HISTORY OF THE CHIPPEWA VALLEY - CHAPTER 35


*****

Transcribed and contributed to the USGenWeb Archives by Timm
Severud Ondamitag@aol.com

Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm

*****

Faithful Record of all Important Events, Incidents, and
Circumstances that have Transpired in the Valley of the
Chippewa from its Earliest Settlement by White People,
Indian Treaties, Organization of the Territory and State;
Also of the Counties Embracing the Valley, Senatorial,
Assembly and Congressional Districts, and a Brief
Biographical Sketch of the Most Prominent Persons in the
Settlement of the Valley. BY Thomas E. Randall 1875.  Free
Press Print.  Eau Claire, Wisconsin

CHAPTER 35

As citizens of the world, caring nothing for country or
locality, or the welfare and prosperity of one State or
section, more than another, man would cease to be regarded
as patriotic, and however philanthropic they might consider
themselves, without some special regard for the country of
our birth, adoption, or wherein we have made our homes, its
success and happiness, we should scarcely be considered good
citizens.

The sources of wealth and comfort or the means of
subsistence are not equally distributed over the earths
surface and aside from man's inherent selfishness, which
usually induces a love for ones own, his house, his family,
kindred, possessions, his town or city, State and nation, it
would seem to be natural conclusion that whatever resources
have been bestowed upon any country (other things being
equal as to health, climate, etc.) would best serve human
interests and contribute most to the welfare of that
community by whom such resources are developed by being
wrought into those fabrics or articles of comfort and
convenience to which they are best adapted, in the locality,
State or country, where they abound. Influence and progress
of civilization and refinement amongst the nations of the
globe, that in all countries where the internal policy of
the government has persistently favored the exportation of
the raw material, whether derived from the farm, forest, the
mine or the sea, -- such countries are always poor.

The support of government, education the church, humane and
all other institutions which conduce to political and social
advancement in a State, renders it imperatively necessary to
raise a revenue from the resources of its people whether
natural or industrial, and the policy or necessity that
precludes and community from the advantages to be derived
from the manufacture of its raw products or takes them to a
distant or foreign shore for the purpose, can only be
regarded as a grievous blunder committed by its rulers or a
sad misfortune of its natural position.

No wonder, that the people of this valley who had borne the
hardships and incurred the expense of first developing its
resources, and of establishing homes in a corner so remote,
should vehemently oppose any and all enterprises having for
their object the carrying away of the timber cut from our
pine forests to be manufactured into lumber out of the State
and in distant localities. More than half the value of our
pine timber would be lost to us if taken to points on the
Mississippi to be sawed. Strenuous efforts were therefore
made to induce the capitalist who lately acquired title to
large quantities of timber land on the Chippewa and it
tributaries and were anxious to realize from their
investment to take an interest in some of the mills here
that required assistance or erect new ones and confine the
manufacture to this State, but the want of some safe and
capacious reservoir where logs could be assorted, and the
Mississippi in the erection of works necessary to secure
them in the Beef Slough, not only deterred them from
investing here, but secured an organization of means to
carry out the latter enterprise.

And in the fall of 1867 an association composed mostly of
lumbermen from Michigan, Fond du Lac, and Oshkosh, in this
State, was organized with a nominal capital of $100,000,
having their headquarters at Alma in Buffalo County, and for
their object the establishment and maintenance of a shear
boom at the head or entrance of the Beef Slough and a cross
or jam boom at a suitable point below, and the necessary
works for sorting and handling logs.

Being flush with means and impatient to realize from their
pine land investment, this company instantly themselves to
effect their object, J.H. Bacon, an ambitious and
enterprising agent was sent forward to commence the work,
while a strong lobby prepared to enter the Legislature and
secure a charter granting the necessary privileges on the
Chippewa River.

At first all the mills on the river joined in opposition to
this gigantic rival as a common enemy. Two of the ablest men
on the river were chosen to represent the two Districts in
the Assembly; in Chippewa, and Dunn, T.C. Pound and for
Pepin and Eau Claire, Horace W. Barnes, who, aided by a
strong lobby, defeated the bill on a direct vote in the
Assembly, but another bill was subsequently introduced, a
copy of an old Portage City charter changing the names of
persons and localities - merely a working charter, it was
claimed, embodying no specific privileges except corporate
powers, but which was afterwards found to contain nearly
everything asked for, and the work went on in site of the
opposition.

