Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1898 — Split Logs for a Living. [ARTICLE]

Split Logs for a Living.

Splitting logs is the vocation followed by two women in the woods back of Wall’s station, on the Pennsylvania railroad. Annie and Mary Wilson are the names of these two women. They are sisters. They split rails and make pit posts and caps for the Spring Hill Coal Company, whose works are between Wilmerding and Wall’s. They do all the work of felling the trees, sawing them into proper lengths and finally with their axes splitting them into pit posts. They are assisted to some extent by their younger brother. The girls work together always and can swing an eight-foot cross-cut saw through an oak tree with apparently as much ease as some women run a typewriter. . When the tree, is sawed through and ready to split one of the girls sets an iron wedge into one end of the log and with a large maul weighing about twenty pounds drives it in, splitting the log from end to end. The operation is repeated until the log is split into sizes for posts. Then thq axes are brought Into play and the posts trimmed up and shaped, The girls came from Indiana. “The work is not hard when you get used to it,” said one, “and then we can make more money splitting rails and making pit posts in one day than we could in a week working in a kitchen. What’s the difference, so long as the work Is honest, how one earns a living? Although I work hard every day, rain or shine, I never get sick. I was never sick in my life. The people around here all talk about us, but we don’t care for that. We are earning a good living and don’t owe anyone a cent.”