Latah County Oral History Collection

Sam Schrager: Herschel Trimble recalls labor conditions and foreign workers and potlatch logging camps around World War One and some misgiving about the IWW. He explains the tricks of log scaling and some early forms of entertainment, such as medicine shows courtship and moonshine. Something about parallel, maybe not a good place to start. What was Pablo like as you remember him?

Hershiel A. Tribble: he was an Irishman and he was a city cop there for a long time. He liked his blues. I think if it was his people, he could trust, You know, some of the moonshiners they were think during probation days. And he you never seemed to arrest the main people there. Somehow they seemed to get by. And but once in a while, some stranger came in and started to report that way or put out for poor moonshine or something.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It became a good show and for himself. But he was really a good guy. Everybody liked him. People that knew him well, they liked him. He kept pretty good order, and I think his popularity helped him to get by more than anything else. Nobody wanted to harm him and they didn't want to get in bed with him either.

Hershiel A. Tribble: He was very accommodating over land. He pretty well liked you. I remember when my wife and I come back with a book and our honeymoon and all the parties congratulate this. He said the first boy, which was a boy's is call it that because we didn't I wasn't Irish enough myself to call it that. You know, I.

Sam Schrager: Heard that they didn't do very much really, most of the time. And it seems like, you know, he had so many friends that then in a way, that was a good way to keep law and order.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I think so, Yeah. I think it helped him to get by, I believe. You know, if he hadn't have been liked, if he'd been thoroughly disliked, he'd had a hard time. And that meant he was so well liked. If anybody did try to turn to get him, though, there's too many friends that no up for him. And I think that's how he held his job and why he gave satisfaction as much as he did.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They just laughed at his mistakes and things that he didn't see purposely.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, I heard he's the butt of more, more stories and probably any buddy around.

Hershiel A. Tribble: there's always making jokes about him. I remember when these medicine shows came in there one time, and I guess they did a little inquiring beforehand, maybe. But anyway, a couple of them got there in front, like they were telling jokes and one of the other, he knew what an island was and he said, No, What? He says, it's a city marshal surrounded by kangaroos and things like that.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You know, the lights are going up somewhere. He's good natured, you know, And this is a joke by that reason for it. It suited him.

Sam Schrager: It good. Did carnivals come through very often? It did. What did you say it was? A carnival.

Hershiel A. Tribble: The carnival. well, one is medicine. Children know they come in and they put on a little free show generally, and then they sell their medicine and usually they want to pick out some popular girl in town and they want to sell medicine in so many chances of voting for it. And she's supposed to get a real good prior so much money or something and push out help to sell the medicine.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They get a girl that's pretty popular and her folks want to ruin it and others, some of their best friends wanted to win it and each one of em tries to outdo the other by medicine that they never needed. The first place did it many good, probably. They did the kind of medicine they usually got, but anyways, it's good for the.

Hershiel A. Tribble: That was quite a hand that you see that proved to lots of places in those days that it traveled out. Little town, a little town. It preyed on the public. They probably get an old pair of scissors out there and cut some glass and say, If you do that and your wife can't run it, sure. Maybe to give it a you what sort of what's doing and then show them how to cut this glass and just cut it all with a nice face.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I remember I was a kid and I got home one time and I was going to try to cut in some glass. I didn't know that could be done with scissors. I took it out, tried to cut the glass, and I couldn't cut. And I don't know what kind of glass it was, but I can cut it.

Sam Schrager: Sounds like they were entertainment for the people.

Hershiel A. Tribble: yes. I remember one time and blues there and supposed to be a great. Come on, man. I remember your name yet. And some guy would get up and introduce somebody and then somebody else introduced him. And finally he introduced the great cameraman. He'd come out there the bingo room. Morning. You looked like some fellow from India or someplace, and he would hear things.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They had a limit that they on. You could touch. You could even cut your arm off related outfielders do anything that that little, but they just rub it on somebody up there to ward off or something. Take it off. And he'd say he didn't feel it. And so they ordered crowded really go for that. And they passed people off around in there to sell this little, little liniment, you know, and of course was foolish enough to get some was also foolish enough to buy one of them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Don't we just like the other people in the room? We couldn't sharpen anything. We couldn't cut any water off the liniment without feeling it either. I don't know. It was a joke. I'm sure it was. But they seemed like they get by with that stuff, or.

Sam Schrager: If they just kept finding new suckers or if people would.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Get down to town or they. They find some new gadget to sell. A new gadget. Yeah, I got a gadget up there they had for years. It didn't even unwrapped. I'd give it to anybody that took one look at it, but it wasn't a good one. Looked at it, so I didn't even try. So I quit buying this kind of get around very many.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I couldn't afford it. But once in a while they put it by an unusually big lie about it. Maybe they'd take me, but I don't think there's many crypto days there is now. The ones now are better educated and smoother than they have to be to get by. Or the people who catch you on.

Sam Schrager: I don't know whether there are other other kinds in entertainment that were a little more aboveboard came through as well.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Those days, of course, they had little house parties in that house, which were dances, you know, where they didn't even charge, you know, some of the neighbors or some would furnish a little music. They didn't care what kind of work you saw was a noise. They didn't care what the floor was like. That was they just didn't break in.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They all do crack and they do things like that. They didn't have regular parties sometimes, you know, this is always been the post office and all these things get gamey or maybe even grown people or things like that for amusement. But it was generally in those days, you know, they had to put in their time somewhere. Most of it was working, but in fact, each party in the house, which they called them and various things, you know, they used to many years ago in this country, they did have a school, what they call literary and debate.

Hershiel A. Tribble: That was really something quite nice. I remember a few of them. I never took part in them, but I went to a human program. Whatever the good somebody could sing when they go sing or and or anything they do would entertain the public and go free, of course. And then they'd have a debate, they called it, and they choose up side and they do.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I can't remember too many things, but one of them I remember was the weather Horse was more valuable as a result of that horse and more valuable than a cow or vice versa or something like that. Well, one side would take the cattle and the other side would take cars and then put on quite an argument. And then at the end of it they'd have some judges, the judge who would side one district, one would require a lot of comedy, they'd get us some pretty funny thing, you know, just describe little people depending on how much or how witty they were.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And another who's older woman had an easier time in life than me and all the things, anything they can think of. And them together with a little entertainment. It was real nice and Christmas way and all the women had string popcorn and things like that. Most of the great stranger yards and yard and they have the whole tree decorated with this.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And after the presents were taken off and everything by the kids, it grabbed me, grabbed these great strings of popcorn. Each of these things is that and they have a little program, you know, to go along with it. such things as that. There's no car in a way to.

Sam Schrager: Go.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Any place. Hardly. No horses. So they made their own amusement and things. They thought they had a good time.

Sam Schrager: How would they go courting you? Well, interested in, a girl or.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, they spent quite a bit of time with houses, but the good house good quite a lot of the time. And they'd go for walks and things like that and come back and linger on the gates. They usually had yard fence and gate and then, and lean on that and talk and beer and things like that. Go for buggy rides.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I could tell you the horses were buggy and all that required a girl to run a horse and buggy and they'd go for maybe one horse or maybe two horses.

Sam Schrager: But they had.

Hershiel A. Tribble: An both ways and, and they'd go for a drive and back, or they'd go someplace on Sunday to visit or various things somewhere for a girlfriend or boyfriend or something like that. Who were the couple. And that's where they did. Most of them.

Sam Schrager: Would be likely for, for a person to, The Court With more of a number of different people before they found the right person, it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Was nothing like it is now, nowhere near like it is now. They, they did of course there would be some particular people to do that, but quite often the girl would marry the first man. The children went with it. Go together. Maybe for a long time or. But quite often she would marry the first one and quite often they would marry the first one.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But then there'd be others that wouldn't marry. But those were quite a few before they married, but nothing like it, you know, they were. And they took very seriously those days of courtship and all these things. You, you know, they got married. They they knew that that was it. They settled down. They're working to make a living and raising a family and all those things.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I think of the modern cars and everything transportation, the food, the radio and television and all that. They wrecked all of those things. There's so many different ways now that they can entertain or know people can go to is they couldn't even do any of those things anymore. Nobody would come to them anymore and try to have a literary debate or anything like that.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Would people look and laugh at it? And I think were kids obviously were nice in those days and I don't know, they all had a good time. I think they're just retired those days as they do now. They worked harder, had less money, but enjoyed life and just about the same thing. They had the same feelings as people are now, didn't have the same things to enjoy, but they didn't know it because they it was they didn't know there was it wasn't any such a thing at that time.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So they didn't miss them? No. Didn't take it away from a person or they wouldn't go crazy back because they don't know what they're missing. But those days they didn't know anything about them.

