The Forest for the Trees:
How Humans Shaped the North Woods
By Jeff Forester
2004

Excerpts from Chapter 4 "Lumberjack Life"

"But while each horse in a livery got its own stall, in a lumber camp the men slept two to a bunk....Daylight cascaded in from numerous chinks between the log walls, and beams of light stabbed into the room from holes in the roof(p.70)."

"The companies forbid thermometers so jacks could not complain that is was too cold to work...Lumber camps were like loose confederations of fiefdoms, and as the jacks passed from one realm to the next they had to serve different masters and abide different rules (p.68)."

"Logging was harc work, dangerous and demanding. But the rules established to maintain control of hundreds of men living in close quarters were perhaps more tormenting than the labor (p.68)."

Excerpt from Chapter 3 "The Cut Increases"

Weyerhauser had almost exclusive control of logging operations on the Chippewa, St. Croix, and Upper Mississippi Rivers, and area containing some of the richest pineries left in the world. He woned timberlands, mills, transportation networks, and retail outlets, making the Weyerhauser companies the most econimically integrated organisation in the Upper Midwest and allowing him to set the price for lumber from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains (p.63)."