by the man on the empty truck, who has hardly even to direct its fall. The driver becomes immensely dexterous with this monstrous weapon, all the more fearsome in that he is dealing with two variables, the moving boom and the weighted cable which slides out on it. Watching this perilous play I could not help thinking of that dictum of a certain judge, in deciding an accident case in favor of an electric-car conductor: "You cannot wield a trolley-car like a rapier." The learned justice could never have said that of the steam loader.

Along with these two great machines to multiply the work achieved by a given number of men, there should be recalled another, which is, perhaps, not less an instrument of saving. Of course, the power in such a camp is all from the waste wood as fuel; but the old casual hit-or-miss method of gathering wood for the locomotives along the tracks has been superseded by a most ingenious fuel machine, which supplies seven locomotives with wood of the right size. At intervals, the steam skidder assembles a carload of "culls" or useless logs, the defective "dead-heart" logs, or the gnarled branches. These are hauled down to the yard where stands the fuel machine, every inch of solid steel. A log is hoisted by a small donkey-engine on the machine truck to an endless-chain conveyer, which brings it under a steam cross-cut drag-saw. After the saw has cut it into lengths it slides on, still on its conveyer, to where a negro waiting with a hook, like a cotton-hook, twists it around to stand on end under something between a pile driver and a guillotine. That is, the pile-driver is fitted with a guillotine of five knives set in starfish shape. At the signal the pile driver comes down with a "short, sharp shock," and the log falls apart, neatly split in five sections. If the skidder is terrific, and the loader elegant, the wood machine can only be described as incisive! Certainly one watches it with amusement, and can hardly refrain from attributing to it an all but human temperament.

The tremendous increase over the old method, in the number of logs thus harvested, and the great skill and daring developed in the wielders of these machines, have their influence on the

prosperity of the company and on the earnings and morale of the men. But, before and beyond this, the whole group of conditions has been, it is not too much to say, metamorphosed by the presence of the loader, so that the camp has been made a place for human living.

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Up to 1895 no families ever lived at a logging-camp was no place for them. The men slept in bunk-cars and ate in a cook-car; with the methods of payment and camp rule then in vogue, what that meant in vicious living and slovenly habits of work I have tried to indicate. And even now, as Professor Hart says in his recent Southern South, The great lumber camps give employment to thousands of people, and are on the whole demoralizing, for liquor there flows freely, the life is irregular, and sawmill towns may suddenly decay." Yet with a probable seven hundred and fifty people or so to care for in a migratory camp, no other disposition seemed possible. But with the cheap, quickly made tracks, and the powerful loading machine, the problem was solved by the Vateria owners. If logs could be lifted on and off cars with ease and expedition, so could other things. The company proceeded to devise a unit shack, twelve feet by eighteen, with a hole through the floor and roof through which an iron rod with an eye on top, like a huge needle, could be bolted. In the South small cabins always stand on posts, free of the ground. How easy, then, to bring up the loader on a temporary spur, hook into this needle's eye, and swing the shack up on a railway truck, to be deposited in the same way fifty feet from the track in the heart of the new camp. To-day the camp has a completely developed family life. Every workman has his one or two shacks free, and as many more as he wants to pay for, at a dollar a month or so. In a region where the common type of farmhouse - and the best for country living- is two rooms set some six feet apart with a raised common roof over all, the shacks are a most liberal substitute. The usual arrangement copies this, or assembles three or more shacks end-on to a central square or platform, and covers the whole with a raised roof, built either by the men themselves or the company's carpenters. Many of these houses

have fenced-in gardens, full of flowers and vegetables, with vines running luxuriantly over roofs and fences.

Thus the unit shack and the loader together have made it possible for four hundred or more men to keep their wives and children with them through frequent changes of camp, with all that that means for thrifty living and steady work. It has meant that the best workmen in the country have come and stayed with the Vateria Company, and by their skill and productive work have contributed again to the same efficiency which first gave the basic conditions of their life.