Sam Schrager: How would the couple figure when they were going to get married and the plans that went with that? Would they have to be would they be figuring it when they were going to be setting up housekeeping in their own different home, or would they often stay with them? the husband's family and wife's family? I mean, when would they decide to get married after this courtship and however long?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, the courtships, I think usually there was over nearly always a courtship those days. And they're not just a meeting of a few are just happy And then decision to get married should be a courtship nearly always some like it, might vary anywhere from short courtship up to months or even years. But then they made the decision why they didn't.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It very seldom any big elaborate wedding. Not quite often. They just married the justice of the peace and are just a minister in a small church and a small gathering. Friends and relatives of the family there little bit and things that way. And then they you know, they set up their own housekeeping pretty quick as a room. Sometimes they would they might stay at their folks if they had a room there, your room would stay there and maybe even work like a boy for his father.

Hershiel A. Tribble: He's a big farmer. Maybe he'd stay there and his wife and they had a place to stay or maybe a separate little house or something. But they'd quite often try to buy themselves a rent a place to live. But they usually would to themselves when they were married. And very often stayed or.

Sam Schrager: Was getting married. considered the end of being a kid when you got married, it didn't mean you were grown up or.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Pretty much so, yes, pretty much so. They didn't go out and play after they got married. Many of them settled down of the housework. She'd probably start having children pretty quick and then she'd have her hands full nowadays because they had to work hard and long hours for a living. And one of the women, when I was younger, from early on, the women didn't work out at all.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They worked out and this is a woman, it was her husband and she had to work out for them or support a child or two. But it was just normal for a woman who couldn't even get a job those days of the trade. And they didn't pay the woman show a man's place to make a living in support of it, and then figured that if he couldn't make a living for a woman, that he'd never been married in those days, even horrified just out of his wife getting out in working government to support him.

Sam Schrager: Although from what I hear, it sounds as if the woman was working about as hard as the men.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I think these women live. I think they already had it before, and I think they're losing it. But they're doing because before they got it, looked upon as a kind of a queen or something, and it never had to go out in the house, in the house to do any hard work, Real hard work, cause they had pretty hard work in the house.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't mean a woman didn't work hard, but I mean, they didn't do anything heavy work, hard hit men, usually the house and furniture, anything, every movie to help them do that. But he wouldn't care to wash dishes or lake bed or anything that way. But the men work and make a living. He was supposed to do that to support them and stay there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And the woman, she had plenty to do it. Maybe she'd help the little gardener things every time she cooked for me and read her children dinner housework. She didn't really have any time to go out work at night.

Sam Schrager: I heard that. quite a few women did farm work because with the men working up in Bovill, working in the timber that the women were expected to take care of the fields pretty well.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I tell you, I think a lot of these women working I think a lot of that started with the word wars, pretty much because some of the men were overseas, you see, and there was a shortage of labor and they went out and helped in that and they started taking men's work over there. But they never got a man's pay at that time.

Hershiel A. Tribble: That's what started all this commotion about equal rights and things I think myself and other men work in exactly the at the same price. And I think that part. But I don't know. I always had a lot of respect for women. I guess I put them on a pedestal. I thought that was to be looked up to and it was men were supposed to sort of take care of how.

Sam Schrager: Did you handle your fields and your farm? And when you were working in exchange work?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Mostly when I was younger. But you're all exchange work and having money to hire anybody with, and each farmer would help the other and then they'd take and you see they it was a hay bales of hay, and it took a crew of about 700 horsepower beaters and they'd go from place to place. And the former fed them at each place whenever they like to say, If you want me really put their your place where your wife would get dinner from one of the neighbor wives or whatever, coming overseas when the crowd was there and she'd get me or for whatever meals is going to have was there and you bale for me next where

Hershiel A. Tribble: they would come there and we furnish the food and that's the way they went is done. But there was hardly any money paid. Now the young folks, you know, didn't have any farmer they sent, they paid. Some people like that didn't have to be, which was very, very small in those days. And same way with threshing. You see now on the threshing, I forget to think, if I remember, I guess about well over 15 of 18 on the cash machine and even in the early days, that's the way they did to make the family would feed and wherever they were, the three for each board for feed and they would move from place to place.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But there was very little hiring done.

Sam Schrager: Did you have a hard time getting your work done while you were in Bovill? Well.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You mean at home?

Sam Schrager: Well, meaning the farm and whatever.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I did very little farming. You see, when I was young from we bought this land from the company, Paradise Lumber Company, with a contract to load it. And we looked at the Thames River, and in the spring, when the water is high, it would grow with the product and that we'd make a little money on that and we had to practically, you know, farm land, maybe just a little bit an account in my case and not try the case, be the same.

Hershiel A. Tribble: My wife, my wife was here. She'd do the milking. In fact, she beat me up a lot better I could in when our children got older. They done milking and things like that and helped. And that's how we get by on that was, of course, the bigger farmers. Some of them didn't even go to work. They were pretty good to making a living on their farm and cattle and such as that.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But those of us that were down in the low pay, that area, I as we saw it manage that way, you know, stop ranching. So we didn't have to pay rent, Carol, or two nights and Sundays all the time we had and work all during the week and then a little bit earlier to take a year to do it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But it was at least as if we stayed with it about ten years. We had about ten year contract and they still prices, of course, much anyway in the first place for 40 acres. But the best they had here in the country, about $800 for 40 acres. But that was a large building for for all of those days.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You didn't have any money. But we did work on that and we did pay a small probably just a small amount of money. And at the end of ten years, or is we stayed with it? We don't. The place where I would pay rent, we were doing nothing. That's the way we looked at it, not as an investment, but as a take that they should live cheaply.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And we doing that and where to work. I didn't our family didn't use to go with it. We go to work. Or maybe when I come home I worked in camp there when I went to get home, but once a month most of that was before I was married. But afterwards married. Most of the time I get home of Saturday or Sunday or Saturday night until Sunday night.

Hershiel A. Tribble: My brother in law here had an old Dodge car at that time, and he and I used to ride back and forth that week, so I thought it was pretty lucky. Then I got home about one day a week, but we never moved anyplace, you know, and we looked over what kind of life could work for three months of a career.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So that's the only time in the life it was in place of work. He always stayed home.

Sam Schrager: Was that a special contract that you were doing right around there? That time?

Hershiel A. Tribble: We were all up in Bovill. No, no. We were working for the Product Lumber Company. Which department there.

Sam Schrager: Was at the time. And she was cooking for you?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Yes, we were working for him at that time, Yes, but. But most of them were wounded in camps. And that's where we had a boat. And if we hadn't had my wife with us, but we rented a little house up there about four miles from where we're one little place, the coal columns. And and she stayed in that.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But she took a job just before one of our babies was born. That baby was born premature, seven months. And we had no time of saving him. And we come down. We didn't go back to the woods in that we didn't want to stay up there who help the wife. And I couldn't go back in anyway for a while, so we stayed down here for a while.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Then eventually they got logging down here and to work out here and then.

Sam Schrager: We think back on the old days in Bovill and can hear about logging towns and being really rough towns or talking about Pat Malone's place. We think about that, too. You think it was a pretty rough town? Well, you.

Hershiel A. Tribble: No, not for a lumber town. I don't believe that Bovill was a rough town for a lumber town. There was, you know, once in a while, if I dare. And or something like that. But not serious. It was. No, no murders, knives and guns seldom ever used or anything. Maybe just to fight between lumberjacks or something. You didn't hear a robbery and that the crimes committed there at that time.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Not anything like a tennis court, of course, But they had of course, a lot of this time I was up, they were doing probation. That might have made a difference, too, I suppose. I think for all the time I worked at Beaufort, I believe it was during Prohibition days. So the racket all the trouble down, but there was very little trouble up there.

Sam Schrager: Why did hold the trouble there?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I think lack of liquor for one thing, cause they had the moonshine, but they had been little bit more careful with that. And I think the the people up there, most the people that were put were all lumberjacks or lovers. And I tell you, the truth is they were too busy working to fact, I think to maybe, you know, if people are real busy and they don't have time to get in trouble.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So I think that it a lot to do with it. I think they just moved them too busy to fight and do tired and then quite a few of them foreigners. I don't think they can hardly argue with one another. They couldn't understand one another. A lot of it's no, I don't think it was too bad a town for it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I think it was exceptionally good down at the four backwoods. Don't I mean another sort of hunting trip and they like Pierce and some of them places were terrible and the trouble and drunken people around over the streets and thing. I don't remember seeing much drunkenness out in the streets. No doubt there was a lot of times that I didn't see, but I don't remember seeing much of it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well.

