1 IBHAHY OF THE UN IVLR.5ITY Of ILLINOIS 331-88 U82s cop. 2 Mtqwaa Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/soldiersspruceorOOhyma f SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE: Origins of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Origins of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen By Harold M. Hyman INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA • LOS ANGELES Copyright, 1963, by The Regents of the University of California Industrial Relations Monographs of the Institute of Industrial Relations No. 1. Due Process on the Railroads: Revised Edition, by Joseph Lazar. $1.25 No. 2. Right-to-Work Laws: A Study in Conflict, by Paul Sultan. $1.75 No. 3. The Knights of Labor in Belgium, by L£on Watillon. Translated and with an introduction by Frederic Meyers. $1.50 No. 4. Inside a Sensitivity Training Group, by Irving R. Weschler and Jerome Reisel. $2.00 No. 5. Law and the National Labor Policy, by Archibald Cox. $2.50 No. 6. Tenderness and Technique: Nursing Values in Transition, by Genevieve Rogge Meyer. $2.75 No. 7. European Coal Mining Unions: Structure and Function, by Frederic Meyers. $2.75 No. 8. Union Government and the Law: British and American Experiences, by Joseph R. Grodin. $3.00 No. 9. Education for the Use of Behavioral Science, by James V. Clark. $2.25 No. 10. Soldiers and Spruce: Origins of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, by Harold M. Hyman. $3.00 Copies of this publication may be purchased for $3.00 each from the INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 300 Economics Building University of California Los Angeles 24, California Foreword The Institute of Industrial Relations is pleased to offer Soldiers and Spruce: Origins of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen as the tenth in its Monograph Series. Its author, Harold M. Hyman, was at the time of writing Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is presently Professor of History at the University of Illinois. The Institute reading committee for the manuscript consisted of Pro- fessors Charles M. Gates of the University of Washington and Frederic Meyers and Irving Bernstein of UCLA. Mrs. Anne P. Cook edited the manuscript. The cover was designed by Marvin Rubin. The viewpoint expressed is that of the author and is not necessarily that of the Institute of Industrial Relations or of the University of Cali- fornia. Benjamin Aaron, Director Institute of Industrial Relations University of California, Los Angeles Preface Several years ago I wrote a history of loyalty tests in America. Part of that story involved a curious agency of the United States Army of World War I, the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. The avail- able scholarship on the Legion, adequate for my interest in loyalty tests, failed, however, to answer a good many questions as to why the Army sponsored it and as to the policies that the officers in charge decided to follow. Once the loyalty book was in print, I searched out a store of primary materials on the Legion which up to that time historians had not been able to use. With these discovered, temptation became too strong to resist, and I decided to try my hand at a history of the war- time Loyal Legion. Perhaps this was a rash decision. I am no expert in labor history. Until now my professional life centered happily on the Civil War and in the general arena of American constitutional development. Never- theless I have made the attempt, and this book is the result. Venturing on unfamiliar terrain became pleasant, though I felt the strains that uncertainty brings. But the experience was always instruc- tive. I hope that the reader will have a similar reaction to this narrative, without the nervousness. In any case I feel qualified now to endorse Samuel E. Morison's advice: . . . too rigid specialization is almost as bad for the historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis. Everyone should, I believe, study something general or national in scope and something special or local; should do research on a remote period and on a contemporary period, and work on more than one type of history. The national field teaches you what to look for in local history; whilst intensive cultivation of grass-roots . . . teaches you things that you cannot see in the broad national view.* I would not have been able to follow Professor Morison's wise coun- sel without the release from teaching duties provided by a grant from the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations. The Institute also pro- vided the services as assistant of Mrs. Cynthia Reich. I thank the Insti- tute's directors, Professors Benjamin Aaron and Irving Bernstein, for these encouragements, and Mrs. Anne Cook of their staff for her capable editorial oversight. * "Faith of a Historian," American Historical Review, LVI (Jan. 1951), 271. Vlll PREFACE UCLA's librarians performed their usual miracles of cooperation, and the Interlibrary Loan personnel especially provided many aids. I am grateful, too, to the indefatigable archivists who make researching at the National Archives a pleasant professional task. Their opposite numbers at the University of Washington Library, especially the cura- tor of manuscripts, Mr. Richard Berner, and his assistant, Miss Judith Johnson, offered the most fruitful assistance. Since the utility of this study depended upon the availability of new manuscript sources, the work of Mr. Berner and Miss Johnson in making materials in their charge physically available to me was of decisive importance. In this connection I want also to thank Professor Richard Schwarzman of El Camino College, Los Angeles, for affording me access to the papers of J. A. B. Scherer, which he owns. And the generosity of Mrs. Florence Disque, in turning over to me her late husband's papers, requires a special and heartfelt expression of appreciation. Without her unquali- fied tender, only more heat rather than light on the Loyal Legion could have been generated by another attempt to examine its history. Last, Feme, Lee, Ann, Billy, Leslye, Frankie, and Wendy, in their particular ways, helped to make the execution of this study a particu- lar challenge. „ __ TT ° Harold M. Hyman Contents Introduction .... 1 1. The Soldiers' View 17 2. School for a Soldier 37 3. Apostles of Reform 50 4. Autumn of Frustration 66 5. Entering the Graveyard of Reputations 81 6. The Birth of the Legion 105 7. A Close Call for the Legion 131 8. In Suspense 152 9. A Sort of Godfather 168 10. Marking Time 186 11. Breakthrough 207 12. Some Fruits of Victory 226 13. Round One with the AFL 253 14. Building an Anti-Gompers Barricade 274 15. Crisis and Compromise 298 Epilogue 323 Introduction Felix Frankfurter, musing over his World War I work as a govern- ment mediator in labor disputes, recently recalled that "there was a strike in the spruce industry, and spruce was then indispensable for the manufacture of [war] planes. We settled that strike." To be sure, Frankfurter's efforts on President Wilson's Mediation Commission were fruitful. His report on the "deportations" at the cop- per center in Bisbee, Arizona, is a classic of constructive analysis, and the Commission did pacify unsettled situations in the southwestern tele- phone industry and later in Chicago meat-packing centers. But in the words of Louis B. Wehle, who also participated in wartime labor rela- tions matters, the Commission "had apparently shot its bolt by the end of 1917. '^ The lumber strike did not, unfortunately, prove amenable to the Commission's arguments. Before work resumed in the northwestern lumber camps and mills, before the production of spruce increased to meet the soaring demand for airframes, and before the output of lesser woods from the Northwest supplemented the eastern softwoods supply and satisfied the acceler- ating need for lumber with which to build barracks, boxcars, and cargo ships, much more was needed beyond the efforts of the Mediation Com- mission. Settlement of the lumber strike defied the exertions of many traditional and war-emergency agencies and officials of the national, state, and local governments. The labor difficulties besetting the lum- ber industry of the Pacific states seemed to be incapable of resolution in time to meet the production requirements of a nation unexpectedly involved in a total war, and without repetitions of the disgraceful, di- visive brutality that had marred the scene at Bisbee. Then, almost with a melodramatic last-minute to-the-rescue flavor, the United States Army entered the unquiet labor scene of the tall timber country along the Pacific shore. In order quickly to raise the out- put of lumber, the Army for the first and only time in its history created a labor union — the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. An Army-in-the-woodlands union has an Alice in Wonderland qual- 1 Felix Frankfurter Reminisces: Recorded in Talks with Dr. Harlan B. Phillips (New York, 1960), 127; Wehle, Hidden Threads of History: Wilson Through Roosevelt (New York, 1953), 55; on Bisbee, see the pamphlet, Report on the Bisbee Deportation (n.p., n.d.), issued by the Commission. A full study of this Commission is needed. 1 I SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ity, and perhaps uniqueness alone justifies an attempt to tell the Le- gion's story. Consider, for example, that in the Legion the directors were commissioned, uniformed Army officers, who were advised by civilian lumbermen. They had at their command by mid-1918 an over- size division of more than 25,000 enlisted soldiers, also in uniform, who were armed with both rifles and woodcutting implements, and who were, of course, subject to martial discipline. The bulk of the rank and file of the Legion was composed of more than 100,000 civilians, mostly loggers and mill and kiln hands, who subjected themselves to the para- military authority of the union's leaders more or less voluntarily. The Legion, however, has a firmer claim to a place in history than the recording of a mere administrative novelty. Yet, despite the fact that a considerable literature on the Legion has grown up in the forty years since the Armistice, its history has not been adequately reported. Judg- ments on its origins, purposes, policies, personnel, and wartime achieve- ments have been almost as oversimplified and inaccurate as Justice Frankfurter's cloudy recollection. This inadequacy requires explana- tion. In part it is due to the fact that historians until recently have largely ignored the homefront history of World War I in favor of concentra- tion on more dramatic themes centering on Wilsonian diplomacy and high-level party battles. Economists and political scientists who have dealt with the Legion at all have done so en passant, as it offered data useful to studies in labor relations and in the economics of the lumber industry. However worthy, these partial considerations of the Legion never presumed to be full statements of the facts of its origins and history. 2 All investigations into the Legion's history have been prisoners of a body of printed sources that are passionate in tone and polemical in purpose. After all, the Army's Loyal Legion intruded into a labor- management situation that for more than a decade had been attended with violence, brutality, and recriminations. The Army's "official" his- tory of the Legion nevertheless insists that the officer-directors of the 2 As examples see Cloice R. Howd, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Industry, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Miscellaneous Series, Bull. No. 349 (Wash- ington, 1924); Edward B. Mittelman, "The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumber- men — An Experiment in Industrial Relations," Journal of Political Economy, XXXI (June 1923), 313-41; Charlotte Todes, Labor and Lumber (New York, 1931), 141-49; Alexander M. Bing, War-Time Strikes and Their Adjustment (New York, 1921), 255-72. Most useful was Vernon H. Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York, 1945), 129-37. The fullest study of the Legion by an historian is Claude W. Nichols, Jr., Brotherhood in the Woods: The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen; A Twenty Year Attempt at "Industrial Cooperation" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oregon, 1959). This work is cited hereafter as Nichols, Legion. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 3 4Ls were always absolutely neutral in judging between all competing factions of capital and labor. According to this account, the Legion was conceived and run solely in the interests of the whole nation. 8 Starkly differing judgments emerge from almost all other literature dealing with the Legion. For example, Edwin Selvin, the publisher of Seattle's Business Chronicle, worried in Social Darwinistic terms that the Legion was fathered by Samuel Gompers and therefore the Legion officialdom coddled unionists. Yet Selvin applauded incontrovertible evidences of the diminishing appeal that the Industrial Workers of the World had for loggers after the Legion set to work. AFL spokesmen, though also antagonistic to the IWW, were disgruntled at what they insisted were the original antiunion purposes and persisting anti-Fed- eration attitudes of the men who built the Legion. 4 Recent commentators have echoed the theme set by "wobbly" writers, that the genealogy of the Legion rests in an unholy alliance between Wall Street and the War Department. For example, Professor William Preston correctly asserted in 1957 that the war offered opportunity to antilabor champions to exploit patriotic passions and to condemn strikes as disloyal interferences with production. But Preston, moving on from this documentable point, became mired in the quicksand of partisanship surrounding the Army's involvement in the lumber strike. "At the very moment when the Wobblies seemed to be winning the lumber strike of 1917," he wrote, "the timber interests employed the federal army as their strikebreakers. . . . The Army had become an illegal posse comitatus, not only for federal authorities [to employ], but for local and state officials as well." The Loyal Legion marched where it had no constitutional right to go and where the nation's needs did not require its presence, Preston and like commentators implied. 3 By this analysis, businessmen midwived the Army's Legion and were men- tors for the leading Loyal Legionnaires, and the soldiers were mere puppets for lumber barons to employ. 3 History of the Spruce Production Division, United States Army and United States Spruce Production Corporation (n.p., n.d.), 19. This is not a government publication. Mostly the handiwork of then Major Cuthbert Stearns, it was assembled by Legion personnel in 1919 as a defense against congressional criticism. Hereafter it will be cited as History. * Jensen, op. cit., 129; Todes, op. cit., 143. Mrs. Selvin recently donated a complete file of the Chronicle to the UCLA Library's collection on industrial relations, and her kindness is appreciated. Marc Karson, American Labor Unions and Politics, 1900- 1918 (Carbondale, 111., 1958), 204, errs in suggesting that the Legion resulted from the conclusions of the Mediation Commission. Maxwell C. Raddock, Portrait of an American Labor Leader: William L. Hutcheson (New York, 1955), 226, has the AFL view. 5 William Preston, "The Ideology and Techniques of Repression, 1903-1933," in Harvey Goldberg, ed., American Radicals: Some Problems and Personalities (New 4 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Consider, too, that the Legion was inescapably involved in the spec- tacularly unsuccessful aircraft production program. Thereby it was linked with the puncturing of a popular vision of triumphant American airpower. The dream was born during the three years of lessening neu- trality after 1914, and it grew mightily on a diet of unexaggeratable accounts from France of the degradations men suffered in trench war- fare. Compared to them, the aviator was a knight of the war, engaging in clean, chivalric combat high over the rat-infested earth. Even before this country joined in the European fray, the men whom Secretary of War Newton D. Baker was soon to call "The Spoiled Aces of Flight" were heroes to Americans. When this country entered the war, Americans carried the dream with them. They linked it to their confidence in the genius of American inventors and industrialists. Congress would provide vast amounts of money, and Ford, Goethals, and Edison, among others, would create mass-production miracles with the descendants of the Wright brothers' brainchild. Armadas of warplanes, built from the endless stands of west coast spruce and fir, would quickly emerge from numberless fac- tories that did not even exist in April 1917. In these fleets of invincible planes, Americans would brush the Hun from the skies of France, then crush the Kaiser's legions on the ground below. The aviator, not the doughboy, would be this country's major contribution to victory, and America's men would gain exemption from the horrors of infantry fighting. It is less surprising that propagandists incautiously furthered this mirage than that soldiers and statesmen joined in the theme. The fact is, of course, that probably no one in this country in 1917 understood the limitations or the potentialities of airpower, or the problems in- volved in building an industrial apparatus and in assembling a skilled labor force in order to create an American aerial combat arm. Even the head of the infant air service that the Army had in 1917 in its Signal Corps, General George O. Squier, talked of "winged cavalry sweeping across the German lines and smothering their trenches with a storm of lead." American aeronauts, Squier continued, would "put the 'Yankee punch' into the War." After defeating the experienced, superbly York, 1957), 249-51. Compare this with John S. Gambs, The Decline of the I.W.W. (New York, 1932); Robert L. Tyler, Rebels of the Woods and Fields: A Study of the I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oregon, 1953); Harry N. Scheiber, The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 1917-1921 (Ithaca, 1960); and my To Try Men's Souls: Loyalty Tests in American History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), 298-315. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE equipped German air force, American air fleets would "blind the Prus- sian cannon, . . . raid and destroy military camps, ammunition depots, and military establishments." Squier's expectations of "an enormous flock of flying fighters" was a war away from reality. 6 Whatever success the Legion achieved in expanding spruce timber production could not prevent the disillusionment that followed when the dream failed to come true. America's aces gained their victories in Allied planes rather than in craft of American design or manufacture. An outraged public demanded the reasons for this frustrating, humiliat- ing, and expensive failure in our factories. Army Chief of Staff Peyton C. March remembered of early 1918 that "everyone who could claim the right was investigating the Air Service, and everyone else was de- manding an investigation." 7 Critics of the aircraft industry's performance looked for German spies, Bolshevik plotters, "wobbly" saboteurs, and capitalist profiteers. Charges of graft, corruption, and collusion between aircraft manu- facturers and government officials were widespread and commonly accepted. Congressional investigators broadcast allegations that un- scrupulous entrepreneurs had garnered extraordinary profits from the nation's needs, and that the Army's Loyal Legion had played a sorry role in this shoddy story. These investigations took place during the heated months between the 1918 congressional elections and the critical presidential election campaign two years later. Unsurprisingly, the record left by these parti- san inquiries is composed mainly of villains. Its scandalous implications helped to foster the cynicism regarding the Wilsonian crusade that was so marked during the two decades following the Armistice. One com- mentator of 1940, for example, employing the 1918-1920 inquiries as sources, concluded that the World War I warplane program, from spruce stands to combat operations, was really a tax-supported "school" that the government provided for businessmen who came to Washington as veterans of corporate manipulations in the automobile and other industries and in finance capitalism. These businessmen, according to this judgment, directed military aviation policy, and as commissioned officers or as dollar-a-year men in mufti, learned how to work with cost- Squier is quoted in Frederick Palmer, Newton D. Baker; America at War (New York, 1931), II, 293; see also pp. 181, 289-95; cited henceforth as Palmer, Baker. Popular, accurate accounts are in Quentin Reynolds, They Fought for the Sky (New York, 1957), 204-11; and Arch Whitehouse, The Years of the Sky Kings (Garden City, 1959), 195-96,269-72. 7 March, The Nation at War (New York, 1932), 199-200. D SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE plus contracts and patents pools, how to avoid criminal statutes, and how to "fix" government contract officials. Finally, these businessmen- profiteers "graduated in 1918 or were eased out earlier, hurdled con- gressional investigations which scanned their activities, and took a leading part in the aviation industry for many years after the war." 8 Prejudgments by partisans are not satisfactory sources. But in the absence of primary source materials adequate to test the validity of such pugnacious secondary themes, even the scholarly literature on the Legion has taken on a characteristic of untrustworthy oversimplifica- tion. For example, the most recent examination of the Loyal Legion offers this succinct and misleading account of its inception: "In October, 1917, Colonel Brice P. Disque came to the West Coast to investigate the inadequate procurement of spruce. . . . Disque discovered chaos during his two-week tour. . . . During this . . . tour a lumberman sug- gested to Disque that 'some sort' of a patriotic organization be formed to win over the support of the workers for the government's production program." Thereupon Disque sold the idea at the War Department. Within a month after returning to the east coast, he was ready to bring the first units of the Legion into existence on the Pacific's shore. 9 This description derives from a laudatory article on Disque that ap- peared in 1918 in a popular magazine, and from Disque's self-defensive testimony in 1919 to a congressional committee that was attacking his work with the Legion. Despite the article's contemporary flavor, and the fact that Disque "fed" its author some of the facts for it, it was journalism then and remains an unreliable secondary source. The testi- mony Disque offered to the congressmen was hortatory in purpose and requires verification before it is accepted. Such sources can bring one to little more precision or insight than John Dos Passos provides in his recent novel, wherein a character reminisces over the time when ". . . Colonel Round [Disque] was organizing the [lumber] industry for war production" and under his administration of the Loyal Legion 8 Elsbeth E. Freudenthal, The Aviation Business: From Kitty Hawk to Wall Street (New York, 1940), 61. The opposite view of a member of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce is in Howard Mingos, The Birth of an Industry (New York, 1930), 7-47. For better balance and scholarship, see G. R. Simonson, "The Demand for Aircraft and the Aircraft Industry, 1907-1958," Journal of Economic History, XX (Sept. 1960), 361-64. 9 Robert L. Tyler, "The United States Government as Union Organizer: The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLVII (Dec. 1960), 440-41, hereafter cited as Tyler, "Loyal Legion." On the point of Disque's swiftness in initiating the Legion, Tyler has not advanced beyond the breathless spirit offered in Earl Chapin May, "A Model for the New Deal," Forum, XCI (March 1934), 162-63. Nor is Nichols, Legion, 58-60, more satisfactory. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE / the migratory timberworkers of the Northwest grew accustomed "to being treated like white men." 10 Consider for another moment tiiis question of the inspiration for the Loyal Legion. Logic balks at accepting the idea that Disque within a crowded fortnight was able at one blow to cut through the dense jungle of hatred that had grown up during fifteen years of class antago- nism, and that had stilled the cry of "timber" in the lumber camps. It seems incredible that anyone could so swiftly envision and then create an institution that at least for the duration of the war brought the logger and the lumberman to work together in fruitful coexistence. After all, when the United States entered the war Disque, according to his own assertions and to all published accounts, was unfamiliar with the economy, technology, or structure of the lumber industry. In the words of one of Disque's friends, he "didn't know a spruce tree from a white rhinoceros." Disque knew equally little of the aspirations or methods of organized labor. A soldier during all his adult years except for a brief interlude as a prison warden, he was accustomed to giving orders, not to searching patiently for the delicate equipoises that make compromises possible in strikes. Let it be admitted at once, then, that Disque did not find in his own education, career, or vision the inspiration for the Loyal Legion. At the same time, however, he was much more than the mere messenger for the War Department or puppet for the lumber operators that Jensen suggests in his history of labor in the lumber industry, which is ac- cepted as the standard on the subject. According to Jensen, before Disque set out for the West, some unnamed, and unnameable, Army bureau had formulated the necessary plans for the Legion and sup- plied him with them. Alternatively, Jensen suggests that "leading lumber operators" conceived the Legion as a selfish device, employing the spur of patriotism and the goad of martial force, to serve their own interests. In this version, the operators received War Secretary Baker's and AFL president Gompers' approval of the scheme as a way to kill off radical wobbly organizers, and used Disque as a front for their purposes. It is a primary purpose of this study to pin down the question of the Legion's actual origins, and with it the implications of class involve- 10 Samuel H. Clay, "The Man Who Heads the 'Spruce Drive,' " Review of Reviews, LVII (June 1918), 633-36; Disque in House Select Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, Subcommittee on Aviation, Hearings, 66 Cong., 1 sess. (1919), II, 1365, hereafter cited as Hearings; Dos Passos, Midcentury: A Contemporary Chronicle (Boston, 1960), 171. 8 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ment that subsequent commentators have attached to the issue. Disque's role, it will be seen, is a leading one. Further, with the Legion's inception, Disque took on a complex task in industrial statesmanship. The colonel, even in unsympathetic ac- counts, admittedly performed like an able political gamesman, who gained the respect if not the affection of hard-bitten lumberworkers and grizzled timber operators. These men, after a decade of rugged infighting, were not very sensitive to assertions of superior authority or to the wisdom of compromises. Overcoming these obstacles, Disque and the Legion finally succeeded in ending the lumber strike. Timber pro- duction increased dramatically once the Legion set to work, where all other efforts to secure this end had failed. This record is clear. What has remained confused because of the lack of reliable evidence, or rather the profusion of contradictory assertions, has been the Army's motivation for venturing into the uncharted maze of labor-management relations at all. As Professor Nichols remarked in his recent study of the Legion, "the War Department's reasons for sending Disque to the West Coast are obscure." They need no longer remain so. 11 Deeper insight than presently exists into the question of the inspira- tion for the Legion, and into the evolution of its policies up to the time of the Armistice, required the availability of new sources that had not been tailored to fit postures of defense or attack, praise or contumely. Recently such materials became available. They permit some penetra- tion in depth concerning the actual origins of the Legion. These mate- rials also illuminate several debatable episodes in the Legion's life during the war months. They bring into relief the interaction of the Army and Disque with other agencies and officers of the national gov- ernment, with local officials in the West, and with private persons affiliated with labor unions and lumber corporations. For the first time since the 1918 Armistice the historian is freed from the printed accounts of partisans. The manuscript records kept by J. A. B. Scherer of his activities as a field representative of the Council of National Defense permitted filling in many missing links that existed among the Council, the War Depart- ment, other federal agencies, and the authorities of several states. 12 The 11 Nichols, Legion, 60; "rhinoceros" quotation in Hearings, II, 1229. Postwar con- gressional critics hammered at the theme of Disque's inexperience; see Expenditures in the War Department — Aviation, House Report 637, Part I, 66 Cong., 2 sess. It is the majority statement of the three-man subcommittee on aviation (see note 10 above). The minority report is Part II of the same title. See also Jensen, op. cit., 129-30. 12 Owned by and used with the permission of Richard Schwarzman; cited hereafter as Scherer Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE V rich manuscript collections at the University of Washington Library offered the papers of Henry Suzzallo, head of that state's council of defense, as well as letters of leading figures in the lumber industry and in the Legion. 13 Among heretofore unexploited sources, the mountains of documents in various record group divisions at the National Archives provided the detailed memoranda that illuminate the Legion's activi- ties. 14 And last and most important, Disque's own papers, added to these others and used in combination with contemporary commentaries and with earlier published researches into the Legion, provide a viewpoint that investigators have thus far ignored. 15 That viewpoint offers insight into the Army's purposes in sponsoring the Legion. Perhaps now it may become clearer what soldiers and their associates saw in the northwestern lumber situation, and why certain high Army officers came to accept the need for the Legion as the sole practical remedy for that industry's labor ills. Because these new sources center primarily on the Legion's war years, this account will close when, soon after the Armistice, the Army ended its extraordinary affiliation with the Loyal Legionnaires. 16 Dealing with the wartime scene seems enough of a task- Sources liberate, but they also limit. The new sources on the Legion's history center on the Army's view of events and flow naturally in a chronological rhythm because the men who authored the letters, re- ports, and memoranda that comprise these collections set down their thoughts in the full tide of time. The Legion's officials sometimes, nay often, made decisions that grew out of events of mere hours earlier, and rarely with time to reflect on topical interrelationships. Reworking these sources into more smoothly flowing, topical arrangements might have resulted in a neater organizational pattern for this study. I think, however, that an element essential to the spirit of truthful re-creation would then have been lost. This element is the sheer planlessness that attended the Legion's conception, birth, and youthful months. The Legion was the Army's Topsy. 13 The Suzzallo Papers will be referred to by that designation; other manuscripts at the Library of the University of Washington will be specified as at UW. 14 Because of the frequent retitling of the collections at the National Archives, materials found there will be referred to by the permanent designations: by Record Group (RG) number and NA for the Archives. 15 Owned by and used with the permission of Mrs. Florence Disque; cited hereafter as Disque Papers. 10 Soon after the Army broke away from the Legion in 1919, the latter became a company union, or rather a coalition of company unions, in the lumber industry. It endured in this form into the 1930's. See Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 (Boston, 1960), 344. 10 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Only total war made necessary or possible the Army's intervention in labor relations, as a government agency with peculiar and urgent needs and authority. World War I ended forever the "haphazard years" of separation between battlefront and homefront. Areas of activity that had heretofore been left to private agencies, or at most to local governments, for solution were assumed quite casually to touch on the military's concerns. Industrial readiness for immense expansion, the adequacy of materials and stockpiles, and the dedication of the labor force in building machines for war impinged on considerations of tactics and strategy and finally on the highest-level diplomacy. 17 In 1917 and 1918 the soldier's world and the civilian's world inter- mixed in numerous ways. Apart from conscription, no other wartime effort by the Army so involved the military with civilians as did the Loyal Legion. In its activities as in no other agency the interstices of the federal system were exploited as opportunities for the exercise of effective power, rather than considered to be limits beyond which power could not travel. Charles Evans Hughes, after conducting a careful examination into the wartime airplane production program, remarked that "in connection with the war we have largely obliterated State lines. The officers of our States and municipalities have been acting as Federal agents, and the Federal authority to direct local enterprise, to an extent hitherto unanticipated, has virtually been unquestioned." 18 Not only were these developments unquestioned during World War I; they have remained almost unexamined since then. But the strains of a second global conflict and the cold war suggest that we must learn all we can about the ability of our democracy to function when it is caught up in such stresses. Exacerbating problems of our day — internal security procedures, individuals' civil rights, the political force of labor unions and of employers' associations, the pattern of dynamic federal- ism, and the question of civil-military relationships — were part of the daily business of the Loyal Legion. M Insight derives from hindsight. The Loyal Legion deserves attention, and benefiting from the availability of revealing new sources, it can now receive the attention, if not the adequacy of description or inter- pretation, that it deserves. The Legion deserves attention for still another reason. If, as sug- 17 George C. Reinhardt and William R. Kintner, The Haphazard Years: How America Has Gone to War (Garden City, N.Y., 1960), 15-117. 18 Hughes, "Some Reflections on Conditions after the War," address at Columbia University, Nov. 30, 1918, Hughes Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. 19 Comment on these themes is offered in Scheiber, op. cit.; Louis Smith, American Democracy and Military Power (Chicago, 1951); and Edward S. Corwin, The Consti- tution and the Common Defense (New York, 1947). SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 1 gested earlier, it was the Army's Topsy, the military institution as a whole experienced strange and unanticipated developments during the 1917-1918 months. World War I tested the Army's capacity to rise above the Indian-control function it had performed since Appomattox and to surpass the romantic inefficiencies of the Spanish war and the humiliating incapacities of the expedition after Villa. Few Americans expected the Army to raise itself by its internal human resources. A "Tommy Atkins" attitude governed the civilian's view of the profes- sional soldiery. Military careerists were assumed to be limited men, incapable of coping with the harshness of the "outside" world. There- fore, civilians must rule the homefront, even the Army's preparatory operations. The soldier's business was in France. Except for the condescension toward himself that attended this as- sumption, the professional officer of 1917 might have agreed with it. As always, combat was the ultimate test of his craft. Scorn for civilian pursuits was a tradition of his profession. The peacetime soldier, in a period that minimized the utility of his calling, might well be expected to display the narrowness that civilians attributed to him. Probably the Wilsonian crusade for democracy must have seemed too tarred with amateurism to attract the professional officer to willing participation in homefront assignments. Indeed, it is true that a fetish of amateurism and an assumption, reminiscent of Jacksonian concepts, that any man could fill any slot, however specialized, pervaded official Washington. It seemed even to the President, who after all had professional training in historical method, that "this is an unprecedented war." Logically enough, he came to the derivative judgment that "it is a war in one sense for ama- teurs." Mere experience could count for little in the light of the size of the armies locked in combat, the ferocious weapons employed, and the issues at stake. President Wilson concluded, therefore, that amateurs would best coordinate and control the manifold strands of activity that American participation in the war involved. Nearly every frontier of inquiry, Wilson mused during a rare moment of relaxation, "is pushed forward by men who do not belong to it and who know nothing about it, be- cause they ask the ignorant questions which it would not occur to the professional man to ask at all; he supposes they have been answered, whereas it may be that most of them had not been answered at all. The naivete of the [amateur] point of view, the whole approach of the mind that has had nothing to do with the question, creates an entirely differ- ent atmosphere." 12 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE In this "different" wartime environment, dominated by the convic- tion expressed by the President that "nobody has ever before fought a war like this," Wilson recruited a war administration of civilians, hurriedly assembled from varied callings of American life, but espe- cially veterans of corporate enterprise. A swiftly growing, constantly changing bureaucracy grew into a veritable "army of the Potomac." Four dozen smaller versions came into being in state capitals, and thousands of local units completed the staggeringly complex pattern of a federal democracy at war. 20 Many Army officers found themselves in 1917 in strange homefront assignments far removed from the Western Front and in situations unanticipated by West Point or by the in-service training schools. Neither field soldiers nor War Department bureau personnel were pre- pared for the supply, security, and production functions that claimed such an unprecedented proportion of the Army's energy. In many in- stances, the Army's swelling wartime needs were met satisfactorily only because civilian "amateurs" in large numbers, whether remaining in mufti or temporarily donning officer's garb, filled positions that Army professionals could not cope with. Civilian domination in homefront policy matters was the rule in the bureaucracy that puffed so swiftly into being. New agencies intermixed soldierly and civilian concerns. Though uniformed personnel frequently formed part of this enlarging structure, their voices were muted in deference to the prestigious civilian volunteers who headed the mani- fold war agencies and who, as temporary officers, even invaded the War Department. Whether in mufti or in new uniforms, civilians set the pace in questions of industrial production, agricultural and mining output, and manpower allocation. Inescapably, the Army became involved in civilian matters. On April 6, 1917, a War Department spokesman wrote, the Army "had no labor problem recognizable as such." By the time of the Armistice, the same reporter accurately noted that the War Department "was a dominant factor in the industrial and labor situation in the country." 21 20 Wilson quotations are in Lindsay Rogers, "Civilian Control of Military Policy," Foreign Affairs, XVII (Jan. 1940), 291; and see T. Harry Williams, Americans at War: The Development of the American Military System (Baton Rouge, 1960), 116. Many things undertaken during World War I only seemed unprecedented. The Civil War experience, as one example, offered lessons in the connections between battlefields and factories and between labor supply and the flow of war supplies to the fighting fronts. This history was not known in 1917, however, and men sought their brave new world with little awareness that they had a past to build on as well as a future to win. 21 U.S. War Department, A Report of the Activities of the War Department in the Field of Industrial Relations during the War (Washington, 1919), 7. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 13 By no means all officers welcomed this untraditional reshuffling in their responsibilities, or were easy under the patronizing oversight of the civilian war lords of Washington. War, if too terrible to be left to generals, was not rendered more rational under civilian management. At least this was a discernible reaction among some bestarred officers. 22 Most Army officers, though they grumbled at being denied assign- ments to combat duty, accepted what they could not avoid, and con- tributed unstintingly to the homefront effort. However lacking in training or experience in industrial matters, many officers were not, of course, proportionately deficient in talent or adaptability. To be sure, the Army stamp was on them. When, as in the instance of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, the Army did move bravely into a totally new and traditionally civilian frontier, it advanced in martial manner, with all the inherent capacities and limitations of the soldier's way. Nonetheless, in the Army's Loyal Legion the soldiers brought to northwestern labor relations the fresh, amateur outlook that Wilson so properly valued. Though traditionally depicted as a corps of insensitive Colonel Blimps, hidebound to obsolete and useless forms, a segment of the Army leadership proved more capable than its civilian counterpart in 1917 and, in partnership with civilians, was able to transcend a fruitless past and open new paths leading to a temporary solution of rancorous labor-management difficulties. As was true in all facets of the homefront organization, the Army did not, could not, function without civilian participation. The hybrid civilian-military form that the Legion assumed reflects this inescapable fact of wartime American life. At the same time, the martial character- istics that the Army imposed on the Legion derive from the equally inescapable fact that soldiers were the real parents of the Legion, how- ever assisted by civilian midwives, and that the Legion fulfilled the Army's primary goals as well as those of civilians. Because of its military heritage, the Legion was more than an intervention into labor relations on the part of the national government that took on a special, military form. Rather it was the professional Army's defensive outreaching against a "civilian" situation that career soldiers distrusted and feared might affect adversely the strategical plans of the combat units overseas. The Army's Legion was not, however, the result of deliberate, academic estimations conducted in a sober committee room of the War Depart- ment. It was instead a reflexive, unplanned, and opportunistic creation. 22 Major General James G. Harbord, Leaves from a War Diary (New York, 1925), 3-4. 14 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE The mere fact of the Legion's existence gives rise to wonder that the Army should have dared to enter the labor relations arena at all, which even the universities of 1917 had by and large left unstudied. Once it was entered, the Army's Legion, even more remarkably, proved success- ful where lumber entrepreneurs and labor union organizers had failed for years to find a formula for industrial peace. Yet only a few Army professionals of 1917, who had served as occupation administrators on islands conquered from the Spanish in 1898, had experience in labor concerns. Even this slim cadre had no history of dealing with labor unions in terms of apparent institutional equality. As with unions, Army careerists had little prewar experience in working with the cap- tains of industry. By the end of 1917 interaction on a large scale was common, and it reached a high mark in the Legion. Shouldering the enhanced and novel responsibilities that came with America's entrance into the war, professional Army officers assigned to homefront functions like the Legion helped immeasurably to outfit Pershing's AEF as an effective combat arm. Whatever the defects of the career officer corps, it con- tained enough men with insight and courage to launch the Army into trackless paths. One of these roads led to the formation and direction of the Loyal Legion. In a very real sense, this road could have existed only in 1917. The Legion idea was intimately attuned to the Progressive spirit so dominant in the age of Wilson. This observation is quite opposite to the ready responses to the history of the Legion that occur almost instinctively out of the antimilitaristic tradition of America. These responses derive apparently from the assumption that the military is ever alert to oppor- tunities for expanding its functions and for intruding its powers into civilian concerns. And, so far as the Legion is concerned, these responses and this assumption have resulted in a kind of grudging admission that it achieved some useful results, but only because the Army's purposes and personnel were superseded by civilian goals and volunteers. 23 This appealing prejudgment concerning civilian superiority in the Legion is part of the general American assumption of civilian superiority to the soldier. It may be a proper and deserved attitude. The fact remains, however, that the Army's professionals refused to be permanently overwhelmed in 1917 (or in previous wars for that matter) by the flood of volunteers -' 3 See, for example, Dorothy O. Johansen and Charles M. Gates, Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest (New York, 1957), 474. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 15 who, maintaining the higher inventiveness of civilian pursuits when they donned Sam Browne belts, applied the loftier standards of the commercial world to the moribund bureaucrats and atrophied cavalry- men of the War Department. Leadership in the AEF, in staff positions in France and on the homefront, and in the War Department did not stay with the eager amateurs, but by November 1918 again adhered to the Army careerists. 24 Perhaps this process reflects the mere operation of clan spirit among the West Pointers, leading them to choose among fellow alumni of the military academy when command posts fell vacant. On the other hand, the percolation of the professional soldiers to the top in combat units, and in homefront Army functions as well, may arguably demonstrate the availability of the regular and his greater sensitivity to the Army's needs. In the instance of the Legion at least, his readiness to venture where the Army's interests led strengthened the total war effort. The regular was ready in 1917 to follow the unplotted pathway to the Legion because he was, unsuspected by himself and by Americans at large, in harmony with Progressivism. In 1917 the Army had a cadre of regular officers of middle rank who had grown to maturity during the rise of Progressivism in politics. Remaining in most instances apolitical themselves, these officers ab- sorbed, accepted, and applied Progressive assumptions in their wartime work. When some were assigned to homefront tasks involving labor relations and dealings with manufacturers, they brought to these billets the pragmatic attitude that was the hallmark of Progressivism. Prewar Progressives had propounded a question that is still before us. They asked if a political democracy, structured in a complex federal system of overlapping jurisdictions between the nation's and the states' governments, and based on a capitalist economy, can adapt to the rigors of modern times. Their reply, with the exception of a few pessi- mists like Henry and Brooks Adams, had been overwhelmingly affir- mative. Of course, men like Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root did not deal, as we do now, in terms of world or even national survival. They cared little for the now-burning issue of the enlargement of civil liberties. The Progressive test, seemingly adequate for its day, was the adaptability of society to changing social needs. To meet this test, Progressives argued that governments on all levels of the federal system must take on new roles and functions in order to rationalize the desir- able competitive struggle that capitalism inspired. By lessening the strains of that struggle, government would help to insure the survival 24 Williams, op. cit., 119-21. 16 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of political democracy and economic capitalism against the socialist criticism that was gaining currency in Europe and at home. Progressivism was never an organization or a political party. It was an attitude most prevalent among men of the middle class, who joined in the prewar crusade to translate that attitude into statutory practice in a dozen different fields. 25 Except that it has not been remarked, it seems unremarkable that military professionals should have shared in the Progressive's creed, and that the influx of volunteer officers into the Army in 1917 vastly increased the numbers of men in uniform who looked at their responsi- bilities as opportunities for progressive solutions. "I want progressive officers ... in command," President Theodore Roosevelt had stated years before in connection with subduing the Filipino insurgents. 28 So did Wilson, and both Presidents could get them. Therefore, Army personnel involved in the new kinds of duties that World War I prescribed were able effectively to work with the huge, intricate, civilian bureaucracy that sprang up along the Potomac. Mil- itary officers, benefiting from the spirit of cooperation attending the patriotic upsurge that came with the war, could function alongside politicians, labor union leaders, industrialists, financiers, and the intel- lectuals who in one way or another affected the Army's responsibilities. Of course, no one in the Army or in the War Department set out in 1917 to try to settle the timber strike or to increase spruce production by applying in practice a catalog of Progressive remedies. The Army stepped into the Northwest's labor picture because no other agency on any level of government seemed to be arriving at a solution quickly enough. In order to achieve the soldier's goal of increased timber pro- duction, the Army's Loyal Legion brought a kind of Progressivism in khaki to the tall timberlands of the Pacific Coast. What follows is the story of the Legion told from the soldier's view. It is an approach to the 4Ls, and to the question of why the Army ven- tured into the unplumbed depths of labor strife, that has not previously been possible owing to lack of insightful evidence. Now the approach is opened, and this account may proceed to the history of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. 25 George E. Mowry, The Progressive Movement, 1900-1920: Recent Ideas and New Literature (Washington, 1958), surveys extant scholarship, and see especially his The California Progressives (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951); Samuel P. Hays, Progres- sivism and the Gospel of Efficiency (Cambridge, 1959); Arthur Link, "What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920's?" American Historical Review, LXIV (July 1959), 833-51; Harold V. Faulkner, The Decline of Laissez Faire, 1897-1917 (New York, 1951); Sidney Fine, Laissez Faire and the General Welfare State: A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865-1901 (Ann Arbor, 1956). 26 Palmer, Baker, I, 162. Chapter i The Soldiers' View "Incredible as it may now seem," Louis B. Wehle recalled of April 6, 1917, "Washington was not even ready to prepare for war." For three years the determinedly neutral and politically astute President had held men, measures, and most federal agencies to a mark-time rhythm. This slow pace accurately reflected the deep divisions among Americans concerning the merits of the European combatants and causes. Now indecision ended. Disunity appeared to evaporate. Enthusiasm replaced angry debate. As Wehle remembered the capital scene, "the released national energy, seeking organization, made Washington a maelstrom." 1 No wonder there was confusion. Organization for war, in a govern- ment dedicated to a search for peace, was inadequate where it existed at all. For example, among the government agencies with obvious wartime responsibilities, the Justice Department was already overstrained with antitrust prosecutions and other peacetime matters. It had no internal resiliency adequate to assume novel internal security functions. 2 The Navy, to be sure, was readier in April 1917 than any other government branch to snap to a war footing. For a variety of reasons it had escaped the worst effects of the mortmain that blighted the Army during the years of neutrality. But in certain grave respects the sailors were no better prepared to cope with suddenly enlarged responsibilities than the rest of the Wilson administration. There was a seagoing navy, but it lacked the shore facilities capable of transforming it quickly into a grand armada or an effective convoying force. Above all, the Navy in April 1917 was not backed up by an industrial, productive apparatus that could swiftly build the profusion of war vessels and cargo ships that all at once were needed. But the Navy did have a tradition of famil- iarity with technical, production, and labor problems, though of course on a small scale. In the Navy Department's bureau structure, however hidebound by traditional forms, there was some understanding of what modern war involved. 1 Wehle, Hidden Threads of History (New York, 1953), 3. 2 Harold Hyman, To Try Men's Souls (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), 267-73. Joan M. Jensen, The American Protective League (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1962), ch. 1, vividly details the unreadiness of the Justice Department. 17 18 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ! Not so the Army and the War Department, which were almost ludi- crously unready for war. The Army's recent performance in Mexico seemed to mark it as a force incapable of inflicting wounds and un- worthy of respect in European terms. The internal organization of the Department had not altered since the general staff renovations of the turn of the century, and the fourteen semiautonomous bureau chieftains were little disposed to reform themselves because of the war declaration. From April 1917 to January 1918, the War Department apparatus expanded twentyfold in size but not in inventiveness or in improved allocation of responsibilities. The Secretary of War, affable Newton D. Baker, was vastly overshadowed by Wilson and lacked the ruthlessness and endless energy of his Civil War predecessor in that office, who, faced with an even more moribund Department structure and a greater emergency, grasped the reins of administrative leadership and never let go. Baker failed even to discern the existence of the harness. Taken together, Baker's shy lack of outreaching, Wilson's three-year-long an- tipathy to increasing military readiness, and the limited visions of the Department's bureau chiefs combined to justify Wehle's grim judgment that in 1917 "the War Department was wholly unprepared for its vast responsibilities. For the most part it had no plans, even tentative, for the vast volume of training-camp, warehouse, and other construction, and of munitions and supplies production, that were now its imperative task." 3 However much the pitiable state of the uniformed bureaucrats dis- couraged Wehle and other volunteers who flocked to Washington to offer their services to the government, the common expectation was that the new blood inpouring from civil life would quickly put things right. Indeed, Congress had already shown the way. Back in August 1916, the legislators had attempted to provide a measure of leadership for "defense" planning, because of Wilson's obvious reluctance publicly to perform this function, whatever his private and more bellicose feelings. The Congress had authorized the six Cabinet officers, excepting the Attorney General, to form a Council of National Defense, with the War Secretary as chairman. It in turn appointed an advisory council, directed by Walter S. Gifford and composed of civilian experts drawn from industrial and communications enterprises and organized labor. 3 Wehle, op. cit., 4; on the Navy, see Alfred B. Rollins, Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (New York, 1962), chs. 13 and 14. The latest study of Baker is C. H. Cramer, Newton D. Baker: A Biography (Cleveland and New York, 1961). Other data in Benedict Crowell and Rohert Forrest Wilson, How America Went to War (New Haven, 1921), IV, 1-4; Hyman and Benjamin P. Thomas, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War (New York, 1962). SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 19 Along with staff personnel of the Army and Navy, these men filled some of the gap left by the regular government agencies in planning how raw materials, manpower, and production facilities might, if war came, be blended most efficiently and swiftly. 4 However, though pres- tigious in a time that revered the captain of industry, the unsalaried volunteer councilmen enjoyed neither coercive powers in law nor large influence among the uniformed officialdom of the War Department. During the first weeks in 1917, the councilmen prepared various specialized committee studies. A General Munitions Board, for ex- ample, under Cleveland industrialist Frank A. Scott's direction, tried to coordinate standards of Army and Navy projectile needs, and sur- veyed the munitions production potential of American factories. Other subgroups dealt with price-fixing, taxation, gun specifications, steel supply, fuel, shipping, consumer goods, and, with Samuel Gompers' addition to the advisory council, labor matters. Throughout, these committeemen invited the War and Navy Departments to assign staff officers to participate in all matters, but cooperation was not won this easily. 5 Many Army and Navy officers were resentful and jealous of the civil- ian committeemen, who, it must be said, were at times less than tactful in lecturing uniformed personnel on improved ways of performing military duties. For this reason, and because the Council was so recently established, liaison between the civilian councilmen and the bestarred staff men was far from complete when war was declared. This essential lack of accord was most evident in two areas of the Council's activity, which the armed services initially set out to deal with independently. The first was the immense problem of building the cantonment cities to house millions of recruits and draftees while they trained to become an army, navy, and aviation corps. The thousands of buildings that were needed would obviously be constructed of com- mon grades of softwood lumber, which existed in abundant supply. To prevent gouging overpricings to the government, the Defense Council organized a lumber subcommittee, whose members proceeded to fix prices and to allocate quotas, though of course without statutory right to do so. Meanwhile, however, the War Department's staff responsible for buildings construction put its hand to the helm. It proved to be a shaky grasp. No plan existed at the War Department 4 Wehle, op. cit., 5-7, judges that the mere existence of the Council "had done something toward offsetting the Government's unreadiness." See also Margaret L. Coit, Mr. Baruch (Boston, 1957), 154. 5 Bernard Baruch, American Industry in the War (New York, 1941), 17-21; Herbert Heaton, A Scholar in Action: Edwin F. Gay (Cambridge, 1952), 98-136. 20 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE for initiating or standardizing the immense barracks projects. Army officers, accustomed to leisurely peacetime building routines and fixed price contracts, floundered helplessly in a wartime environment wherein such methods were increasingly out of tune with inflationary conditions of materials and labor shortages. During the first weeks of the war, strikes by cantonment workers and slowdowns by dilatory contractors cramped the progress of the vital barracks projects. The Secretary of Labor, William B. Wilson, put forth no useful approaches to solutions that anyone cared to accept. Neither did the Army. Finally, five weeks after the war declaration, Colonel I. W. Littell of the Army's construction division admitted defeat to the civilians of the Defense Council. On the advice of Wehle and other lumber committee- men, the Army plunged ahead with an unauthorized use of cost-plus contracts for barracks contractors, rather than the traditional lump-sum method. Although weeks passed before Congress retroactively approved these contracts and appropriated funds to cover them, meanwhile the soldier-cities were springing up across the nation. 6 With generous rewards for their efforts assured, and with an unend- ing stream of woodstuffs flowing in from convenient southeastern for- ests, the contractors were satisfied. To be sure, they were faced with labor difficulties. Rises in the cost of living inspired workers employed on the cantonment projects to strike for proportionate increases in wages. In some instances, walkouts were also directed to gaining recog- nition for craft unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Here Gompers played a crucial role. To be sure, he knew that the President and Secretary Baker were determined to avoid antagonizing America's businessmen by insisting on recognition of the AFL's locals. At the same time Wilson was dead set against compulsory government arbitration. Above all, Gompers agreed, work on the cantonments must go forward unimpeded by persistent strikes. With the last point fore- most in his thinking, Gompers on April 7 had the Council of National Defense "order" employers and workers to honor existing labor arrange- ments. Two months later, on June 19, Gompers and Baker signed an agreement approving what amounted to a most un-unionlike open shop on cantonment projects, but with union standards of wages, hours, and working conditions obtaining. Along with these diplomatic terms, the agreement authorized the creation of a Cantonments Adjustment Commission, composed of an Army representative chosen by Baker, a labor member chosen by Gompers, and a public delegate. Within a Wehle, op. cit., 10-17; Baruch, op. cit., 224-27; Palmer, Baker, I, 237. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 21 few weeks the Navy added its approval to this informal arrangement, with Assistant Navy Secretary F. D. Roosevelt serving as that service's delegate. Baker appointed young Walter Lippmann as the public mem- ber, primarily because of his impressive personality and endless con- nections among journalists rather than for his labor experience or knowledge. Retired General Ernest Garlington took up the Army's banner on the Commission. Gompers chose John Alpine, president of the plumbers' and steamfitters' international of the AFL, as labor's champion. Wehle served the Commission as counsel. There were to be many alterations in the Commission's form and personnel during the subsequent year and a half. The basic pattern, however, leading to acquiescence in wage raises and no-strike agree- ments between labor and management, but without union recognition, was set early for the trades involved in barracks construction, and later in shipbuilding, stevedoring, leatherworking, and railroad activities. This harmonious development was unhampered by the question of adequate supplies of raw materials or by the need to create an entirely new production industry. Solutions could be worked out on relatively traditional levels, however novel might be the intervention of such an ad hoc creature as the Cantonments Adjustment Commission. Of course, some AFL leaders resented Gompers' open-shop "sellout." The government took a high hand here, but it remained officially unin- volved. The whole was permeated by the spirit of Gompers' "solemn owlish wink" to Wehle, as the masquerade of government intervention yet nominal abstention was carried on through the first months of America's war effort. 7 Military aviation was the second area of activity in which the Army sought unsuccessfully to follow a course independent of civilian inter- ference. It was no more able to do so than had been true of the canton- ments question. So far as airpower was concerned, the Army's readiness for combat operations in April 1917 was nil, and the War Department's internal organization to cope with this deficiency was scarcely more satisfactory. Since mid-1914, an Aviation Section had existed in the Signal Corps. But it barely existed. The swiftly developing strategical employment 7 Wehle, op. cit., 10-50, and p. 41 for the wink. Marc Karson, American Labor Unions and Politics, 1900-1918 (Carbondale, 111., 1958), 96-98, takes a dim view of Gompers* willingness to abide by an open-shop agreement, as does Maxwell Raddock, Portrait of an American Labor Leader: William L. Hutcheson (New York, 1955), 88-89. Note that Secretary of Labor Wilson, whose infant department lacked prestige, was not part of this apparatus. He was deliberately short-circuited, with the Presi- dent's implicit approval. 22 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of warplanes by the contending European powers left the neophyte American air planners confused as to the proper specifications and appropriate purposes for this neutral country's craft. Inadequate con- gressional appropriations for research and production starved the in- fant airframe and engine industries. In this context, then Lieutenant Colonel George O. Squier took com- mand of the Signal Corps' Aviation Section early in 1916. He was an engineer officer, university-educated, and he hoped to apply rational methods to aircraft procurement. But he was frustrated by lack of information. The Mexican campaign against Villa, however distressing with respect to the performance of existing American warcraft, was too limited in scope to permit extrapolation of data so as to improve future units very much. Aircraft producers operated only on a tiny scale. At the same time, none of the European combatants was willing to offer American observers useful data on the standards of their respec- tive warplane operations. When the United States entered the war, only five American aviation officers were in Europe, and only one was actu- ally in a combat area where he could observe practical performance at first hand. There was little improvement during the ensuing months. Entirely apart from and often at odds with the Army's Signal Corps, the con- gressionally created National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as well as a subsequent Joint Army-Navy Technical Board, pondered merely detail matters. Indeed, it seems clear that, as with cantonment problems, during the first hectic weeks after the war declaration, Army leadership involved in aircraft procurement abdicated policy-making decisions to Allied officers and to American civilians. Ten days after the United States went to war, the Chief Signal Officer pleaded for Allied military missions to come to this country to afford instruction on how to build an air force. At the same time, however, this same officer was taking no steps at all to come to grips with other difficulties that were threatening the success of any airframe production program that might be worked out. Neither was anyone else. 8 Unlike the pattern set in the cantonments construction program, no one in the War Department or in the Council of National Defense took cognizance of labor difficulties that might impede the supply of the basic raw materials peculiar to airframe construction. Instead, the in- 8 1. B. Holley, Jr., Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapon by the United States during World War I; A Study in the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapons (New Haven, 1953), 30-42,50,66-67. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 23 dustrialists, businessmen, and other volunteers who staffed the war- emergency bureaus ignored this matter, perhaps in expectation that its solution would follow as simply as had been the case with the barracks builders. For their part, the staff officers of the Army and the War Department were even less ready than the civilians to exhibit sensitivity to such arcane subjects as labor relations in the aircraft industry. But in aviation as with the cantonments question, the civilians seemed to be bent on usurping all control from the Army galaxy. Signal Corps officers, already disgruntled by the autonomous oper- ations of the NACA, were further exacerbated in May 1917 when the untraditional Council of National Defense organized a completely un- official Aircraft Production Board under the direction of energetic auto- mobile manufacturer Howard E. Coffin. The Board was to coordinate interservice ordering of aircraft components and to prevent impedi- ments to production of airframes and engines. Of course, no factories yet existed to produce either; no plans were at hand to set specifications; and no personnel were assembled, much less trained, to run the factories or to maintain and fly the as-yet mythical aircraft. 