Sisters or the Sal
walton Army. He would buy those
whittled-out things from the train
butcher for which he had no possible
use.
Some of them grew up-went on
their own and worked their way in
to the front ranks. There's many a
prosperous farmer and many sub
stantial business man who got his
start in the woods and, when he
feels inclined, can tell about the win
ter in Paul Bunyan's camp when Paul
himself, with the help of his blue OK
Babe, scooped out Cass lake for a
log pond. You will recognize the old
timer by the shoulders that carried
a pack and swung an axe and by the
peculiar Looping gait.
The lumberjack was an athlete
who could dance on slippery logs and
make sport of it. There is no trick
Ter game in the world than log roll
ing contest, one man at each end Of
a twelye-inch stick spinning in the
water till one or the other loses his
balance and is doused in the pond.
They were clever craftsmen who
could juggle sixteen-foot logs like
jackstraws. And when it came to
spending winters wages in one
burst, they were gorgeous.
And what has become Of the cruis-
err? The man who plunged into the
woods with sack of -four and hunk
Of pork and tea and tobacco and
matches, to find his unerring way to
the northwest Of the northwest" and
! check up the timber on each forty by
pacing it off and counting the trees,
reporting how much they would
scale. There was a master of many
arts.
In the nature of the case, the lum-
berjack's job was vanishing occupa-
tion. Moving down the forest at the
rate of two billion feet year was
bound to finish it. But the beginning
Of the end was the logging road.
When numbering worked it's way back
from the streams, logging by rail be-
gan. And once loaded on cars, they
ran the logs direct to the mills. Sum-
mer logging began and numbering be-
came an all the year round occupa-
ton. Machinery was introduced for
swapping and skidding-no more
need of juggling logs with canthooks
and peaveys.
Times changed. A man could work
In the woods lifetime now and never
see log jam nor ride log nor
build wanigan. The man working
in the woods may be every bit as
good as the lumberjack used to be
but he isn't lumberjack. He is just
man working in the woods.
For numbering after the old fashion
is rapidly dwindling in Minnesota
and will soon be thing of the past.
In its place, according to the present
trend Of things, will rise new in
dustry, depending on perennial crop
of trees, using everything that comes
from the woods and running on stead
lily and soberly.