er trust. And so it
happens that the government's forest policy has added fabulous wealth
and prestige and power to the rulers of the lumber kingdom.

But whether the timber lands were stolen illegally or acquired by
methods entirely within the law of the land, the exploitation of labor
was, and is, none the less severe. The withholding from Labor of any
portion of its product in the form of profits--unpaid wages--and the
private ownership by individuals or small groups of persons, of timber
lands and other forms of property necessary to society as a whole, are
principles utterly indefensible by any argument save that of force. Such
legally ordained robbery can be upheld only by armies, navies, militia,
sheriffs and deputies, police and detectives, private gunmen, and
illegal mobs formed of, or created by, the propertied classes. Alike in
the stolen timber, the legally acquired timber, and in the Government
Forest Reserves, the propertyless lumberjacks are unmercifully
exploited, and any difference in the degree of exploitation does not
arise because of the "humanity" of any certain set of employers but
simply because the cutting of timber in large quantities brings about a
greater productivity from each worker, generally accompanied with a
decrease in wages due to the displacement of men.

With the development of large scale logging operations there naturally
came a development of machinery in the industry. The use of water power,
the horse, and sometimes the ox, gave way to the use of the donkey
engine. This grew from a crude affair, resembling an over-sized coffee
mill, to a machine with a hauling power equal to that of a small sized
locomotive. Later on came "high lead" logging and the Flying Machine,
besides which the wonderful exploits of "Paul Bunyan's old blue ox" are
as nothing.

The overhead system was created as a result of the additional cost of
hauling when the increased demand for a larger output of logs forced the
erection of more and more camps, each new camp being further removed
from the cities and towns. Today its use is almost universal as there
remains no timber close to the large cities, even the stumps having been
removed to make room for farming operations.

Roughly the method of operation is to leave a straight tall tree
standing near the logging track in felling timber. The machine proper is
set right at the base of this tree, and about ninety feet up its trunk a
large chain is wrapped to a