9 Further, the Board, like the Signal Corps, remained insensitive to the labor question which other men had discerned as the first hurdle to the creation of an effective American air arm. These more perceptive observers were a small group of professional field soldiers centering on General John J. Pershing and his staff, who were nervously waiting to depart for France with the first units of the American Expeditionary Force. Pershing, along with other high American officers, had mixed re- actions to the mushrooming civilian bureaucracy which was taking over the running of the war. He admitted that this expansion was probably necessary, but he resented the casual, patronizing manner of the civil- ians toward career soldiers. At the same time, however, Pershing was an old field officer who had little respect for the staff personnel at the War Department. The hectic and unsystematic seat of government, he was secretly convinced, could not become an orderly and effective seat of war in time for America to strike a full blow. Distrusting the capacity of stay-at-home civilians and desk soldiers to forestall a problem that might later restrict the overseas operations, Pershing decided to take a discreet hand in a matter that especially worried him. 10 Pershing's attitude is best mirrored in the comment of his newly 9 Ibid., 67; Disque's memorandum of conversation with General John J. Pershing, undated, ca. May 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers. 10 Disque's memorandum, ibid. 24 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE chosen chief of staff, an old friend who was close to affairs, General James G. Harbord. Harbord glumly noted that Pershing was soon to go off to make the world safe for democracy, and worried that "mean- time, with the labor unions rampant, . . . with . . . scores of ambitious patriotic societies 'milling around' as Howard Coffin stated it; with War Department bureau chiefs regaling dinner guests with secrets supposed to be sacred; with the Pershing party hiding its heads around the capital for two weeks, . . . and looking mysterious when Europe was mentioned; with the clever staff departments shipping its supplies to the White Star pier in New York to lie there for hours with 'General Pershing's HQ' stencilled in box car letters for the whole world to read — . . . one won- ders while we are making the world safe for Democracy, who is going to make Democracy safe for the world." 11 Even without homefront worries, Pershing rightly felt he had enough to do in preparing the first American overseas contingents. "The thought of the responsibilities that this high position carried depressed me for the moment," he later wrote of his elevation to the command of the American Expeditionary Force. It was "a theoretical army which had yet to be constituted, equipped, trained, and sent abroad." There were, however, some favorable auguries to balance the weight that had fallen so unexpectedly on his shoulders, and to lessen his worries over the inadequacy of the government's administrative preparedness. Pershing was encouraged by the realization that President Wilson and War Secretary Baker were determined not to interfere with him. For the first time in American history, a wartime military commander was to have what amounted to free rein in strategy matters. Baker was willing to take on the complexities involved in bringing the homefront to a war footing so that Pershing's requisitions for men and materials would be met quickly. The general, overcoming his initial pessimism, came to have "no doubt ... of my ability to do my part, provided the Government would furnish men, equipment, and supplies." But of course this was a large qualification in his thinking. 12 Proceeding to the creation of a staff to take overseas with him, Persh- ing surprised Washington habitues who expected that the "trade school" spirit would govern his choices. Instead, he favored non-West Pointers, especially cavalrymen who had served in the campaigns against the Filipino insurgents in which Pershing had won his first 11 Harbord, Leaves from a War Diary (New York, 1925), 3-4. 12 Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (New York, 1931), I, 17-18; Ernest R. May, The Ultimate Decision: The President as Commander in Chief (New York, 1960), 117, 131. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 25 important laurels. For example, he specified Harbord to head his staff. Harbord had enlisted as a private in 1899, then risen through the ranks until he was granted a field commission in the 10th Cavalry Regiment in the Philippines. Pershing had admired the younger man's combat record and the ingenuity he had evidenced in organizing a native con- stabulary. Now they worked effectively together on far larger tasks. As the day neared for their embarkation for France, Pershing and Harbord tried to spare some time to consider what homefront diffi- culties might adversely affect their plans for building up the AEF as a field army large enough to warrant its exposure on the Western Front. Office 223 at the War Department was the center for planning sessions involving multitudinous subjects, some of which Pershing feared con- cerned no one else in Washington. At one of these conferences, Pershing expressed to Harbord his grow- ing worry over reports of a strike in the Pacific Coast lumber industry. Even were there no work stoppage, a shortage of wood was feared by July because of increased war demands which southeastern pine sources alone could not satisfy. If the great cantonment cities that were being hurriedly planned and assembled were not ready to house conscriptees by September, inclement weather would halt training in some parts of the country for an unbearable four months. Then the mass armies that America had promised its Allies might never come into being in time. Extrapolating from this specific subject, Pershing confided to Har- bord his growing concern over the whole labor picture. He adverted to the threatened nationwide railroad workers' strike of only a few weeks earlier. Had it occurred, the strike would have tied up the major trans- portation system of the country on the eve of war. Secretary Baker had revealed to Pershing how narrowly the walkout had been averted. Only pressure from government officials and the assumption that the Supreme Court would, as it did, sustain the Adamson Act had pushed the rail- roads' managers to a reluctant consent for the eight-hour working day. Though the railroad strike was aborted, literally hundreds of other disruptions in industry and communications were under way or im- pending, including that in the lumber industry. 13 Pershing believed that ideological radicalism, spurred on by the Kaiser's agents, was at the root of most of these disputes. He admitted to Harbord that he had come to this conclusion from his observations 13 Harbord to Disque, May 4, 1917, Disque Papers; see also Palmer, Baker, I, 97-99, and Wilson v. New, 243 U.S. 332 (1917), on the case; for numbers of strikes, see Edson L. Whitney, comp., "Strikes and Lockouts in the United States, 1916, 1917, and 1918," Monthly Labor Review, VIII (June 1919), 313. 26 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of the labor unionists he had met in Mexico during his recent assign- ment there, rather than from a reasoned survey of the American indus- trial scene. The general was convinced that philosophical anarchism and syndicalism, which he lumped together as "socialism," dominated the Mexican labor organization. Their spirit, he feared, was infiltrating north of the border, especially on the west coast. Leagued with German spies, organized radicalism had been responsible, in Pershing's opinion, for the San Francisco Preparedness Day parade explosion nine months earlier and the subsequent tragedy at the Black Tom munitions works in New Jersey. The revelations of a German-Mexican connection in the Zimmerman telegram confirmed Pershing in these assumptions. He was certain that a veritable deluge of sabotage and strikes was imminent. 14 The members of the Industrial Workers of the World were the carriers of the radical plague from Mexico, Pershing believed. Nothing he had seen along the border promised that American soil could be immunized from this infection. Breeding unrest as they proceeded northward, the wobblies would create situations in the West that would require military force to suppress. Then great numbers of troops who might otherwise follow him to France would of necessity be held to patrolling the Rio Grande and protecting vital communications and production facilities everywhere in the country. This would prevent the assembling in France of enough American troops to function as a separate army and would thwart the fulfilling of America's promises to her allies. Pershing knew that the Army was unequipped to deal with a problem of this nature except as a sentry force, which was precisely what he wished to avoid. He correctly anticipated that civilian police authorities of the nation and of the affected states would try to cope with the wobbly menace. He pointed out to Harbord that the state of Washing- ton had recently enacted an antisyndicalism statute, and quoted approv- ingly an editorial from the Seattle Business Chronicle, a prominent champion of that law, which threatened that henceforth any workman "who practices sabotage . . . commits one of the most dastardly crimes on the calendar. His punishment should fit the offense." But Pershing wondered if it would. Washington's Governor Ernest Lister, expressing strong concern over the threat to civil liberties in- volved in the bill and asserting that it would not suppress discontent, had vetoed it, and its passage over the veto made Pershing doubt that " Disque's memorandum of conversation with Pershing, undated, ca. May 1917, Disqne Papers; see also Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmerman Telegram (Sew York, 1958). SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 27 the governor would enforce it adequately. The general admitted to Harbord that he did not trust "small politicians." 15 He trusted soldiers. Before he left for France, and that time was fast approaching, Pershing wanted the Army to have a representative at home aware of its interests in the west coast labor scene, and alert for opportunities to prevent the consequences to the Army that Pershing feared would follow any enlargement of wobbly influence. He had already spoken to Secretary Baker of his concern, he told Harbord. The War Secretary had no objection if Pershing wished to place an officer on what Harbord called "a watchdog assignment" over the labor situa- tion, with power merely to observe and to report to Harbord or to the Secretary the existence of danger, so that Pershing might base his plans on the judgments of a military man. Then Baker had suggested to Pershing that it might be best to keep such an assignment secret. If Pershing was known as the source of authority, the reform and labor press of the country would react angrily. The President, proud of the Clayton Act achievement, conscious of the support that organized labor had provided for his re-election, and anxious to retain every possible illusion of harmony now that the country was at war, might conceivably feel that Pershing should not receive his support. Would not such an outcome, if it occurred, lower Pershing's status among the heads of the Allied armies? It would be better, Pershing and Baker had agreed, if the Army acted unofficially in this matter. Meanwhile Baker would try, through tradi- tional agencies and by means of such new bureaus that might come into being, to forestall the need for the Army, as a police force, to intervene at all. 16 Thus it was agreed. Pershing now wanted Harbord to recommend an officer who was capable of carrying out a confidential assignment involving civilian rather than military matters, but who if exposed would have no official connection with the Army. ^Harbord to Disque, May 17, 1917, Disque Papers. The editorial Pershing quoted is in Business Chronicle, March 10, 1917. A general account of the theme is in Eldredge Foster Dowell, A History of Criminal Syndicalism Legislation in the United States (Baltimore, 1939). The governor's veto message is in West Coast Lumberman, XXXII (April 1, 1917), 41, with editorial comments. 16 Disque's undated memorandum on Harbord's oral explanation of this back- ground, in "Brice P. Disque: A Record," ms. autobiography, Disque Papers. The memorandum bears a notation in Disque's hand that after the war Pershing verified these facts. Palmer, Baker, I, 162, 180, 243, and 246, has brief allusions to these subjects, but none to the conference with Pershing. Note that the problem of adequate spruce supplies for warplanes as yet played little part in Pershing's thinking. On labor and Wilson, see Dallas Lee Jones, The Wilson Administration and Organized Labor (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 1953). 28 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE During the next few days Harbord had personnel files searched with- out success. There were few regular officers, not already assigned, who had any experience in labor matters and who seemed otherwise quali- fied by evidences of adaptability and discretion. He was about to admit to Pershing that the Army had no suitable man at hand. Then, while reviewing applications for active duty from resigned, retired, and re- serve officers, Harbord came across the folder of a man whom he and Pershing knew and respected. Brice P. Disque appeared to fit the requirements for this special mission. On inactive status since late in 1916 at his own request, Disque had been among the first to volunteer his services after the war declara- tion. The facts of Disque's life and Army career impressed Pershing and Harbord, who added their personal recollections of the man to the summary they reviewed. Disque, born in 1879 in Ohio, had grown up in Cincinnati where his father was a grade school teacher and then a principal. Young Disque announced an Army career as his goal when he was fourteen years old, and at sixteen he became a trumpeter in an Ohio National Guard artillery battery. Two years later, an Ohio congressman who had prom- ised him an appointment to West Point reneged. The following year, when the war with Spain was barely begun, Disque, forsaking his clerk's job and evening law school classes, enlisted as an infantry private in the United States Volunteers. When his regiment reached the Philippines at the end of 1899, he was a second lieutenant. Within a year he had participated in sixteen combat actions, and in one of them he, with twenty-three soldiers, cap- tured Aguinaldo's commander in Sorsogon Province, Colonel Emetrio Funes, along with thirty-three insurgent junior officers, twenty-three riflemen, and 113 "bolomen." Belying the small numbers of troops in- volved, Disque in this instance opened up southern Luzon to American pacification. As reward, Disque's superiors recommended him for the commission in the regular Army that he had requested. By the end of 1901, he had returned to the Philippines from the United States, where he had gone for induction as an officer of the 5th Cavalry Regiment. Now a proud second lieutenant of the regulars, he was determined as never before to make the Army his lifelong career. Inspecting officer Pershing in one instance, and Harbord in another, were struck by the performance of this talented, energetic, and obviously ambitious young officer. For him- SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 29 self, Disque noted in 1903 that "tough Captain Pershing was here, and put us through our paces. I bet he goes way up." 17 Returning to the United States later that year, Disque continued a slower climb up the ladder of the peacetime Army. He made an out- standing record at the Staff College, then volunteered for the infantry and engineering curricula as well, an unusual course for cavalry officers to follow. During the next dozen years a motley array of assignments came his way, including duty as instructor with Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan National Guard cavalry units. A fine horseman at a time when equestrian ability was highly re- garded in the Army, Disque also proved himself to be an effective teacher of the art. After he had directed field maneuvers of the Illinois Guard, the Detroit News Tribune commented: "His heart is in his work, and he is constantly striving for the efficiency of the militiamen under his charge. They made astounding progress, for Disque has a knack of instilling enthusiasm." 18 On transferring from a Michigan post, a local newspaperman asserted that he would be missed. "Equipped with a splendid physique and a fine personality he has been a student of military science to such good effect that few officers of his vears can equal him," the account ran, "and he has a rare gift of passing on his knowledge in a way to make it fascinating to the cavalrymen under his instructions." 19 His Army superiors continued to acknowledge the promise of this young officer. Colonel C. A. Hedekin, in assigning Disque to instruc- tional duty with the Michigan Guard, advised him that the unit he was to teach "is not in very good shape and the man who takes it will have hard work with perhaps more discouragement than success, in the first year or two. ... I would like to see you hold down the job." Two years later, Disque proudly recorded that this unit had won a national com- petition for efficiency. An officer of the Michigan citizen-soldiery ad- vised General Leonard Wood that Disque had been "the best instructor that it is possible to obtain." 30 Yet he was not so outstanding among his peers or blessed with in- 1T "Brice P. Disque: A Record," and memorandum dated Jan.-Feb., 1903, in Ledger volume III, Disque Papers. Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brother (New York, 1960), graphically depicts guerrilla warfare in the Philippines as Disque knew it. For the Army's views, see Hugh Lenox Scott, Some Memories of a Soldier (New York, 1928), 273-416. 18 June 16, 1912. 19 South Haven (Mich.) News, Dec. 6, 1912. 20 Hedekin to Disque, Nov. 13, 1912; Capt. E. W. Thompson to Wood, Dec. 6, 1912; Wood to Disque, May 16, 1917; and Disque's entry in Ledger volume VII, Disque Papers; on Disque's toughness as an instructor and inspector, see Hearings, II, 1846. 30 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE fluential champions in Congress as to warrant marked advancement. By the middle of 1914 Disque was a captain, married, and in his own words, "settled down" to a lifetime of military routine. Even the out- break of war in Europe seemed to matter little in the snug, ingrown j world of the peacetime Army. In the normal course of personnel rotation, Captain Disque in mid- j 1915 returned to the Philippines. Fighting had long since ended there, and Disque, always anxious to make his mark, seized the first oppor- tunity to shine. He noticed, as he wrote forty years later to John J. McCloy, that "very few regular officers ever displayed talents for con- struction work and direction of non-military projects." 21 With some training in those areas through his engineering schooling and quarter- master assignments in the Army, but more from self-confidence in his ability to master new data quickly and to obtain good results from subordinates, Disque volunteered for a responsibility no one else wanted. He took charge of an organization known as the Army Land Trans- port Corral, Canal, and Shops. Located in Manila, this moribund unit had grown up a decade earlier out of the difficulties the Army faced in supplying its scattered outposts and maintaining the workability of its harness, wagons, and other housekeeping equipment in the adverse climate of the islands. Replacement items from the United States were too slow in coming out and their cost cut too deeply into the limited budgets that Congress allowed. The Army had tried to substitute items of local manufacture and to arrange for its own repair work, but the results had not been satisfactory. Disque plunged into this unglamorous task. First installing a precise cost accounting system, he arranged for an increase in his work force by recruiting trusties from the city prison and short-timers from nearby military stockades. Disque instituted a bonus system for individual work efficiency when the Army Shops took on its first major contract under his management. It was for the repair of a much rebuilt sea-wall off Manila's quartermaster loading docks, which was in the habit of col- lapsing when typhoons whipped up heavy seas. Using waste materials garnered from the entire Manila area, Disque's gangs rebuilt the wall rather than trying to repair it, and it survived without needing further basic work until after World War II. Within six weeks after taking over the 100 workers employed in the shops, Disque commanded more than 2000 civilian laborers, and his enterprise gained quickly in reputation in Army circles. Wagons, gun 21 March 18, July 24, 1955, Disque Papers. if [IT ii id 11 Ml SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 3 1 carriages, harness, and tents were now repaired locally and promptly instead of being discarded or sent thousands of miles for reworking. The shops and canal transport he directed met schedules and kept costs down. Disque worked his force up to such a level of efficiency that it outran the Army's repair needs. Not wanting to let his now-skilled employees scatter, Disque received permission to contract out for civil- ian jobs. His were the only shops in the Manila region able to perform heavy foundry work, even on railroad locomotives, and by the end of the year Disque reported an actual profit to the Army from his oper- ations. They were soon to bring him unanticipated results." At this point in reviewing Disque's record, Pershing asked Harbord why he thought that Disque had proved himself capable of fulfilling the task they had in mind. The most relevant part of Disque's career was still to come, Harbord replied, and picked up the thread of the narrative. In mid-1916, friends Disque had made during his tour of duty with the Michigan National Guard recommended him for the wardenship of the state's reformatory at Jackson. Since the turn of the century, penological reformers had transformed the Jackson prison from an ordinary, costly, politics-ridden Victorian house of correction into a promising center of newer experiments in rehabilitation. Its 1500 in- mates made it the largest single prison in the nation. But the state legislature was losing its reformist zeal out of concern for costs. The incumbent warden, denied a requested raise in salary, had resigned. Seeking a successor, and learning of his industrial accomplishments in Manila, members of the prison's governing board nominated Disque. 23 The suggestion came to him at a time of self-doubt concerning his Army career, and while the humid island climate was adversely affect- ing his health. He was now in his late thirties and was conscious of the needs of his growing family. The financial rewards the Army offered were far from adequate. In addition, Disque's purposeful dedication to his work antagonized some of his colleagues, an effect that was prob- ably heightened by his seeming coldness of personality. He was there- fore attracted to the possibility of a civilian career. Later, Disque admitted: "At that time I did not understand civil life. ~ "Brice P. Disque: A Record," quoting from official reports on this work. In Earl May, "A Model for the New Deal," Forum, XCI (March 1934), 163, Disque's Manila experiment in industrial management, which involved him personally for less than a year, becomes "Many years of army life as director of an army factory [that] had developed a Disque code of human relations." 23 "Brice P. Disque: A Record," and Harbord to Disque, May 11, 1917, Disque Papers; on reform at Jackson, see Hearings, II, 1848. 32 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE I did not know the powerful forces that motivate bankers and business- men to do things, for reasons other than building character." The Michigan wardenship seemed to offer a transition between the military and civilian societies. As warden, he would enjoy authority not unlike that of an Army officer, a far higher salary than that of a captain, plus housing, servants, and transportation perquisites that promised to double his real income. Moreover, the possibility of continuing the improvements already under way at Jackson in the practice of remaking men, and of accomplishing this with greater efficiency, was the kind of challenge that Disque had always relished. 2 * In December 1916 he resigned from the Army, and with his family was installed at Jackson. His major efforts there were directed at in- creasing vocational education opportunities for the inmates, introduc- ing correspondence courses in academic subjects from the state univer- sity's extension service, and expanding the trusty and parole systems. At the same time he secured from the state legislature inclusion of the prison's employees and guards into the expanding civil-service structure that Progressive reformers in the state were creating. This obtained, Disque insisted upon higher educational levels for new guards he re- cruited as well as increased remuneration. The immediate results were satisfying. Turnover among the supervisory personnel decreased, and over-all conditions in the prison improved markedly. Disque was in an unusually fortunate position regarding the financ- ing of reforms. As warden, he was ex officio the manager of Michigan's State Industries, a chartered corporation that involved responsibility for running the prison's industries. This had heretofore been a trouble- some task, for businessmen's organizations, labor unions, and penolog- ical reformers had lobbied against the sale of the products of servile labor, so that under Disque's predecessor the prisoners had worked at tasks of little profit to themselves in the way of acquiring new skills, and at a heavy financial loss to the state. But by early 1917 the European war's demand for goods lessened the outcry against prison competition. Disque revived the industrial apparatus at Jackson, and under a rigid cost accounting system enlarged furniture, twine, brick, and tile manu- factories. A granite quarry and a canning and packing plant were added. The prison, when Disque arrived, had a forty-acre farm that produced a mixed lot of substandard truck incapable of supplying the inmates' tables. A year later this had grown to be a well-managed farm-factory 2t "Brice P. Disque: A Record." He also considered a place with Henry Ford; Hearings, II, 1844; and see Maj. F. Leadbetter to L. Levy, March 8, 1918, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 33 of more than 5000 acres, which supplied all the table needs of prisoners as well as staff and sent substantial amounts of high-quality produce to nearby urban market outlets. By the end of 1917 Disque's efforts had resulted in profits adequate to repay the state for the entire operating cost of the prison, plus $371,000 in clear profit."' Commenting on this achievement, the Battle Creek News marveled that without incurring political repercussions a mere Army captain had been able "to direct one of the greatest industrial institutions" and "the greatest sociological experiment in the state. " x Everything was "in apple-pie order" at Jackson, Michigan's governor declared, and the Jackson Citizen Press, a newspaper that had predicted failure for Disque because he would be a mere jackboot disciplinarian, concluded in apology that he had been an admirable warden in all respects. Disque, the writer declared, had won out because he refused "to enter into con- troversies when there is a greater work of remaking men."' 7 These judgments were occasioned by the general assumption in Michigan that with the American declaration of war against Germany Disque would re-enter the Army. And as has been noted, this had been his intention. On May 7, Disque received a telegram from Harbord, asking him to come to Washington, and he presumed that this meant a place in the AEF and the first step to France. He anticipated com- mand of a cavalry or infantry regiment, or perhaps a place on Pershing's staff, and expected resumption of his former rank of captain. Before leaving Jackson he readied his uniforms. Then, meeting with Harbord on May 8 in Room 223 at the War Department, he learned that some- thing far different was wanted of him. At first Disque refused to accept an assignment that would keep him in civilian status for an indeterminate period, a mere observer over developments involving an industry and region of which he knew nothing. 28 Harbord then brought Disque to Pershing. The AEF com- 25 Disque's critics in 1919 alleged that his tenure at Jackson was attended by serious financial irregularities and that in any case he had merely continued reforms begun by his predecessor; see Hearings, I, 585-88, 597, 752-53. All other evidence contradicts these charges; see Michigan Senate Journal (1919), 896, and reports of state investi- gating committees and of the prison Board of Governors in "Brice P. Disque: A Record." 20 April 4, 1917. ^Governor Sleeper in Detroit Patriot, Sept. 17, 1917; Citizen Press, Sept. 26, 1917. 28 Details in "Brice P. Disque: A Record." Samuel Clay, "The Man Who Heads the 'Spruce Drive,'" Review of Reviews, LVII (June 1918), 633, errs in stating that in April the War Department made Disque a lieutenant colonel; see also Hearings, II, 1846. Nichols, Legion, 58-60, misinterprets the time sequence and the significance of Disque's work at Jackson and his retention of civilian status between April and August 1917. 34 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE mander told Disque his views regarding the menace that radicalism in the labor movement held to American military success. Disque replied that he agreed with Pershing in his antipathy to radicals. But he still considered himself to be a professional soldier. Even had America not entered the war, Disque had decided to re-enter the military service after a year or two more at Jackson. Any Army man knew that advance- ment after the war would go only to those soldiers who had served in France. If Disque agreed to stay in mufti at home, he argued with Pershing, then he was sacrificing his hopes for a postwar Army career. Pershing agreed that he was asking Disque to incur a personal sacri- fice that in Army terms was considerable. But, repeating that he trusted only soldiers like Disque, who was the one man with adequate experi- ence that Harbord had been able to locate, Pershing made it impossible for him to refuse. Disque reluctantly agreed to undertake the assignment. 29 Leaving Pershing, he and Harbord continued the discussion that evening. They agreed that Harbord would "bury" Disque's request for overseas duty, Disque would stay on for a while at the Jackson job, and spare what time he could from it to keep abreast of developments in the labor situation of the Pacific Northwest's lumber industry. Harbord agreed to see to it that Disque have access, through Secretary Baker, to in- coming news of pertinent developments. There was one concession Disque wanted. Whenever he felt that the danger from labor unrest and from subversion was past or too minor to require the Army's attention, or when he decided that there was nothing constructive that his continued presence as observer could ac- complish, he might petition Harbord for an overseas command. And so it was agreed. All the men involved kept the promise of se- crecy that cloaked Disque's assignment, and John D. Ryan, who in 1918 directed the aircraft procurement program, could truthfully assert to congressmen that "I never heard of . . . Disque . . . before I became connected with the service." 30 In his subsequent defenses of his work with the Legion, Disque hewed strictly to the theme that he first be- came involved in lumber matters in October 1917. 31 This dating masked the fact that it was in May of that year that Pershing alerted him to the existence of a potential problem for the 29 On decision to return to the Army, see Hearings, II, 1363, 1846; Disque's memo- randum, "May 1917 meeting with Pershing," in Ledger volume IV, Disque Papers. 80 Hearings, II, 1780; III, 3214. 31 See, for example, History, 10, and note that Disque authored these paragraphs himself; drafts in Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 35 Army in the northwestern forests. From May to October Disque ful- filled his obligations to Pershing by carefully studying the nature of that problem and, with others, considering means to solve it. Within a day or two, Pershing introduced Disque to Secretary of War Baker and made him privy to the work Disque was to do. Continuing his policy of affording Pershing a totally free hand in military matters, Baker promised Disque full cooperation. For his part Disque was not favorably impressed with Baker. The Secretary seemed to him to be too unassertive and altogether too in- significant a personality for the management of the war. But Disque was amazed at the ambitious plans the Secretary had for the Army's infantry and aviation growth. This was the first indication Disque received, apart from Pershing's assurances, that the task he had undertaken was potentially of primary strategical significance. In 1919, using notes supplied by Disque, Ryan told Congress that "we could have fallen down anywhere else, and the Allies might have carried on, but if we fell down in the spruce produc- tion the Allies went down with us, because they were depending on us for their spruce, and they had no substitute." 32 There was no hyperbole in this statement. As of May 1917, the claim of subsequent reporters, especially wobbly writers, that in forming the Loyal Legion six months later Disque was motivated by animus toward the IWW, has a foundation in fact. 33 Taking his cue from Pershing's animadversions against radicals, Disque had prejudged that a red menace was the sole source of existing and incipient labor troubles in the Northwest. He disliked wobblies in ab- stract terms, for he was almost totally ignorant of any facts concerning them. In a muddy way, Disque believed that all labor unions were in- fected with the radical virus. Yet in 1922 Disque, in sincere distress of spirit, wrote to an editor of Outlook magazine: "Even today the labor press speaks of me as a friend of the 'Lumber Barons' who hoodwinked the laboring men into a framed up organization." 34 His bitterness at this charge was genuine. Whatever Disque had felt in May 1917 about the IWW in particular and about labor unions in general, when in November he initiated the 32 Ryan in Hearings, III, 3214; on Baker, see memorandum in Ledger volume IV, Disque Papers, and note the similar reaction to Baker in Robert Lee Bullard, Person- alities and Reminiscences of the War (Garden City, 1925), 30-31. 33 See the IWW pamphlet, The Lumber Industry and Its Workers (3d ed., Chicago, n.d.), 81-83. 34 Disque to Sherman Rogers, April 24, 1922, Disque Papers. 36 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Loyal Legion his judgment on both matters was far more balanced and objective than most commentators would allow. The half-year be- tween May and November had considerably enlarged his sophistication concerning the facts of labor-management life. As in his earlier careers, Disque proved to be capable of rapid absorption of new data and of sensitive growth. It was fortunate for the Army's purposes and for the nation's needs that Disque had as mentors some of the most qualified men in the country. Chapter 2 School for a Soldier Remaining in Washington for a few days after his meetings with Pershing, Disque was struck by the spectacle that the capital afforded. Flags flew everywhere. Crowds gathered to see the marines parade at sunset. A sense of bustle pervaded the city, contrasting sharply with his recollections of the quiet that had once prevailed along the Potomac. Every train brought in more important-looking men, hurrying to offer their ideas and persons to the war effort. The civilians were invading Washington and taking charge of the war. Disque, employing the War Secretary's card of introduction to gain entree throughout official Washington, set out to acquire the informa- tion he needed to meet his new and unanticipated responsibility. It was well that he was favored with the Secretary's card, for less fortu- nate persons waited in long queues that were a feature of the growing bureaucracy. New agencies were forming daily. Even the jitney drivers, Disque noted, could not keep pace with the locations or the functions of the proliferating agencies, and he wondered if the officials were bet- ter informed. 1 At Baker's suggestion, on May 17 Disque attended a session of the Aircraft Production Board, which the Council of National Defense, itself merely an advisory body, had established by resolution only the day before. Here Disque met representatives of the new breed of ci- vilian expert who were rocketing to leadership in the race for manage- ment of the production effort. He was much impressed. The meeting Disque observed was an exciting one. A few days earlier Congress had appropriated eleven million dollars for the acqui- sition of aircraft. Now the Board's members, benefiting from the earlier work of the NACA (which was still continuing, independently), were arguing the merits of re-creating tested Allied designs of warplanes and engines or originating domestic types. Disque wondered at the heat of debate when he learned that no industrial capacity existed in the coun- try to do either. 2 1 Memorandum, May 17, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers. 2 Ibid.; I. B. Holley, Jr., Ideas and Weapons (New Haven, 1953), 67. Fiorello H. La Guardia, The Making of an Insurgent; An Autobiography, 1882-1919 (New York, Capricorn ed., 1961), 141-42, conveys Disque's sense of the excitement emanating from the Washington scene. 37 38 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Still, he thought that the Board's chairman, Howard E. Coffin, was effective and powerful. Slim, tall, balding, with large features giving an impression of craggy temper that was true to the fact, Coffin was an early investor in and executive of automobile concerns. He had also been one of the first disciples of the advocates of mass airpower, as well as a fervent interventionist concerning the European war. With his appointment to the Board, he began pressing congressmen to grant one huge appropriation so that manufacturers might plan new fac- tories and convert existing ones on a systematic basis, rather than piece- meal. "I think he will have his way," Disque prophesied, and events bore him out. By summertime, almost a billion dollars was on the books for airplanes, in the largest money bill for a single purpose that the legislators had ever authorized to that time. :! The casual manner in which Coffin "spent" great sums of money amazed Disque, who was accustomed to the cost-conscious habits of Michigan's legislators and to the stringent budgets of the peacetime Army. Anxious to ascertain how much confidence he could feel in Coffin's grasp of affairs, Disque sought to speak privately to the indus- trialist. Meeting with Coffin after the May 17 session, he turned dis- cussion toward the question of whether labor strife might dry up the supply of raw materials needed for war construction, including war- planes. Coffin amazed Disque by replying that there was no problem warranting concern. After all, he reminded Disque, the Board was a division of the Council of National Defense, which had Gompers among its members and which on April 7 had announced that "neither employers nor employees shall endeavor to take advantage of the coun- try's necessities to change existing [wages and hours] standards." This announcement settled things, Coffin asserted. Strikes and lockouts were obsolete for the duration of hostilities. Thus no stoppages would occur in industries vital to the Army's plans. What, Disque persisted, if disobedient or unpatriotic persons re- fused to abide by the Council's injunction? Then, Coffin replied, state and local officials would have to deal with these malcontents; no one in Washington had any jurisdiction. Disque pressed on. Suppose local efforts to settle labor disputes proved fruitless? As a final resort the Army must employ martial law and step in, Coffin answered, not knowing, of course, that this eventuality was precisely what Disque hoped to head off. r, •'j 3 Entry, May 17, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers; on Coffin's role, see New York Times, Nov. 22, 1937. "Our Air Fleet in the Making," American Review of Reviews, LVII (Jan. 1918), 80-81, offers then Colonel H. H. Arnold's observations. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 39 Disque then inquired if Coffin was concerned at the possibility that resentment against the Aircraft Production Board might develop within the regular government departments and be strong enough to obstruct completely the work that the Board had assumed. The Board ; was after all an extralegal offshoot of the advisory Defense Council. Coffin treated this problem, like that of possible labor unrest, as already settled in favor of the Board. His confidence was as limitless as his energy and contagious as well. Of course, Disque could not know it then, but he was observing in H the early operations of the Board, and of the Council generally, a phase \i that Bernard Baruch recalled as "the crucible out of which was pro- duced our entire wartime economic administration." Floundering in the dark, the councilmen "started out with little knowledge about the working of government and the requirements of war." In Baruch's opinion, the Council enjoyed little prestige with the regular Cabinet i departments, and most of the uniformed heads of the Army and Navy especially looked with ill-concealed resentment on the intrusion of , these civilian advisers into military purchasing affairs. "When I reread , the minutes of the Council . . . and my own memoranda and data," Baruch later mused, "I still wonder how we were able to do what we did." 4 Disque learned that the most important factor permitting the new- born board to operate at all was the immense forcefulness of Coffin. This was driven home to him when later the same day he talked with General Squier, head of military aviation. Disque assumed that Squier would evidence greater sensitivity than Coffin to the possibility of labor 5 strife that worried Pershing. Squier, notorious as a gruff, brusque man c with his juniors, was frank and affable with Disque, who guessed that [ some inkling of his connection with Pershing was abroad in the War Department. Taking advantage of the general's unusually genial mood, Disque sought a factual picture of the readiness of the air force for war and of the ability of American industry to cope with any exist- ing deficiencies. Squier confounded him with his description of the pitiful inade- quacy of American air force. Not a single gun-carrying plane was at hand. At a time when the other combatants daily mustered thousands 4 Entry, May 17, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers; for the text of the April 7 statement, see U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Bulletin, IV (June 1917), 807-809; other relevant data in Philip Taft, The A. F. of L. in the Time of Gompers (New York, 1957), 342-48; Benedict Crowell and Robert Wilson, How America Went to War (New Haven, 1921), I, 324-28; Baruch, The Public Years (New York, 1960), 35-44. 40 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of agile, tested warcraft, as well as the pilots, ground staff, and supply organization to operate them, the United States had fewer than 300 obsolete training craft as its total ready strength. Nevertheless, Squier was optimistic that the grandiose images he had drawn before Con- gress of massed fleets of American craft irreparably damaging the enemy would soon be realized. Disque, inquiring how this would oc- cur, received the reply that Coffin would achieve it. "It is like a circle," Disque recorded. "Coffin expects someone else to settle labor questions. Squier expects Coffin to attend to produc- tion." What if the "someone else" failed to do his job or did not exist? Clearly, if Squier's way of thinking held sway in the War Department, no one in the Army would have anything to do with labor matters. Like most Army professionals whose service had been largely in the field, Disque had little respect for the bureau personnel like Squier who ran the military institution from the Potomac. Nothing he saw at the War Department during his fateful visit in May altered this attitude. Like an Army acquaintance, Robert Lee Bullard, whom he met again at this time, Disque was scornful of the Department's ways and doubtful of the adequacy of its means. Yet, paradoxically, Coffin's and Squier's judgments that the Army had no worry concerning labor difficulties, and would as a consequence experience no raw materials shortage for its aircraft production, de- lighted Disque. If correct, they relieved him of the necessity of con- tinuing with his watchdog assignment. Disque went to his room and prepared a memo to Harbord outlining the points Squier and Coffin had made, and requesting the active, uniformed command that he coveted. But Disque did not send on this request. A message came from Sec- retary Baker that a man had just arrived in the capital from California who could give Disque firsthand observations on the west coast labor scene. That evening Disque called on James A. B. Scherer and learned from him that Pershing had been more correct than Squier or Coffin in gauging the potentials for discord that existed in the West. 5 Tall, graying, dynamic, Scherer was president of what is now the California Institute of Technology. In prewar years, after training for the Lutheran ministry, Scherer had made a reputation as an analyst of economic trends in modern Japan and of economic motivations in international affairs. When Disque inquired as to his field of profes- 5 Disque to Harbord, May 17, 1917, with notation, "not sent, spoke to Scherer," Disque Papers; Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of the War (Garden City, 1925), 23-25. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 41 sional specialization, Scherer replied that he was "a social scientist who accepts the idea that the economic impulse governs men and na- tions." In this Beardian belief, in his convictions concerning human rationality, and in his assumption that concerted efforts on all levels of government were necessary to effect social ends, Scherer was typical of Progressive pedagogues. Since 1914 he had also been a fervent inter- ventionist, preaching with all the ardor that he had once exhibited in the pulpit that America's destiny was involved in the salvation of the embattled Allies. Within a few days after the United States entered the war Scherer was helping to organize a California defense council. In theory, each state's defense council was to serve the Council of National Defense in arranging for and encouraging war bond sales, food rationing, travel restrictions, and similar civilian matters. It was already becoming ap- parent, however, Scherer advised Disque, that practice was another question. State defense councilors, appointed in various ways by local authorities in the several states, were only as subject to the national council's directives as they wished to be. In some instances state coun- cil members were following policies that contradicted those advanced from Washington. One of the purposes of Scherer's visit to the capital was to urge the need for a traveling field representative for the national council, who might systematize and restrain the autonomous state units and also carry out special assignments for other war agencies, and within a few days he was to take on that job. 6 Meeting with Disque in mid-May, Scherer offered the former Army officer every cooperation. It amazed Disque that on every hand men representing diverse levels of American government, and carrying com- missions from a congeries of agencies or no commissions at all, un- questionably stepped out of any restrictive organizational concept that might exist, to afford aid to others seeking common ends. In any case, Scherer was probably the best informed man in the country on the specific concerns that troubled Disque. He had just completed a swing around the Pacific shore. There he had surveyed labor matters and estimated the supply of raw materials available to feed the demands of war. Scherer had with him a report to the Council of National De- fense on these matters and, at Secretary Baker's word, was ready to open it to Disque. This report, and Scherer's continuing instruction in the months to come, began what was essentially an intensive and effec- See Scherer's Cotton as a World Power: A Study in the Economic Interpretation of History (New York, 1916) and The Nation at War (New York, 1918) for heavily edited details on defense council activities. 42 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE tive schooling for former soldier Disque in matters heretofore totally strange. 7 Disque first had to learn something about the northwestern region which, without premeditation on the part of anyone, was becoming his responsibility. Although he had traveled through parts of that region in earlier years, he had been a mere transient each time. Now he gained from Scherer insights into the economic and political life of the Far West. Rugged mountains, running north and south, cut in two the vast rectangle formed by the four states of the upper Northwest. The up- thrust ranges blocked most rain clouds from continuing their eastward drift. As a result, a normal condition of semi-aridity prevailed in the eastern segments of Washington and Oregon and in Idaho and Mon- tana, along with the southern offshoot of the bordering counties of California. These dry regions, rendered politically self-conscious by their relatively waterless condition, had become known as the "Inland Empire." An agricultural economy had developed centering on fruit orchards, livestock raising, related grains cultivation, and with some important pine lumbering along the easternmost mountain slopes. Water made life markedly different on the western face of the moun- tains and on the coastal fringe. The ocean supported a significant fish- ing industry, and canneries dotted the shore. Commerce was easy and transport inexpensive along the marvelously indented coastline that stretched from the San Juan straits to south of San Francisco. Ashore, downpouring rains nurtured rich orchards, dairy and truck farms, flower nurseries, and, above all else in terms of economic worth, the lumber industry, which concentrated upon fir cutting and processing. The trees that men cut from these forests produced more than a sixth of the country's total annual peacetime supply. Forest giants were milled near the logging camps and dressed to commercial sizes. A sub- stantial amount of finished lumber was employed in the derivative shipbuilding industry centering on Seattle and Portland. But by far the greatest part of the western lumber went eastward. America's homes, its ranks of railroad cars and ties, and a large share of its fleets of ships were built of wood, and most of it came from Washington and Oregon. Lumber was clearly the most significant wartime contribution that the far western states could offer the nation. Scherer doubted, however, that the lumber industry possessed adequate resiliency to adapt its methods and goals to the changed demands of war. Not only was great 7 Entry, May 17, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 43 expansion in output needed, but also a simultaneous shifting in the logging habits of a generation of numerous tough, individualistic wood- cutting entrepreneurs, whose history was marked far more by discord and antipathy to any overseer than by accord. Later Disque, having learned the accuracy of Scherer's analysis, noted that "logging is not at the best a white-collar job." 8 By 1917 lumbermen had developed an industry that had a few giant landholders, fewer great producers, but no monopolists. Large numbers of small loggers, millowners, and kiln operators complicated all at- tempts at cooperation. Overinvestment in timberland as speculation required that labor costs be kept as low as possible. Overproduction helped lead to fierce competition, which grew more intense as the wood products of other regions, far closer than the Northwest to consuming centers, increased in supply. Speculation in northwestern land values spurred heavy investments in improved machinery which in turn fur- ther increased output, but narrowed profit margins. Profits, sometimes large, were erratic as well. Prices and standards fluctuated wildly, often within a single season. Efforts during the preceding two decades, aimed at stabilizing prices, restricting output, and forming a common front of employers, resulted in 1905 in the formation of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, which appeared by 1917 to have rationalized some of the marketing problems of the Pacific Coast lumber industry. The relative stability wrought by the Lumbermen's Association had sufficed only for peacetime, and even then was inadequate. Further, the Association's achievement was based upon demand for the traditional woods — pine and fir — which commerce had long sustained. With the war, the need for the ordinary types of lumber was obviously going to soar. Existing logging and milling facilities might be expected to cope adequately with the enhanced demand by some expansion of physical plant investment, arranged for through traditional and largely private enterprise, if the labor supply grew in proportion to the in- creased production needs. War was changing the production pattern, however. Experience on the fighting fronts indicated that warplanes, in order to withstand the strains of combat aloft, must be built primarily of spruce. Straight- 8 Disque, "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," System: The Magazine of Business, XXXVI (Sept. 1919), 379; Scherer's ms. report, untitled, Scherer Papers. 9 Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York, 1945), 99-102, and Dorothy Johansen and Charles Gates, Empire of the Columbia (New York, 1957), 460-68, offer the most reliable scholarship on these points. Probably 1500 producing units existed in the industry in 1917. I was privileged to examine a typescript of Ralph Hidy, Frank Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins, Timber and Men: The Weyerhaeuser Story, to be published in 1963, which offers full details on the industry. 44 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE grained, resilient, tough, yet relatively light in weight, spruce was especially suitable for use in the main members of wing spars and fuselage frames, and for lamination into propellers. So employed, long, straight-grained, flawless single pieces were mandatory. In the giant Sitka spruce trees that towered into the sky over the rugged Cascade range, the Northwest had a virtual monopoly of the world's remaining supply of this suddenly invaluable resource. In seeming perversity, however, the eleven billion feet of spruce estimated by experts to be at hand in the Northwest was an illusory figure, as was the sudden request, just in at the War Department from France and England, for a hundred million feet of spruce, cut and milled, of aircraft-use quality, as an annual supply. These estimates were unreal because the spruce trees and the existing lumber industry just did not coincide. Spruce trees grew in millions, to be sure, but scattered in small clumps amid whole forests of other types of more common woods. Lumbermen heretofore had ignored spruce as a commercially unsuit- able grade. Logging roads and mill sites had no relationship to spruce stands except in a few accidental situations. And much of each tree cut was wasted at the mill. Scherer wondered how the lumber magnates of the Northwest were going to be persuaded to alter their existing arrangements in order to pursue the elusive spruce. He doubted that, on their own, the lumbermen would bring their industrial components into harmony with nature's unhappy distribution of spruce growth. Cost-conscious loggers and lumbermen were happy with things as they were, Scherer pessimistically concluded. They were accustomed from bitter experience to the financial hazards occasioned by overpro- duction, and, anticipating as did most Americans that the war was to be short, had no intention of furthering this evil on their own. Most operators were savoring the windfall profits already flowing from cut- ting and processing the limited amounts of spruce that came their way as other types of wood were cut. Less than two million feet of spruce a month was being cut, therefore, less than a fifth of the amount required by the Allies alone, and this without taking America's needs into account. Almost all of this minuscule amount was of indifferent quality and in short pieces, unsuitable for aircraft use; but uncritical or unscrupulous brokers snapped up every scrap of spruce that issued from the mills, at prices already double the 1914 level. Little wonder that the western lumbermen were pleased with spruce scarcity. Unless SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 45 forced into pursuit of spruce, the lumber operators would happily hold where they stood. 10 Regardless of the attitude of the northwestern lumbermen, all wood- cutting was going to halt, Scherer feared, if the labor question were not swiftly settled. "Here," Disque recorded, "was my first intima- tion that Genferal] Pfershing] had been correct in his fears about the wobblies." For the Californian agreed that the IWW was indeed a dangerous force, infesting all labor organizations of the West and verging on open disloyalty now that war was at hand. In a confidential report on labor unrest, addressed to the Council of National Defense and shown to Disque with Baker's approval, Scherer concluded that the IWW "recognizes no law, no obligations, no ethical control. It is outlawed by the [California, Oregon, and Washington] State Federa- tions of Labor, which it apparently hates as much as it hates the Gov- ernment itself. It should be exterminated as we would exterminate nest of vermin — swiftly, secretly, and completely, since otherwise it will more and more infest the body politic and ultimately reach the very heart of government." 11 Disque was amazed at Scherer's depiction of the extent of wobbly penetration among western workers. He asked Scherer to explain fur- ther how it had come about. This is the sense of the Californian's reply. By his analysis, a dangerous proportion of the card-carrying IWW members in the Northwest were hardened, devoted missionaries of the gospel of class warfare. Their activities among migratory California farm workers had resulted in bitter strikes only the year before. With the war declaration, w r obblies were responding to their pacifist prin- ciples by acts of sabotage in factories and arson in fields. In addition to the intent of diminishing war production, the IWW was set on in- spiring a social revolution. 1 ^ So far as Scherer could see, the only way to lessen the wobbly menace as a revolutionary force was for federal troops in large numbers to 10 Hidy, Hill, and Nevins, ch. 20, p. 2, argue that the Avar equaled economic relief for most producers. Scherer, ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers; Wilson Compton, "Production of Airplane Spruce," American Review of Reviews, LVII (June 1918), 629-31. A year later, Disque wrote Scherer that the latter "was proved to be an unhappily accurate prophet"; May 30, 1918, Disque Papers. 11 Ms. "Confidential Report on California, Oregon, and Washington," Scherer Papers; entry, May 17, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers. 12 Ms. "Confidential Report on California," Scherer Papers; see also Hyman Weintraub, The I.W.W. in California (unpublished MA. thesis, UCLA, 1947). 46 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE move in and police the Pacific states. Of course, this would not solve the question of adequate labor forces for the lumber industry. But the Army would at least serve as a preventative against outright in- surrection. Local and state authorities were either too weak or too fearful of political retribution to act forcefully, and in any case their jurisdictions were too limited, Scherer insisted. The migratory workers of the farm belts and lumber camps of the West were careless of state and county lines. The wobblies were a national problem which re- quired swift solution. He told Disque: "In the lumber areas there is so much hysterical ranting that unless the people in Washington [D.C.] stop pussyfooting we will not only not get lumber but we will get a blow-up that will be bloody and terrible." Scherer admitted that by no means were all the western wobblies real revolutionaries. Most IWW card-carriers were mere champions of the rhetoric of revolution, who had little understanding of the poten- tial gravity of their apostolic devotions. The lumber industry had always depended upon migrant workers for its unskilled labor. These nomads were rootless, voteless men, careless of any future save the next payday. Lacking education, they took on the most dangerous and menial tasks. Accepting wobbly membership and mouthing wobbly slogans, such men were more misguided than mischievous, Scherer be- lieved. Nevertheless, because they were indulging in sabotage and spur- ring the rash of strikes so noticeable in the West, even the relatively innocent wobblies were dangerous to their country now that it was at war. And the minority of wobbly ideologues, Scherer insisted, were outright traitors. He pointed out to Disque how many recorded strikes were located in the Northwest. In 1916 there had been forty-four strikes recorded in the lumber industry. Scherer knew of at least one hundred more begun since the turn of the year 1917, and the war declaration had not abated the rate of increase. What, Disque asked, of the April pro- nouncement of the Council of National Defense, which Coffin had placed so much reliance on, calling for the maintenance of existing labor-management relations? It was a "pious plea, a prayer directed at heathens, as inapplicable to the West's needs as a lollipop to a starv- ing city," Scherer derided. Nothing like it would impel employers to accept union working standards or convince loggers to abandon de- mands for improvements. 13 13 Disque's notes on conversation with Scherer, undated, but undoubtedly May 17, 1917, Disque Papers; and see Edson Whitney, "Strikes and Lockouts in the United States, 1916, 1917, and 1918," Monthly Labor Review, VIII (June 1919), 307-31; Jensen, op. cit., 124-25; Johansen and Gates, op. cit., 468-69. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 47 Scherer admitted frankly to Disque that he admired the tough, in- dividualistic lumber operators. But he deplored their unchanging atti- tude toward all their employees, which resisted almost every request for improvements in the way men worked and lived at lumber camps and mills and in the returns they received for their labor. Such in- transigence was driving men toward the wobblies, for only the IWW recruiters offered sympathetic attention to the lumberworkers' com- plaints. The militant core of wobbly professionals was benefiting from the very stubbornness of their devoted enemies, the employers. Nation- ally, a public opinion adverse to the employers was spreading as a result of the exposure of flagrant liaisons between the operators and local governments, as in the tragic "Everett Massacre" of the preceding year. And the tendency of the employer and his minions among local officialdom to resort to physical violence was stiffening the resolve of many lumber workmen to organize effectively in a labor union." This resolution, combined with the atrocious conditions under which lumberworkers lived, achieved results. In March 1917 the first IWW local in the lumber industry was formed. Ostensibly, the Lumber Workers Industrial Union was abandoning what Scherer called "guer- rilla tactics" to seek power through open collective bargaining. Out- shoots of this IWW 7, union spread from eastern Washington to Oregon and California. Though it was harassed by local law officers, indignant patriotic organizations, and federal attorneys and troops in some in- stances, the union's open appeal for support, and for improvements in wages and other working conditions, was proving effective among more lumberworkers than ever before, although there were probably fewer than 3000 official members. The wobbly spokesmen demanded an eight-hour day for lumberworkers in the pine regions of the Inland Empire, other improved conditions, and recognition of the union. De- nied these, they set a strike for July 1.™ At this point in Scherer's narrative, Disque interrupted to inquire about the role of the American Federation of Labor in the lumber regions. Scherer replied that in his estimation, which proved accurate enough, the AFL was weaker in power and had fewer members than the new IWW union. The first craft in the lumber trades to come into "Disque's notes on conversation with Scherer, May 17, 1917, Disque Papers; see also Petition of Spokane Central Labor Council, July 16, 1917, addressed to Henry Suzzallo, Governor Lister Papers, Washington State Archives, Olympia, hereafter cited as Lister Papers. 15 Robert Tyler, Rebels of the Woods and Fields (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Univer- sity of Oregon, 1953), passim; Jensen, op. cit., 125; William F. Ogburn, "Causes and Remedies of Lumber Labor Unrest," University of Washington Forest Club Annual (1918), 11-14. 48 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE the Federation had been the numerically small Shingle Weavers, a group of highly skilled millworkers, who had organized before the turn of the century, but whose efforts to gain higher wages for them- selves had been generally unavailing. Attempts by the Shingle Weavers to extend their jurisdiction over the entire industry had failed dis- mally, though a skeletal International Union of Timberworkers re- mained as a barely living residual of this effort. Now, in 1917, the two weak AFL organizations were planning com- mon action, belying their puny membership lists of less than 2000. Like the IWW's Lumber Workers, the AFL duo demanded recogni- tion from employers, the closed shop, a shorter workday, and a measure of immunity from employers' oversight in camp activities not con- nected with working tasks. Refusal would incur a strike, set for July 16. As Scherer saw it, the wobblies, taking on a gloss of conservative "bread and butter" goals, were obviously proving more attractive to lumberworkers than the moribund AFL locals. Keeping its member- ship list a strict secret, the wobbly union was better able than its AFL opposite numbers to retaliate against the private detectives, the in- junctions, the blacklists, and the other techniques the employers used to maintain their primacy. The result was that even AFL members, skilled craftsmen, were taking out "red" cards. And two deadlines existed — the wobbly strike set for July 1 and the AFL threat for two weeks later. Almost certainly, Scherer concluded, the Northwest's lumber op- erators were not going to negotiate with the AFL Shingle Weavers or Timberworkers, much less the IWW's Lumber Workers Industrial Union. Lumber output, already inadequate, must decline further, and spruce cutting, requiring a tenfold increase, would instead virtually cease. Strikes and stoppages would curtail not only lumber produc- tion but attendant activities in shipbuilding and barracks construction. Sabotage, arson, and violence were predictable accompaniments. The probability of class war hovered over the Northwest. 16 Depressed by Scherer's analysis, Disque sketched the nature of his assignment to the Californian, without revealing Pershing's inspira- tion for it. Encouraged that the War Department was taking a hand through Disque, and insensitive to the unofficial nature of his con- nection with the Army, Scherer enjoined him to employ all his influ- ence to "get troops" to the Northwest. Midsummer was the deadline. 10 Scherer to Disque, June 25, 1917, recalling from "notes I [Scherer] took last May, details of our conversation and events since," Disque Papers; see also Nichols, Legion, 36-37; Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 434-37; Jensen, op. cit., 125. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 49 In early August the National Guard units of the Pacific Coast states were due to depart eastward for overseas service. Then, whatever for- tunes might attend the strikes, the lumber situation would explode into violence and treason, Scherer repeated. On this dismal note the meeting closed. Disque returned to his room and outlined to Harbord what he had learned. Further dispirited at having to remain in mufti, Disque returned to Michigan. 17 Scherer, Disque's first mentor in labor-management relations affect- ing the Army, had turned Disque's attention particularly to the lum- ber industry of the West. Clearly, Scherer's antiwobbly and generally antiunion views were of considerable impact in setting Disque's initial attitudes concerning the pattern of unionism on the Pacific's shore. To be sure, the Californian's antipathy to labor organization was an out- growth of his resentment that during wartime men should seek selfish ends. The important point for this narrative, however, is that Scherer's views were the first Disque was to absorb on this subject. They were not the only views, however. As Disque settled back into his prison wardenship in Michigan, he retained a heightened awareness of the complex world of labor and of capital. And other mentors, even closer than Scherer to the realities of the northwestern labor scene, were soon to offer Disque the benefits of their teachings. 17 Disque to Harbord, May 18, 1918, Disque Papers. Chapter j Apostles of Reform As the weeks of 1917 passed into summer, and Pershing with the first units of the AEF reached France, Disque, through Scherer and to a lesser extent Coffin, kept abreast of developments in the labor situation. Nothing that national authorities were doing, Disque felt, was adequate to meet the threatening situation. To be sure, the Espionage Act be- came law in mid-June. But this statute would be too slow in its effects to help matters, Disque feared. He knew that on July 9 Pershing had informed the War Department that the AEF required a million trained men in France without unnecessary delay. On the following day, Disque wrote Harbord that so far as he could see, at least five divisions of trained infantrymen, totaling more than 125,000 combat-ready soldiers, would be needed to keep order west of the Rockies. One man from every eight that Pershing wanted was not going to be available for France. The strike, under way by midsummer in the lumber regions, seemed to justify Scherer's worst apprehensions. Governor Lister of Washington had publicly announced that when the state's Guard en- tered federal service in August, he would appeal for Army forces to take its place, in order to prevent "internal troubles." 