The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen

THE Pacific Northwest is the last place to which one would look for the promise of permanent industrial peace. The Northwest is inevitably associated with the I.W.W. at its worst, with the Seattle general strike, and with a violence in labor disputes as bitter as civil war. And the lumber industry is the last industry from which one would look for light on organization for industrial peace. For the lumber industry was once second only to the mines in nourishing the I.W.W. and in furnishing standard material for radical organizers. It was not only the filthy bunk-houses of the lumber camps, the desolation of the soggy woods, and the constant peril from crashing trees and flashing ropes that made the lumber industry so anarchic; even more, it was the tough pertinacity and rugged individualism of the employers, the sullen lonesome hatred of the lumberjacks, and the timid stolidity of the mill workers.

And yet to-day the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, — the 4LL, — an association composed of over 20,000 persons engaged in the manufacture of lumber in the Pacific Northwest, offers a plan for the settlement of the labor problem on a national scale. It is the only large industrial organization in the country in which all questions of wages, hours, and conditions of labor are decided, not by the sole action of employers, by agreement between employers and employees of a single company, by the warfare of strike and lockout, by the more subtle warfare of sabotage and strike on the job, or by the arbitration of special commissions, but by elected representatives of all members of the industry pledged to coöperation.

The 4LL is a new organization, but it is old enough to have proved that it is practical. It has changed an industry which was the unkindly nurse of the blackest class-hatred into a peaceful, efficient industry free from strikes and unrest. It has raised low wages to the highest in the country for the work done; it has raised those wages, not by fiat of employers but by the joint deliberations of employer and employee; it has improved living conditions in the lumber camps to a remarkable degree; It has made individualist employers and employees recognize that all modern business owes certain duties to society; it has taken the stand that the old principle of industrial autocracy must be replaced by a system of coöperation and mutual adjustment.

The Loyal Legion has done these things by the simple, but extremely difficult, process of recognizing the inevitable. Employers have recognized that employees have a right to collective bargaining, the eight-hour day, and a voice in determining their wages and conditions of labor. Employees have recognized that employers have a right to a return on their capital and to faithful production if they pay good wages. When these principles are recognized in an industry there is nothing left to quarrel over. Given a workable organization of the industry and capable leadership, and industrial peace is inevitable.

The organization of the 4LL is not startling; it is so simple that one wonders why it was not worked out fifty years ago. It is built upon the sensible theory that men will put their best efforts into their work when they have a real, positive, definite share in controlling their own wages and working conditions. Three ideas have been put forth in support of this theory. The first is the idea of conference, the second is that of mutuality of interest between workman and employer, and the third is the theory that labor and capital are equal partners in the industry, and that, so far as matters of production are concerned, each must have an equal voice in determining the conditions in the industry. Each partner, therefore, has an equal share in financing the organization.

The unit of membership is the local. A local of the Loyal Legion consists of such members as may be employed from time to time at any operation under one general management. Since membership in the Loyal Legion is open to any male or female who, as an owner, operator, or employee, is engaged, either directly or indirectly, in the logging, milling, or manufacture of lumber, including the allied industries, it follows that a local is an inclusive, non-classconscious organization. The superintendent, the laborer, the skilled craftsman, and the office-worker meet on an equal footing.

A pledge of loyalty to the organization and the government is exacted from each person as he joins. The initiation fee is one dollar and the dues are twenty-five cents a month. The employer contributes a sum equal to that of all the membership dues of his employees who are members of the Legion. He also files a bond for two years ‘in the sum of $2.50 for each employee, computed on the basis of the average number of employees, no bond to be in amount of less than $100. The above bond is to be deposited as a guaranty of good faith and compliance with the rules and regulations that have been adopted by the constituted authority of the organization. . . . Employer members may withdraw from membership in the organization at any time on giving thirty days’ notice in writing to the board of directors.’¹

The fundamental instrument for the settlement of disputes is the ‘employees conference committee’ which consists of the chairman, vice-chairman, and secretary of the local. ‘It shall be the duty of the employees conference committee to confer with the operator or operator’s representative on all differences of local concern arising in the local from which it is elected, and to endeavor to adjust such differences in a manner satisfactory to both parties. This committee shall be strictly an employees’ committee, and shall at all times act as the spokesman for the men concerned rather than as an arbitration board. Upon a failure to agree with the operator on any question under consideration, the conference committee shall submit the case in writing to the chairman of the district, board through the headquarters office, for action by that body at its next meeting. The employees conference committee may initiate questions of general import, but shall not have jurisdiction in the final settlement or interpretation of such questions.’

A distinction is made between ‘matters of local concern’ and ‘questions of general import.’ The first are defined as ‘questions affecting the living, working, and recreation conditions of each local; unwarranted discharge of members; tool charges and breakage; and all local conditions surrounding the employment or affecting the obligations of members of the organization in that local.’ The second are defined as ‘those affecting the industry by districts, or as a whole, such as wages and hours, general administration affairs, and all matters of general value either to locals or members of the association. Consideration must be given the fact that questions of hours and wages, which in some cases are apparently of local concern, in reality affect the entire industry.’

Next above the conference committee of the local is the district board. (The Northwest has been divided into twelve districts.) ‘District boards for each district of the Loyal Legion shall consist of four employees, two millmen and two loggers, to be elected at the annual convention by the employee members from among the local conference committees of the district, and of four operators, two millmen and two loggers, selected by the employers of the district concerned. The duty of the district board shall be to hear all matters on appeal from the employees conference committees and it may initiate matters of general import for the consideration of the board of directors. The decision of the district board on matters of local concern shall be final, except that it shall be clear to the board of directors that a fair and impartial hearing was given to all matters brought before it. Upon a failure to agree, the district board shall refer the case or cases to the board of directors, but no such reference shall be made until the district board shall have exhausted all honorable means of adjusting the question.’

The board of directors, composed of the employees’ district-board chairman and the operators’ district-board chairman of each district, is the supreme body of the 4LL. This board meets twice a year, appoints a president, secretary-manager, and other executive officers, decides appeals, and initiates ‘matters of general import.’ Its decisions are final except in the case of a tie, when the president casts the deciding vote, but must refer the question to a board of arbitration selected for the occasion. No such tie has ever been reached, and according to the present executive officers, employers and employees have never lined up in an equally divided vote on any question.

It is clear that the 4LL differs radically from all industrial organizations which have hitherto been proposed.

It is like the trade union in that it does not deal with plants owned only by one corporation or syndicate. Its members are employed by hundreds of separate employers. Furthermore, it maintains a staff of organizers taken from the rank and file of labor, men who have had experience in the camps and mills and know the psychology of the men and the operators. Like tradeunion organizers, these men not only organize new locals and increase membership, but they also straighten out many misunderstandings between the management and the men and perform other duties comparable to those of the trade-union organizer and business agent. The effect on the employer of the organizer’s visit is similar to that of a trade-union delegate, in that he represents an organization the power of which the operator respects, and over which he alone has little control.

But the 4LL is also unlike the trade union. It is an industrial organization, not a craft union. It admits to membership both skilled and unskilled men. It has championed the cause of the unskilled man by raising his wages in greater proportion than those of the skilled man. A more important difference is the manner in which disputes are settled. The trade union demands; the 4LL requests. If the union wishes to discuss a dispute with the management, it does so usually through its business agent; if the men themselves wish to deal directly with the management, machinery for the purpose has to be created. In the 4LL, requests for changes always originate with the local conference committee, and this committee is always ready to function. As a result, community of interest is developed to a high degree in 4LL mills.

But the most important difference between the trade union and the 4LL is in their attitudes toward the strike and lockout. Although the 4LL constitution does not in terms prohibit these instruments of warfare, the purpose of the organization is to create harmony and coöperation and thereby to eliminate the causes of warfare. At any rate, there have been no strikes and lockouts in 4LL operations in the lumber industry during the last three years.

The 4LL differs radically from the Industrial Workers of the World. The I.W.W. work on the assumption that owners of capital have obtained control of the means of production largely because of the capitalistic organization of society rather than through their own effort. They maintain that large owners of capital are in control of power which does not rightfully belong to them because they did not earn all of it. The present system, they maintain, which gives a few men control of industry, of wages, and of prices, and so puts the lives of millions of men in the hands of a few, is an aristocratic system. The I.W.W. look forward to the actual appropriation of the means of production by the wage-earners.

The 4LL is opposed to this doctrine because it believes that the present economic system is not to be fundamentally changed. It aims at industrial peace, and professes to secure to both employer and employee proper shares in the results of production. It is formed to function in a capitalistic system. Its declaration of the mutuality of interest between employer and employee is fundamental. The employee receives an equal share in the settlement of problems of production, and thus receives partial control of the industry.

Nor should the 4LL be confused with the so-called ‘shop-committee’ plan, in which a group of employees are elected to represent their fellows in time of crisis, in conference with a ‘welfare manager’ or a similar executive officer of the company. The shop-committee plan, attractive as it is at first sight, has certain fundamental difficulties which prevent its being a real solution of the problem of industrial relations. It is confined to a single plant, or to a group of plants owned by one company. It does not cover a trade or an industry. Employees act, not as fellow members of an industry, but as employees of a company. Moreover, since shop-committee plans are handed down from above, they are thoroughly paternalistic. The men have no voice in the formation of the plan by which they are governed, and may see their organization destroyed in a moment by the will of the employer who created it. The shop-committee plan works well in plants where good feeling already prevails, or where men are helpless; it can never create industrial peace on a large scale, as the 4LL has done.

