I

Sec. 562, P. L. & R.U. S. POSTAGE

PaidButte. Mont.

Permit No. J 39

-CopperCommandoCOPPER COMMANDO is the official newspaperof the Victory Labor-Management ProductionCommittees of the Anaconda Copper MiningCompany and its Union Representatives at Butte,Anaconda, Great Falls and East Helena, Montana.It is issued every two weeks ..• COPPER COM-MANDO is headed by a joint committee fromLabor and Management, its policies are shaped byboth sides and are dictated by neither . . • COP-PER COMMANDO was established at the rec-ommendation of tfte War D~partment with theconcurrence of tfte War Production Board. Its. editors are Bob Newcomb and Marg Sammons:its !>afety editor is John L. Boardman; its chiefphotographet' is AIGusdorf; its staff photographerI. Le. Bishop •.• Its Editorial Board consists of:Denis McCarthy, CIO; John F. Bird, AFL; Ed

t:"ouard, ACM, from Butte; Dan Byrne, CIO;Marick, AFL; C. A. Lemmon, ACM, from

aconda; Jack Clark, CIO; Herb Donaldson.~FL. and E. S. Bardwell, ACM, from Great Falls•• • • COPPERCOMMANDO i. mailed to the homeof every employee of ACM in the four locations--if you are not receiving your copy, advise COP·PER COMMANDO at 112 Hamilton Street.Butte, or better still, drop i. and tell us. This i.Vol. 3. No. I.

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Fro•••the Woods...•••to the Mines

SOME fifty miles from Missoula, in the mountain country to the north, stretch greattimber tracts. These tracts are part' of the essential backbone of the mining indu ..try, for timber is necessary in vast quantities to the operation of the undergrouwdnetwork below the Butte hill, which is the copper mines. Tim"er is eMential, too.to the operation of the smelters at Anaconda and at Great Falls.

So, because timber is essential to mining. timber is esse ....ial to the war. To-day, with the need for copper production being as great as it is, tke lumlterj.ektof Montana are doing a masterful job in .vpplying needed timber to the miniftg itt-dustty. These logging operations are gravely handicapped by tIM manpowet'shortage. The Armed Services and coas tal industries have drained away Ma..,workers from the woods. But those wh 0 are left are perfor"""'t a top priorityjob for Uncle Sam.

Copper Commando has visited thes e logging operations and hrittgs yotI ..

this and the next issue tfte picture-story of this interesting and wital wOl'k. W.hope that our readers will enioy th,is picture-story as much as .... edftors enfoy.clpreparine it.

-T HE logging operations take place inthe last timber zone in the country. Be-ginning with the days of the settlers ofour country, our American forests weredestroyed tree by tree; the pioneers didnot stop to realize that once you cut atree down, it can never grow again. Ormaybe they knew and didn't care.

But down through the years, ourforests have been stripped because littleprovision was made for building theseforests up again. So only one zone re-mains in the whole of the United Statesand Canada for successful fogging opera-tions. Beyond that, only one remains inthe whole world, and that is in Siberia.

But when the Anaconda organiza-tion acquired these vast timber tracts inMontana, for the purpose of providing'timber chiefly for the mines, the officialsundertook its'logging in a scientific way.It involved the proper care and handlingof timber tracts; in brief, for cutting'down only an established percentage oftrees, leaving a young and sturdy growthfor the future. It meant taking care ofthe underbrush so that it would protectand preserve those trees which remained.It meant the use of science and commonsense in cutting trees so that the fallingtree could not carry others with it. Itmeant the system of burning of brush.

What it actually boils down to isthis: those in charge of the timber oper-ations know that it would be a simple

thing to take every tree which waswanted. But they know, too, that itwould only be a matter o'f time beforethere would be no trees left. So carefullogging has been practiced for many yearsand in another couple of generations thetrees which have been preserved willhave grown to commercial size and beready for cutting.