1 Disque complained that the national government had allowed the western labor situation to drift, probably in the expectation that private entrepreneurs, "respectable" labor organizations, or state and local agencies would settle matters on their own. But the lumbermen, it appeared from Scherer's description and the public press, were beset by too many differences of view to permit constructive concerted action. Some operators were swiftly raising prices of stockpiled holdings as Army, Navy, and Allied purchasing officers competed among themselves and against civilian users, and outbid each other. Speculators held back scarce supplies in order to benefit from the growing shortage. Most lumbermen refused to expand operations out of fear that when the war ended they would be left with costly plant facilities for which there would be little postwar commercial use. About all that the lumbermen held in common, Disque grumbled, was a deep-rooted antipathy to dealing with any union at all, whatever 1 Disque to Harbord, July 10, 1917, Disque Papers; Lister's proclamation dated July 8, Lister Papers. 50 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 51 the cost in terms of decreased output occasioned by the spreading strike. Instead, a Lumbermen's Protective Association was formed early in July, with a membership sworn to resist any demands for union recognition or for a shorter workday imposed from without. The lumbermen pledged themselves to maintain a ten-hour rather than an eight-hour workday, clothing this stubborn plank in a mantle of patri- otic rhetoric and repetitive claims that because of higher transportation costs they could not compete with southeastern mills if the reduced hours formula obtained. But patriotism notwithstanding and economics aside, the intransigent lumbermen were determined to hold the line as a moral commitment. There would be no truck with offers of media- tion, for this implied recognizing union contenders. Even the conserva- tive Business Chronicle at Seattle, to which Disque now subscribed, was coming to realize that such complete intransigence was too much. "The manufacturers and loggers are making no individual efforts to cope with the situation," the Chronicle editorialized, "as it is beyond them." Agreeing with this conclusion, Disque began to feel with Scherer that the nation's extraordinary needs must take precedence over the over- weening self-interest of the lumbermen. A shift in Disque's views, and in Scherer's, took place during the midsummer weeks of 1917. Their patriotism was outraged at the undeniable evidences of entrepreneurial selfishness and unyielding rigidity. The lumbermen's intransigence was wasting precious time, which Disque translated in his thinking into terms of lost combat opportunities. To be sure, he no more than Scherer lost his antiradical and mildly antiunion attitude. The former Army officer and the California college president glumly observed the course of events in the Northwest during the first days of July, as thousands of lumberworkers, careless of their unions' timetables, walked off their jobs. The wobbly organization seemed clearly to be stealing the mantle of leadership among the west- ern workers. It obscured the AFL by calling an IWW strike to start on July 16, the same day that AFL locals had set for a walkout, rather than on the first day of that month, as had previously been announced. The IWW appeared to be the frontrunner in strike action, and by taking up the eight-hour issue was cleaving to the heart of what most lumber- workers demanded, and what most lumbermen opposed. "Organization is in the air," Scherer dolefully wrote to Disque, "and the IWW men are way ahead." 2 2 Disque to Harbord, July 17, 19, Aug. 24, 1917, and exchange with Scherer, June- Aug. 1917, quotation from Scherer, July 30, Disque Papers; Chronicle, June 30, 1917; see also West Coast Lumberman, XXXII (Aug. 1, 1917), 20; Benedict Crowell and Robert Wilson, How America Went to War (New Haven, 1921), IV, 336. 52 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Whatever the outcome of the race for leadership between the AFL and the IWW, it was distressingly certain that in five western states lumbering operations were slowing almost to a halt. Sympathy strikes and slowdowns in shipbuilding and barracks building projects multi- plied the effects of the walkout, testing almost at the moment of its creation the efficacy of the Cantonments Adjustment Commission. I Meanwhile, nothing seemed to be under way to pacify the insurgent loggers. In isolated logging camps and mills violence and intimidation, never far from the scene of western gang employment, were shockingly common. Irate congressmen and senators called for the application of martial law to crush the strikes, not knowing, of course, that this ready remedy for domestic disturbance was exactly what Pershing most dreaded. Open opposition to such proposals by President Wilson and by Senator Borah, as well as secret pressure by War Secretary Baker through the White House, kept them at least temporarily in check. But, Scherer reminded Disque on the occasion of a visit to Michigan, mere maintenance of the status quo was inadequate. The timing of the strike heightened the need for action. Congress was ready to provide another half-billion dollars for warplanes, in response to information from our allies that the skies offered the most likely avenue through which to break the ghastly deadlock that since 1914 had gripped the ground forces on the Western Front. 3 Apparently the size of this appro- priation astounded some lumbermen, who had not really believed that extraordinary plant or tract expansions were going to be needed. With the evidence of this gigantic money bill before them, a few operators, motivated by patriotism and/or a hope of sharing in the plum, indi- vidually granted the eight-hour workday and resumed operations, though without recognizing any union. The Lumbermen's Association, however, threatened to hamstring these mavericks by arranging through brokers to hold back needed supplies. Was there no one in the lumber industry, Disque wondered, employer or workman, who would serve the nation's interests before his own? From what he learned from Scherer and read on his own, the answer was distressingly negative. Neither lumberman nor worker, AFL or IWW, had clean hands. 4 There seemed little question that up to this time Disque had scant opportunity to understand labor's side of this situation. His major 3 Disque to Scherer, Aug. 3; Coffin to Disque, Aug. 3, 1917, Disque Papers; Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 434-38; Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York, 1945), 126— 27; on Baker's stand against a declaration of martial law, see Roger N. Baldwin reminiscence, I, 58-60, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University. 4 That Disque retained this "pox on both your houses" attitude is evident; see his "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," System, XXXVI (Sept. 1919), 379-80; and his letters to Harbord, July 23, Aug. 6, 24, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 53 source of information was Scherer, whose sympathies were clearly with the employers although he was critical of them. Beyond this, the soldierly criteria were primary in Disque's considerations. He was be- coming aware of the doleful implications that the lumber strike held for aircraft production, barracks construction, and shipbuilding. He was even more worried that if matters in the West deteriorated much further, one out of every eight American soldiers would be lost to the AEF by having to serve as a homefront policeman rather than as a Western Front combat trooper. As Disque saw it, Pershing alone of anyone in the government had prophesied correctly. Radical unionism, in the guise of the wobblies, was impeding the AEF's capacity for war. What the general could not have appreciated, Disque advised Harbord on August 24, was that the employers would be intransigent, and that no one on any level of civil government, apparently, would be capable of useful action. Probably martial law would come by congressional law or by presidential fiat. The Army would after all become embroiled on a grand scale. And the war in Europe might then be lost, because of the inescapable lessening in lumber output and the denial of an eighth of a million men to Allied strength. Thoroughly discouraged and disgusted, and anxious to get into uni- form, Disque asked Harbord for relief from this unpleasant and fruit- less assignment. Receiving no reply from this preoccupied staff officer, and unaware that Harbord had approved a billet for him on the staff of General Benjamin Foulois, designated as head of the AEF's aviation, Disque applied to Theodore Roosevelt for a place in the volunteer division that the old Rough Rider hoped to form. Then, because at the end of July Scherer visited him at the Jackson prison and had some slightly more encouraging news, Disque kept at the work that Pershing had asked him to do. 5 At least one federal agency was working away usefully in the western lumber dispute, Scherer reported. The Cantonments Adjustment Com- mission had an examiner on the west coast, Carleton H. Parker, who had already successfully mediated more than two dozen actual or in- cipient work stoppages in locations ranging from San Diego to Seattle. In Scherer's opinion, Parker was "probably a genius." 3 Hearings, III, 3565; Disque to Harbord, Aug. 24, 1917, Disque Papers. 6 Scherer to Disque, Aug. 1, 1917, Disque Papers; Louis Wehle, Hidden Threads of History (New York, 1953), 19-24; Lewis L. Lorwin, The American Federation of Labor (Washington, 1933), 157-58; Philip Taft, The A. F. of L. in the Time of Gompers (New York, 1957), 348. 54 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE He was at least enormously inventive and to his colleagues of the academic profession troublesomely unorthodox. Veblenesque in his scholarly outlook — his major published work, appearing posthumously, was dedicated to Veblen — and in his outspoken forthrightness, Parker had pursued his graduate studies at a half-dozen universities in this country and in Britain and Germany. In his researches he was develop- ing a synthesis between labor economics and sociology; in prewar years he had applied these insights in examinations of industrial unrest in Arizona and among California's migratory farm workers. These activ- ities had interested him in the I WW, and he was probably better versed in that subject than anyone else in the country. Parker had antagonized his superiors at the University of California when in 1916 he published an analysis of the causes of discontent among the state's migratory agricultural workers. In carefully reasoned and documented passages he condemned, as the major factors, the em- ployers' niggardly wage, housing, and work-safety policies and the effects of obsolete and oppressive state and local labor laws. Leaving the insti- tution, Parker early in 1917 had accepted an economics professorship and the deanship of the new graduate school of business administration at the University of Washington. A relatively young man, almost the same age as Disque, Parker had already gained a high reputation among leading Progressives. Herbert Croly, Felix Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis, and Walter Lippmann, among others, admired the effectiveness of Parker's scholarly method and the objective, useful data he had collected. When Lippmann was named to run the Cantonments Commission, he recommended Parker to Gompers and the nomination was quickly made. Despite Gompers' approval of him, Parker was not labor's man, although the allegation that he was persisted among members of the Lumbermen's Protective Association and in the columns of the Busi- ness Chronicle, and hampered him in his war work. For example, lumberman E. G. Ames of the Puget Mills Company put a private detective on Parker's trail, and from business friends in California re- ceived reports on his ousting from the university there. Parker, Ames concluded, was a socialist, prolabor and anticapitalist, and not to be trusted. 7 7 Carleton H. Parker, The Casual Laborer and Other Essays (New York, 1920); Cornelia Stratton Parker, An American Idyll: The Life of Carleton H. Parker (Boston, 1919), 105 and passim, hereafter cited as Cornelia Parker, American Idyll; on Ames, see his letter to W. H. Talbot, Aug. 6, 1917, Box 30, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; and Business Chronicle, Nov. 24, 1917. Mrs. Parker informed me in 1960 that only two years earlier her late husband's papers had been inadvertently destroyed. Despite this doleful event, Parker's life and work should receive scholarly attention. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 55 The fact is that Parker was soon respected and trusted by almost everyone, even Roger N. Baldwin, that rara avis of 1917, who devoted himself to the defense of individual liberties. Baldwin later recalled that Parker gave "sympathetic support" to several committees that were formed to raise money for wobblies under federal prosecution for vio- lations of wartime statutes, and that, along with Harvard's John Graham Brooks, he tried hard but unsuccessfully to move the Justice Department to "a sensible policy" regarding the IWW. War Secretary Newton Baker also came to admire Parker for his "knowledge of labor conditions in the North West and sympathy with labor." In brief, Parker was an ardent devotee of rational economic capitalism and of a broad-based political democracy. But rather than being in "sympathy with labor," as Baker thought, he privately worried over a quite unscholarly antipathy to the wobbly labor organizations that troubled his pedagogical conscience. A tall, hulking figure of a man, Parker was an unconventional scholar only in terms of conventional and obsolescent attitudes rooted in the nineteenth century. He had de- veloped his striking syntheses in response to the tremulous excitation of the first decade of the twentieth century, during the full flowering of the Progressive years. Drawing heavily on the pervasive attitudes of Croly as well as the scholarly heresies of Veblen, Parker brought to his work for the Cantonments Commission a commitment to the idea that the public interest was paramount in disputes between management and labor. He brought to it also the full force of his great personal charm, unwearying surface patience, and keen sense of justice. s In his mediation work Parker employed a method that he had tried out a year earlier in California. He insisted that disputants in a labor argument meet personally and simultaneously with him. Employers and employees must face each other in order to emerge from the gen- eralized abstractions of "boss" and "worker." Then, under the medi- ator's careful guidance, a meeting might move toward consensus. Parker was willing to employ every possible government agency, federal, state, and local, as well as private organizations, church groups, and any influ- ential individual, to bring disputants together. During the midsummer weeks, before the lumber strike developed, Parker chaired dozens of such meetings involving disputes on barracks projects, which began in ill-temper but ended in substantial, if local, accord between canton- b These factors are best dealt with in Charles Forcy, The Crossroads of Liberalism: Croly, Weyl, Lippmann, and the Progressive Era, 1900-1925 (New York, 1961); and Cornelia Parker, American Idyll, passim. See also Roger N. Baldwin reminiscence, II, 286, loc. cit.; Baker to Florence Kelley, Dec. 16, 1921, Box 16, National Consumers League Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. Professor Dan Levine of Earlham College was kind enough to send me a copy of the Baker letter. 56 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ment contractors and AFL craft workers. He was wearing himself out trying to apply in his work for the Commission the conclusions he had drawn from his untraditional scholarship. His task became far more difficult as the 1917 lumber strike attracted sympathy among barracks construction workers, and stiffened the atti- tudes of the contractors with whom he had to deal. Workers were too sensitive and opportunistic, Parker complained to his wife, and "gee, the pigheadedness of bosses!" As the summer advanced, he feared that "The whole situation is drifting into a state of incipient sympathetic strikes. . . . This is the most bull-headed affair and I don't think it is going to get anywhere." But Parker learned. He grew convinced that the only way to forestall strikes was for the authority of government, acting neutrally, to impel contenders to hear each other out. Then it was his job "to find, in all this heap of words, the irritation points of the other side." After that he had to draw up an analysis and suggest a settlement in laymen's terms that was acceptable to both disputants. If it was not, then his solution must become enforceable by the public authority when an extended stoppage would adversely affect the general interest. 9 The lumber strike was undoing the fruitful effects of his work on cantonment disputes. Wood stocks, even of the common building grades, were diminishing. It seemed as if hundreds of barracks must remain unbuilt, and in consequence winter training for many thousands of soldiers would be delayed, thereby frustrating the AEF's strategical plans. Parker found a temporary way out, so far as west coast barracks con- struction was concerned. He convinced barracks contractors whose stocks were depleted to relinquish their contracts to others who had adequate lumber supplies on hand. Construction continued for the time being on the cantonment cities of the West. 10 Closely observing Parker's successes as mediator and reporting on them to Disque, Scherer revealed that he had been trying to convince the national defense councilors to widen Parker's jurisdiction to en- compass the burgeoning, basic strike in the lumber camps and mills. "My whole point will be gained," Scherer noted in a confidential report to Coffin, which Disque saw, "if the [national] government is thus brought into close understanding with the Washington [state] Council 9 Cornelia Parker, American Idyll, 138-39. 10 Report of the State Council of Defense to the Governor of Washington Covering Its Activities during the War, June 16, 1917 to January 9, 1919 (Olympia, 1919), 43-44, hereafter cited as Washington Council Report. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 57 of Defense, since I am convinced that no better method offers for a speedy adjustment of the spruce supply." 11 Thus the interstices of the federal system were slowly and adventi- tiously being bridged during the first weeks of July 1917. Scherer rep- resented the network of state defense councils that was developing, more or less under the overseership of the extraordinary and merely advisory Council of National Defense. Parker was the officer of the equally extraordinary offshoot of the Council, the Cantonments Adjust- ment Commission, which had come into being merely by agreement between Gompers and Baker, both members of the Defense Council. Now Scherer wanted to link these two levels and agencies with the state defense council of Washington, in order to seek a new way to cope with the lumber strike. The crazy-quilt development of measures and agencies to deal with the exigencies of war is reflected in Scherer's suggestion. Theoretically, the Washington state defense council was an outgrowth of the national council. An order from the latter should have received compliance in the state echelon. But in fact, as Scherer well knew, each state unit was independent of the merely nominal parent organization back in the national capital. Cooperation was forthcoming only if the state council- men wished to afford it. Since each state's defense council was as extraor- dinary an ad hoc creation as the national group and drew its support from local and state interests, Scherer could only hope that patriotism would override local pride and create uniformity in policies. Meanwhile, Disque remained discreetly in the background in Michi- gan. Of all the officials observing developments in the situation, he alone represented an established government agency. The Army, how- ever, traditionally had nothing to do with such matters as the lumber strike or any private labor-management issue. In this sense Disque was the most extraordinary and extralegal observer of them all. Posted merely to report secretly on events, Disque suffered the galling restraints of passivity, though his nature cried out for action. Trained to seek direct solutions to martial problems, accustomed as a military officer and as a prison warden to command men who must obey his directions, Disque received reports from Scherer that must have seemed marvels of discordance. Perhaps he wondered what possible good might arise from adding the Washington state council to those other federal 11 Ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers. Entry, July 30, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers, indicates that Disque read the report. 58 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE and private agencies that were attempting to cope with the burgeoning lumber strike. So far as Scherer was concerned, the benefits from this addition were obvious and substantial. Parker, the representative of a national agency and a gifted mediator, would then be linked with the Washington state defense council, the best in the nation in Scherer's judgment. The Washington councilors were expert, patriotic, and eager to serve. Their members included Ernest P. Marsh, an able and conservative craft unionist, now head of the state's weak AFL federation; aviation indus- trialist W. A. Boeing; and lumberman Everett Griggs of the St. Paul and Tacoma Lumber Company, who enjoyed close business and per- sonal ties with E. Grammer, the president of the Lumbermen's Protec- tive Association as well as an executive of the Puget Mills Lumber Company. These men, Scherer advised Coffin, "can be approached on a footing of sure confidence. They represent, moreover, all the interests involved, including labor; and having learned already to work together around the same table are far and away the best body in the Northwest with which Government representatives can deal as to spruce." In Scherer's opinion, the Washington defense council had attained its superior status largely through the efforts of its chairman, the presi- dent of the University of Washington where Parker taught, Henry Suzzallo. A native of California, now in his early forties, Suzzallo had graduated from Stanford University and then taken a doctorate in education at Columbia. Teaching assignments at both institutions fol- lowed, along with publications in the philosophy and sociology of pedagogy. The promise he had exhibited was adequate to gain him the presidency of the University of Washington in 1916, and, anxious to enhance the prestige of the school, he had brought Parker there despite the misgivings of some of the university's regents. Suzzallo's in- terdisciplinary researches in pedagogy and sociology struck a responsive chord to Parker's views on the need to integrate economics and soci- ology. Adding to this Scherer's stress on relating history and economics, the acquaintanceships the three men shared in the academic world, and, with the war, their discrete but increasingly intertwined homefront responsibilities, there was common ground for effective accord for patri- otic purposes. Belying an impression commonly held, and perhaps caused by his average height, rotund figure, and bland features, Suzzallo, in Scherer's words, was a man blessed with "a positive genius for leadership, organi- SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 59 zation, and effective execution as well." 13 Heading the state council since its inception, Suzzallo had prevented it from becoming a mere instru- ment of the will of the lumbermen although they were the state's most powerful business interest, unlike the pattern in Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, and several other states where defense councils were frankly dominated by entrenched political and financial concentrations. Able, sensitive, proud of his central European ancestry and yet an apostle of melting-pot Americanism, and in Scherer's opinion "ambi- tious for a political career after the war and therefore anxious to avoid antagonizing too many people," Suzzallo managed to enjoy the con- fidence of many lumbermen, large farm operators, Marsh of the state's AFL, and most newspaper publishers in the state, as well as of the governor and leaders in both major parties. "It may be," Scherer guessed in a letter to Disque, "that this is because Suzzallo is a university head and is therefore something of a strange fish to all other kinds of people; by definition not dangerous, and everyone may think he can manage a mere college president." 13 Suzzallo knew that his defense council could achieve useful results only as cooperation was forthcoming from regularly constituted public officers. In most states, council chairmen were mere figureheads, usu- ally pawns for governors. For example, the academic world, plunging enthusiastically into war work, was momentarily shocked at news of the treatment that Wisconsin's governor gave to A. L. P. Dennis, chairman of the state's defense council and University of Chicago his- torian. At loggerheads with the governor on policy matters, Dennis finally chose to resign and entered Army Intelligence. The Wisconsin council remained under the governor's thumb." By contrast, Washington's Governor Lister permitted Suzzallo almost a completely free hand, a bit too free for Suzzallo's liking. The governor, Scherer guessed, wanted the state council to take on as many of the politically dangerous issues of the war as possible, thus relieving the regular political party machinery and Lister's administration of blame 12 Ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers; for background on Suzzallo, see Jack Van de Wetering, "The Appointment of Henry Suzzallo: The Uni- versity of Washington Gets a President," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, L (July 1959), 99-107. 13 Scherer to Disque, Aug. 19, 1917, Disque Papers. 14 On Wisconsin, see Elizabeth Donnan and Leo F. Stock, eds., An Historian's View: Selections from the Correspondence of John Franklin Jameson (Philadelphia, 1956), 208. The Michigan situation is in Scherer's ms. "Confidential Report on Michigan," Scherer Papers; and on Minnesota, see O. A. Hilton, "The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety in World War I, 1917-1919," Bulletin, Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, XLVIII (May 15, 1951). 60 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE for failures or of the consequences of antagonizing influential minorities or large groups of voters. Everyone in the state wanted to dump unpop- ular duties into the council's lap. At the same time, each organized interest in the state expected the council to serve only itself. Nothing in the state and in the Northwest region was more sensitive than the lumber strike and the eight-hour issue. Because Suzzallo never forgot that his state unit was designed to serve the national council and the nation's interests, he was willing to risk his academic future and the postwar political career he coveted, if Scherer's analysis is cor- rect, by taking Parker on in a joint effort to mediate that strike. Suzzallo was well aware that whatever he might do in the lumber issue was bound to antagonize many people. "In moving into the lumber strike with Parker," Scherer wrote Disque, "President Suzzallo is asking for boomerangs." 13 Yet there seemed to be no one else in the Northwest or in Washington state with any chance at all of doing something useful about the strike. Though the lumber industry's traditional center of operations was in Portland, Seattle was its more recent headquarters for lumber corpora- tion management and finance. Parker, however effective as a mediator in cantonment disputes, had no status in the lumber industry. More- over, in the opinion of many lumbermen, he was tainted by his mem- bership on committees to raise defense funds for wobblies under prose- cution and by his alleged association with Gompers. Scherer was un- known to most Washingtonians, and the sensitive northwesterners would not brook any hint of carpetbagger tactics, as they saw it, from the East. "Suzzallo is the only man in Washington on whom both capital and labor will agree to arbitrate their differences," Scherer advised his superiors of the national council. "Since strikes are as plentiful in Washington as earthquakes in Japan, Suzzallo has had his hands full." 16 In his unusually sensitive and constructive state councilmen, and in Parker and Scherer, Suzzallo recruited able hands to share the burden. These men also shared a spirit of ardent patriotism, an impatience with obstructive perfectionists, and a repugnance to the tenets of ideological radicalism. Results were the goal they sought. The three academicians now associating for war work were clearly under Parker's mentorship concerning the nature of the IWW threat. A pervasive Progressive assumption obtained among them that men became wobblies out of unbearable environmental indignities and in* 13 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 1, 1917, Disque Papers. 16 Ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers; and see Roger Bald- win reminiscence, II, 286, loc. cit. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 61 adequacies. By this standard, the remedy for weakening the wobbly leadership in the lumber strike was obvious. Intelligent concessions, which corrected actual substandard living and working conditions and which, through governmental overseership, sustained new and more salubrious modes, were the answer. In meeting after meeting on the campus of the University of Wash- ington, usually in Suzzallo's office, Parker stole time from his crushing congeries of duties to bring his academic superior to this conclusion. As the weeks of early summer passed, Suzzallo tested out Parker's theo- ries — or rather tested the approach, not uncommon then, that Parker championed — in small issues that might afford an inkling as to their efficacy without endangering overmuch the effectiveness of the state council or of Suzzallo's university headship. "According to Suzzallo," Scherer advised Coffin, "the I.W.W. leaders are as 'smart as rats.' The [Washington state] council, however, has proved to be a good mouser." 17 Up to mid-July, when Scherer proposed that Parker associate as a federal agent with the state council, it had pursued relatively small rodents. Back in June when the state council formed, widespread rumors of wobbly-inspired sabotage, dynamiting of reservoirs, and burn- ing of warehouses and orchards had reached hysterical proportions. Tremendous pressures were exerted on Governor Lister to declare the state in insurrection and to employ the militia and federal troops to crush wobblies and all union organizers. Lister shunted much of this pressure on to Suzzallo, who organized a state-wide network of patriotic societies as the base for a state secret service system. In theory, this system was to be led in each locality by a defense council subordinate. But as in the relations of most state councils to the national body, the local units Suzzallo set up often proved to be embarrassingly inde- pendent of his instructions. At least the patriotic league did submit evidence to substantiate Parker's insistence that the public fears exag- gerated the wobbly threat. In almost every settled section of the state, police, sheriffs, militiamen, and vigilantes "managed" the resident wobblies, sometimes very ungently indeed. The result was that the cry for state-imposed martial law lessened. 17 Scherer to Disque, July 15, 1917, Disque Papers. Parker could not have been paid higher compliments than that both Harvard professor John Graham Brooks and the man he admired most professionally, Thorstein Veblen, agreed with these assump- tions. See Baldwin's reminiscence, loc. cit., on Brooks, and Veblen 's report on "Farm Labor and the I.W.W. ," in his Essays in Our Changing Order (New York, 1934), 319- 36. Professor Bernstein of the UCLA faculty brought the latter item to my attention, as well as a photostat of the ms. of this report Veblen made in 1918 for the Food Administration, from Record Group 174, National Archives. It must be said that Parker was the first to apply these common principles. On the "mouser" quotation, see ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers. 62 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE j The second, simultaneous action by Suzzallo was a state-wide educa- | tional campaign designed to bring the wobbly menace out into the light of day. He took this action on Parker's assurance that the wobblies i would thrive as an underground organization, but when exposed to view would rapidly lose their appeal. By mid-July, in a report to Scherer which Disque saw, state council secretary M. P. Goodner, a lumberman, could correctly assert that almost everywhere in Washington except in the isolated logging areas, the wobbly situation was "in hand." For example, when some of the state's migratory farm workers threat- ened to strike for better living conditions and out of sympathy for the loggers, Suzzallo recruited businessmen, teachers, students, and house- wives for the field work. The townsfolk, he believed, would thus come to understand the wobblies' problems, while the workers would see human beings instead of faceless exploiters. No romantic, Scherer re- j ported: "This brought about a friendly acquaintance with I.W.W. I malcontents that disarmed them, so that when the appointed strike Sunday arrived, the strike fizzled." 18 Parker's influence on Suzzallo's mediation work was apparent even before the professor joined his president in state council work. Suzzallo helped to avert another threatened farm labor walkout when he dis- cerned that a major cause of discontent was the absence of privies in the fields. Workers, paid on a piecework basis, disliked wasting the time needed to walk to the latrine area. But many women were now em- ployed as harvesters. Embarrassed by the ladies' presence, male farm hands were trapped between two needs. Discovering this unsuspected delicacy on their part, Suzzallo served it, and saved an apple crop, by recommending to employers that portable privies accompany the field gangs. Like Scherer, Suzzallo obviously was coming to accept Parker's thesis that environmental deficiencies rather than ideological radicalism were producing discontent. 19 In the matter of the farm hands' privies and in other local disputes, Suzzallo was able to steer a fine course, keep the support of the gov- ernor, and work his councilmen in harness. The question remained, however, whether he could be equally successful when dealing with 18 Goodner to Parker, ca. Oct. 1917, Disque Papers; Washington Council Report, 36, 43-45; ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers. 19 Ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers. For further examples of Parker's widespread influence, see the approach of his coJleague in the university's Sociology Department, William Ogburn, "Causes and Remedies of Lumber Labor Unrest," University of Washington Forest Club Annual (1918), 11-14; and State of Washington, Bureau of Labor, Eleventh Biennial Report, 1917-1918 (Olympia, 1918), 68-75. In phrases almost purely Parkerian, and which Parker might indeed have inspired (see Suzzallo to Disque, Nov. 9, 1918, Disque Papers), the commissioner of the Bureau, C. H. Younger, described most of these events. Fin iid si Coun 4aK lever SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 63 larger matters. In Scherer's estimation, Suzzallo had certain factors on his side. Marsh, the AFL man on the Washington council, was grateful to Suzzallo for preventing the wobbly hysteria from exploding into a violent crusade against all unions. On the other hand, Marsh agreed with councilman Boeing that Suzzallo had erred in not getting out troops against the wobblies. Boeing, for his part, would have blessed these troops had they attacked AFL as well as IWW offices. 20 In moving with Parker and Scherer into the lumber strike, which was bringing production almost to a standstill and was spreading to other industries, Suzzallo was stepping into an arena wherein the cen- trifugal tendencies among his councilmen would strain the pattern of cooperation more than in any precedent circumstance. "President Suzzallo is a fearless man," commented lumberman Ames, "but whether he will be backed up by the [state defense council] . . . and the Gover- nor ... or not, and the Mayors of the various cities, is altogether another proposition." 21 Further complicating these manifold uncertainties was the ambiguous and self-protective refusal to declare labor policy that characterized the Council of National Defense, the Labor Department, the War Depart- ment, and the White House. Suzzallo had to move without the comfort that comes to an official from approved guidelines of conduct. "We never knew the real attitude of the [national] government toward the IWW," Suzzallo reminded Frankfurter early in 1918. "That we did not blunder in acting on our own initiative was luck." In Suzzallo's own analysis, which Disque fully endorsed much later, the Washingtonian's good fortune consisted of having Scherer at hand to link the westerner's activities with the national administration's un- stated but pressing policies. Scherer had breathed life and a degree of uniformity into the defense councils of the west coast. "His services were amazing," Suzzallo judged. 22 In addition, the accidents of the aca- demic marketplace had brought Parker to the University of Washington scene, where his scholarly interests and personality attributes forged another link between the state and national agencies these men rep- resented. Through Scherer, but unknown to the others involved, Disque was kept closely attuned to these developments. Exposed through Scherer to 20 Marsh, dealing with himself and Boeing, in Washington State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Convention Held at Aberdeen, Wash- ington, June 24-28, 1918 (Tacoma, 1918), 9-11. Seattle Industrial Worker, July 14, 1917, has other data, and see Scherer to Disque, July 19, 1917, Disque Papers. 21 Ames to W. H. Talbot, July 27, 1917, Box 35, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 22 Suzzallo to Frankfurter, Jan. 2, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. 64 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Parker's writings and assumptions, Disque became a convert to them, he later admitted to Suzzallo. His swift evolution toward acceptance of Parker's environmentalist Progressivism impressed Scherer, who along with Parker decided that Disque's education would benefit from further and spectacular guidance. Employing Parker and Suzzallo as go- betweens, and Marsh of the Washington council as intermediary to the AFL hierarchy, Scherer advised Gompers of the wisdom of cultivating the obscure prison warden at Jackson, Michigan, whose only claim to such attention was in the innuendoes that Scherer probably let drop of Disque's intimacy with Pershing, which the Californian by this time had discerned. 23 Thus, in the late summer and autumn of 1917, Disque was surprised to receive letters from Gompers. Thereafter, whenever his travels brought him near the town of Jackson, Gompers troubled to stop off there and to talk with Disque. The labor leader impressed Disque very greatly. Squat and heavy of body, square of features, Gompers seemed to emanate power. He almost grew in size when his emotions were jolted by recollections of sweatshop days, which he described to Disque in vivid detail. Clouds of cigar smoke wreathed the two men as they talked for hours on end — or rather Disque listened — of the trials that orga- nized labor had faced to rise out of the pit. Now the country needed labor. The AFL was responding to the call. Trade unions were not the venal ogres depicted in most of the nation's newspapers, Gompers in- sisted, but rather a logical evolutionary institution which only the most antediluvian employers refused to recognize. Disque for his part, flattered but wary of Gompers' attention, pro- ceeded to learn all he could from the labor leader, as he had from Parker and others. Without question Disque was stirred by Gompers' sincerity and passion. Later, Disque wrote him that they had come to "a sympathetic view" as to the role of labor unions, and that they also agreed as to the evils of the wobbly organization. 24 Perhaps Gompers, as was his way, overestimated his ability to persuade. He taught Disque, but he did not convert him. Major links had formed by midsummer 1917, connecting all levels of the federal system and the war-emergency bureaucracy with Disque, the unofficial watchdog of the Army's interests. Even as Disque grew 23 Disque to Suzzallo, Jan. 1, 1918, Disque Papers. Scherer's and Parker's roles in bringing Disque and Gompers together can only be estimated. The most direct evi- dence is in Disque's reminiscent letter to George Meany, Dec. 4, 1952, Disque Papers. Unless some such liaison occurred, the logic of events fails to hold together. ^Gompers to Disque, Oct. 27, Nov. 27, Dec. 10, and Disque to Gompers, Dec. 11, 1917, Disque Papers; on description of Gompers, see Wehle, op. cit., 24-25. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 65 in awareness of the complexities of the labor problem, the strike situ- ation worsened in the Northwest. It was fortunate for the nation's interests that Scherer, Parker, and Suzzallo refused to be restricted by formal notions of traditional federalism. Rejecting limitations, they sought out opportunities and developed their informal liaison into a productive teamwork that did not hold back from venturing into un- mapped interstices of the federal system. Of all the roles thus far set, only Disque's was still unspecified, and he wanted it to remain not merely undefined but unneeded. He hoped that the Scherer-Parker-Suzzallo trio would of itself succeed in settling the lumber strike. In that event, he could apply for the only post he desired — that of an Army officer on overseas combat duty. Meanwhile, he must wait for events in the West over which he had no control, and for men there he trusted but knew little of, to decide his fate. Chapter 4 Autumn of Frustration When they joined forces early in July, Parker, Scherer, and Suzzallo had expected quick successes to reward their united efforts. The three optimistic academicians worked out plans designed to halt the spread- ing labor unrest that was fanning outward from the infected lumber regions. Many timberworkers, idled by the strikes, were obtaining employment in other industries. The wobbly doctrines they spread were gaining receptive audiences among shipyard and agricultural workers already gored by inflation. For the first time, newsboys, domes- tic servants, candy makers, deliverymen, and gas utility workers were talking of organizing. Longshoremen along the west coast were con- sidering walkouts to show sympathy for the lumberworkers. In Seattle and Tacoma, streetcar company workers halted operations. Most immediately urgent was the discontent that seethed in Pacific Coast shipyards. Hundreds of inexperienced, ambitious entrepreneurs had established yards and, fattening from the cornucopia of war orders, bid wildly for workers. At the same time yard management resolutely forbade any dealings with AFL unions. The result was constant tumult as workers longer on a job resented the higher scales that newcomers commanded. No mediation mechanism equivalent to the Cantonments Commis- sion existed in shipbuilding. The problem in the latter industry was complicated by the large numbers of shipyard contractors as compared to the three dozen that Parker and other Cantonments men had to cope with. Parker and others had lobbied for the Emergency Fleet Corpora- tion to extend its jurisdiction from contract negotiations to labor matters. 1 While this campaign was developing, Parker and his co- adjutors continued their unresting efforts to pacify the general west coast labor scene. Their first goal was to convince hysterical Washingtonians that the state would not be left without protection when National Guard units stationed at Camp Lewis entered the federal service in August. To gain 1 See Maxwell Raddock, Portrait of an American Labor Leader (New York, 1955), 94-97; ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers. In mid-August, an adjustment commission was established for the shipbuilding industry. 66 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 67 this end, the three men exploited their manifold connections to the utmost. Suzzallo obtained the cooperation of Washington's governor and the local director of a press association wire service. Scherer gained the help of the neighboring states' defense councils. Parker worked through federal attorneys at Spokane, Seattle, and Portland, through a special Justice Department agent who was investigating the IWW, and through Labor Department representatives who were inquiring into the Seattle-Tacoma streetcar stoppage. A barrage of reports, many telegraphic, were directed to the Attorney General, to the Secretaries of War and Labor, and to the President. The sense of these communica- tions was that catastrophe must ensue if the troops departed. A holo- caust of wobbly-inspired incendiarism, which local police forces could not prevent but merely punish, was the least dreadful consequence pictured. 2 On July 30, Secretary Baker signaled success. He wired Governor Lister that Washington's troops would remain for a while at their present location. The governor should deal directly with the Army commander at Camp Lewis concerning the "gradual withdrawal" of these state forces in the future. 3 Suzzallo also arranged with Marsh, his state defense councilor and AFL head, to work with Henry White, the federal attorney who also served as immigration commissioner at Seattle, in mediating the street- car dispute. For a brief while the streetcar company officials appeared reluctant to accept intervention. Treasury Secretary McAdoo suddenly called for payment on certain loans that the federal government had made to the company, which were already overdue. Suddenly the man- agers invited in Suzzallo's mediators. The employees' demands were met, and the strike ended/ Quite apart from the immediate, local benefits accruing to the north- western labor situation from these tactical victories, Parker had sought them in order to open the way for an offensive leading to a far wider strategical goal. In his view, the W 7 est could never fully participate in the production race until the lumber strike ended and the wobblies were rendered powerless to inspire fellow workers with discontent. To reach this end, Parker wanted AFL locals to gain recognition from em- - Special Agent F. A. Watt to Attorney General Gregory, July 18-26, 1917, file 186701, RG 60, NA; Washington Council Report, 73-80. Roger Baldwin likens the concern over the IWW to the post- 1945 red scare; see his reminiscence, II, 280, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University. 8 Baker to Lister, July 30, 1917, file 186701-49, RG 60, NA. 4 Labor Secretary Wilson to Baker, same to Gompers, same to McAdoo, and G. C. Corbaley to J. E. Barnes, all July 24, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 68 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ployers in the lumber and shipbuilding industries. "Unfortunately," Parker wrote War Secretary Baker on July 29, "there is no adequately organized branch of the American Federation of Labor to dicker with," and therefore the wobblies "dominate lumber camps." 5 If workers were to become AFL members, Parker realized, an "ade- quately organized branch" of the Federation was needed. As incentive for wobblies and uncommitted workers to join an AFL local, and as a rallying point around which Federation organizers could generate enthusiasm and build up their power, Parker proposed that the lumber companies grant, along with recognition of the AFL, the further prize of the eight-hour day. He anticipated that before the end of July lumber operators would grant this reform, which was becoming the central symbol of employee demands. Parker thought that the quick settle- ment of the streetcar strike, combined with the abatement of excite- ment through retention of the National Guard units in the state, would bring the lumbermen to agreement on both the union and hours issues. And so it seemed. Lumbermen were impressed by these achievements. Representatives of their association agreed to meet late in July with Suzzallo and, for the first time, with Jay G. Brown, head of the AFL's west coast lumber locals. After learning this from Parker, Labor Secre- tary Wilson wired excitedly to Henry White: "Mill and [lumber] camp operators are willing to grant an eight hour day to a union affiliated with [the] American Federation." 8 This was an overoptimistic statement. Most lumbermen were not as cowed as Parker had estimated them to be. Though many operators were resigned to the inevitable coming of the eight-hour day, they in- sisted that it obtain nationally in the industry rather than regionally. On the question of recognizing the AFL, Parker had been hopelessly sanguine. At a session of the Lumbermen's Protective Association which he addressed on July 26, he and E. G. Ames of the Puget Mills Com- pany had it out. Parker decided to push where he had no right to go. He intimated that unless the lumbermen gave way on recognizing the AFL as well as on the eight-hour workday, the troops at Camp Lewis would shortly transfer to eastern billets. Ames and his associates re- fused to panic at Parker's bluff. The lumbermen, as Ames reported the outcome of this secret session, decided never "to treat with the Ameri- can Federation of Labor or . . . recognize them in any way. . . . The whole crowd was strong on that." 7 5 File 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 8 July 24, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 7 Ames to W. H. Talbot, July 26, 1917, Box 30, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 69 The stubborn lumbermen had won. As though publicly to point up Parker's defeat, the Camp Lewis detachments remained at their posts. Nevertheless, Parker and Suzzallo, along with Scherer when he was at hand, continued to press the operators toward a reversal of course con- cerning the AFL. Their unceasing efforts during the last days of July proved self-defeating. Some lumbermen, who had earlier been coop- erative on the eight-hour reform, retracted because of the AFL recog- nition pressure. Lumbermen began to regard Parker and Suzzallo as tainted with socialism. The Business Chronicle, editorializing on this theme, wondered why slackers were so numerous among the univer- sity's students, and implied that the reason lay in the un-American teachings of certain members on the faculty. Parker, Ames whispered about, had the effrontery to boast of union membership in his youth. 8 Both men realized that their attempt to gain the eight-hour reform combined with recognition for the AFL had boomeranged. They now sought to counter the adverse judgments of the lumbermen, so that at least further efforts toward raising lumber output might continue. Suzzallo insisted to lumberman J. Bloedel, for example, that he had never lost his antipathy to wobblies. "It would be a great disappoint- ment to me personally if the present national crisis could not separate everybody from the I WW," Suzzallo wrote. "I had hoped that we could separate the sheep from the goats completely." For his part Parker let loose with an antiwobbly tirade that would not have been out of place in the Business Chronicle's columns. To be sure, it reiterated the need for the eight-hour workday, but many op- erators agreed with this point. The heart of Parker's appeal for the support of the lumbermen lay in his statement to Baker, which Parker first circulated around Seattle, that the "eight hour concession will not reopen camps and mills as long as terrorizing agitation [on the part of the wobblies] dominates workers." The IWW leadership was "revo- lutionary in aim and method both as to the wage system and as to the government," Parker continued. Employing sabotage against the em- ployers, the wobblies in effect were serving the Kaiser. Intimidating workers who might otherwise willingly cut wood if the eight-hour con- cession obtained, the wobblies could wreck production even if the formal strike ended. Therefore, the mere presence of troops and even the application of martial law in the West would not halt the retro- grade effects of IWW activity. It was not open insurrection that faced the government but covert sedition. H /^d.,July26, Aug. 7, 1917; Chronicle, Aug. 11, 1917. 9 Sept. 11, 1917, Suzzallo Papers. 70 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE What was needed, in Parker's publicized view though not in his secret activities, was for Congress to outlaw wobbly propaganda and to prosecute IWW leaders. Lumbermen would stick by their recent and none-too-firm resolution to go along with an eight-hour reform, if Baker gave an immediate, personal guarantee to this end. The War Secretary, however, who knew that Parker was quietly trying to apply brakes against excessive court prosecutions of wobblies, replied that he had no power to offer such a guarantee. 10 Scherer, reporting on these developments to Disque, clarified the purposes of Parker's seemingly unprincipled reversal of course. Ac- cording to Scherer, the primary reason impelling Parker to this public antiwobbly stand was the need to regain the confidence of the leading lumbermen. Desperation, not an expression of genuine conviction, had driven Parker to the unaccustomed position of espousing an onslaught against the IWW. He and Secretary Baker had probably prearranged the latter's refusal to sanction the scheme. It seemed worth while to Scherer. Unless the government secured the lumbermen's cooperation, no swift, large increase in spruce out- put was possible. Now, in the last days of July, Parker's efforts seemed to be bearing fruit. The adamant anti-AFL group among the lumber- men was weakening; the pro-eight-hour faction was strengthening. "If things hold still," Scherer wrote Disque on August 1, "my friends in the [lumber] industry will win." 11 But "things" never held still in the lumber situation. The Council of National Defense, numbering in its membership George Long of the Weyerhaeuser firm, and acting independently of its west coast labor pacifiers, had scheduled a conference of all Allied and American spruce users to meet in Seattle early in August. The conferees were to agree on prices and to accept a rough order of priorities governing the dis- tribution of spruce stocks now on hand. Scherer hurried from Seattle to Washington, D.C., to present to Coffin of the Defense Council the pleas of Parker and Suzzallo that the conference not be held. It would, they said, "alter the local [west coast] situation; the lumbermen were at the point of concession," Scherer wrote Disque. After expending some effort to win Army bureau heads to Scherer's views, Coffin judged that the conference had to go on as scheduled. He told Scherer that "War Department opinion" was too strong in its 10 Parker to Baker, July 29, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; on Parker's real atti- tude toward wobbly prosecutions, see Baldwin's reminiscence, I, 60, loc. cit. 11 Scherer to Disque, July 30, Aug. 1, 15, 18, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 71 favor for the Council to counter. He blamed Major Charles Sligh, of whom more later, for being largely responsible for inspiring this ad- verse opinion.^ With much fanfare, the "international" lumber conference began its work in the first week of August. Every word spoken received wide newspaper coverage. Wounded Allied aces told of their aerial exploits; government purchasing agents specified prices they would offer for the astronomical amounts of spruce and fir they were anticipating for air- frame manufacture; and Suzzallo and Parker, shrugging off their pessi- mism concerning the poor timing of the meeting, rang the changes on the need for patriotic self-sacrifice by everyone. It soon became apparent, however, that the conference had the un- fortunate result that they had foretold. Lumbermen, "from some in- explicable source," Scherer complained, had concluded that the gov- ernment would come around to their way of thinking on the evils of all labor unions. Consciousness of indispensability stiffened their demands. In response, AFL representatives at the conference assumed an intransigent attitude. 13 Nearing physical collapse after conducting the numerous, fruitless meetings that made up the conference, almost abandoning hope for constructive solutions to replace the existing deadlock, Suzzallo and Parker temporarily lost faith in themselves. It had seemed so very close. Suzzallo later told congressmen that the lumbermen, just before the conference began, "practically agreed with us as to what was necessary to set aside the discontent, [and] the chief thing we could not agree upon was as to the method of bringing it about." 14 Even the "method" seemed at hand. Suzzallo and Parker had convinced Marsh of the AFL to drop the demand for recognition and for all other changes in favor of accepting the eight-hour reform as a seemingly free gift from the em- ployers. In effect, the Baker-Gompers formula of June, respecting cantonments, would apply to the Northwest's lumber areas. But the lumbermen, so recently cooperative on this point, were now again ada- mantly opposed to an eight-hour concession. Instead, the operators countered with a demand that all strikers return to work at once on the basis of prestrike conditions, including the traditional ten-hour day. "Unhappily," Suzzallo, Parker, and White wired Lippmann on August 9, "conciliation of differences is apparently impossible." The strike contagion would now more than likely spread further than ever. 1 ""' 12 Ibid., Aug. 18, 1917. 13 Ibid., Aug. 10, 1917. "Hearings, II, 1183; Raddock, op. cit., 92. 15 File 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 72 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE On August 7 the wearying mediators had requested President Wilson to flash a "patriotic request" westward to all hands engaged in the con- ference, that they work "in conciliatory spirit." For the President, Sec- retary Baker and the national defense councilors provided the appeal. It forcefully outlined the nation's urgent need for lumber. Implying that woodsmen were in a sense government workers, because their prod- uct served the government, and that an eight-hour clause obtained on government contracts, Baker threw his weight on Parker's side. 16 It was too little weight, and it came too late. Baker's thesis that lum- berworkers were in effect government workers, entitled to an eight-hour workday, ignored the too obvious reality that, as subcontractors, the lumber operators and employees were twice removed from coverage under the eight-hour statute. Now, with the conference ended so unsuccessfully, the prestige of all the participants on the government's side declined. Parker had inspired Baker to take the plunge on the eight-hour issue. Its failure inescapably reflected adversely on the War Secretary. Meanwhile, Parker and Suzzallo were almost broken down from fatigue and from the depression attending the failure of their weeks- long exertions. Their standing was lowered in the War Department and at the Council of National Defense. Labor Secretary Wilson pre- pared to visit the Northwest. Felix Frankfurter, counsel for the newly established President's Mediation Commission, advised Parker that he had added the lumber strike to the Commission's crowded agenda. The implication was clear on the Pacific Coast. Parker, the rumors spread, was incapable of handling really large matters. 17 Suzzallo had suffered less in the lumbermen's esteem than Parker. With the deadlocked spruce conference finished, the university presi- dent tried an admittedly desperate tactic. Parker had involved the national administration through War Secretary Baker. Suzzallo was now to bring Washington's Governor Lister into the eight-hour fray. On August 15, the governor proclaimed that an eight-hour day was in effect for the lumber industry, with pay for nine hours of work. It was an empty gesture, everyone knew beforehand. The reason that the proclamation was ever actually issued was that its content prematurely became public. Five days earlier, Suzzallo and other state defense councilors had met with Jay Brown, acting as chairman of a joint conference com- I 16 Suzzallo, Parker, et al. to Secretary Wilson, Aug. 7; Baker to Suzzallo, Aug. 11, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 17 Scherer to Disque, Aug. 13, 1917, Disque Papers. i SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 73 mittee of AFL Shingle Weavers and Timberworkers. Suzzallo had with him the governor's nine-hour proposal. The Lister formula was accept- able to the AFL, Brown admitted. But the lumbermen would first have to commit themselves to adhere to it. "In view of the reluctance of the lumbermen to accept any of the proposals we have presented," Brown wrote, "we have not felt justified in calling our joint boards together until we know definitely the attitude of the lumbermen on the proposal submitted." 18 Suzzallo advised Governor Lister to issue the proclamation even though efforts to obtain a guarantee from the lumbermen were un- availing. At the same time he tried hard to pressure the AFL spokes- men toward a firmer acceptance of the Lister formula. "You may as well blow up these mills with German bombs and allow them to be wrecked for six months as to come to a deadlock at this time," he argued before an AFL assembly. Employing data on the need for spruce provided him by Professor Edmond S. Meany of the University of Washington faculty, Suzzallo depicted every logger and sawyer as a front-line soldier. "It must have been picturesque," Scherer wrote Disque, "but it was not successful." 10 These efforts were not totally fruitless, however. Even some of the most intransigent antiunion lumber operators, like Ames, were im- pressed by some of the academicians' arguments. By mid-August Ames declared himself ready to treat on the eight-hour issue, so long as rec- ognition of the AFL was not involved. "No one blames their men," Ames wrote after a session with the persuasive Parker, "for sympa- thizing with the eight-hour day." A similarly conciliatory tone was discernible even in Business Chronicle editorials, and the AFL Weekly News Letter predicted a swift smoothing of troubled labor-management relations. 20 But almost at once, hope ended for an across-the-table rapport be- tween employers and the AFL. Grammer, president of the Lumber- men's Protective Association and a bitter foe of all unions, denounced the Lister formula as a sellout. The lumbermen formally resolved that any eight-hour day meant economic disaster for the Northwest. Pri- vately, Grammer admitted to Suzzallo his belief, generally accepted by ls Proclamation, Aug. 15, 1917, Lister Papers; Brown to Suzzallo, Aug. 10, 1917, Suzzallo Papers. 19 Suzzallo quoted in Seattle Semi-Weekly Industrial Worker, Aug. 11, 1917; Scherer to Disque, Aug. 15, 1917, Disque Papers. 20 Ames to W. H. Talbot, July 26, Aug. 13, 1917, copies in Disque Papers; Chronicle, Aug. 11, 1917; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 12, 1917; AFL Weekly News Letter, Aug. 4, 1917. 74 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE most lumbermen, that if they stood firm now, the federal and state governments would be forced to move in and suppress the AFL as well as the wobblies. 21 Returning to the AFL men, Parker and Suzzallo found them as in- transigent as Grammer. Federation spokesmen professed now to dis- trust the government's agents along with the employers and the wob- blies. After all, Suzzallo's defense council entourage included Everett Griggs, president of the St. Paul and Tacoma Lumber Company and a leading spirit in the lumbermen's clique that was holding out for the ten-hour day. Suzzallo learned that employers were spreading the rumor that he was unalterably on their side. And he and Parker found out that Gompers, becoming aware of the intensity of intra-AFL dis- satisfaction with the open-shop formulas he had approved, was secretly encouraging the Shingle Weavers and Timberworkers to stand firm on the eight-hour workday. 22 And so the hope of ending the lumber strike, which had inspired Parker and Suzzallo to join forces with Scherer, wilted after weeks of frantic, fruitless efforts. Still they had done their best. At least, Suzzallo argued, they must be credited with having brought many important lumbermen and the battered, resentful AFL locals to an attitude of willingness to treat on some matters. This was no inconsiderable feat, however temporary. Consider that the three academicians had openly and honestly tried to gain recognition for AFL unions, a brave policy for anyone to adopt in the Pacific Northwest. Failing in this, Parker and his associates tried to reach an acceptable eight-hour-day formula, not involving union recognition, came close to success, and then lost out here too." 3 On August 23, Suzzallo hoisted the flag of defeat. In a report to Labor Secretary Wilson he concluded that the lumbermen were rigidly ob- durate against any eight-hour reform unless a national law provided for the shorter workday everywhere in the industry. Suzzallo under- stood that for Congress to enact such a law would require more time than the needs of war allowed. 24 But there was nothing more that his 21 Lumbermen's resolution to Washington state defense council, undated, and Lister's reply, Aug. 17, 1917, Lister Papers; Scherer to Disque, Aug. 25, 1917, Disque Papers, on Suzzallo-Grammer conversations, and note that Grammer later became a major in the Spruce Production Division; see also, Business Chronicle, Aug. 25, 1917. 22 AFL Weekly News Letter, Sept. 1, 1917; Gompers to Jay G. Brown (telegram), Aug. 10, 1917, Lister Papers; Raddock, op. cit., 93, 96-98. 23 Suzzallo to Lister, ca. Aug. 30; to J. L. Shay, Aug. 1, 1917, Lister Papers. 2i Suzzallo to Secretary Wilson, Aug. 23, and Washington state defense council reso- lution, Aug. 20, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Senator Miles Poindexter to Suzzallo, Aug. 27, 1917, Lister Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 75 state council could do, notwithstanding Parker's links to the War De- partment and Scherer's to the national defense council. Parker and Suzzallo were exhausted. Both men were also bitterly aware that their respective superiors, Baker and Lister, were angry with them for having involved them publicly in the fruitless negotiations. Now Suzzallo admitted to lumberman Bloedel, "The lumber situation is out of my hands for the present." 25 Not entirely. Suzzallo and Parker gamely set out to analyze the rea- sons for their failure, so that Frankfurter's Mediation Commission, soon to arrive on the west coast, might profit from it. In this analysis, they moved away from the antiwobbly bias they had assumed in the heat of mediation, back to an objective consideration of environmental factors that produced recruits for the IWW. Both men agreed that the lumbermen were primarily responsible. The timber operators wielded the bulk of economic and political power. Refusal to exercise this power for common ends had nullified attempts at compromise. Of course, some lumbermen were philosophically set against the eight-hour reform or any dealings at all with the AFL. Suzzallo and Parker believed that a larger proportion of the operators were more reasonable than this, but were afraid to appear so. Still other lumber- men, because of local conditions at their tracts and mills, were afraid to discharge "troublesome" employees, whom they labeled as wobblies, and wanted someone else, preferably government, to do it for them so that there would be no reprisals. 38 There was, however, a more basic reason impelling the leading lum- bermen to intransigence. This, Parker and Suzzallo judged, was the expectation, derived from some mysterious source, that victory would come to them without the necessity of compromise. And indeed it did seem that all society was harassing the IWW, so that concessions ap- peared unreasonable. The mayor of Spokane declared martial law. Federal and state prosecutions of wobblies increased, as did the out- flow of injunctions against IWW activities and AFL organizers from national and local courts. The few mills that had voluntarily adopted the eight-hour workday renounced the heresy under pressure from the 25 Sept. 11, 1917, Suzzallo Papers. 26 E. G. Ames to W. H. Talbot, Aug. 4, 1917, Box 30, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW, as an example of a bitter-ender; private detective E. M. Eachman to Public Service Commission, July 23, 1917, Lister Papers, on isolated lumbermen who wanted govern- ment to deal with all their troublesome workers; M. P. Goodner, secretary of the Washington council, to Suzzallo, Oct. 9, 1917, Lister Papers, on the return to environ- mentalism. Suzzallo's and Goodner's report, mostly Parker's work, is in ms. form in Disque Papers, and in final form in Washington Council Report, 73-80. 76 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Lumbermen's Protective Association. Vigilantism increased everywhere in the West. During the last weeks of August the lumbermen appeared to have won. Striking lumberworkers returned to work, ostensibly beaten into submission. But as Frankfurter's report later indicated — and Marsh as a member of his Commission in effect gave Parker and Suzzallo a voice in that investigatory group — the unyielding employers had not suc- ceeded in destroying the wobblies. Rather they had killed whatever chance the conservative AFL might have had to steal the wobbly's radical thunder. At western shipyards 60,000 angry workers were still on strike. Now there was no union left, of any pretension to strength, that workers would support and that government agents or moderate businessmen could countenance. 27 As if to underline the accuracy of this contention, on September 1 the IWW leaders altered their open strike tactics in the timberlands. They called for a "strike on the job," centering on the deliberate slow- down. Thus they avoided the perils of picketing. Because their ad- herents remained nominally employed and drew wages, the wobbly organization gained income for defense expenses in pending court cases against members, and for future strikes. Though most lumber plants resumed operating, absenteeism, inefficiency, and, some employ- ers claimed, sabotage increased. Despite the end of the midsummer strike, production rates failed to rise. The quality of the output was outrageously below aircraft standard. 