Sam Schrager: Wonder why the what would make Bovill different from some of the other?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, you would think it would be a backwoods town like that, you know, get to the end of civilization almost. You would think it would be, but I don't know. And there was never they never had the liquor there at any time. I don't think some of the others found it. I've been there since probation was ended and they never had much in the way of liquor.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Very little places have got near as many beer products and things, but and they all seem to be pretty well operated and pretty quiet, reasonably quiet. I just don't know for sure. The thing I if it was I work from school there and I was there a year that time, you know, worked for several years up there in the woods.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And it had been very much of it. I should've seen some of your know, and I didn't see it very.

Sam Schrager: You know, any stories about about the old bootlegging and prohibition days and stories about Pat Malone and the way he was, what he was doing or.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, not too many. There was a it was used as a joke or a lot of it. And not to do it all. I know he used to be around there and he knew everybody in town because he knew everybody there. See that the regulars are normal. Well, and they were pretty well established. Both those people were regulars at work.

Hershiel A. Tribble: That engineer that conducted and such as that on trains and camp foreman and they like their with their families were pretty good people you know they were not some people that's one reason why they was much more trouble there. But you know well, it'd be something good and I know that there was a man who came to camp there and it was one time he come in, he was a Frenchman, and he was all dolled up beyond his means.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And he was working the same salad I got. I swear. I know he didn't he didn't have very much, but he had a family in St Mary there to support a wife and two children. Two daughters. And he got a career. Another woman involved to show you don't know what his morals were. He got courting a woman there and over in the deep door and found out and boy he went out and fired him is right now he wouldn't stand for nothing like that if he knew it at all.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And as the superintendent with his department see and men working for him and another man, he he got in trouble with a girl. And I don't know there's going to be a lawsuit over it. And he would have worked in camp to try to get some money to go fight in this lawsuit. And David Jones would have made the foreman fire him.

Hershiel A. Tribble: He wouldn't even let him work in and work in camp. So the morals that he'd be doing was just the very highest. And he was the superintendent there. So he had a lot to say and a lot to do about it. And I think Pat Malone's morals was highly to compete. He didn't think it was wrong. Having them drink was Well.

Sam Schrager: I heard I think Dick said Ti Jones himself, commanding them, drinking.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't think if he cared too much about he knew that some of that was going on in town. He had to know it. He was too smart to handle it. Then goodbye. But I think that DP Jones figured that along with it was decency and they would behave themselves. I think he just tried not to see it but ignored it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't think you do that. But the immorality or anything like that, to be guilty of anybody mixed up in fire is working for him. He wouldn't stand for anything that way. I think he's more very I except to say right. He just figured I think the good.

Sam Schrager: You think that the men were pretty aware of the way to be Jones felt personally that did he make that no one can the men and do the men the men pretty naturally just.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I think they knew it by experience. I don't think he would make it known to them. I think they just noticed it. He ignored it the easy way around.

Sam Schrager: About the morals or the morals.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I think that probably there was it doing real well. And, you know, Case came up with talking about it, probably telling the people everything. I think it would be pretty well known in the fantasy more for me. And he had a I think he never had. But it was Bob Jones. You never had but one child, a girl.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't know. D.B. I don't know of any children. DBD I don't know if you read it, but Bobbie brother, he was camp. Blame it on him. He had one daughter and those killed her brother to the section. Well, she had a son, that's all the children I knew of him. And I don't think you're going to see hardly any children.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I was very small.

Sam Schrager: When you say that, that most people, most of the loggers did drink during prohibition.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I think the majority of would drink. Some very few of them were drinkers, though. Very few because there was no drunkenness. I don't remember any drunkenness in camp during working hours. I think maybe come or do maybe over a weekend it'd be a little, but very, very little. It wasn't too easy to get moonshine nowadays, but they did grog.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You still set up some place out of timber if you miles and often.

Sam Schrager: They could get there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But some other managed to go and get some liquor. But the foreman wouldn't put up with it at all. And sellers, you know, they'd farm. They didn't dare let men go out in the work drunk and then they'd farm and they tried to get drunk. But I think for the conditions there and I think everything was managed quite well.

Sam Schrager: Did you know any guys that had stills?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Yes. Yes. I need to be on the fence to do You have pretty good citizens too. If a person had to deal if they wanted, would want to do have operated it right? I think we could have operated a long time and never get caught. I think they did their anyplace, but they don't do it every time anybody I mean, kind do want the money right away.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And in most cases they're lazy. People don't wanna work for a living anyway. They're going after the money. They can't go without some money and they just make a little bit in the cellar. Can they get a good friend that truck? And pretty soon he introduces other friends and pretty soon and then their car. What if that fellow would take and and make a lot of never sell a bit of it make a lot of it and then dispose of his still buried or destroyed or anything and take and get one big haul wholesale customer there and just that he could tractor where they couldn't have any witness or anything and you turn the whole

Hershiel A. Tribble: thing over trying to wash his hands. It would be that for that very long time he never a good cook because it had been awful hard to get him out like that. And let's say you caught him in a steal or something like that. Run over to him. I know a man that operated up a creek here. He had several different places where you fill up here, some rocks up here, back three or four miles above my place.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And he got in among them, rock some place and go out and he put up a stovepipe and then the tamarack bark put around this two pipe. So it looked like a time rectory or not a train wreck. I mean, yeah, cedar trees in a tree. And it looked just like a cedar tree. If he of course, we had it still going like a smoke wouldn't be noticeable anyway.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Going up among the tree Disney. That's how he operated Camp out of sight.

Sam Schrager: Did certain guys have a reputation for making real good moonshine? Yeah. For others.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Yes, they did. And some people they came with making poison and all that I guess was all poison. If you drank too much, it probably there was a lot of that around this country here when they're logging down here, but they still wouldn't. And drunkenness in the camps and things that other people mostly drunkenness was around in Manchester places and people had been working in most drunkards and not holding down a good steady job.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't know other people around and don't work anymore. They can help as a rule, moonshiners are the same class that they're doing that goes, you know, to work.

Sam Schrager: Like that. There was a lot of gambling too, and.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I was gambling some and some of the camps. I don't like it, but I worked in one night there was a newcomer, okay? He was a new fella, came in, he did some gambling, and then one night there was a fella coming around and the officer with the foreman I was. And that said that the fellow pulled a gun on him.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And so we started in there. But in the meantime, he ran into the for the car, joined one another and jumped out and ran for the wood. And so he he didn't talk for anything, had act there, took it in the office and it was shows where he's pistol a pistol and killed for it and so his personal belongings and yeah some time later right the foreman got a letter from him from St Mary's and he wanted to send the Tax Act back up and he threatened him if he didn't.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But you never put intention he never got his backside back anyway. And then a gambler, someone would gamble all night quietly. Nobody paid any attention to him, but they wouldn't follow. He seemed to win pretty regular. Every time I went to vote, I would send some money in for me to deposit in the bank in his name, and he seemed to be doing all right.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Some of the fellows who went in because they had to be a bunch of losers and so many winners because they did a lot of gambling. All right. But nobody paid any attention to that. They did the work.

Sam Schrager: I don't know if we got it on the other side. You you're saying that the remaining the foreman would just not go through you.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Know, the foreman. He didn't he didn't pay attention. He left the privacy of the camp life in the evenings and Sundays and times like that. He didn't bother me. And the a day, if it was too rainy, which you very seldom they worked in rain. Usually if it wasn't too bad, they'd gamble some then, but they were allowed that privilege.

Hershiel A. Tribble: That's about the only thing they did for pass the time or anything. They were allowed that privilege to do their work. Why? The women didn't know nothing about the rest of it.

Sam Schrager: Then we started talking about the about the Balkan people and the Austrians and.

Hershiel A. Tribble: yeah, there's only a few white people in the camp that is English speaking, English speaking people that lived around there was the foreman and clerk, and they're usually a cook and you don't get points. You just can't go on the donkey engines and sometimes foot tenders. Not always. The man is in charge of the donkey. Don't care, would be in charge of slingers and men worked on that don't give a woman dinner.

Hershiel A. Tribble: The rest of them were all foreigners. It was about every country represented quite a lot of Austrians, Hungarians and and people from was a few from Russia. Not really many from Russia, Czechoslovakia and Finland. Bulgarian and just about everybody you could think of. And there was a quite a mixture, but they all seemed to get along pretty good, hardly ever any any trouble among them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So we couldn't understand the others. Of course they maybe that helped.

