The Mills Are Stealing a Third of Our Logs, Chehalis Loggers Charge
A letter from Elma to the editor accuses the harbor mill companies of short-scaling hand loggers into permanent debt — and calls for a combination to force a fair scale.
Elma, Wash., June 25.
To the Editor: There is considerable complaint — in fact, it is universal — with the loggers of this section that the mill companies on the harbor steal about one-third of the logs sent to them. One firm of hard-working men, hand loggers, aver that they have been swindled out of not less than 100,000 feet of logs this season; that their scale, although a very liberal one, is that much more than the scale allowed by the companies on the same logs. Now, if this firm was the only one making these charges we could understand that they possibly might be mistaken, but as the complaint is made by all, without exception, we must believe there is something in it.
This matter ought to be remedied in some way, and we believe by holding the companies to a strict compliance with the recent law they would be unable to thus gouge men who earn their bread by the sweat of their faces.
As matters are now, every logger is in debt to the mill companies, and when a drive is made the parties making it are allowed just about enough more credit on their logs to feed the teams and men, and the balance, if any, is applied on back debts, and after each settlement they are just a little deeper in debt to the company they sell to than before. Logs are selling at a good price apparently, yet when the companies scale the products of the different camps it is so much less than it should be that notwithstanding the low wages paid, the boss loggers get nothing absolutely for their investment, responsibility and risk, and as a consequence the fine body of timber along this river is going rapidly, with no return of substantial benefit to the country.
The stealing can be prevented by holding the logs back and allowing the mill men to whistle for timber until they agree to do what is right, or if the scaling and inspection law is rigidly enforced. A combination of the loggers similar to that of the mill men would soon bring a crisis that would result in the loggers getting a fair scale, and then men, honest as they are, would be able to pay the mill men what they owe them and have something left beside.
I am writing to the Post-Intelligencer because we know the mill men of this region have no "cinch" on it, and that it is in favor of fair play.
“Every logger is in debt to the mill companies... and after each settlement they are just a little deeper in debt to the company they sell to than before.”
The complaint is a century-old version of the company-store debt trap: loggers paid in scrip against a scale the buyer controlled, never quite clearing their account. The same power imbalance between the people who harvest a resource and the mills that set its price still shapes rural Washington timber country.
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