While logging camps were very much a male-dominated world there were, of course, women working there as well, often in the kitchens and in laundry services. Here, one ‘flunky’ shares her experience.

‘My Experience in a Logging Camp’ by Winifred G. Shats from The Daily Worker. Vol. 3 No. 23. February 7, 1926.

(Worker Correspondent.) SEATTLE, Wash., Feb. 4. Two years ago, I “shipped” to a logging camp fifty miles from Seattle as flunky (waitress). The kitchen crew was composed of nine, head cook, second, baker, kitchen helper, disher and four women flunkies for two hundred men.

Each girl had fifty men at a table to wait on. We were in the dining room from 6a.m. until 2 p.m. Then we went to the store room and peeled three sacks of potatoes by hand. That took us until about 3:30. We then rushed to our rooms to wash up and put on a clean apron, then back to the dining room at 4:30 to prepare the tables for the evening meal.

Putrid Meat Used for Men.

In the evening we put up eighty lunches. We were allowed so much for each lunch, sometimes we would try to steal a few extras to put in, but of course, if we were caught we got a calling down from the head cook. I have seen meat cut up for these lunches with the magots crawling out of it and we were told if the magots were too thick to throw it away.

One of the cook’s favorite dishes was codfish and cream, if there was any left the cream was washed off and a salad (can anyone who reads this imagine a “codfish salad?”) made for supper. This head cook was a company man and very economical for the company.

There is an eight-hour day and a six-day a week law for women in the state of Washington. But the women in all logging camps in the northwest work from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. seven days a week. The monthly wage in the camp I was in was fifty-five dollars.

If J.L. Blackburn, who thinks the camps are such wonderful places, would go to addle of these camps and work there he would get his eyes opened, but from the way he writes I think they are glued shut. The men never had enough to eat while I was there. No man ever got such wages or worked themselves up to such sums as he stated, it is an impossibility. As members of the company they get those sums but they don’t take working stiffs in. The highest paid man in the camp I was in was the high climber, $8 per day. The lowest paid was the bull cook, $60.00 per month. He makes the beds, keeps the bunkhouses clean, and brings fuel for the cook house. All men paid $1.40 a day for board and bed.

Every man must go thru a clearing house before he is sent to any camp, and if it be found that he belongs to any organization of a radical nature he is not accepted. I worked almost two months in this camp, I then came to Seattle and reported the conditions to the labor commissioner here. He wrote to the company and sent me their reply.

They stated they would investigate and if conditions were as I said, they would take care of it. I had a friend in camp who kept me informed and nothing was done. I then wrote to the women’s department in Olympia. But as yet the girls are grinding away from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. They are not organized, and therefore, can do nothing.

Just a little incident while coming in on the train. A lady said to me, “Have you been out in the woods camping?” I said, “Yes, lady, I have been out in the woods, but I have been working in a logging camp.” She said, “Oh, how terrible, weren’t you afraid of those terrible I.W.W.’s?” I said, “No, lady, I would rather be with a bunch of I.W.W.’s than preachers or bankers.” She moved into the next seat, and judging by the way her escort was dressed, he was a preacher and she his wife.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n023-Chi-feb-07-1926-DW-LOC.pdf