It is, however, not family life alone that has been made possible. Other lumber camps, if not utterly neglected, are cared for with benevolent despotism. That the camp and the store, boarding-house and hospital cars, are lighted with electricity from a company plant, and supplied with water from an artesian well, and that the employees have the free use of the company's telephone, shows only the care of the company to abolish so far as possible the minor hardships of camp life. But it has been the practice of the Vateria Company to have each logging-camp regularly incorporated as a town under Mississippi law, with alderman, constables, school board, and so forth. And it is the laboring men, not the superintendents, who become the responsible town officers. As the camp has a full life of some two years, and, thereafter, frequently remains a way station on the logging railroad, this is entirely feasible. The company builds a schoolhouse and a Y. M. C. A. building with baths, and a combined church and schoolhouse for the negro end of the camp; but the citizens of the "town" pay for their own teachers, and, as members, for the services of the Y. M. C. A. director. There are now three teachers and over a hundred children in the white school, which compares favorably with any rural school I have seen. The workmen also largely sustain the camp doctor, with a drug store and good operating room arranged in a car. The company store sells for cash at ordinary town prices.

It is easy to see what an independent and self-respecting community is thus encouraged; but what is not so obvious is the far-reaching importance of a very simple economic change made

F

by the company, which preceded and conditioned all these developments. To an Easterner it would seem only ordinary business method; but from the point of view of universal lumbering practice in the South, it was nothing less than revolutionary.

The real great secret of the recklessness and irresponsibility of the lumber crew was their financial bondage. In all lumber camps and sawmill towns the men were compelled to trade at the company store, and were paid only by being allowed to draw their balance over this store account once a month. And as in the towns, the prices at the commissary, or company store, were highly exorbitant, and the workmen were always tempted to run up large accounts. In fact, practically all the lumber companies that made any profit at all made it out of their stores," operating on a commissary basis," as it is called, with results to the workmen that may be imagined. To change this custom was by other lumbermen looked on as suicidal.

But the Vateria Company began at once the payment of its workmen once a week in cash. It is hard to make clear the miracle that this one simple fact works, and has worked here, in the conduct of a man's life, and in his moral attitude. It might be said that this is a commonplace business method, a matter of course. Unfortunately it was, and is, so little a matter of course in the South that the country's whole economic condition would have been changed, if fifteen years ago the credit system could have been swept away everywhere and cash payments inaugurated. A large number of immigrants, brought with great hopes to South Carolina in 1906, left there within a year largely because they were not paid in cash and had to trade at the company store. And to-day, still, the camp, mine, and plantation hands, the tenant farmers and the small freehold. farmers, are nearly all fast bound, each under the special conditions of his calling, in this cruel system of indefinite credits and inordinate payments. But by this first act of economic justice on the part of the Vateria owners, the first condition of independent and self-controlled living was given, to which the others were but corollaries. All the incentives to steady and

thrifty living, to self-control and self-respect, were thus supplied to the workman; family life and responsibility, the opportunity for civic duty, education, and the basic condition of all, control of the product of his labor.

It was this same financial freedom which in Vateria itself gave an early firm foundation for its healthy and enterprising growth. With liberal weekly wages in hand, the mill workers could trade where they would. The result was that merchants and storekeepers of all kinds came to set up in the town; a healthy competition was induced, which kept prices reasonable, so that the country trade came in from all about. The thus augmented stream of ready cash attracted banks, and the deposits made new enterprises possible through loans. Thus simple common-sense fairness in paying off laborers became a very great factor in the building up of an active town.

To this day many lumber companies are operating on a commissary basis." If, however, they tell of the reckless improvidence of their mill and camp operators, it is easy to impute the responsibility; Vateria has demonstrated the results of the other method.

Thus, drawn by steady employment and prompt payment, the best workmen were available. Much at variance with the usual outlook, the main reliance of the Vateria Company, both mill and camp, was to be on the country people. These were at first reluctant. They had the usual view of "lumber-jacks"; they were of pure American stock, used to farming only; poor and proud, and, at first, indolent. But if a man has a stake in the country in property and family relations, he is fixed, steadied, and speeded. The Vateria Company encouraged in every way the ownership of land and the building of homes by its men. Though the legal rate of interest in Mississippi is six per cent, most of the country bankers get their ten and twelve per cent and over; but the lumber company lent money to its employees at six per cent, and sold plots of ground to them on easy terms.

A tremendous inducement to superior workmen is an opportunity to educate their children. Now the success of the lumber mill, the shops, and the various subsidiary enterprises of Vateria