Tag Archives: white pine

20th Century, Great Lakes, History, Industry, Intercession, Judgment & Counter-Judgment Cycle, Logging, Minnesota, omnipresent history, trade, Unions, World War I

Workers Strike at Largest Sawmill in the World 1917

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1917

“Workers at the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company sawmill, the largest in the world, strike for higher pay and safer working conditions. Organizers from the radical International Workers of the World spread the strike to the logging camps before police break it up with arrests and force.” *

Minnesota’s history of logging in this era is rife with irony. On one hand, it is a shining example of cooperation and productivity. 

“The VRL Lumber Co. was the largest on earth producing on average a million board feet of lumber a day seven days a week. Production on such a vast scale required an enormous supply of virgin white and red pine harvesting a total of four billion board feet over a 20 year period.” **

On the other hand, this mill was pitifully negligent in its care for its workers’ health and well-being. 

“Toilet facilities were primitive in the extreme. Privies were no more than shallow, open pits with a roof and some poles for seats. Excrement was only rarely treated with lime or even covered with dirt. State inspectors repeatedly and despairingly observed that “there seems to prevail an idea that toilet facilities in a camp are superfluous.””

Safety precautions were ignored, too. Engaged in strenuous manual labor with lethal tools in frigid weather, lumberjacks had an extremely high accident rate. Although immediate first aid was therefore the jacks’ greatest medical need, a survey of logging

camps several years before the strike revealed that “in none . . . were there any facilities for giving first aid to the injured.” **

Below is the an eye-witness testimony regarding the ‘jacks accommodations.

“Prospects of a major IWW walkout were enhanced, however, by the working and living conditions of the lumberjacks. Typically, jacks lived in rough-cut lumber shanties. A bunkhouse 30 feet by 80 feet by 11 feet would house anywhere from 60 to 90 men in rows of double-decked wooden bunks lining each wall. Each individual bed with its mattress of loose straw slept two men. Each jack received two or three woolen blankets from the camp (sheets were unknown). The turnover was so high that four or five men might easily use the same blankets each season. 

Virtually all the beds, blankets, and men were infested with lice. In 1914 inspectors from the State Department of Labor and Industries observed that “the conditions under which the men were housed made it impossible for men to keep their bodies free from vermin.” 

Bunkhouses were ventilated only by doors at each cud and one or two small skylights in the roof. One or perhaps two iron stoves, kept fired all night, provided heat. The poor ventilation compounded sanitary problems.

The men worked 11-hour days in the cold northern Minnesota winter and generally wore two or three sets of underwear in addition to their outer garments. The combination of wet snow and hard labor soaked the jacks’ clothes every day, but the men were without washing facilities either for themselves or what they wore. 

Since most of them put on all the clothing they owned, dozens of sets of wet-from-sweat clothes hung near the stove every night to dry for the next day. The steam from the clothing joined the stench of tightly-packed, unwashed bodies in the bunkhouse, prompting one Wobbly to comment that “the bunk houses in which the lumber jacks sleep are enough to gag a skunk.” **

“Chronology

December 24, 1916

Timber mill workers at the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company draw up a list of demands.

December 26, 1916

Workers present their demands to the superintendent of manufacturing, Chester R. Rogers.

December 27, 1916

Mill workers decide to go ahead with the strike.

December 28, 1916

Pickets begin at the company’s gates. One thousand workers go on strike. Flying squads (IWW messengers) head north to lumber camps.

January 1, 1917

One thousand lumberjacks walk out of the camps.

January 2, 1917

A thousand more lumberjacks strike. Lumberjacks are banished from Virginia, Minnesota.

February 1, 1917

The lumber strike is officially called off.” ***

So, what was the aftermath of this strike, and how did it improve the lives of lumberjacks and those that worked the sawmill? Below is an excerpt from Wobbly (IWW) records:

“The mill workers returned to their jobs in the last week of January. The lumberjacks held on a bit longer and neither the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company nor the International Lumber Company was able to reopen logging operations until February. What remained of the Wobbly lumber strike leadership gathered in Duluth. On February 1 the leaders called off the strike, claiming a partial victory by way of improved conditions.

Most companies did attend to their camps better after the strike. The ILC bought new blankets for the men and raised slightly the base pay. The quality of food seems to have been improved, too, in most camps. In 1917 the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company spent nearly 20 per cent more per man for food than earlier. Wartime price inflation accounted for part, but not most, of the increase.” ****

What say You of this event and the broken relationships between loggers, their representatives in the IWW, and the V.R.L. company managers and International Lumber Company (ILC) owners? We invite Your timeless knowledge, and graceful judgment into their circumstance Ruach Ha Kodesh. How do we begin to make right this wrong from Your perspective? How have we offended You and the principles of Your kingdom?

