Maine Voices: History provides reality check to lumberjack’s romantic image

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • December 27, 2020

In the early years of the 20th century, 15,086 wage earners labored in Maine’s lumber and timber products industry. The loggers who fell the giants of the Maine forests have won their share of space in folklore literature. The romantic image is, however, not necessarily reflective of the reality of their life experience. Many were tricked into taking jobs characterized by isolation and debt servitude. To ensure greater control over the woodsmen and protection of their financial resources, the lumber interests secured legislation in 1907 that made it a crime to leave one’s place of employment while in debt to the company store. ~ Charles Scontras, historian, UMaine Bureau of Labor Education