The logging operations spread overa vast area. It is beautiful mountaincountry, with many lakes. When the op-erations are going at full blast with allnecessary manpower, several outlyingcamps may be in operation at one time.When men are scarce, camps are some-

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times combined so that full crews canwork assigned areas.

The trees are primarily fir, tamarackand pine. The forests themselves arenot thick-the desired trees are actually'pretty thinly scattered so that it meansthat the logging operations range over:many square miles.

The Company's headquarters are lo-cated near a small community known asWoodworth. From this place 'the day-to-day operations are directed by Super ...intendent Don MacKenzie and his staff"We visited Headquarters, as it is called'(you'll have a chance to get acquaintedwith Headquarters and its men later on)1",and then went out into the woods them ...selves, following the operation rightthrough from the beginning.

The loggers, or lumberjacks, work}out from locations known as "camps"We worked with the crew from Cam~Seven, which has been merged with Camp'Six because of the manpower shortage,

We worked and talked and ate witHthe lumberjacks and we found them tobe great guys. They lead healthy, vigor ..ous lives; they work hard, eat a lot, andsleep heavily. They rarely take the time'to realize, as many of us do, that the",are playing an important part in helpinfito win the war. They are the boys who"by providing the logs and the timber.,.help keep the copper mines going. Andthat's an. essential war job if we ever.heard of one.

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Here's a typical scene in the woods through which your editors passed on the way to the big tree theto cut down. We d for miles and saw scenes similar to the ones shown here.

Your editors take it easy with a group of sawyers for a few min~tes after the big tree shown on the nextpage had been toppled. To watch the sawyers topple a tree is something not to be forgotten.

This is a section of the highway which the bulldozer has-built. The 'dozers, cats and trucks move backand forth over this road constantly. It's hard to believe that the ro,adsare most all new ones.

We Tookto

the Woods•

Here's where the stu lis and other minetimbers come from. Let's start at thebeginning by g~ing right out into theforest and follow tbe log through. It'llbe an interesting trip for you, we're prettysure of that. It is really beautiful country •

•IN order to establish a logging opera-tion. you have to provide for getting tJ-te .logs out. That means building roads.Not only that, it means building roadsthrough tough country.

It means that. when logging opera-tions are completed in one area and themen move to another, new roads have tobe hewn through the forest. So the crewgoes out and clears a broad trail. Whenit is done, in comes the "bulldozer," amechanical giant without which loggingoperations would be hard indeed.

These high-powered 'dozers, as theyare called for short, uproot nearly any-thing in their path and level off highwaysbefore them. One 'dozer operator inthree months last year laid a twenty-five-mile hig!:lway for the logging trucks tooper.ate over.

There at the top of the page is astand of timber. Actually there are fewtrees of sufficient size to warrant cut-ting yet, but it was in this section whereone big fellow was toppled-we'll showyou the pictures of it later on.

The lumberjacks for the most parthave been in the game for years-thereare not many young men among them be-cause the Armed Services have cal led -them out. But age seems to be no handi-cap to these husky fellows. In the secondpicture, the small man seated at the ex-treme left is seventy-one years old-he'sworked for the Anaconda Company forthe past twenty-five years as a woodsman.He is a sawyer and we'll catch up withhim shortly.

There, at the bottom. is a sample ofwhat part of the highways look like. Theroad is about fifteen feet wide and wascreated by a bulldozer. While the roadis rough in spots. it is surprisingly goodand you don't get bumped around muchtraveling over it in a car. The road weavesand winds through the mountains andpast beautiful bodies of water. Once thetimber from this area has been exhaustedthe men will move away to another sec-tion to lay their roads and take the logsout. And, thanks to good forest manage-ment, crews will -come back in anothercouple of generations to resume logging./here.

