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