XVIII
For a year Bob worked hard at all sorts of jobs. He saw the woods work,the river work, the mill work. From the stump to the barges he followedthe timbers. Being naturally of a good intelligence, he learned veryfast how things were done, so that at the end of the time mentioned hehad acquired a fair working knowledge of how affairs were accomplishedin this business he had adopted. That does not mean he had become acapable lumberman. One of the strangest fallacies long prevalent in thepublic mind is that lumbering is always a sure road to wealth. Themargin of profit seems very large. As a matter of fact, the industry isso swiftly conducted, on so large a scale, along such varied lines; theexpenditures must be made so lavishly, and yet so carefully; theconsequences of a niggardly policy are so quickly apparent in decreasedefficiency, and yet the possible leaks are so many, quickly draining themost abundant resources, that few not brought up through a longapprenticeship avoid a loss. A great deal of money has been and is madein timber. A great deal has been lost, simply because, while thepossibilities are alluring, the complexity of the numerous problems isunseen.
At first Bob saw only the results. You went into the woods with a crewof men, felled trees, cut them into lengths, dragged them to the roadsalready prepared, piled them on sleighs, hauled them to the river, andstacked them there. In the spring you floated the logs to the mill wherethey were sawed into boards, laden into sailing vessels or steam barges,and taken to market. There was the whole process in a nutshell. Ofcourse, there would be details and obstructions to cope with. Butbetween the eighty thousand dollars or so worth of trees standing in theforest and the quarter-million dollars or so they represented at themarket seemed space enough to allow for many reverses.
As time went on, however, the young man came more justly to realize theminuteness of the bits comprising this complicated mosaic. From keepingmen to the point of returning, in work, the worth of their wages; fromso correlating and arranging that work that all might be busy and notsome waiting for others; up through the anxieties of weather and thesullen or active opposition of natural forces, to the higher levels ofcompetition and contracts, his awakened attention taught him thatlegitimate profits could attend only on vigilant and minute attention,on comprehensive knowledge of detail, on experience, and on naturalgift. The feeding of men abundantly at a small price involved questionsof buying, transportation and forethought, not to speak of concreteknowledge of how much such things should ideally be worth. Tools by thethousand were needed at certain places and at certain times. They mustbe cared for and accounted for. Horses, and their feed, equipment andcare, made another not inconsiderable item both of expense andattention. And so with a thousand and one details which it would besuperfluous to enumerate here. Each cost money, and some one's time.Relaxed attention might make each cost a few pennies more. What do a fewpennies amount to? Two things: a lowering of the standard of efficiency,and, in the long run, many dollars. If incompetence, or inexperienceshould be added to relaxed attention, so that the various activities donot mortise exactly one with another, and the legitimate results to beexpected from the pennies do not arrive, then the sum total is very aptto be failure. Where organized and settled industries, howevercomplicated in detail, are in a manner played by score, these frontieractivities are vast improvisations following only the generalunchangeable laws of commerce.
Therefore, Bob was very much surprised and not a little dismayed atwhat Mr. Welton had to say to him one evening early in the spring.
It was in the "van" of Camp Thirty-nine. Over in the corner under thelamp the sealer and bookkeeper was epitomizing the results of his day.Welton and Bob sat close to the round stove in the middle, smoking theirpipes. The three or four bunks belonging to Bob, the scaler, and thecamp boss were dim in another corner; the shelves of goods for tradewith the men occupied a third. A rude door and a pair of tiny windowscommunicated with the world outside. Flickers of light from the cracksin the stove played over the massive logs of the little building, overthe rough floor and the weapons and snowshoes on the wall. Both Bob andWelton were dressed in flannel and kersey, with the heavy German socksand lumberman's rubbers on their feet. Their bright-checked Mackinawjackets lay where they had been flung on the beds. Costume andsurroundings both were a thousand miles from civilization; yetcivilization was knocking at the door. Welton gave expression to thisthought.
"Two seasons more'll finish us, Bob," said he. "I've logged the Michiganwoods for thirty-five years, but now I'm about done here."
"Yes, I guess they're all about done," agreed Bob.
"The big men have gone West; lots of the old lumber jacks are out therenow. It's our turn. I suppose you know we've got timber in California?"
"Yes," said Bob, with a wry grin, as he thought of the columns of"descriptions" he had copied; "I know that."
"There's about half a billion feet of it. We'll begin to manufacturewhen we get through here. I'm going out next month, as soon as the snowis out of the mountains, to see about the plant and the general lay-out.I'm going to leave you in charge here."
Bob almost dropped his pipe as his jaws fell apart.
"Me!" he cried.
"Yes, you."
"But I can't; I don't know enough! I'd make a mess of the wholebusiness," Bob expostulated.
"You've been around here for a year," said Welton, "and things arerunning all right. I want somebody to see that things move along, andyou're the one. Are you going to refuse?"
"No; I suppose I can't refuse," said Bob miserably, and fell silent.