Lumberjack - Lumberjack Culture

Lumberjack Culture

Tomczik (2008) has investigated the lifestyle of lumberjacks in 1840-1940, using records from Maine and Minnesota logging camps. In a period of industrial development and modernization in urban areas, logging remained a traditional business in which the workers exhibited pride in their craft, their physical strength and masculinity, and guarded their individualism. Their camps were a bastion of the traditional workplace as they defied modern rationalized management, and built a culture around masculinity. At the peak in 1906 there were 500,000 lumberjacks; they took special pride in their work. Logging camps were located in isolated areas that provided room and board as well as a workplace. With few females present other than the wives of cooks and foremen, lumberjacks lived an independent life style that emphasized manly virtues in doing dangerous tasks. Men earned praise for their skills in doing their work, for being competitive, and for being aggressive. When not at work, they played rough games, told tall tales, and won reputations for consuming large amounts of food. By 1940, the business was undergoing major changes, as access roads and automobiles ended residential logging camps, chain saws replaced crosscut saws, and managers installed modern industrial methods.