Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1876 — How Loggers Live. [ARTICLE]

How Loggers Live.

about 10,000,000°?6e< each season. Work begtos at daylightand ends at dark; and when Um days lengthen or the moon toemtta reTSe working Su£ So tbe riw. when the drive is started. work begins at three o'clock in Ute morning and ends at nine in the evening, the men having five meals: breakfast at six, lunch at nine, dinner at twelve, cupper at five and tea at nine. The meals consist of pork and beans, con bread, molmeescue and tea or coffee. <"* No stint ia given to a man's appetite. The fare, such as it ia, is abundant, monotonous, nutritious and cheap. A ocok is provided for every fifty men. The beans are generally the large white bush, parboiled in pota holding half a bushel, then ten pounds of Dork is set in the middle of the beans in the pot, a quarter of a pint of molasses is poured in, and then the pot is set in a hole aur rounded with hot ashes and burning charcoal, the top covered with a stone, over which a heavy wood fire is built; and here they stoy from five to eight hours, coming out a most palatable dish. All the baking is done In rudely built stone ovens, which are heated, before the dough is mixed, with a good wood fire. The loaves of biscuit or cake are act upon the hot stones, and are cooked quickly and thoroughly. A camp of three hundred men wilt consume daily four barrels of beans, one half a barrel of pork, one barrel of flour, half a barrel of meal, one quarter of a barrel of sugar and five gallons of molasses. The men are encamped in tents, making their beds of boughs, while their extra dtoihing, a pair of duck overalls, woolen shirt and two pairs of woolen socks, is kept in an old grain sack and used as a pillow at night. The Sabbath in the woods is always a day for sharpening axes, mending sleds, rqtairing boots and clothes, setting out a new tenting sjfot handier to the cutting in the woods, and all the odd chores which would grow out of the congregation of so large a body of men. All well regulated camps exclude liquor. The work being usually fifty to two hundred miles from any settlement, and the men not being paid until the end of the season, there is little inducement for any speculator to peddle rum through the woods, or for the men to straggie off in search of it. The consumption of axes and handles is enormous, an ax lasting a month, and a handle about three weeks. The axes are

sharpened daily, some camps having regular sharpeners, while others require each man to keep his own ax in order. The old axes are never collected for the junk dealer, the distance to ship them being almost too great to make it an economical measure. Woodsmen generally consider spruce harder on axes than either birch or pine. The gum which runs out of the spruce tree is often found hard enough to chip the edge of the ax when striking through it. The stvles of axes differ with nationalities, a Canadian chopper preferring a broad square blade with the weight more in the blade than elsewhere, the handles being short and thick. A downcast logger, one from Maine, selects a long, narrow head, the blade in crescent shape, the heaviest .part in the top of the head above the eye. New York cutters select a broad, crescent-shaped blade, the whole head rather qjiort, and the weight balanced evenly above and below the eye, that is, whenr the handle goes through. A Westcm backwoodsman selects a long blade, the corners only rounded off, and the eye holdihg the weight of the ax. The American chopper, as a rule, selects a long straight handle. The difference in handling G that a down-Easterftakes hold, with both hands, of the extreme end, ana throws bis blows easily and gracefully, with a long sweep, over the left shoulder. A Canuck chops from directly over his hea*l, with die right hand well down on the handle to serve in jerking the blade out of the stick. A Westerner catches hold at the end of his handle, the hands about three inches apart, and delivers his blows rather direct from over the left shoulder. In fact, an expert in the woods can tell the nationality or State a man has been reared in by seeing him hit one blow with an ax. It is, however, an interesting fact to know that a Yankee chopper, with his favorite ax and swinging cut, can, bodilv strength being equal, do a fifth more work in the same time than any other cutter, and be far less fatigued. This in a very large degree will account for the greater percentage of Maine men who will be found each year in the woods of Northern New England and New York.-North-wntern Lumberman.