MAKING HISTORY IN THE MAINE WOODS-CULTURE FOR THE LUMBERJACK Sprague's Journal of Maine History Volume 9 July, August, September, 1921 page 126-130 Contributed by Androscoggin Historical Society http://www.rootsweb.com/~meandrhs Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm MAKING HISTORY IN THE MAINE WOODS-CULTURE FOR THE LUMBERJACK (By the Editor.) When the writer was a lad and for years thereafter there were no "lumberjacks" in the vast and dense forests of northern Maine. they were all "woodsmen," whether choppers, swampers, ox or horse teamsters, river drivers, cooks or cookees. The old-time woodsman was ever known by his outer garment which invariably was a bright red woolen shirt. When he went into the woods he carried on his back an old meal bag stuffed with- a few supplies from his home that the good wife thought he might need during an eight months' sojourn in the heart of the great wilderness fifty or a hundred miles beyond the head of Moosehead Lake. These crews of woodsmen started on foot from Bangor, and walked a distance of sixty miles to Greenville at the foot of Moosehead Lake, where they embarked on the lake by steamboat; usually receiving reinforcements from the farms in every town and hamlet along the way. It should be understood that in those days-fifty to sixty years ago-there were very few foreign-born Maine woodsmen ' except some from New Brunswick, then called "bluenoses." The latter class would work summers in the lumber mills at Bangor and other points along the Penobscot river, and for the lumber operators in the woods for the winter, and drive the logs on the rivers and streams in the springtime.' The much larger portion of these woods crews were, however, pure-blooded sons of Maine, whose fathers came here from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and who had descended straight from the old Pilgrim and Puritan stock. Thoreau when he wrote "Maine Woods" had never heard of lumberjacks. When Fanny Hardy Eckstorm wrote her charming epic story of the "Penobscot Man" as late as 1904, she at least ignored this appellation. As the old-time saw mills began to give place to the great pulp and paper industry and Bangor on the Penobscot was no, 'longer "the largest lumber market in the world," the red shirts gradually dropped out of the ranks to be filled by a rapidly increasing army of a distinctly different type of man. They came in droves from Boston and other seaport cities, ordered by mail from labor agen-cies. The new crowd was wholly cosmopolitan. They hailed from every nook and corner of the earth and from all the ports of men in western and eastern Europe. The first view of the lumberjack was beheld when this influx strange to the deep, dark shadows of the woods of Maine, began. He was first discovered and this name bestowed upon him by that wizard in the portraiture of Maine country and backwoods life, Holman Day, not more than a quarter of a century ago. Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson were never more successful in the coinage of words than was Day in this one, for it has since been universally adopted. One of the largest employers of these lumberjacks, is the Great Northern Paper Company. Its policy of dealing with the public has from the first been a broad and generous one. This fact is well illustrated by its having constructed and maintained in this wilderness practically at its own expense, about 135 miles of good graveled turnpike roads, and by its acts saying to the public: "Come on and use these roads for pleasure or business as you may desire. They are free for all." There are about seven thousand of this new type of woodsman working in its Spruce Woods Department. The passing of the old conditions and the time-worn customs and methods of the fathers of the Maine lumbering was, several years ago, perfectly apparent to its manager and his lieutenants. Gradually and quietly they have revolutionized their entire woods system, upon an entirely new basis, designed to meet the swiftly changing conditions. A "welfare department," with its moving pictures, its libraries, victrolas, night schools and reading rooms for the use of rough-neck swampers, choppers, etc., would today surely astound the Babbs, the Stricklands, the Morrisons or the. John Ross of the past generation, though they were all great and wonderful men for their times. And yet as startling as it may seem, it is exactly what is now being accomplished in the wild timberland districts, in the counties of Aroostook and Piscataquis. The plan is amazingly progressive. It is in absolute harmony with the most advanced thought on the problems of immigration and labor. Thus, far removed from the lure and temptations of the crowded cities, where Maine's wild life exists, where the bear and the moose have their homes; where the loon laughs and the beaver builds his castle; where the pine and the hemlock murmur their weird re-frains, and the roar of windy blasts from mountain tops, and the scream of the eagle is heard, new Americans are being made. They have been started on the road to refinement and good citizenship, without noise or fuss. And by the same token, the relations of the employer and the employee are wisely adjusted, equalized and harmonized. Its latest venture in this social and welfare work among the lumberjacks, is the founding of an illustrated monthly magazine, entitled "The Northern," with Harry B. Coe, late of Portland, for its editor, who is well known for his experience and ability as a writer and publisher. Its sole purpose is to furnish its thousands of employees with a publication of their own, devoted wholly to their own interests and welfare. It announces that it is "A Magazine of Contact, Between the Management and the Men of the Great Northern Paper Co.-Spruce Woods Department." It is unique. Culture and the woods life of the lumberjacks are delightfully intermingled in its columns. It is breezy, attractive, and full of excellent matter, appropriate for its reading constituency. It will be a bright addition to Maine literature. The first number appeared in April, of the present year. In this issue the editor says: "The Social Service Division of the Spruce Wood Department of the Great Northern Paper Company is the develop-ment of an idea which had its inception in the active brain of Manager F. A. Gilbert in his desire to bring to the people of the Spruce Wood Department more of the pleasures of life and to afford them opportunities for diversion which they could not otherwise get. "That is the reason for its existence and its excuse for func-tioning. "Mr. M. S. Hill was appointed superintendent about a year ago, since which time his plans were developed to their present stage, of bringing to the wilderness those pleasures of city life which we all enjoy having, in entertaining and instructive reading, in music and in moving pictures. "Reading is provided through traveling libraries which are rented from the State through the office of the State Librarian, these it libraries being placed at the company's headquarters at Pittston, Seboomook, Grant Farm, Rice Farm, Dyer Brook and Monticello. A librarian is in charge and books can be had at any time. From these headquarters places, the books, under certain necessary re-strictions, can be used by the men in the outlying camps and oper ations of their several natures. "Besides the libraries, current event and fiction reading is offered through weekly and monthly magazines, forty of which go each issue to these headquarters places and during the woods operation season to the principal depot camps as well, and from those places, after being read, they are forwarded to the smaller camps located farther back in the woods. "Victrolas have been placed at the same places and sets of records arranged in programs of about twenty-five selections each, and the aim has been to make them sufficiently varied to cater to all tastes so that there is included a variety from the latest fox trot to the big Red Seal records of grand opera by the greatest singers. These concert programs are sent in rotation to these several places to give them a new set of records at stated intervals."