The first step is to under-cut or notch the tree.This notching determines the fall. It is essentialthat the tree does not carry other trees with it.It must hit squarely on the ground. The notch is

made approximately one-third through the trunkof the tree. The size of the tree determines wherethe notch is to be-it is never over three feetfrom the ground. It extends up to twelve inches

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in the tree trunk. The initial cut is made with asaw and then a falling axe is used to complete it-the falling axe has a thin, narrow blade andtakes an expert to handle it. Here are the experts.

HERE are the first scenes. Those sawyersat the top are Ben Hallgren-he's theseventy-one-year-older we just told youabout-and Henry Johnson, who hasbeen on the job about ten years.

After Ben and Henry have made thenotch, a crosscut saw is used from theother side. After the tree has been sawedthrough a few inches. iron wedges aredriveri into the cut to help give the treethe right slant and also to keep. the sawfrom binding.

There, at the right, you see the treegoing. The men have backed away fromit (even the photographer has hiddenhimself behind another fallen tree as thebig fellow toppled to the ground). Benand Henry calculated the fall perfectly-the tree thundered to the ground throughan opening in the other trees and carriednothing with it.

You can hea:r the crash of a fallingtree for a great distance." It seems toecho and re-echo through the-still woods.

After the tree falls, the "swamper" moves in andcuts oH the limbs. They call this "swamping" thetree. The ....ee is then cut into desired lengths bythe sawyers. The ..e are Henry and Ben sawing up ,the tree into lengths. The next important mem-ber of the crew is the swamper-that's ArnoldReinhard in the center picture. Arnold is theIwamper-lte cleans out the unde ..brush and re-moves brush from the point of fall to the high-way 10 that the tractora (known as cats) can

come in to h<!ulthe logl out. If a road is needed,the bulldo:ler moves in and makes it first. Notethat Arnold is swinging his axe so fast that eventhe camera could not catch the motion.

Naturally trees have to be measured to de-termine their board feet-these trees are all goingto be cut up into lumber, and that's where thescaler comes in. At the right is Albert Free, thescaler, who measures the tree off as soon as itfalls. That is his dog Pal with him. Albert carries

SEPTEMBER 1. 1944 .

a scale stick with him and works right along withthe sawyers. It's up to him to determine howmuch lumber there is in every t-ree cut down.

You'd think all these operations take a greatdeal of time, but they don't. The lawyers workvery fast and once the tree is chosen and theangle of fall determined, the sawyers dig right in.

These. trees are not midgets. Accordingly ittakes heavy equipment to get them out to thehighways and on their way to the lumber mill...') .

Help Wanted

~ HIS issue of Copper C~mando andthe next one are devoted to the loggingoperations of the Anaconda Companywhich stem out of a little town calledWoodworth, which is fifty-odd milesfrom Bonner. Bonner is where the Com-pany's lumber mill is located and we aregoing to follow up these issues with aseries of picture-stories on Bonner which,no fooling, we thin'k you will really like.

Timber today is right up there withthe top priorities. If we didn't have treesto convert into timber for the mines, cop-per production ,)Yould cease. And if cop-per production were to cease, this warwould very quickly be lost.

•This operation out of Woodworth isOne of the most interesting tlrings we'veever seen. The logging camps we visitedare not the largest in the world, but inmany respects they are the most scien-tific. For this country's forests havebeen stripped clean in many placesthrough the failure of operators to seethat, if a tree is cut down, it can nevergrow again.· Many years ago, at theCompany's logging operations, a scien-tific method of logging was put into ef-fect. This system provided for timber-ing with an eye to the future. You don'tcut down every tree you se~you leavethose with promise, and you don't cleanout the underbrush. It's too scientific'actually to discuss in detail here (weClon't understand it thoro'ughly by a longshot ourselves) , but careful logging is thereal answer to rebuilding the country'sforests. It will take longer to do thanany of us will live, but the grOtindwork isbeing laid.