Sam Schrager: Or do you they're describing this language to me that they could most of them could understand.

Hershiel A. Tribble: No, it was they are it was a Slovenian language. It seemed to do it. It's sort of a universal language among them, just a few countries there that that each one could understand it enough to talk with one another. And they'd be talking it around. I know every place I want somebody to say somebody dobra, dobra, I could understand convert, they would know that to finally get on my nerves a little bit.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I thought I had to find out what that was. So it turned out that it'd be about like good in our English language. It, it says going by an equipment and it's a dobro. It said it couldn't I maybe they said for me that was good. The day was finished. Or if they had an actual examiner and maybe a dobro, secret secret was ax and dobro.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It was good. They had a good actual sharp ax or anything like that. They used it for so many, many things there. And I don't know how no movement.

Sam Schrager: I mean, what were some of the other words?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, at the end, I had, I guess, one sentence I learned there to put together, and it was just for the fun of the thing it is. I mean, Molly Schultz, Piva di was to give me and Molly the small chance was, let's see, a glass or bottle or something. And that piva was beer. Well, it was big in that language and I don't know, I knew quite a few words there for a while I couldn't talk it, but they had to say some English words that there were no words in their language that they could translate.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So they'd separate a few English words. And then the few words that I knew I could tell the general run of the conversation with it, but I couldn't tell too much about it or talk with him. I would know what they were talking about. That's as far as I got. I've ever really tried to learn the language.

Sam Schrager: Could most of them speak English pretty good after they'd been the.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Most of them could. Yes, you could. Very few of them there. They couldn't understand it at all. Some, you know, not very well maybe, but the most sort of real English they are because they were on their people on the opposite side of war. A lot of them, you know, with us. And while they were good hearted people, they just you could borrow money from people or anything and everything by when it was not really them, and they'd offer to try to sell them bonds because after I had tried to sell the bonds and they wouldn't buy them at all, it all offer me money.

Hershiel A. Tribble: If you want money to get the money, there are no bonds. And that's got to keep what I like them. The property that they offer, well behaved. No, you know, I. I borrowed money from fellow. I know they didn't.

Sam Schrager: You know.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I borrowed money down here at camp one time. I needed some money right back for just a little bit. He was a he was from Switzerland and a real nice fellow. And I needed a few dollars and I asked him if he lend me $50 and he said, Sure, You pulled out of his pocket. I had to do it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't want to pay it back. They paid in. So a pay day. I went to pay it back and he wasn't there. And they ask what happened to him? I said he went back to the old country and made me feel pretty bad. And then they they said that he'd be back and I so he did come back and went to do it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I asked him why he didn't let me know. I said I told them I'd gotten the money. If you do it all and everyone worried about it and they were like that, them kind of people. That's the only time I ever borrowed any money from him. But it still you kind of people they were though if they liked you well you didn't you know no interest and no security.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You know nothing. That's what you ask for.

Sam Schrager: Was there much tension with these Europeans who were on the other side in the war?

Hershiel A. Tribble: No, that wasn't. Not at all. I didn't notice it one bit. Of course, they might have figured that they'd they'd get in trouble pretty easy if they said anything or started anything at all. I mean, the real trouble here and they didn't feel it in order to safe and disappear, but the people never came and never returned. I can't hear them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I like real well. I wished for my people, but I don't know. They just disappeared when that happened. I suppose they thought they were going back to Canada. Maybe they were deported. All I know.

Sam Schrager: You mean after we got into.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Yes. After the war? Yes.

Sam Schrager: And they all disappear once. Was it was it all pretty close together in time and.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I don't know too much. Of course. You see, when I. I wasn't enlisted in the Navy myself. I do. I would have been drafted if I had. No, I didn't. Or I wanted to listen to the event in order drafted. And of course, I have to work somewhere. And when I went back to California, it was quite a lot different than hardly any of those people there anymore.

Hershiel A. Tribble: None that I knew, and they just disappeared. It seemed like from then on, white people living around there were into over and they briefed about all the wood crews and locally and around the country, all the photographs.

Sam Schrager: We were pretty clear. Or did they was there an awful lot of mixing between different groups?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I wouldn't call them too clannish. I have seen foreigners sometimes that were especially the Italians working on the railroads a couple, of course, they couldn't talk English language very good, a lot of them. But no, I didn't think these people were clannish. They they would seem to be very sociable, very friendly and in the cards because I used to go out this and it's very fun to go out and duck.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And in there they'd always be real, real nice to me. Conversation walked out with me all the time when I went out to there, and I think Dick found the same thing imperfectly. But I think maybe they kind of like to talk to people. Ernie's I don't know, but and it wouldn't seem have been calling or it wouldn't be just one group, you know, it's all separate groups.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It was around. I didn't notice any conditions of our but things are pretty tough in the camp there early, early days when I first went in there. So, you know, like I said, you know, there was hardly any white people in there. But when I first went there, I was, you know, harder for a job than it wasn't very many jobs around, especially young, inexperienced person.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And when I went there, there were no electric lights. There was no cold water, cold water, no hot water. There were no place to take a bath. And there was just they had to help these people. They were long with boxcars. They was boxcar, 40 feet long. And I think state Senator 41 for you to think standard length for a flat car boxcar, maybe.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But it was in there and it was a function in the middle. They had all the over what is called boxed box heaters. They built a sort of a fence around them, a little board, maybe about six inches high out to the sides and further up past the two ends and the field with sand for protection from cold, I suppose.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And these people are the most of them. Never took a bath. No place in business in the school creek. Once in a while some of those little but never know. No five gallon can punch a few small holes, the bottom overhanging the tree and jump an underground quicksilver and jump right quick and try to take a shower from there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But anyway, overnight they were shocked. They had these big old wool, heavy socks on and they'd be wet from sweat. If they weren't wet from the snow and water. They'd be wet and sweat and hang these on the wires over these above the stores to dry. Some of new tobacco chewed tobacco and it's a bit of this sand around the stores and a lot of them weren't very good shots they might aim to over to high store over the floor.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And then what is it doing up above the stove? You can think that there must have been a little water in there. In fact, if you use that, they never get to your stomach. I don't know if you'd ever make it through and save your last meal date or not. I tell you, that would work. And then if there was some talent in their tune that they could just get ahold of a little garlic that really finished it, Then I tell you that, it goes terrible.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And that's one reason why that the war the IWW had a little a little gripe coming was things like that. And now they're no no place to take it back. You see, of course, those of us live at home. We get home once in a while or maybe get into town or something. But it was tough for anybody.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Then they finally, after this, IWW probably had a big meeting in Spokane. One thing you know, and love walked out and this shook the camp down where they they put in a little Delco plant system at camp and then like the blight and they put in a shower baths there. They didn't cover the top, just little overhead and probably be in there taking a shower and then the on and from wife comes over and right there adjoining that and some probably in the front desk as you said you know the water about the right temperature and somebody take a cool bucket of water out of them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: He brought it up a little didn't come out. Everybody be real innocent. But they didn't know who done it. That used to be one of the favorite jokes in there. But now these old lamps, they had kerosene lamps at that time. You know, when I first were in the camp and they had a book around there, he supposed to start the fires in the morning.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And these bought these lamps filled with a lot of them and watched the chimneys. If they got too dirty, they usually do dirty. He didn't think. And I you can imagine the amount of light you get from them. Kerosene like your chrome there. It was a pretty tough place. Now, at one time.

Sam Schrager: Did you hear many complaints when you're first there about these conditions?

Hershiel A. Tribble: No, they had packed their own beds. They had a lot of gray backs. And when they had people come home and bring some people back in, working camp and come back and fight, and when they got home, they had quite a way, though I heard a friend to tell how to get rid of them things. He said, You put a lot of salt in, you go to them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Going back to the didn't see you down to the water, jerk off your clothes and lay them down to the gray back to all. Run for a drink and then you grab your clothes and run while they're down and get in a drink. He said you can get rid of every time. That way. I never tried it, never had the great back.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Thank goodness. But it was pretty rough those days. But then after they got in there and fix things up like electric lights and faded away, the things that you know better so that well.