Disastrous as the success of this new organization was
considered by the mill men, a considerable class of our
citizens were favored the innovation. They were the class
known as loggers who, while the mils on the Chippewa were
the only purchasers of logs, saw themselves completely at
the mercy of a dozen or twenty monopolists. What cared they
whether cities grew up at Davenport, Clinton, Muscatine by
the manufacture of our pin into lumber, instead of at
Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire, if they could only get fifty
cents per thousand more for logs with the promise of cash in
the place of trade for pay.

But most of the mills were illy prepared for the new order
of things. Subjected to annual losses by floods and short
supply of logs for want of storage, few of them had been
able to erect sorting works and keep sufficient force to
sort out and pass the logs below going to other parties, and
secure their own, and therefore had recourse to exchanging
marks, as the practice was called. About fifty million feet
of logs were contracted by the agent for the Slough Company,
this year, 1868, and on the opening of spring, a driving
force of 125 men was placed on the river, and a watchman at
every boom and mill to guard the interests of the new
company. A moderate freshet favored the drivers this spring,
and it was well into June before the main force of the Beef
Slough Company reached the Slough, who on their way down had
cut or opened almost every boom on the river, and taken out,
indiscriminately, whatever logs they contained. It seemed as
though the agent of the new company aggravated every
hardship by ruthless, unnecessary and arbitrary destruction
of property and loud and bitter were the denunciations
against him. It had been a doubtful problem even amongst the
friends of the measure where logs could be successfully
driven over the broad sandbars of the lower Chippewa, and
cost what it would its feasibility must be demonstrated now,
or the stockholders, already assessed for the last dollar on
their stock, would abandon the undertaking, the drive was
therefore continued after the water got so low that the cost
of driving was more than the logs were worth. But the drive
was a fixed fact, and hereafter the Chippewa pinery must
furnish its quota of logs for the mills and build up the
cities on that great river whose tributaries span two thirds
of the continent. The next session of the Legislature, 1869,
witnessed a renewal of the struggle for charters, but it was
a tri-party fight, with a leaning of the Chippewa Falls
interest towards Beef Slough, and a final coalition of the
two to defeat the Dalles bill. It was not until the session
of 1870 that the final charter for the Beef Slough Company
became a law, by which time the concern was completely
bankrupt, and several of its stockholders financially
crippled in the endeavor to sustain its credit; one of whom,
Mr. Palms, of Michigan, informed me that in addition to
twenty thousand dollars in stock he had actually loaned the
company one hundred thousand dollars, more than fifty
percent of which will prove an utter loss.

Like many other western enterprises, the cost of the boom
was too great for its earnings, and no dividends will
probably be declared on the original stock. The whole
concern, charter, boom, building and fixtures were leased to
the Mississippi Logging Company, who will probably reap
where the other sowed.

Although stoutly opposed and the establishment of those
works much deprecated by a large share of our people as
derogatory to our manufacturing interest, their existence
has not been without it benefit, even to its most strenuous
opposers. For in 1869 the Company at the Falls having
planted some immense piers directly in the channel at the
big eddy, just below Paint Creek Rapids, a jam of logs of
vast proportions was formed against them during the Spring
drive, filling up the entire river for several miles with
logs piled by the force of the current, twenty or thirty
feet high, totally obstructing the passage of logs and rafts
- and presented a grand, almost sublime spectacle to the
beholder - which jam, when broken in the July following, by
the aid of two steam engines and a great force of men,
filled the river for miles in extent with floating logs,
pouring down in rapid profusion, that any force the mills
below could command was powerless to arrest their onward
course, or secure a hundredth part that belonged to them.
Millions on millions of feet of logs would have gone in to
the great river, and been lost in a thousand lagoons and
bayous, which were saved to their owners by the Beef Slough
boom.

One paragraph more and the account of the Beef Slough and
Mississippi Logging Company is done. They have been and are
now using the sheer boom invented by Levi W. Pond, the
patent right being held by him and the Eau Claire Lumber
Company - without consulting the patentees, alleging, it is
said, that the patent is void by reason of prior use, and
suit has commensed by the patentees, requiring the said Boom
and Logging Company to show cause why the said sheer boom
now in use should not be discontinued. The defendants will
of course resist this action to the last extremity. The best
legal talent in the State has been retained by the parties,
and some curious developments may be expected to grow out of
it.

The defense however seems to be aware of the hopelessness of
their cause in the courts, and are lobbying in Congress with
a view to abrogate the patent.