2 * Apparently everything that had been sought since June was undone. Smarting under the onus of defeat, Parker, Scherer, and Suzzallo set out to ascertain what factors lay behind the employers' sudden in- tractability in mid-August. Through their manifold contacts on both coasts, an answer was forthcoming. G. L. Gardner, general manager of the Great Northern Lumber Com- pany and a power in both the West Coast Lumbermen's Association and the newer Protective Association, had been trying to "take over" the Washington and Oregon defense councils and to convert them to the Minnesota model, wherein that state's dominant economic inter- 87 Charlotte Todes, Labor and Lumber (New York, 1931), 142; Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York, 1945), 129. The point is, of course, that destroying the effectiveness of the AFL as a bargaining agent and as an anti-IWW force was never the purpose of the federal or state mediators. No evidence appears to support a different contention. See also Raddock, op. cit., 99. 28 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 438-39; Herbert A. Resner, Trees and Men (2d ed., Seattle, 1938), 119-21. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 77 ests utilized the council for private purposes. In Minnesota the state council built a private armed force of 50,000 men, recruited as home guardsmen from among draft-exempt, middle-class persons of known antiunion sentiments. This considerable army was sparking a fero- cious vigilante campaign against wobblies and other nonconformists in Minnesota. In Washington, with Governor Lister's backing, Suzzallo and his coadjutors had successfully resisted Gardner; but in Oregon similar pressures had been less well held off. Suzzallo realized that his stand against Gardner in Washington had earned him some enmity among the lumbermen and was part of the reason for the failure to solve the labor problem. Now the unregenerate lumbermen were striking out independently of Suzzallo and the state defense council, in an effort to swing the rest of the state's war-emergency apparatus to an overt antiwobbly posture. By midsummer 1917 the lumbermen were apparently gaining this objective."' 9 Lumbermen always wielded power in the Northwest, Scherer lec- tured Disque, because of their central position in the region's economy. Soon after the American entrance into the war some lumbermen had set out to exercise this power through outlets conformable, as they saw it, to the primary needs of patriotic endeavor. In June they found the opportunity through still another agency of the national government, the Justice Department, and its remarkable offshoot, the American Pro- tective League. The League was an extralegal, volunteer auxiliary to the Justice Department, formed shortly before the United States declared war on the Central Powers and since then expanding rapidly across the nation. Theoretically, the League's hundreds of thousands of members were under the control of Justice Department agents. But the Leaguers were uncommissioned, unsalaried, and irresponsible. They were by neces- sity recruited from among older, draft-exempt men, often persons of affairs, who had the time and money to devote to antispy footwork for the Department. There proved to be no German spies to catch. In many localities, League locals became by autumn the centers of anti- liberal, antiradical, and antiunion activity. This was the case on the Pacific Coast. Organizing American Pro- 29 Gardner to Suzzallo, Aug. 4, 1917, Suzzallo Papers; O. A. Hilton, "The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety in World War I, 1917-1919," Bulletin, Oklahoma Agri- cultural and Mechanical College, XLVIII (May 15, 1951), passim. Gompers' protest against these developments is in American Federationist, XXIV (Aug. 1917), 642. See also ms. "Confidential Report on Oregon," Scherer Papers; Scherer to Disque, Aug. 30, 1917, Disque Papers. 78 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE tective League locals, lumbermen had achieved dominant positions in the APL hierarchy of the coastal states as well as in the Inland Em- pire. Leaguers Thomas Burke and Grammer were also prominent in the Lumbermen's Protective Association. Furthermore, these men, tied to the Justice Department through the APL and to the state defense council structures of the West, were connected by another, less licit link. Burke had formed an organization known as the Minute Men, re- cruited chiefly from among the more prominent lumbermen as well as from representatives of other large, associated entrepreneurial concen- trations. This association had vague and undefined purposes. Two goals that its members had no difficulty agreeing on, however, were the closing of all doors to labor-union recognition and the extirpation of all wobblies. Through Henry White's links to Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory, and by the intercession of Charles Warren of the Attorney General's office, Burke in mid-1917 was working for a formal linkage of the Minute Men to the American Protective League, and thereby to the Justice Department. Although he was not able to achieve this organizational goal for months to come, actually the west coast APL apparatus was secretly so interwoven with Minute Men in 1917 that Burke's basic purposes were already won. The Justice Department, through the APL, was the lumbermen's friend. 30 Little wonder that lumbermen luxuriated in this benign atmosphere radiating westward from the Justice Department, and that the intran- sigents had won out. They saw less reason to compromise in August than they had in July because the APL and the Minute Men organi- zations were more complete by the latter date, more intermixed, and more intimate with the Justice Department. League and Minute Men spokesmen had hinted during the early days of August that a sharp attack on the wobblies was imminent. A deluge of federal and state legal prosecutions sustained the rumors. Then, on September 5, Justice Department agents, including their extralegal auxiliaries, launched dozens of raids across the country against IWW centers. In the North- west, it was commonly believed that the wobblies were close to being 30 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 9, 1917, Disque Papers; on the background of the Ameri- can Protective League, see Harold Hyman, To Try Men's Souls (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), 267-97; on Burke's APL activities, see League Papers on Washington state, owned by the author. Robert G. Nesbit, "He Built Seattle"; A Biography of Judge Thomas Burke (Seattle, 1961), ignores Burke's APL affiliation but acknowledges his deep conservatism. On the Minute Men, see APL, Minute Men Division (Seattle, 1918), 3; reports in Burke Papers, UW; Clay Allen to Washington Minute Men, Jan. 16, March 22, 1918, APL Papers, UW; A. J. Lombard to F. R. Clayton, March 21, 1918, Calif, file, APL Papers, RG 65, NA. Gregory was never sensitive to civil liberties issues, in Roger Baldwin's recollection; see his 1954 reminiscence, I, 58-60, loc. cit. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 79 crushed. Therefore, the AFL unions could no longer trade on being a moderate counterforce to the wobblies. The teeth of the unions were pulled, and the muscles of the federal and state labor mediators ren- dered flabby. 81 When they learned what had been occurring, Parker, Scherer, and Suzzallo understood what had undone their efforts and they revised upward their low self-estimates. Considering the odds against success as shown by the full facts, they had come closer to it than was reason- able to expect. Bringing as many lumber operators to heel as they had, even though temporarily, was a large achievement. Thus encouraged, the three amateur mediators assumed a new tack. As Scherer described it to Disque, the trio in a series of meetings pointed out to the jubilant lumbermen that merely jailing or deporting wob- blies did not get spruce cut. Equating discontent among loggers with disloyalty was nonsense. Where else could men with grievances go, once the employers themselves had proved how weak the AFL was, but to the IWW? It is noteworthy that so far as the record indicates, Parker and his colleagues saw nothing intrinsically wrong with the APL or the Minute Men. The discernible reaction of the three mediators was not one of anger at the purposes or methods of those extraordinary organizations. Rather the reaction was one of bitterness at time lost and of surprise at the irrational inefficiency of the government. That one branch of the national administration should put wobbly loggers in jail while Parker, for the Defense Council and the War Department, was devot- ing all his strength to getting these same men to work cutting wood, outraged the tenets of Progressive rationalism. "The Justice Depart- ment moves," Scherer complained to Disque on September 10; "the War Department does nothing at all." 32 As to the outlook for a rapid improvement in the situation, Scherer painted a dismal picture. Unrest was increasing among lumberworkers, and the "strike on the job" in that industry seemingly defied solution. New strikes impended or were beginning in manufacturing, utilities, and service industries. In several western communities, notably Seattle and Los Angeles, popular resentment was rising sharply at labor's apparent lack of patriotism, and this emotion might soon reach "dan- gerous peaks." ul Scherer to Disque, Sept. 13, 1917, Disque Papers, deals with these events, and this description reflects his angry account. 32 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 10, and in a lengthy, undated memorandum on these matters, Disque Papers. On Parker's opposition to wobbly prosecutions, see Baldwin's reminiscence, I, 60, loc. cit. Even Baldwin was against the prosecutions, not against the substitutes for them that Parker proposed. 80 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Most of the cabinet officers and national defense councilors shared in this resentment, Scherer wrote Disque, only restraining expression out of deference to the President and to Gompers. Although almost every high official agreed that the wobblies were the main source of the trouble, a process of associative guilt was under way in the public's mind, linking the wobblies with all other labor unions and with all laborers. Workmen were suffering and would suffer more as the con- viction gained currency that labor's selfishness was denying the AEF the tools of war, and that production inadequacies were threatening to prevent the United States from playing its rightful part in shaping the nature and outcome of the conflict being waged in Europe. Every- one Scherer met was "frustrated and angry," he confided to Disque. "Airplane spruce is becoming a graveyard of reputations." 33 This was a judgment that many persons shared in 1917 and con- tinued to hold. After the war, Archer A. Landon, an assistant to Coffin in the aircraft production section of the Council of National Defense, told congressmen that the spruce situation was "an example of dilly- dallying through a lack of organization. . . . The only reason that there was no action in July [1917] was because we . . . [did] not possess an organization of direct responsibility and on that account these ineffi- ciencies were possible." What was needed was someone who "wakes up and thoroughly organizes the work." 34 Anticipating the sense of this conclusion, Parker and Suzzallo, de- spite their temporary decline in prestige, had inspired Frankfurter to recommend that "someone, either in behalf of the President or the War Department, be sent out [west] quietly," there to evaluate the degree of dedicated radicalism that existed among the lumberworkers as compared to mere discontent; to "seek out responsible leaders who can be counted on for constructive work"; and to make plans with these persons for another attempt at solution, this time without the fanfare that had attended the abortive August meetings. 35 Agreeing, Baker in mid-September sent Major H. W. Tornwy, an inspecting offi- cer of the Signal Corps, to Seattle. There, Tornwy established a close connection with Parker and Suzzallo. With his arrival, the latter two began to regain their former roles as influential advisers to the national authorities. 38 33 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 13, 1917, Disque Papers. 34 Hearings, 111,3932. 35 Memo, Frankfurter to Baker, Sept. 4, 1917, Box 3, Baker Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. The memo is titled "Plan for dealing with so-called IW W strikes and western labor troubles." 36 See file 190657, RG 60, NA; Scherer to Disque, Sept. 19, 1917, Disque Papers. Chapter j Entering the Graveyard of Reputations Meeting quietly in Suzzallo's office, Major Tornwy brought him and Parker up to date on affairs at the national capital. A Shipbuilding Adjustment Board, organized on the model of the Cantonments Adjust- ment Commission which Parker served so ably, was now in action. Its representatives were due on the west coast in early October, and thence- forth shipyard labor difficulties were to be outside the jurisdiction of the Washingtonians, for which favor Parker and Suzzallo were thank- ful. 1 Now they might concentrate their efforts on the lumber "strike on the job," if this is what the War Department wanted them to do. It was. For, Tornwy reported, War Department heads now realized that they had stumbled badly in the timber imbroglio. Having learned their lesson, Army bureau chiefs were coming around to Parker's often- reiterated point of view that all efforts to increase spruce output were useless if they did not take workers' legitimate grievances into account. 2 After this introductory, Tornwy described why the War Department had been moving so sluggishly, in comparison to the emergency boards and the Justice Department. Early in May Howard Coffin had taken complete charge of the Army's equipment procurement branch. In June he had placed two "dollar-a- year men" in uniform to help him to meet this enlarged responsibility. The first was Edward A. Deeds, a former executive of the National Cash Register Company and now a colonel. Under Deeds, with primary responsibility for securing all the lumber that the military and its con- tractors needed, was Charles R. Sligh, recently a Grand Rapids furniture manufacturer, now sporting a major's leaves. In mid-July, balding, rotund Sligh had organized a group of Wash- ington and Oregon lumbermen into a Spruce Log Bureau, which was supposed to achieve voluntary deferments of private lumber contracts 1 Both men offered Wehle, the Shipbuilding Board's counsel, full cooperation, and Suzzallo saw to it that other University of Washington faculty and the state defense council aided the Board as well. See Maxwell Raddock, Portrait of an American Labor Leader (New York, 1955), 99; Washington Bureau of Labor, Eleventh Biennial Report, 68. 2 Parker to M. P. Goodner, Oct. 13, 1917, Disque Papers. 81 82 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE in favor of the Army's needs. Sligh received permission from the Air- craft Production Board to establish a Bureau office on the spot in the West to make contracts for buying up the entire output of spruce, theoretically on the basis of coordinated price and quality controls. At Sligh's request, a prominent Oregon lumberman, Russell Hawkins, took charge of this western office, locating it in Portland. Sligh and Hawkins completely ignored Parker and Suzzallo. Touring the Northwest several times during the summer and autumn weeks of 1917, Sligh mixed only with lumbermen. The officers of his brother- in-law's Seattle lumber firm and George S. Long of the Weyerhaeuser Company, along with Hawkins, became his closest confidants. Appar- ently Sligh shared the attitudes of his new friends concerning wobblies and labor men, while at the same time he agreed with the lumbermen on the need for cooperation and even governmental restraints in mat- ters involving conservation of natural resources and Federal Trade Commission regulations against wildcat competition. The influence of Sligh's associates is also evident in his erroneous opinion, subsequently offered to congressmen, that Washington's Gov- ernor Lister was "a sympathizer with the I.W.W.'s" who "exerted no effort whatever to furnish the spruce the Government desired." Sligh preferred the governor of Oregon who permitted that state's defense council to be dominated by lumbermen so that it was not bothered by the restraints that Suzzallo imposed upon the Washington council. Oregon's state authorities espoused the use of physical force against the M m wobblies and other unionists, in preference to alternative remedies. 3 Lumbermen on the west coast welcomed Sligh enthusiastically. They cooperated with him as they had never done with Parker or Suzzallo, and they gained his influence in the August lumber conference de- scribed earlier. In appreciation, the lumbermen agreed to defer private contracts in favor of providing first as much as they could toward the timber supply the government and its contractors needed. Sligh thought that he had won thus quickly, and promised Secretary of Commerce Redfield: "We are going to get this spruce." Obviously he planned to "get" it by arranging matters as much as possible in conformity to lumbermen's interests. For example, Sligh's own subordinate, knowledgeable E. T. Allen, a member of the Lumber- men's Protective Association and a prominent conservationist, set up 3 Hearings, I, 580-81; ms. "Confidential Report on Oregon," Scherer Papers. On FTC and conservation, see Elwood Maunder's interviews with, respectively, Royall S. Kellogg (April 16, 1955), and S. Cowan (Oct. 30, 1957), Forest History Foundation Transcripts, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 83 a separate purchasing unit to buy lumber directly from prime loggers rather than from brokers, thus bypassing the expense of middlemen, since the government was ostensibly to be the sole spruce purchaser. But Sligh countermanded this sensible policy. Lumber brokers, needed for peacetime financing of private operations, but rather less necessary for the conditions of war, were sustained, and added their bills along with their expressions of admiration at Sligh's methods to the loggers' chorus. 4 News of Sligh's frank admiration for and support of lumbermen spread quickly from Portland north and east. Lumbermen of the entire northwestern region, readying for the August "international" confer- ence that ended so disastrously as Parker and Suzzallo saw matters, were encouraged by Sligh's attitude to resist recognition of the AFL and granting of the eight-hour day. After all, Sligh, clad in the Army's prestigious wartime mantle, was frankly antiunion. No wonder that lumbermen had felt able to bid from strength rather than plead from weakness. Controlling the burgeoning American Protective League units in the Far West, and now in the person of Sligh enjoying a spokesman at the War Department and on the Council of National Defense, lumbermen were flexing new muscles in rejecting the Parker- Suzzallo admonitions to compromise with workers. After observing Sligh in action for a few weeks, lumberman Ames advised that to get out spruce the government should centralize all purchasing functions, presumably under Sligh, so that competing units would cease squab- bling and interfering, and the wood would come forth. And Scherer, offering Disque his estimations, observed that the lumbermen had been able "to shop around" between what Parker and Suzzallo offered and what Sligh gave as a free gift. Of course, Scherer dolefully concluded, the timber operators chose what was obviously for themselves "the best bargain." 5 Sligh's most effective liaison with the operators was through lumber- man Alexander Poison, "one of the big men of Washington," as Sligh described him to Redfield. Reciprocating this admiration, Poison in mid-August thanked Sligh "on behalf of our American citizens for the stand you have taken in the interest of our boys who have gone to the 4 History, 5. Note that Disque here credits Sligh with originating the Loyal Legion. Sligh was obtuse concerning the essence of the Legion idea — the inclusion of workers on a theoretically equal basis with the government and with management. He was never an originator of the Legion; Disque sought to deflect congressional attacks and Sligh's bitter postwar criticisms of the Legion by awarding him undue credit. Sligh to Redfield, Aug. 24, 1917, file 186701^9, RG 60, NA, and see note 40 below. 5 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 15, 1917, Disque Papers; Ames to W. H. Talbot, Oct. 4, 1917, Box 36, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; Nichols, Legion, 55. 84 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE front to keep this country worth living in." 6 It was the "stand" Sligh took in labor matters that most outraged Parker and his coadjutors. Sligh had enlisted the Army in the most blatant anti-IWW and anti- AFL ranks. He had opened his Portland office to Oregon's American Protective League members. Poison in return lent Sligh some of his corps of Pinkerton private detectives, one of whom had bored into an IWW local as its secretary. Allen of Sligh's staff served as intermedi- ary between Poison's Pinkertons, the APL, the Minute Men, and the Army's Intelligence operatives. In a few instances, Pinkertons were recruited directly into the Army and into the less restrictive echelons of the APL. By late August and early September, an antiunion network was woven tightly across much of Oregon and rather less completely to the north. The wobbly raids of those weeks reflected the initial open activity of the Sligh-Polson mechanism. So far as Oregon was concerned it worked to perfection. The wobblies there were hopelessly defeated, in Sligh's opinion. Only more timberworkers were needed; those at hand were cowed. 7 To be sure, Washington and the Inland Empire offered less pleasing labor prospects, but after all, Sligh had just begun his method of fight- ing. The strike on the job that the wobblies were currently engaged in had to end. And Sligh had a method that would put a stop to it swiftly. He suggested, in brief, that the national government organize the labor resources of the West on behalf of the lumbermen. Sligh derived his method primarily from the proposals of two coop- erative Washington lumbermen, Grammer and J.J. Donovan. Grammer was an officer of the Puget Mills Company and president of the Lumber- men's Protective Association. Donovan was chairman of that trade association, vice-president of the Bloedel-Donovan Lumber Company, and a long-time friend of Bernard Baruch. In mid-September, the Grammer-Donovan proposals so impressed Sligh that an observer later testified to Sligh's belief that "We had mastered the worst phases of the [labor] situation by September [1917]." 8 Sligh, Grammer, and Donovan knew by this time that War Secretary Baker was dead set against employing large Army units as strikebreak- Sligh to Redfield, Aug. 24; Poison to Sligh, Aug. 17, 1917, file 186701-49, RG 60, NA. 7 Poison to Sligh, Aug. 17; Sligh to Attorney General Gregory, Oct. 8, 1917, file 186701^9, RG 60, NA; Signal Corps Inspector F. B. Stansbury to Chief E. Leigh, Plant Protection Section, Military Intelligence Division, Nov. 8, 1917, RG 165, NA. 8 Hearings, II, 992. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 85 ing police in the West, as they wanted him to do. Faced with this puzzling reluctance on the Secretary's part, and not knowing Pershing's inspiration for it, Sligh and his lumbermen friends proposed that civil- ian branches of the national government intervene far more intensively and directly than before in northwestern labor matters. In the Grammer-Donovan scheme, a series of "labor exchanges" should come into existence under the aegis of some unspecified national agency. These exchanges would take over hiring and firing in the lumber industry. All applicants for employment would have to sign a loyalty oath. None might leave his job "until discharged." A "standard wage" would prevail throughout the industry and region. Instructors were to teach proper sawing and milling methods designed to insure a product usable in airframe and propeller construction. "Appropriate rules of discipline should be strictly enforced at all points. . . . Secret Service should be provided to report sabotage, derelictions of duty, pro-German influence, etc." Presumably, this "et cetera" included sur- veillance over any IWW or AFL organizers. This proposal, seriously advanced, was based on the assumption that lumber company executives, who would be in charge of the govern- ment's operations, would somehow become more acceptable to the restive timberworkers than in the present laissez-faire situation. Sligh's pet scheme included a further provision for a time limit — one year — after which the government's participation must automatically cease and totally private management resume its sway. The plan promised that within that year one hundred million feet of perfect spruce would be supplied. Sligh never understood why his proposal was rejected at the War Department. He came to suspect the existence of a radical plot de- signed to give over the lumber regions to the unions. There was no plot. What happened was that the Secretary of War referred Sligh's plan to Parker for comment. Parker reported his opinion that it was an absurd scheme, and Baker agreed with him. The Sligh design lacked an ingredient essential to practical, Progressive reforms, in that it failed to provide incentives for the workers involved; it did not offer them betterment in the present or hope for the future. Lacking these advan- tages for employees, the Sligh-Donovan-Grammer proposal was merely an instrument for the lumbermen to exploit. 9 "Ibid., I, 580-81; II, 992, 1148-49; Palmer, Baker, I, 50. Baker did authorize Sligh to requisition all spruce output in the Northwest for military purchasers, at prices set at the Seattle August conference; see Assistant Lahor Secretary Kerwin to Henry White, Sept. 12, 1917, file 33/574-A, RG 280, NA. Essentially, Sligh thus hecame a privileged broker; Hearings, I, 600. Baker's reaction is best described in Scherer's 86 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Sligh, nevertheless, proceeded to act as if the proposal were approved. He announced from his War Department headquarters that he would guarantee military protection for all lumber camps, yards, and kilns that were at work on government contracts. Then, having "demoted" Allen, who had persisted in criticizing his operations, Sligh authorized Hawkins to act as a "czar" over spruce and fir matters, with power even to commandeer private property. Commenting later on this, Sligh's executive officer of 1917, Major C. A. Seoane, an old friend of Disque's, noted that this authorization "was so broad that it empowered these individuals [of Sligh's spruce bureau] who had no [official] connection with the Government, with such powers as even the Secretary of War himself did not possess." Sligh obviously expected no adverse reaction. A peculiarly insensi- tive and uninstructable individual, he was "astonished," for example, that Gompers opposed him and flayed Grammer, Donovan, and Hawkins as notorious antiunion men. When Baker admonished Sligh for stepping out of bounds by committing the Army to a policy it had neither desire nor authority to undertake, Sligh "leaked" details to the press which made it appear that Baker was Gompers' puppet. Then Sligh looked to Congress for support. Representative Fordney, a partner in the struck Coats-Fordney Lumber Company, agreed to defend him in the House if west coast lumber matters came to a crisis on Pennsyl- vania Avenue. A crisis was avoided because President Wilson brought up bigger guns. Learning, through information that Parker and Suzzallo supplied to Baker, that Sligh was unacceptable in any policy role not only to Gompers but also to leaders in both political parties in the West, the President had a "conference" with Senator Chamberlain of Oregon. Chamberlain "conferred" in turn with Fordney, who suddenly was no longer available as Sligh's protector. 10 All would probably have gone well with Sligh despite his arrogant bumptiousness if he had gotten out spruce. But while his recommenda- tions were under consideration at the War Department, he failed to check the reliability of statistics supplied by his lumbermen-subordinates and seriously overestimated the spruce production rate that his group could attain. He based his projections on lumberman Poison's plan of letter to Disque, Sept. 28, 1917, Disque Papers. "The Secretary," Scherer wrote, "pulled the scheme apart at once." Note again how in History, 5, Disque tries to placate Sligh's congressional supporters by overcrediting this scheme as the Legion's source. On Parker's role, see Baker to Florence Kelley, Dec. 16, 1921, National Consumers League Papers, Library of Congress. 10 Seoane to Disque, Aug. 20, 1919, Disque Papers; Sligh to Attorney General Greg- ory, Oct. 8, 1917, file 186701-49, RG 60, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 87 obtaining several million spruce logs that had been cut earlier that year, and since left afloat in rivers. When brought ashore, almost all of this supply was found to be of a quality inadequate for airframe use, and the remainder was of little worth for other industrial purposes. At the same time, however, Sligh incautiously permitted a few lumber- men who did have stockpiles of high-grade spruce to sell them off for pulping into paper, perhaps in expectation that the river supply would more than cover this inessential employment of the timber. Recriminations and excuses for the expensive, frustrating mistake failed to clothe Sligh's incapacities. He had erred seriously in choosing his subordinates and grossly miscalculated in concentrating solely on the producers and ignoring the workmen. At the War Department, as Seoane described it to Disque, the conclusion was "quickly formed" by late September "that the entire spruce situation was beyond Major Sligh's grasp." 11 To be sure, in the autumn of 1917 it seemed beyond the capacity of anyone to solve. And by no means was all the fault attributable to Sligh. Only his spectacular failure forced the higher authorities to see the labor aspect of the spruce problem as part of an "entire . . . situation," in Seoane's words. Sligh's flounderings illustrated the lack of organization that plagued the overbuilt administrative structure of the war period. No one had taken the initiative to warn Sligh that western workmen demanded some benefits from whatever authority decided to do in the West. The numerous agencies, officials, and spokesmen of the Wilson war administration no longer really communicated with one another. This mazelike aspect was rendered worse when incapable personnel, contradictory policies, or overlapping jurisdictions blocked efficient action. There can be little doubt that the Wilson administration's chieftains were guilty of having permitted the spruce problem to drift, and of attacking it piecemeal and belatedly. In some instances the expectation prevailed too long that the spruce imbroglio would sort itself out. In other cases excessive timidity obtained where braver atti- tudes were needed. For example, by late 1917 Attorney General Gregory no longer permitted his officers to conduct investigations for the Labor Department. Gregory feared that such inquiries might entangle his department in local or regional class partisanships, or in attitudes of favoritism or antipathy toward unions. So they might have. On the other hand, this caution seems strange in view of Gregory's sponsorship of the APL. And it certainly deprived the unprestigious Labor Depart- 11 Seoane to Disque, Aug. 20, 1919, Disque Papers; Hearings, I, 578-81. 88 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ment of a way to understand the complexities of the lumber strike-on- the-job, a loss that its limited budget and personnel could not overcome. This is not to say that Sligh's myopic proposal should have received approval. His chosen subordinates were politically inadmissible, and the spruce production question was clearly now in the political arena. Sligh's plan was also too limited. He ignored the men in the West, like Suzzallo, best fitted to advise him; and in eschewing consideration of organized labor's desires, he had too low a vision. At the War Department, Baker and Coffin decided in mid-September that as soon as possible they would relieve Sligh of all connection with procuring spruce, keeping him in charge of a section dealing with com- mon furniture hardwoods. 12 It was past time for the change, Scherer wrote Disque, and he hoped it would soon be realized. All that was holding it up was the fact that neither the War Department nor the Council of National Defense knew what policy to put into effect in place of Sligh's abortive effort. Now more than ever caution was needed and speed was imperative. Dwindling spruce supplies were in stark opposition to rising estimates from France of the demand for aircraft. But Sligh's bungling had made realization of the production goal even more difficult by placing the federal government in a clear promanagement posture. The national AFL, by no means so weak everywhere as in the west coast lumber industry, had its hackles up. Gompers now wanted all government contracts to contain recognition of Federation locals, perhaps in re- sponse to the bitterness that had grown up within the Federation at his earlier acquiescence in the open shop. The Council of National De- fense refused Gompers' request. In the West, this refusal stressed what AFL and wobbly spokesmen claimed was the antilabor bias of the administration, which Sligh's activities had merely underlined. Taken altogether, the month of September 1917 was the low-water mark for the men on the scene in the Northwest. Such harmony as Parker and Suzzallo had created in Washington state with lumbermen and with labor leaders was sorely tested by Sligh's fiasco. But the very fact that Sligh had ignored them now redounded to their credit. Wash- ington's lumber operators and workers looked with new respect upon their state councilmen, who had, unlike Oregon's, remained in the clear of the Sligh apparatus. At the same time, the Oregon state coun- ^Seoane to Disque, Aug. 20, 1919; Scherer to Disque, Sept. 19, 1917, Disque Papers; on the Justice Department, see Gregory to Labor Secretary Wilson, Oct. 18, 1917, file 190470, RG 60, NA; and see Cloice Howd, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Industry, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Miscellaneous Series, Bull. No. 349 (Washington, 1924), 77; Palmer, Baker, II, 188; Baruch, American Industry, 42-43. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 89 cilors, ever undistinguished and dominated by the lumbermen, and known as frank antilabor spokesmen and espousers of vigilantism, lost greatly of the slim store of prestige remaining to them. What it all added up to, in Scherer's analysis to Disque, was that this was now the time for the national defense councilors to take advantage of the Oregon decline and to encourage other state councils to adhere to the fruitful, obedient pattern set in Washington by Suzzallo. At least this improvement might emerge from the Sligh blunder, and from the over-all jungle of the spruce problem. 13 It was, Scherer knew, difficult for the national council to exert stricter discipline over the autonomous state units as they were then organized. A basic reorganization, looking toward centralized authority in the national council, was impossible in political terms. The best that Scherer could recommend for the defense council structure was a larger degree of administrative supervision by the national body. 14 But how- ever improved, the state councils with their semiofficial volunteer per- sonnel had proved not to be the answer to the Army's need for spruce, nor did any existing federal agency or any combination of them offer more hopeful auguries for quick success. "We need a new starting point, and soon," Scherer confessed to Disque in mid-September. Without more waste of time, somehow the lumberworkers had to be persuaded to cease their slowdown on the job. The lumbermen must be rendered cooperative and subservient to the nation's precedent needs. And the wobblies of the Northwest had to be reduced to a position of harmlessness. 15 Scherer had a scheme to propose. He had brought with him to the national capital several reports prepared by Parker. During the last two weeks of September these reports formed the bases of frequent discussions involving personnel of the Defense Council, civilian and military leaders of the War Department and Army, and the Secretary of Labor. These discussions, added to the lessons derived from the experiences of the preceding six months, brought forth a new approach to the wobbly problem in general and the lumber strike in particular. During that fortnight Parker became the architect of the essential con- cept underlying the Loyal Legion, as he was later to sketch other major features. 13 Ms. "Confidential Report on Oregon," Scherer Papers; Suzzallo to Frankfurter, Jan. 2, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Scherer to Disque, Sept. 17, 1917, Disque Papers. 14 See Council of National Defense, Information Circular No. 10, Oct. 1, 1917, for the Council's action on Scherer's recommendation. 15 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 16, 1917, Disque Papers. 90 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Parker's rise in stature to the point that his ideas rated the closest consideration of the busy officials on Pennsylvania Avenue, especially of War Secretary Baker in the Cabinet, is a matter that deserves atten- tion. He had continued his acquaintanceships with prominent Pro- gressives like Frankfurter and Lippmann, who had admired his prewar scholarship and who were now associated with him in war work. They applauded his outstanding record in mediating labor disputes. In the Seattle region alone, Parker had been chiefly responsible for ending, preventing, or limiting walkouts on a streetcar line, in a gas utility, in shipyards employing over 30,000 men, among newsboys, express deliverymen, candy makers, and domestic servants. Only the lumber strike completely defied his efforts, as it had those of everyone else. 16 By the end of the first war summer, Parker was acknowledged as the government's "ace" mediator, Scherer wrote Disque. Spokesmen for the lumbermen like Edwin Selvin of the Business Chronicle, labor union leaders like Marsh, and politicians like Governor Lister re- spected his suggestions. For example, Parker had urged Suzzallo to persuade Lister to issue the unsuccessful public appeal to lumbermen that they accede to the eight-hour day and at least some other demands of their workers, despite the substantial political risk that Lister in- curred in making this appeal. 17 Among the several officials of the national and state governments with whom Parker worked as a mediator, he had assumed a similar position of influence. At his suggestion Frankfurter had included Marsh of the AFL as a member of the President's Mediation Commission. Marsh, already on the staff of the Washington state defense council, was able to direct Frankfurter's attention to labor's side in the lumber dispute, and in several instances to help Parker gain Gompers' agree- ment on compromising with employers. Suzzallo and Scherer were growing under Parker's patient tutelage, and Suzzallo in September 1917 spoke publicly of the "social psychology" that inspired radicalism. 18 16 Cornelia Parker, American Idyll, 106-109; Carleton Parker, Casual Laborer, 126. Professor Judson A. Grenier of El Camino College, California, presented a suggestive paper, "The Muckrakers at War," to the Historical Research Association for Educa- tion in Journalism, Eugene, Oregon, Aug. 27, 1959, in which he traced the ardent support for the war that the prewar Progressive literati like Parker offered. Grenier's "Muckraking and the Muckrakers: An Historical Definition," Journalism Quarterly, XXXVII (Autumn 1960), 552-58, should also be consulted. On Baker, see his Dec. 16, 1921, letter to Florence Kelley, National Consumers League Papers, Library of Con- gress. It proves the potency of Parker's reputation at this time. 17 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 1, 1917, Disque Papers; and see Chronicle, March 23, 1918, on Parker. Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 439, in suggesting that the War Department convinced Lister to act in this instance, may have had Parker in mind, but this is not clear. 18 Ms. "Confidential Report on Washington," Scherer Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 91 Suzzallo was a total convert to the views of his spectacular economics professor. He supported Parker's efforts at mediation even when they endangered his own career in the state by antagonizing influential Washingtonians. Parker taught him that when a labor dispute involved the public's interest, it transcended mere contests between employer and hireling and became a question of "public morality." In such instances, Suzzallo stated soon after the war, government had a right to "step in" and say to both contenders that it would "find the common principles of conduct and you must obey them." Continuing, Suzzallo asserted that "there is absolutely no place under the American system for . . . insanitary and unhuman conditions of work. Let the scientific man determine whether or not they exist and then let the moral will of the American people wipe these evils out." 10 Parker, obviously, was the model for Suzzallo's "scientific man" and the lumber strike a fitting instance for the intervention of government. Scherer's major role was in publicizing Parker's achievements to the national councilors, and thereby expanding his influence beyond the Pacific Coast region. Scherer, with Frankfurter's encouragement, had persuaded Parker to prepare the reports now before the Council of National Defense, though this added to his already crushing mediation schedule. In addition, Scherer with Lippmann's permission sent editor Ellery Sedgewick of the Atlantic Monthly one of these reports dealing with the IWW, and it was accepted for publication in that popular periodical. Another of Parker's reports to the Council, concerned with motives in economic life, was scheduled for presentation at the forth- coming December meeting of the American Economics Association, also through Scherer's intercession. These prestigious acceptances for Park- er's essays, Scherer boasted to Disque, gave them added weight when he presented them to the Council in September. 20 Though Parker's reports were presented in the form of an essay that was to appear in a high-level Progressive magazine and a paper slated for an audience of scholars, they were in fact addressed to government officials. Parker hoped to spur them to new, constructive courses of action when he wrote that "it is imperative that those ... on whom falls the duty of thinking and planning" accept the fact that the "labor mind" was in "profound unrest." The authorities must "not misuse the 19 Suzzallo, Capital, Management, Labor and the Public (Chicago, n.d.), 10-13. This is a pamphlet containing Suzzallo's speech to a 1919 Rotary convention. On May 15, 1919, Suzzallo wrote Disque, enclosing a copy of this speech, and commenting: "Parker would have approved every word, don't you think?" Disque Papers. 20 Scherer to Disque, Sept. 21, 1917, Disque Papers. 92 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE moment by useless if admirable moral indignation. " a He then pro- ceeded to lecture the authorities of the Council and of the War Depart- ment on certain realities of working-class life. It was time to talk frankly about the IWW, Parker asserted, and to lift the "taboo" concerning rational discussion of it that blocked useful thought. Mere angry condemnations or even prosecutions of the wob- blies, however deserving, solved nothing. The miserable living and working conditions that bred recruits for the IWW remained, and were increasing the influence of the organization far beyond what its card- carrying members could achieve. Most workers, including wobblies, were as patriotic as the next man, he asserted. But candor required the judgment that as a class workers were "not participating in the kind of patriotic fervor that is in vogue among the upper middle class." The war was merely an "episode" to unskilled wage earners, a phase in a lifelong struggle against exploita- tive employers to achieve subsistence and improvement. Therefore, most workers saw nothing un-American in striking during wartime. Yet strikers were no more unpatriotic than profiteers. There was so little ideological syndicalism current in the Northwest that even the Justice Department was hard put to find subjects for Espionage Act prosecu- tions, and the states' antisyndicalism laws were flat failures save as cloaks for persecutions. Workmen grew cynical as they observed their em- ployers sponsoring vigilantism, exploiting intimate links with police, legislatures, and courts, and dominating the channels of public opinion through complaisant newspapers. What could the promise of American life add up to in the estimations of migratory lumber and farm hands? A submarginal scale of life bred outcasts. Parker warned that the mob spirit, always close to the surface in America and now clad in patriotic garb, was merely accelerating a process of class cleavage that had long been under way. But the unity that America needed for prosecuting the war would not be achieved through fear and repression. Patriotism was an emotion that "a bum without a blanket" could hardly share. Storm-tossed men, lacking family roots, unwelcome in the weak locals of the craftsmen, victimized by the owners of property, rejected by all save saloonkeepers, and not 21 Carleton Parker, The Casual Laborer, 112. This volume contains the two reports by Parker. The first, entitled "The I.W.W.," is on pp. 91-124. It appeared in the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The second, entitled "Motives in Economic Life," appears on pp. 125-165 of The Casual Laborer. Disque's copy of this volume, owned by Mrs. Disque, is heavily annotated, and in the Disque Papers there are similarly well-used ms. copies of these articles, supplied to Disque by Scherer. In nena btai ft) dpi jjppi iijn, pdei Wo \ ai lean SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 93 even admitted to most churches, turned to the one place apart from the saloon where a warm sense of kinship, acceptance, and purpose was sure to be found — the local wobbly headquarters. In Parker's view, the wobblies were really not much of a menace after all. Their numbers were small, and acts of sabotage alleged against them were grossly exaggerated as to numbers and effects. The real menace was in the drift of many completely unideological workers toward acceptance of syndicalist ideas, a drift that was gaining mo- mentum and would continue to grow as long as intolerable conditions obtained where men worked and lived, and hope for a better future was absent. Psychology linked with economics, not penology, was Parker's pre- scription for a cure. Freud, Dewey, Jung, Veblen, Thorndike, Wallas, Lippmann, James, and Paton offered, in his opinion, better guidelines for rapid improvement in the deteriorating labor situation than Her- bert Spencer or the strictures of the Lumbermen's Protective Associa- tion, which he condemned as a radicalism of the right. Until genteel society catered to "traditions of a richer psychological life than mere physical maintenance" for its workers, wobbly recruiters would win converts or at least followers. Wobblies shared an attitude more than an organization. Therefore, there was no hope of killing off the IWW by prosecutions or through tar and feather parties. "This tenacity of life," Parker wrote, "comes because the I.W.W. is not only incapable of legal death, but has in fact no formal politico-legal existence. Its treasury is but the momentary accumulation of strike funds. Its numerous headquarters are but the result of the energy of local secretaries." Though a wobbly secretary might be driven away, another would come, and the wobbly spirit would remain. In some of what Parker called "the rough-handed trades," like lum- bering and shipbuilding, employers had prevented effective organizing work by AFL personnel. Again, the dissatisfied employee, even though he secretly held an AFL card, saw no reason not to join the IWW as well. Almost everything that the national and state governments and the employers were currently doing only added to wobbly strength. Parker pointed as illustration to the instance of a farmer's widow of Finnish birth, who lived with her three children near Seattle, subsisting on the meager pension that the county afforded her. Some of her late husband's friends, wobblies, visited her home to bring food for the children. Learning of these visits, county officials cut off her pension, 94 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE and federal immigration authorities were readying to deport her. The wobbly press had a field day, exploiting the foolishness of the govern- ment's vendetta against a helpless woman. 22 Such egregious irrelevancies had to stop, Parker urged. The IWW, like the Grangers, the Knights of Labor, the Farmers' Alliances, and the Progressive Party, was an instance of "revolt phenomena." The cure was rehabilitation, Parker concluded, "and the stability of our Republic depends upon the degree of courage and science with which we move to the task." 23 Having lectured to the national councilmen in these two essays, Pro- fessor Parker, in a third, unpublished report, proceeded to recommend a way for authority to apply his thesis to the lumber strike. First, he advised that the national government must move positively into the lumber industry. The innumerable national, state, local, and private committees and organizations that were nibbling away at discrete pieces of the spruce problem were getting in each other's way, antagonizing workers as well as lumbermen, and accomplishing almost no good at all. A new, centralized agency was needed that would bear authority from Washington, D.C., yet be on the spot on the west coast. This organization must for the first time treat the lumber industry as a vertical unit, rationally embracing all of its activities from the most isolated logging high up in the Cascades to the shipping of the milled product to manufacturers engaged in war production. It should serve the owners of timber tracts and lumber camps, kilns, mills, and yards; but not cater to them alone as Sligh had wanted to do. Parker's proposed organization would see to it that lumbermen obtained the tools they needed in order to reach new stands of spruce and fir, and had the trans- portation facilities required to bring felled trees to the mills. Further, by assuring lumbermen of a market for lumber at a fair price, it would overcome the hesitancy of many entrepreneurs to expand existing pro- duction and processing facilities. At the same time, the government, enjoying a monopolistic control over the entire spruce industry, would obtain what it needed when it needed it, at a cost not lofted high by competitive bidding, and of a quality easily maintained by standardized inspection. Parker was not advocating government ownership of any part of the lumber industry. He referred instead to a "government monitorship, 22 Parker, Casual Laborer, 115, 127-28, and passim. 23 Ibid., 124. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 95 or stewardship, called for by the public interest, required by the war's needs, and hoped for by men of good will."- 4 At the heart of Parker's proposal for a new federal agency was his recommendation that it must be the means to insure a reliable labor supply, and to convert wobbly lumberworkers into useful members of a democratic society at war. The two articles he had prepared for pub- lication were actually a sophisticated, trenchant preamble for this por- tion of his recommendation. For what he advanced was the daring proposition that a complete reversal of the government's attitude toward the wobblies was necessary. In his new agency all lumber- workers, including and, indeed, especially wobblies, would be welcome. As a practical matter, he argued, wobblies had to be employed to cut trees, for his researches indicated that a majority of the Northwest's lumber hands either held red cards or acted in sympathy with those who did. Without wobblies there could be no adequate labor force short of a national conscription of labor, a step that Parker knew was outside serious consideration if merely by reason of lack of time to begin such a vast process. Only by employing wobblies could the time element be mastered, as the firenghting branch of the U. S. Forest Service was doing. The experienced logger working at full steam rather than malingering, whatever his proclivities toward the IWW, was what the government needed. Parker predicted that under his scheme men would work. Invited into society rather than rejected, woodsmen would embrace the lure with open arms. His agency would see to it that all lumberworkers were treated by employers as human beings, worthy of dignity and with hope of improved worth. Ineluctably, a renaissance of the human spirit would follow. Under the government's supervision, lumberworkers would be assured of the coveted eight-hour day, fair wages, decent food and housing, adequate safety devices at work, and restrictions on the activities of company detectives and on the gouging overprices of com- pany stores. Encouraged to acquire property, loggers would eschew the wobbly organizers and become transmuted into loyal, industrious, law- abiding citizens. The government would dignify it all with a patriotic purpose, and thus permit the individual worker to feel himself part of the war effort rather than a victim of it. As evidence that his plan might work, Parker pointed to the record of the Merrill & Ring Lumber Company's plant at Pysht, Washington. 24 Ms. notes on Parker's recommendation, Disque Papers. Its application is visible in W. E. Hotchkiss' ms. "Memorandum with Regard to Labor," Disque Papers. 96 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Even IWW publications admitted that it provided the finest working and living conditions available in the Northwest. Its president, R. D. Merrill, had improved the camp in conformity with certain paternalis- tic ideas he held on the employer's responsibilities toward his employees which he wanted to test in practice. But because Merrill would not go so far as to recognize any union, accept the eight-hour day, or permit his employees to participate in determining any policies, but insisted that all decisions emanate only from himself, his plant was struck along with others where conditions were far less comfortable and where man- agement was much less concerned over the well-being of workers. 25 The Merrill & Ring experience, Parker asserted, proved that physical comforts were not enough to satisfy the increasingly militant lumber- workers. They wanted dignity as well, a sense of sharing in decisions that affected their manner of work, and a psychological identification with something more satisfying than a paycheck for themselves or profits for their employer. All this Parker proposed that the national government provide, and in its own interests as quickly as possible. What would be left for the wobbly propagandist, Parker asked, when everything he had con- demned was removed? The IWW would be a voice without thunder; the government would have stolen it. Lumberworkers would respond as useful woodcutters, abandoning the satisfactions of the slowdown or of sabotage. And the spruce would come forth. 26 Parker's "new idea" did not specify what agency of the government should handle this unprecedented assignment. He omitted considera- tion of what role the AFL should play if his scheme was acted on. Though he included a passing mention that, under his plan, the Jus- tice Department might be able to maintain better oversight of the tiny minority of wobblies who were actually dangerous, because they would be locatable by the "labor exchange" that would operate under the proposed agency, Parker probably did not envisage that this Depart- ment should manage the entire venture. One can only surmise that he assumed that the new agency would be an administrative commis- sion, perhaps appended to the Department of Labor. It is more certain that, envisaging his scheme as an opportunity for social regeneration of a large number of casualties produced by the strains of industrial life, Parker had no idea of the Army taking over. In any case, Parker's proposal was designed to diminish any remain- 25 On Merrill, see Seattle Industrial Worker, July 7, 1917; Merrill to Sheriff H. C. Bishop, Aug. 9, 1917, Merrill & Ring Co. Papers, UW. 28 Ms. notes on Parker's recommendation, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 97 ing support for Sligh's commandeering scheme and to inspire quick and practical action, not to prescribe the exact patterns for that action. He was offering a sketch of practical reform, not a Utopia. In the light of Parker's proposal, Upton Sinclair's recent comment, that "no one was interested in social reform in wartime," is far too widesweeping. 27 Carleton Parker was very much interested in just that. The question in September 1917 was whether or not the government's need for lum- ber was compelling enough to obtain a test for his argument that only in social reformation was there hope for an adequate supply of spruce. On his way to Washington in mid-September, Scherer had stopped off at Jackson to visit with Disque. Their tenuous official connection set in the preceding May had developed into a warm personal friend- ship, based in part on their agreement on most public issues. Scherer permitted Disque to make notes on Parker's articles and recommenda- tions on spruce production and wobbly correction. Disque enthusi- astically supported the idea. He wrote Scherer that his prison warden- ship experience had shown him that seemingly hardened criminals could be rehabilitated under certain conditions. It seemed logical to him that wobblies, few of whom, after all, were felons, would be likely possibilities for an analogous kind of regeneration. And Disque wrote Gompers that Parker had convinced him that the eight-hour reform was the basic symbol that was blocking the road to the kind of solution Parker advocated. Disque hoped that Parker's proposals would achieve rapid accept- ance in Washington. Bidding Scherer goodbye, he supposed that this would be the last he would hear of his spruce responsibility. For very soon he expected to be in France. There was nothing more that the Army could gain from merely observing the lumber situation. 28 Sure enough, a few days after Scherer's visit, orders arrived from the War Department. With the rank of lieutenant colonel, Disque was assigned to the staff of General Foulois, now in charge of the AEF's tactical aviation. Foulois and his staff, including Disque, were sched- uled to sail for France on October 24. 29 Preparing happily for active service, Disque dealt with the manifold details involved in turning over the wardenship of the Michigan prison to his successor. He also completed a report on northwestern lumber and labor problems that he intended to give to Harbord as soon as he 27 Ibid.; Sinclair, My Lifetime in Letters (Columbia, Mo., 1960), 183. 28 Disque to Scherer, Sept. 17, 1917, and Gompers to Disque, Oct. 27, 1917, Disque Papers. 28 Hearings, I, 750; II, 13G4, 1917. 98 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE reached AEF headquarters in France. In this report Disque described Parker's suggestion, including the need for the eight-hour workday, and recommended that the Army support it "with enthusiasm." 30 On October 1, Disque, now in uniform, arrived in Washington and reported to the War Department. A request awaited him that he see Secretary Baker. "With some trepidation," he recalled, Disque obeyed the summons. Baker inquired if Disque had any recommen- dations to offer concerning the spruce problem. In reply, Disque sec- onded Parker's proposal. The Secretary indicated that he also favored it. But there was a factor about which Parker knew nothing, Baker stated, and he wanted Disque to know of it, so that he might inform Harbord at first hand when he got to France. Perhaps also Disque might offer suggestions about how this new factor might be dealt with. The wobbly problem was worsening so far as spruce production was concerned, and was also affecting the Army in a manner no one had anticipated. Baker showed Disque reports from Military Intelligence agents assigned to factory protection duties in the Seattle and Portland areas. Some of these secret agents were former Pinkerton detectives who had been employed by lumberman Poison and who had taken on the guise of wobblies. The agents had long since become accepted as stanch IWW regulars; one of them had become secretary of a wobbly local. With the war, several of these undercover operatives had en- listed in Military Intelligence, while retaining their IWW disguise. According to these agents, the wobbly leadership was involved in a grand plot to bring all lumber operations to a total halt on January 1, 1918, by means of a general strike scheduled for that date. In prepa- ration, IWW organizers had spread out over the Northwest and into British Columbia, and were penetrating into the southeastern lumber sections, preaching disaffection, sabotage, slowdown, and strike. If this estimation was correct, then the Army faced not merely an inadequate supply of spruce for its warplanes, but a total lack of the essential woodstuff, plus a nation-wide crisis in labor relations. Only three months remained until the New Year deadline. During that period, the IWW plans had to be stymied, and the spruce production rate lofted upward. Unfortunately, however, nothing in the existing battery of federal and state statutes seemed adequate to cope with the wobbly opera- tions. Baker sadly concluded that the Army would after all have to send several divisions of soldiers to fruitless police duty on the Pacific '■" Ms. "Report for General Harbord," and Gompers to Disque, Oct. 27, Dec. 10, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 99 Coast. Thus, in October, the War Secretary arrived at an equivalent to Pershing's pessimistic expectation of May and to Disque's subse- quent judgment, that a large military force employing martial law would be necessary to patrol the Northwest and perhaps other sections of the country as well. Baker saw no alternative if a general strike occurred in the lumber regions. He commented bitterly that in France the first units of the AEF to graduate from Allied instructions in trench warfare were at that moment readying to move into front-line posi- tions. How many more could follow, he asked, if tens of thousands of American soldiers had to perform sentry functions in the West and South? A second, almost equally worrisome assertion by the undercover agents was that wobblies were infesting the Army itself. The draft had scooped some wobblies into uniform. They were bringing their pam- phlets, set speeches, and critical songs about capitalist society into the barracks of Camp Lewis and other western cantonments. Working with IWW comrades in mufti, the drafted wobblies were becoming a serious menace to discipline wherever they appeared. The overcrowded, hur- riedly built training camps offered perfect situations for the wobblies to exploit. They were inspiring disaffection regarding the need for the war at all, and spreading discontent about the quality of food, the inadequacy of sanitary preparations, and the harshness of drill. It was proving impossible for the military police to cope with them. The wobblies were wise in the ways of concealing their activities after years of experience with civilian police officials, and were reportedly laugh- ing at the clumsy efforts of the soldier-police to discover who they were. The result of the IWW preachments was an increase in the rate of desertion among recruits and draftees, as well as a kind of widespread and growing "soldiering" during training that was akin to the wobbly technique of striking on the job. At stake were the Army's training schedule, and consequently the AEF's strategic plans, and the future reliability as disciplined soldiers of thousands of men now undergoing drill. 31 Still a third problem, associated with the second, was less funda- mental but annoying enough. Some members of the American Pro- tective League, the volunteer citizens' auxiliary of the Justice Depart- ment, were also now in uniform, and these amateur counterspies were 31 The voluminous reports on these themes by Military Intelligence agents, includ- ing several who had bored into IWW ranks, and from Pinkerton detectives are too numerous to cite. See especially reports on these subjects dated Sept. 1, 20, 29, Oct. 21, 1917, RG 165, NA, as illuminating all. On Baker, see Disque's notes of this meet- ing, small notebook, Disque Papers. 100 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE carrying on unauthorized investigations of alleged radicals and pro- Germans among their barracksmates. They were no more proficient or useful at this self-imposed duty than they had been as civilians, and in several instances their accusations of disloyalty resulted in embarrassing situations. None of these disloyalty charges had proved to be true, but a good many officers and men, aware that somebody was secretly in- vestigating them, were becoming resentful and hesitant in their duties. Baker wanted the Leaguers to drop their detecting once they became soldiers. Attorney General Gregory was cooperating to this end, but the Justice Department had no effective way to enforce its wishes on APL members. 82 Completing his disturbing analysis of the labor and lumber picture, Secretary Baker asked Disque for his comment. Disque replied that the report he had just heard confirmed his belief that Parker's proposal should be adopted. In addition, Disque revealed that he and Scherer, during their meeting two weeks earlier in Michigan, had discussed the question of which department of the government should direct the new agency. At that time they had assumed that a civilian department would be appropriate. But this new information had changed his mind. He now suggested that it was clearly a job for field soldiers of the Army, rather than for a mere purchasing or coordinating agency like Sligh's, staffed with civilians in uniform. 33 When that suggestion was combined with Parker's proposals, a second basic element of the Loyal Legion was formed. The next day Baker asked Disque to forgo his place on Foulois' staff and the overseas service that he so wanted. Instead, Disque was to take over the spruce production problem for the Army, first touring the Northwest to estimate its difficulties at first hand and to judge if Parker's plan should be tried under the Army's auspices. General Foulois, already asked by the Secretary to give Disque up, had pro- tested that he "is one of my best men. I am going to take him overseas with me. He would not stay anyway." But Baker made it impossible for Disque to refuse, and for Foulois to insist that he go. The Secretary pointed out to Disque that he was acceptable, at least thus far, to both Coffin and Gompers of the national 32 Disque's notes on meeting with Baker, Oct. 1, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers. On the APL in uniform, see Harold Hyman, To Try Men's Souls (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), 267-97; Joan Jensen, The American Protective League (un- published Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1962), ch. 6. 33 Disque's notes on Oct. 1 meeting with Baker, and Disque to Scherer, Sept. 17, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 101 defense council, and few individuals fitted the conflicting criteria of those two sensitive souls. In fact, Disque's name as the best man to take on this assignment had been brought up to Baker by Gompers and Coffin, then by Major Fred Leadbetter, a subordinate of Sligh's, and by Colonel Seoane, an old Philippine campaign friend of Disque's and now executive officer of the War Department's spruce bureau. Finally, Foulois agreed to release Disque from his staff on a tempor- ary basis only, on condition that the overseas post awaited "the minute he gets this [spruce] work done," Leadbetter remembered. Still Disque tried to fend off this unwelcome duty. Baker reminded him that for six months he had been at least aware of the spruce problem, which was more than was true for any other experienced Army officer. He was unable to shake Disque at this meeting, but during the next few days Baker turned bigger guns on the reluctant officer. Members of the Council of National Defense and of the Aircraft Board pressured Disque to accept. They "presented the thing to me in such a manner," he recalled, "that it looked like a national necessity to have the spruce during this winter period [of 1917], so that the material could get into the airplanes and be on the west front by the time of the [1918] spring drive." 34 Army friends of Disque's sounded the same theme, but to these old comrades he exercised the prerogatives of familiarity. "I would not even talk to them about it," he later stated. 35 Then Seoane, who knew in discouraging detail how desperately the spruce was needed, came to Disque with an argument that defied re- sistance. Seoane had cabled Harbord in France. In reply, Pershing's chief of staff sent Disque a "personal request" that he undertake any- thing that "gets spruce out. Without it we cannot win. You know what is involved." After the Armistice, Disque referred obliquely to this message, telling congressmen: "Eventually it was brought to me by people whom I respected, who made it a matter of cold-blooded duty for me to accept it, and finally I agreed to come Northwest, and instead of going with General Foulois I was ordered here." 36 And so, on October 7, Lieutenant Colonel Brice Disque set out on the fastest available train for Seattle. He had with him no detailed in- structions as to how he should proceed, except that if an emergency situation arose while he was in the West, he might, as he later con- fided to lumberman Ames, organize a special regiment from among 34 Hearings, I, 750; II, 1371, 1780, 1917-18; Disque's notes on second meeting with Baker, Oct. 2, 1917, Disque Papers. * 5 Hearings, II, 1361. 86 Ibid., 1364; copy of private cable, Harbord to Disque, Oct. 7, 1917, and Seoane to Disque, Nov. 14, 1919, Disque Papers. 