Sam Schrager: What do you think had to be done? We did have to do it. I mean, as far as the final the chain, the improvement and conditions goes.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They helped a lot because it showed so much dissension and it showed a lot. And other people begin to realize that the things was awful bad. And even the employers, you know, they were being showed up. The public are everyplace. All of the United States, the conditions that people were living under in the works, you see the workers and they did help a lot.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But you see it took the foreigners to do it to people. Those people didn't even have a naturalization papers here in this country. I wouldn't join it and I knew it wouldn't do. I lived here and we weren't going to join. An organization is going to tell us how to live in our own country. Of course, if we needed somebody to tell us how to live, I yes, but we like for our own people to do it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And but there was no they weren't mean to mean. I'd go out nights and come back and everything over there. I never had anybody that tried to get me with me. They talked to me and told me the conditions as they seen it in camp and I think I only. But I wonder if the doctors were tired of being Doctor Bill of Foreign Drug Bill and I had a hard time at night.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I had to work every minute I possibly could. And I told them I came there of my own choice, that they didn't get me the job or get me there or leave my own choice. But we would leave in a good name or none of that mean to me about that. But, you know, I thought I should walk out of them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I didn't want to. It had nothing to do with it. So I felt differently. But there's no question that they they did have quite a bit to do with helping improve it. You had a big meeting there, spoken delegates up. I was sent as one and we picked our best spokesman and they got up and talked to give good talks.

Hershiel A. Tribble: People were evicted. And after this know, they give everybody a chance to talk or did they make a mess of things? I guess so. I didn't even feel sorry for my own race there. I'm going to talk to the that three to pick somebody talked good could talk sensible you know and they get it and it wasn't even reasonable you know.

Sam Schrager: You're talking about now you were for our representative and they are meeting with you.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Either they were meeting with those. Yes.

Sam Schrager: And you're saying that the IWW is were the ones that were making too much sense?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, actually, yes, they were the ones who weren't make much sense. But some of the the for of the belief in that was was to get together. You see and move side to get together and talk things over. And that was what this meeting attempted but it just got wild all of you could see what the what some of the people do when they regrouped and allowed to see.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They just took over almost everything here. And one follower jumped up. And if you were to take it down, you better take it down and he'd start running away. You know, it certainly reflected down to me, said, Never mind. Is that what you're saying is being taken down? He said, Don't you worry. We'll just things like that, you know, And even after he was saying things that the other forces had left out, that should be said, you know, I learned ideas out and I was disgusted.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You felt as though he had lost all he had gain. They I had a feeling that when I left that place, that the working man had lost on that meeting, if I'd been a judge, I had just said that he did, that he lost out every just by his own ignorance in those was he didn't talk sense of or anything was radical.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You know they were this of that and everything. And when they tried to get me to quit their town about the filth in camp, how dirty the cooks was and things, I don't know. I've been to the camps. I never found it that way. My brother was a cook. And in London I know that men wouldn't put in the table, would need himself, and there was no filth there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And he was very particular about that camp. Well, I said, Well, maybe that camp in, but among the others. Well, I didn't know about the unsecured, but I imagine so maybe they were dirty. I don't know.

Sam Schrager: Did you think that before elsewhere were better, had a more reasonable approach at this meeting? Were they better?

Hershiel A. Tribble: What? They talk sensibly. They were sensible people. They most of them were maybe better educated the other than they were able to talk reasonable. The other just grew out of you couldn't even cope with it and say no reasoning to them. So I don't know how two sides can hardly get together if one side or the other. And only recently.

Sam Schrager: Can you remember a little bit of what the difference was, what the four owls were saying and what the IWW was saying. If well.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It didn't say a heck of a lot. They were just asking to find out the complaints and everything, to find out to try to deal with them, see and see what they could major what it was, make an agreement, what they just got up there and they demanded everything, wages their wages way up. They had their I know everything in camp, just modern and up to date.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And they had everything they knew if they'd had intelligence at all and property, it was a demand and that stuff. They thought they couldn't possibly get all the things they they got reasonable. And where how do you read what anybody like that. That's the thing that got me going. It made me feel ashamed of the working man, you know, to think they could get up there and spoil everything were forcing everything.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You can't get any sympathy on your side if you just go look for a reason. What they were thinking, everybody knows they couldn't do that for if they wanted to see.

Sam Schrager: Do you think that most of these guys were guys that just didn't have remorse for it? Anything? They mostly have little education or who were the kinds of guys that were that were doing well?

Hershiel A. Tribble: I mean, I think it was pushed, but the ones that didn't have education, mostly they had them for the for the big moneyed man and things. Well, you know, got it in for money, man. If he earned his money, honestly, it's it's his money. And if he doesn't beat people out of it, you know, he gets it, honestly.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But they just had their way. They'd take everything everybody got. There'd be nobody to even, you know, furnish any bigger things for them to work harder to get people. And nobody had money or anything. But I don't know, their demands were just down reason for energy. Cause I know someone told me, well, they don't do anything that's company offer.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, perhaps so, but there was the idea. The company outfit and the other outfit can talk together. See, that's the way I see it. But let them get together. Let them could put in their complaint and let the company outfit. Of course, those of us up there, working men like the others, was now like I was in Kirk in Canberra and I was appointed secretary for weather.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I was just the same with him. It was striking in a way. What I mean, I had the same interests they had, but I don't know that I didn't think they got in what that mean. They undoubtedly did. That undoubtedly helped advocacy.

Sam Schrager: But when did that meeting take place, as so far as the changes in conditions around here was this and before the conditions had had improved?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Yes, that was before conditions had improved. That's right. Conditions were bad at the time that happened. But I can't tell you the data. But no but it was a it was, I think, a lot like the First World War. I don't know, maybe 19, 19 or 20, somewhere in there, 21, two in that area, some place where they I think could probably.

Sam Schrager: You well, to go back to the beginnings of this labor activity, if you think about it, when it started, do you remember when a real change or when the men began to talk about changing conditions? He said that they didn't early or that there wasn't a lot of complaining. And then I get the idea that suddenly there was.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I expect maybe among these foreigners they probably were doing complaining all the time among themselves and languages that I wouldn't hear probably. And then they in the bigger places were where they were getting organized. You see, other than the camp and the bigger places that probably were the planning, and most of that would've been that route, you know, this government come on.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And so I don't know too much. And then there was a little blank there. I was only one. I was in the Navy a little while and that was right during some parts of it too. But the meeting in Spokane, I was sent down to get to was after that, after I came back, of course. But they, they had a strike there and everybody walked out there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Just 13 men left in the camp I was in. I imagine there was around 100. That camp usually had pretty near 100 anyway, and they just had enough to run one donkey and some men had to do double duty. They got the to maybe bring in some the come in from abroad and things like that I was able to do for a little while that game.

Sam Schrager: Which camp was this and was this the only time this was struck.

Hershiel A. Tribble: No, no. They all against a strike. They had quite a showdown. And all of us trying to think I was in favor quite a while. I can't do it for a while. The I believe it is what they call Camp five. It was out on the feather. Good country there.

Sam Schrager: How long did it go on.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Roughly? Well, I don't really know. I didn't want to a too long. There they see the it wasn't just the complaints altogether I don't think is the complaint at this meeting and things but that the company couldn't get men so they would shut down rooms too shorthanded. I think that's what had about as much to do with them improving conditions as it is.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They strike. Well, the strike, of course, was part of that. But any of the complaints did for the men. See, I am I have a feeling that they figured that they to be forced to do it to improve things. So order to be able to help fire it up enough so that to improve pretty rather rapidly. See they they change things over there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It wasn't very long. So they furnished the bedding and then under the bed into the sea. And then they put in this the light plant and the cold water for them and things like that, and they put in electric light. And all of this was in a fairly short period of time in there when they started to work them over.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And then after that, what like there wasn't much dissension in the camp then from then on that I know of, you know, there's radicals and people that horror about is not about that and complain. But as far as any general disturbances, why or complaints over I didn't hear much from their own people seem to be fairly well satisfied.

Sam Schrager: I mean this tape isn't just about my rowdy stuff. Too soon to leave? Well, I think we have a little bit of tape with what? What did the division men do when they went on strike work and they still stay live in the camps?

Hershiel A. Tribble: No, no, They left camp. No camp. Presumably there was little station out there. The coal columns. It's just a little small place where you're setting out of the storm. If it's waiting for the trains here on the Milwaukee tracks. And this camp was out there, I don't know. I remember two from there and I know these people, they'd be about to take their tickets to go station to talk to people.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Everybody had left camp for town or went by, went in the camp, went by there, and so they'd try to talk to everybody to discourage them from working and going back into camp and such. But I don't know where they all they did go. They just left camp, just disappeared. As far as I'm concerned. I don't know where they say that or where they went to.

