THE B.C. LUMBER WORKER

March 5, 1941

‘One Logger ~ Five Millionaires’

A Tale of the British Columbia Coast

By OL’ BILL

(Continued from Last Issue)

The last of the millionaire quintuplets was Richard B. Crook, corporation lawyer, whose talents and genius were at the disposal of his millionaire frat- ernity at all times, to show them how to keep within the law or to evade it, as the case required.

He was one of those “rapacious hell- hounds that growl in the kennels of justice,” of whom Rabbie Burns once ‘wrote. Besides the United States Con- stitution, he had made a close study of the methods of the judicial vampires who wrote the Criminal Syndicalist laws of California and had learned all there was to know about the “frame-up,” for deal- ing with labor agitators, an extra-legal device which had its origin in that sunny land of oranges, the Los Angeles Times, vigilantes and earthquakes. He con- tended that in North America we had some of the best judges that money could buy—and he knew just how much money it took to buy them. “The law and the prophets,” too, he studied on Sundays, but he spelled it “profits.” And when the preacher sald, “Brethren, let us pray,” in his mind’s eye it stood out like a red neon sign, “PREY.”

His knowledge of the law was used, not to advise his capitalist friends of the legal limits beyond which they must not go, but to find for them the loopholes which had been placed there by other cunning lawyers and through which the purpose of the law could be dodged. He knew how politicians could be corrupted and how reactionary trade union leaders could be bought over. This latter process was usually accomplished by getting them appointed to well-paid government jobs on boards and commissions and was referred to by Crook as “making friendly advances to labor.”

He knew how to organize goon-squads and finks and enlist the help of the police and military forces to relentlessly trample out of existence, any working class or- ganization whose leaders could not be corrupted and to set up _strike-proof unions in their place.

To muster the judges and the courts for the legal extermination of the small business men and operators who stood in the way of Big Biz. was another of his jobs. He was one of those whose efforts are building a ferocious atmos- phere in civilized life more terrible than the ferocious environment of the wild in which Joe Burton was trying to scratch a living from nature.

The wealth he acquired in this way was not wages, fees, salaries, emolu- ments or honorariums, but his legitimate share of the spoils, He, too, was “inter- ested” in industry, He drew dividends from many industrial undertakings. He liked to think of himself as a logger; for he was a logger in the same way that Bagger was a fisherman. He was a large shareholder in Georgia pine camps where chain-gang prison labor was used to har- vest the turpentine crop. In a lesser de- gree, he was “interested” in fir and cedar through stock he held in a vast Middle West timber octupus, whose tentacles reached out to Washington and British Columbia.

He did not know Douglas fir from devil's club, so every tree he saw through his binoculars as the yacht passed along the coast, gave him a thrill. Maybe it ‘was one of his trees and in time would contribute something to his bankroll.

"Their relations on the trip were genial, Over them the spirit of Rotary hovered, although its wings were not wide enough to cover the crew or the old man, Fish, who was kept busy attending to their wants, and who, if he had had nothing else to do, had a good day's work every day, picking up the matches they threw on the deck of the cabin. “Fish, do thi: “Fish, do that,” kept him moving all of his waking hours. Captain, engineer and cook, the form of address used when speaking to the crew members, prevented

any further embarrassment of the spirit of Rotary, however. Cal, Ham, Josh, Hosk and Dick: so they addressed each other and the urgent demands of the great ideals of service a la Rotary were satisfied.

But the spirit of Rotary went into hiding on those occasions, which were numerous, when they sat down at the table to a game of draw poker or stud. ‘Then the steely glint in their eyes showed that they had become the great business executives again and Cal and Ham and Josh and Hosk and Dick, forgot that the other fellow had a name at all and became interested only in skinning the hide off him in true business style.

The one-word description applied to the host is equally descriptive of the guests—capitalist.

The Navajo was a creditable job to her builders, Without being pushed, she was capable of doing twenty-five knots. From Puget Sound up the Coast, her crew had worked her from point to point during the daylight hours, Towards nightfall they would make some sheltered cove or inlet and drop the hook. There they would lay to until daybreak. While the afterguard relaxed over the contents of the few cases of imported goods that constituted the cargo, the crew made things ship-shape for the start in the morning, before turning in for a well- earned rest.