1 02 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE the drafted men in training camps of the region. But conditions ap- proaching insurrection would have to exist before Disque was to act in this manner. Beyond this point, there was no blueprint of any sort. Disque was heading westward in search of a plan. In his briefcase were copies of Scherer's confidential reports on the West, of Parker's articles and rec- ommendation, all of which he had heavily annotated, and of earlier reports and suggestions that Sligh and other officers had submitted. The total area of agreement reached at this time was that a new effort by some federal agency was needed, involving over-all industrial con- ditions — Parker's idea — and that presumably it should be directed by the Army — Disque's contribution. Nothing further was established. The assertion, allegedly by a future subordinate of Disque's, that he carried westward with him a detailed plan for the Loyal Legion based upon some unspecified movement that "was first launched in the East [in 1916] and transplanted to the Pacific Northwest in 1917," is puzzling and inaccurate. 37 Similarly, Jensen's statement that the War Depart- ment had "devised" plans to deal with both the employers and workers in the lumber industry, as well as his intimation that Disque bore those plans with him and that west coast lumbermen were the inspiration for them and the mainspring behind Disque's October tour, lacks sub- stantiation from the primary evidence. 38 To be sure, the War Depart- ment had received many proposals from operators on how to end the lumber impasse. But these plans, culminating in the effort of Gram- mer and Donovan, had not been accepted by the Army leadership. Disque was aware of all these proposals. He had copies of them with him. But the only ones he employed as references for the copious notes he made as the train plunged westward were the Parker-Scherer-Sligh recommendations, and of these, Parker's was clearly the major one. 39 Jensen also states that "the popular view that the plan of organiza- tion [for the Legion] was originally conceived by Colonel Disque is to be questioned." Indeed it is, and Disque never put it forth. In fact, paragraphs of his own creation that later appeared in the Legion's "official" history credit Sligh with the "germ" of the idea. This was probably Disque's way of trying to conceal the actual origins and, less 37 Tenth Biennial Report and Industrial Directory of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Inspector of Factories and Workshops of the State of Oregon, From Oct. 1, 1920 to Sept. 30, 1922 (Salem, 1922), 561; on Ames, see his letter to W. H. Talbot, Oct. 27, 1917, recounting a conversation with Disque, Box 30, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 38 Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York, 1945), 129-30 and n. 3y Disque's notes and the references he carried with him were kept, apparently un- touched since his trip, in a folder labeled "Information for Seattle," Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 103 successfully, to deflect Sligh from his feud against the War Department, the Legion, and Disque, whom Sligh blamed for displacing him.* A Marxist claim is that Disque was from the beginning a tool of the lumbermen, and that he was predisposed against the AFL as well as the wobblies. Yet Todes, the author who makes this judgment, also admits that Disque saw Gompers before leaving Washington and that the latter wired Jay Brown, president of the Federation's Shingle Weav- ers in Seattle, asking that he cooperate with Disque on his arrival there. 41 On the other side of the class warfare coin, and equally unre- liable, is the lumbermen's charge that in order to gain Gompers' aid, Disque at this meeting had to promise the labor leader that he would bring the eight-hour day to the Northwest as the first major goal of the new agency. 42 As to the allegation concerning Gompers, Disque had to promise nothing for he was asking for nothing. Coffin had wired Scherer that Disque was coming. Scherer, wanting to pave the way for him, had Suzzallo and Marsh request Gompers for the gesture of assistance. Tele- graphing Gompers, Marsh made the point that the AFL was in no posi- tion to gain recognition from the lumbermen or to displace the IWW in the affections of most lumberworkers. Therefore, in addition to fur- thering a patriotic objective, the Federation had nothing to lose by cooperating with Disque. Marsh also pointed to the widespread senti- ment among AFL members in the Northwest in favor of drastic action by the federal authorities, to the point of welcoming government op- eration of all facilities in the lumber industry if labor's grievances might thereby receive a fair hearing. Maybe, Marsh hoped, the War Department would bring the embattled employers to heel, as well as suppress the wobblies. Gompers, of course, already knew Disque and trusted and liked him. 43 The fact is that as Disque neared Seattle he was an uncommitted M Vernon Jensen, op. cit., 129; History, 5; Hearings, I, 578-81. To be sure, in History, 19, Disque is credited with the "inspiration for the Legion." But Disque's letter to Capt. Maurice E. Crumpacker, Nov. 19, 1919, Disque Papers, makes it clear that this paragraph was in print before Disque saw it, and that he complained to Crumpacker, its author, over the exaggerated image created. 41 Charlotte Todes, Labor and Lumber (New York, 1931), 142, 169; and see Maxwell Raddock, Portrait of an American Labor Leader (New York, 1955), 226, for the AFL view. 42 Hearings, II, 1401. "Gompers to Disque, Oct. 27, Nov. 17, Dec. 10, 1917, and copies of the Scherer- Marsh-Gompers exchange, Disque Papers; and see Weekly News Letter, Sept. 15, 1917. Note that the AFL's unhappy experiences with the Army up to this time in the war period had not soured Gompers on the need for the Federation to extend every cooperation to the military; Philip Taft, The A. F. of L. in the Time of Gompers (New York, 1957), 350. 104 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE man, or better perhaps to say he was the Army's man, without stub- born prejudgments on management or labor. He disliked the IWW and felt that an eight-hour workday was needed, and that was about the size of it. But he also realized, from his studies of Parker's reports and from his observations of the preceding half-year, that if the wob- blies required handling in a manner more constructive than Espionage Act prosecutions provided, the lumbermen also were in need of some kind of coercion. What kind, he did not yet know. In the very planlessness that Disque exhibited there was potential advantage as well as possibility of danger. The advantage that Disque's Progressive pragmatism offered, in the guise of planlessness, was flexi- bility. Seeking better means only, and without fixed ends save an in- crease in timber output, Disque was free to experiment. At the same time, however, he like so many of his generation must be adjudged to have mistaken material advancement as the front-ranking social prob- lem. Gompers, Parker, Scherer, and Suzzallo, who had been Disque's unofficial mentors for six months, had taught him well by their lights. The danger was that Disque was capable of taking on new mentors who preached a doctrine similar in outward guise to the old, but who in truth aspired to different ends than the academicians or the labor leader. The question would be determined by the acuity and range of Disque's vision, in penetrating beneath a rhetoric of reform to its more substantive nature. The Ann la lorn' Idi sobbi rbich Chapter 6 The Birth of the Legion Disque's train arrived at Seattle in the chill predawn darkness of October 10, 1917. Scherer met him at the depot. They proceeded rapidly through the wet, empty streets of the sleeping city to the president's office on the university campus, where Suzzallo, Parker, and Major Tornwy waited. Introductions made, the five men settled quickly to work. An opti- mistic mood prevailed, and Parker voiced the reason for it. For a few weeks the eight-hour issue might be forgotten. Northwestern winter, hastening in, meant fewer daylight hours, frequent rainstorms, and heavy snowpacks on the high mountain slopes where the coveted spruce trees grew tall against the elements. Under such conditions an eight- hour workday became a goal beyond the ability even of willing workers to achieve, much less men engaged in the "strike on the job" that the wobblies had called, which AFL locals were covertly supporting and which almost all lumberworkers, with or without union affiliation, were maintaining. For weeks to come, what had been the major focus of contention was transformed by unalterable natural forces into a theoretical maximum. 1 In terms of war needs, however, Nature's gift of delaying a decision on the eight-hour-day question cost a heavy price. Shortened winter workdays meant lessened woodcutting regardless of the pervasiveness or intensity of the wobbly-inspired slowdown. The output of finished, usable lumber from the mills was already far too low. Any further de- crease during the oncoming winter would be reflected in lowered stock- piles of trained men and ready weapons in the spring, just when the planned Allied offensive in France would require more troops and ma- terial of all kinds. And though the eight-hour issue was in abeyance, the questions of the strike on the job and of union recognition were still pressing. 1 Unless otherwise noted, data on Oct. 10 meeting on this and future pages derive from entry for that date, small notebook, Disque Papers. On the eight-hour day, see in addition R. D. Merrill to Sligh, Sept. 28, 1917, copy in unlabeled folder, Disque Papers. Nichols, Legion, 75, notes that Disque arrived in Portland on Oct. 20. He ignores the Seattle arrival, ten days earlier. 105 106 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE The quintet gathered in Suzzallo's office worried also over the phe- nomenon now termed industrial time lag, when efforts months in the making seem to bear no fruit. Then, suddenly, accumulated effort be- gins to produce results. The other side of this coin is that efforts unmade or delayed will prevent or hold off the final desired results. Summing up for his confreres, Parker stated their agreement with Disque's conclusion that the Army must take some action in the lum- ber tie-up. Now was the opportune time. Advantage in terms of medi- ation efforts might be squeezed from the diminution of agitation on the eight-hour issue, if the Army served as mediator, since all other possibilities seemed closed. Increased woodcutting, rather than the reverse, could yet obtain during the score of weeks that spanned the winter and led into the 1918 spring, when a vast upsurge in the AEF's timber needs was foreseeable. But, Parker regretfully judged, existing agencies concerned with spruce acquisition were incapable of useful action. Now Disque learned from firsthand observers what had occasioned the antipathy to Sligh. At the Yeon Building in Portland, where Sligh had brought together what Parker called an "alphabet soup" of federal agents interested in lumber purchasing and standards, near-chaos reigned. At best these agencies were mere bookkeeping centers. The best was not apparent, however. Instead, discord and internecine backbiting ruled among Sligh's theoretically centralized personnel, who were supposedly under the direction of the lumberman, Hawkins. The latter's supervisory powers, however, depended entirely on Sligh's influence. This was slip- ping badly along the Potomac as well as in the West. Even prominent coast lumbermen, who still backed Sligh, were voicing reservations con- cerning his ability. Parker admitted that he was always critical of Sligh because of the major's incapacities. Sligh, in Parker's opinion, mistook the physical assembling of his bookkeeping agencies in one building for effective centralization and coordination of effort. There was nothing wrong with standardizing accounting procedures in the anarchic lumber in- dustry. Regularity of bookkeeping was essential, but minor, a weak first step where giant and brave leaps were needed. Even so, Sligh could not run his congeries of officials in single harness. The man lacked administrative ability, Parker judged, and his incapacities were height- ened by his stubborn self-esteem and a temperament that invited con- troversy. Effective cooperation with men of different outlook than his own seemed to be beyond Sligh's narrow field of vision. He could not SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 107 see that labor matters affected lumber production at all, and believed that an employer should rightfully impose whatever standards he wished for his employees. Sligh behaved as though he was still run- ning his Michigan furniture factory where no unions existed to trouble him, and where "business as usual" meant whatever pace Sligh wanted to set. 2 It seemed, Suzzallo interjected, that Sligh's present pace was an un- dignified but nonetheless slow trot, when a gallop was needed. For example, one of Sligh's circulars "heartily encouraged" lumbermen to increase their efforts to locate and cut spruce, as though such pious preachments could have any effect. Another of Sligh's "curious ar- rangements," Suzzallo continued, was the matter of draft deferments for lumberworkers. Every logger, including wobblies, willing to wield an axe should obviously be deferred; but despite the strangling effects of the labor shortage, Oregon's lumbermen with Sligh's encourage- ment were exploiting their links with the American Protective League and with the conscription machinery to rid themselves of troublesome employees — and they had an elastic definition of troublesome. It was simple for the lumbermen, who, through local politics, the APL, and the Minute Men, dominated the draft apparatus, to get blacklisted workers conscripted. But it did not occur to them that they were thereby losing invaluable workers, imperiling the aircraft program, and push- ing the IWW problem into the Army. 3 Some of Sligh's subordinates, to their credit, were becoming aware of the inadequacies of his policies. Hoping to jar Sligh into a realiza- tion that the labor shortage would not cure itself, E. T. Allen had recently spoken out publicly, and before Sligh determined to oust this insubordinate assistant, had secretly thrown out links to Parker and to Suzzallo. "Strike troubles are bad enough," Allen told a meeting of conservationists despite Sligh's order not to comment publicly on the labor issue, "but I believe that if they were all settled tomorrow, there would still be a labor shortage in the Pacific Northwest sufficient to make our war lumber program doubtful of success." Allen pleaded with lumbermen to forestall further government intervention in spruce production by taking action themselves, but he had admitted privately to Parker and to Frankfurter that he had little hope that his suggestion would be acted on. Nevertheless, Allen wanted the gov- - Parker's statements and other details quoted in Disque to Seoane, Dec. 1, 1919, Disque Papers; Hearings, I, 574-75; III, 3584. 3 See Merrill & Ring Logging Co. to Sligh, Oct. 10, 1917, and memo on draft, Oct. 5, 1917, Disque Papers; ms. "Confidential Report on Oregon," Scherer Papers. 108 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ernment, if it intervened, to serve the lumbermen rather than the other way about. He had, in the spirit of the Donovan-Grammer suggestion, proposed that the Army form "one or more forest regiments" to act as the core for labor exchanges for the lumber industry, and to be di- rected by men like himself, lumbermen in uniform. Allen's further suggestion was that the government must underwrite the extraordinary costs that lumbermen were asked to incur, but had in the main carefully refrained thus far from incurring, in seeking out the scattered spruce trees that grew interspersed in deep stands of non- commercial grades of timber. Such subvention must cover the costs of building railroad spurs, motor truck routes, and cutting mills. Disque placed this in the large catalog of suggestions he was collecting, adding the notation: "A most promising approach — lumbermen, seeking profit, must be indemnified for going where there can be no profit after the war." 4 After reviewing Allen's proposal, Parker told his colleagues in Suz- zallo's office that so far as subsidizing the lumbermen was concerned, the scheme was meritorious. If the details were well handled in practice, the lumbermen would be taken care of and would support whatever agency brought them these unexpected returns. But Parker feared that Allen really wanted to use the new Army division for strikebreaking purposes. Once lumbermen had the backing of military law added to their coercive powers stemming from their numerous connections with the draft apparatus, the American Protective League, and the galaxy of civilian police and judicial agencies, there would be no labor prob- lem. There would also, Parker added, be no labor or lumber. Labor, both radical and conservative, would react like a bull pricked by a thorn to any such misuse of troops, and the moral position of the Wilsonian crusade for democracy must suffer in Europe as at home. Yet he, Suzzallo, Scherer, and Tornwy had been attracted by certain elements of Allen's scheme and of the Donovan-Grammer idea, if domi nation by any faction could be avoided. Parker and the others wanted Disque to consider an enlargement of the Allen-Donovan-Grammer approach. 5 4 West Coast Lumberman, XXXIII (Oct. 15, 1917), 27. Marginal notes in Disque's hand on a typescript copy of Allen's address, in Disque Papers, indicate the heavy use made of it in the Oct. 10 meeting and give other details. Sligh, later becoming aware of Allen's apostasy, asserted to congressmen that he "was drunk most of the time, and incompetent all of the time." Hearings, I, 584; II, 1019. This is contradicted by all other evidence. 5 Parker's comments are on undated slips of paper, adrift in a file of miscellaneous items in Disque Papers. Contextual factors make it certain that these comments were on Allen's ideas and the Donovan-Grammer proposals, and were offered Oct. 10. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 109 Before Parker broached to Disque the suggestion that he and his west coast coadjutors had worked out, he wanted him to see at first hand the conditions that, in the academician's view, lay at the root of the labor unrest. The first course in the curriculum of instruction was a survey of how most lumberworkers lived. Exploiting the connections they had made in their wartime mediation work, Parker and Suzzallo had arranged an involved itinerary for Disque, which commenced, after a brief rest, late on the day of his arrival in Seattle. The grueling schedule included visits to approximately three dozen lumber camps, mills, yards, and kilns, located in sites ranging from the Canadian border to points south of Portland, and from the lush western rain forests overlooking the Pacific to the sere stands of the eastern face of the mountains. In order to reach the scattered camps Disque and his party employed spur railroad flatcars, automobiles, log rafts, horses and mules, and, often, footpower. Among the camps visited were the model units of the Merrill 8c Ring Company at Pysht, and others where the conditions in which men lived, worked, and ate were so miserable that Disque noted: "We treated captured Moros better in the Philip- pines during a war." 6 Conditions at the worst camps turned Disque's stomach. "We could not eat it," he noted of a repellent, greasy stew that he and Parker were invited to share with loggers at one evening meal. Most bunkhouses would have failed to pass the inspection standards of an extremely negligent Army company officer, he judged, and any Army medical man "would have exploded" at the provisions at lumber camps for dealing with the effects of industrial accidents, communicable diseases, and common ailments. The exposed, unguarded, murderous work sur- faces of great saws were as deadly as weapons, and Disque was not surprised when one millworker told him that the notches cut on the housing around a saw represented arms and hands that the huge blade had cut from workers. Too many fingers had been severed to rate recording. The impact of these visits on Disque, combined with Parker's con- stant prodding and preaching, was considerable. Up to this time Disque had looked upon the spruce problem primarily as a question of raising work efficiency, of securing improvements in sawing and felling tech- niques, and of increasing antiradical security activities. Although he had credited Parker's writings as valid, Disque had not heretofore paid much attention to the importance of workmen's living and working ■ Disque to Gen. Foulois, Nov. 19, 1919, Disque Papers. 1 1 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE conditions as a factor in the spruce situation. At least, he had not previously estimated that such conditions affected the Army's interests. "I thought that radical propaganda had inspired the reports on these conditions," he noted. Not only were the reports true, "they defied exaggeration," and they involved the Army, he wrote, "because it is the United States Army." Disque was filled with sick dismay that in the twentieth century American workmen had to live as the loggers did. Considering that his experience as an Army officer and as a penitentiary warden occurred when reformers were only beginning to raise the standards for soldiers and inmates toward the modern level, the intensity of Disque's emotion on what he saw of the lumberworkers' lives is a measure of the degra- dations he observed. These conditions, Parker assured him, and not wobbly ideology or sympathy, were the major causes of the unrest in the lumber industry. Someone must end these wretched conditions; the lumbermen would not. The IWW exploited real injustices. Failing a substantial, swift uplifting of living and working conditions, an improvement in labor relations became impossible of attainment. Further, Parker insisted that an educational agency was urgently needed among the workers and the lumbermen. Veritable economic chaos afflicted the industry. An agreed standard of modern cost account- ing was absolutely necessary, else who could do more than guess what figure represented a fair profit or a proper wage? Until rational pro- cedures prevailed, wobbly assertions of gross profiteering by the em- ployers would continue to find wide and uncritical acceptance. Reforms via bookkeepers' ledgers and improved environmental con- ditions are so typical of the Progressive mood as to require no further comment. One element is still lacking, however — the hope of achieving through governmental action lasting improvement in the human con- dition, the assumption that regeneration was possible. Sometime during this week-long tour, Parker and Disque agreed that a major goal of the national government in entering the spruce dispute must be rehabilitation of the social outcasts who made up the bulk of the lumberworkers and mill hands and of the wobbly membership. The two men shared a dream of mass reformation of wobblies and all disaffected workmen of the woods. They would raise the living stand- ard of the worker to that of the Army's private soldier, by having soldiers live and work with lumberworkers and by setting the military norms for food, housing, and work safety as the minimum for all. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 1 1 It is noteworthy that he and Parker contemplated from the begin- ning that the reforms they wished to introduce should, if possible, become permanent. They dreamed that what they wanted to undertake for the purpose of winning the war would go on into the postwar scene. The cooperative union of employers and workers, overseen by the neutral government, which they now felt impelled to establish, was to be a permanent formula for improved labor-management organiza- tion. Parker and Disque became bent on a reformation of a segment of society. 7 Unlike most Progressive reformers, these two men had the opportunity to translate their dream into practice. Under Parker's adroit tutelage, Disque had come a long way on the pathway to reform that the professor wanted them to travel together. The colonel now boasted a wider field of vision than had been true before his personal observation of the wretched conditions that most lumberworkers endured. He could now understand at least some of the economic and social complexities that bedeviled the region. He agreed with Parker that a narrow approach to a solution was perhaps worse than no attempt at rectification at all. On the other hand, both men believed that without an abrupt improvement in the social aspects of work in the lumber industry, no increase in production could be gained. For Disque, this was a profoundly stirring experience. He was almost besotted with excitement, partly occasioned by the scenic magnificence of the area he was traversing and partly caused by the vision of possible accomplishments. Writing later from notes he made during this 1917 tour with Parker, Disque commented on "the joy of the woods which the office man never knows." 8 In a sense, Disque was the field campaigner again, freed from the restraints of desk work and enraptured at the opportunities unfolding before him of meeting his responsibilities and furthering his career. Perhaps because he was so excited by the prospect of action, Disque failed to see that he and Parker were not, after all, really kindred spirits on the basic question of the causes of labor unrest in this Eden. For Parker, environmentalism sufficed as the cause of discontent among the workers, all of whom were equally blameless. For Disque, a more con- servative ethnocentrism played a major role. Disque saw the Northwest as the epitome of the American dream. Therefore, he wrote later, all Americans should have benefited from the region's glories. Evil had come to Paradise when native American 7 Ms. notes on Oct. 1917 tour, unlabeled and undated folder, Disque Papers. 8 Disque, "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," System, XXXVI (Sept. 1919), 379. 112 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE workmen had given way to illiterate, radical aliens, and when working employers were replaced by a generation of absentee owners, who hired professional managers to run the industry's manifold units merely for maximum profits. "The American spirit seems to have gone," Disque felt. In its place came mutual suspicion of exploitation and of profiteer- ing that alienated worker from employer. Little sense of mutual obliga- tion endured. Managers "hired indiscriminately and fired ruthlessly; . . . they never retained a man an hour longer than was absolutely necessary for the work in hand, aside from the nucleus ... of old, regular em- ployees. . . . The employee gave as little as possible for the highest pos- sible wage. . . . To the men the employers were monsters grinding out flesh and blood at a very high profit." Disque noted that labor turnover by 1917 ran almost to 1000 per cent annually. Employment agencies in Spokane hired 8000 men a month, yet only about 12,000 lumberworkers altogether were employed in that neighborhood. "My wonder," Disque wrote, "was not that production was low but that there was any pro- duction at all." His own predilections and Parker's viewpoints brought Disque to certain conclusions. Before spruce production could rise, a fourfold alteration must occur in the Northwest's lumber industry. First, inter- mittent, seasonal, migratory labor must give away to year-long, sta- bilized work conditions. Second, some form of standard accounting must obtain, in order to prevent price gouging and to counter the charges of profiteering. Third, a mechanism was required — and the national government must provide it — to break through the existing class insulation between workers and employers. And last, but really first, because it affected all the foregoing, the "almost indecent living conditions in the camps" had to give way to the higher standard that was roughly what the Army set as the minimum for its private soldiers in noncombat areas. 9 This mid-October tour of the Pacific Coast highlands, which Disque and Parker enjoyed together, had set general goals. Now on October 18 they returned to the University of Washington to test out their ideas before Suzzallo, Scherer, and Major Tornwy. Certain arithmetical facts set the over-all frame. The entire labor shortage in the coastal lumber regions amounted to fewer than 25,000 workers — less than 10,000 trained workers were needed in the state of Washington — provided this number were competent, stable men. Dis- Ibid., and notes of Oct. 1917 tour, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 1 3 que and Pershing had feared that 125,000 soldiers would be needed as police forces on the Pacific Coast, if the wobbly insurgency was not checked by other means. Obviously, it would be a very advantageous arrangement for the Army, if by supplying approximately the number of soldiers needed for the labor deficiency, it might keep for overseas service the remainder of that eighth of a million. Further, if soldiers employed in the Northwest managed to stabilize and improve labor- management relations there, thus attracting to lumber work other thousands of civilian loggers, then the spurt in production so long sought might be forthcoming along with the reforms that Disque and Parker envisaged for the industry. 10 To achieve all this, the Army would have to take a far more direct role than anyone had yet anticipated. All other agencies already in- volved in lumber matters were hopelessly tarred with unneutral atti- tudes as between management and workers. This was true even when, as in the cases of Suzzallo's defense council and Parker's cantonments adjustment unit, such associative guilt was generally unwarranted. Workers were stiffly suspicious and employers, if anything, were worse. Existing government agencies were also inutile because they were too numerous, uncoordinated, and in the main poorly led. A new agency was required with power enough to supervise the melange of discrete organizations that had grown up planlessly in lumber affairs. In addition to authority from government, it would need voluntary acceptance from both workers and operators before the exercise of power could be effective in production terms. The War Department could by fiat make a new agency overlord of governmental subunits; but only support from lumberworkers and lumbermen could flesh out the directives, lift the production quotas, and raise the standards of spruce quality. All this must be done quickly. Only the Army, of all federal agencies, could adopt a posture of neutrality between labor and management, Parker and Disque agreed, and at the same time, by exploiting the patriotic glamor that attended the martial institution in wartime, gather support from below as well as power from above. Soldiers could move where men in mufti feared to tread. To be sure, memories of past misuses of the Army as a strike- breaking force had to be replaced with a very different picture of what soldiers would be doing under the Parker-Disque proposal. 10 Note on draft of an unpublished article that Disque was preparing on the Loyal Legion, perhaps for use as an address to 4L veterans, date uncertain, unlabeled folder, Disque Papers. It dealt with his trip with Parker, but mostly concerned itself with this statistical relationship between lumberworkers and soldiers. 1 14 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE The Army would be engaged in a dual task in their scheme. First, the Army would seek quickly to overcome the labor shortage in the timberlands and, by so doing, make possible swift rises in spruce output. To achieve this first end, Parker and Disque took from earlier proposals of other men the idea of the formation within the Army of a new division of service regiments, to be headquartered in the Northwest for the war's duration. The enlisted ranks of this new division were to be staffed primarily with drafted or volunteer lumberworkers. Divi- sional officers were to canvass existing Army units and draft boards, so that all present soldiers and future inductees with woodcutting experience might be transferred to the new corps. Soldiers of this division were to form a labor pool for lumber pro- ducers. Upon requests from "approved" lumbering companies, soldier- workers would fill gaps in the ranks of civilian workmen needed by those firms. Already expert in the woodsman's craft, loggers in khaki would do far more for the war by wielding axes and saws in the Cas- cades than they could by brandishing weapons in France. Thus, rational principles of selective service would apply. The romantic but inefficient use of skilled men as infantry troopers would be replaced by the scien- tific management of war. Further, and significant in Disque's thinking, any wobbly infestation within the Army would be localized in its parent area of the west coast. The new division would become a kind of decon- tamination unit, a cordon sanitaire protecting the bulk of the Army from radical propaganda." As a labor pool, the enlisted men of the proposed division would just about make up the numerical deficiencies of the timber-producing coastal region, but would not meet the needs of the Inland Empire. This human resource would most likely counteract the effects of the strike on the job. Presumably, production would return to pre-1917 levels. On the other hand, if the worst fears of wobbly influence were re- alized, the men of this division would be on hand in the West as a police force. Should this dismal prospect come to pass, the country would be no worse off than it was at present. A division's roster was 11 The recommendation that Parker and Disque brought back to Seattle is in type- script form, unlabeled, in Disque Papers. The last point, concerning isolating wobbly- sokliers, is undoubtedly of Disque's particular devise. Hereafter this recommendation, datable by internal evidence as being presented on Oct. 18, is termed the Parker- Disque recommendation. In Hearings, I, 598, Sligh argued that if the War Depart- ment had furnished troops to him in August, he would have solved all labor prob- lems in the Northwest before Disque arrived there in October. Of course, it is im- possible to say that Sligh was wrong. But the facts are that unless Parker had sub- mitted it, a request for troops in August would not have been honored in the War Department, and further that Sligh at that time submitted no such request. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 1 5 far less than the 125,000 that Pershing had pessimistically foretold as necessary for security purposes. Even with nothing else gained, the AEF would save the equivalent of four infantry divisions for overseas use by the Parker-Disque scheme. Parker was willing to bet that this extreme possibility would not eventuate. If his scholarly estimate was correct — that most wobblies were merely rhetorically radical — the IWW menace would dissipate when the Army took on the second task that he and Disque envisaged for it, and production would not merely return to normal but would far exceed any prior year's output. The Army's second task, as Disque and Parker proposed it, was to bring about, through the new division, much improved physical con- ditions for lumberworkers. Beyond this, the two men envisioned the possibility of creating a better industrial democracy in the Northwest, wherein management and labor possessed peaceful means of communi- cation and of settling differences. In conceiving this tripartite goal, and in sidestepping the sore point of employer recognition of the AFL, Disque and Parker both deserve to be considered creators of the Loyal Legion, though in all probability Parker took on the larger share of the architect's burden. 12 Labor-management reformation as a task for soldiers required ex- planation. Parker defended this startling concept, with Disque a quiet second, by suggesting that far more woodworkers were needed than the Army could muster from its ranks, if spruce output was to rise quickly and in large amount, rather than merely return to prewar levels. There- fore, thousands of civilian timber workmen, not presently in that craft, must be found, who would not malinger on the job as men were now doing. To accomplish this, Parker and Disque envisaged organizing all the entrepreneurs and workmen of the entire region into an association for patriotic purposes, which would be affiliated with the Army divi- sion of uniformed woodcutters. By mixing soldiers and civilian loggers, the higher Army standards for physical conditions would be made acceptable. If all lumber operators and workers pledged themselves to work through the commander of the proposed Army division, and to accept his decisions in matters of controversy, perhaps the commander might construct an arbitration mechanism within the division and the u Parker-Disque recommendation, Disque Papers. Once organized, the Legion had a peak wartime membership of an eighth of a million men. Taken together, the Army division and the 4Ls make Pershing's prediction of the number of pacificators needed on the coast startlingly, if coincidentally, accurate. 116 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE affiliated civilian organization that would outlast the war and bring industrial peace to the embattled Northwest. What was essential, the argument continued, was that the soldiers and the civilian employers and workers should join together so that the common interests of all parties could be discerned and realized. This could come to pass only by a centralized effort, rather than in the too numerous compartments of discrete bureaus as at present. That single organization, Parker continued, should be integral with the proposed new Army construction division. Yet it should not be in the Army, but of it; its members would remain civilians but associate with soldiers and accept orders from Army officers. Parker pointed to the example of the American Protective League, the spectacular auxili- ary of the Department of Justice, to illustrate the delicate relationship that he was trying to describe. It was less important, he continued, to draw precise lines of organi- zation than to keep clearly in mind that this new division had to per- form the essential function of smoothing away differences between employees and employers. Because workers and bosses would be associ- ated together and be bound by their own pledges to give heed to the Army's injunctions, arbitrament should be relatively simple. At the same time, the wobblies, invited into the organization as members in good standing, but overseen by non-IWW timber hands and by the soldiers of the division, would be rendered powerless to do harm and probably made over into productive workers. The Army's spruce production division would serve this auxiliary organization as a supply agency, as a symbol of national purpose, as a reservoir of coercive force if mediation failed, and as the sole, central- ized customer, buying all lumber at set rates and of specified quality. The auxiliary civilian organization, in turn, would serve the division as its main working force and as a source of managerial talent. To- gether, Parker hoped, they might be able to get matters into such good shape during the winter weeks to come that by spring there might not be a spruce shortage or a labor problem, and even the eight-hour issue might have been solved. 13 How else, Parker asked somewhat rhetorically, could the old bitter- ness between the employers, the AFL, and the IWW be glossed over except by lumping them all into one brotherhood? In what other manner might the willful employer organizations be brought to heel and be made to cooperate with laboring men, not unionists, but orga- 13 ibid. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 1 7 nized in the division's symbiotic corps of civilian woodsmen? Were there any better suggestions? So far as the evidence indicates, Disque was wholeheartedly in sup- port of these novel concepts concerning the Army's mission. This is not surprising, quite apart from the evident merits of Parker's proposal. The professor had a large influence over the impressionable soldier. Parker's high reputation as a mediator who had been successful beyond anyone else in that field had predisposed Disque toward him before the two men met. Since their personal acquaintanceship had begun a few days earlier, the two men, seemingly so disparate in their person- alities, temperaments, and talents, had developed a warm mutual re- gard. Disque was struck with the depth of Parker's scholarship on the IWW; Parker, in turn, through Scherer, was acquainted with Disque's varied experiences among the insurrectionary Filipinos and the inmates of the Michigan prison. Parker's ardent espousal of a science of society, buttressed by statistical data and warmed with crusading zeal, proved adequate to move a man like Disque, who except for Parker's writings had no understanding of or sympathy with the plight of the lumber- workers. 14 In their interaction, Parker and Disque had found the needed ele- ment for what would soon become the Loyal Legion — the conviction that social rehabilitation was a necessary mission for the Army to under- take as a goal in itself and as a prerequisite to increasing spruce output. Parker held out the lure that Disque might achieve concert and unity in the Northwest by employing the formula for compromise that Parker had devised. In short, the professor helped to inspire the colonel with a heightened zeal for social reform and with a broad conviction of human improvability. During the middle two weeks in October Disque realized the promise he had exhibited in Manila and Michigan and, under Parker's direction, stepped out into the main route of Progres- sivism. The conclusion seems inescapable that Parker, having measured the man, had deliberately set out to steer him precisely that way. He could not know how true a course Disque would keep. Thus, on October 18, 1917, in Seattle, in the office of the president of the University of Washington, the major purposes were evolved of what was to become the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. Instead of explosive labor strife, the men who embraced the dream of the Legion envisaged an outpouring of war-necessary spruce and a si- 11 See closing notations, in Disque's hand, on typescript of Parker-Disque recom- mendation. 1 1 8 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE multaneous uplifting in the conditions of society. America's crusade for democracy would no longer be tarnished by vigilante excesses. Pro- gressivism in khaki would stand forth in vivid contrast to the bestiali- ties committed by Germany's armies in the name of Kultur. The Ameri- can Army would turn discontent into constructive channels; and in the | interests of war production, it would have found the way toward perma- nent industrial peace for the timberlands. 15 Suzzallo, a hard-headed man, though fully approving of the outline before the group, next introduced a matter of detail. He brought up the troublesome question of how public reaction would go if dollar a-day soldiers worked for private enterprise, making profits for lumber men, while combat soldiers suffered in France. How the patriotic societies, the reformers, the congressmen, and unions would scream, he guessed, and how the Army leadership would join them. Through the remainder of that night Disque and Parker worked out possible solutions to this problem, and they emerged with a complex solution, which events proved to be workable. It was that the soldiers who served as lumberworkers were to be paid civilian wages by the lumber contractor, minus their Army pay. This military pay was to be deducted from the price the contractor received for the cut spruce. The Army, partly in order to retain a hold over the woodsmen-soldiers, and also to sustain the fiction that this division was primarily a military unit, was to pay them their trooper's pittance. 16 This settled, the five men in Suzzallo's office came to the question of obtaining approvals for all this. They quickly agreed that the first step must be for the Army officially to approve the formation of the new division. After that, unofficial approval could be sought for the affiliated organization, which could then form, apparently of its own volition. Once in being, the lumbermen-lumberworkers auxiliary could attach itself to the Army division, and then petition to the War Department for formal approval of its existence. By bypassing for the present the complexities involved in the auxiliary organization, the quintet hoped to fend off the foreseeable antagonisms of bureaucrats like Sligh, of some lumbermen who were dead set against any government interven- tion in their business affairs, and of Gompers and other AFL leaders. The Army division, as it were, would run interference for the civilian auxiliary organization. 15 Ibid. 16 "Notations on payscale," in Oct. 1917 pages of small notebook. Disque Papers. The peculiar wage provision, later to trouble Disque, will be discussed in subsequent portions of this monograph. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 19 During the few remaining hours of darkness, the conferees expanded the proposal into an acceptable concrete form, with Parker and Disque, apparently, playing the largest role in this editorial procedure. Dawn was breaking on October 19 as the quintet came to a conclusion and approved the wording of discrete recommendations which each would send to his respective superior officer, yet which would flow together at the Aircraft Production Board for final effect. Suzzallo sent his recommendation to Governor Lister, knowing that it would in turn go to Washington's United States senators. Parker's went to War Sec- retary Baker, whose trust in the economist's judgment was known, and to Frankfurter and Lippmann; Scherer's to Coffin; Tornwy's to General Squier; and Disque's to Baker with a copy to Chief of Staff Tasker Bliss and another to Squier. By noon that day the Aircraft Board had swiftly approved a resolu- tion addressed to the Secretary of War, recommending the creation of a woodcutters' division and by implication embracing the spirit and almost all the details that the men who had met in Suzzallo's office had suggested. It was quick action, reflecting the urgency of the situation and the impact of the five-sided pressure that Disque and his confreres, especially Parker, had been able to exert from Seattle. Six days later, General Bliss wired Disque that the Army had given its approval to the Board's recommendation that the Army form a woodcutting divi- sion composed of service squadrons. Meanwhile, Disque and the others in Seattle had been working on in anticipation of the Army's consent. As of Bliss's wire of October 25, Disque's role in the West was almost ended. He had completed his mission by helping to bring forth the recommendation which Bliss approved. Disque had already visited Camp Lewis "for the purpose of securing volunteers [for the new units] from the selective draft men there." 17 Now, presumably, he could return to the east coast and take passage for France and his AEF post with General Foulois. This is what he expected to do. Discussing the authorization with Parker, Disque noted that it was as noncommittal as the Army could get. Certainly its terms were more restrained than Parker's vision or his. It provided for nothing beyond the creation of new units into a division staffed primarily with draftees who had lumbering experience. The authorization did not name a commander, specify the precise manner in which divisional personnel were to be employed, provide a budget, or demand that the congeries ;T Rliss's memos for Adjutant General, Oct. 19-26, 1917, with copies of all telegrams, presumably supplied by Disque, Disque Papers. 120 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of fiscal agencies involved in acquiring spruce come under the new jurisdiction. In short, Disque wrote, the authorization "almost asked for someone to give it meaning and direction." 18 Probably he did not mean for that someone to be himself. Back east in the War Department, Sligh had kept abreast of some of these developments. They seemed to him to presage an attempt to wrest his jerry-built command from under him, and at the same time an opportunity to expand his domain. In a desperate effort to forestall attack and to gain control of this new division, Sligh moved alertly, but blindly. He issued a circular letter which blandly assumed that the Aircraft Board intended him to take charge of the service squadrons "and any others later to be formed." Hawkins, as Sligh's west coast representative, would command the Portland headquarters of the new units. 19 Disque, aware of Sligh's actions and secure in his knowledge that Sligh had lost the respect of the War Department and the Council of National Defense, might now have challenged him to open combat. Had he done so, it would have been fought as such struggles for power are ever conducted, in the bureaucratic maze of the capital and quite probably in newspaper columns across the nation. Disque was sure that Sligh, almost bereft of friends in power, could not win. But how- ever certain the outcome of an internecine struggle, it would make more difficult the task of the permanent commander of the new division. If Disque did not see himself in that command position, he wanted to ease the way of whatever officer was called to fill it. Therefore, he sought a quieter campaign tactic for use against Sligh. Parker proposed one. With Suzzallo's adroit assistance Parker arranged a series of meetings in Seattle, away from the oversight of Sligh's Port- land apparatus. The "guests of honor," Disque reported in a private note to Colonel Seoane, Sligh's executive officer, were Allen and Hawkins and others among Sligh's present and former subordinates. The result of this subtle offensive was that each of these prestigious volunteers signified his willingness wholeheartedly to accept a new superior officer in the event of Sligh's transfer to other duties. 20 It was at one of these meetings that a name emerged for the Parker Disque creation. The evidence fails to specify which man of the growing 18 Memo of conversation with Parker, Oct. 27, 1917, Disque Papers. 19 Oct. 19 memorandum, Aircraft Spruce Production Bureau, copy in Disque Papers, with Disque's superscribed comment: "Send copy to Bliss at once." 20 Undated, fragmentary notes, ca. Oct. 19 or 20, 1917, small notebook, and W. E. Hotchkiss' ms. "Memorandum with Regard to Labor," Disque Papers, outlining these matters. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 121 number of westerners involved with Disque first proposed the title of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen for the proposed auxiliary organization. It is certain that Disque liked the fact that this grandiose and alliterative designation avoided any word akin to "union," yet stressed patriotism and embraced capital and labor. It still remained, however, to gain even preliminary approval from the War Department for the Army to form a para-military labor organization, in a region and industry where the hypersensitive AFL had fruitlessly been trying to organize union locals and where equally touchy employers had for years fought off any taint of collective bargaining. To ease the problem of securing the Army's approval for this un- precedented scheme, Disque prepared a report on it for the War Department, which stressed the traditional military administrative structure of the division he proposed. That is, he described the division as though it were an unusual though by no means unique supply unit. As a kind of addendum to his report, he tacked on a suggestion that it sponsor an attached, yet separate, civilian auxiliary, of which the officers and enlisted men of the division would be overseers. Disque and Parker worried most about Gompers' reaction to all this, rather than the Army's. Perhaps Parker still harbored his earlier am- bition to bring the lumbermen to recognize the AFL, and was contem- plating using the Army to secure that end. In any case, he and Disque worked through Scherer and Suzzallo to obtain the cooperation of Frankfurter and Marsh. Frankfurter, now in the West with the Presi- dent's Mediation Commission, and Marsh agreed to exert whatever influence they could on Gompers to effect his approval. The tough, individualistic lumbermen were even less likely than Gompers to welcome subservience to the Army's supervision. Parker advised Disque to appeal directly to them, and at once, with heavy stress on patriotism, and to insinuate that lumbermen would be promi- nent in the guidance of this new organization, which would "take care" of the wobblies once and for all. Once he had gained an expression of support from the lumbermen, Parker estimated that Gompers could not refuse to go along. Not waiting for the Bliss authorization to arrive, but going ahead in the belief that it would, Disque set out from Seattle on October 21 on a circuit of meetings that Suzzallo had arranged, at which lumbermen, mill and kiln operators, and managers were present. Now Disque had a firsthand opportunity to hear the employers. He found that his rank did not overawe them; rather, he overheard a few comments to the 122 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE effect that the Army had underestimated the gravity of the spruce sit- uation in sending out a mere colonel, his promotion to that rank having been announced on October 22. Disque, on the other hand, was im- mensely taken with these men. Mark Reed, Alex Poison, and Ralph Burnside, he wrote, "are not going to be bullied." Disque had no intention of trying to bully them. He listened to the lumbermen's complaints about their workers' absenteeism and unre- liability with sympathy as genuine as had attended his observations of the loggers' atrocious menus. Both sides had justice in their points of view. What was lacking was a means to make the contenders "talk" to one another. In order to impress the lumbermen with his own resources, Disque let them know that the Army was ready to use soldiers in some unde- fined manner in the Northwest, and hinted at what he and Parker had worked out. After talking with Disque, Ames of the Puget Mills Com- pany wrote: "The Colonel has authority to go to American Lake and take out ... up to 9,000 men and to organize a regiment for a special purpose. . . . He has found conditions here somewhat different, I sup- pose, than he had any idea of." Ames accompanied Disque for two days of the latter's tour, in order to insure that his own views were heard. Disque listened well, Ames noted, and was noncommittal, although Ames worried that he "appears to be in favor of an 8-hour day." But he felt that this defect on Disque's part came from overexposure to labor man Marsh, who was also part of the entourage. 21 During this tour Disque showed himself to be an instinctive adept at industrial politics and a fine public speaker. Wobblies, AFL men, Sligh's subordinates, and lumbermen all liked him, and more impor- tant, they accepted Disque at his own description as a neutral in the multifaceted lumber dispute. One lumberman, for example, recalled a meeting at which Grammer and Hawkins arrived in time to hear Disque persuade the audience of lumber operators to participate in "a roll call" wherein the productive capacity of each man's company was estimated, "in case . . . Government furnished additional machin- 21 On the name, for details on Disque's concern over the Army's approval, on Frank- furter's and Marsh's agreement to cooperate in obtaining Gompers' approval, and on the lumbermen, see Disque's letter to Parker, Nov. 2, 1917, Disque Papers; on Ames, see his full descriptions to W. H. Talbot, Oct. 27, 1917, Box 30, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. Nichols, Legion, 75-78, is awry on all these matters, as is the assertion in Hearings, I, 591-92, that Disque and Gompers had a pre-October agreement on the Legion, in which the AFL head traded his approval for its institution in exchange for Disque's promise that he would initiate an eight-hour day in the West. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 123 ery." Accustomed to the glum, resentful, defiant spirit that had char- acterized similar meetings called by Sligh, Hawkins and Grammer were tremendously impressed when "It all went as cheerfully as a wedding bell." 22 Disque did not hesitate to imply to lumbermen that he possessed more authority than he actually had in October; perhaps he anticipated that he, or whoever took over the spruce problem, would have to ac- quire more power soon. Consider the widespread effect of his impact on George S. Long, one of the major figures in the Lumbermen's Pro- tective Association and a power in the state's politics. After talking with Disque, Long sent out a confidential circular to most west coast lumbermen: Col. Brice P. Disque has been authorized by the Secretary of War to take whatever steps are necessary to get out what the Government needs for aircraft spruce lumber, and he comes to the Coast with full authority to do whatever may be necessary to do to bring about the production of all the spruce aircraft lumber that is needed at once by the Government. Col. Disque is a very fine practical man and accustomed to labor problems and he realizes that there is a labor problem in this issue, but bigger than any labor problem is the Government's necessity for spruce, and he has full authority to go to any extreme that may be necessary to bring about its pro- duction, even to the extent, if in his judgment it is essential, to put troops into logging camps and do the logging. To do this, of course, means some kind of a mutual harmonious solving of the labor problem, and as the issue is a large one, he is especially anxious to have the benefit of the viewpoint of the loggers and of their advice and counsel, and at a conference which I had with him this afternoon, he has requested that a few of the prominent loggers in the industry meet him at Portland, at the Benson Hotel, at ten o'clock Thursday the 25th inst. From the State of Washington I have asked the following named gentlemen to be present at this conference. Mark E. Reed Shelton, Wash. Ralph Burnside Raymond Alex Poison Hoquiam A. J. Morley Aberdeen Mr. Jerome, of Merrill %c Ring Co. Seattle J. J. Donovan Bellingham No more important conference has yet been called and I urge you to drop everything and be present. The lumbermen came on October 25 and were impressed if not con- quered. Poison, after talking with Disque for several hours, judged that "He is a very fine gentleman. . . . Major Tornwy, Major [sic] Hawkins "Hearings, 11, 1019. 124 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE and this gentleman seem to be very practical men, and I am sure that they will find some way of getting the . . . spruce." 23 While Disque held the center of the stage, Parker and Suzzallo worked quietly in the background. They "planted" cooperative individuals among the audience who at appropriate opportunities offered sugges- tions and asked questions that led the discussion toward the conclusions that Disque and his supporters wanted to reach. Considering the staged arrangements, it is unsurprising that recommendations emerged from this meeting, and from earlier, similar assemblies, that embraced what Disque and Parker had worked out together." 4 Sometime during the October 25 meeting, a committee of lumber- men whose total invested capital worth, in Hawkins' estimation, ex- ceeded $24 million, and who employed or could employ (were workers available) more than 12,000 lumber hands, came to agreement with Disque. They would join with him in an attempt to form a volunteer organization among fellow-lumbermen and lumberworkers, in which each member would swear to be loyal to the United States and to try to increase the rate of woodcutting. "The thought is," Hawkins re- ported next day to Sligh, "to give each man a good-looking certificate of membership and a characteristic emblem to wear. We believe this will sort the good from the bad." Hawkins then recounted that prom- inent lumbermen "Alex Poison, Mr. Q. J.] Donovan, and Mark Reed are a committee of three to work out the proposition and will report to Colonel Disque.'" 1 Hawkins' description bears out the contention of some commentators that the Legion was inspired primarily by the lumbermen, until it is recalled that Disque and Parker had preconceived the outlines and arranged for the resolutions from the floor on which the suggestion for the Legion was based. What occurred on October 25, 1917, which is perhaps the best formal birthdate for the Loyal Legion, is that the lumbermen were maneuvered into seconding the Army's program. Further, it is now verifiable that what Hawkins described as a "com- 28 Circular addressed to Mr. T. Jerome of Merrill & Ring Co., in folder full of copies of this and similar telegrams, various addressees, Oct. 23, 1917, Disque Papers; Poison to R. D. Merrill, Oct. 26, 1917, Merrill & Ring Co. Papers, UW. 21 Disque's note, undated, ca. Nov. 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers, specifies need to "plant" leading questions among audiences, and gives other details. Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 441, offers the traditional and unperceptive judgment that it was at one such meeting that the "idea" for the Legion rose spontaneously from the floor. Nichols, Legion, 76, echoes the incorrect theme that Disque accepted the leadership of the lumbermen at these sessions. ^Hawkins to Sligh, Oct. 26, 1917, Army Air Force Records, LLLL, RG 18, NA. Hawkins states that with Disque, himself, Parker, and Suzzallo at this conference were lumbermen Poison, Reed, Morley, McLeod, Burnside, Merrill, Ring, Donovan, Long, and Gregory. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 125 mittee of three" lumbermen to work with Disque was more accurately a quintet, and not all were lumbermen. In addition, Disque asked the state's AFL head, Marsh, to review with him and Parker what the lum- bermen proposed. Labor's voice was also heard through the presence at these deliberations of C. O. Young, chief organizer of the national AFL and Gompers' personal lieutenant. Gompers had sent Young to Seattle under specific instructions to confer with Disque and to prevent the growth in the West of any development that would be unfavorable to the goals of organized labor. Together with Marsh and Young, Disque, Parker, and Suzzallo worked with the three lumbermen to arrive at some promising formula. Disque insisted to all these men that his own mission was only to in- crease spruce production. 3 * 3 He frankly stated that if the Army thought that an eight-hour day was needed in order to accomplish this, or the unionization of lumberworkers, or the prevention of unions, then he would support such novelties. Disque, according to Young, also "said he agreed with Gompers on union principles." The upshot was that both the Legion proposal and the projected spruce production division received the support of the labor men as well as the lumbermen. In order to achieve this support, Disque had to sell out to neither side. He emerged from this conference not only with the approval of organized labor and management for the Loyal Legion, but also with the respect of both, and with his self-respect intact. "I think that I have kept the Army independent in this matter," he con- fided in a rough journal that he kept on this fruitful conference; "its honor is unimpaired." 27 Before ascertaining that the Legion idea of a joint employer-worker effort under Army supervision was acceptable to its putative member- ship, Disque had already come to grips with the question of whether or not he should be the one to bring these recommendations to reality. Sligh was still nominally in charge of spruce matters. Without question, M Young to Immigration Commissioner Henry M. White, Aug. 2, 1918, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Records, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA, describing the October meeting. Writing months after the event, Young misdates this meeting as "about Oct. 21." Disque's own memoranda, the letter cited in note 25, and the circular from Long cited in note 23 show conclusively that Young is referring to the Oct. 25 meeting. On Disque's relationship with Gompers, see ch. 7 below. 27 Young to White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; entry, Oct. 29, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers. To be sure, Disque's eight-hour views at this time were not firm; see Robert Tyler, Rebels of the Woods and Fields (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oregon, 1953), 106; Portland Oregonian, March 1, 1918. Why should they have been? The issue was quiet. Winter weather, it should be recalled, had shelved this problem. 126 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE he would lash out in anger to prevent anyone from diminishing the bureaucratic authority that he had amassed. Having set the stage in Portland, Disque had to carry through at the War Department or all this intense activity would be wasted. Only with Sligh out of competi- tion for the headship of the new division could the large possibilities for reform be realized that Disque and Parker had envisioned. Parker insisted that once Sligh was out, then Disque must step in to take charge. But opposing this ambition was Disque's intense desire to go to France. He had to balance the two. Parker presented him with an argu- ment that decided Disque in favor of remaining in the United States and taking charge of spruce production for the war's duration. Just after breakfast on October 21, Parker rushed into Disque's hotel room with the news that Parker's earlier mediation efforts had suc- ceeded in settling a strike in several west coast shipyards which had idled more than 10,000 workers. A fair proportion of these men had filled in the slack by taking jobs in the lumber industry. But now that the shipyards were readying to resume operations, and on an eight-hour basis, the temporary lumberworkers would undoubtedly prefer to re- turn to the better paying, safer, and more comfortable conditions pre- vailing in their former employment. Indeed, Parker feared that a good many lumber "regulars" would transfer their skills to shipbuilding. If they did, the lumber crisis could still lead to disaster. Someone, Parker pleaded, must take charge in the new crisis, and at once. Disque was the only one capable of doing so with any chance of effective results. This new development decided Disque to give up France and to stay on in the West if he could get approval for his and Parker's scheme from the lumbermen on October 25, and then from Gompers and the War Department. He wired Colonel Deeds at Signal Corps headquarters: "This is very important and I am prepared to do it so that it will be acceptable." There was no joy for Disque in this decision. He knew that giving up combat duty in France meant sacrificing his postwar Army career. In addition, the spruce problem had already become a despoiler of reputa- tions. But he hoped that the grand design that he and Parker had evolved might break the pattern. In order to secure approval at the War Department for the total scheme, Disque would have to return there at once. But first he re- assured lumbermen and lumberworkers alike that his hurried departure did not mean, as had been their experience with all previous govern- SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 127 ment investigators except Parker, that their needs were going to be shelved in some forgotten report. Before leaving, Disque asked Deeds for authority to fix prices for cut logs and to move the 4th Engineer Regiment from its barracks near Seattle to the timber areas where its members "could be used to great advantage. Can't you get them placed at our disposal at once? . . . Spruce will suffer if we don't get labor." Disque also wanted $300 to be used "to offset agitators [through] an educational campaign" waged on billboards. The inclusion in this wire of a request for funds to be spent on "edu- cational materials" misled Howd, among other commentators, to con- clude: "As so conceived the Four L was to be merely a propaganda agency to counteract the IWW, and as such it was carried on for a con- siderable period." But Howd never learned of the Parker-Disque con- ferences of the preceding fortnight. He did not actually see the two telegrams that Disque sent to Colonel Deeds on October 21, and had to rely on garbled reports of their contents. Therefore, Howd could not know that the important part of Disque's request was for troops, not posters. 28 That this is so becomes clear by the nature of Deeds's reply the next day. It authorized Disque to spend not only $300, but an additional $5000 which Disque had requested in his second telegram. This larger amount, Disque's notes indicate, was adequate to print posters and, more important, to prepare to move regular soldiers in small detach- ments to eighteen different lumbering locations in Washington and Oregon, where their presence might at once lessen pro-wobbly activities. At the same time, lumbermen would see in the anticipation of the soldiers proof that Disque had not forgotten them. And then, if Gom- pers and the War Department approved the broader proposal he wished to present, troops might be already located as cadres for the soldier-labor units that Disque hoped to supply to lumbermen. 29 Readying to leave for the East on October 27, Disque let lumberman Poison know that he intended to be gone only ten days. Within that period of time, he confided to Ames, he hoped to gain "more authority." He needed more, for before his departure Disque boldly told the Army officers at Portland, whom Sligh had appointed, to hold all policy mat- ters in suspense until further notice from the War Department. Antici- 28 Cloice Howd, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Industry, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Miscellaneous Series, Bull. No. 349 (Washington, 1924), 77; telegrams to Deeds, Oct. 21, 1917, Disque Papers. 29 Col. B. T. Lenoir of Deeds's staff to Disque (telegram), Oct. 22, 1917, with Disque's annotations, Disque Papers. In Hearings, III, 3584, Disque admits only that in October 1917 "I went out there [the Northwest] . . . and gave a few instructions." 128 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE pating, however, that the powers he sought would be forthcoming, Disque arranged with the Army personnel office at the Presidio to send him a young regular officer, Captain Cuthbert P. Stearns, whom the colonel had met a year earlier in Hawaii and who was now in the West awaiting transit to France. When Stearns arrived at Seattle, Disque put him to work preparing administrative guidelines for the projected division. 30 Another young officer, Lieutenant Maurice E. Crumpacker, being available, Disque assigned him to work under Parker's oversight, pre- paring "Principles of Presentation" for future Loyal Legion organizers to employ as a guide. It is noteworthy that Disque wanted the regular officer, Stearns, to cope with the Army's new spruce division's adminis- trative readiness, if the division came into existence. The Legion, how- ever, would be served by the work of the war-service volunteer, Crum- packer. Going further in his assumption that the War Department would back him up retroactively, Disque through Suzzallo established a liaison with the Washington state defense council's "secret service" apparatus. With the approval of Governor Lister and Army Intelligence, he ar- ranged that if the Legion did arise, at least in Washington state it would enjoy a primary jurisdiction among these agencies over anti-IWW activities. 31 These facts render absurd Sligh's later charge, lodged against Disque to inquiring congressmen, that Disque merely "gives the impression that he assumed control in October" and that he really "had nothing to do with [spruce matters] until after the 1st of December." 32 It is a measure of Sligh's inability to gauge reality that he never realized that Disque had actually taken over in October. At the War Department, Parker's and Disque's telegraphic reports received intensive consideration even as his train sped eastward. The 80 Poison to Merrill, Oct. 26, 1917, Merrill & Ring Co. Papers, UW; Ames to Talbot, Oct. 27, 1917, Box 30, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; J. P. Keating, Mgr., Aircraft Spruce Production Bureau, to Merrill & Ring Co., Nov. 6, 1917, Disque Papers. Stearns, now a retired colonel, kindly confirmed these details for me in 1960. 31 Information Bulletin for Speakers, LLLL, No. 1, Nov. 23, 1917, AEF Records, RG 120, NA; exchange between Suzzallo and E. J. Blain, chairman, Washington State Public Service Commission, Oct. 20-Nov. 27, 1917, Lister Papers. Probably it was Crumpacker's work here that remained in the memory of 4L veterans as the source of the Legion itself. For example, in 1917 Walter S. Johnson, now president of Friden, Inc., San Leandro, Calif., was a Legion recruiting officer. In a letter to the author, May 7, 1962, he recalled that "one of the lieutenants in Gen. [sic] Disque's Portland office was reported to have conceived the idea of converting these IWW members to be good loyal citizens." 32 Hearings, I, 598-600. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 129 opinion prevailed, Colonel Seoane recalled, that the insight and promise they revealed justified Pershing's insistence that regular Army officers were best suited after all to run the military machine. 33 While Disque traveled, his west coast supporters were further easing his way so that approval might quickly be forthcoming for the proposals he was to present. Parker wired an old acquaintance, the reformer Louis Post, now an Assistant Secretary of Labor, asking him to give Disque every assistance. A similar appeal went to Baker and to Lippmann. Scherer played the same theme to Coffin, and Suzzallo offered it to Washington's United States senators through Governor Lister. 34 Thus, on November 2 when Disque arrived in Washington, D.C., machinery was already in motion to bring him quickly before respon- sible officials who could make decisions on his proposals. Evidently, however, Secretary Baker wanted to keep the War Department and the Cabinet clear of things for a while at least. Baker therefore set up a meeting for Disque with the Council of National Defense. Meeting with Coffin and Deeds that morning, Disque, after outlining his and Parker's scheme, reported that enough spruce trees existed to meet all wants if — and it was a large qualification — new tracts were quickly opened and the resulting timber carefully cut and milled. Existing mill- ing techniques could not produce logs of high enough quality for air- frame use. The government would have to assume part of the costs of new spurs and mills. One of Sligh's grossest errors had been to purchase large amounts of lower grade spruce, which aircraft manufacturers had eventually rejected. But millers and loggers had become convinced that the low grade stuff was salable to the government and would resist rais- ing their standards. Labor, however, was still the greatest problem. At least 38,000 skilled, permanently employed woodsmen were needed in the Northwest, in- cluding the Inland Empire. But the draft, the curtailment of immigra- tion since 1914, the unshakable determination of many lumbermen not to employ any wobbly or union man, and the strike on the job were all worsening the situation. Taking advantage of the acrimony, the wob- blies were broadening their agitation and sabotage activities. Disque recommended the centralization of all spruce activities in the Army, ^ Copies of Disque's reports, and Seoane to J. D. Ryan, Sept. 9, 1919, Disque Papers; Palmer, Baker, II, 184. 34 Parker's telegram to Disque, Nov. 2, 1917, Disque Papers, summarizes all these efforts. Post, of course, is the Progressive reformer who in the immediate postwar period figured so prominently as an opponent of the anti-Red hysteria. See his Deportations Delirium of Nineteen-Twenty (Chicago, 1923), and pertinent portions of Robert K. Murray, The Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (Minneapolis, 1955). 130 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE with himself in charge of the spruce production division along with an auxiliary, civilian organization, and with power to request the Provost Marshal General to release experienced lumberworkers to his projected new command. And he asked that soldiers serve as lumberworkers when necessary. 35 Coffin, with the hearty approval of Secretary Baker, saw to it that the Council of National Defense acted quickly and favorably on Disque's report and recommendations. On November 3, Aircraft Board resolu- tions, on behalf of the whole Council, asked the Army Signal Corps to hurry the formation of the special division that Disque had requested. 30 So far as permissions were concerned, between October 19 and No- vember 3, the Aircraft Board, a delegation of prominent lumbermen, the Army, and the Council of National Defense had gone on record approving the new division of soldiers and, by implication, the auxiliary Loyal Legion. Obtaining approval from Gompers for the use of soldiers as lumberworkers and for the Legion might be more difficult, and Secre- tary Baker, obviously, would not tilt lances on this issue with the AFL head. But whether or not Gompers smiled on the Army's idea for a spruce production division, the Loyal Legion conception had been established out of six months of interaction of numerous individuals, institutions, and agencies. Despite this multitude of parental sources, the evidence indicates that Parker and Disque together were primarily responsible for conceiving the major features that identify the Loyal Legion as a unique creation, and that the professor deserves recognition as the chief architect. The Legion, so conceived, was not intended as an instrument of sub- servience to either capital or labor. Disque especially saw it as a lever to be wielded by the national will for the Army's purposes; in his and especially in Parker's thinking these characteristics had an overlay of social improvement as a primary goal. In short, the Legion was a Pro- gressive conception, and in early November 1917, as Disque planned the best way to seek Gompers' approval for the spruce production division and for the Legion, he couched his approach in Progressive terms. 1,5 Coffin's memo for Deeds, transmitting the proposals that Disque had made to the War Department, Nov. 2, 1917, Disque Papers. 35 Copies of Board resolution, Nov. 3, 1917, Disque Papers. In addition, the resolu- tion specified that the division establish new, higher inspection standards for spruce milling, in order to retain the largest possible center cuts, considered the best for airframe use. The Board also recommended that the Army advance 30 per cent of the contract price to spruce producers who needed money to open new tracts. It appears that Disque, who authored these motions, had quickly picked up some of the technical terminology of the lumber industry. Chapter y A Close Call for the Legion Thirty-four years after the Armistice, Disque, congratulating George Meany on his accession to the presidency of the AFL, referred to the "fruitful and satisfactory relationship" that he had enjoyed with Gom- pers during World War I. "Many is the night," Disque recalled, "that he and I sat up until early hours discussing the welfare of the country." 1 November 3, 1917, was one of the most important of those nights. Disque had Secretary Baker's permission, indeed injunction, to clear with Gompers the scheme for employing a division of "service squad- rons" in the Northwest as soldier-lumberworkers or as police forces, before the War Department gave final approval. To some critics of the Wilson administration, it was "quite a joke in Washington that nothing was done in the labor situation unless Gompers approved it." Disque apparently saw nothing amiss in this procedure. He was, after all, pro- posing to intrude the Army into labor matters. Gompers was the labor man on the Defense Council. And Disque knew and trusted Gompers. 2 Although he assumed from the pleasant tenor of their earlier meet- ings in Michigan that Gompers also respected him, Disque, preparing for the November conference, admitted to being as nervous as a recruit in his first fight. To be sure, during the first few minutes after the men gathered, an undercurrent of formality and some tension existed, but it soon dissipated and an atmosphere of cordiality took its place. Accompanying Disque was Major Leadbetter of Slight's staff. If the plan under discussion went forward and Disque replaced Sligh, Lead- better was to join the new commander as a liaison between Disque and the Army and so his presence at this meeting was designed to keep Leadbetter abreast of developments. 3 Gompers had with him his chief 1 Disque to Meany, Nov. 28, 1952, Disque Papers. 2 Hearings, I, 592; II, 1921. 3 Entry, Nov. 3, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers. Leadbetter was a small-scale lumber broker in Portland who in prewar years participated in the state's militia program. With the war he was "federalized" with his regiment, but, being overage, he was "dumped" into the spruce production office merely because he possessed enough political influence to prevent the Army from ousting him altogether. This was typical of the Army's lack of concern for the spruce program. Hearings, II, 1758-59. As it turned out, Leadbetter became a good liaison man. His function would be to protect Disque's interests at the War Department. "No sensible soldier," General George Marshall said later, "undertakes a field command without leaving a rear echelon at headquarters." Quoted in Dean Acheson, Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known (New York, 1959), 150. 131 1 32 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE organizer, Young, whom Disque had met in October on the west coast, where together they had helped to bring forth the first public expression of approval for the Legion idea. However, the entire discussion the night of November 3 was on the service squadrons, not the Loyal Legion. Since Disque's return to the capital, he had learned that Gompers was opposed to any employment of the Army to control civilian labor matters. Informing Disque of this development earlier that day, General Squier had advised the colonel that the spruce production division proposal was task enough for the Army to assume, and that gaining Gompers' approval for the use of soldiers as workmen in the woodlands would be sufficiently difficult, without intruding the subject of the Legion. "Let us form the [spruce production] division," Squier had urged. "Then, if we find something more drastic like the Legion needed, we can then move." There was little Disque could do but acquiesce. 4 Gompers, of course, could not force Disque to drop the idea of the Legion, but he could withhold his approval of the production squad- rons and exert backstage influence against one or both suggestions. The probable consequence would be that President Wilson would forbid the Army from initiating the innovation. Disque tried to understand why Gompers opposed the formation of the Legion. He estimated that Gompers, though deeply hoping for the demise of the wobblies, feared to associate the Federation in any way with approval of an organization like the Legion which would be frankly devoted to that end, even if by the unusual procedure of curing radicalism with kindness. Probably Gompers also hoped that the spruce division would kill off the wobblies anyway, and that then the AFL could move into the vacuum created. Hence he would approve the idea for the production division, although it involved soldiers working as lumber craftsmen. At the same time, Gompers was being goaded to take a stand by intra-Federation criticisms of his allegedly craven attitudes concerning wartime limits on strikes and wage demands. For the record, therefore, Gompers felt impelled to protest even against the division during the November 3 meeting: "Mr. Gompers did not like the idea of it very much at first," Leadbetter recorded. 5 Without too much difficulty, Disque brought him around. After stressing the patriotic necessity for the new division, Disque asked the reasons for Gompers' opposition. Gompers replied that the soldiers 4 Disque to Parker, Nov. 4, 1917, quoting Squier and offering other details, Disque Papers. 5 Entry, Nov. 4, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers; Hearings, II, 1921, for Lead- better. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 133 Disque planned to introduce into the lumbering regions would take on "economic" functions, while following the traditional strikebreak- ing, antilabor-union, antiworker role of the military; that if "the laborers did not like anything they might be lined up and shot." Not at all, Disque insisted. He would be in command. Had he not come up from common folk, risen in the Army from the equivalent of enlisted rags to the relative riches of field rank? No soldiers under his orders would break strikes. His division would help get out spruce and that was all. Gompers knew, Disque continued, that they agreed on "union prin- ciples," and that the "basic eight hour day is a fundamental factor." But the new spruce division would cut trees, not try to raise standards of health, safety, or comfort for all lumberworkers in the Northwest. Unlike the proposed Legion, it would not involve itself with such matters as the eight-hour day or wage scales for woodsmen, Disque asserted, and the insinuation was clear that those subjects would be left for private agencies like the AFL to deal with. In short, Disque guaran- teed that his new production unit would be solely "a patriotic organi- zation, not to be used for economic purposes," as Young remembered the conversation. The Army, in November 1917, was promising Gom- pers that it would not create any form of a labor union, and Gompers accepted the commitment because he trusted and liked Disque ("We had a good impression of him," Young recalled) who, after all, now represented the Army. For his part, Disque was offering to kill off the Legion idea in exchange for Gompers' acquiescence in soldier-laborers for the spruce production division. Gompers did not force him to this decision. In addition to the factor of Gompers' opposition, Disque had come to the conclusion on his own that his energy and the Army's resources were adequate only to the probable demands of the new division. Responsibility for a unique organization like the proposed Legion would be an added weight which would make too heavy a burden both for Disque and for the Army administration. "I cannot do two things at the same time," Disque wrote Parker later that night. "Perhaps the things we wanted the civilians of the Legion to do, the soldiers of the Division will take on." Undoubtedly Disque was taking the easy way out. Away from Parker's influence, the soldier's commitment to reform, never the leader in his priorities, lessened. Disque's professional addiction to preferring a martial organization, even an uncombative one, to civilian alternatives exhibited itself. He may also have been correct. Dropping the Legion experiment at this point might well have saved the Army a great deal 1 34 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of trouble. Soldiers could probably have performed many of the strictly production functions that Legionnaires later accomplished. All that would have been lost would have been the daring opportunities Parker had seen for the Legion to reform substandard conditions and perma- nently to rationalize an entire industry embracing a vast region, which for decades had verged on anarchy and chaos. Parker's Legion embraced a vision; Disque's production division involved actuarial tables. Disque dimly perceived this. In his self-defensive letter to Parker he admitted that the mediator was "concerned with helping men to better things; I am now responsible for helping the Army to increase airplane pro- duction. I will try to achieve both, but it is obvious which comes first." 8 It is obvious, also, that this admission by Disque of differences between himself and Parker, at this early stage in the Legion's story, presaged future difficulties between the two men. With the understanding reached that the Legion idea would fade away, the November 3 meeting with Gompers became a love feast in- stead of the fight that Disque had anticipated. Gompers promised to approve all of Disque's proposals for a new Army spruce production division, including the use of troops as lumberworkers at civilian wage levels, and to have the Federation, through Young, assist Disque in every way. 7 Soon after midnight the meeting broke up. Later, Disque's critics alleged that at this meeting the colonel prom- ised Gompers his support for an eight-hour day, in order to secure the labor leader's approval. On the contrary, it should be clear that Disque had implicitly to promise not to touch such subjects as working hours. Men like Sligh, jealous of Disque's later accomplishments, asserted that Gompers required Disque to open the Northwest to AFL unionizing, else the Federation head would kill off stillborn the idea for the new division. 8 Here, too, there is more passion than fact or logic. In Novem- ber Disque could neither open nor close opportunities for AFL re- cruiters. That Young was detailed to work with him is irrelevant. It was Gompers who assigned Young to cooperate with Disque; not the colonel who asked for that assignment. How he could avoid accepting it, once Gompers made the shrewd gesture, is a question that any veteran of committee infighting would acknowledge as unanswerable. 6 Young to Henry White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; and see Gompers to Disque, Oct. 27, Dec. 10, and Disque to Parker, Nov. 4, 1917, Disque Papers. In the foregoing chapter it was noted that Disque had two faces concerning the eight- hour-day issue when speaking on the west coast in October. The same seems to be true here. 7 Young to White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 8 Hearings, I, 591-92. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 135 In sum, practical, opportunistic men like Gompers and Disque did not waste time promising each other fruits which neither could harvest in November 1917. Without Gompers' approval the new Army division could not come into existence. The Army wanted it formed because the failure in spruce supply threatened the next year's strategical planning. With the division's men at hand, Disque might be able to bring tempo- rary order to the Northwest, quickly enough to save the 1918 aircraft production program and with strength enough to shut off the growing wobbly voice within the Army. The Disque-Gompers accord had still another face. Both the War Department and Gompers were digesting the first news of the Bolshevik coup in Russia. Gompers feared that, as a result of the Russian example, radical unionism in the United States would take on new energy and ferocity and that the Federation might thereby be tarred with the brush of radicalism. By cooperating with Disque now, Gompers was preparing a defense for the future. In a sense, Disque and Gompers entered a temporary agreement not to oppose one another so long as the Army restrained its activities in the W 7 est to the divisional scheme, on the one hand, and the AFL marked time in matters of its goals there, on the other. Neither could lose anything by permitting the other to proceed. It was a truce, not a partnership. The real point of dissimulation did not concern promises about the eight-hour day, or Disque's nonexistent subservience to Gompers. Rather it involved the Loyal Legion. On November 3 everyone made believe that the Legion could not come into existence, and ignored the fact that its goals concerning better wages and conditions, which Young of Gompers' staff had helped to inspire and promote, smacked clearly of those of all unions. This deliberate myopia reflects the fact that both Disque and Gompers that night were bidding from weak- ness. Some such ideas as the spruce division and the Legion were in the wind. Perhaps Gompers preferred that Disque, whom Gompers knew and perhaps believed that he could control, should command the di- vision, rather than some outright businessman like Sligh. At least this was the way Disque interpreted Gompers' viewpoint. For himself, Disque resolved to incorporate into the spruce division the reformist goals that he and Parker had set for the Legion only if it was possible to do so, and only in such degree and at such a rate of speed that spruce production increases were not threatened. There was no sense in antagonizing Gompers. Neither Gompers nor Disque could foretell the future. Both were satisfied that at the November 3 meeting an honest presentation of 136 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE plans and ideas had been made. When, the next morning, Disque boasted to Sligh that "I have got Gompers' approval," he could have and probably should have added that there had been no price to pay for it that the Army could withhold in practical terms. 9 Only the Legion baby had been sold, or rather left outside the bargaining room in the expectation that it would die. This was made manifest by the next day's developments. In the morning, Secretary Baker heard from Gompers of his approval of Disque's proposal for the new division. Baker immediately called in Assistant Labor Secretary Post and brought him up to date on the details involved. Parker had feared that Post, a militant prolabor Pro- gressive, might prove to be a more troublesome hurdle even than Gompers. Before Disque left the West, Parker had written Post, asking him to look with favor upon Disque, and he had also asked Lippmann and Frankfurter, both favorites with Post, to support the colonel. Post had substantial resources among reform elements across the country to oppose developments. When, on the morning of November 4, Post asked Baker for an opportunity to meet Disque, the colonel feared that this was what was going to occur. He did not learn until later that Post was motivated by curiosity, not hostility; "I wanted to meet the tiger that bearded Gompers," he admitted to Disque. 10 Post and Disque met "most cordially" the next morning. Impressed by Disque with the need for haste, Post arranged for a longer confer- ence to assemble that evening, November 5. He would represent the Labor Department, Gompers the AFL, and Disque the Army. This meeting was merely a pleasant formality, since all its members had already studied the Disque proposal for the Army woodcutting divi- sion and given their approval to it. Within an hour of assembling, the men agreed that the Army should use troops in lumber work and approved the unique pay arrange ments that Disque and Parker had devised. All soldiers in the timber lands would serve under their assigned officers, never under civilian foremen. Where civilian workers were available, no soldiers were to be employed. Entries, Nov. 3, 4, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers; Hearings, I, 591-92; II, 1401-403. Note that Sligh had never even tried to see Gompers concerning labor for the lumber areas. Nichols, Legion, 84-85, concludes that Disque's "relationship with unions defied easy explanation." I hope that on this point, at least, matters i are now clearer. Entry, Nov. 4, 1917, small notebook; Post to Disque, Aug. 19, 1919, also contain ing details on Parker, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 37 Only in a few matters was the document precise. Disque, it was agreed, was to command the division. He was to restrict its activities to western Washington and Oregon. This was the area where most spruce grew, for one thing. For another, it was also the neighborhood of the most intense labor-management difficulties. Probably the AFL's possi- bilities of achieving recognition for its locals in that neighborhood were most dim. Therefore, the Federation had least to lose by Army involvement. Last, it may have been that the AFL hoped to keep the Inland Empire as an organizing preserve. This interpretation seems to be borne out by the fact that Young, the AFL official, was specified to "aid in meeting the government's necessities in connection with this understanding." His role would logically be to instruct northwestern AFL locals on the reasons for Gompers' agreement in this undertaking, and thus prevent resistance to its progress from within the western ranks of organized labor. But this is merely the interpretation that stems from logic, not necessarily the view of all the men there. Indeed, the November 5 "understanding," as well as the earlier one with Gompers, was very vague. Perhaps the conferees deliberately employed imprecision out of a desire to avoid potentially embarrassing commitments and, more important, because they had no clear idea of the direction that the organization they were approving would take. Post's expression of "confidence in the ability and intention of Colonel Disque to carry out the understanding in its purpose and spirit and effectively" was a sincere but vacuous formula. 11 The "purpose and spirit" of the new Spruce Production Division, apart from producing spruce, was un- certain. If the goals were unclear, the approval of Gompers and Post at least opened the road for Disque to commence organizing his division. The morning after the second meeting with Gompers, Disque had the Army's orders to start. There had been a brief flurry at Baker's office that morning when it suddenly occurred to the Secretary that at least a gesture should be made of considering other persons than Disque as commander of the new division. "He thought," Colonel Seoane later wrote, "that specifying Disque a day after the meeting with Gompers, would look and smell bad." Post proposed that Frankfurter take on the job. There was little enthusiasm and no support for the idea. "The "Agreement, memorandum to Gompers, and Post to Baker, all Nov. 6, 1917, in file 33/574-A, RG 280, NA. Copies of all these in Disque Papers bear Post's and Gompers' signatures and Disque's notation, attached: "I suppose we all know what we signed." See also Hearings, II, 1401-403. 1 38 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE man from Boston," Seoane confided, "is too busy and I suppose most businessmen would say he is too liberal." With this formality out of the way, Baker reached out and suddenly Major Sligh was transferred away from any connection with spruce. "I was never so surprised in my life," Sligh later admitted. Although he had not remained completely ignorant that an intrigue was under way against his administration of spruce affairs, he was so sure that his performance in obtaining spruce had been adequate that he did not really contemplate serious attack. On learning of the new spruce division, Sligh had actually supposed that he would command it, and he thought of getting Disque, whom he had met, as a subordinate." Disque's November 6 orders specified that he was to have his head- quarters in Portland, on the spruce scene, not like Sligh three thou- sand miles eastward. Leadbetter was to represent Disque's interests at the War Department in a liaison function, while Hawkins was to be granted a captain's commission and to work under Disque in the West, to afford him the benefits of his considerable logging experience. With $40,000 budgeted to his division's account, Disque would absorb what- ever organization Sligh had already put together. 13 In other matters, however, as will be seen, these orders were to be a source of great diffi- culty for Disque, and of vast significance for the Legion. Disque left immediately for Oregon. Arriving at Portland on No- vember 15, he set to work to carry out his mission. His first step was to initiate the division. So far as Disque was concerned, the Legion was stillborn. But he soon learned that the Legion idea refused to die, especially among the lumbermen. During Disque's absence in the East enthusiasm for the Legion had gained momentum on the west coast. "Put the Loyal Loggers to work," pleaded the Portland Oregonian, a voice of the organized lumbermen. "The way to do this is simple. . . . Let the government organize such men to work ... on the lines suggested by the Loggers' Loyal Legion." 14 Suiting action to this theme, representatives of sixteen of the region's "Sligh in Hearings, I, 585-88, 591-92; Seoane to Gen. Foulois, Sept. 2, 1919, Disque Papers. "Memorandum No. 51, Chief Signal Officer, USA, to Disque, Nov. 8, 1917, in- cluding Nov. 6 orders, Disque Papers. 14 Oregonian, Nov. 6, 1917. For some unspecifiable reason, perhaps merely that he was overtired and following a crammed schedule, Disque sent notification to Parker to stop the Legion by mail rather than by telegram. He just did not anticipate that the lumbermen would seize upon the Legion idea so enthusiastically. See also West Coast Lumberman, XXXIII (Nov. 15, 1917), 19, 23. Nichols, Legion, 77, accepts the Oregonian's pro-Legion pieces during Disque's absence in the East as proof of his complicity with the lumbermen. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 139 largest lumber companies met at Centralia on November 10, while Disque was still in the East. After addresses by "Captain" Hawkins, Suzzallo, and Parker, the assembly offered to sponsor Legion units in Disque's name, in expectation that he was to take over responsibility for spruce production, that he wanted the Legion to endure, and that the War Department would approve the Legion. This Centralia meeting of lumbermen unanimously resolved "to keep an active organization of all logging interests." Further, the as- sembly voted to have Disque, through Hawkins, "meet with all the loggers at his earliest convenience to go over the labor situation thor- oughly." In short, lumbermen wanted the Legion to live, undoubtedly in anticipation of controlling it. 15 Disque wanted it to die in order to be free to concentrate on what seemed to him to be the precedent objects of the new spruce division. Almost as soon as he reached his new Portland headquarters, Disque issued a confidential circular, addressed to all lumber company heads, to explain the purposes of the new Spruce Production Division (here- after referred to as SPD). In this circular Disque specified that his office was to be the center for all orders, purchases, and inspections of all spruce stock. He also promised to try to get lumberworkers exempted from the draft, or if too late for exemption, to have them transferred to the SPD. Disque wanted all instances of labor shortages and alleged sabotage reported to him. And that was all. The Legion idea was ended. 18 He soon learned that it was not to be so easy. For example, Disque had apparently forgotten that in October, before going east, he had assigned Lieutenant Crumpacker to work under Parker. Somehow that busy mediator had found time to devote to planning for what the Legion should be. Crumpacker, enthusiastically employing Parker's memoranda, created a syllabus for Legion organizers to follow, in which Parker's scholarly guideposts and literary style are clearly evident. 17 u Minutes, Nov. 10, 1917, meeting, and Spruce Log Bureau to Merrill & Ring Co., Nov. 13, 1917, Disque Papers. Although Hawkins was not commissioned, he used the title of "Captain," perhaps in expectation that his commission, recommended by Sligh and seconded by Disque, would soon be forthcoming. Thus the quotation marks. "Confidential circular, Nov. 17, 1917, Disque Papers. "The Parker-Crumpacker "Principles of Presentation" stressed the interrelation- ship between spruce trees and warplanes. One plane, it was asserted, was worth 150,000 infantrymen. The Legion was going to make it possible for the United States to have enough planes. In no way, the statement continued, was the Legion "influ- enced by any private organization." Legion organizers were cautioned to emphasize that the Legion wanted to affect the members' "sentiment toward their country and their Government"; not necessarily, unless it became needful in order to get out 140 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE During late November and early December, when Disque wanted to soft-pedal Legion activities, these "Principles" attracted many inquiries concerning the SPD and the Legion from lumber operators and from some timberworkers. In addition, other government agencies were posit- ing certain policies, especially internal security matters, on the existence of the Legion. Military Intelligence, for example, assigned F. P. Stans- bury, the chief inspector of its west coast industrial plant protection section, to "work with Mr. Crumpacker toward the solution of the: I WW problem." By mid-November, Stansbury had "space in Mr. Crum- packer's office." 18 These faits accomplis faced Disque upon his return to Portland. Theoretically, he might have recognized the incongruity of these devel- opments with his decision to end the Legion, and with the implications of his meetings with Gompers and Post, and simply issued an order to that effect. But such an order would have offended many lumbermen, some workers, and several federal officials, all of whose support Disque needed if his SPD was to be a success. Parker, of course, had at once pleaded that the Legion not be terminated. In addition to the friend- ship that existed between himself and Parker, and the desire not to strain it, Disque also hoped to exploit for the purposes of the SPD the close links that Parker had built up with Suzzallo and with Scherer. These considerations probably would not have sufficed to overcome Disque's sense of implicit commitment to Gompers concerning ending the Legion, had the SPD been able to commence large-scale functioning at once, and thereby send soldier-lumberworkers into the camps and mills. But within a week of his return to Portland — a week filled with visits to more than a dozen mills and camps, with numerous confer- ences, and with frantic, ultimately fruitless efforts to get several thou- sand troops assigned to him — Disque had to admit defeat. Some strange impediment was blocking his most strenuous exertions to bring the SPD into being. Because Disque was temporarily frustrated in his inten- tion to assemble soldier-woodsmen quickly and in large numbers, and to assign them to private lumber camps as labor reinforcements on government contracts, he had to backtrack on his decision to stifle the Legion. With his opposition to its continuation removed, the Legion revived and blossomed. The result was that the Legion rather than the more spruce, "the relationship of men to their employers." "Principles of Presenta- tion," Information Bulletin for Speakers, No. 1, Nov. 23, 1917, SPD Military Informa- tion Section, RG 120, NA. 18 Inspector Stansbury to Chief Edmund Leigh, Nov. 22, 1917, General Staff Records, RG 165, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 141 SPD became the primary instrument of Army policy in the Northwest. It quickly developed into the manpower force of the size, stability, and reliability that the nation needed for its war purposes. The following pages explain the causes of the change in Disque's plans. On November 25, Intelligence officer Stansbury reported to his supe- riors that Disque "is not going to proceed to get [spruce] production by sending soldiers into the camps and mills." 19 Two weeks after his return to the west coast, Disque angrily wired Leadbetter: "I had authority of the War Department to organize 60 construction squadrons and 6 supply squadrons [to form the SPD]. To date I have one enlisted man at Vancouver Barracks — he enlisted here. There are some 110 officers and 32 medical officers, all waiting for the soldiers. ... I have tried in vain to get these [enlisted] men, and logging companies to whom I promised relief in the way of labor are daily calling on me." 20 Where were his troops, Disque demanded in this and in many similar com- munications; why was he not being supplied with the men needed to do his job? In his report to Squier and to other officials, Disque hit on the expedient of trying to spur the Army to action by magnifying the wobbly menace. He indulged in some hyperbole here which was un- doubtedly deliberate, and which reflected the tendency of sufferers from inefficient administrative apparatuses to cry wolf in order to gain results. The relief Disque had promised was needed, he reported to General Squier, because "alien enemies and domestic agitators" in the lumber regions were increasing their depredations, as preparation for the feared general strike call of the new year. Since arriving in Oregon, Disque had visited a wobbly headquarters and read many IWW pam- phlets, along with secret service reports, that convinced him anew of the genuineness of the wobbly threat. Still, he believed that there was little pro-German disloyalty involved, but rather an urge "to destroy industry for the sake of destruction." Nevertheless, Disque stated that he did not believe that living con- ditions, wages, or working hours were the real causes of dissatisfaction. The agitators were. "This element" was delaying spruce and fir opera- tions. Only if Disque had enough troops under his charge in the SPD, able to overawe agitators and to replace them with soldier-loggers if v ' Ibid., and Stansbury's memo to all agents, Nov. 25, 1917, General Stall Records. RG 165, NA. L0 Xov. 29, 1917, in Hearings, II, 1938. 142 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE needed, "could he eliminate the possibility of serious trouble in the early part of 1918" and increase spruce output. 21 In large part, the source of Disque's difficulties lay in the War Depart- ment's sheer inability to cope with the Army's war-swollen needs. Like everything else in wartime America, the cream of the Army bureaucracy was devoting itself to supplying the AEF. Old soldier Disque realized this. "It cannot be expected that busy Washington — 3000 miles away — can or will realize our requirements," he fretted to Leadbetter. But in his view the spruce job was too big and important to permit delays. And he realized that there was more to the difficulties he was experi- encing than mere administrative overburdening. Disque came to learn that the Army bureau heads were giving the cold shoulder to his personnel requisitions because the SPD was a military stepchild, casting almost no weight at all in the scales of intra- Army priorities. The SPD was the ward of the Defense Council's civil- ians, not an honorable creation of the soldierly galaxy at the War Department. Further, Disque's command was tainted by association with the aviation branch of the Signal Corps, which other Army men saw as a Johnny-come-lately group, too popular with the public and with congressmen to be real fighters. Again, Disque, wise in Army ways, was aware of all this. "In other times," he confided to Seoane, "I would take the Army's cavalry bureau view on this, but now I insist that Coffin and the other civilians are in the right." 22 But if the War Department was too far off to sense the significance of getting men to cut trees, Disque was astounded that Army Engineer officers in Oregon and Washington were advertising in newspapers, recruiting experienced woodsmen for regiments destined for AEF over- seas service as pioneers. French forests, Disque complained to Squier, were like the short-wood areas of the American Southeast rather than the northwestern tall spruce region. Long logs needed for airplanes did not grow in France or the eastern forests of the United States. What sense did it make to despoil the west coast, already short of lumber- workers, in order to staff regiments where precious specialized tall- timber experience would be wasted? What was going on, he asked, when men who volunteered specifically for the SPD were told by re- cruiting and draft officers to join the Engineers' forest regiments in- stead? 21 Disque to Squier, Nov. 27, 1917, and over 100 telegrams of similar import to various Army officers and War Department officials, sent out Nov. 16-26, Disque Papers. Apparently Disque then lost patience and decided to hit at the highest level within channels. See, too, Portland Oregonian, Nov. 8, 15, 1917. ^Hearings, II, 1938; Disque to Seoane, Dec. 25, 1917, Disque Papers; and see Port- land Oregonian, Oct. 24, Nov. 13, 1917. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 143 Then, on November 26, the Chief Signal Officer of the Army wired that he was en route west to see Disque at Portland. This information troubled Disque. What was it that Squier had to impart that he could not trust to the mails or to the Army's leased telegraph wires? 23 General Squier's arrival brought enlightenment. Disque's rank was too low and his authority too imprecise, Squier informed him, to evoke obedience from conscription officials or Engineer officers. Disque could merely recommend to the Army's west coast commander when inter- vention by the SPD as a police force was necessary, or when troops should serve as neo-civilian workers. Further, Disque's orders did not specify what fiscal authorization he was to tap. Other commanding officers were understandably reluctant to permit the SPD to live off their budgets. No wonder that Engineer Corps regimental commanders had ignored Disque's requests for the transfer to the SPD of experienced spruce sawyers, and that paymasters had held off from supplying Dis- que's requisitions for funds. There were certain things that Squier could do at once to rectify these matters, which had merely grown out of overhasty drafting of Disque's orders. First, he confirmed permission for Disque to use Secretary Baker's signature in urgent instances. 24 But there was another reason that Disque was having trouble, Squier confided, and there was little that the general could do about this factor. It was up to Disque to amass strength in his own defense and to take action. Squier revealed that Disque and the infant SPD had become the subjects of a personal attack by Major Sligh and the object of an intra- Army power play. Sligh was insinuating around the War Department that Disque was a coward. According to the disgruntled major, Disque, a failure in the prewar Army and a hopeless bungler as a prison warden, rejoined the military service in 1917 in order to escape the consequences of certain bookkeeping curiosities in the Michigan penitentiary's rec- ords. But, "yellow on every page," Disque was frantic to avoid overseas service. When finally scheduled for embarkation to France, he managed to grab the spruce job way out in the safe West. 25 ^Disque to Squier, Nov. 21, 26; Squier to Disque, Nov. 26, 1917 (all telegrams), and memorandum by Disque, undated, but attached to last item and referring to Disque's puzzlement, Disque Papers. There is also a copy of the Engineers' appeal for lumberworkers. 24 Orders, Gen. C. M. Salzman to Disque, Nov. 6, 12, 1917; on Secretary Baker's signature, telegram from Baker's secretary, John A. Paine, to Disque, Nov. 23, 1917, and Disque's attached annotation of Squier's confirmation, all Disque Papers. 25 Summarized in Hearings, I, 600, in which Sligh depicted himself as an innocent civilian, helpless before the sophisticated, ravenous professional officers of the Army. The fact is, of course, that Sligh was an intriguer, but a poor one. Disque remained silent in 1917 under Sligh's shafts, but in 1919 told a friend that the furniture magnate was "a disgrace to civilization"; to Seoane, Aug. 31, 1919, Disque Papers. 144 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Sligh had allied himself with friends at the War College, with a group of high Engineer Corps officers, and with a few officials of the Interior Department's Forestry Division, to try to establish a monopoly of juris- diction in all lumber matters that would exclude the upstart Signal Corps. Through General Peyton C. March, who had been carrying on a vendetta against Pershing and who accurately saw Disque as Pershing's protege, Sligh's scheme came before the General Staff. There it was depicted as a desirable step in a projected plan of administrative cen- tralization within the Army that the Staff was evolving. The effect of these influences was the frustration during the last two weeks in November of all of Disque's efforts in the West to get troops assigned to him, on funds and supplies reserved for the SPD's use. Interior Department agents, especially of the Forest Service, exploiting prewar links with western political leaders and conservationist cham- pions, were rigging conscription apparatuses so that Disque's requests for exemptions were delayed or conveniently lost. All told, Disque wired Leadbetter, "I have not had a chance." 28 Sligh expected that his plotting would result in a faultless coup. He failed to anticipate, however, that Disque had defenders. Underesti- mating, as usual, the complexities of the problem with which he was coping, and the metal of his opponent, Sligh soon found himself smothered in a smooth flow of support for Disque and for the Spruce Production Division, which came out of the West and funneled di- rectly into both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. On December 4, the Aircraft Board assembled at the War Depart- ment. Colonel H. H. "Hap" Arnold of the Signal Corps appeared before it, to argue against the General Staff plan to take over all juris- diction in lumber matters. While Arnold was speaking, a telegram arrived at the Board from Frankfurter, at work in Portland with the President's Mediation Commission. "We met with Colonel Disque," Frankfurter reported, "and found him an officer of very unusual under- standing for handling the delicate labor problems which the execution of your [lumber] program involves. We found ourselves in entire ac- cord. . . . You can be entirely at rest that the President's commission and Colonel Disque will work in entire harmony." 27 Perhaps this would have been enough. But Disque, Parker, Suzzallo, and Frankfurter on the west coast, and Secretary Baker in the East, were taking no chances. Baker appeared unannounced at this session 30 Hearings, II, 1938-40; Disque to Leadbetter, Dec. 2, 1917, and memoranda in folder labeled "Sligh," Disque Papers. 27 Ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 49-50, RG 18, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 145 of the Board. He had a telegram and a cable to read. The telegram was in the form of a unanimous resolution subscribed by 150 western spruce and fir producers, members of the Lumbermen's Protective Association, that Disque be immediately authorized to recruit his "force of troops" to its full contemplated strength, and that he enjoy "absolute power" in all spruce matters. Disque, the telegram concluded, enjoyed the complete confidence of all lumbermen. No one else could do in his place. 2S The cable Baker read was even briefer. "Please keep Disque on pres- ent task," it stated. "I want no other officer or agency to be in charge. Pershing." 29 With this, any possibility that might have existed for Sligh's success completely collapsed. The Board proceeded to support Disque in every particular, expressing its confidence in his efficiency and devo- tion and its conclusion that it was "inadvisable to disturb at a critical time the present organization in charge of the work." Therefore, the Board recommended that neither the Army Engineers nor the Interior Department intrude into Disque's domain. Centralization of adminis- trative efforts within the Army might well go forward, the Board stated, but it must not include Disque's SPD squadrons. 30 In addition, more commissioned manpower, at least, for the skeletal SPD squadrons would be forthcoming. That same day, General Salzman reported that 85 officers were to go to Disque's command, and that Disque had misconstrued to his own detriment his November 6 orders. The Signal Corps, Salzman ingenuously asserted, had intended in them that Disque could on his own decide when it was necessary to use his soldiers as security forces or as laborers, and that he need not seek prior permission from west coast Army commands. Next day, the Board resolved that the SPD must have priority in securing transfers to its squadrons for soldiers with lumbering experience, including those presently enrolled with the Engineers. And as a crowning touch, the Board submitted for Disque's prior approval a recommendation that the SPD serve as the agent for all American and Allied spruce pur- chases, set charges and rates, and collect payments for all spruce sales made abroad. 31 Thus encouraged, Squier sent a rather impolite wire to Major Clark 28 Copy of resolution, signed by J. J. Donovan, with Disque's notation, "Copy sent to Hon. Howard Coffin and Newton Baker by Russell Hawkins, 11/30/17," Disque Papers. 29 Copy, Dec. 4, 1917, with notation in Disque's hand, "Not entered into minutes by request of Sec. Baker," Disque Papers. 30 Dec. 4, 1917, ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 50-51, RG 18, NA. 31 Dec. 4, 5, 1917, ibid., 49-50; and copies of resolutions on SPD operation of a cut-up plant, not in minute book, in Disque Papers. 146 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of the Engineers to tell "his people in the spruce country in the north- west to stop recruiting and get out." The Engineers blew retreat; by December 15 their recruiting personnel would close operations, and the Provost Marshal General reported that conscription officials would henceforth stop the present arrangement of directing lumberworkers to the Engineers' pioneer regiments. The SPD would be the favored unit in this regard. 33 Baker was still not quite satisfied. Ostensibly at Coffin's request, but, Leadbetter guessed, more out of his own anger at the General Staff's temerity, the War Secretary ordered an immediate investigation into the matter. "Baker," Leadbetter wrote Disque, "is furious that the Staff people are trying to take over a project that the civilian directors of the Army and the Aircraft Board thought necessary in its present form. He was ready to bring in the President if necessary to maintain civilian control over these military empire-builders." 33 Higher-level intercession proved to be unnecessary. On December 19 the General Staff, like the Engineers before it, signaled surrender. It had all been a mistake, the Staff officer protested. Surely they had never wanted to take over Disque's division, and they could not understand how anyone could have reached a different conclusion. The only cen- tralization contemplated by the Staff was in cantonments construction administration and fiscal responsibility. But this reform never could have involved Disque. Any contrary suggestion had to have been due to an innocent misunderstanding that would not, of course, be repeated. "The Board," Coffin noted laconically to Baker, "was much relieved by the information." 34 A few days later Baker cast the final blow. He ordered the Engineers to vacate the Vancouver Barracks, which henceforth would serve as the SPD troop headquarters and also be devoted to housing soldiers of the division who were unassigned to woodcutting duties or who were in training. "You should have seen Sligh's face," Leadbetter exulted, "when Coffin called him in before the Board, and without comment- ing, asked him to read aloud Colonel Arnold's and Mr. Frankfurter's messages, and the Board's resolutions sustaining you. I wager that he and the General Staff do not cause you trouble again." 3 " Leadbetter proved to be slightly overoptimistic. Still seeking ven- 32 Ms. memorandum for Asst. Labor Secretary Post from Special Representative, Labor Dept., C. T. Clayton, Dec. 12, 1917, file 33/574-A, RG 280, NA. 33 Dec. 29, 1917, Disque Papers. 34 Dec. 19, 1917, ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 92-93, RG 18, NA. 35 Ibid., 97, 108; Leadbetter to Disque, Dec. 31, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 147 geance, Sligh resorted to a petty expedient. Though outraged that Hawkins had chosen to change masters and support Disque, as in securing the well-timed lumbermen's resolution in favor of the colonel, Sligh suppressed his anger and intimated to Hawkins that he should refuse to turn over to Disque the records of the Portland spruce pur- chasing office that Sligh had headed. Hawkins, to his credit, refused the gambit. He reminded Sligh that his own position was completely unofficial. Uncommissioned, Hawkins was a free agent, not subject to Sligh's orders. Weeks before, on October 26, he had lectured Sligh on the evils that must attend an intrabureau feud: "Business can't be done without harmony," and Disque had his "undivided cooperation and support." 38 When Sligh's maneuver came up to transfer spruce matters to the Engineers or to the Interior Department, Hawkins proved to be an invaluable ally for Disque. The Oregon lumberman wired Coffin: "I cannot too strongly emphasize my objections to any move that con- templates giving engineers or any other authority charge of the [spruce] situation. If done, figure on positive calamity to your excellent board's program. . . . Give Disque power and let him cut corners. I am only here to get more spruce logs. Don't give continental about anything else." 37 These last two sentences, Disque grew convinced, represented Hawkins' true feelings. The colonel was pleasantly surprised, for Parker had earlier pictured Hawkins, with considerable justice, as a self-seeking lumberman who would not subordinate his own advancement to other goals. But apparently Hawkins had been touched with patriotic fire since the advent of the war. Disque decided to reward Hawkins' sup- port by keeping him on as his subordinate in the SPD, and he recom- mended that Hawkins' commission, already in the Army machinery, be issued. Then, late in December, Disque was astonished to learn that Hawkins would not receive the commission. Inquiries at the War Department revealed that the scuttling had involved what Disque called "some political thing." By objecting to the commission, Senators Chamberlain and McNary had killed the chances for its passage. Secretary Baker called Hawkins in from the West. As Hawkins re- membered, the Secretary's advice was "to go home and keep my mouth shut and mind my own business and be patriotic and forget all about 36 Notation, Dec. 7, 1917, small notebook, Disque Papers; ms. "Minutes of the Air- craft Board," I, 50-51, and Hawkins to Sligh, Oct. 26, 1917, RG 18, NA. 37 Hearings, II, 1551. 148 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE the spruce production [division]; stay away from it; that he wanted Disque surrounded with men not interested in the lumber business." 38 The Secretary was dissimulating. The Army dropped Hawkins less because the government feared that he would favor lumbermen, than from its wish to avoid the predictably angry reaction of union men, Gompers especially, if Hawkins stayed on as an executive officer in the SPD. What happened in the Hawkins matter was essentially this. It will be recalled that Scherer, Parker, and Suzzallo had with good reason looked with ill favor on the Oregon state war apparatus and the federal agents at Portland who under Sligh's nominal direction sought to obtain spruce. When Disque took over the spruce program, he asked Parker to draw up a list of Sligh's subordinates who should be retained under the new dispensation. Hawkins was not on that list. In a memorandum to Marsh, Parker and Suzzallo stated that Hawkins was among the most prominent anti- union lumbermen of Oregon, whose directorship of the Whitney Lum- ber Company made him unacceptable as a government officer. Already, Parker alleged, rumors of collusion between Hawkins, his company, and spruce purchasing agents were spreading. It would be impossible for a man like Hawkins to serve two masters, they asserted. 39 Presumably, Parker wanted Hawkins out in expectation that the lumberman would not give the Loyal Legion a fair try, or else would somehow try to make it into an antiunion organization. Parker obvi- ously did not know as yet that Disque no longer intended to bring the Legion into full-fleshed being. If he had, he would have had far less reason to pry Hawkins out of the SPD. Through Marsh these destructive accusations reached Gompers; through Scherer they reached Coffin; and Suzzallo, through Governor Lister, brought in western congressmen. Before Disque could act to defend the man he now wanted to retain on his staff, any chance Hawkins may have had for a commission was gone, and by the new year of 1918 Hawkins bowed out. Disque soon thereafter recalled him to serve in a civilian capacity, however, and he continued to advise Disque most usefully and in calm good nature. Thus Parker, Suzzallo, and Scherer unintentionally thwarted Disque's desires and pleased Sligh in this last phase of his campaign against the SPD. Learning these facts, probably through Leadbetter, Disque was furious, and he and Parker apparently argued the matter in a hectic 88 Ibid., and II, 1760-62, 2284. 39 Ibid., 1758-62; ms. "Confidential Report on Oregon," Scherer Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 149 New Year's Eve conference. Parker "was to refrain from trying to run the SPD, the Army, and me," was Disque's description of the outcome. Thereafter, although they continued for a while to work together effectively and in seeming amity, the earlier accord lessened between Disque and Parker. 40 The unforeseen consequences of this deteriorating personal relationship combined with the results of Sligh's petty angling to keep the Legion going, but with Parker's influence becoming less. By delaying the speed at which Disque could recruit troops for the SPD, Sligh and his friends in the General Staff, Engineers, and Interior Department had unintentionally made it impossible for the colonel to live up to his implicit obligation to Gompers and to his own best judgment, and kill off the Loyal Legion. No wonder that the latest scholarly discussion of the Legion states that "In this [period of] infancy of the Loyal Legion . . . the organization was loose and improvised." 41 The wonder, indeed, is that there was any organization at all. If Disque had been able to have his way in December 1917, there would have been no Loyal Legion. Disque allowed the Legion to live because, in the absence of prom- ised SPD troops, the Legion organization alone offered a visible sign to worried lumbermen that the Army was going to keep its word and provide some labor supplement and immediate measure of protection for timberland properties. Meanwhile, other government agencies be- came further involved with the Legion. Suzzallo, for example, had arranged for Department of Justice agents in Seattle to turn over their files of materials on the wobblies to Loyal Legion officers as soon as possible. The Legion, Suzzallo asserted, will soon be "catching men stepping over the line who could be arrested." According to Suzzallo, Labor Secretary Wilson, who visited the Northwest in December, and Frankfurter were pressuring Baker to have the SPD expand its activities to the Inland Empire. State defense councilmen of Idaho and Montana, learning this, assumed that the Legion followed where the SPD led. Suzzallo noted on December 24 that more and more westerners expected the Legion to take on all antiwobbly work, and helped spread this gospel when he commented: "The whole policy of dealing with these fellows [wobblies] is [now] concentrated in the hands of the Federal Government. . . . We [state officials] no longer make policy, but work under them." 4 - 40 Entries, Jan. 1, 15, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. 41 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 442. 42 G. F. Hagenbush to Suzzallo, Dec. 15; Suzzallo to Hagenbush, Dec. 24, 1917, Suzzallo Papers. 150 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE What occurred, in short, is that despite Disque's sporadic and rather fumbling attempts to halt the Legion's growth during the last six weeks of 1917 a movement developed among various government officials like Suzzallo and among many lumbermen in support of the Legion idea, which Disque could not stop. His own most trusted coadjutors, Parker and Suzzallo, were influential in deflecting his intention from cutting off the Legion's life, as were lumbermen like Hawkins, though un- doubtedly the academicians had different motives than the lumber operator. For example, a great deal of publicity, much of it spontaneous but some arranged for by Parker and Suzzallo, who were by now knowledgeable in evoking cooperation from journalists, attended every fact and rumor concerning the Legion's actions during that six-week period. In the margin of one such newspaper story, Disque penned a notation — "The Legion is spreading so very rapidly" — which indicated the trend of his thinking. By Christmas, the Legion had gone too far for him to stop. 43 As one of his last acts as a subordinate to Disque, Hawkins signaled the Legion's survival at year's end by requesting the War Department for an additional $10,000 to speed its organizing work. 44 Nine days earlier, on December 20, Disque had wired Baker, asking for his formal approval of the 4Ls' development "as a patriotic organization under military auspices." 45 Baker's official reply expressed his hearty approval of this step, as vitally "necessary to the carrying out of the Army program for the 1918 offensive." Echoing the theme, Coffin encouraged Disque to stress to lumbermen and timberworkers the fact that "every blow struck by an ax in getting out aircraft materials" was the same as "a bayonet thrust on the fighting front." 46 To Disque, as the new year of 1918 began, the Legion was an incubus that he feared would get in the way of the SPD's work, which he now considered more important. Disque felt pushed into a situation that he did not want. Because of the confusion attending Hawkins' com- mission, Disque blamed Parker for this uncomfortable posture, and this attitude, while unreasonable, is understandable. 43 The publicity went so far that it was picked up in Japan. Concern there regard- ing the question of whether American-Japanese would be permitted to join the Legion resulted in a U. S. War Department query on this to Disque. See translation of Japanese newspaper article and Disque's marginal comment, Dec. 31, 1917, in RG 18, NA. 44 Hawkins to Leadbetter, Dec. 29, 1917, SPD Papers, RG 18, NA. 45 Ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 36, RG 18, NA. ^Telegrams, Coffin to Disque, Dec. 22; Baker to Disque, Dec. 23, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 5 1 The diminishing rapport between Disque and Parker occurred just as the Legion, accidentally saved from death, was at its most malleable stage of development. Having conceived its major outlines, Parker was to be deprived of a chance to shape the Legion in directions he felt most desirable. 47 47 Memorandum, undated, in folder labeled "Parker," Disque Papers. One can only guess from fragmentary notes that Disque soon realized that Parker had not intended to defy him in November and early December 1917. How far Disque progressed toward a reconciliation with Parker during the latter's brief remaining lifetime is uncertain; by mid-December 1917 it appeared to be complete. But, as will be seen, this harmony proved illusory. Chapter 8 In Suspense "You'll have a hell of a time to get spruce out of northwestern timber," Portland's mayor had prophesied to Disque the day after the colonel arrived in that city. Six weeks later, encountering the mayor again at a New Year's Eve party, Disque admitted that the forecast had proved to be distressingly correct. 1 Seeking later to understand the reasons for his difficulties, Disque came to realize that back east in Washington, D.C., as well as on the west coast, confusion and muddleheadedness were widespread. For example, the draft boards of the Northwest were still working on the basis of a three-months-old labor bulletin issued in mid-September by the Labor Priorities Section of the revamped War Industries Board. That bulletin excluded lumberworkers from a deferred draft classi- fication. At that time it had been assumed that the conditions of the southeastern lumber industry, wherein transportation shortages rather than production breakdowns limited output, applied also to the North- west, and that in any case Sligh was solving the spruce production problem. 2 Now, to be sure, new orders were ostensibly operative at draft boards, deferring loggers from the draft or assigning those conscripted to the SPD. The newer instructions were not yet enforced, however, or were sporadically or merely locally obeyed. Similar policy contradictions attended every phase of the aircraft industry. "Without an effective organization for making decisions," wrote I. B. Holley, Jr., the most reliable student of this situation, "production of aircraft on a large scale failed to materialize." Substituting "spruce" for "aircraft" in the preceding sentence offers a perfect statement of what Disque faced at year's end of 1917. Drift and indecision befogged the Potomac and, combined with northwestern impediments to woodcutting, slowed prog- ress along the Columbia. 1 Mayor Baker in Earl May, "A Model for the New Deal," Forum, XCI (March 1934), 163; cf. Minutes of the Convention of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lum- bermen, March 4, 1918, Portland, Oregon (n.p., n.d.), 7; Baruch, Public Years, 35, 43-44. 2 Baruch, American Industry, 94-95. 152 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 153 Back in October, while Disque was on his first western tour, congress- men had lashed the Aircraft Production Board of the Council of Na- tional Defense into some distressing stock-taking. A reorganization of that month resulted in the redesignation of the Aircraft Production Board as the Aircraft Board, and the assignment of its ad hoc materials procurement functions to the Army Signal Corps' Equipment Division. Sligh's Spruce Bureau came within that division's jurisdiction. The Aircraft Board retained only what Holley gently describes as "the power to advise the army and navy on matters of production," that is, no power at all. Everyone realized that a merely advisory group was inadequate. But Sligh's suggestion that the government "commandeer" all lumber was felt to be, in Grosvenor Clarkson's well-chosen words, "an empty thing as applied to such a decentralized industry as lum- ber — since it was manifestly impossible for the Government to take possession of thousands of mills, forests, logging railways, distributing machinery, etc. — and that, therefore, public price control would be difficult. . . ." Though softwood producers accepted a maximum price "regulation" from the Board, spruce and other hardwood operators did not. 3 In December 1917 Disque was unsure just where his infant SPD meshed into this new and flabby hierarchy. Was he under the Council of National Defense or under the Signal Corps' Equipment Division? This was not a burning problem. None of these agencies was com- peting for control over the maverick SPD. So far as the SPD's payrolls, military supply requisitions, and courts-martial authority over its per- sonnel were concerned, Disque as an old campaigner had little diffi- culty attaching the division to the commanding general of the Western Department. But he had less luck in determining where extraordinary budgetary commitments of the SPD might be charged, where the Legion's costs should be assigned, and where final responsibility rested for the whole. Not until May 1918, after investigations of the aircraft industry un earthed evidence of spectacular wastage, did President Wilson decide such matters. On May 20, 1918, he removed the Signal Corps from all connection with procurement. A Bureau of Aircraft Production (BAP), headed by a civilian, though this was an agency within the War Depart- ment, assumed charge of production matters, including the SPD and the Legion. 3 Holley, Ideas and Weapons (New Haven, 1953), 67-68; Grosvenor B. Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War: The Strategy Behind the Line, 1917-1918 (Boston, 1923), 42, 69, 425-26. 154 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE But in December 1917 this overdue reorganization was still almost half a year away. 4 As the old year drew toward its end, the SPD was an infant division of the Signal Corps, almost without personnel and with too many parents. Disque reported to Army superiors, to the national defense councilmen, to the Aircraft Board, and to the Equip- ment Division. Since the SPD was the only one of the multitudinous agencies that was preparing to treat an entire industry as a unit, includ- ing the labor question, it is not surprising that none of Disque's superiors was willing to accept full responsibility for what was going on out in Portland. In default of others shouldering the load, Disque took it on himself. This exposed position did not sweeten his temper. Disque grew angry and frustrated at being bounced between cautious officials who were reluctant to commit themselves on his work. He was beset by confusion, and eventually mistook it for a conspiracy against him. Perhaps this helps to explain why Disque felt it necessary to receive attestations of support from lumber operators and workers. If he was in part feeding his ego, he was also reaching out for regional grants of power and authority to fill the gap created by maidenly officials back east. As 1918 opened, the labor crisis of the Northwest worsened. The much-heralded President's Mediation Commission, as Wehle recalled, had obviously "shot its bolt.""' Disque realized that the labor nightmare, which he had hoped the Mediation Commission would dissipate, was again dumped in his lap, in default of anyone else exhibiting any capa- bility to control it, or much desire to try. Further, the eight-hour-day issue, dormant now for weeks, was inexorably reviving as spring came to temper the persisting evidences of winter. All in all, it is little wonder that Disque was glum at the 1918 New Year's party." Disque's actual weakness makes it obvious why he forbore from cor- recting rumors that circulated in the Northwest concerning the Legion and the SPD. These allegations had it that Disque already commanded at least 15,000 trained troopers — as we have seen, the SPD had a few score officers and no private soldiers; that the Legion was blossoming into a vast host of tractable timberworkers — the Legion was barely recuperating from its near-miss with death; that Disque had authority to deal with the Inland Empire as well as the coastal slopes — he had * Note that in History, 14, Disque alleges that the SPD was "at all times" under the BAP. Of course this was impossible. The error may simply have been that; or perhaps Disque, disliking the memory of the confused early weeks of the SPD and the 4Ls, attempted to mask it. 5 Louis Wehle, Hidden Threads of History (New York, 1953), 55. 