The camps themselves, always more or less temporary affairs, were inferior to the cow-shed accommodations of a cattle ranch.  The bunk house were over-crowded, ill-smelling and unsanitary.  In these ramshackle affairs the loggers were packed like sardines.  The bunks were arranged tier over tier and nearly always without mattresses.  They were uniformly vermin-infested and sometimes of the “muzzle-loading” variety.  No blankets were furnished, each logger being compelled to supply his own.  There were no facilities for bathing or the washing and drying of sweaty clothing.  Lighting and ventilation were of course, always poor.

In addition to these discomforts the unorganized logger was charged a monthly hospital fee for imaginary medical service.  Also it was nearly always necessary to pay for the opportunity of enjoying these privileges by purchasing employment from a “job shark” or securing the good graces of a “man catcher.”  The former often had “business agreements” with the camp foreman and, in many cases, a man could not get a job unless he had a ticket from a labor agent in some shipping point.

It may be said that the conditions just described were more prevalent in some parts of the lumber country than in others.  Nevertheless, these prevailed pretty generally in all sections of the industry before the workers attempted to better them by organizing.  At all events such were the conditions the lumber barons sought with all their power to preserve and the loggers to change.

Organization and the Opening Struggle

A few years before the birth of the Industrial workers of the World the lumber workers had started to organize.  By 1905, when the above mentioned union was launched, lumber-workers were already united in considerable numbers in the old Western afterwards the American Labor Union.  This organization took steps to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World and was thus among the very first to seek a larger share of life in the ranks of that militant and maligned organization.  Strike followed strike with varying success and the conditions of the loggers began perceptibly to improve.

Scattered here and there in the cities of the Northwest were many locals of the Industrial Workers of the World.  Not until 1912, however, were these consolidated into a real industrial unit.  For the first time a sufficient number of loggers and saw mill men were organized to be grouped into an integral part of the One Big Union.  This was done with reasonable success.  In the following year the American Federation of Labor attempted a similar task but without lasting results, the loggers preferring the industrial to the craft form of organization.  Besides this, they were predisposed to sympathize with the ideal of solidarity and Industrial Democracy for which their own union had stood from the beginning.

The “timber beast” was starting to reap the benefits of his organized power.  Also he was about to feel the force and hatred of the “interests” arrayed against him.  He was soon to learn that the path of labor unionism is strewn with more rocks than roses.  He was making an earnest effort to emerge from the squalor and misery of peonage and was soon to see that his overlords were satisfied to keep him right where he had always been.