The Passing of The Timber Beast by James Stevens
THE HARBOR lights glowed through a fine drizzle as the J. N. Teal, the last of the old sternwheeler fleet to carry cargo and passengers between Portland and The Dalles, churned into her West Side dock. With my blanket roll at my feet I stood by the rail and stared, trying to see what life was beyond the lights along the river. There were only shadows, black bulks of buildings, streaked faintly with yellow gleams. I could only imagine That, for the present, was enough to give me a cold, sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach and to make my heart thump as the sternwheeler was moored. At last I was in Portland. Here I was, alone in a big city. Here I would realize my dream of a new life of labor. Of that I was still certain. No more grading camps! I was through with the drudgery of railroad building. So long, mules and scrapers! From here I was going to the tall timber and live the life of a bully logger!
“Where do the loggers hang out here in Portland?” I asked a deck hand.
“The skidroad,” he said shortly.
“Where’s that?” I asked, with a blush for my ignorance.
It’s hell, I ain’t got time to give directions. Just go ashore and ask anybody which way’s Ericsen’s.”
A loafer ashore pointed the way to Third and Burnside Streets. I plodded along the waterfront in the rain of the March night. The low clouds were black above the dim street lamps. The steel frames of the drawbridges over the Willamette looked naked and cold in the river lights and shadows. I knew I was on the skidroad when I came upon gangs of men before the blackboards of employment offices— “slave markets,” I soon learned to call them— on Second Street. Most of the men wore mackinaws or short mackinaw shirts, “tin pants” or overalls stagged just below the knee, and calked boots. Woods jobs were scarce. Many of the loggers were on the bum. An old-timer struck me for the price of a bed. I had only a few dollars, but I offered to buy him a beer. Over the glasses in a corner saloon he was free with information about logging camps. The best one in the Northwest for a young man of seventeen who wanted to get a start as a logger was Paul Bunyan’s, he said. Yes, sir, I certainly ought to inquire around everywhere and try to get a chance in Paul Bunyan’s logging camp.
Two years among the team hands of Idaho and Montana had left me fairly wise, and I had some notion that the old logger was stringing me along, though I didn’t doubt that there really was a famous logger named Paul Bunyan. I only suspected that this old-timer was trying to work me for some more beers. So I quit him, and headed for Ericsen’s up the street, where all flush loggers foregathered to blow in their hard-earned wages.
At that time— 1910— Ericsen’s Saloon had a world-wide fame. To me the grand and glittering barroom was a fairy tale come to life. My imagination exaggerated every detail of the scene. The brown and shining bar curved away from the door and ran down a room that seemed as big as a circus tent. Row after row of card tables, each one crowded with gambling men, reached into corners that appeared mysterious and far in the smoke drift. A score of slot machines lined one wall. From somewhere came a sound of piano and fiddle music. A mellow glow swam about me. I was enchanted as I moved toward the bar.
This bar had nearly the length of a city block in all its curves and turns. Back of it white lights shone on mirrors, pyramids of glasses and rows of queer-shaped bottles labeled with vivid colors, and these stood on a back bar draped with the snowiest cloths. The diamond-like dazzle of white half-blinded me. Bright light was also reflected from the varnished columns and beams about the mirrors, from the brass of the bar rails; and the nickel of spigot handles. The bartenders, at least fifteen in number, were all in white jackets. They were shaved in such a clean style, their hair was slicked down into such a fancy curl over their eyes, and their mustaches were spiked so elegantly that I was certain dukes couldn’t look handsomer. I had never seen such magnificent men before, not even in the saloons of Boise, Idaho. Shiny brass spittoons that looked pretty enough for flower vases stood all along the big footrail. Linen towels were hanging in front of the bar. Glasses clinked, gold and silver jingled, the click of poker chips sounded from the card tables, beer purred as it gushed from the spigot to the glass, laughs and happy talk sounded all along the bar . . . I sipped my beer delicately and looked through half-closed eyes upon the scene, and dreamed.
I remembered a February night in a sandhouse at The Dalles. Hoboes huddled miserably about a fire. Too bitterly cold for sleep. Complaints, denunciations, life defiled and cursed. There we were, used in the working seasons to dig the ditches, build the railroads, harvest the crops; and when winter closed up seasonal work we were made outcasts, jailed, or harried from town to town like criminals. Well, the working stiffs of the Northwest were learning something. In that sandhouse our miserable gang was told of Direct Action and the Red Card. I signed up with the others. We could pay our dues when we got a job.
Then the talk had changed. A dream emerged. It was in such circumstances that American folklore, the art of the plain man, flourished. The eternal force behind all creations of art, noble and lowly, is the desire to escape from reality. And there in the sandhouse I heard again the story of the Hoboes’ Heaven. I had heard it before, but Singer Larkin told it with genuine intensity of feeling. Briefly, his tale was about a Heaven in which every house was a saloon, every road a race track, and the only jobs poker playing and crap shooting. Liquor and warmth and play. The saloon was the nearest thing to beauty and comfort that the Western workingman knew in those days. Small wonder that he idealized it in his bitterest hours, that he turned to it when the cold politics of industrial revolt failed to inspire him with hope.
The tale had struck my imagination. And here in Ericsen’s it seemed to be realized. Standing at that glittering bar, it was easy for me to fancy that long, hard hours of labor for small wages were gone, that I was done with lousy blankets and sour beans and bully boss-men, that at last I was in a land where every place was like Ericsen’s . . . liquor and warmth and play . . . Hoboes’ Heaven . . . I have never known a happier hour. . .
Before the summer was over I was to reach a clearer understanding of the reason for Ericsen’s, and for Fritz’s, Blazier’s, Our House, Billy the Mug’s, the Horseshoe, and other famous skidroad saloons of the Pacific Northwest’s lumber centers. They were, in fact, the only refuge of the “timber beast,” the only places where he was welcomed as a man, where he could find solace and comfort after a hard and mean existence in the woods. In that summer I lost much of my own youth, and forgot about fairy tales. It was to be many years before I recovered my boyish perception of the fact that the fanciful tales of Western workingmen were as truly art creations out of their own life as are the formal works of educated story-tellers.
The saloon, a famous political leader informs us, is a defunct institution. No one dares to defend it. The place of the saloon in the social life of the time in which it flourished has, however, never been intelligently and fairly studied. It is isolated from the life of its time, attacked alone, and never considered in its relations to the greater evils of its day. For example, the timber beast. The timber beast was the great evil of the Northwest twenty years ago; and he will always remain a black blot on the history of that time and on the record of the society which was responsible for him.
As I discovered, soon after shipping from Portland to a Columbia River logging camp, the man who joined the tribe of loggers made himself a pariah among the nice folk of the farms and towns. To these gentry — all of whom were in some way dependent on the lumber industry and consequently on the labor of the men of the woods—the man who appeared with a blanket roll on his back, stagged overalls on his legs, and calked boots on his feet, was simply a strayed animal. He was permitted to stay in town only until his wool was clipped. Then he was herded back to the corral. “Timber beast” he was called, and so he was treated. In those days few loggers attempted to dress up when they came to town, and they never thought of seeking acquaintance among decent girls. Ah, no! Loggers must keep below the Deadline in Seattle and to the North End in Portland. There saloons and red lights were provided and also sundry gambling games, so that there was no chance of a timber beast returning to camp unplucked. The virtuous police protected the good citizens. The skidroad cops had an uncanny instinct for discovering when a logger’s last dime was gone. Then and only then was the timber herded back to camp.
If the saloon was an evil, the logging camp of its time was incomparably more so. The men of the woods were herded into dirty, lousy and unventilated bunkhouses. They were forced to carry their own blankets. There were no facilities for bathing. There were no dry rooms, and after ten or twelve hours of labor in the rain every bunkhouse was pungent with the fumes of drying wool. Grub was plentiful, but it was coarse and badly cooked; the boss of the cookhouse in those days was invariably referred to as “the belly-burglar.” On the job ground-lead logging was still the rule, and every camp had a high monthly toll of injury and death. Industrial hospitalization was hardly thought of; any seriously injured man was certain to get the “black bottle” in a county hospital or in the hell-holes conducted by medical murderers who fattened on “hospital fees” collected from lumber companies. Workmen’s compensation laws were then in the class of “radical and fantastic legislation.” Two dollars per ten hours was the common labor wage, and half of that went for board. In short, every condition of existence in the logging camp of that era was brutalizing and degrading, and the man who could stand it perhaps earned the name of “timber beast.”
Yet, out of such conditions came the Paul Bunyan stories and many other tales that survive because of the beauty of the fancies woven into them by forgotten bards. No doubt it was the misery of life which made imaginative loggers create the stories of Paul Bunyan’s camp, with its incomparable cookhouse, delightful bunkhouse life, and interesting labors. Certainly it is true that the bunkhouse bard passed with the timber beast and the miserable conditions of existence in the logging camps.
At any rate, my own experiences in my first year of logging survive in my mind as two tremendous contrasts. One is black with the misery and grief of life and labor in the logging camp of that time; the other shines and rings with the glamor of the moments of escape, when I foregathered with the despised timber beasts in saloons like Ericsen’s and escaped reality. There we became heroes. There, over the glasses and under the lights, our labors seemed Herculean, and we boasted that none but bullies like ourselves could stand them. In Ericsen’s we swaggered to the bar and bawled our defiance. Timber beasts, and proud of it! We repeated tales about mighty men of the woods to justify our kind. We sang old ballads. We were outcasts, but we had a tribal life. In Ericsen’s was glory, and there we found pride. . . The aftermath, of course, was a sick and bitter awakening in a foul-smelling bunkhouse, to be high-balled to work by an iron-fisted bull of the woods . . . but a little of the glamor always remained, to make us feel some hope in our existence. There was always a blow-in ahead….
