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THE methods of lumber
manufacturing in vogue at this time in the pine districts along
Green Bay in Wisconsin and Michigan were crude compared to the
elaborate system which has since been perfected. The mills, during
the decade between 1840 and 1850, were small establishments operated
by water power, making approximately one million feet of lumber a
year. The type of saw known as the "mulay" had just come in and not
a few of the mills were still equipped with the old-fashioned sash
saws. The circular saw and the band saw, together with most of the
mechanical apparatus now in use for handling logs, had not then been
perfected.
In logging, driving
and sawing the lumbermen of Maine and New Brunswick were the most
expert of their time, and it was largely under their direction and
through the introduction of the methods which prevailed along the
St. John and Penobscot rivers that lumbering in Wisconsin and on the
northern peninsula of Michigan, of the West generally, was brought
to the point of its greatest development.
In this respect the
firm of Sinclair and Wells enjoyed a decided advantage over their
competitors. As I have said Mr. Sinclair was probably the greatest
practical lumberman hi the country and had not only acquired a large
experience but had directed operations of magnitude in Maine. In
addition he had brought to Wisconsin men who were schooled in
lumbering methods in the Pine Tree State. Among them were David
Langley, who came west with us in 1845; Silas Howard, who went oil
from Milwaukee to Flat Rock the same year, and others. For some time
afterward his forces were constantly being recruited from Name. Some
of the men I brought out with me when I returned from my trips to
the East. When the forests in this territory were cut and
opportunities for employment became restricted, thousands of the men
who had grown up in them went still farther West to the Pacific
coast where they are at work to-day. In this way has time enterprise
of Maine exerted a marked influence upon the entire lumber industry
of the United States.
It was not long
before members of my own family, attracted by the prospects which I
unfolded in my letters to them, decided to follow in my footsteps.
Two of my brothers, Robert and Samuel, came to Escanaba from their
home in Maine in 1849 but remained for only one winter. Perhaps they
regarded my enthusiasm over the growing West as unfounded. In June,
1852, however, they made a second venture and this time remained
permanently. Both of them took up logging by contract near
Masonville, Michigan, and afterward occupied conspicuous places in
the lumbering industry on Menominee River, whither I had preceded
them, taking charge of and becoming the owners of some of the
important mills on the river at that time.
About 1850 the moving
stream from the eastern pineries to the West attained large
proportions, the result, very largely, of a business depression
which left many of the lumbermen in the older region without
occupation. Many also were attracted to the newer field by Mr.
Sinclair, and following their example still more responded to the
growing demand for experienced men. There were no less than thirty
of them one winter at Escanaba who had been camp "bosses" or logging
contractors in Maine.
These men were very
different from the workmen of the present day, a fact due to some
extent, possibly, to the environment in which they lived. In the
absence of a highly organized system of industrial interchange they
were obliged to depend upon their own resources to supply their
needs and their capacity for doing things was developed accordingly.
They could erect camps, make axe handles and sleighs and many of
them were blacksmiths, sawyers and carpenters capable of undertaking
almost any variety of work. Two-thirds of the men in logging crews I
have had could do these things and, in addition, were excellent
boatmen. At present in a crew of fifty men there is rarely one man
who can do any of them, even the "boss" himself. To supply the
deficiency it is necessary to send blacksmith and a mechanic into
the woods and the axe helves and other tools are made in factories
and included in the list of supplies. It is said, in explanation,
that it is cheaper to buy articles of this sort than to make them.
But they cost us very little sacrifice of time as we did most of
these tasks at night or on Sundays. The same rule of conduct applied
to the women in the mill settlements who devoted their evenings and
spare moments to knitting instead of occupying themselves with the
diversions of the present day which were, as a matter of fact,
unknown.
Similarly my
practical education covered a wide range. I could build a bateau,
make all of the tools used for river driving, ox yokes and sleighs,
shoe oxen and horses and exercise generally the functions of a
blacksmith, carpenter or millwright,—all of which stood me in very
good stead.
While other mills
along Green Bay were being operated to their full capacity to
produce a million feet of lumber a year we were turning out from
eight to ten millions besides laths, pickets, and other products. We
were also the forerunners in this region in the manufacture of sawed
shingles. At this time only shaved shingles were known in the West.
About one-third of all the boats plying between the pineries of
Wisconsin and Michigan and southern lake ports carried bolts, about
four feet long, which were made into shingles by the old process of
shaving in the yards at Chicago and Milwaukee, at each of which
places probably one hundred men were employed in the work.