But what we started out to say wasthis: Copper mines need timber. With-out timber, copper mines can't operate.~oday, bec~use of, the tremendous de-mands made by the Armed Services andby other industries, the lumber industryis ,in a bad way. It needs men and needsmen desperately. Not only do the minesneed timber, but practically every majorwar operation calls for more wood thanthe forests can hope to produce. Theworker in a non-essential industry, whowishes to perform his country a service,could do worse than enlist with the lum-berjacks who are really doing a war job.

We think it sums up to this: Themini,ng of war-essential copper needs anawful lot of men who can do an awfullot of things.

People (rPlacesWE thought you might like to see a fewlittle pictures of different personalitieswe mingled with during our visit to thelogging operations.

When we started off from the Head-quarters we were trying to track downDon MacKenzie, the superintendent, sowe could check our plans with him. Don,as usual, was off on the job-he spendslittle time in the office and likes to beoff where things are going on.

We caught up with Don on thehighway and got him out of the car.While he was checking routes with MargSammons, AI' Gusdorf got a picture,

That's Don in the center talking to MargSammons, and Fred Schiesser, the driverof the truck, is at the left. We were onour way at the time to get pictures ofthe fellows coming in for grub at noon,and we had to hurry right along aftersaying hello to Don.

Later on, up in the woods, we got totalking with the sawyers and the swam perwhose pictures at work you have justseen. They were telling us just what·they were g~ing to do and answering ourquestions. _ In the second picture, Bob

_ Newcomb and Marg Sammons are at theleft and they are talking with Ben Hall-gren, Arnold Reinhard and Henry John-son. We had had a swell lunch, hadtaken a few minutes to digest it and wereready to go to work.

The fellows insisted that Margshow off her skill with the axe and herewe have a view of her taking a huskyswing at the tree. Ben Hallgren is stand-ing beside her and seems rather proudof the performance. Marg started cut-ting this tree down around the end ofJune and at last report she was still at it.

In the next issue we are going totell you about AI Henderson, an old-timerwho now runs the library Car at campHeadquarters. That's a picture of AIsome years ago with a canthook overhis shoulder-the picture was loaned tous by Mr. Lubrecht, manager of theLumber Department at Bonner and anold friend of AI's.

AI is a veteran woodsman and whathe doesn't know about logging just isn'tworth knowing. But we don't want tospoil the story about AI by telling it here.Just be patient until the next issue andyou'll get to know this fine man better:

As the old saying goes, the photog-rapher is the- fellow who takes all thepictures and never gets in them himself.The fellow who took all the pictures forthis issue (with the exception of the oneof AI Henderson which Mr. Lubrechtloaned us) is AI Gusdorf of AI's PhotoShop in Butte.

We started off with AI at about day-light and wound up way after derk. dur-ing which time he hustled himself overhighways, fallen trees; he stood 011 tablesand chairs, and if we asked him to hangby his heels he probably would havedone it. That's AI below.

Foreman Peter Willey and operator Ray Bailey are shown standing in frontof the 'dozer tal~ing about the road which Ray i. making through the forest.

THE ~DOZEBMOVES IN

IF you want to get a look sometime at a real honest-to-Jo~npowerhouse. you want to get a close-up of a bulldo%er in ac-tion. A bulldozer is a diesel motor tractor which plows righttJ-rough the brush. It makes a logging road or truck road sothe. caterpillar can 'get in and skid the logs to the truck land'ingwhere the logs are assembled. This bulldozer is 108 berse-"power. In front of it is a huge scraping blade which cuts andpushes and heaves. It can shovel either straight ahead, di-rectly to the side, or at an angle.

It has a powerful cable hoist ,which is used to lift up thestumps of trees and get them out of the way.'

