Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

It was a sultry night just before the battle of the wilderness at Shiloh in the Civil War. Camp fires were springing up in both armies. Both sides were getting set for the battle the next day. An occasional sentries challenge could be heard on both sides.

Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges unveiled yesterday a do-it-yourself kit for those who want to try their hand at economic forecasting. While the man didn't exactly specify just what was in the kit, we can use our imagination a bit here. Perhaps it's a miniature cardboard horse with a removable tail, a blind fold, and a set of rules. The blind fold is or you, Mr. business man-not the horse.

We all remember the Munich pact of 1938 when the "Umbrella Man Neville Chamberlain, Premier of Britain sold the non-Fascist world down the river to Adolph Hitler on the false premise of gaining "peace in our time". Can we ever forget?

The following article was written by myself for the Forum of Humboldt State in Arcata, California in 1960.

As reprinted from Lumberjack News:

Comes to mind now, a boomer lumberjack that I knew in the logging cams of Northern Minnesota in 1915. He was a damned State of Mainer, but a good man for all that with, but a good man for all that with an idiot stick (can't hook to you) and he could do a good job with the old Swedish Fiddle, Misery Whip (crosscut saw). He would even swear a blue streak with the best of 'em as every one knows you can't log without that.

By Eugene V. Debs - Originally Featured in Appeal to Reason.

"Whistling girls and crowing hens shall always come to some bad end." That is what the old rural American proverb says, and likewise with beat up, wore out lumberjacks. The "bad end" we come to is the next-to-the-last stop in the lumber industry, namely, pond monkey at a sawmill. As a general rule the last stop is night watchman. Of course a quite a few young backs are pond monkeys too.

Ran into old Wind River Bill Taggart the other day, and he was hopping mad. (He is an old timber, about 75 now who used to be a riggin' slinger up Columbia River way in the big logging camps, and before that, was a river pig back in Minnesota). It seems as though he turned into kind of an extrovert on account of hollering at the whistle punk and the choker setters. Like that time over to Carson, Washington back in 1916.

I submitted an article for publication in the Humboldt Forumon December 15, 1961 when I was editor of Lumberjack News at Eureka, California. The article was printed under the following statement:

"The opinions reflected in the following article are not necessarily those of the Forum staff. Its inclusion represents continued effort on the part of the staff to give equal representation to all views. The Forum welcomes articles in answer to this one and will consider publishing one or more, depending upon their merit."

Web Editor's Note: This chapter is not included as originally presented in Scribbner's original text, because it's an excerpt from James Rowan's book, The IWW in the Lumber Industry, which is featured elsewhere on this site. Instead we offer a link to that work, here.