You have said clearly through the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians:

“Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf? Indeed, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they should also expect to share in the harvest.” I Corinthians 9:8-10

We acknowledge, first, our offense to You through the judgments of Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and the ILC. We offend You as employers when we do not provide a Sabbath rest. We offend You when do not provide for the lives and safety of Your workers. We offend You when we fail to provide food, clothing, and adequate shelter for those in our care. We offend You when profit becomes an idol that forgets the contributions of the employees to the health of the corporation. Will You forgive VRL Co.  and the International Lumber Company in this era, and create right relationships that lead to blessing in our timber industry’s management both in the present and future?

Similarly, we have offended You through the judgments of the lumberjacks and sawmill workers towards the VRL Company’s owners and ILC managers. We offend You when we do not take a Sabbath where it is offered. We offend You when we expect our employer to solve our unmentioned problems, and fail to be proactive in our own needs. We offend You as workers through the misbelief that profit is a given, therefore, the company has unlimited resources to spend on labor. Will You forgive the lumberjacks and millworkers of VRL Co. and ILC of this era, and create new 

interconnections between laborers, labor unions, and executives of our logging industry that lead to present and future blessings for all?

Above all, we especially ask for the release of the victims of the injustices of this era from the prisons of their counter-judgments. We know that there are those who lost life and limb. We know that there are those who were circumstantially hemmed in who felt they had no choice but to submit to abusive work conditions to survive. 

Will You forgive those who were ensnared through the maintenance of offense towards the abuses of Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and the ILC? Will You give them gifts of grace that look to You for justice, while not resubmitting themselves to abuse? Will You take these judgments and counter-judgments up, out, and onto the Cross of Christ? Will You remove the log from the eyes of all in the logging industry?

* http://www.mnhs.org/about/dipity_timeline.htm

** http://monarchtreepublishing.com/Ilets/1916-Lumbering-Strike.pdf

** Testimony of Jay Hall; Sixteenth Biennial Report, p. 117; Boose, in International Socialist Review, 14:414

*** Chronology and an excellent brief summary by Anja Witek can be viewed at this MNopedia link. http://www.mnopedia.org/event/iww-lumber-strike-1916-1917

**** https://iww.org/node/1524

 

 

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19th Century, Exploration, History, Intercession, Judgment & Counter-Judgment Cycle, Minnesota, omnipresent history, State Government

Itasca State Park Established 1891

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1891

“Conservationists win a bitter fight against lumber interests to establish Itasca, Minnesota’s first state park, at the headwaters of the Mississippi River.” * 

“Even after Schoolcraft’s discovery, a few other explorers claimed they had found the source in various tributaries of Lake Itasca. The controversy continued until 1889 when Jacob V. Brower studied the topography of the Itasca basin. He concluded that several creeks do contribute to Lake Itasca, but only at the lake’s outlet is a river formed. To learn more about his great North American River, stop at the interpretive center next to the parking lot before leaving. A souvenir shop is located in the same complex.

Brower struggled for years to preserve Itasca. In 1891, the legislature established Itasca State Park. It is Minnesota’s first state park, and one of the oldest in the country. But Brower, appointed the first park commissioner, received no pay and no funds or support to make the park a reality. Logging companies muscled their way into the park and began to clear-cut the timber. It wasn’t until 1919 that the major logging operations were completed. Today, however, there are still stands of virgin red and white pine in the park with some of the oldest and largest pine trees in Minnesota.”**

Help me with this, Lord of the Forests! I’m neither a man of the woods or of the city, but have empathies with both. What shall I pray?

First, let me say thanks for the discovery or rediscovery of the source of the Mississippi. May You bless this river, and keep, and make Your face shine on it! Thanks for the creation that it has blessed and upheld! Thanks for this pathway across our nation! 

I thank You that You are not offended by our science! I thank You that You do not bristle at our questions! I thank You that, though You may hide the truth for a time, You bless those that earnestly seek it. 

With this in mind, will You bless Schoolcraft, Brower, and any other unnamed or unrecorded explorer for the source of the Mississippi? Will You bless their heritage of family, friends, and any who would follow in their path to study and discover new aspects of this Creation?