6 "Brice P. Disque: A Record." Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 155 jurisdiction only for the latter; and that he had full power to set con- ditions of work, prices, and wages everywhere in the great regional expanse of the lumber industry — of course he had nothing of the sort. Disque was actually beset with uncertainties and boxed in by limi- tations. 7 As assets, Disque had courage, some insight, and a stubborn will. He was determined to solve this unsavory spruce problem. Possessed of imagination and intelligence, Disque could discern opportunity and had faith enough in himself to make decisions. He was blessed with applicable experience for the knotty task he had picked up. And if he was confused about where the best path to solution lay, so was every- one else. Other aspects of Disque's personality made him less well fitted for the role of taskmaster, considering the goals that Parker had set. Disque was thin-skinned, sensitive to alleged insult, and eager for approval. More, like many of his generation, he was predisposed to accept over- generalized explanations for complex social and political phenomena. What it boils down to is that Disque was a very impressionable person, a leader only by superficial meaning. Rather he was a follower, or at least a would-be disciple. Wanting and needing guides, Disque, once a mentor had him in tow, could build mechanisms well designed to reach the goals that others set. The Disque-Parker relationship indicates how sensitive the colonel was to a more powerful personality. In a very real sense, the December 1917-January 1918 weeks tested the durability of Parker's hold over Disque and, through the colonel, over the purposes and policies of the SPD and of the Legion. If Parker was to lose his gentle direction, there were others in the Northwest who were eager to lay hold of the tiller and guide Disque, the SPD, and the Legion to harbors that the professor had no wish to enter. Meanwhile, happy to have an active assignment, Disque turned to military matters. Organizing unusual Army units had been his specialty in the Philippines. The intervening years had not robbed him of this skill. He appointed Stearns as adjutant of the SPD. Together, the two Army officers quickly worked out plans of internal organization for the division. They envisaged a two-sided scheme. Since raising spruce output was primary in Disque's thinking, he naturally turned first to this aspect of the division's organization. 7 The rumors are discussed in C. O. Young to Henry White, Jan. 16, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 156 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE At the Yeon Building in Portland, where Sligh had held forth, Stearns late in November opened SPD headquarters and set up the "Logging and Milling" section of the division, the first of the two in- ternal sections that Disque evolved. Its responsibilities involved con- tractual, inspection, and general production details, including the employment of SPD troopers as woodcutters once soldiers became avail- able. Disque called in the lumberman Hawkins to take charge of this operational work. Hawkins, Disque had learned, was an able organizer in his own right, and an effective tutor on the financial and technical sides of lumbering. Hawkins was also able to carry forward whatever seemed useful in the work Sligh had started. With Hawkins' "logging" section roughed out, Disque and Stearns turned to the soldier's side of the division. Already 105 officers were at hand, and 5000 enlisted men were due, indeed overdue, on transfers from engineer units. Stearns arranged for adequate space at Vancouver Barracks and planned to employ the officers and soldiers as the first "service squadrons" of the division. The five-score officers on hand were assigned to train the still overdue enlisted men in soldierly ways as well as in unmartial woodcutting techniques. After training, the plan was that by the end of 1917, only a few weeks away, the 5000 soldiers would move out from Vancouver Barracks to labor-hungry lumber camps, kilns, and mills, which Hawkins' subordinates were meanwhile to have designated. 8 As Disque worked it out, the division's soldiers were at all times to be under martial discipline, even when out in the field cutting timber. To maintain this spirit, Stearns set up a "Military Department" as the sec- ond side of the SPD's internal structure. It was, of course, concerned with the traditional matters of military administration: personnel record keeping, medical standards, quartermaster work, and intelli- gence. As an afterthought, Stearns appended a catchall to the "military" segment, which he designated accurately enough as the "miscellaneous" office. This was where the chaplain held forth, for example. And it was in this inconsequential space on Stearns's table of organization that an absent-minded provision was made for the Loyal Legion. 9 Even in late November Disque and Stearns were ready to let the Legion stay in limbo. A few weeks later, however, Stearns drew new 8 History, 8-10, 16, offers misleadingly neat retrospections on all this. Correctives, vividly illustrating the ad hoc nature of the planning, are in "Stearns" and "SPD Training" folders, Disque Papers. 9 History, 8, asserts that the first SPD unit organized was the Legion. This is totally misleading. It was merely included in the first organization charts, without much intention in November 1917, I assert, to flesh out the paper plan. "SPD Training" folder, Disque Papers, offers fragmentary memoranda justifying this conclusion. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 157 organization charts. In these revised abstracts, which reflected the im- pact of intervening events upon their thinking, Disque and Stearns replaced the "miscellaneous" office with an "Industrial" section, in charge of Legion matters as well as a public information unit, a lyceum or peripatetic troop-education group, and, of course, the chaplain. The new charts of early 1918 show that the civilian Legion, which had been destined to die in late 1917, was to grow so large in membership as hope- lessly to outdistance in importance for lumber production the SPD's uniformed woodsmen. 10 The remainder of this chapter, and all of the chapter following, detail the reasons why the Legion revived. Three factors appear to be primarily responsible for the resuscitation of the Loyal Legion. The first one lay within the Army. Of the thou- sands of soldiers promised to Disque for the SPD's enlisted cadres, only a few "strays" signed in at Vancouver Barracks during the last week of November and the first week in December. Disque (as will be seen in the next chapter) could barely form a guard company, much less com- mence training thousands of soldiers as woodsmen. 11 Therefore, while pressing for the tardy troops, Disque had to consider alternative ways to flesh out the labor resources of the lumber region. A second reason will be dealt with later in this chapter. It centers on an alternative plan that Parker brought forth, which involved a totally civilian agency concentrating reform and woodcutting efforts in the Inland Empire. This substitute scheme, which became known as the "Hotchkiss plan," ultimately failed. But while chances for its success remained, Disque had to mark time with the military SPD and the para-military Legion. He hoped that the Parker-Hotchkiss alternative would succeed. Had it done so, then Disque might have dissolved the infant SPD and transferred the Legion to the future Hotchkiss organi- zation. Then Disque could have taken that elusive, coveted assignment in France. Intervening events justified Disque in the conclusion that the Army would after all have to act in the Northwest, through the SPD and the Legion. Third, during that crowded fortnight a marked shifting occurred in the men who were Disque's close associates and guides. It appears that most lumbermen took at face value the overblown rumors concerning 10 History, 9-13. 11 SPD muster rolls, abstracted in "SPD Training" folder, Disque Papers, show fewer than 200 men at Vancouver Barracks on December 15, 1917, in contrast to the 5000 recorded in History, 8. By 1919, when the History was assembled, Disque ap- parently decided to let this old sore stay dead. 158 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Disque's powers. Impressed by his supposed strength at the War De- partment and by his forthright manner, lumbermen assiduously courted the colonel. At the same time, Disque's former coadjutors Parker, Scherer, and Suzzallo, overburdened with multitudinous responsibili- ties, almost ignored him, and, of course, Disque was already displeased with these men over Hawkins, Apparently they counted Disque as safely in agreement with them, and perhaps as a rather pliant and weak tool, for Parker and the other government men understood how hazy Disque's authority really was. The result was that Disque was left to the lumbermen's devices dur- ing the weeks following his return to the Pacific Coast. He saw Parker only a half-dozen times before the New Year; Suzzallo, Marsh, and Young not at all. Disque's desk memoranda indicate that Parker tried three times to gain an appointment. Twice Disque had actual prior commitments and in the third instance Parker had to cancel a sched- uled meeting when a wildcat shipyard strike broke out in Seattle. 12 In default of these familiars flocking to his banner, which Disque seems to have expected them to do regardless of other duties, he ac- cepted other servitors from among the lumbermen. The operators quickly discerned the opportunity afforded by the glaring absence of competing advisers around the colonel. They moved swiftly into the vacuum. Of course, it was Disque's responsibility as head of the SPD to gain quick familiarity with the lumber industry. Nothing was more natural than that men running that industry should be in his company when he toured a hundred camps, mills, and kilns during the first two weeks of December. Unlike his October survey of the timberlands, however, no government or labor men accompanied him on this trip. Disque should not have invited the one-sided view of lumber matters that he received on this exploration. Indeed, considering the exacer- bated state of workmen's tempers, and the repeated insistence of Parker that government must maintain a pose of absolute neutrality, he should not even have accepted publicly this unilateral estimate of lumber methods and economics. Labor men assumed that lumbermen were gaining control over Disque. And, of course, this is precisely what the operators were attempting to do. If the lumbermen may be criticized for seeking to gain advantage from the emergency situation, the government's officers were delinquent in not addressing themselves with equal assiduity to the task of in- fluencing the colonel. Suzzallo, indeed, seems for a while to have con- 12 Disque's appointment schedule, Nov. 15-Dec. 31, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 159 cerned himself with rebuilding bridges to the influential lumbermen whose favor he needed in state political matters. To George Gardner, manager of die Great Northern Lumber Company, Suzzallo wrote: "I told Colonel Disque to get the situation from you." 13 Thus advised, Disque seemingly fell easy prey to the campaign that prominent lumbermen initiated, to see to it that he should be advised by "good practical men, not theorists," as Alex Poison phrased it, in an oblique animadversion to Parker. With Mark Reed's cooperation, Pol- son got Governor Lister to urge Disque to accept the counsel offered by the lumbermen. The governor felt that Disque welcomed this sugges- tion. Similarly, Timothy "Tiff" Jerome, a bitterly antiunion lumber- man of Hoquiam, Washington, and manager of the extensive Merrill & Ring lumber properties, was at hand to greet Disque when he reached Portland, and seems to have rarely let him out of sight after that. Jerome became a member of a permanent committee of volunteer advisers and remained one of Disque's staunchest supporters. 14 The apparent influence of lumbermen on Disque continued to grow. Exhilarated, lumber operators sometimes received advantage from events over which they had no control. Back east, Secretary Baker was coming under fire from Capitol Hill and from Gompers as the failures of the war production program grew obvious, and as the labor leader heard of the ascending influence of the lumbermen on Disque. Baker worried more that the lowly colonel would plunge into costly mis- adventures. At Coffin's suggestion, he instructed Disque to form an advisory committee to guide him in technical lumber matters, perhaps expecting that Parker would aid the colonel in its selection. The upshot was that the War Secretary and the Aircraft Board, at Disque's nomina- tion, selected as an advisory council men whose corporate interests were a cross section of the largest producing and investment units in the industry. These were also the men who were in his retinue as he toured the lumber camps in December 1917. They included "Tiff" Jerome, George Long of the Weyerhaeuser firm, J. H. Bloedel of the Bloedel- Donovan Mills, and Portland banker William Ladd, who was closely identified with Mark Reed. In 1917 these men formed an unofficial group around Disque, which later became regularized as the Pacific Coast Committee of the Aircraft Board. 15 13 Dec. 24, 1917, Suzzallo Papers. 14 Poison to Reed, Nov. 24; Reed to Lister, Nov. 26, 1917, Lister Papers; Jerome to R. D. Merrill, Nov. 14; same to H. H. Holland, Dec. 1; and Disque to Merrill (telegram), Dec. 17, 1917, Merrill & Ring Papers, UW. 15 The Committee was formally constituted in February 1918. Feb. 5, 1918, ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," RG 18, NA; Hearings, III, 992, 1148-49, 1764. See "SPD" ledger volume, memorandum on "Sources of Advice," Disque Papers, for other data. 160 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE As Disque toured the lumber areas in company with these men, he gave every sign of being their ready coadjutor. With his approval, Jerome let it be known that on request Disque would obtain for lumber- men new stocks of fuel oil, grown increasingly scarce, from the Army's stockpiles. Ames of the Puget Mills Company was delighted when Disque agreed to transfer elsewhere a spruce inspector, appointed earlier by Sligh, who had made himself obnoxious by looking suspi- ciously upon all lumbermen and by rendering overly "technical" and "theoretical" judgments on the quality of woods offered to government purchasing agents. Disque, Ames exulted, "realizes that this is no time for red tape, but a time for action." The action that Ames most desired was for lumbermen to do their own inspecting and grading, with the Army accepting the verdicts of the operators. Disque even seemed to go for this proposal, and Ames was sure that "we will get along very nicely." 10 From this fortnight of intense exposure to the wishes of the region's chief lumbermen, Disque learned from his new friends their almost unanimous agreement that the Loyal Legion should proceed in its or- ganization as quickly as possible. Remembering his implied commit- ment to Gompers, Disque tried to divert the attention of the lumber- men from the Legion by suggesting that the SPD, once in full operation, would meet all their needs for labor. For example, at one meeting Disque worked out a scheme whereby, as Ames described it, each lum- ber firm working on government contracts would at once obtain the services of two or three uniformed soldiers of the SPD, to stand as sen- tries at the gates of lumber mills and camps, to "act as secret service men ... to inquire of the workmen why they are quitting," and to keep wobblies out. For months past, most lumbermen had employed and paid deputy sheriffs to perform this kind of task. Now, Disque inti- mated, the Army would do the job better and free of cost to the lumber- men. 17 But, lumbermen responded, while Disque's scheme was all very well, they wanted the Legion to work within their camps against the wobblies while the SPD's sentries held the outer keep. They were impatient for him to begin large-scale recruitment of the Legion and to amass enough SPD troopers so that the division, in addition to guarding lumber prop- 16 Jerome to Holland & Briggs of the Merrill & Ring Co., Dec. 11, 1917, Merrill & Ring Co. Papers, UW; Ames to W. H. Talbot, Nov. 20, 1917, copy in Disque Papers. Ames intimates that Disque was ready to suppress all union organizers, AFL as well as IWW. Whether the colonel meant this, or implied it to gain Ames's support, or whether Ames was totally mistaken, cannot be specified at this time. 17 Ames to Talbot, Nov. 30, 1917, Box 36, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 1 erties, might add its weight to the laggard production machinery. Disque's difficulties in manning the SPD prevented him from supplying the soldiers. Parker's new efforts with the Hotchkiss plan in the Inland Empire inhibited him from upsetting the existing precarious, but familiar balance. Therefore, Disque had only one avenue of action open to him. That was to encourage the development of the Legion and so to fulfill at least part of the promises implicit in his presence in the West. A week after his return to the Pacific Coast, on November 22, Disque confided to Army Intelligence officer Stansbury that because the SPD program was inexplicably delayed, and troops were unavailable for use either as sentries or as woodcutters, the Legion must be em- ployed to fill the void. The very purposes of the Legion had shifted from the reforming and rehabilitation agency that Disque and Parker had talked of. Now the lumbermen were bending its goals toward police and production func- tions. At the same time, the Army's interest in the Legion as an anti- IWW instrument was seemingly slighted. "Colonel Disque has been so very busy getting the production program underway [i.e., trying to obtain SPD enlisted men] that I have not had much of an opportunity to confer with him regarding the I.W.W.," Stansbury reported. 18 And so the Legion received a lease on life. The duration of that re- prieve depended upon the degree of success that Parker might achieve in the Inland Empire with the alternative Hotchkiss scheme. For many weeks the President's Mediation Commission had sought to find a formula that would harmonize the relationships between workers and employers in the lumber industry, without the necessity of creating new institutional bridges such as the SPD. Failure was certain by mid-December. The commissioners prepared to leave the West, as Parker wired Disque on December 11, "in the spirit of a defeated army." Then Parker inquired: "Who will swoop in to fill the vacuum?" Unless Disque moved actively, all was lost. "We have an opportunity for swift action in eastern Washington and in the rest of the Inland Empire," Parker asserted. "Will you help?" 11 ' Disque apparently agreed at once. That very day he met with Parker and Mediation Commission secretary Frankfurter, who promised that as soon as he was back at the War Department he would press for "Stansbury to Edmund Leigh, Chief, Plant Protection Section, MID, Nov. 22, 1917, RG 165, NA; and see also Samuel Clay, "The Man Who Heads the 'Spruce Drive,' " Review of Reviews, LVII (June 1918), 634. 10 Dec. 11, 1917, Disque Papers. 162 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE "authorization for the discreet use of [SPD] troops" in the Inland Em- pire. 20 Disque's November orders gave him no jurisdiction at all east of the coastal range. Now, however, events had altered matters. If SPD troopers could move into the Inland Empire quickly and in sufficient numbers, it appeared that perhaps the lumber producers there would agree to a breakthrough on the eight-hour deadlock. Parker had dis- cerned that the inland lumbermen were less adamant on that score than their long-log colleagues of the Pacific slope. A faction of the Spokane- based Western Pine Manufacturers Association was willing at least to discuss this vexed point, instead of rejecting it "short and sweet but final," as Suzzallo described it. For the preceding fortnight, while Disque preempted the attention of the coast lumbermen, Parker had been meeting quietly with small committees of the inland operators. Parker had promised them, prob- ably with Frankfurter's backing, that if they volunteered to accept the eight-hour reform, then Disque, the SPD, and the 4Ls would move east of the mountains to supply the cooperating lumbermen with a source of labor and of protection from retaliation either by wobblies or by western lumber producers. 21 At Spokane early in December, represen- tatives of the Inland Empire loggers promised Parker that they would go on the eight-hour day as of January 1, 1918. Still further, the inland operators consented to try out in practice Parker's theories on the proper handling of labor. An industry-wide hiring hall was to be set up, with a "neutral" referee of Parker's nomination in charge. In addi- tion to centralizing hiring procedures, this official would establish minimum standards for housing, work safety, and food. He would over- see the recreation centers and libraries that were to be established at each camp, and the homes for married workers, along with nonprofit company stores and grade schools, that were to be made available. In short, through voluntary, civilian agreement at Spokane, Parker achieved the promise of the environmental reforms that he and Disque had thought only the government, through the Army, could win, if the eight-hour reform went into effect. But, as will be seen, it could go into effect only if the Army penetrated the Inland Empire and paved the way for the civilian referee that Parker was to appoint. 20 Frankfurter to Suzzallo, Dec. 31, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. Report of the President's Mediation Commission (Washington, 1918) is the result of Frankfurter's and Parker's agreement on the environmental causes of radicalism. It echoes Parker's views as described earlier. 21 Suzzallo to Mark Reed, Dec. 15, 1917, Suzzallo Papers; Disque's memorandum of information on Parker's Inland Empire work, "SPD" ledger volume, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 163 It was a tremendous breakthrough. Frankfurter telephoned Mrs. Parker to say: "We consider it the single greatest achievement of its kind since the United States entered the war." 2 "-' Parker, jubilant, hur- ried to Minneapolis from Spokane to recruit as the "neutral" expert Professor Willard E. Hotchkiss of the University of Minnesota. Dubious at first of the possibilities for success in Parker's plan, Hotchkiss was swayed by Frankfurter's encouragement to make at least a provisional survey of the Inland Empire, using a pseudonym so as to escape em- barrassment if the venture foundered. But secrecy proved impossible to maintain. Parker had been under a spotlight of critical attention for a month in any case; his article on the wobblies had appeared in the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly, and its reasoned analysis of the excesses of employers and the effects of substandard environments on workers exacerbated the more conservative spokesmen for the lum- ber industry. "A reading of Dr. Parker's article," the Business Chronicle worried, "gives rise to the fear that the new Dean [of the University of Washington] may possibly be a Socialist." The Chronicle's alert publisher unearthed the full details of Parker's scheme for overhauling the economic and social relations of the region. A storm of abuse broke upon the heads of the eight-hour compromisers. Lumbermen in wild meetings accused each other of truckling to union pressure and of collusion with the wobblies. Seeking to shore up the courage of the reformers, President Wilson, Gompers, and Frankfurter publicly congratulated them, whereupon the Chronicle damned them all. Professor Hotchkiss shortly afterward withdrew from all further connection with the knotty lumber problem and returned to academe. 23 Clearly, something spectacular was needed to stiffen the courage of the wavering eight-hour lumbermen. The best stiffener, Frankfurter and Parker agreed, was for Disque to move at once into the Inland Empire with his SPD and Legion, despite the fact that his orders gave him no explicit authority to do so. Hence, as already noted, they called the colonel to Seattle on December 11. That meeting ended with Disque agreeing to move eastward with the Legion, but holding back on the SPD until he received permission to enlarge his geographical jurisdic- tion and had enough enlisted men on hand to make such an expansion meaningful. Once Disque possessed permission and adequate personnel, and could threaten an imposed alternative, the plan was for Parker to 22 Hearings, II, 1780; Frankfurter in Cornelia Parker, American Idyll, 170-71. 23 Hotchkiss, ms. "Memorandum with Regard to Labor," Disque Papers, which reveals that Hotchkiss subsequently refused the post despite the fact that the SPD and 4Ls had, as agreed, paved the way for him; Chronicle, Nov. 24, Dec. 15, 1917. 164 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE try once again to have the industry on both sides of the coastal range accept the Hotchkiss plan of voluntary, civilian self-regimentation. Disque, in short, was to pose as a threat from without, so that the lum- bermen would agree to reforms from within their own ranks. 2 * Disque, Frankfurter, and Parker were thinking too logically. They estimated that the lumbermen, professing detestation of all government intervention in private business affairs, would live by this tenet and at once snap at the bait of self-regulation inherent in the Hotchkiss scheme. They failed to realize that many lumbermen expected to get by with no regulations or reforms at all. The trio also overlooked the fact that some operators, drawn close to Disque during the preceding fortnight, preferred the Army to move in. These men believed that they had a better chance of controlling Disque than an unknown intel- lectual like Hotchkiss, who was damned as Parker's choice. If this analysis is correct, the error in the December 1 1 strategy was that the lumbermen refused to play by the rules of logic. On his return to Portland, Disque called in subordinate SPD officers and by the 15th had a dozen of them ready to head into the Inland Empire as Legion organizers. His orders were to center their efforts in areas where rapidly spreading strikes were directed against operators who refused to join the eight-hour group. Meanwhile, Suzzallo tried to comfort the fearful eight-hour minority among the inland producers, who were suffering from the outraged reactions of fellow lumbermen. He insisted to these unhappy men that help was coming almost at once from the SPD and the Legion. Soon, Suzzallo promised the manager of the Great Northern Lumber Company at Leavenworth, Washington, troops would be "sort of Godfathering the lumber district." Disque was going to send men into the "trouble spots" to organize the loyal workers into Legion locals, put the Justice Department on the trail of disloyal workers, and have the soldier-workers of the SPD available for the use of government lumber contractors. The Legion, "consolidating the loyal men into an organization officially under the influence of the War Department," Suzzallo wrote to J. C, H. Reynolds, manager of the Inland Empire's Employers' Association, "would tend to give you a solid body of employees." Disque wired Leadbetter to obtain $10,000 from the War Department at once, to be used for this organizing work. Without waiting for au- thorization, Disque sent four SPD officers into Idaho and eastern Wash- ington and Oregon to recruit for the Legion. But while men in the West C4 Disque's memorandum on Dec. 11 meeting, "SPD" ledger volume, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 165 moved swiftly to take advantage of the beckoning opportunities, the authorities at the national capital refused to be stirred to action. 25 A week passed; then part of another. Disque's requests for permission to extend his operations inland, and for funds to cover the costs in- volved, went unanswered from the War Department. Finally, in desper- ation, Disque committed the unsoldierly sin of breaking away from intra-Army channels. He had a civilian acquaintance, former governor of Oregon Oswald West, now an executive of the Pacific Telephone Company, take a report to General Squier personally, and he wired Frankfurter directly, asking him to push matters through. 36 Suzzallo backed up Disque's requests, warning Frankfurter that the wobblies were claiming credit for initiating the eight-hour reform in the Inland Empire, and benefiting from the chance to claim that the employers had never really meant to institute it. Widespread violence was feared, and predictions that there would be repetitions of the Everett massacre were gaining currency. A very few soldiers "could in one day allay the entire situation," Suzzallo pleaded. "Without this assistance we shall lose the confidence of the loyal operators and the public as well." 27 But even as these telegrams flashed eastward, it was already too late. On December 22, Baker and Gompers had pessimistically decided that the Inland Empire minority would give up the fight at the first pressure and rescind their eight-hour resolution, along with the other reforms that Parker had sought to initiate. According to an informant of lum- berman Ames, who was present in Baker's office at the time this decision was reached, Baker and Gompers thought it wisest "not to discuss this [eight-hour] matter any further, and to leave it as it was." 28 Frankfurter did not, of course, agree with the wisdom of or need for this decision, but he could not successfully oppose it. Finally replying to Suzzallo's importunate telegrams, Frankfurter admitted that he had promised to back up Disque's request for reinforcements in men and in authority. Now, however, he thought it more important "for the sake of Disque's prestige," that the colonel work through regular Army channels for the authority to enlarge the decidedly irregular activity that the SPD and 4Ls hoped to engage in. 29 23 Suzzallo to G. H. Gardner, to Gov. Lister, and to Reynolds, all Dec. 24, 1917, Suzzallo Papers; Hawkins to Leadbetter, Dec. 29, 1917, AAF Records, RG 18, NA; memorandum headed "Dec. 1917," "SPD" ledger volume, Disque Papers. 26 Hearings, II, 1780; Disque to Col. C. A. Seoane, Aug. 20, 1919, Disque Papers. ^Disque to Suzzallo, Dec. 27, 1917, Suzzallo Papers; Suzzallo to Frankfurter, Dec. 28, 30, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 28 Ames to W. H. Talbot, Dec. 22, 1917, Box 36, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. The informant was J. J. Donovan of the Bloedel-Donovan firm, whose partner was Bloedel of Disque's committee. -"Frankfurter to Suzzallo, Dec. 31, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 166 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE And so the decision stood "to leave it as it was." This conclusion by Baker and Gompers meant stalemate for the eight-hour minority among the Inland Empire's lumbermen, a few of whom on December 29 re- scinded their commitment to this reform in the face of overwhelming pressure. "Am helpless to do anything," Disque complained to Suzzallo, "until authorization which I have repeatedly urged of the government is made." Suzzallo's reply closed 1917 on a note of flat futility: "Sorry we are all so helpless. Thank you very much." 30 For Disque, December seemed to have been attended with wasteful frustration. There had been no increase in spruce production. The SPD and the 4Ls had floundered on the western slopes of Oregon and Washington and in the Inland Empire, not from any fault of his, but because of the inexcusable inactivity of the War Department and Frankfurter's failure to live up to his promise. The superb opportunity offered by Parker's plan for the Inland Empire, to prove to all western lumbermen, by a voluntary reform, that industrial betterment includ- ing the eight-hour day was possible, had been lost. Now Disque had to agree with the antireform editor of the Business Chronicle that any thought of lumbermen voluntarily initiating improvement was illusory. In effect, this meant that there was no practical alternative to the SPD and Loyal Legion. 31 Parker agreed. "Am absolutely sure," he advised Suzzallo, "that the proper helpful government action will come soon and we must keep the Spokane [Hotchkiss] experiment intact pending this help." He assured Suzzallo that "My position with the various government depart- ments is now absolutely sure and I am not apprehensive of the lumber operators' personal attacks on me." What it amounted to, Disque confided to the inquiring Suzzallo, was that he and Parker were going to try to incorporate all the details and spirit of Parker's thwarted plan for the Inland Empire into an enlarged agenda for the SPD and 4Ls, to be undertaken inland as well as on the western face of the mountains. "Am sending an officer to lone [Wash- ington] and Spokane to investigate and report," Disque noted to Parker. That report, in Disque's hands by New Year's Day, confirmed the need for the SPD to act at once, and especially to try to win the eight-hour day. 32 30 Disque-Suzzallo exchange (telegrams), Dec. 31, 1917, Suzzallo Papers. 31 Chronicle, Dec. 29, 1917; notes, with clipping from Chronicle, in "SPD" ledger volume, Disque Papers. 32 Parker to Suzzallo, Dec. 31, 1917, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Disque to Suzzallo, Dec. 31, 1917, Suzzallo Papers; report on eastern Washington, dated Jan. 1, 1918, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 167 By the new year, then, Disque no longer held the fate of the Legion in suspense. The ineluctable march of events was overriding his implicit commitment to Gompers to end it stillborn. Next at hand was the task of accelerating its organization. This was made the more necessary by the frustrating difficulties Disque faced in getting his hands on the long overdue SPD enlisted men. In a sense, the Legion grew because the division did not. What existed at the new year was a curious balance of forces, or weak- nesses. The major risk facing the government officials, considering the soaring demand for spruce and other hardwoods, was that the minority of Inland Empire operators, having espoused the eight-hour reform in expectation of SPD and Legion reinforcement, and now standing alone, would quit all cooperation. Therefore, Parker and Disque waited with considerable trepidation for the reaction of the inland lumber pro- ducers to the news of the colonel's enforced immobility. It came from the manager of the Employers' Association of the Inland Empire, Reynolds, who reminded Suzzallo that he and his fellows "have taken an extreme step in order to assist the general governmental war pro- gram and is [sic] naturally up against a great many trying obstacles, not the least of which is the criticism and obstacles placed in their way by the other lumber operators in the northwest who are not in sympathy with the [eight-hour] program we have adopted. Action taken by the Spokane lumbermen was predicated on statements of yourself, Dr. Frankfurter, and Dr. Parker as to assistance we would receive from the state and federal authorities." Reynolds wanted to know if that assist- ance was forthcoming at once. 33 There was as yet no answer to this question. 33 Reynolds to Suzzallo, Jan. 9, 1918, Disque Papers. Chapter g A Sort of Godfather While Disque waited impatiently for the tardy SPD troopers to assemble at Vancouver Barracks, Parker headed eastward for the na- tional capital, ostensibly to offer his paper on the causes of wobbly disaffection at the annual meeting of American economists. Once in the capital he privately set to< work with Frankfurter to get Disque those still-missing 5000 soldiers, and to gain approval for Disque, the SPD, and the Legion to move into the Inland Empire. This is what the lum- bermen of eastern Oregon and Washington had bargained for, in exchange for granting the eight-hour day. But notwithstanding Parker's high reputation at the war office and Frankfurter's recent elevation to an assistantship to the War Secretary, the permission concerning Disque was not forthcoming. Parker was an interested and discouraged observer of the unhappy capital scene. Despite the martial bunting, a sense of incoherence pre- vailed everywhere, he wrote Disque. 1 It is of these weeks at the end of 1917 and beginning of 1918 that Baruch recalled: "the confusion is greater and not less." At the Council of National Defense tempers grew snappish. Almost a year of strenuous efforts seemed to have been wasted, and the accumulated effects of fatigue were making themselves felt. "No one has a plan," Baruch noted, "and all seem too tired to* do any- thing but criticize." Like the war administration, private industry was afflicted with seem- ingly complete dislocation and despite all the war regulations exhibited a rudderless quality. In default of coherent direction from government officials, corporation managers were "going out and grabbing right and left ... in order to strengthen themselves, with no thought of the thing as a whole," Baruch complained. 2 Soon the friction that surrounded production affairs like a fog would give way to smooth, lubricated efficiency. The industrial time-lag was ending. Factories were almost ready to pour out the river of arms needed for decision in Europe. The amateurishness of the first nine months of war was to give way to polished professionalism. 1 Parker to Disque, Dec. 30, 1917, Disque Papers; Cornelia Parker, American Idyll, 171-72. 2 Baruch, Public Years, 46. 168 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 169 But the evidence for achievement still lay in the near future. At the new year everyone in Washington was apprehending Spanish-American- War-type scandals. Congress was restive. Oregon Senator George Cham- berlain was outspokenly criticizing the President, the War Secretary, and the Council of National Defense for production inadequacies. Chamberlain, who with other west coast congressmen was part of a solid bloc of anti-eight-hour opinion that the President did not wish publicly to oppose, wanted Congress to create a Cabinet-level "muni- tions czar" who would control all labor relations matters as part of his production responsibilities. Wilson was against this idea, holding that supermen were not at hand. "We should keep Chamberlain in mind," Parker wrote Disque. "Perhaps we can employ his influence and ideas." Meanwhile Parker dined with Brandeis and Frankfurter, joined "sessions" of the Aircraft and Shipping Boards, and talked with Gom- pers, Baker, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels and his assistant, Franklin Roosevelt, and Coffin. Hammering at the theme that without the eight- hour reform, whether introduced by the government or by the lumber- men, no lasting settlement of labor's grievances in the Northwest was possible, Parker asserted that the SPD and 4Ls were the proper spear- head to make that reform. Then his own hopes could materialize for permanent betterment of northwestern labor-management relations and for environmental improvements leading to the rehabilitation of present social misfits. The first necessary step was for Disque to get those missing SPD troopers and to flesh out the puny Loyal Legion. Then, if authority to move into the Inland Empire was finally granted, forces would be on hand adequate to the task of convincing lumbermen to accept the eight-hour day. 3 Parker's efforts at the War Department, though unsuccessful con- cerning the enlargement of Disque's jurisdiction to embrace the Inland Empire, did finally win action on the absent SPD troopers. A spate of telegrams and telephone calls spanned the continent, and the seemingly impenetrably clogged lines of the internal Army hierarchy suddenly loosened. At Vancouver Barracks the former deathly quiet gave way to the martial cacophony of drilling soldiers, attendant commands, and even the sound of a military band. "Thus the Division became a Divi- sion," the official history of the SPD exults. 4 Not yet. For Disque's command was after all a spruce production division, and until it performed in this guise it was not meeting its 3 Parker to Disque, Jan. 3, 4, 1918, Disque Papers. 4 History, 16; "Brice P. Disque: A Record," Disque Papers, on his pleasure at re- viewing the incoming troops. 170 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE unique responsibility. Therefore, Disque and Stearns carefully selected cadres of experienced lumberworkers from among their officers and soldiers, and set them to work training others in the techniques of woodcutting and processing. While this was under way, SPD head- quarters circularized lumbermen up and down the coast (but not of course in the Inland Empire), announcing the availability of troopers as supplements for civilian workmen. 5 According to the division's historian, assignment of soldiers to wood- cutting corporations went ahead smoothly and in a measured cadence governed by a careful operating plan. "Soldiers were not sent into the woods except on written request," the official account has it. "It had to be made abundantly clear that the soldiers would not take the place of loyal civilian loggers and lumbermen. In addition it had to be made abundantly clear just what production was expected from a given operation, and if the results in providing lumber needed by the Gov- ernment would justify the use of the soldiery. Also, living conditions were investigated, the food question was looked into, and in general all matters pertaining to the welfare of the men. Where these were found satisfactory, or made satisfactory to an Army inspector, the troops were sent." 6 Such a description hardly fits the facts of the SPD's initial troop allocations to private entrepreneurs. Instead of careful preplanning there was eclectic improvisation. Rather than preliminary surveys of physical conditions, there was acceptance of whatever standards ob- tained in the camp or mill involved. And quite opposite to the impli- cation that the wishes and concerns of civilian lumberworkers were consulted or even considered, this factor, it appears, was ignored until the Legion organization put its stamp of acquiescence in SPD policy on the Northwest. Disque's relations with the Merrill Sc Ring Logging Company during the hectic days when the very first SPD troopers were ready for wood- cutting work illustrates his methods and the difficulties he faced. The secretary -manager of that prominent firm, "Tiff" Jerome, was already close to Disque as an unofficial adviser and was becoming his personal friend. Exploiting this intimacy, Disque asked Jerome not to let the . company's plants close down for the traditional week-long layoff at 5 SPD training schedules, unlabeled folders, Disque Papers. It is the SPD and not the 4Ls that Disque stresses in December. History, 17, correctly notes that at this time Disque had no intention of moving the SPD into actual production entrepre- neurship: "The idea of Government cost-plus operations, and the use of soldiers for these, was a later development." 6 History, 17. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 171 Christmas. Anything more than three days of inaction would help Germany, Disque asserted. Replying, Jerome agreed to keep operating if the SPD could supply 150 trained lumberworkers. Without them there was no use main- taining operations in view of the damage from winter storms and floods that had to be repaired, as well as personnel shortages caused by the strike, nomadism, and the firings occasioned by the company's black- lists and private detectives. Disque promised that the soldiers would be at work at the com- pany's camps by the end of December. Priorities to the Merrill & Ring interests were justified, he felt. If he could work the SPD into the operations of that important firm, cooperation from most others would be almost assured. The 150 men that Disque had promised were still in Engineer Corps detachments at Camp Lewis, although formally transferred to the SPD. Engineer officers, disgruntled at Disque's coup in gaining control over these troops, were in no hurry to speed them on their way to him. Sluggishness blocked administrative channels. Disque had trains chuffing at Seattle ready to bring the men to the Merrill & Ring properties, when he learned from the engineering en- campment that the soldiers' military record books could not be ready for three weeks and that the men would be delayed that long. He roared as though pricked by a thorn. Then, realizing that he was being victimized by an old Army game, Disque played it himself. First he telephoned the Engineer commander at Camp Lewis, re- minding him that "I wanted those men and had given him three days' notice and in any event records could follow men as is often done. He said it couldn't be done." With this, the Army's proprieties had been observed. Disque next telephoned the general commanding the area and made a direct request, which suggested reference to the Sec- tary of War if cooperation did not come forth. That same night, De- cember 22, trains were loaded with recent Engineer troopers. Four days later, as Disque had promised, 150 soldiers bearing the unmilitary specialization titles of hooktenders, chokermen, rigging slingers, load- ers, knotters, signal men, firemen, engineers, graders, fallers, and buck- ers, were on their way to scattered Merrill & Ring lumber facilities. Following up his triumph, Disque telegraphed Jerome: "Wire at once [additional] number of each class of men desired and they will go forward. Have skilled labor of all classes and unskilled. Increase your figure if necessary. Camps must not shut down." Encouraged by 172 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE the arrival of the first detachment, Jerome requested that 50 more experienced SPD workers be supplied. When they arrived, he reported how pleased the foremen and managers were "with the general ap- pearance of the men." 7 Disque, because he could not now prevent it and because he wanted lumbermen to sustain him, let them think that they were directing him. "We will keep you advised from time to time as to how matters are going at the camps," Jerome grandly condescended. The colonel, who at this time had to tread very gingerly so as not to step on the lumbermen's sensitivity to government interference, even had tem- porarily to agree to let the company determine if the SPD's soldiers at its facilities were well cared for. Later, SPD inspectors, or at least Legion secretaries secretly serving as SPD inspectors, would be busy snooping out substandard housing, sanitary, or working conditions. But not in December 1917. It was all done opportunistically and planlessly. When Jerome tele- phoned Disque to ask if the soldiers assigned to the Merrill $c Ring Company would have Army blankets with them, thirty hours were needed before Disque was able to reply that they did. The SPD was feeling its way step by step. Its functions as well as those of the Legion were being determined as much by Parker's earlier teachings to Disque, and by his current maneuvers at the War Department, as by Disque's tactics along Puget Sound. 8 It is clear that Parker's direct and indirect influences on the colonel were still very great as 1917 ended. This is strikingly evident in re- spect to the recurring question of whether or not the Legion should continue to live and grow. Disque, it will be recalled, had been ready to terminate its brief and indeterminate life. But Parker had pressed for an SPD-4L partnership of effort and goals. In addition to trying directly to convince Disque of the continuing need for a reforming Legion apparatus to coexist with the production work of the SPD, Parker had earlier seeded the ground so that the Legion might grow, and in the direction he wished. For example, Disque in November had assigned SPD Lieutenant Crumpacker to take charge of all "labor" matters, presumably including the Legion. Parker had cultivated the young officer. Flattered, and impressed by 7 Transcripts, telephone conversations with Major Clark, Dec. 22, and with Gen. Irons, Dec. 22, 1917; telegrams to Merrill, Dec. 26, and to Jerome, Dec. 27, and Jerome to Disque, Dec. 31, 1917, all Disque Papers. 8 Transcripts, telephone conversations, Jerome and Disque, Dec. 27, 28; Jerome to Disque, Dec. 31, 1917, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 173 the professor's apparent intimacy with the mighty colonel, Crum- packer gladly employed Parker's memoranda on labor problems as guides to Legion policy. Thus bent, Crumpacker and Intelligence offi- cer Stansbury worked out a secret antiwobbly apparatus that was to be part of all Legion units, when and if they formed. The heart of this apparatus was the Parkerian assumption that wobblies must be invited into Legion membership. 9 In this way alone, Parker set an indelible stamp on the Legion, which made it different from almost every other war-emergency agency involving labor. Unless this is realized, Disque's motives in pushing the SPD and Legion organization so hard at this time are subject to misconstruc- tion. Tyler, for example, has it that Disque's primary purpose in encouraging the 4Ls was to bridge the gap between worker and em- ployer that existed in the industry, and create an atmosphere in which collective agreements "that trade unions depended upon in more favor- able climes" were possible. I suggest that, as of December 1917, the primary purpose Disque saw for the Legion was to impress lumbermen with his prowess. At the same time, however, the lessons that Parker had given Disque were capable of bearing fruit, and Disque later tried, in a tentative, incomplete way to be sure, to seek out and to remedy some of the psychological sources of disaffection among the lumber- workers. Four months later, Army Intelligence officer Stansbury described the situation in November and December 1917 as "an apparent armed truce between capital and labor but beneath the surface there was a guerrilla warfare." Wobbly depredations were increasing, by report of lumbermen. Many operators were so discouraged as to shut down their properties. A general strike, to worsen the effects of the existing no- madism and slowdown, was anticipated for the spring of 1918. Most operators were of the opinion that workers were getting too much money and were not exhausting themselves in hard enough work. One lumberman suggested to Disque in December that whiskey and women were the solution — "a return to the old days when the saloon keeper was their banker and social guide, with information as to where a girl might be obtained." Though now favoring lumbermen as friends and counselors, Disque 9 Stansbury to Edmund Leigh, Chief, Plant Protection Section, MID, Dec. 30, 1917, RG 165, NA; Samuel Clay, "The Man Who Heads the 'Spruce Drive,' " Review of Reviews, LVII (June 1918), 634; Crumpacker, "History of the Loyal Legion of Log- gers and Lumbermen," in Eighth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Inspector of Factories and Workshops of the State of Oregon from October 1, 1916 to September 30, 1918 (Salem, 1919), 28. 174 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE was in fact restricting his acceptance of their counsel to the technical aspects of lumber production. He was still proceeding under Parker's I mentorship, though less and less under Parker's personal tutelage. Harried as he was, Disque took time to explain to the Intelligence officer that from the beginning of the Legion he had sought a "psy- chological remedy," in which the Army, preaching patriotism, was the symbolic physician. This remedy, or "Religion," as Disque also phrased it, was based upon identifying the Army through the SPD as the god- father of the Legion. "This Army stamp was all that was needed," Stansbury quoted Disque; "it supplied 'The Religion' necessary and this condition will continue just so long and no longer ... as the Army keeps control and dictates the policy of the Legion." According to Stansbury's report (and he was an official of obvious sensitivity who for four months had daily spent his entire time ob- serving the Legion's inception and development), the labor situation in the Northwest as of November and December 1917 was "a smolder- ing volcano," held in check thereafter only by "The Religion" infused through the Legion and the SPD. Until the Legion implanted deeply enough the lumberworker's self-identification with the nation and with social acceptability, it was useless for Disque to seek shorter hours or higher wages for 4L worker-members. "While they help," the report continued, "they are not the panacea." 10 Therefore, the Legion's relative inattention to "labor union func- tions" and "working conditions," which Tyler points out, was de- liberate on Disque's part. Desiring to gain the full cooperation of lumbermen, without permitting them to dominate him, and needing to impress them with the numerical strength of the SPD, Disque in the last weeks of 1917 and the early months of 1918 was in no position to push very hard for economic or social goals. He did not forget them entirely, however, and even in December 1917 Legion secretaries were cautioned to send him reports on what each lumber facility needed to improve living, working, and safety conditions. 11 It seems conclusive that Disque, slowly gaining confidence in the effectiveness of the Legion to achieve higher worker output, came to accept wholeheartedly Parker's idea that it was essential to bring each rootless logger into a direct connection with patriotism, the highest form of social acceptability that a modern nation can offer in wartime. But at the same time he determined that the nation would control its 10 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 441; Chief, Plant Protection Section, MID (Edmund Leigh) to Chief Signal* Officer, March 27, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA; Disque's report to Squier, Dec. 29, 1917, Disque Papers, on the lumberman's suggestion. 11 Tyler, "Loyal Legion/' 441; Confidential Bulletin No. 1, Dec. 29, 1917, WLPB files on LLLL, RG 1, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 175 creature. For these reasons he opposed the lumbermen ! s "requests" that they choose the secretary for each local of the Legion. This ques- tion of the secretaries opened another salient in the complex battle that Disque had to fight in the Far West. Because in November and December 1917 Disque was ambivalent concerning the Legion, and uncertain of what relationship it would have to the SPD in function or in relative importance, he ordered Crumpacker to work out a scheme of organization for the first locals that would be as simple as possible. Crumpacker's solution was to have the total machinery for each Legion local represented in one official, the secretary, who in every instance during the early months of organi- zation was a soldier, usually a noncommissioned officer of the SPD. Through the Legion secretary the SPD, under military law and discipline, was tied to the civilian world. At the same time, the Legion secretaries could exercise whatever Army policy the SPD decided on concerning antisabotage work in general and the wobblies in particu- lar. "I insisted," Disque recalled, "that the secretaries be soldiers or else I had no control." That his policy regarding the secretaries was followed is evident from the report, cited earlier, of the Army Intelli- gence officer in March 1918: "By this method ... there is a two-fold purpose accomplished. First, the Army stamp is kept upon the Legion. Second, there is an intelligence system which has its tentacles on the ground." 12 No wonder that with the SPD so vital to the 4Ls' develop- ment, Disque insisted that the division be established before the Legion progressed. Lumbermen quickly realized the opportunity that each Legion sec- retaryship offered to dominate a camp, mill, or kiln. Some, notably "Tiff" Jerome and Mark Reed, tried to convince Disque to permit them to name all Legion secretaries. They could be recruited, Jerome explained, from the lumbermen's rosters of private detectives, deputy sheriffs, American Protective League agents, and other "reliable anti- wobblies." Politely declining the proffered assistance, Disque did not yet see fit to reveal that he intended to recruit wobblies into the Legion, not to embark upon a crusade to drive them out of the timberlands. He merely stated that the SPD required an organizational link to the Legion. Army personnel as secretaries provided that link. He made it seem that nonsensical military archaism rather than his own policies required this decision. Promoting the Legion's expansion and joining it themselves, Disque's ^Disque to Seoane, Aug. 20, 1918, Disque Papers; Chief, Plant Protection Section, MID, to Gen. Squier, March 27, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA. 176 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE lumbermen advisers welcomed SPD personnel as Legion secretaries. 13 Crumpacker's standing injunction to Legion secretaries — "Remember you are officers of the U.S. Government . . . impress this on the mem- bers of your local" — was acceptable to the lumbermen, at least at this time. "Much depends on you — don't be swayed," Crumpacker pleaded with the secretaries. The secretary's primary duty during the early weeks of Legion or- ganization was to decrease absenteeism and walkouts among the em- ployees. Each secretary, in addition, was to draw up a roster of tasks that available civilian lumberworkers could not fulfill, so that, when staffed, the SPD could send soldier-workers to accomplish the needed production. He could also act as a check upon the lumbermen, who might otherwise gladly discharge their obstreperous civilian employees and try to gain an undue proportion of SPD help. Further, the secre- tary, in Army uniform, represented patriotism to the workers. "Fly an American flag over your HQ," Crumpacker ordered, and later en- joined his subordinates to unfurl the Legion's colors as well. Disque took care to see that the soldier-secretaries of the Legion's first locals were cautioned against vigilantism. Disaffection might exist in the lumber areas, Disque advised them, but it was not treason or dis- loyalty. The lumberworker who merely spoke against the government, the SPD, or the Legion might be talked out of his peeve. But if the sec- retary could not prevail by words, he was to strike the recusant em- ployee from the Legion's roster, recall his pin and membership card, and ask the employer-member of that local to discharge him. At the same time, he was to send in the employee's name to Crumpacker. The latter would forward such names to Military Intelligence, whence copies of these reports would go on to the Justice Department. 14 The fact that in early 1918 Disque kept control of this apparatus, while retaining the cordial support of his new-found friends among the lumbermen, and without antagonizing AFL representatives to the extent that a policy-level crisis was provoked along the Potomac, or inciting wobbly leaders to a test of strength, is testimony to the skill he was exhibiting as a military ambassador to the world of industry. It is also a testimonial to Parker's influence, which permeated these formative efforts of the Legion and set its wartime direction. During the last hectic weeks of 1917 Crumpacker, deeply impressed 13 Jerome to Disque, Dec. 19; Disque to Jerome, Dec. 23, 1917, Disque Papers. 14 Confidential Bulletins No. 1, Dec. 29, 1917; No. 2, ca. Jan. 2, 1918, WLPB files on LLLL, RG 1, NA; Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 441-42. Disque to Squier, Nov. 27, 1917, Disque Papers, anticipates these instructions. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 177 by Parker's approach, gave the initial Legion units more tangible lead- ership than was true of Disque, who concentrated on the SPD. Quickly assembling a staff of recruiters from among available SPD officers, Crumpacker sent them off to tour lumber camps, kilns, mills, and yards. Each recruiter was armed with Legion loyalty oaths and mem- bership blanks. More potent still, every Legion organizer bore a set of instructions of Parker's devise but over Crumpacker's signature. 1 "' These "Principles of Presentation," dated November 23, 1917, but in circulation throughout the war period after that date, deserve atten- tion. The "Principles" were primarily a speakers' and organizers' guide. Speakers were to take care, for example, to avoid patronizing or an- tagonizing the hard-bitten loggers by exhibiting overeducated man- ners of speech. An "easy conversational way" was specified to create an atmosphere of cordiality. Once this was achieved, and considering that the SPD man was in uniform, the desired harmony should not be difficult to obtain. Then the speaker was to explain the gravity of the existing military situation, stressing the new liabilities of the Rus- sian overturn and the Italian defeat, the submarine menace, and the shipping shortage. Germany might well win. In that event, the "Prin- ciples" asserted, Pacific Coast lumberworkers would join the hordes of slave-workers that Kaiserism had already conquered. To prevent this, lumber was vitally necessary. The very docks that the AEF trod on after leaving their ships had to be built from Ameri- can-cut lumber. But instead of millions of men, America wanted to send war machines to France. "These things are what make the Gov- ernment regard Northwestern forest industry as a chief military re- liance," the "Principles" continued. Spruce was essential for aircraft. A thousand feet of perfect spruce were required for each small pursuit plane, although only 200 feet were actually used. This meant that the industry must increase pro- duction almost at one jump from two million feet per month to more than ten million, and of far higher quality than was presently cut. Pilots and bombardiers were readying; "to get out spruce is now the most urgent thing in the entire program of the United States and the Allies." At this point the "Principles" advised Legion recruiters to return 13 On Parker's authorship, see Disque to Parker, Dec. 1, 1917, Disque Papers. A recollection of an SPD officer, recruiting for the 4Ls, is in Walter S. Johnson to the author, May 7, 1962, and see "Personal Control Works for Friden," Business Week, Sept. 3, 1960, 117. 178 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE to the immediate purpose of their visit. In "simple, telling language," the SPD officer was to state that the Legion was a symbol that the gov- ernment appreciated what lumbermen and workers were doing for the war. In the Legion, the nation "is coming to them, personally and frankly to tell them the gravity of the problem and enlist their coop- eration. ... It believes that loyal workers will be glad of an oppor- tunity to enroll as a recognized part of the Nation's defense in time of need and it wants to give them such recognition." Finally, Crumpacker warned that organizers were to avoid being overly specific on certain points. There was need for imprecision on the question of whether Legionnaires would be automatically ex- empted from the draft, and on the exact nature of the Legion's rela- tionship to the SPD. "Too much attempt to explain the purposes and possible workings of the organization," Crumpacker warned, "may suggest detailed inquiry that the speaker will find difficult to answer until policies have been developed by necessity. It is not well to invite such questions." Probably recruiters would find certain questions impossible to avoid, especially if wobblies were in the audience. Surely questions as to whether the Legion would grant the eight-hour day or permit strikes would have to be faced. Recruiters should stress the theme that the Legion "does not involve the relations of men to their employers, but their sentiment in regard to their country and its Government. . . . Nevertheless, the Government does intend to take a lively interest in having such conditions in the forest industry as will insure its effi- ciency and justice. . . ." Should this evasive tactic not be successful in thwarting questioners, Crumpacker recommended another recourse to patriotism. "The Gov- ernment does not feel that this is any time to bargain over these things as a condition of loyal effort to win the war," was the stock phrase that he devised. "Finish with an appeal to patriotism," he advised, "and ask for a vote of those who are with the Government. . . . Say you want to be able to report how this crowd stacks up as compared with other communities. Then ask for a vote of those who want to give the Gov- ernment assurance of this, by joining with the rest throughout the Northwest who have signed the pledge of the Loyal Legion. This process should make it difficult to refuse except to the very wilful. Then get signatures promptly."' 6 Legion Bulletin No. 1, Nov. 23, 1917, "Principles of Presentation," Information Bulletin for Speakers, SPD, RG 120, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 179 Proof that Parker's and Crumpacker's hastily devised formula worked was offered on November 30, 1917, when at Wheeler, Oregon, the first local of the Loyal Legion was established. The camp employed 110 workmen and one manager-operator. Enrollment was 100 per cent. Im- pressed by this unusual display of unanimity, Disque, though still un- committed on continuing the Legion, let Crumpacker push ahead on organizing locals. Perhaps the colonel estimated that if he after all decided to terminate the Legion, at least the SPD officers acting as Legion organizers would have gained invaluable experience in that capacity. 17 It must also be recalled that Disque and Parker wanted both the SPD and the Legion going on as large a scale as possible by the end of December, and with as much publicity as could be obtained, to lend weight to Parker's arguments at the War Department that Disque should have access to the Inland Empire as well as to the coastal region. Therefore, Disque gave Crumpacker free rein. By the third week in December, 100 officer-recruiters had created 400 Legion locals, totaling more than 20,000 sworn civilian members. One SPD officer alone, Walter S. Johnson, signed up 8500 members in less than a year. 18 What happened, in essence, is that the Legion idea caught fire among both lumber entrepreneurs and workers. With corporations like Mer- rill 8c Ring already indebted to Disque for his supplying of SPD labor supplements, company executives could hardly deny him permission for SPD officers to recruit civilian workers as Legionnaires, or forbid SPD noncommissioned officers to serve as Legion secretaries. Thus the SPD brought the Legion in on its coattails, or more appropriately, in its knapsacks. But probably the Merrill 8c Ring people and most other lumbermen needed little or no pressure to open their gates to Legion recruiters. Apparently equally little exertion was needed to convince the workmen to join the strange-sounding but exciting new organiza- tion. Cooperative accord was the Legion pattern from the first. Con- sidering the acrimony that had so long attended all matters in the Northwest, this harmony was itself a vast step forward. Note, as merely one example, Ames's first reaction to the Legion. Describing to W. H. Talbot the arrival of an SPD detachment at their firm's Ludlow mill, Ames on January 10 went on to discuss the activity 17 Clay, "The Man Who Heads the 'Spruce Drive,' " loc. cit., 634; entry, Dec. 1, 1917, "SPD" ledger volume, Disque Papers. 18 Disque to President Wilson, Dec. 19, 1917, Wilson Papers, No. 4505, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress; Johnson to the author, April 24, 1962. History, 19-20, offers slightly differing statistics on membership. The numbers I present carefully separate SPD enlisted personnel from 4L members; apparently this was not done in the SPD's chronicle. 180 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE of the SPD officer in charge, who proceeded to recruit a Legion unit from among the civilian workers: While I was at the mill yesterday a Lieutenant from Colonel Disque's depart- ment, with our Mr. Gundrum of our employment agency, arrived at Ludlow, and arranged for a meeting with the men in the hall last night, to enroll the men as members of what they call the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumber- men. They have been down to Admiralty camps and got most of the men there to sign up. The organization is purely a government affair, and takes as mem- bers employers as well as employees. All anyone has to do to join (and there are no dues or initiation fees) is to sign an oath of allegiance to the United States, and promise to do everything they can to assist in providing ways and means, supplies, etc., to carry on the war. One of the objects of the government is to find out who is loyal and who is not. So far they have gotten 85% to 90% of the men to sign, and others sometimes sign a little later on when they thoroughly understand it. It is perfectly natural for everybody to be suspicious, but there are a few slackers and pro-Germans and alien enemies who are being weeded out of the crews of the logging camps and mills in this way. I think the organization is all right, and, as I understand it, in good hands it will always be all right, and it seems to be the general opinion that we ought to help in every way we can. Each member wears a button which is presented to him at the time he signs, and each member has a little card or certificate of membership which he is supposed to carry with him at all times. We, as well as all other mill men and loggers, are doing everything we can to assist the army officers in perfecting this organization, but they prefer not to have the employers take too active an interest in the promises. 