The timber beasts, the saloon, and all of the old life that belonged to them passed in the war. Many different groups claim the credit for making the logger’s trade a respectable and profitable one. The I. W. W., once the most vociferous and violent of Western labor organizations, claims the credit for sheets and showers in the camps and for the eight-hour day. The lumbermen insist that they themselves inaugurated the social and economic changes. Politicians horn in and shout for recognition. The fact is, however, that no organization or individual was more than an agent for the inevitable change. The real cause was the sweep of the tide of Eastern urban civilization over the West.
Transportation and finance had at last bound the West to the East. Small lumbering and logging operations were being bought up by the big companies. The manufacture and marketing of lumber were reorganized along Eastern industrial lines. Vast mechanical developments occurred in both the mills and the woods. The degree of Logging Engineer was conferred on graduates of forestry schools. The bull of the woods who ruled by brawn gave way to the logging superintendent who was technically skilled. Logging railroads, new types of bull donkeys, high lead and skyline logging methods brought mechanics to the woods. The logger became a skilled laborer, and as such he demanded the wages and living conditions enjoyed by skilled laborers in the cities. All of the changes were coming into effect when America entered the war. The economic condition of the logger had improved tremendously, but he was still a timber beast in the eyes of farm and town folks. War conditions, however, elevated his social status and made his trade respected, even admired.
This resulted from the entry of the government into spruce production. Col. Bruce Disque was sent out from Washington to organize the lumber industry for wartime needs. The Spruce Division was formed, the government eight-hour day established in the logging camps. Loggers became soldiers, and soldiers were popular. When the erstwhile timber beast came to town he no longer wore the old regalia of stagged pants and calked boots; instead, he was shiny and neat in a tailored uniform. He was no longer kept to the North End and below the Deadline. Now he was one of Uncle Sam’s boys, a fit companion for decent girls, a man honored by all. He learned the pleasures of the theater, the automobile and the dance palace. He discovered that with this broadening of his social life the necessity for the saloon was diminished and his appetite for its beverages fell away. He was no longer a timber beast; at last he was a man.
And he was more of a man in the woods. Production per man far exceeded the figures of the old era. The lumbermen learned that better food, cleaner living conditions, shorter hours, respectable treatment meant more logs and lumber. After the war, some of the old-time lumbermen fought for a return to the old conditions, but the younger and more progressive men among them held to the once revolutionary idea that it was better in every sense to regard workers in the woods as men rather than as beasts.
So the logger of today is a man with a highly respectable and profitable trade; he is no longer a drudging and despised timber beast but a skilled mechanic of the timber. His bunkhouse is orderly, clean and comfortable. He sits at a table loaded with savory, well-prepared food. There is a camp garage for his automobile. He enjoys the radio and the graphophone. He is protected by company insurance, workmen’s compensation laws, and first-class hospital service. When he drives to town he goes to his tailor’s, where his hundred-dollar suit has been kept for him, dresses up in an elegant style, and stops at one of the best hotels. He has friends among smart and pretty business girls. His only concern with liquor is to be socially acceptable; that is, he must never be without a full pocket flask.
Certainly for this logger the saloon is a defunct institution, but only because other institutions that once made his life wretched and bitter are also defunct. The romance of his life is also gone, for that romance was made by the contrasts in his life, the high vivid spots among the darkest of shadows. He no longer suffers miserably in a life of bleak toil, and he no longer riots in a tumultuous blow-in, or dreams purple fancies of a logger’s heaven ruled by a beneficent god such as the good and great Paul Bunyan. He is no longer the outcast, the timber beast; he is the everyday skilled American workman, prosperous and proud. Romance passed with his old life. I for one often look back with regret on “the good old days”, but I know that is because I forget the long months of labor in the woods and only remember vividly the few nights in Ericsen’s. So I cheer the passing of the timber beast and salute the timber mechanic, that fat and sassy plutocrat of the modern logging camp.
The above essay appeared in The Frontier Magazine in January, 1929. James Stevens was an accomplished writer later in his life. In 1960 he appeared in Missoula for a writer’s conference along with Leslie A. Fiedler, Jack Barsness, Naomi Babson, Dorothy Johnson, Dale White, Dan Cushman, and Nelson Bentley. Stevens’ talk was titled “The Tall Tale and How It Grew.” Dr. H. G. Merriam edited The Frontier Magazine in 1929. You may have heard Stevens’ song, “The Frozen Logger”, in your travels. Learn more about him at Wikipedia – see link below: