foreman and, in many cases, a man could not get a job unless he had a
ticket from a labor agent in some shipping point.

It may be said that the conditions just described were more prevalent in
some parts of the lumber country than in others. Nevertheless, these
prevailed pretty generally in all sections of the industry before the
workers attempted to better them by organizing. At all events such were
the conditions the lumber barons sought with all their power to preserve
and the loggers to change.




Organization and the Opening Struggle



A few years before the birth of the Industrial workers of the World the
lumber workers had started to organize. By 1905, when the above mentioned
union was launched, lumber-workers were already united in considerable
numbers in the old Western afterwards the American Labor Union. This
organization took steps to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the
World and was thus among the very first to seek a larger share of life in
the ranks of that militant and maligned organization. Strike followed
strike with varying success and the conditions of the loggers began
perceptibly to improve.

Scattered here and there in the cities of the Northwest were many locals
of the Industrial Workers of the World. Not until 1912, however, were
these consolidated into a real industrial unit. For the first time a