Not long after my
arrival at Escanaba we added to our mill equipment two shingle
machines obtained in Maine, each with a capacity of eight thousand
in ten hours. The economy of this method of manufacture was obvious
but in the beginning there was a prejudice against sawed shingles in
the West and the demand was confined to people who had migrated from
the New England States. After a time this was overcome, the older
method was abandoned and other mills followed our example. With
added improvements in the machines some of the mills produced later
from forty to fifty thousand shingles a day.
Milwaukee and Chicago
were the chief markets for the Green Bay region and the distributing
points whence the lumber was shipped to points in the growing Middle
West. In these cities practically all of the mills maintained their
own yards, to which the lumber was shipped without drying as soon as
made. Mr. Sinclair and his partner, Daniel Wells, owned at this time
an interest in the firm of N. Ludington and Company, which
maintained yards at both places, and a few years later the
Ludingtons, Harrison and Nelson, purchased an interest in and
subsequently control of the property at Flat Rock. With the building
of railroads and the reduction of freight rates most of the lumber
producers abandoned the practice of maintaining their own yards and
piled and dried the lumber at the mills shipping it to all points by
rail as well as by boat.
For a year or two
after the extension of the railroads through the Green Bay region,
freight rates were so exorbitant, twelve cents per hundredweight,
that there was little change in the methods of transporting of
lumber. The railroad officials were brought to the realization of
the short-sightedness of their policy by the establishment of a car
ferry which ran between Chicago and Peslitigo, connecting at the
latter place with a short railroad line, the Wisconsin and Michigan,
which rail for some distance up the Menominee River. The loaded cars
were transferred to the ferry at Peshtigo and taken thence to
Chicago. We were so successful in this method of transportation that
the Northwestern and the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroads
reduced the freight rate from twelve to six and one-half or seven
cents. When this was done the Chicago and Milwaukee lumber yards
were abandoned and shipments were made direct from the mills.
In 1846, when I first
went into the woods at Escanaba, I was able to apply to good purpose
the training I had acquired as a boy in the logging camps "down
East." The firm of Sinclair and Wells began at that time the
production of masts in which trade they had practically a monopoly
on the upper lakes. Other lumbermen had the same opportunity but
were not skilled in the driving of oxen except in single teams and,
consequently, could not haul out of the forest logs of the size and
length required for masts and spars. To do this the six-ox team was
necessary. The masts were transported in the rough to Chicago and
Milwaukee, lashed to the sides of the ships, being too long to be
taken aboard, and were finished at the ship yards.
This was the first
branch of lumbering I took up in the West. During the winter of 1846
I drove a six-ox team at Escanaba and hauled out of the woods one
hundred and fifty masts. It was not such a far cry, after all, from
masting on the Great Lakes to the pre-revolutionary period when the
English government reserved to itself for the royal navy and marked
with broad arrows the tall pines in the forests skirting the St.
John River.
Trees of this kind
along the lakes are no more. They vanished when the forests were
stripped of the white pine, and their lesser brethren, the Norway
pine and hardwoods, are following fast after them. In 1846 I hauled
from the forest a white pine twelve inches thick at the butt, six
inches at the top and one hundred and seven feet long. It was
shipped to the yard at Milwaukee where it was made into a "liberty
pole" or flagstaff and presented to Rock County. Because of its
great length it could not be hauled intact over the crooked roads
and had to be sawed in two and spliced. It was erected in the court
house yard at Janesville and stood there for many years until it
rotted down.
During the winters of
1846, 1847, and 1848 most of my time was devoted to the driving of
oxen with a goad stick, after the Yankee fashion, jogging along the
Escanaba River. This branch of the industry I have always considered
the most important. In sawing, which is entirely a matter of
mechanical equipment and arrangement, conditions are everywhere
equal and no mill enjoys an advantage over competing mills, but in
logging there is a wider field for the expenditure of individual
effort and the exercise of skill and it is in this that the profits
are made or losses of operation sustained. The difference between
success and failure oftentimes depends upon the ingenuity displayed
in the harvesting of the timber, so to speak, and bringing it to the
mills.