Also, I ask Your blessing on those who sought to gather a harvest from this land. Every human on the face of this planet uses its resources on a daily basis. Thankou for those who worked the logging camps, fished, hunted, mined, or sought a better life in this region. Will You also bless their heritage of people who gather resources or repurpose those resources?

And here comes the guardian lie, that the motives of the former are superior to the latter, or that the actions of the latter are superior to the former, etc. You have made some to explore, some to study, some to harvest, some to gather, some to refine what is gathered, but NONE can claim superiority! We are all independently dependent on the Author of Life! We are necessary parts of the same body, but we have failed to recognize this, acknowledge this point of separation, or seek forgiveness, or give honor where it is due. 

Will You forgive us of our zealous judgements and counter-judgements regarding the land use of Itasca? Will you forgive our arrogance towards our neighbor for whom Christ rose and highly esteems? Will You remove the curses that have bound this land, this state, and this river? Will You help us remember the wisdom that You already have given regarding land? ***

** http://mntrails.com/trail-log/itasca-state-park-log

*** See “The Year of Jubilee Leviticus 25 http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0325.htm

 

 

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19th Century, Business, Economics, History, Logging, Minnesota, Native Americans, trade

Stillwater as Lumber Center 1844

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Maine lumberman John McKusick forms the Stillwater Lumber Company. Other New Englanders follow, making Stillwater the early center of Minnesota lumbering.*

May I watch this moment in 1844 with You? Can I sit with You on the east bank of the St. Croix bluff and take in the whole valley? I can practically smell the forest, and feel the calming flow of the St. Croix river.
On this day I remember to You the Ojibwe and Dakota nations that shared this land with us. Will You remember their open-handedness? I thank You for all, past present and future, who are blessed by this kindness.

The forests of this valley, and its’ proximity to such a wide river must have been an amazing discovery to lumbermen like McKusick. Huge trees could be harvested, rolled downhill, and floated to the sawmill. What prime real estate for the woodsman?!

May I thank You for Mc Kusick and the utility of these vast stands of timber? May we ponder the needs those woods supplied for that generation? Thank You for the hard, but good work provided through logging in that era.

As with almost any endeavor, with success comes competition. I know too little about the specifics of the competitive nature of these loggers in Stillwater, but relate to them as human who knows what it’s like to protect something valuable. It is easy to over invest in one’s work, to have our nose so close to the grindstone that we can’t see beyond it.

Will You forgive their fears of losing face, of being lesser? Will You forgive their offenses to You and each other through over harvesting, stealing logs, ignoring boundaries? Will You bless those who practiced happy competition, and enjoyed the camaraderie of Your woods?

Last thought, You present us with an odd paradox in our behavior; we often love what we harvest. Who loves the soil more than the farmer? Who loves ducks like their hunters? Who loves the woods like the logger? Who loves words like the writer?

Thank You for whatever it is we harvest now, or our future generations! May we humbly acknowledge You, and our dependence on Your resources. You commanded the Hebrews to not harvest up to the edges of their fields, but leave some behind so the needy would have food. Will You bless us to do this now and always, whatever our field or forest looks like?

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19th Century, Business, Economics, History, Industry, Intercession, Jesus, Minnesota

Timber industry begins in Minnesota 1839

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More than two-thirds of Minnesota is covered with trees when Minnesota’s first commercial sawmill is constructed at Marine on St. Croix–the beginning of Minnesota’s first industry.

On the east side of the Mississippi, a vast forest of pine and other evergreens stretches to the Canadian border. Many white pine along the St. Croix River are 200 feet tall and five feet in diameter.*

Jesus, thanks for our timber resources in Minnesota. Thank you for all who have, who are at present, or who will work in our forests in the future! Will You send your blessing into every place where Your Minnesota forests have gone: furniture, homes, barns, fences, etc.? Will You bless every recipient of Minnesota wood as You chop the roots of blame, and judgment, grudge and jealousy, envy and anger?

As you said in Romans 11:16b “…if the root is holy; so are the branches.” At present, will You forgive any worship of nature itself, and the lack of acknowledgement of to the Creator of the Woods? I’m guilty Lord too: we love stuff and use people instead of loving people and using stuff! Have mercy!

*Note – PrayThroughHistory uses the timeline located for several years at the Minnesota Historical Society Web site, at this URL: mnhs.org/about/dipity_timeline.htm .  The current URL is www.dipity.com/Minnesota/History/Minnesota-History/ and only works if typed, not pasted, in browser. It is worth the effort!

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