The paid-up membership in the 4LL is over 20,000. About 5000 additional members are on the books, but were not reported as having paid in the last quarterly report. Various estimates place the total number of men in the industry in the Northwestern states at about 100,000. About one fourth of the men in the territory, therefore, are members of the Loyal Legion. Three other organizations exist. The I.W.W. still has members, but because of unrelenting persecution by the government they are forced into hiding. Timber operators report a cessation of sabotage, and the 4LL has secured practically all the possible demands that used to be the staple of I.W.W. agitation. The International Union of Timber-workers, a craft union, claims some members, but has closed its Portland headquarters and is reported to have only a scattering membership. Only one operation is known which has signed an agreement with the timberworkers. The fact seems to be that the ‘collectively minded’ men of the industry find their wants satisfied by the Legion. One company has adopted the shop-committee plan.

There are 450 operations affiliated with the 4LL. There are in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho 264 mills and 500 logging camps. The great majority of the largest mills and fully half of the camps are affiliated with the Legion.

The Legion has accomplished six distinct things. It has made calm and steady production possible in an industry which, three years ago, was thoroughly disorganized. It has placed wages on the highest scale in the United States for the work done, and has established the eight-hour day. It has stabilized wages on a minimum uniform scale, with an allowance for reward for superior skill and initiative. It has made striking progress in improving sanitary conditions in the industry. The sanitary officer reports ‘substantial improvements in conditions. A general clean-up has taken place in 84 per cent of the operations. Eighty-six per cent of the camps have bathing facilities. Seventy-one per cent have screened mess-halls and sanitary toilets.’ The 48 complaints of bad sanitary conditions made in 1919 were all adjusted. It has begun, through an organization of the wives of the 4LL men called the Ladies’ Loyal Legion, the development of the community life of the lumber camps and mill towns. At last reports, nearly thirty locals had been organized. Finally, it has been carrying on a persistent campaign of education among employers and employees in the spirit of harmony, coöperation, and fair play. This is its greatest task and its greatest possible achievement, for its success depends, not upon its machinery, but upon the initiative, responsibility, and fair-mindedness of its members, their ability to work through an organization, and the degree to which they recognize the spirit of a new industrial era.

The Legion has recognized that it is primarily an enterprise in education by the selection of Norman F. Coleman, formerly Professor of English at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, as president. Of the new president’s powers it is impossible to speak without seeming exaggeration. He has none of the doctrinaire spirit that might well be fatal to the enterprise. He has an understanding of the workman’s point of view that comes from experience before and during his career as a teacher. He has a fairness and open-mindedness that commend him to the operators. In ten years of teaching in the Northwest he has gained the respect and affection of the public by his simplicity, his steadiness, and his complete honesty. If the form of organization spreads to other industries, one of their chief problems will be to find other Colemans.

The 4LL is not without, opposition. There are employers in the Northwest who, unaware that a new day has arrived, refuse to let one jot of power pass from their hands. They share in the new peace that the Legion has brought into the industry, but they refuse to help in maintaining that peace. They are paralleled by numbers of workmen who are similarly individualistic. Some of them are constitutionally averse to organization; others drift in and out of the industry and have little interest in its improvement. No form of organization can permanently settle the problem of the roving laborer; and the roving laborer is everywhere in the Northwest. Organized labor, of course, hates the Legion with all its heart. The Legion has secured everything that organized labor demands, plus peace and coöperation. It is commonly reported that the American Federation of Labor expects to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars next year in an attempt to disrupt the Legion; for it sees clearly that an extension of the 4LL plan to other industries would mean the downfall of unionism. It need hardly be said that the I.W.W. hate the organization. It has robbed them of their staples of propaganda until only convinced revolutionaries are left. The greatest danger of all, however, is the new peace which the organization has brought. Having so much, employees and employers alike may come to feel that further effort and expense are unnecessary. Nothing would be more salutary for the organization than a determined fight for its life.

All things considered, it is indubitable that the 4LL offers a solution of the problem of industrial relations in the United States. It has been tried in a large industry, which labors under as many difficulties as any in the country. It successfully unites two different types of workmen: the unsettled worker of the logging-camps and the settled worker of the sawmills. It covers a large section of the country in which travel and communication are difficult. It works with employers who are bred to a hard, dominating view of industry, who have earned what they own, and are governed by realities. Yet it is succeeding, because employers and employees really are willing to give up ideas of domination to secure industrial peace, when that peace is based upon fair dealing and democratic coöperation.