Logging conditions
were similar to those which prevailed in Aroostook County and in New
Brunswick. At the camps, then about twenty-five miles up the
Escanaba, we were up for breakfast at five o'clock and off to work
before daylight and did not return until dark. By comparison with
the supply lists of the logging camps of the present the rations
upon which we thrived were, to say the least, meager, and there was
not enough variety to tempt even a normal appetite. As there were no
farms in the vicinity to rely upon, the supply of vegetables was
small. We were rarely able to obtain any at all. For five and
one-half months during one winter we did not see a vegetable and
were given fresh meat only once. Camp fare consisted of the
inevitable pork and beans, bread, and tea which we sweetened with
Porto Rico molasses in lieu of sugar. Occasionally we had a little
butter and dried apples but so infrequently that they seemed a
luxury beyond the conception of even the lumbermen of the present
day who have varied camp supply lists to draw upon for subsistence.
For breakfast and
supper the beverage was tea, for dinner, only water. Sometimes when
I was detained, arriving late at the mess table, I found the water
which had been poured into my tin cup frozen and had to break the
ice to drink. Tea seemed so much of a luxury that I promised myself
that, if I ever had a home of my own and was able to afford myself
that enjoyment, I would have tea three times a day. For almost
seventy years I have adhered to that resolution. It happened
afterwards that Potter Palmer, of Chicago, and I became very good
friends and, whether by reason of his earlier experiences or not, he
seemed to regard tea-drinking in much the same light as myself. For
a number of years he obtained his supply from Sir Thomas Lipton,
whom I had met with him in Chicago, and he shared it with me.
Sunday, as in the
East also, was a day of rest, the kind of rest that takes the form
of a change of occupation. The men in charge of the camps made axe
handles, filed saws and ground axes. Despite all these apparent
hardships, the long hours, the hazardous nature of the work, and the
lack of luxuries we did well enough. Our work was such that we
needed no special stimulus to whet our appetites. We made the most
of our unvarying fare and ate with a zest that comes only of long
days of work in the open, the keen, crisp air of the winter and the
tang of the pine forests.
In late years the
methods of logging have been entirely modified. More men are
employed to do the same amount of work and the cost has become
proportionately greater. As the forests along the streams were
cleared and the hard wood, which cannot be floated, came into
demand, the tree trunks were cut into short lengths in the forest,
hauled to the railroad on sleighs drawn in some cases by steam
tractors and transported to the mills overland. In this way the
dangers of log driving have been obviated and time economized to a
moderate degree, but the much-heralded progress in the promotion of
efficiency of labor has not, so far as I can see, wrought any
improvement upon the logging methods we followed sixty-five years
ago. Then the foremen worked as leaders rather than directors. In
the woods and working rollways or jams they took the initiative and
set the example for the men, the only effective way, to my mind, to
handle them under such conditions. Nowadays the system used on the
railroads is followed,—the foreman looks on and gives orders. If his
attention is diverted the men work indifferently or not at all until
they are again under observation.
Many of those who
worked in the lumber camps and at the mills in Wisconsin and
Michigan were Germans who made their way westward in great numbers.
They were not very efficient as water men or for log driving, but
steadier than the laborers of any other nationality. Whether or not
the watchful eye of the "boss" was on them they kept to their tasks
with unflagging energy. I found generally that the men needed no
close supervision. At Marinette, when I first took charge of the
mill of the N. Ludington Company, as part owner and manager, they
made it a point to cut more lumber, if possible, when I was away in
attendance upon the meeting of the county board or elsewhere, than
when I was present.
During the spring of
1847 I went on drive down the Escanaba River. This work, done by the
men who had been engaged in cutting timber during the winter, was
more or less dangerous. The stream was shallow and swift of current
and its course lies through a country underlaid with a ledge of flat
rock. To avoid having the logs swept away by the ice freshets, which
sometimes came down with great force, it was necessary for us to
pile them on on the banks whence they were turned into the water
when the danger had passed. Following the custom that had prevailed
in Maine the logs were barked when hauled from the forest, and when
the rollways were broken out they rushed with dangerous momentum
down the banks into the river.
Because of the flat shores it was
necessary for us oftentimes to work waist deep in the icy water to
keep the stream of logs moving. In April, 1848, when the winter was
scarcely over and the weather still cold, we met with these
conditions and I suggested to two of my men,— William Phelps, who
came from New York, and an Irishman named Barney Gurtie,— that we go
into the water. Gurtie, who was somewhat older than Phelps and
myself, remained for two hours, at the end of which time the ice was
forming on our handspikes and clothing. Phelps and I kept at the
task for four hours although our flesh was blue and our teeth
chattering as if we had the ague. From such exposure we suffered no
ill whatever.
