“Ten monopoly groups, aggregating only one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, monopolized one thousand, two hundred and eight billion eight hundred million (1,208,800,000,000) board feet of standing timber—­each a foot square and an inch thick.  These figures are so stupendous that they are meaningless without a hackneyed device to bring their meaning home.  These one thousand, eight hundred and two timber business monopolists held enough standing timber; an indispensable natural resource, to yield the planks necessary (over and above manufacturing wastage) to make a floating bridge more than two feet thick and more than five miles wide from New York to Liverpool.  It would supply one inch planks for a roof over France, Germany and Italy.  It would build a fence eleven miles high along our entire coast line.  All monopolized by one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, or interests more or less interlocked.  One of those interests—­a grant of only three holders—­monopolized at one time two hundred and thirty-seven billion, five hundred million (237,500,000,000) feet which would make a column one foot square and three million miles high.  Although controlled by only three holders, that interest comprised over eight percent of all the standing timber in the United States at that time.”

The above illuminating figures, quoted from “The I.W.A. in the Lumber Industry,” by James Rowan, will give some idea of the magnitude and power of the lumber trust.

[Illustration:  “Topping a Tree”

After one of these huge trees is “topped” it is called a “spar tree”—­very necessary in a certain kind of logging operations.  As soon as the chopped-off portion falls, the trunk vibrates rapidly from side to side sometimes shaking the logger to certain death below.]

Opposing this colossal aggregation of wealth and cussedness were the thousands of hard-driven and exploited lumberworkers in the woods and sawmills.  These had neither wealth nor influence—­nothing but their hard, bare hands and a growing sense of solidarity.  And the masters of the forests were more afraid of this solidarity than anything else in the world—­and they fought it more bitterly, as events will show.  Centralia is only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and worker.  But let us see what this hated and indispensable logger-the productive and human basis of the lumber industry, the man who made all these things possible, is like.

The Human Element—­“The Timber Beast”

Lumber workers are, by nature of their employment, divided into two categories—­the saw-mill hand and the logger.  The former, like his brothers in the Eastern factories, is an indoor type while the latter is essentially a man of the open air.  Both types are necessary to the production of finished lumber, and to both union organization is an imperative necessity.