Sam Schrager: And I wondered if maybe my camped out there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: There were no camps established around near there that I knew, no place that I know of. No. And they wouldn't allow them to accumulate in town. They had about an on that to a very many people accumulated in town. But I don't know. They made a lot of more to Spokane because I don't know what they'd do without money.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They wouldn't have much money here. I don't think.

Sam Schrager: Were many of what you called white people and also IWW. So were they mostly foreigners, but.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They're all foreigners. I think about the only people that they really were English. English people, people that really belong in this country would be more likely to be an officer in that where he thought he could get some money out of or something like that, I would say, rather than them, because they, of course, they were the common laborers then people have taken more crazy or your foreman and and or donkey engineers and all them kind of people, they they had a higher salary in railroad or something.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They had a higher salary. But the railroad of course, the railroad strike was different than what they went through. But that wasn't the IWW, the railroads truck. I don't think that's some railroad organization they struck in the Logan train. They just put greenhorns on the train before for conduction. Isn't breaking their neck.

Sam Schrager: If you remember about when the rail strike was that in the same period as the these lightning strikes.

Hershiel A. Tribble: There was a little bit of difference. And I think it was a little bit later than them, if I remember right, I don't remember too much. I didn't I never did any work on the railroad myself at all. It was in their in camp. I know we had a lot of fun out of it and we did get in front of the first folks just grab the greenhorns.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You didn't know anything about it. I think maybe they had the engineers and the engineers have been very dangerous, maybe a man or so here and there, but then they'd give them all kinds of motions to want back up like you'd get out of your motion to somebody. You didn't have any signals at all. You know, they just looked around in any direction.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They couldn't even understand anything. They had to be careful. It was dangerous, you know, for a while. But of course, they soon got on board, wouldn't quite abandon some of them. And back that strike, then left to off alone. But some of these fellows quit work. They never did come back. They all did, because I think they figured they probably would get in bed anyway.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But then some of the better ones did eventually come back and get back on it, but they couldn't train them for that. It was it would work, you know, if they were in all of Hollywood.

Sam Schrager: Was it related to the IWW strikes, you think, Well.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't know if that helped to stir it up or not. It might have given the ideas or something that way and got strike ideas in their head or something. I really don't know too much about the the railroad strike, what happened on that. But I do know that they were just a little of that. It was quite a mess, but they were determined to try to show this one as they get along without them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So they just grab and anywhere they could get them to take more of it or not. People were your brothers, you know, wanting to get on the railroad off of bed and give them a chance. Do they got tired of America? A little bit, you see. So the most important I don't think they gained much from the strike.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't know if they gained anything or they might or they might not have. I really don't know what the result was.

Sam Schrager: Why was there so much shortage in the local people out in the logging camps when you first started out there?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, settlers were small. People hadn't been used to that. They lived down there. There was nobody lived up in there hardly at all. In the first start, they got that little town of all the starter, but most of those people were very good men, you know, operated trains and things like that, and marines and machinery or people that could understand it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And these people down here had never been used to that food up there. And they didn't know either. And a lot of it, you know, somebody worked pretty bad. You'd go up there and get work. And I don't know what they they just had to work employment, hopefully they had regular employment office up their Spokane that they dealt with all the times whenever they needed many say in the so many I know one time they sent in 30 men there and they were real short and a bunch of money.

Hershiel A. Tribble: That was after the Troubles and beginning to get straightened up, they said, for 30 men, and that they came in there had made a pretty tough proposition on me because I had to keep track of them hard at the time and I had to keep track of them that year, the name, you know, And there were different prices.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So much for our this kind of work, so much for our work, another kind of work and such as that. And maybe they work a while and then take them off. And then the foreman didn't tell me when it changed. The men. Well, then I was in trouble because the end of the month I wouldn't have the right time for that man.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I hadn't shortchanged or something. But anyway, they brought in 30 men. No one was to tell you the incident there. That was kind of funny. So I had to take down all the names in the command. Some of them brothers all kind of grew up. And I don't know, I didn't get a very good bunch of followers to me.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But anyway, I got around to where there's work in to see how the work place and what jobs and such. And I'd check their names. I didn't know all the names, you know, we couldn't separate it. We could bring 30 million at one time and I'd ask them their names again to be sure I had them right now.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Right. I come to in front of them and I told you my name with a command like that. And I didn't like it very well. And he didn't know that I couldn't get everybody straightened out. And I explained, overcorrected. I said 34 or one time, This is pretty hard to be a vet. You don't know what you're doing, what you're doing.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't know. He told me I didn't forget it. I'd figured he wouldn't last long, and I was pretty sure I had his number and what kind of man he was. So finally, sure enough, you go into I need to avoid. You're going to tell me your name once more. Whether you like it or not. You get a check if you have free time.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I said, there's grandkids I can I can name. This is great. Is it? He answered, Very well. I better go now. I'd get my revenge. But they come and get a badge like that and just a little bottle, you know, don't like it. You know, they have it's called short statement. Sometimes it works a few days. Just get money enough to make it on the next camp or maybe vulnerable.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And then they have what you call a long take man. They have their he must make money before they go work. Spokane they around give it to. The fellow told me that one time a kind of kid is nice. Before he wasn't even a foreigner. Well, he was, I believe, a French Canadian, even though I do 60 and I can work for the donkeys.

Hershiel A. Tribble: So it by hand, you know, they they would and he would work there for months and then he goes book and he'd live like a millionaire nobody nobody real wealthy they get a ten year replacing went and he had tell a little joke on himself and they said you want to go someplace and it didn't work was that he said he said you were too high to live in town and ask you about taxes so that this job didn't give him the address.

Hershiel A. Tribble: He said to take me at his word around the corner, is it? They'll let you know. He is a good sport, you know, joke with on here we know nothing about. We had little bit I'd tell if it were too funny but those rumors were like that you know they were weapons and everybody when they had little in that come they satisfied at work again for a while and they knew they always get work.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They knew they had to put up with so much of that, you know, good men.

Sam Schrager: So it was hired. You spoke mostly, and I.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Guess through the employment of this book in front of the name of Featherstone and the employment up there, and they sent it there for me, and that's the worst deal I ever got into it, bringing 30 men in there to keep track of it the same at one time. Usually in order to see men come in for something just crazy, walk in, ask for job those.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, if you get lined out, you maybe remember what the boss would say, but it's in there. But I tell you what, she couldn't hardly keep track of employers.

Sam Schrager: This was during the strikes that.

Hershiel A. Tribble: This, I believe, was a of it where I think this was after that when they beginning to get men again. And then they began to see they'd lost all their old timers and that was them. Now, they weren't so much men like I was telling about earlier. You don't like that talk, this little old man language from different type of people?

Hershiel A. Tribble: I think these people were mostly the citizens of this country. The majority of what they were not a very high grade citizen. The majority either did. They used to try to follow the logging camps, uneducated and go dirty, but they were so good hearted. Is it true? They were very friendly. And you know.

Sam Schrager: How how fast after the strike And did that did conditions change? Was it an immediate thing or.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Pretty fast because it probably seemed like quite a while, but really it was fairly fast because you see, it caused them a lot of shut down. They have to keep men hired all the time. Now, like a muslim dementia, I work for a month and the cooks work for the month, the foreman work for the month. And people like that, their steady salary all the time at this base here.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, those people who stayed, they weren't they didn't belong. They stayed and they had to pay them. And then they also had to have a watchman. And at one time there they had three, three police or sheriffs, whatever you call them in their life. And they were afraid during that IWW trouble that they would cause trouble. And they had three of them hired.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And sure, if you can move there, that time was only 13 or 30 deputized at all and give us a permit to attack a gun and I wouldn't I didn't take it very serious. I didn't think there's a lot of opinion, but it's a little bit hard to read one from Moscow for sure. And we worked at sheriff in Moscow for a long time.

Hershiel A. Tribble: We were just scared to death out there. What night it is that somebody might feel my need to step out in front of that guy had made it for. Well, I think he shot him because he was scared. But I was going as a group that came over and I had a little 25 Colt automatic pistol, rather not about one one.

Hershiel A. Tribble: We weren't afraid. Young folks. We bought him. She found that pistol, our security guard, afraid to come to see back, taking the gun. I didn't carry a so I went back and forth. There's a about ten mile walk five miles into town. And in my work in Boulder, in back when the camp was and I walk, I was in front of everything and never had anybody off in the army.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They talk to me and try to get me to do that. But I told my detectives I have to work and my mother says, I don't belong here. Union. And you didn't tell me when to come here? Anything. I said, You can't tell me what to quit. And it pretty nice to me. They pretty reasonable because I thought I'd talk reasonable them give me my right to do.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And none of them ever bothered me. Your arm.

