Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 159, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1910 — LIFE OF A LUMBER JACK. [ARTICLE]

LIFE OF A LUMBER JACK.

“Mesa of Preacher*” That Sap» ireaaed Men at Chrlatnaaa Time. The Woman’s Christian Temperanca Union has sent out tons of magazines and tracts that have at last broken the monotony of the lumberman’s dreary existence, although the value is doubtful of temperance tracts and floral mottoes saying, "Look not upon the wine cup when It is red.” As on« old fellow remarked to me, “We never have no red^cups j here, anyfcpw," There seems' to m? a Jrea? gulf Bprung up betwfen the life of the lumber Jack and the outside world, and mighty little has been done to bridge that gulf, a writer in Harper’s Weekly says. “Faith without works," is as dead in the American woods as it is in our American cities. The woods and the streams and the singing of birds and the icq and snow and the awful silence may all teach the Divine Spirt, but the only gospel preached and worked out in the Use. of the lumber jack Is the gospel of greed. It is hard enough to be robbed of his hard-earned dollars in the' company’s stores, where he must pay two er three times the regular price for his tobacco and "foot riggin’ ” and clothes. But every mortal that ne sees from the outside world is clothing peddlers, cheap jewelry agents and insurance agents authorized on the payment of a certain commission to the lumber company to go in and “rob” the men of their scanty earnings. Do you wonder that the men one night, after a settlement worker had gone out twenty miles to a camp to give the men a Christmas entertainment with a talking machine and choir boys from a large Boston church, and with pipes and tobacco and handkerchiefs for gifts, were dumfounded to have the visitors refuse an offtring of more than $25. The boss stood there with the collection in his cap and exclaimed: “This is the first mess of preachers I ever saw that wouldn’t take a hat after it ’d been passed around.”