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The responsibilities I
bore at this time covered a much wider range than the mere direction
of logging activities. In the camps and at the settlements around
the mills, far removed from the communities where there was an
organized system of local government, the superintendent. or "boss"
was as absolute as the captain of a vessel on the high seas. He
settled all disputes, maintained order, took care of the sick and
regulated affairs generally. Nor was there any constituted authority
upon which he could depend for the enforcement of his decrees. For
this he had to rely upon his own resources.
The most important
task was probably the care of the sick and injured. In Maine the
medicine chest had been one of the indispensable requisites of the
camp equipment, and Mr. Sinclair always had one at hand when he
began operations in Michigan. Following his example I had become
somewhat adept in treating illnesses and devoted much time to
reading such literature on the subject of medical practice as was
available. Sickness, fortunately, was rare but the men not
infrequently injured themselves while working on frozen timber, many
gashes being inflicted by glancing axes, and it. was necessary under
these primitive conditions to act as surgeon by sewing up the
wounds. These minor operations were performed successfully and every
patient recovered as promptly and with as few complications as might
be expected under modern hospital conditions.
From 1854 to 1858,
when I was supplying all the logs for Holt and Mason at Little Bay
de Noc, I employed one hundred and twenty men in the winter, besides
the mill crews and women and children, and at White Fish, four miles
from Masonville, more than a hundred men, besides women and
children,—in all about one thousand persons. During these four years
I lost only two men by sickness. One of them, who was inexperienced
in the ways of camp life, worked only for a day when he was taken
down with crysipelas, froze his toes while cutting wood for an hour
and lost five or six of them. From this plight I succeeded in
rescuing him and he was apparently on the road to complete recovery,
except for the missing toes, when in violation of the instructions
given him he ate a quantity of pork and greasy food which caused a
protracted illness resulting in death. The only other fatal case was
that of a young man who contracted an intestinal disease which did
not yield to our rudamentary treatment.
My experiences in
medicine and surgery did not end here. At Marinette, where there
were doctors, there was more or less for me to do in the way of
assisting at, if not actually performing, surgical operations, some
of them amputations of a serious character. 1)r. Hall, one of time
pioneer lumbermen of the Menominee, who came from Ithaca, New York,
in the early forties, although not actively engaged in time practice
of medicine, responded to the call of necessity and treated time
sick and injured of the community as occasion required. He guided
his course by the philosophy that the less the medicine the better
for the patient and his surgical work lie confined to the
unavoidable minimum. Oftentimes he said to me: ''I don't want to
meet these people hereafter and have them tell me that I made
cripples of them." Sometimes when men were severely injured we could
not avoid amputation altogether, but we did as little as possible
using, for lack of better instruments, carpenters' tools. The
general conclusion I have reached as a result of these experiences
is that much of the activity of doctors is superfluous and many of
the operations they perform unnecessary. But that subject I leave
for others to discuss.
Unaided I performed
what was probably the first amputation in Marinette about 1860. One
of the men employed in the mill at Menekaunee mangled his hand in
the machinery and it was necessary to cut off the arm about four
inches above the wrist. Dr. Hall was unable to perform the operation
and it was necessary for me to act as surgeon. There was no
aesthetic. The unfortunate victim of the accident was conscious all
of the time. A tool chest afforded most of our instruments and the
sterilizing apparatus of the modern operating room was unknown. None
the less the patient came through the ordeal without mishap and
lived for twenty years afterwards. There were a number of accidents
of this kind necessitating amputation which Dr. Hall or I performed.
We cut as little as possible and succeeded as well as a surgeon
under modern conditions could have done.
It is certain, at
least, that for the most part we did very well without doctors. In
1877, when the N. Ludington Company was constructing what was known
as the Dow dam, near Amberg, Wisconsin, we employed sixty men. I
invited Dr. Jones, of Marinette, to inspect the camp with iiie and,
while we were eating our breakfast in three inches of snow without
shelter of any kind, we discussed conditions and the health of the
men. "There are sixty of them here," I said, "who have been at work
for six weeks. During that time not one of them has been sick. Two
jamed their feet without any serious permanent effects, but that was
all. If they had been at the mill at the village where there were
doctors and drug stores and newspapers advertising patent medicines
for all kinds of ailments I have no doubt that at least three or
four every day would have thought that they required drugs." Dr.
Jones, possibly with some reluctance, admitted the truth of the
assertion.
In other respects
also we succeeded in getting on very comfortably without many of the
institutions that are now considered essential to the life of a
community. At Escanaba and Masonville for twelve years, until 1858,
we had neither doctors, lawyers, nor ministers. Neither did we feel
that we were suffering very much for lack of them except, possibly,
the ministers. I believed then, as I do now, that it would have been
an advantage, perhaps a consolation, to the people to have some one
preach the gospel to them and to administer to their spiritual
wants. Whatever their creed might have been their influence would
have been for good.
Because of the lack
of lawyers and the difficulty of resorting to ordinary legal
processes for the settlement of private difficulties we were free
from the burdens which litigation oftentimes imposes upon a
community. There were no divorces whatever. What domestic
disturbance arose it fell to the lot of the superintendent to
settle. This summary method was much more effective than the modern
remedy offered by the courts. I have no doubt that many families
would have been dispersed and homes broken up - there was ample
occasion for disagreement if the legal machinery of to-day had been
available.
Fortunately it was
not. The "boss" usually brought the refractory principals involved
in the controversy together, scored them roundly for their
misbehavior and threatened to turn them loose upon an unfriendly
wilderness if they repeated the offense. Almost inevitably this
treatment resulted in a promise to do better and the promise thus
made was carried out. I have in mind one case which illustrates the
effectiveness of this summary treatment,— that of an Irishman and
his wife, persons of almost gigantic stature, who became involved in
a quarrel. To end the fracas and save herself, the woman, with both
eyes blackened, took refuge in my house. The husband, becoming
penitent over night, came the next day to see her, but I told him as
gravely as I could that the camp had been so aroused by his brutal
treatment of his wife that it was bent upon giving him a coat of tar
and feathers and that it would be well for him to hide himself in
the woods for two or three days until the feeling subsided. He was
thoroughly frightened and did as I suggested. In the meantime I took
the wife in hand and by a process of admonition brought her to the
stage of penitence and alarm over the non-appearance of her husband.
In time she returned to her home where her husband joined her and
for two years afterward they lived together in perfect serenity,
models of domestic virtue.
There was another
phase of lumbering at this time which can be understood only by
those who have knowledge of the difficulties of keeping a mill in
operation. We were far removed from the sources of supply and our
equipment was meager compared to the establishments of the present.
If a part needed replacing or repairs were to be made we had to rely
upon our own resources. For this reason the blacksmith shop and the
carpenter shop were an integral part of the establishment and a
knowledge of smithing was almost essential to the superintendent who
was at times called upon to forge chains, make axes and other tools,
and shape broken parts. At Escanaba the company was fortunate to
have as a blacksmith William Rogers, a man of many attainments
outside his profession, who built the Flat Rock dam. I have known
him to forge a knife in the morning, grind it and make a handle for
it and shave the men with it in the afternoon.
For the more
important repairs it was necessary to have machinists, who were in
great demand. Two of the best of them on the upper lakes were Mason
and Barber, who had come to Grand Haven from England by way of
Canada. Both were exceedingly skillful in those days when it was
necessary to work with a hammer and cold chisel, such machine tools
as lathes not having come into use. Mr. Barber bought out the
interest of Mr. Mason,—who was afterwards associated with Mr. Holt
in the firm of Holt and Mason,— at Grand Haven and was able to
retire within a short time with a considerable fortune which he
enlarged in Chicago, where he was rated as one of the wealthy men of
the city. He returned to Europe in 1858, with his wife and one
child, to visit his home in England. On their return the steamer
"Pacific," on which they had taken passage, was lost with all on
board. His estate was dissipated not long afterward.
When I undertook
logging operations for Holt and Mason I necessarily severed my
connection with Mr. Sinclair. This I did with much regret, for I was
mindful of all that he had done for me and how much my own progress
had depended upon the lessons he had taught me. He was also sorry to
have me go but there was no other prospect unless I continued to
work for him on a salary basis, which I was not content to do. He
and the members of his family, however, remained my steadfast
friends. The agreement he had made that I should be given a farm and
equipment was never carried out. Mrs. Sinclair volunteered to make
good the promise after Mr. Sinclair's death, but I declined her
offer.
Mr. Mason was an
excellent millwright and his partner, Mr. Holt, who had charge of
the lumber yard in Chicago, was a. very capable business man and
they made a good combination but neither of them had had any
experience in logging or in looking up timber lands. This was left
to me. Having acquired considerable capital I contemplated
purchasing Mr. Mason's interest in the firm and in July, 1857, made
an agreement with him by which I was to pay one-third down and the
remainder in one and two years. He was to give me a deed of the
property and accept a mortgage for the unpaid balance. Arrangements
having been concluded on this basis I took an inventory of the goods
in the store and warehouse, made contracts with jobbers and started
then to work in the woods. Likewise, assuming that the bargain had
been struck, Mason proceeded to dismantle his home and brought his
furniture down to the dock to take the last boat of the season from
Masonville for Chicago.
As he was about to
leave he submitted to me, much to my amazement, what was known at
the time as the "Chicago cut-throat contract" by the terms of which
if a payment became overdue one became a tenant at will and
forfeited all that had been paid up to that time. Reminding Mr.
Mason of his agreement to give me a deed and accept a mortgage for
the balance I refused to sign the contract. He admitted that such
was the understanding but gave as an excuse that some years before
when he had sold his property at Grand Haven he had been obliged
during a panic when he was badly in need of money to wait for the
payments for two years and did not wish to place himself in a
similar position again. "I refuse to sign that contract," said I
decisively. Equally unyielding he carted his furniture back to his
substancial house and the boat departed for Chicago without him.
Again did my plans to enter into large fields of activity as a mill
owner come to nothing.
In the meantime
changes had taken place in the ownership and management of the
business of Sinclair and Wells at Escanaba. In the winter of 1850
Harrison and Nelson Ludington, under the firm name of N. Ludington
and Company, who had maintained a lumber yard at Milwaukee in which
Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Wells were interested, purchased the
controlling half-interest in the Sinclair and Wells Company which,
in 1851, also became known as the N. Ludington Company. In the
following year they opened a lumber yard at Chicago, which I helped
to establish, on Twelfth Street and the South Branch, subsequently
removing to a tract of land on Twenty-second Street.
In June, 1855, Mr.
Sinclair under stress of an illness which affected his mind,
withdrew from the business entirely and retired to Janesville. This
marked the end of his rather remarkable career. In a fit of
melancholia he committed suicide on the farm near Janesville in
October, 1855.
In 1856 the N.
Ludington Company, in addition to their property at Escanaba,
erected on Mission Point, on the Menominee River, another mill,
which was operated for only two months when the panic of 1857 turned
the business world into a shambles and it was closed down.
Neither of the
Ludingtons nor Daniel Wells, who remained in partnership with them,
had the slightest knowledge of the practical side of lumbering and
about the time I was negotiating with Holt and Mason they approached
me with a proposition to take charge of their mills and an interest
in the business. It was my judgment at the time that the Holt and
Mason Mason enterprise offered greater opportunities and I declined
their offer but aided them to the extent of securing David Langley
as superintendent of the mills at Escanaba. The discussion of these
affairs required my presence in Chicago where, for the first time, I
was able to indulge myself without stint in the delights of the
drama. For thirty-six successive nights, excepting Sundays, I went
to the theatre and gave myself up unreservedly to the enjoyment of
the tragedies of the period, which were much more satisfactory, to
my mind, than the frothy comedies and melodramas of the present day.
The crash of 1857
brought the prosperity of the preceding few years to an abrupt end.
Failure followed failure, business became stagnant and a period of
"hard times," which was to endure for several years, until the
shadow of the Civil War began to pass, followed. Many people
suffered and I myself had to endure a period of enforced idleness.
Reverses bore heavily upon those who possessed what might be
regarded as fixed capital. Rather than feed them I slaughtered
twenty oxen, receiving little or nothing for the beef, and sold a
number of horses, of which I had many, to my brothers who were
logging by contract. Others I let to various persons for their
maintenance.
Despite our
disagreement Mr. Mason and I remained good friends and went to Green
Bay together from the North on the ice with our teams in February,
1858, and thence to Fond du Lac where we boarded the train for
Chicago. About. March 1, I returned with Harrison Ludington,
afterward Governor of Wisconsin, who contemplated starting the mill
at Marinette. We remained here for a day or two for the purpose of
making an arrangement to buy out the interests of Messrs. Kimball
and Brown, who were associated with the Ludingtons in the ownership
of the property and who also knew little about the lumber business.
Our negotiations
failed at this time and we went on to Escanaba and Masonville
covering eighty-two miles in a single day. About a week later we
returned to Mannette, purchased from Mr. Brown his interest and
secured his promise to use what influence he had to induce Mr.
Kimball to relinquish his holdings also. In the meantime I returned
to Masonville. On May 1, after assisting my brothers in driving
their logs out of Day's and Rapid rivers, I went to Marinette with
my sailboat, took the steamer to Green Bay and went by way of Fond
du Lac to Chicago to complete the negotiations.
This we did
successfully and I became the owner of a. quarter interest in the
mill, personal property and lands of the N. Ludiugton Company. With
Mr. Ludington I returned to Marinette and took charge of the
property on May 15, 1858. After more than a half-century,
fifty-eight years, I am still where that venture brought me. |
