Chapter I: Preface

"TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN" is a complete story in itself, but forms the first volume of a line to be issued under the general title of "Great American Industries Series."

In beginning this series, I have in mind to acquaint our boys and young men with the main details of a number of industries which have become of prime importance, not alone to ourselves as a nation, but likewise to a large part of the world in general.

Our United States is a large country and consequently the industries are many, yet none is perhaps of greater importance than that of the lumber trade. Lumber gives us material for our buildings and our ships, our railroads and our telegraph lines, and furnishes the pulp from which millions of pounds of paper are made annually. We export lumber to Europe, to the West Indies, and even to the Orient, drawing on a forest treasure that covers thousands of square miles of territory.

The tale opens in Maine, which in years gone by was the paradise of the American lumberman. In those days pine was king, and Maine became known far and wide as the Pine Tree State. When the best of the pine had disappeared, spruce claimed the logger's attention; and then the lumberman looked elsewhere for his timber, first in Michigan and along the Great Lakes, and in the South, and then in California, and in that vast section of our country drained by the Columbia (or Oregon) River.

The two young lumbermen of this story are hardly heroes in the accepted sense of that term. They are bright youths of to-day, willing to work hard for what they get, but always on the alert to better their condition. As choppers, river-drivers, mill hands, and general camp workers they have a variety of adventures, but only such as fall to the lot of more than one lumberman working in the woods of Maine, Michigan, or Oregon to-day. It was in the Far West that they found their greatest opportunity for advancement, and how they made the most of that chance is described in the pages which follow.

In presenting this work the author desires once again to thank the many who have interested themselves in his previous books. May they find the reading of this volume even more interesting and profitable.

EDWARD STRATEMEYER.

_August 1, 1903._

CONTENTS

I. A TALK ABOUT EMPLOYMENT

II. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BROOK

III. TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN AT HOME

IV. A FRESH START

V. SOMETHING ABOUT THE MAINE LUMBER TRADE

VI. DEEP IN THE WOODS

VII. THE DANGERS OF LOG-ROLLING

VIII. CHRISTMAS, AND AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

IX. DALE AND OWEN SPEAK THEIR MIND

X. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOODS

XI. SPRINGTIME IN THE CAMP

XII. THE LODGE AT PINE TREE LAKE

XIII. A LOG JAM ON THE PENOBSCOT

XIV. BERTIE AND GERTRUDE

XV. TWO LITTLE RUNAWAYS

XVI. PURSUED BY THE FOREST FIRE

XVII. THE RAGING OF THE ELEMENTS

XVIII. BOUND FOR THE GREAT LAKES

XIX. A TALK ON THE TRAIN

XX. AT JOHN HOOVER'S HOME

XXI. AN UNSIGNED CONTRACT

XXII. A LUMBER BOAT IN A STORM

XXIII. OFF FOR OREGON

XXIV. SOMETHING ABOUT THE NORTHWEST LUMBER INDUSTRY

XXV. AN INTERVIEW WITH ULMER BALASCO

XXVI. IN AN OREGON FOREST

XXVII. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOG TRAIN

XXVIII. JEFFERSON WILBUR SEEKS INFORMATION

XXIX. MATTERS OF IMPORTANCE

XXX. ULMER BALASCO SHOWS HIS HAND

XXXI. THE CRISIS

XXXII. AN UNEXPECTED APPOINTMENT

XXXIII. THE RAILROAD CONTRACT

XXXIV. DALE COMES INTO HIS OWN

XXXV. END OF THE CONTRACT AND OF THE STORY

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Want a job, eh?"

It leaped forward with lowered antlers directly for the young lumberman.

"Jump! Don't wait! Jump!" yelled Owen.

"A bear!" cried Dale.

Logs rose and fell in front and on each side of them.

"Have ye got 'em?" he demanded, in a shrill voice.

"Hurrah! it's down!" cried Dale.

Ulmer Balasco shook his fist in the young lumberman's face.

TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN