Barely a word was spoken at supper that night. Men went without something rather than asking for it aloud. They were philosophical about loggers getting killed; it happened—frequently. Still, respect needed to be shown. Aino, however, wasn’t at all philosophical about loggers getting killed; it might be her brother. Finished for the night, she found Matti and Aksel outside their bunkhouse, both smoking. The little whistle punk, Kullerikki, was sitting with them, also smoking.
“Do you want a cigarette?” Matti asked.
She knew that he knew she’d refuse. “It cuts your wind.”
“It keeps us alert.” Matti said, taking a long pull. Aino knew he was showing her that she was no longer the big sister telling him what was good for him. Aksel made room for her to sit but still had said nothing.
“How did the man die?” she asked.
“Cable broke,” Matti said.
“Why did the cable break?”
“It broke because the load exceeded the breaking strength.”
Two loggers came out of the bunkhouse door and stood there, listening.
“Did anyone check the cable?” Aino asked.
“Aino, back off. Huttula said the lead log on the turn hit something, it put too much strain on the line, and it broke. End of story.”
“Somebody is responsible.”
“What? Do you want to go fire some dumb swamper because he didn’t prepare a perfect skidway?”
“If he didn’t do his job, yes. But who’s responsible for having to haul the logs out so fast that no one has the time, not just to prepare the skidway, but to check the equipment?”
“You want me to say ‘John Reder,’ don’t you?”
“Only in part. John Reder has to pull the logs out fast so he can make a profit.”
“Because if he doesn’t, he goes out of business,” one of the previously silent loggers said.
“If the working people owned the logging companies,” Aino answered, “there’d be time for safety inspections and no need to make a profit. We need lumber to build houses. We don’t need to kill people to make profits.”
“He didn’t kill anyone,” Aksel said.
“And Reder always pays for the burial,” the other logger said. “He’s under no obligation to do that.”
Since the conversation was in Finnish and, other than cards, there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment, several more of the Finnish loggers had come outside. Aino was suddenly aware that she had people listening to her, and she had something to say. She stood up and faced the small group of loggers.
“Which would you prefer, free burials or no burials?”
There were no answers.
“How many men die in the woods every year?” she went on. Again, there were no answers. Everyone knew that it was quite a few.
“Who looks out for your safety?”
Again, silence.
Toivo Huttula, the hook tender on the side worked by these loggers, had joined the group and was leaning on the bunkhouse door smoking a pipe. He said quietly, “She’s right. No one. How long have we been asking for dry straw and to let one man off half an hour early to light the stoves?”
Aino jumped on the statement. “Don’t you see, there is no dry straw for the same reason a man died today. The profit motive, capitalism, forces everyone, Reder included, to work for profits. We should work for the common good.”
“That’s communism,” someone muttered.
“That’s just common sense,” Aino shot back. She felt Matti tugging on her skirt. She got the message. The word “communism” was an emotional lightning rod. Some of the men looked enlivened, others sullen. She realized that converting loggers to the message of Marx and Engels was going to be even more difficult than what the socialists faced in Finland and Russia. These loggers were almost all young, without families, and they’d never eaten better in their lives. The very air was full of the two myths of individual prosperity just around the corner and every American as an equal. Even worse, like Matti they found logging exciting. Unlike workers facing the drudgery of factories or peasants the drudgery of tenant farming, these loggers faced danger every day with skill and aplomb. They came home feeling like men, not proletarians. Then she saw the angle.
“If Reder won’t let one of you come back half an hour early, why don’t all of you come back half an hour early?”
“That’s a strike,” someone said.
“Is that legal in America?” another asked.
Aino took a breath and jumped in. She tried to remember all the arguments and tricks of rhetoric she’d learned from Voitto. She found she was good at both. She made her arguments in Finnish and Swedish. She even tried a few sentences of English but found herself handicapped. Frustrated, she reverted to letting some of the bilingual loggers translate, knowing it was less effective than using her own voice.
The loggers listened, some occasionally nodding, some muttering disapproval. She pointed out with biting humor the contrasts between John Reder’s house in Knappton and their bunkhouses. She made fun of the human excrement, telling a story on herself about stepping in some before going to work in the dining hall. She made a mock bouquet of damp straw, holding its limp and drooping form for all to see, sarcastically exclaiming over its beauty and other virtues. She pointed out that if they organized as one group, Reder would have to give in or face hiring a hundred loggers with none of their skills. She made it clear, without in any way shaming them for their lack of courage, that it was their lack of courage that kept them in squalor. Then, she connected their living conditions and working conditions—and working conditions and the accident. She ended by saying it wasn’t just about straw. It was about the value of their lives. It was about dignity. Those were things worth striking for.
Aino walked back to the henhouse quite pleased with herself.
The next morning, Aksel was promoted.
He’d just started splitting wood in the near darkness when Reder got off a speeder, a tiny hand-pumped railcar used to move maintenance crews or get kids down the track to go to school. He walked up to Aksel, puffing slightly from the exertion of pumping the speeder by himself. Aksel took off his cap. Reder laughed.
“Put that back on. Loggers don’t doff their hats to anyone.”
Aksel’s eyes went wide at the word “logger.”
“You’re not there yet,” Reder chuckled. He pointed to a small canyon, barely discernible in the dawn light. “I’ve had to move some men around. Get down there with Huttula. Maybe he’ll make a logger out of you.”
Aksel’s first day of setting chokers was every bit as hard as Matti’s first day, with the same result: exhaustion and a fierce feeling of pride. He never thought once about the man who’d just died.