on the gleaming saw in front
of him, cut out the narrow strip containing the knot hole with two quick
movements of his right hand and toss the completed board down the chute
to the packers, meanwhile keeping eyes and ears open for the sound that
asks him to feed a new block into the untiring teeth. Hour after hour
the shingle weaver's hands and arms, plain, unarmored flesh and blood,
are staked against the screeching steel that cares not what it severs.
Hour after hour the steel sings its crescendo note as it bites into the
wood, the sawdust cloud thickens, the wet sponge under the sawyer's
nose, fills with fine particles. If 'cedar asthma,' the shingle weaver's
occupational disease, does not get him, the steel will. Sooner or later
he reaches over a little too far, the whirling blade tosses drops of
deep red into the air, and a finger, a hand or part of an arm comes
sliding down the slick chute."[2]

This description of shingle weaving was given by Walter V. Woehlke,
managing editor of the Sunset Magazine, in an article which had as its
purpose the justification of the murders committed by the Everett mob,
and it contains no over-statement. Shingle weavers are set apart from
the rest of the workers by their mutilated hands and the dead grey
pallor of their cheeks.

"The nature of a man's occupation, his daily working environment, marks
in a large degree the nature of the man himself, and cannot help but
mold the early years, at least, or his economic organization. Men who
flirt with death in their daily calling become inured to physical
danger, they become contemptuous of the man whose calling fails to bring
forth physical prowess. So do they in their organizations become
irritated and contemptuous at the long-drawn-out process of bargaining,
the duel of wits and brain power engaged in by the more conservative
organizations to win working concessions. Their motto becomes 'Strike
quick and strike hard,'* * *" So says E. P. Marsh, President of the
Washington State Federation of Labor, in speaking of the shingle
weavers.[3]

Logging, no less than shingle weaving, is a dangerous occupation. The
countless articles of wood in every-day use have claimed their toll of
human blood. A falling tree or limb, a mis-step on the river, a faulty
cable, a weakened trestle; each may mean a still and mangled form. Time
and again the loggers have organized to improve their working conditions
only to find themselves beaten or betrayed.