Although the conditions we encountered in driving and sacking logs
were uncomfortable my crews lost less time than in the camps in
winter. Sometimes the men injured their feet in log jams but
otherwise they were in better physical condition; and subjecting
them to hardships which, from the latter day point of view, might
have been considered inhumane, seemed to do them more good than
harm. They worked cheerfully, at least, on wages of from twelve to
fifteen dollars a month and seemed to accomplish more than men who
are now paid two dollars and a half a day.
One of the most important aspects of the
lumbering industry during the period from 1845 to 1860 was
"exploring" or ''cruising," the location of timber in the little
known stretch of forest. In the forties the government was making a
survey of the lands in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The work was
originally undertaken by Dr. Houghton, who lost his life in the
wilderness, and William Burt and was being continued by the sons of
the latter. "Judge" Burt was the inventor of the solar compass,
which obviated the difficulties that had been encountered with the
magnetic compass by reason of the deflection due to the presence of
magnetic iron ore in the region. He received a premium for it from
the government and several efforts were made to induce Congress to
pass a bill paying him further compensation for the use of the
instrument. To
the study of surveying, as it was adapted to the needs of the
lumberman, I gave much attention and acquired some proficiency in
tracing and locating timber, exploring the forest for advantageously
situated pine, and outlining it on the maps so that it could be
entered for purchase. The first of the land north of the Straits of
Mackinac was offered for public sale by the government in July,
1848. To take early advantage of the opportunity Mr. Sinclair and I
left Milwaukee, where I was at the time, during July, for Sault
Sainte Marie where the land office had been established in one of
the old Fort Brady buildings.
We went on the steamer "Nile,"— one of
the vessels of the line owned by Mr. Newberry, of Detroit, which ran
between Chicago and Buffalo,—as far US Mackinac, and there boarded a
smaller steamer, the "Ben Franklin," commanded by a Captain Jones.
We arrived at our destination about a week before the beginning of
the sale. Three days later we were joined by Mr. Sinclair's partner,
Daniel Wells, who had done some government surveying in Florida in
1832 and was skilled in this sort of work.
Such latter day conveniences as mapping
paper, blotting paper, mucilage and envelopes were not obtainable,
but with the materials at hand Mr. Wells made several tracings from
the government maps inserting free handed the rivers, swamps, and
lakes. For $1.25 an acre, the minimum price for public lands, we bid
in at the mouths of the Escanaba River, Ford River, and Sturgeon
River, now Nahina, eland also an island oil the chemical works and
furnaces at Gladstone, Michigan, now stand.
For five or six years after this opening
sale I went to the "Soo" three or four times a year to enter lands
for the Sinclair and Wells Company and, in with my forest
explorations, acquired a very thorough knowledge of lands in the
northern peninsula. Later my activities took me southward along the
Green Bay and in August and September, 1853, I took a crew of men,
among them two of my brothers and William Holmes, now of Menominee,
Michigan, to the land office at Manasha, Wisconsin, to make the
first entry of pine land on the Menominee River. On some of this I
am cutting timber even at the present day, the last remnant of the
pine forests remaining on the river which only thirty years ago was
the greatest timber producing region in America. Some of it, also,
after more than a half century, stripped of timber, is selling as
farming land for many times the original price paid for it and the
green fields are gradually obliterating the blackened stumps, all
that are left of the great forests that stretched may oil sides when
I first set foot in them.
In retrospect much has been written of
the great wealth these vanished forests have yielded, highly colored
narratives of the beginning, growth and decay of the lumbering
industry from the point of view of those who have seen little more
than the results and nothing at all of the processes. In reckoning
the billions of feet that have been cut, the vanishing of the
wilderness and the magical appearance of the fertile farms, many
historians overlook the hardships that were encountered, the
difficulties with which the path of progress was strewn. Nor is
sufficient consideration given the good that was achieved,— the
upbuilding of the great prairie states into which the flood of
immigration poured.
Daniel Wells
In the days when I began my career on
the Escanaba River, lumber was sold for six and eight dollars a
thousand feet. The same grade of lumber in the present market would
be worth from twenty-five to thirty dollars. The meager returns were
scarcely worth the struggle of blazing a way into the forest and
risking the dangers that confronted the pioneer. Where some
succeeded many failed, and if the opportunities of the time were
contemplated face to face and not through the perspective of more
than a half century I doubt very much whether many of the present
generation could have been induced to take their chances confronted
by such disconcerting odds. |