We were fortunate to find a 'doze~ in top action. RayBailey, the operator, was building a road'at the foot of a nearbyhill. One minute he would be heaving stumps and smalltrees out of the way; the next he would be piling up a high-wily in front of him. He would move the bulldozer right upto the edge of the road and you would think he w..s goingright over the edge. but he always backed away in time. Thepower these tractors develop is amazing, and most of ourreaden know that the ~ilitary highways all over the worldhave been built with this type of equipmenf,

Without bulldozers, every foot of highway would haveto be built by men and much time would be ~ost and moneywasted. With thts equipment, the 'dozer can move right inpractically on the heels of the swamper and level off a road sothat the cats can come in and haul out the logs. Even thoughthe cat is itself a powef'ful tractor. it could not be expectedto haul huge logs over country that was too rough. So the'dozer, so to speak, smooflhs the way for the cats. Modernlumbering would be mighty tough without the bulldozer.

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Cangway, here she comes! Here is a head-on view of the 'dozer getting setto c~annel a path through the woods. The photographer had to step lively.

a jungle of fallen underbrush, and it has to be pushed out of the wayby the bulldozer before the road can be made, But the bulldozer can do it.

*',,...... '~ , "* ~~.

Here's how the road is made, The dirt and gravel are pushed ahead of the'dozer. In a short time the road will be ready for the cat, and hauling of logs.

A close-up view of the dirt and gravel being levelled off to make the high-way. This powerhouse can literally move mountains, as pictured here.

)<4. ..iTime out! Ray Bailey starts up the hill to talk to Foreman Peter Willey,. This..... n Bailey is really an artist to watch at his work. He has it down pat.

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Home plate for the cats is the truck landing. Thecats go out from it empty and return to the land-ings with their loads of logs. These sturdy littletractors move ovet' mighty rough teA'ain once they

leave the road the 'doser has built. They musthelp the choker-setter get the logs in line. Theyastemble the logs one by one, and when the fiveare together with the butts on the skidding pan,

the cat i. ready to move to the landing. Here aretwo cats getting ready to go to work again. Butbefore the cats take off, they are carefullychecked for break downs .Iow up production. .

HERE'S the next step-this is wherethe "cats" come in. The term cat doesnot come from the domestic animal. Itis just a short way of saying' Caterpillar,wh ich is the trade name of the tractor(you probably knew this all along, but wethought we'd tell you anyway).

These little tractors have tremen-dous power, as you will see on this andlater pages. But because of the hardwork they perform and the knockingaround they get, they have to be kept in 7'tip-top repair. They are looked over care-fully and are greased regularly so thatthey can do their job well.

After the road has- been made, thecat comes in and picks up the treelengths. The man who fastens the cablearound the log is a choker-setter, and t~cable itself is called a choker. After theload is made up (they average about fiveor moore logs to a load), the ends af"--(iplaced on a "skidding pan" and skiddedto the truck Iet'\ding.

In the big center picture, the cat is backing intopositio.,. That's the choker-setter at the left.When the cat is close enough to the log, thechoker-setter puts the choker around the butt

end of the log and the cat jockeys it into positionto pick ~p later. Above. at the left. Zig Thompsonis backin~ up for another log-the frame abovehis head is for protection against falls. In the pic-

ture at the right, Andy Hollott, the choker-set·ter, has fastened the choker to the log and Zig i.now ready to haul this big fellow into the clear.It's a real sight to see them line up the logs..8. SEPTEMBER 1. 19_~

The load is assembled and the noses of the logs are on the skidding pan.

IT'S a real sight to watch these cats at work. They can sc~feup the side of a bank with ease; when a big fallen log lies.in front of them, they just climb it. They have to move backand forth over many logs as they assemble a load.

The operators of these cats are experts in every sense ofthe word. They seem able to gauge distance down to thefraction of an inch. They know by instinct what the cat cando and what it can't do, although there seem to be very fewthings that it can't do.

The choker-setter is an important fellow, too-he mustkeep his eyes wide open all the time. He has to guide the catoperator and signal him above the roar of the motor.

When the load of logs is in line, each with its chokeraround the butt end, the whole load is moved onto the skid-ding pan-this is merely a flat pan which helps slide the logsand makes it impossible for the ends of the logs to bump intoanything.

