In this second part of the Labor of Logging, I look at the labor involved with the Spring River Drives and the use of Boom Companies. The labor was the most important part of the log drives, without the men working the rivers, the logs would have never made it down the rivers to the sawmills. The drives could be very dangerous, with many men seriously injured or killed. I share a first-person account of Elmer Nolan about the danger of breaking rollways and river driving on the Tittabawasee River in the 1880s. Then we take a look into the workings of a log boom company that would control the entire driving operations on a river. Using the Menominee River Boom Company of Marinette, Wisconsin as an example, we learn of the stratification of a river drive operation and how the various jobs were broken down and performed. Last, we look at one of the most popular lumberjack songs, "The Jam at Gerry's Rocks" and how the loggers and river drivers kept the memory alive of their friends who were lost on the river drives.
Episode Resources:
Burke, Fred C. Logs on the Menominee: The History of the Menominee River Boom. Menasha, WI: Banta Publishing Co., 1946.
Nolan, Herbert. Logging the Tittabawassee: In Memory of Camp Sixteeners. 1939. Reprinted in 1970 and by Printer's Devil Press, Tawas City, MI in 2005.
Rickaby, Franz. Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era. Originally published by Harvard University Press, Boston, 1926. Revised edition by University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2017.
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