Sam Schrager: Did you feel more closer to them or closer to the to the management of people in camps?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I don't know if I tell you I had a high regard for the management. Know all those people? No, I wasn't high enough up to be a be one of my I don't mean it but the superintendent, when I first went to camp he hired groups of scared. I worked directly under him and he held a place for me after the back that I'd been in the service there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I come back, my clothes went to press tonight or they made a mistake on me and he wrote down I was going to go back, but he wrote down and said he heard I was back and that probably I would like to have a job back. Said he had a place for me to come work. And so I told him that I my clothing was lost.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And so like my new clothing, for a while I wanted to get my clothing and I'd be up as soon as I could get it. And it was ten days before he came up. And and when I seen there, he told me as I just apologize, dear to me, he said I did to get that place open for you for ten days.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I says yesterday I had to send out a work. He said I was getting some bottled up and everything. He said I had to send somebody out. And I told him, I said, Let's go to our camp and go to work for the day and you'll have an opening sometime we're going to be looking for. Why didn't you let me know?

Hershiel A. Tribble: He said, No, you don't need to do that. I always said I would get an opening for you and so he told me to go out to Camp two and scale well, first to me to go down to Camp five or something like and become area some place and scale. And therefore Egypt was down there and then the jeep was recalled as the people were contracting sea hauling with a thousand there just starting.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But they called the depot at that time and go down there and I'd never scale for any of them course, which they made a difference. But anyway, next morning I to go down the train at one particular I said no. And he says you haven't got your ticket. He says, I've changed my mind. He says, I'll send the manitou down, let him scale for them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And he said, Would you go out and take his place? So he gave me a note there and take it out with this man for him to go down to Camp five or whatever it was, I don't know, maybe. Anyway, down by home or there or someplace down there. Very and scale where he didn't like it. And I didn't know that the time he went on out, Bruce started to roll down there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I didn't know that, but I went out. I can hear that. But I see I went out to there and let's go in there.

Sam Schrager: Then this T.P. Jones, the superintendent that you're speaking of.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Yes. Yes, that's right. Well, now, he hired me to direct at that time. But you see, later on in the more particular scene, they would put Skater and Kirk in camp. And then finally they got so that they had skater. And it was for the skater, the sole. Everything was going to go with the thousand. So much 4000 was working, Nancy.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, they had to put a scooter in a large scale facade. And then they had on the landing because I was running after the separated, the school that was the head school there was on the landing. Then they had a men's school on the Marion. The painting was all he did, just barely skated. So they couldn't pay the myriad skaters or the crews working on the near Marion, but they all everything was working to the tower.

Sam Schrager: He did you ever get in there. And disagreements with the men about your skill and their idea of what the scale should be.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And yes, yeah. Was poetry right in the start? I was never kicked out of things, you know. I'll try it. You had to learn. I was too. I tried to be real honest, and I found out there were some ways you couldn't be too honest. As honest enough, in a way. But I mean, tricky ways that you had to act finally in order to get along with both sides.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And but they protect you see all that skating because if they didn't, they couldn't keep a skater at all, you know, running off the job. The working men would be some people that were hotter and take you off the job. And they had checks to check you pretty regularly. They'd come on to $100 and compared. You didn't know your number numbers in your book.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, you could come there and skate if you didn't even seem and scale and pick the numbers off. Then you log in and go to your books and tell exactly what you gave them, see? So they had minute checking you and inevitably all the time that protected you. Easy a lot. That was pretty good for you. See but I, I skill there for a number of years and of course I was one they were I don't want to say head square I wasn't in camp there the many skaters, the main skater camp I was always learning skater Every place I was, I was always landings here.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But they a tricky thing you know I followed who would skater you see the fires the trick the scared I think they'd ask they would scare how much you gave for certain log there and he'd tell them to be friendly. And I soon found out when they got on the landing, they'd see that log maybe and see me or see what she comes.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Give us, like, not a promiscuous thing that we could. That was one. I was scared and they'd already found out. What's guilty? We're now a log is seldom perfectly around. They're more or less over that rule. Some are private, you know. And another thing, your skin really goes by inches. And there are 2 to 3 ways of scaling a log.

Hershiel A. Tribble: You you may scale if law was perfect around or wouldn't make it a different for you later how you later on. But you can take and measure the narrow way and the white way and give the average between. But as it breaks on it, you sometimes it indivisible say and you have to give or take just a little bit where no one skill will give and the other take or maybe you will give honest and take on the lectures on what is going to be the variation there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, a man of working doesn't realize that. And another way you can go up and Leo one the fastest rate and part as good as is just you you step up to a log lay a rule on diagonal your log is going to lay on the flat side you really see and liar liar. You're not in about a 45 degree angle they're in.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They'll catch the average. So I used the scale. But anyway, I found out if there was a if there was a question on it when I scale is log and I would say I knew that it was he's checking on to try to check or see if there was two figures you could give it. I'd always give it a low figure myself because I didn't care what he thought about me.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I wasn't scared of him previously and I didn't want to hurt the man that was good for him because I figured that was an honest man, see, And I didn't want to get him in trouble. Well, then, if there was a doubting that to and I knew the law, and then he'd be sad to see his interview the same way you think, therefore, I would give it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But if he's going to give the other thing, he'd think, Well, I'm glad his guilt for me, I wouldn't want that. Let's just go for a well, you see, it's just a little tricky to help one another out and keep people out of trouble. And there's nothing dishonest about her or anything like that. It really. But I have to tell you, I'll tell you something that's really kind of funny.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It always felt a little guilty about it. I didn't either, man. I never lied anymore. I squirmed around somehow or other, but they had a fire and that the logs laid across everything were two logs crushed one another. It burned them almost in two. Sometimes it did burn them in two. And they always told us that they couldn't handle less than the six or eight foot log when they carried it down there if they couldn't have it, see if a log was under eight feet, it was no good to cut it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, there was a probably haven't been a neighbor of mine that didn't put it down. It rather it left matter and I probably wouldn't say anything about it now. But anyway, he was getting by 2000 and that up there and well, they told us sometimes not to call a log in black log. Yes. He was hard to tell if not the right call on it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It didn't end at all. Just the double on it in your book because you're not give it anything because they said if he did, they'd start leaving good logs and they wouldn't see. So we had to be a little bit sneaky about that. But anyway, this poor guy, he brought in a log. Nice log, pretty one. It had laid a cross-channel log.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Exactly in the middle of 16 foot lousy. And it worked as long so near and to it just barely would hold together for him to put it down there. Well, it had run two feet out of the middle of a 16 foot log that left two seven foot chunk feeling we couldn't use them on the carriage when I had to.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Told him at that log was a CO had followed it. It was he would have been mad at me as long as he lives it probably. And of course I was working under orders to we had, we had to do these things. So I told him that name was right next to his last name. At that I said no, I guess this is only to feel that log.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I think that's a perfectly good log, except this two feet of it ruined in minute. These is That's right. If it says nothing at all, if you don't do it, that's all I said. I didn't like man. But see in my book Colored what Time you get these hundred figures, I'm happy to know the logs color and think about it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: See? But now I would have made an enemy if I explained that to him. Don't you see what I did to that? It made an enemy. I didn't know it, man. I. In a way, I left the wrong impression. But to you, you have to do some of them things sometimes, either just for everybody's sake. But then they had one in front of one time and another.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Sorry. I was sorry at that time. Sometimes this careful both bit. And he said that always said that he had to be more than that. I he asked me what the scale was. He had just killed these cut there. It was 11 or had had I mean it was going to be more or less as I scale some myself, because I know better than that.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I didn't have to do anything, but it made me mad and I could adjust with it. I went back to camp, did not need just probably one in quit. But anyway, I somehow or other I thought, well, that will never cure me. And I asked him, you know, how to kill, and he said Yes, but then you now know that I always gave.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I told him, I said, Now I will let you scale in logs. I want you go out there and scale them and see what you get. I want you show me what you get out of him. And I told him I want you to get on the same route away. So you feel inside that mark? It would only that's the way we have to scatter them.