From the minute they started in the morning there was no let-up for them. The engineer ate his meals in the engine room, with one eye on the mulligan and the other on the telegraph and the cook did a trick at the wheel long enough to let the captain feed his face. None of them engaged much in conversation, but at one time or other, each had made it public that he did not belong to, or have any use for, a trade union,

It was late October. A short spell of Indian Summer had ended a few days before. The warm color of the British Columbia bush, the red peeling bark of the arbutus, the russet and red and gold of the fading maples, the varying greens of the willows, the hemlocks, the balsams and the cedars, was offset by the cold steel-blue of the cloudless sky in which a bleary, heatless sun was sinking in the west. A wind that tasted of snow was blowing from the northeast and kicking up white horses that a groundswell car- ried in to batter against a one-hundred- foot high wall of iron-stained, granite rock which began just beyond the en- trance to Ten-Spot Cove where Joe had his booming ground. The nip of shiver- ing winter was in sky and air, and on land and water. Even the most enthusi- astic bather would admit that swimming days were over.

It was four o'clock now. In a couple of hours it would be pitch dark. So Joe decided to see that his boom was OK and call it a day. While engaged in that job, he heard the dull, muffled roar of an explosion and wondered if some new settler had come in and was clear- ing the ground for another home in the bush. He had not heard of any, but he had not been to the post office for a week and anything could happen in that time —even another war might break out.

He turned the boat’s head for home. His house stood on the south side of the Cove, just above high-water-mark, and commanded a good view of the coast- line and the islands that dotted the gulf. It was hidden from where his boom lay by a large, jutting rock that some imag- inative English surveyor had christened Gibralter, the name it bore on the charts, but which the materialist settleis per- sisted in calling Clam Point.

Rounding the point he saw his wife and children all outside on the beach. ‘They were apparently interested in some- thing that was happening beyond the point of land on the other side of the Cove, When they saw him, they became quite excited and from their actions he Imew they were shouting some warning

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or information to him. But, because of the throb of his engine and the wind which was coming over his starboard quarter and blowing directly towards the house, he could hear nothing. From their gesticulations, however, he knew that something was wrong, so he gave her all the gas she would take.

When he had cleared the Cove mouth he found out what it was all about. About two miles away and at least a mile off shore was the beautiful yacht that had passed a few minutes before. But she was different now. She was a mass of flame, burning like a piece of the forest fire that had swept through the bush behind his home last summer. The ex- plosion he had heard, This was where it came from—gasoline!

The men on her? What about them’ If they had not been able to get into their boat they were threatened with the most terrible death that hovers over the men who make their living on the bosom of old Mother Ocean. Joe's thoughts, naturally, were for the crew members, men like himself, who fought the sea in an eternal struggle that they might spend a small part of their life ashore in peace and comfort. He did not know that there were a boatload of millionaires on that blazing furnace that had once been the Navajo.

Joe was not a replica of Rodin’s famous study in stone of man in a pensive mood. All his life he had been given more to acting than to cogitating. Thinking and acting with him were practically co-inci- dental and even while he was sizing up the situation, his boat was headed for the Navajo as fast as her engines would

drive her. He hoped he would not be too late.

While still about two hundred yards from her, he heard a tired voice crying for help, somewhere close to his boat. Scanning the water, he saw the head and little more, of a man who apparently had been swimming, but by this time was fin- ished. He spun the wheel to take her close, threw the clutch out and got the pike-pole handy. The’ swimmer seemed to have given up hope and was now wast- ing what little strength he had left, try- ing to make the sign of the cross on that

part of himself that remained out of the water,

With the hook of the pike skilfully in- serted in the waist of his pants, he was pulled towards the boat and lifted aboard. When he had recovered his breath suf- ficiently to speak, Joe asked him if there were any others on the yacht. “Yes,” he was told, “there are seven others. I was swimming to get help.” “Swimmin’ to bring help, was you?” asked Joe. “What help did you expect to get from that there wall'a granite rock? How was you gonna get out a’ the salt chuck? That there cliff is a hundred an’ fifty feet from the water straight up an’ they ain’t no toe- holt even for a woodpecker along the hull six miles of it, even if you would of did the swim. An’ you don’t look like no English Channel swimmer to me.” “I know,” replied the other, “but I knew God would not desert us and you see he has guided you right to where I was in the water.” “That's as may be,” said Joe, “an’ pickin’ you up may of cost the other seven their lives.”

(To be Continued in Next Issue)

An end to millionaires’ profits and luxuries! .. . A decent life for Tabor!

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