The logs themselves are of various kinds and sizes-notuntil the logs are sorted out at the mill is there any attemptmade to classify them.

These logs are all assembled at the truck landings, whichis merely a big open space where trucks and tractors can ma-neuver. The logs are piled beside the truck and a giant cranehoists them onto the truck. The truck landings are alwaysbusy places, because the trucks are constantly coming andgoing. Even at noon hour, this is a busy place, for the grubis served here. It would take too much time to bring all themen' into their camp for the noonday meal, so the food isbrought out to them and served at the truck landing.

Some of these logs were sawed by hand, as we have shownyou in earlier pictures. Others were sawed by a giant powersaw which works at various points in the logging area. Itwas our tough luck that when we "covered" the logging opera-tions out of Camp Seven, the power saw was too deep in theforest for us to get to it. But we have the boys' word .for itthat the power saw really does a job sawing down the timber.

There goes Zig Thompson with his load. You can't see the 5th log to the left.

Out to the truck landing. Note another tractor coming into the landing.

.No. ~2 with a cargo of btg boys starts the incline to the truck randing.

No. 27 Comesin frona a haul. That's the choker-setter standing behind. The load is read)' to be cut 1000e.Logswill be assembled at the right.

IT'S too much of a jaunt back to thecamp for the noonday meal (they call itdinner in the woods, just like the minersdo; supper is the evening meal). So thechefs at Camp Seven send out by trucks(or "candy wagon" as it is known in log-ging camps) the big meal the boys putaway at noon.

Here they come in the picture above.These men have been picked up by truckout in the woods and brought into thet.....uck landing. They all look good andhungry and they're going to get a goodfeed. The man in the center is RayBailey, the bulldozer operator we got ac-quainted with a few pages back. In thecenter picture we see the food from thetrucks spread out-that's the candywagon at the right. The food is broughtout hot, in big steaming kettles, andevery man helps himself. There's nodainty appetites to be found after" a shiftof working in the woods.

(;OMEAND

GET ,•

•You've all heard th'at lumberjacks eat andlike it. Take it from us, that's no fooling. \These boys get good food and all of itthey want and they want plenty of it•

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THERE'S no monkey business at thiscamp about putting it away-and if a~man doesn't get as much as he wants toeat, it's nobody's fault but his .9wn, be-cause it's there for him. Marg Sammons(see if you can find her in the centerpicture) jotted down the noonday menuand here it is:

Cabbage and ham hocks, roast pork,hard-boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, corn,sliced onions, home-made bread (and wasit good l) , two kinds of preserves, honey,cookies, doughnuts, coconut cream pie,cherry pie, coffee and milk.

Over there on the opposite page weshow you some views of the men at din-ner. They start at one end of the boardand load their tray-cafeteria style-the large cans of coffee and milk are atthe end. The men sit comfortably on theground or on logs and dig in. After themeal is over, they have time to smoke andtalk.

Your editors can report this: Thegrub is swell.

EVEN the woods· go to work for UncleSam. Out of these beautiful mountainscome the logs that help the mines pro-·duce. And if the mines don't produce,the sh'ips and tanks and the planes don'toperate.

This is tile first half of a two-partstory on the loggers of Montana. Withthe forests cryiftg for more men to helprelieve the pressure for vital production,any worker in a non-essential industrycould well afford to QOnsider helping hiscountry by working in the Montana for-ests. Logging experience ,is desirable butit isn't necessary--there are many jobs inlogging which a man without experiencecan perform.

All that a man needs are two things:An average condition of strength andhealth and a desire to do what he can forhis country.

Workers in essential industries can-not, of course, be traRsferred to theseoperations. But there are many men to-day in industries not considered essentialby Uncle Sam to whom the outdoor lifeappeals. They would be welcome hereand they would be doing much to aid thecause of production and bring the boysback from the fighting fronts sooner.