Hershiel A. Tribble: When I says if there's anything wrong with it, you need to a bit on it. And I said, You come back and see and probably in there I was talking to his partner, sitting there waiting for him and his partner said, He gets me into trouble everyplace we go. We have to put him with his partner, made him mad and embarrassed him to see and he said, You get the interpreter replaced with you.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And pretty soon he came back. He didn't want to say anything. I said, Well, he says, wasn't much. I thought, Well, he says, I've had a lot more. He in the room. He wouldn't even say it. He wouldn't even tell me if I'd give him all that. There were no money in my pocket to try to teach him.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Another thing I like about to be done the superintendent. I would learn a man to scare. One time he'd send the new man. He told me to learn to teach him scale. And he says, You tell him if. If there's a doubt, give it to the working man. He says there shouldn't be any doubts. But government, there's a doubt to give it to working man.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Now, that's what the superintendent told me to tell him when I learned. But yet it's not that there was, don't you see? Well, I certainly had no money in my pocket to keep anybody. I didn't get any more at the end of the month. But some of you think you're that way, You know, they think you're going to get something out of it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But one time the camp of the Elk River, the woods grows up there and they would have 6000 or something like that. Anyway, The principal sure, if I'm wrong, 6000 B or million them in there say the woods and the government. There's only and they found out that these these were just young kids. This girl, they found out that the 30 minutes left them a few dollars.

Hershiel A. Tribble: They'd been double in this scale with you. So then that's started to make an adjustment, have to number of old numbers, dumps and everything else. So the check in the didn't used to check the woods before that. All they did was fire them kid with the rest of his estate had to pay for it. We had to do a lot of extra work just because they were.

Sam Schrager: Chris Did you find it that you had to use judgment a great deal It was in scaling and judging.

Hershiel A. Tribble: On defective logs. Yes, that's right. But the sound log, no way. Not much to judgment to use on that. You were you tried to give the average whatever whatever it was or give and take if you thought you had a little low and the next one you give it to. And no, there wasn't much very good skill. It was brutal.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I understood. I never didn't know for sure. Keep it in 5%, but I know was always less than that. Sometimes it be a fraction percent of the checks get people to agree that it was wouldn't affect it would be very go scale the no no but on defective logs nowadays the methods on that sometimes I like they figure right I know what they figure now and they have government together and think I think maybe I might be contradicted on it but I don't like to say what we did.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And under iron fraction. C Now we had a government scanner that checked on the supplier and he's given him a nice skill to get it down here on the first logs ever heard about as he picked me out scale with him and he told me that they figured on a rock log, if you had to log that rotten and middle, you tell it or not.

Hershiel A. Tribble: See how of much timber. If the last shows rock, it would be right in the tree log. And he said, if not, if it not showed rotten and it was the tree log missed out on both and both ends that the the right would go twice as fast down the lower three as it would what the tree. He says maybe this rock for instance was able to go up to three two feet but go down it four feet you're probably six feet in there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: There was damage for that rock. And that was that was one way of telling it like that. And the stump rock, you get a little familiar with them. There's what they call a stump right? There be a hall. Maybe if I were to rewrite the stump a hole or a rotten place and that was as real or as well, but used to go very far.

Hershiel A. Tribble: That's using a pine tree and the other pine, it'll go very far. But you figured, well, if maybe that goes in about four feet, why an average of about two feet would be a hole about so big and you figure about how much it would take out. But now on others, what they call wind shakes, sometimes the heart is a solid piece itself.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And then the outside shell of that is a solid piece. But the two are not divided. They fall apart when they go to the carriage. Well, they had a method they called a rule of thumb there that they used on that. I can't tell you anymore just what it is they they measured in this size and they added too much to it and so on and so forth is I didn't know but I can't remember.

Hershiel A. Tribble: It varied with the five year old and that was a hard one to figure out. And you might require a little, but you had all these methods and still you had to vary, you know, but not too far were it.

Sam Schrager: Did each species get scaled by separate?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Yes. Each piece? No, I did. I didn't have to change that just a little bit. All of the main species were separate. And then they took were the two or three species that didn't have hardly enough low grade like white fur. And in large and or I mean, I can't think of a name that's not large. Tamarack used to have a Tamarack or a large it didn't think.

Sam Schrager: It could ever really.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Agency, but Hemlock White, maybe White Fur and Hemlock. And you'd put them both in some place where the no cedar already maybe mixed all and you put it as mixed. But you see, you'd have your pine and you'd have you read for Douglas fir and the course for this. It's the same thing really. And in your Tamarack we used to call them to change the books to too large and then you'd have your mixture there about four things and then you kept a lengthy logs separate to the school year, 12 foot logs, and they're 14 and 16, 18, 20.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And each timber kept each timber and each length in each timber separately. And a narrower method was given on cards. If it was rainy, you put oil on the card sometimes or is pretty hard, right? Very rainy. And then at night we copy them into a regular schoolbook.

Sam Schrager: They were cutting all the timber in most places that the operation was going on and a man was supposed to take a tree regardless of what species it was.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, yes, that's right. Of course, this is the company in love with all the different camps. If they wanted to get it together, they could do it or anything. Yes, like they coral species. It's too expensive to go through. It wasn't for one time. Then back again, they took everything as they went too. And everything large enough. There.

Hershiel A. Tribble: A little one time they didn't go back in the mosquito camp for the little things was too small. They didn't reach the first number on the scale. Really tickled growth. It got it in White Pine, but I think maybe that had been taken cream. Maybe it had been left there a few years. And how do you think that how.

Sam Schrager: Did the men feel about that? Was there was there any choice? I mean, it was in much reluctance about having the log inferior species of trees. And we knew that there was good stuff.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, as far as quality and value was concerned, it didn't make any difference to them. They were paid by the thousand fee or.

Sam Schrager: Didn't.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Know. There's no absolutely no difference for the working man to help us out, no matter what it was. See, they had maybe preferences for some some timber was another somewhat harder to to frame or not and you know to start with why they had to limit when everything was see and any more you don't want to put a marker each easier can't you say log and nowadays they drag them down through the woods and time they hand them manhandle and everything.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Last time you see them one of and things like that. They didn't used to do that, but most of them would break off. But they got these little you know nothing to it used to be the job for an hour on some of them almost before you can get one of them. There were huge the big they were.

Sam Schrager: Read in a book about warehouses or in the opinion of these men who were reviewing their logging history that they didn't do as a corporation that well with the logging and potlatch forests. And the reason that was given was that had clear cut and taken inferior stands of timber rather than concentrating on the prime timber because believed that they should take it all, but that when you finally got done with all the costs, it wasn't worth it.

Sam Schrager: With some of these grades of do you have any opinion about that?

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well, I really don't know. But if they can't afford to take out a low grade a tree when they're at it, I don't see how they can come back, reload and take it out. That wouldn't sound sensible to me. They might not come out very good on some of these, but now then the low grade Timothy used to have like white fur and things that it was almost worthless and stink and everything else they have now that they're using for a lot of things and on the market you pay a big price for it.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But I don't know how to pay to go back if it was left to the damage, a lot of that type of logging anyway. And to go back and the wind fall down, everything all the way to the back, a log to try to get that stuff to be. That doesn't look like good deadwood to me. They had this clear cutting.

Hershiel A. Tribble: I don't go much on that. Back in some very beautiful country, there are green timber, not as bacteria or so ago, and that road had been a camp back there in the mountains to get there and timber laying in every direction where everything had been stolen. I don't know. I can't see that maybe smarter people are got to figure that.

Hershiel A. Tribble: But I read some articles here lately where some of the other people don't think that paid either.

Sam Schrager: Got it. Was it. Is that different than the way we used to do it?

Hershiel A. Tribble: yeah. I didn't used to do that. they, they took all the mercantile about timber out. Right. Well it was added if they had any sale for all they take all types out all varieties. But this clear cutting the core now they're just going to slash everything that's left, everything is on the ground and illustration problem. Just leave the mountain bare.

Hershiel A. Tribble: And I guess if you go and burn and reseeding or something but I don't know it certainly destroys a beautiful country and terrible thing to go back and look and see all that stuff. A land flat on the mountain fill for a beautiful green timber.

Sam Schrager: Well, what was left after they used to cut.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well it would be the trees are too small, too long. You see all the little trees and the trees that were too small. It seems to me like maybe there was nothing left to see that. I don't know if it had been enough. A little tiny reseeded thick enough or not, but maybe they could have scattered some seed in there.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Maybe the squirrel that they used to do, the reseeding, and maybe they didn't stay in there. I don't if any birds in that room would get that log. Well, maybe some of the trees that were worth less than that, but it.

Sam Schrager: Was a slash burned afterwards.

Hershiel A. Tribble: Well I don't know too much about that. Some of that was still up there when I was in the first. No, that I ever seen. I'd heard of it. But there there was acres.