19 Two days later, Ames sent Talbot a follow-up report on the Legion's progress in their company's plants and camps: Lieut. Bickford of Colonel Disque's regiment of Forestors, with headquarters at Vancouver, Washington, was at Ludlow on Wednesday, and at Gamble on Thursday and Friday, soliciting members for the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, a government organization concerning which I have already written you. I am informed this morning that he was very much pleased with what he saw around our plants, and what we have attempted to do for our men as regards lodging, eating and pleasure. At Port Ludlow out of 289 men on the payroll, 269 readily and immediately signed up for memberships. Twenty refused to do so, took their money and left town. At Gamble out of 319 men on the payroll, 318 signed, and the one slacker was so lonesome that he quit town. In addition to these men all of the longshoremen at both places, and all of the Siwashes at Boston signed up readily for memberships. He did not have an opportunity to visit Camp #4, but will probably do so later on. I am delighted at the results myself. 20 So was Disque. To be sure, his efforts were thwarted in some in- stances, as when an epidemic of measles "and other diseases" quaran- 19 Ames to Talbot, Jan. 10, 1918, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 20 Ibid., Jan. 12, 1918; and see Talbot to Ames, Jan. 18, 1918, copy in Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 181 tined dozens of SPD officers assigned to Legion recruitment, as well as an expected draft of 600 men just as they were due to move into the woods. But by his own estimation December, though, as already noted, a time of intense frustration, had also been a howling success. Lumbermen not at work on government contracts, hearing of the actual arrival of SPD soldiers to bolster the production strength of rival companies, sought information from Disque on how to acquire such services for themselves. His reply, included in SPD Bulletin No. 7, stressed that the division would aid only government contractors. By January 15, Disque was able to record that more than 600 new appli- cations from lumbermen for government contracts had been received. 21 Since one of the major purposes of this outburst of energy was to buttress Parker's arguments for the expansion of SPD and 4L activi- ties to the Inland Empire, Disque saw to it that his accomplishments of December received as much journalistic coverage as he could obtain. Photographers and newspapermen were at hand when the first SPD detachment started work at Grays Harbor, Washington, scene of vio- lent labor unrest for more than a decade. The announcement by Provost Marshal General Enoch Crowder that all drafted men in the Northwest could be assigned to the SPD rated a front-page place in the Oregonian. That Portland newspaper's editorial policy was heavily influenced by Hawkins, Disque's adviser and firm supporter. Its ac- count of January 22 reviewed a month's events: One of the most gratifying phases of the war industry in the Northwest is the growth of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. It is learned that through the activities of this organization . . . worker's sabotage, from striking on the job to the more serious forms, has all but vanished from the woods and mills. The secret of the success of this movement is in the winning of the men's confidence. The workers know that Colonel Disque has no financial or political interest in the work in which he is engaged. They know that whatever he may request of them is not for the purpose of exploiting their labor. He has asked them for cooperation in a work for the National interest. He has won their approval by causing improvement of camp conditions, even to the extent of acting in advance of requests or demands. The men know the appeal is for the common good, and that they will get a square deal and they have re- sponded. It is a condition that could hardly have been brought about and could hardly be taken up and maintained by a civilian employer, no matter what his sympathy with or understanding of the employee's cause. Success in this particular attained by Colonel Disque could properly be taken as a guide for other Governmental policies. It discloses that the man 21 Telegram exchange, Dec. 12, 1917, Disque and Gen. Irons; Bulletin No. 7, issued Dec. 8, amended Dec. 31, 1917; entry, Jan. 15, 1918, "SPD"' ledger volume, all Disque Papers. 182 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE on the ground is best placed to get things done. If the measure of direct control over war enterprises held by the man on the ground were to be enlarged — if a few of the strings that tie officials sent 3,000 miles from the Washington base were cut and such men were thereby given the power of personal decision — there would be quicker and more efficient accomplishment of things that must be done. This was hardly the kind of sentiment calculated to endear Disque to War Department superiors, at a time when Disque was seeking to gain a larger role from them. He cautioned Hawkins to "shut down a little; you go too far." 22 But other newspapers, where Disque's connection was less close than with the Oregonian, were also favorable in their treatment of him and all his works. The American Lumberman praised his energy and de- termination and predicted eventual success for him where all others had failed. The Portland Telegram saw him as "the key man in a most difficult position." Disque's enormous responsibilities required that "higher governmental authorities in the East" free his hands of all red tape. According to the Telegram's somewhat overblown estimate, the Legion already in mid-January had 35,000 members. Disque knew that there were only 25,000 actually enrolled and working, as distinguished from the nominal enrollment which included men in camps closed down by inclement weather, drafted men, or men who had quit the 4Ls, but he made no effort to correct the figure. He wanted an im- pression of strength to go east — an image of the support that he had won in less than two months. This was also the impression that Disque wanted President Wilson to gather. He prepared a report that Parker took to the White House during his Christmas week stay in the capital. Disque and Parker had agreed that this report should ignore the "military aspect" of the SPD in favor of stressing the reformist possibilities of the Legion as well as its war function to increase spruce output. "After a two weeks' cam- paign," Disque reported to the President, "we have already enrolled about 20,000 members. . . . There will be a possible membership of about . . . 35,000 in [western] Washington and Oregon alone." And if the Legion could move into the Inland Empire, then perhaps another 35,000 members might be expected. If the President would cut a phono- graph record addressed to the lumberworkers, appealing to their pa- triotism and sense of duty, "the effect would be overwhelming."" 5 22 Oregonian, Dec. 28, 30, 1917, Jan. 22, 1918; memorandum, Disque to Hawkins, Jan. 22, 1918, Disque Papers. * American Lumberman, Jan. 12; Telegram, Jan. 23, 26, 1918; Disque to Leadbetter, Jan. 9, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA; report to President Wilson, Dec. 19, 1917, Wilson Papers, No. 4505, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 183 While working through Parker directly on the President, who did supply the phonograph recording, Disque also exerted all the pressure he could through War Department channels. He wired Leadbetter to ask for an appropriation "of five to ten thousand dollars for . . . orga- nization and educational work of the Loyal Legion We are getting a better feeling among the laborers . . . and they are working through the [Christmas] Holiday period for the first time in the history of the industry." Concerning the $6,000 already expended on Legion matters from SPD funds without authorization, Disque felt that "it is worth a hundred times the amount." Wanting to be sure that General Squier heard such sentiments from other sources, Disque had his new friend, lumberman Jerome, supply a resolution from the Willamette Valley Lumbermen's Association ad- dressed to the general, praising the SPD and the Legion and the "im- provement in service" since Disque had come on the northwestern scene. Coffin heard from the president of the Far West Clay Company that "All lumbermen . . . seem to be working for the best interests of the Government rather than their own, and all speak very highly of Colonel Disque." John Pearson, a Seattle and Portland banker, ad- vised Senator Chamberlain that Disque was on the road to success and deserved credit for having discerned its course. And Donovan, vice- president of the huge Bloedel-Donovan lumber firm and an intimate of Baruch's, provided Disque with a "to whom it may concern" letter, praising all that Disque was doing, and recommending the expansion of the colonel's jurisdiction and budget. Disque hurried a copy off to Coffin.* Despite all these commendatory reports, something was still wrong. However much publicity Disque obtained locally, the newspapers in the East, where journalistic opinion might weigh heavily with the Aircraft Board and with the Army brass, were strangely silent on the Legion and the SPD. Disque wired Parker to "inquire why this silence prevails along the Atlantic seaboard." Parker was able to learn very quickly that George Creel of the Committee on Public Information was at fault. Creel, after conferences with the President, had adopted the policy of soft-pedaling all news on the SPD and the Legion, out of deference for Gompers, whose attitude on the wisdom of the SPD was still uncertain and who was known to be opposed to the Legion. In- formed of this by Parker, Coffin brought the matter up at the Aircraft 24 Disque to Leadbetter, Jan. 9, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA; Pearson to Chamber- lain, Dec. 22, 1917; Donovan to Disque, Jan. 8; Willamette Association to Squier, Jan. 19; Far West Clay Co. to Coffin, Jan. 22, 1918, copies in Disque Papers. 184 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Board. The members decided that since Gompers was on record as approving the SPD, there was no reason for Creel to block reports on it, or, by implication, publicity on the Legion. 25 Parker quickly cleared this publicity bottleneck. By Christmas Day 1917 Disque's work was receiving attention in the East as well as the West. The point is, of course, that the news coverage Disque enjoyed was far more than merely manufactured. It reflected the deep impres- sion he made on the men with whom he was dealing. Lumbermen like Ames were satisfied that Disque "is more of a practical man than the average military man. . . . Everyone who has met him out here is very well impressed with him, and we realize that he is a very forceful man, and trying to take a forceful view of the situation." George Long of the Weyerhaeuser firm saw "rare executive ability" in Disque's first three weeks of activity, and reported to a national defense councilman that "the mill men and the loggers of the Pacific Coast have been greatly impressed." 26 So were other war officials and politicians. Hazen Titus, manager of the Red Cross regional office in the Northwest, reported after observing Disque that he was "a regular fellow and a man whose heart and soul are wrapped up in his work." Disque made a similar impression on Governor Lister. Too "snowed under" at first to come to the Wash- ington state capital at Olympia to meet Lister, Disque, on Suzzallo's advice, found time to attend to this bit of protocol early in December. "Deeply impressed" with Disque as an able, dedicated man who was responsible for the solution of "great problems," Lister promised him every cooperation. 27 By the end of December, Disque in his own words was "in the saddle of the Legion, where I did not want or expect to be, but was unable effectively to mount the SPD, where I had expected that the greatest initial effort would lie." He advised Squier that unless he received "authority . . . which will be equal to my responsibility," there would be little chance to rectify the existing labor shortage in the lumber areas. The SPD must quicken its pace of organization so that the promises of protection that Disque had made to lumbermen might be kept. Too few soldiers were yet transferred to the SPD, hamstringing its develop- ' ment as well as limiting the available number of high-caliber men from 25 Parker to Disque (telegram), Dec. 31, 1917, Disque Papers; Jan. 15, 1918, ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 130, RG 18, NA. 26 Ames to Talbot, Nov. 30, 1917, Box 36, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; Long to R. H. Dowman, Dec. 10, 1917, copy in ms. "Brice P. Disque: A Record," Disque Papers. 27 Titus to Lister, Dec. 5; Lister to Titus, Dec. 10, 1917, Lister Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 185 among whom he might choose Legion secretaries. Everyone in the War Department was "marking time," Disque complained, while he ran himself ragged in the West. 28 Using his new friends among the lumbermen to exert pressure on the War Department, Disque unleashed a campaign designed to gain the enlarged budget and enhanced authority that he felt he needed and that the War Department was withholding. SPD headquarters set the tone by circulating among all operators an announcement of a month's delay "if not longer, before we will be in a position to send troops to the logging camps." The West Coast Lumberman, commenting, worried that the soldier-worker scheme might not go forward at all. Long begged the Council of National Defense to get Disque what he wanted, for he alone "can depend upon the very best assistance of all the leading operators of the Pacific Coast." If the SPD and the Legion did not succeed, Long warned the Council, "something not far from chaos" would follow in the West. 29 It was a sentiment that had supporters across the country. Both Parker, taking tea and then Christmas dinner with Supreme Court Justice Brandeis and discussing the IWW with the perceptive jurist, and Disque, who was fumbling his way toward goals only dimly per- ceived, worked under a sense of the need for imminent decision and the possibility of disaster. 30 28 Disque to Squier, Nov. 27, 1917, copy in Disque Papers. In Hearings, II, 1759, it is intimated that Squier never saw this appeal, that it was "lost" in War Department labyrinths. See, too, ibid., 1938. 29 Long to R. H. Dowman, Dec. 10 (copy); SPD circular, Dec. 18, 1917, Disque Papers; West Coast Lumberman, Dec. 1, 15, 1917. 30 Cornelia Parker, American Idyll, 171; entry, Jan. 1, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. Chapter 10 Marking Time Events centering on the lumber problem suddenly accelerated with the new year. Before 1918 was much advanced, Disque, Parker, and Suzzallo, still working together in practiced efficiency, won enlarge- ment of the SPD's and 4Ls' jurisdiction to the Inland Empire. Soon after, they achieved a breakthrough on the eight-hour front. The trio exploited discrete lines of authority, but all three appeared to share common goals. Appearance belied the actuality. As always, Disque was primarily concerned with raising spruce output. To be sure, his basic goal allowed a choice of tactical approaches, and this elasticity concerning means made him, the SPD, and the Legion seem plastic and malleable. At times Disque acted in harmony with Parker's reformist criteria. These instances reflected Disque's judgment that his soldierly goals could best be gained by adopting humanitarian modes. Reform, however, was secondary by the nature of the military objective. Misunderstanding grew out of this basic difference between him and Parker. Opportunists sought to take advantage of the ambivalence Disque displayed. He was pulled different ways by lumbermen, labor leaders, and government officials, who tried to help him steer the growing SPD and Legion apparatus. Already nervous from the strains of pioneering for the Army in the trackless waste of labor relations, and tired from unending and seemingly fruitless exertions, Disque grew chronically suspicious of everyone around him. Like Disque, Parker was vastly overtaxed and hypersensitive. As Disque veered away from earlier patterns of emulative cooperation, Parker suspected the existence of sinister reasons for the shift. Results greater than the rupturing of an amiable relationship were nurtured in these cankerous, reciprocal suspicions. Parker had been one of the strongest influences on Disque. The professor had helped to conceive the Legion and the SPD and to shape them. Estrangement from Disque exposed the colonel to different tutors with other aims. As Disque went, so went the division and the Legion. Guided by whatever mentor, the SPD-Legion apparatus inevitably attracted the attention of organized labor. AFL and wobbly leaders 186 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 187 worriedly watched reports of Disque's activities. The very idea of the Army intervening in labor matters dredged up memories of strife extending back to the heyday of the Knights of Labor. Now, with Disque, government professed to be on the side of the hardhanded. SPD officers were ordering arms stacked; divisional troops were shoulder- ing saws and axes to labor alongside civilian workers. For more than a decade, union spokesmen had fruitlessly sought the physical improve- ments that SPD organizers for the Legion now promised. At the least, the SPD-4L phenomenon was capable of making union men nervous. Were soldiers now friends of the workmen or was all this a new strike- breaking vendetta? AFL men in the West were somewhat comforted by the persistent rumors that the Legion was establishing a beachhead for the Federa- tion's organizers. After all, had not Gompers approved Disque's mis- sion? The khaki-clad SPD officers were going to win recognition for west coast AFL locals, the reports insisted. But Disque had no fixed notion that peace in the timberlands had to be achieved through employer recognition of the AFL. Parker, on the other hand, judged the AFL as the only alternative the government had to dealing with the wobblies, which the lumbermen would never accept. Disque came to see the SPD-Legion combination as the gov- ernment's self-created alternative. Detesting interference from outside the Army, Disque saw the AFL's heightened organizing activities in the Northwest, and criticism of him- self from AFL sources when he did not aid those activities, as unbear- able impediments to the nation's war production program. He came to test Gompers as he had Parker, on the only scale he knew — loyalty to himself. Both men, the colonel was to conclude, were wanting in this essential characteristic. Parker and Gompers had nonetheless crafted better than they knew or than Disque appreciated. He was never to abandon Parker's preach- ments on the need to improve environmental conditions for workmen and to create goals loftier than the merely physical for lumberworkers to identify with. By the same token, he was to keep before him Gompers' admonition that the lumber industry would remain productively peace- ful only if collective bargaining were established. Although Disque, to his discredit, later forgot the sources of these ideas and lost confidence in his mentors, he retained the lessons. 1 1 Disque, "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," System, XXXVI (Sept. 1919), passim; on AFL rumors, see Disque to Gompers, protesting against these unfounded reports, Dec. 10, 19, 1917; Jan. 2, 21, Feb. 1, 1918, Disque Papers. 188 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Disque's deteriorating relationships with the economist and the labor leader were balanced by his growing accord with the lumber producers. Timber entrepreneurs were also anxious to shape Disque, the SPD, and the Legion. They stepped eagerly into the breach that grew between him and his former friends. To be sure, Disque exacted a toll for permitting this transfer. Exploit- ing his new friends among the lumbermen, he struck hard and surely to gain from them and their reluctant peers approval for the eight-hour day along with obedient participation in SPD and Legion policies. His success seemed like a conjurer's trick, with the eight-hour rabbit emerg- ing from a peaked uniform cap. Disque's victory was neither magically simple nor sinisterly devious. Success came out of the interaction of men and measures some of which were inescapably in contradiction to one another, and from situations in which paradoxes and ironies abounded. As examples, consider that for many years operators had insisted that economic disaster impended for the Northwest if an eight-hour workday went into effect locally. Disque, however, managed to gain approval for the reform to obtain merely regionally in the Northwest. Consider, too, that in the SPD Disque headed an unusual unit of the national military establishment. The completely unique, civilian Legion, nurtured by the uniformed men of the division, was also under his command, but, at least in theory, its members volunteered their obedience to the colonel. This was neither all truth nor complete hypocrisy. The Legion from its inception performed on a constantly fluctuating level of democratic practice mixed with military authoritarianism. Democracy in the Legion was not so perfect as Disque insisted. While the war lasted, however, it was never as much a sham as his detractors claimed. Disque respected power, not theories. He realized that he was exer- cising a weird congeries of dictatorial and popularly delegated powers which was constantly growing and always altering. Disque found his safest road in the middle of the reforming path that Parker had first marked out for him. This avenue led to yields of cut spruce. It also skirted the Scylla of open subservience to the lumbermen, which Sligh would probably have chosen, and the Charybdis of frank government liaison with the labor unions, which Parker espoused. Either extreme would have placed heavy strains of class partisanship on the already overladen political institutions. Instead, Disque accepted the role of buffer for political' officials of the western states and of the nation, who happily pawned off on the Army the explosive question of Pacific Coast labor relations. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 1 89 Probably Disque's willingness to endure the slings and arrows of outraged lumbermen and of indignant labor spokesmen made the colonel palatable to many political figures whose support of the Legion and the SPD is otherwise puzzling. It is certain, for example, that Washington's governor, Lister, and defense council head, Suzzallo, lent themselves wholeheartedly to furthering Disque's success. In Disque's opinion, Suzzallo hoped for an elective political career after the war and therefore very much wanted the delicate labor question shifted to other shoulders. He also appeared to understand what Disque was accomplishing. 2 Consequently, Suzzallo retained a high place in Disque's personal esteem, while Parker's position was declining. Scherer was out of the running, immersed in national defense council work especially in the Southeast. Hence Disque turned to Suzzallo to advance the fortunes of the SPD and the Legion. It seems clear that, unlike Parker, Suzzallo had few if any reservations concerning the methods Disque employed or the goals he sought. He believed that Disque benefited every interest in the West. The government would get spruce, lumbermen profits, and workers better wages and conditions, if the colonel had his way. 3 Like Disque and almost everyone else in wartime America, Suzzallo had little time, energy, or interest to devote to* peripheral matters of civil liberties or the aspirations of organized labor. Suzzallo had concluded that anything short of complete national responsibility for the aircraft lumber supply problem was unthinkable. For almost a year, federal officers had sloughed off onto the over- burdened states the tasks that central authorities should have grasped at once. Now it was past time for the national government, through the Army, to take up the slack and bear a fair share of the onus for executing unpopular policies. 4 On January 2, 1918, Suzzallo and Disque unleashed a campaign that they had worked out with Parker before the professor headed eastward. As its opening gun, Suzzallo on the 2nd sent Frankfurter a lengthy telegram that was to have decisive results in the spruce program. It also affected the personal fortunes of everyone involved in the Legion and in the SPD, and was finally to destroy completely the fast- weakening rapport that once had existed between Disque and Parker. 2 Disque to Seoane, July 3, 1918, Disque Papers, gives Disque's opinions on the reasons for Suzzallo's support, deals with Lister, and generally surveys the points made above. Disque believed that Suzzallo was aiming at the U.S. Senate. 3 Suzzallo to Frankfurter, Jan. 2, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. 4 Suzzallo to G. L. Gardner, Jan. 1, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; same to same, Jan. 2, 1918, Lister Papers. 190 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE The telegram to Frankfurter reiterated the woes Suzzallo had experi- enced since he had entered the lumber tie-up. He and his defense council subordinates had never really known what the national officials wanted. No longer could the local personnel endure the strains en- gendered by frustration and confusion from above. The failure in the spruce supply, he asserted, was due in part to the inability of those "who know local conditions" to "get an adequately powerful move- ment of the [national] government to centralize the authority for getting this material out of the woods by emergency methods. We could not get the tragic failure home to the proper people in Washington. We have not done so yet." 3 Having made the point that the national government must now move swiftly, Suzzallo, in a lengthy, telegraphed memorandum sent later that same day and headed "Adequate and Prompt Supply of Spruce for Airplanes," recapitulated for Frankfurter what still needed to be done. The United States intended to build 28,000 military aircraft by October 1, 1918, only ten months away. Approximately one hun- dred million feet of the finest spruce was required for the American and Allied governments, if this vast program was to have a glimmer of a chance of success. Simple arithmetic called for monthly production of at least ten million feet of first-grade spruce. During the preceding five months the industry had offered less than one fifth this amount, and of substandard quality. Suzzallo detailed the familiar causes. Labor unrest was one. But the normal prewar labor supply of the industry, even discounting strikes, was incapable of meeting the nation's wartime need. In addition, the industry had never geared itself to expansion, either in its technological processes and equipment or in its financial structure. Even if adequate labor were available, lumbermen would not on their own risk the expenses of novel logging and milling techniques that might bridge the gap in output, and the federal government "has not moved with ade- quate resourcefulness and decisiveness" to pressure lumbermen to take the financial risk, or to assume the cost itself. Suzzallo carefully pointed out that he was not advocating govern- ment ownership or operation in the lumber industry. Specifying that "the regular industrial logging companies" were to be used, he called for the swift elimination of industrial discontent. With a tactful bow to Frankfurter's recent fruitless efforts at mediation, Suzzallo suggested that only by increasing SPD and 4L activity and jurisdiction at once could this goal be reached in time. 5 Suzzallo to Frankfurter, Jan. 2, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Hearings, II, 1187. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 191 In addition to smoothing management-worker relations, the SPD must inspire the loggers to go out after spruce, perhaps by raising prices or by subsidizing the extension of rail and truck roads to the isolated spruce trees. New techniques of logging, cutting, and milling, as ex- pounded by Dean Hugo Winkerwerder of the University of Washing- ton's forestry college, must be introduced under the SPD's supervision. These included selective logging, riving rather than splitting of the logs, and local drying to save shipping weight. The spruce shortage still might be overcome by government subsidy of new equipment and facilities and by expansion of the labor force through the SPD and the Legion. The war might yet be won without recourse to desperate and probably unworkable expedients like government confiscation of the whole industry. 8 Hope existed for accomplishing all this only if Disque received the power he needed. He was the only federal government man "who has shown responsiveness ... in planning a policy, and decisiveness in ac- tion," Suzzallo asserted. "Let us have no more changes. Give this man power. The Government agents have not even understood the problem till he arrived." Disque must expand his twin organizations on the coast and move inland at the same time. The powers that Suzzallo wanted for Disque, or, more properly, that Disque instructed Suzzallo to request, included the right to fix prices on "stumpage" and to send SPD loggers in pur- suit of spruce into government lands, forest reserves, Indian reserva- tions, and private property. This, in turn, necessitated that Disque be able to requisition spruce stands along with the rights-of-way leading to spruce, and to take over the use of idle lumbering equipment. He must also be empowered to apportion priorities of all sorts among various mills and loggers. In short, Suzzallo insisted that Disque be the "one man in absolute charge of obtaining the necessary spruce." He was "the right man." Frankfurter should "stop further changes" that would mean "a bad delay" in the program. Disque, headquartered in the West, should be given authority to make on-the-spot and cost-plus contracts to pay quickly for deliveries. Many of the small loggers were low-capital men, without funds enough on hand to "buy equipment and supplies on the open market." Disque should be able to subsidize these spruce prospectors. 6 Suzzallo's report is in Hearings, III, 3975-77, but without reference to the fact that it was confidential in its original form or that it was part of a plan. There will be later discussion of the new techniques of logging and milling that Suzzallo sug- gested, inspired, of course, by the lumbermen on Disque's advisor)' council and by Winkerwerder. See Winkerwerder to Suzzallo, Jan. 2, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. 192 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Acknowledging that his proposal was unusual, Suzzalto asserted that "the condition of the spruce supply warrants this kind of extraordinary action." He concluded by directing Frankfurter's attention to the fiasco that must ensue when in the spring, so near at hand, the mushrooming airplane plants reached peaks of productive capacity, only to find that they lacked the raw material with which to operate. 7 It was a trenchant argument, the effect of which was vitiated only by occasional hyperbolic passages. This extremism was deliberate. Disque, through Suzzallo, was asking for more than he expected to get at that time, in order to better the chances for gaining at least a part. As of early January, Disque would be satisfied by authority and funds adequate to get the SPD and the Loyal Legion into high gear, and to extend operations to the Inland Empire. The rest could wait. At first Disque thought that this Byzantine strategy was immediately successful. On January 4, Frankfurter wired Suzzallo: "Situation here has changed and Parker is returning [to Portland] with new program. Await his arrival before taking or advancing any decisive steps." 8 But it soon became apparent from subsequent telegrams that Parker, who was traveling westward with General Salzman, sent to Disque that the "new" program they were bringing was not at all what Disque had impetuously concluded it was. Instead of approval for him to move into the Inland Empire, Salzman was merely going to survey once again the west coast lumber-labor problem and report his conclusions to the Secretary of War. Disque grumbled that it was another cautious hop when brave leaps were necessary. Even as the train sped toward Portland, however, Parker's argu- ments on behalf of giving Disque free rein bore belated fruit at the War Department. A revised resolution of January 4 to govern Salzman was passed at the Aircraft Board: "In view of the remote base of [Dis- que's] operations," it ran, Salzman should judge if the picture out west was as dim as Disque and Suzzallo had insisted and Parker had verified. If it was, then Salzman might grant Disque "full power to proceed with his program without interference." The Army pledged that Disque henceforth would receive draftees and troop cadres that he needed for the SPD. Adequate training and barracks space would be available for them. Unqualified approval was made explicit concerning Disque's 7 Hearings, III, 3975-77. That Disque directed this impressive literary effort is evident from the notes of the meetings he and Suzzallo held together during the Christmas-New Year's period, 1917, in "SPD" ledger volume, Disque Papers. 8 Frankfurter to Suzzallo, Jan. 4, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 193 employment of soldiers as workers for private firms which were making financial profits from government contracts. The Board authorized Disque to impose the eight-hour workday when he felt the move abso- lutely necessary. In short, the revised authority of January 4 was a long step toward realizing the catalog of powers that Suzzallo had set down two days earlier. 9 Learning of these alterations in his favor, Disque's irritation lessened at having to wait for Salzman. Closer examination of the new resolution, however, dampened the colonel's pleasure. Restrictions still hedged him in. Instead of an unfettered power to act, Disque was cautioned to steer clear of clashes with the AFL. He must "avoid opposition on the part of organized labor to competition with the military." In his view, this was an unwarranted degree of consideration for Gompers' feelings, which far outran the Federation's real power in the West. Another and even more significant checkrein was that the new authority did not empower Disque to extend SPD and 4L operations inland. Far worse even than these were what Disque mistook as clear indi- cations that Gompers' influence at the War Department, channeled through Frankfurter and Parker, was now specifically directed against himself, with the result that the Army was commencing to distrust his personal integrity. Disque jumped to this fateful, erroneous conclusion because the January 4 telegram required Salzman to appoint an ad- visory council of civilians to guide and assist Disque in substantive matters, especially those concerning labor. As though this mandatory overseership was not enough, another injunction was that Parker, because he was "intimately acquainted with [northwestern] labor con- ditions," should guide Salzman during the general's Pacific Coast sur- vey. Parker, Disque concluded in anger, was becoming little better than a spy over him. 10 Once having jumped to this emotional conclusion, Disque moved decisively. He and Suzzallo worked together almost until midnight of the 4th. During the early hours of the 5th, Suzzallo telephoned and wired for several prominent coast and inland lumbermen, friendly to the Legion, to come at once to his campus office. Assembled, the gather- ing obediently subscribed a petition addressed to Disque (who was of course present) that pleaded with him to expand the Legion's work on both sides of the coastal mountains. Lumbermen on one face of the 9 Jan. 3, 1918, ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 114-15, RG 18, NA; tele- graphic precis, Parker to Disque, ca. Jan. 4, 1918, Disque Papers. 10 Disque's reaction in entry, Jan. 4, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. 1 94 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Cascades could not operate with labor policies different from those that obtained on the other, the petition averred. 11 Employing the telegraph to send this petition on to Frankfurter, Suzzallo appended his estimation that haste was now more necessary than ever before. Wobblies of the Inland Empire, capitalizing on the frustration and cynicism attending the Legion's inability to perform in that region as had been promised, were scheduling a "ten day general strike breaking February first." Indecision on the Potomac was once more forcing west coast officials to accept intolerable risks. Governor Lister had agents at Spokane trying to hold the wobblies down. Disque, daring to act without authority, had sent a few SPD officers to that unquiet city, where they were rendering great service by deflecting wobbly-inspired unrest into constructive Legion channels. But this was a mere trickle when a massive Legion movement inland was required. 12 Thus far in the significant first week of January, Disque and Suzzallo had performed an elaborate charade. The transmission of the petition and other memoranda provided the official record that both thought was needed for propriety. They wanted to create an illusion of spon- taneity adequate to justify Frankfurter and other high Army and Air- craft Board officials in rethinking their recent decision to keep Disque penned to the western mountain slopes. Further, Disque especially wanted the authority to expand his scope of operations inland before General Salzman and Parker, whom he now considered as an untrust- worthy turncoat, reached the west coast. 13 On January 5, Disque thought that he had won out. He was so confident of success that, without waiting for a reply from the War Department to the Suzzallo petition, Disque posted more than fifty SPD officers in eastern Washington and Oregon and in the Idaho panhandle. These officers began their dual duties of Legion recruiting and of ascertaining the demand for SPD soldier-workers. They sent Disque reports of immense enthusiasm among workers for the Legion and among employers for the division. Suzzallo assured the governor that Disque's confidence in receiving permission to move inland was justified. And so it seemed when, late on January 5, a wire from the Aircraft Board appeared to grant this desired authorization. The west coast 11 J. C. H. Reynolds, of the Employers' Association of the Inland Empire, to Suz- zallo, Jan. 5, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. ^Suzzallo to Frankfurter, Jan. 5, 1918 (misdated Jan. 4, 1917), file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. A partial draft of this telegram is in Suzzallo Papers. On cooperation with Disque, entry, Jan. 5, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. 13 Suzzallo to Disque and replies, Jan. 2-5, 1918, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 195 press broadcast the news of the SPD's and the Legion's imminent inland expansion. Depending upon the point of view of individuals and groups, this announcement was received happily or with bitterness, but whatever the degree of happiness or trepidation, Disque's enhance- ment in jurisdiction was important. 14 The balloon broke only three days after the announcement of Dis- que's enlarged jurisdiction. On January 8, Disque issued a statement that despite the hopes of many Inland Empire lumbermen and workers, he could not yet move eastward with anything like the requisite energy or speed. Aid from the SPD and the Legion was still to remain restricted to the coastal slope, and was still spotty and inadequate there. The reason that Disque gave was that "someone" at the War Department was refusing to provide the money appropriation that the SPD-Legion required if it was to serve usefully anywhere at all. This fiscal reluctance, despite the "shadowy" authorization that the Aircraft Board had pro- vided on the 5th, was the block impeding the inland expansion. Luckily for his personal reputation, Disque noted to Suzzallo, knowing that this communication would find a way to the lumbermen through the university president, he had held off from excessive commitment of the division's forces based on the January 5 authorization. "I am already in debt to the extent of several thousand dollars used in organizing 25,000 [Legion] men in [western] Washington and Oregon and cannot go into this to any greater extent until definite action is taken from Washington [D.C.]." 15 Once again Suzzallo picked up the cue that Disque had let drop. In order to insure that "definite action" was taken, Suzzallo called up the journalists, the bankers, and the lumbermen whose aid he had gained in other work for the state defense council. A smooth, tested pressure apparatus let go with a steady drumbeat of demand, directed eastward to the War Department, the Capitol, and the White House, that Disque, having received authority to increase the scope of his work, should at once receive the funds needed to do so. Suzzallo and Disque were able to exploit the anger of many lumber- men at the shabby treatment the colonel was receiving. Consider, for 11 Suzzallo to G. F. Hagenbush, Jan. 5 (misdated the 4th), 1918, Suzzallo Papers. A Washington State Council Intelligence Bureau, a subdivision of the state council of defense, had been forming and, in some instances, operating for three months by the turn of the year. Joining it with the state secret service organization of the gov- ernor's office, after pruning it of American Protective League infiltrators, Suzzallo now thought it ready to operate throughout the state; Suzzallo to H. D. Young, Jan. 17, 1918, ibid. A book of clippings in Disque Papers offers a survey of press reaction. 13 Disque to Suzzallo, Jan. 8, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Suzzallo to Reynolds, Jan. 18, 1918, Disque Papers. 196 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE example, the general manager of the Great Northern Lumber Company of Leavenworth, Washington, G. L. Gardner. As soon as the news came out on January 5 that Disque could move inland, Gardner wired him an appeal for SPD and Legion enrollment officers to survey his facilities. Wobblies, in response, threatened a strike against Gardner's company, and he asserted that arson as well as other acts of sabotage had already done damage. Then it was learned that Disque was, after all, unable to make the inland move. Gardner grumbled that he and many other lumbermen had exposed themselves for nothing. It was not the first time that lumber operators had been embarrassed by the peek-a-boo uncertainties of federal promises. Addressing him- self to Frankfurter at Suzzallo's suggestion, Gardner reminded him that during his recent visit in the West as mediation commissioner, he had requested lumbermen to list the names of troublesome employees. The implication of December 1917, Gardner had felt, was that Disque would soon see to it that the listed men were drafted into the SPD. There, when the division moved into the Inland Empire, these men would be required under military discipline to do useful work. Gardner had sent Disque a list of five disaffected employees. Nothing had happened. The annoying quintet, who had earlier been subdued and fearful at being told of their impending fate, were now made bold by their apparent immunity. Discontent was spreading from them to other employees. Employers like Gardner had been made to appear ridiculous, and agitators were ridiculing the federal government. 19 Capitalizing on the passionate distress of lumbermen like Gardner, Suzzallo counseled them to exert whatever influence they could on national officials. "Disque is doing splendid work but they will not give him the money to do what he wants to do," Suzzallo told G. F. Hagenbush. 17 "Must work Washington [D.C.] end," he advised Gardner. To another complainant at Disque's unexpected inability to operate inland, J. C. H. Reynolds, Suzzallo wrote on the 9th: Dr. Parker and I have tried to do everything we could for you. We are con- stantly trying to bring Washington [D.C.] into action. That we have been disappointed again and again is part of the difficulty of our situation. The possible line of assistance that we have suggested managed to get blocked in some way. We had the approval of Secretary of Labor Wilson, Assistant to the Secretary of War Frankfurter, and Colonel Disque, to organize a Loyal Legion 18 Gardner to Suzzallo, letter and telegram, both Jan. 10, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. It is interesting that of more than 200 employees in this company, only five were con- sidered so troublesome as to deserve the fate of being drafted. Merely arithmetical estimates of IWW penetration are probably useless, but the 5/200th ratio is as low as any recorded by a lumberman. "Suzzallo to Hagenbush, Jan. 18, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 197 in your District and somebody at Washington refused the appropriation. This is typical of everything we try to do. Of course we are bound to be patient, even though we are terribly disappointed." 18 Disque's conviction that a sinister conspiracy was operating against him at the War Department was receiving, through Suzzallo, signifi- cant, backstage circulation in the West. The charge was untrue. Rather than a conspiracy in the District of Columbia there was confusion; it was less sinister than sad. When Parker reached Seattle on January 8, Disque and Suzzallo learned why the SPD's and Legion's funds had not been forthcoming. President Wilson still hoped that the lumbermen would solve the labor problem by offering the eight-hour workday of their own volition. He dearly wished to avoid any further involvement in labor matters on the part of federal officials, and especially by the Army. Parker de- scribed the President as estimating that the "Hotchkiss plan" might still succeed. When Wilson learned of the Aircraft Board's January 5 reso- lution authorizing Disque to move into the Inland Empire, where the Parker-Hotchkiss scheme had been designed to operate, he backtracked on Disque. The President was also greatly disturbed at the Board's willingness to let Disque initiate the eight-hour workday by something akin to martial law. Therefore, word from the White House had per- colated down to Frankfurter sometime on the 5th or 6th, that Disque's move inland with the SPD and the Legion and the eight-hour question were to be held off at least for a little while. Gompers had played some part in altering the President's views. According to Parker, Gompers had been having second thoughts about Disque. Reports from western AFL organizers were increasingly critical of the colonel's policies. Gompers, after all, had assumed with Disque that the Legion was due for demise. Here it w r as flourishing on the far west coast, and ready to grow mightily by expansion into the Inland Empire. The Federation head had let the President know of his con- cern over the Legion, Parker reported. How much w r eight he had swung in bringing Wilson to decision against Disque was uncertain. "Any- thing at all is too much," Disque noted sourly. A third force was moving to oversway the first two, Parker added. He and Frankfurter were convinced that Disque was the right man and that the Aircraft Board resolution was the correct path for Wilson to ap- 18 Suzzallo to Gardner, Jan. 11; Disque to Suzzallo, Jan. 15, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; exchange, Suzzallo and Reynolds, Jan. 9, 18, 1918, Disque Papers; Frankfurter to Suzzallo, Jan. 11, 1918, file'33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 198 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE prove. Back east, Parker insisted, Frankfurter was still trying to bring the President to agreement. To be sure, Disque's expected budget in- crease was not forthcoming, for Frankfurter had to obey the President's wish that Disque mark time. But this delay might soon reverberate to Disque's favor. Western lumbermen had expected an enlargement of SPD and Legion recruiting. They had accepted the possibility of Disque's im- posing the eight-hour reform in order to win workingmen's support for the twin organizations. Now the inland lumbermen were disap- pointed at being altogether denied division and Legion support, and coastal lumber producers were regretful at not having the amount of this support stepped up. Parker proposed that denial might at last bring the lumbermen around to the need for volunteering the eight- hour reform. Hoping for the sweet of the SPD-Legion affiliation, lum- bermen could perhaps be goaded into acquiescence instead of being forced. Then perhaps the President would approve the enlargement of SPD and Legion work inland, once the odds were better against an outbreak of labor strife in which his administration would have to take a partisan role. 10 Disque was unsure whether to trust Parker or not. To be sure, he fully agreed with the maverick economist that, as Disque wrote later, "the labor conditions in the Inland Empire . . . were a reflex of those on the coast, and it was considered wise to organize this region also." Parker and he were also in accord that General Salzman must become convinced of the wisdom of this argument, so that he might repeat it at the War Department. Still further, they agreed that Salzman should work as secretly as possible. The excessive publicity attending all pre- vious investigations of the lumber industry had made leading figures loath to expose themselves. Others, less cautious, had offered overblown predictions of expected accomplishments. Resulting cynicism had less- ened the possibility of constructive achievement. But Disque could neither forgive nor forget the instruction from the Aircraft Board that Parker was to guide Salzman. He was still half convinced that Parker was a War Department spy and that Frankfurter was in league with Gompers to keep the SPD and the Legion fettered. Disque cloaked this nagging suspicion as best he could. It festered with renewed malignancy, however, when soon after his return to the West, Parker encouraged Disque to impose the eight-hour workday by mili- 19 Ms. memo in Disque's hand, undated, on Parker's explanation of events in Wash- ington, D.C., Disque Papers; and see Frankfurter to Parker (telegram), Jan. 16, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 199 tary fiat. The trouble was that, only a week after receiving the authori- zation to do just that, Disque was no longer sure of the wisdom of such a policy. 20 Disagreement with Parker on this vital matter renewed the colonel's phantom fears of a conspiracy against himself. Through these crowded days Disque had been literally jamming the SPD and the Legion into being along the Pacific shore. By January 10, more than 30,000 Legionnaires, including almost 1000 employers, had signed up in the 4Ls; 15,000 troops were listed on the SPD's roster. Intensive training programs were under way to prepare soldiers for effective service in labor-hungry sites and to supplement the work of the expanding Legion organization. Favorable publicity almost every- where except in the wobbly press was smoothing the way for the field organizers of the SPD-Legion apparatus. Even the Committee on Public Information favorably highlighted the work Disque was doing. Now here was Parker, fresh from his possibly underhanded work in the East, stubbornly insisting that Disque must risk this hard-won accord by reopening the hoary eight-hour question. Parker himself had acknowledged Gompers' influence in checkreining the January 5 au- thorization to move inland. Disque uncharitably leaped to the con- clusion that Parker's advice had been inspired by the labor leader and was designed to wreck Disque, the Legion, and the division, so that the AFL might come in to win the glittering prize of recognition as the lumberworkers' collective bargaining agent. 21 Disque was veering around to a determination not to press for the eight-hour workday. His new lumbermen friends were of the opinion that, in the event of a government decree on the subject, a good many intransigent producers would simply close up operations. Probably more influential in Disque's thinking were reports from SPD officers posted at lumber facilities. These Army sources supported the employ- ers' thesis that the shorter workday meant a decrease in production, not a rise, as Parker insisted. As it was, the industry was suffering one of its worst winter seasons in years. Heavy snowfalls and rains had interfered with such logging as was under way, and the oncoming of spring promised further trouble from floods and landslides. A great deal of repair work was needed for many firms merely to keep pace with prewar production schedules, quite apart from the question of the wobblies' threats of a - History, 20, for the quotation. Disque wrote this section of the History; the ms. is in Disque Papers. On Parker's meetings with him, and Disque's attitude toward Parker, see undated memorandum entitled "Preparations for Gen. Salzman," ibid. 21 Disque to Suzzallo, Jan. 12, 1918, Disque Papers, surveys these suspicions. The statistics are from "SPD Reports" folder, ibid. 200 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE renewed strike. In this situation, Disque was coming to believe, an eight-hour day, if imposed upon unwilling employers, might com- pletely thwart his chances for success. Still further, SPD "squadron" commanders were reporting that the mechanical equipment that lumbermen had on hand was incapable of being speeded up. For the remaining winter weeks there would be too few daylight hours to make possible additional shifts or half-shifts of men, even if SPD or Legion activities made labor available. IWW organizers were still very active, these reports ran. As Disque saw the situation, it would be folly to antagonize the lumbermen with the eight-hour goad, for no purpose worth while in military terms." At one meeting with Disque, probably on January 14, Parker spoke out sharply in opposition to the colonel's new view on the eight-hour issue. He insisted that the real folly would occur if Disque ignored the workers in favor of the employers. He reminded Disque that the AFL, as well as the wobblies, was committed to achieving the eight-hour day as a symbol of human dignity and as a sign of opportunity for self- improvement. Without a satisfied labor force to staff the civilian ranks of the Legion, lumber production simply could not rise swiftly enough to reach the lofty goals set for airframe construction. Coercion could not replace cooperation. Disque responded heatedly to Parker's emotional outpouring. The exchange of views became an argument. It appears that Parker was as quick as the colonel to jump to erroneous conclusions. Even as Disque suspected that Parker was reduced to spying for Gompers, Parker worried that Disque was becoming an antiunion tool serving the lum- ber operators. Outwardly, this unfortunate meeting closed on an amicable note and agreement to meet again the next day. But the seed of discord, already planted deeply, had absorbed rich nutrient from the angry words and nagging suspicions of the disputants. Both men were unfair to each other. 23 As of mid-January 1918, the weight of evidence indicates that Parker was acting under the orders of War Department superiors in guiding General Salzman. Whatever suspicions he had of the rectitude of Dis- que's course were not known to the War Department, but they were frankly stated to the colonel. No spy, Parker was a terribly worried and exhausted reformer and labor mediator. Probably the man's sheer fatigue played a large part in bringing him to judge Disque too harshly. 22 See, for example, of many reports to this effect, Capt. S. D. Hartman to Disque, Jan. 31, 1918, Report No. 5, file 166/11.4, SPD, AEF Records, RG 120, NA, surveying consensus of previous reports by more than thirty SPD squadron commanders. 23 Ms. "Preparations for Gen. Salzman," Disque Papers, records the argument. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 201 Ironically, the picture that is commonly drawn of Disque at this time depicts a man in confident control of the situation. Tyler, for example, says: "With the new organization [the Legion] enrolling thousands of members, with the voice of the IWW drowned out and its agitators sent scurrying for cover, and with all the power and prestige of the War Department at his disposal, Colonel Disque in January and February, 1918, considered the time ripe to institute extensive reforms in the lumber industry." 24 To be sure, Disque thought that the time was "ripe," indeed over- ripe. But he certainly did not believe in January that the wobbly voice was "drowned out," or that its agitators were huddled underground, impotent to do further harm. So far was Disque from having "all the power and prestige of the War Department at his disposal," that the statement need be merely quoted as evidence of its error. In January and for most of February 1918, Disque was terribly unsure whether the lumber industry was ready for the institution of "extensive re- forms," and whether the eight-hour day should be included in those he would support. Knowing that he was uncertain, the lumbermen, Parker, and Suzzallo to a lesser degree, with Frankfurter's cooperation, tried to pressure Disque to their views. The result was another cause of discord between Disque and Parker, and with it a continuing lessen- ing of the professor's influence on the colonel and on the unique or- ganizations he headed. Disque was also tired and snappish. He did not consider himself overly disposed toward the lumbermen or in opposition to the workers' desires. He did feel that only the lumbermen were offering him the kind of expert advice that was absolutely necessary to get out the spruce. Labor's men had many voices, and now that Disque was losing faith in Parker, the prolabor spokesman closest to him was rapidly declining in influence. Probably it is fairest to say that at this time in the course of events Disque was confused and uncertain how to proceed. If this is so, then the very self-confidence of the lumbermen provided the semblance of a sure guide for him to follow. There can be no question that Disque was not receiving from his superiors in the Army or in the war-service com- mittee apparatus back east the definite policy lines that a mere colonel had the right to expect from headquarters. Lacking these, he had to find substitutes. On the 15th, Disque met with General Salzman, Parker, and other Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 443. 202 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE members of the touring War Department committee. Lumbermen George Long and Alex Poison and Portland banker C. F. Adams joined the meeting. Disque brought the visitors from the East up to date on the accomplishments of the 4Ls and the SPD. He reiterated the need for expansion into the Inland Empire, and was solidly backed up on this stand by the lumber producers and financier. Then Parker spoke up. He raised the eight-hour question, despite Disque's efforts to cut him off. The lumbermen bristled. They repeated the familiar theme that regional imposition of the eight-hour reform "would be fatal to the Pacific Coast," as Poison expressed it. 25 Parker left this meeting worried that Disque was lost to reform. The economist concluded that if his suspicion with regard to the colonel proved to be correct, the SPD and the 4Ls would be certain to forfeit labor support, leading to a resurgence of wobbly strength. After con- ferring later that day with Suzzallo, Parker wired Frankfurter on the 16th: "The way to meet this menace is to put the basic 8-hour clause in all government contracts" for lumber. If successful, Parker estimated that his tactic would leave the resur- gent wobblies helpless. Even if they called a strike for May Day, as secret service reports said they intended, Parker doubted that they could amass much support among lumberworkers pacified by an eight-hour day and whatever other reforms the Legion might bring to them in the interim. He and Suzzallo were not conspiring against Disque. They had no possible reason to want to squeeze him out of his command or to diminish the power of the Legion or of the SPD. Rather, they wanted temporarily to bypass him through the indirect means which they were suggesting, so that, out of his new antipathy to the eight-hour day, he might not block its institution. Once ordered by the War Department to impose the reform, instead of being merely authorized to do so by a vague resolution of the Aircraft Board, Disque must obey whatever his private doubts as to its wisdom. He was as educable as before, Parker and Suzzallo felt, and he would come to agree with them once improved spruce output was obtained by Legionnaires and other workers made happy with the shorter workday. As indication that neither Parker nor Suzzallo was in an anti-Disque posture, note that Parker proposed that Frankfurter consider the SPD as the Army's prime contractor. Then lumbermen supplying the divi- sion, or enrolled in the Legion, could be considered government sub 23 P. F. Howe to Coffin (telegram), Jan. 16, 1918, file 33/574-B, RG 280, NA, report- ing on this meeting. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 203 contractors and therefore subject to the eight-hour standard for their employees. Note, too, that Suzzallo wired Secretary Baker: Inefficiency in production of spruce continues, despite remarkable effort made by Colonel Disque of Signal Corps. Absolutely essential for Government to give Disque extraordinary powers and clean up labor inefficiency. Labor effi- ciency running about thirty per cent short, caused by discontent which can only be eradicated in any degree by establishing of basic eight-hour day. Strongly urge establishment of universal eight-hour day clause in all govern- ment lumber contracts. 26 The Parker-Suzzallo scheme received a cordial reception at the War Department. Frankfurter at once prepared a memorandum to Baker. It justified the issuance of an eight-hour order from the White House with respect to lumber contractors as a proper exercise of the President's inherent power to prescribe to Cabinet heads and administrative officials the way the government's business should be conducted. No congres- sional legislation was needed. In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt had specified that all government contracts stipulate against the employment of con- vict labor in their fulfillment, and this was but one among several prece- dents sustaining a President's power in such matters. An eight-hour day was now "a stipulation which it is conceived the public need indispens- ably requires," Frankfurter concluded. "There can be no doubt that this exercise of the President's authority is a matter of legal theory and is amply justified in practice." Sharing Frankfurter's confidence that this argument would find ap- proval at the White House, Labor Secretary Wilson prepared a draft proclamation setting forth the eight-hour requirement for all govern- ment contractors. Late on the 16th Frankfurter wired Parker that the hours limitation "will be introduced if necessary." Everything appeared set to go Parker's way. Then someone in the Department of Labor incautiously permitted the intoxication of optimism to oversway restraint and official responsi- bility. The AFL organizer whom Gompers had assigned to Portland to work with Disque, C. O. Young, learned that the eight-hour millennium was close at hand. He let the happy news out to the newspapers. The next day, January 17, Disque learned from his morning news- paper that the President was poised on the brink of requiring the eight- 26 Parker to Frankfurter, Jan. 16, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Suzzallo to Baker and Coffin, Jan. 16, 1918, Disque Papers. The copy of the latter wire in file 33/574-B, RG 280, NA, is misdated the 18th, and the copy in Newton Baker Papers, Box 7, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, is misdated the 17th — apparently dates filed rather than sent. 204 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE hour reform in lumber contracts, and that the SPD was to be the indus- try's prime government contractor. The colonel was furious. He felt betrayed, and feared that the lumbermen in turn would suspect him as their betrayer. Hurrying to the scheduled meeting with Salzman and the others, Disque had to request importunate journalists to clear a path into SPD headquarters so that the general might enter. The spot- light of publicity, which Disque had wanted to avoid, centered on the embarrassed men who met with him that morning. Flustered, the con- ferees broke off the session almost at once. Salzman entrained for the East. Meanwhile the news spread quickly in the West that it was the AFL official, Young, who had spilled the eight-hour story. The hypersensitive lumbermen at once jumped to a conclusion typified by that of W. H. Talbot: "It looks very much," Talbot wrote, "as though the representa- tives of the Federal Government are playing into the hands of the labor leaders." Disque worried that the lumbermen would include him in this partisan category. 27 Had the eight-hour ruling come down from the President, the unfor- tunate collapse of Salzman's hearings and the undesired publicity would probably have been quickly forgotten. But later on that crowded 17th, a telegram from Secretary Baker chilled all optimism. There would be no eight-hour stipulation from the White House, Baker reported; Presi- dent Wilson "is loath to use his power" in such a manner. Baker did not reveal that the President had been dissuaded by the unexpected publicity surrounding the Salzman inquiries and also be- cause Charles Simms, the able Labor Department Solicitor, had flatly contradicted Frankfurter's thesis that an inherent right existed in the Chief Executive to make hours of work a part of government contracts. By Simms's reasoning, Congress would have to act in this matter before the President could do anything. Therefore, the War Secretary pleaded for Suzzallo and Parker to join with Disque in another effort to gain from the lumbermen a voluntary acquiescence in the eight-hour limita- tion. A "much better feeling will exist" than if it was imposed, Baker concluded. 28 Although Suzzallo and Parker had little hope that the lumbermen 27 Frankfurter, ms. memorandum to Baker, Jan. 16, 1918, "The Basis for Presiden- tial Action in Issuing Executive Order as to the Eight Hour Law in the Lumber Industry," Box 5, Baker Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress; Frank- furter to Parker, Jan. 16, and Suzzallo's notes on the Jan. 17, 1918, Disque-Salzman conference, Suzzallo Papers; Talbot to Ames, Jan. 30, 1918, copy in Disque Papers Entry, Jan. 17, 1918, small notebook, ibid., has Disque's reaction. 28 Baker to Suzzallo, Jan. 17, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Simms's report to Labor Secre- tary Wilson, Jan. 17, 1918, file 33/574-A, RG 280, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 20J would voluntarily accept the eight-hour reform, they obediently ar- ranged a series of conferences to take place during February with promi- nent timber operators. Meanwhile, west coast lumbermen's organiza- tions were responding like disturbed hornets to the news of the Salzman fiasco and the eight-hour implications. Ames, for example, resolved that "all influence be brought to bear on Senators and Congressmen on this Coast ... to induce the President to withhold his proclamation to this effect. We understand Senator Jones ... [of Washington] has already protested." 29 So did Senator Miles Poindexter. In a letter to the President, he argued that the eight-hour stipulation, though it would obtain nation- ally in lumber contracts if put into effect, would nevertheless impose "an unequal burden" on northwestern timber operators. In the South- east, the senator charged, no one expected that the reform would be enforced widely if required, and even if it were applied, the eastern operators would suffer very little in the pocket as compared to the Northwest's entrepreneurs. Expanding on this theme to Labor Secre- tary Wilson, Poindexter rang the changes on the theme of how the Northwest was abused through differential freight rates which favored eastern shippers. The increased production costs that the eight-hour day would bring, when added to the freight charge factor and the ac- cumulated effects upon the Northwest of prolabor government agents, dilatory Cabinet officers, and wobbly infestation, would finally bring on the destruction of the region's economy. Anyway, the AFL would claim that it had won the eight-hour day, and to Poindexter this was almost as terrible a result to contemplate. He warned the Labor Secre- tary to expect a full-scale fight in the Senate if at any time in the future the President sought to impose the shorter workday through an execu- tive order. Secretary Wilson's reply sought to impress the senator with the fact that the lumber industry would continue to have a labor shortage so long as other northwestern industries offered the eight-hour day, higher wages, and far better working and living conditions, and thus attracted timberworkers away from the woods. But the Secretary could only play the pedagogue; his letter was a signal that the President would not battle on this issue. 30 Disque confirmed this. On January 23 he revealed to Suzzallo that through him the Army had supported Senator Poindexter. "I regard it 20 Exchange, Ames and Talbot, Jan. 25-30, 1918, copies in Disque Papers. 30 Secretary Wilson-Poindexter exchange, Jan. 25-28; Poindexter to President Wil- son, Jan. 28, 1918, copies in Disque Papers. 206 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE unwise at this moment to agitate [the eight-hour] question further, Disque wired, as he had earlier telegraphed to Frankfurter. "Every re port to me indicates labor conditions in excellent shape and labor will ing to allow 8-hour question to solve itself which it should do within a few months. It is my hope to let this matter rest temporarily." 31 Unlike his lumbermen friends, Disque was not dead set against agita tion on the eight-hour day. He had never forgotten Parker's argument that workmen saw the shorter workday as the primary reform. Surely if the SPD-Legion apparatus achieved this basic improvement for north western lumberworkers, they would respond gratefully by joining the latter and cooperating with the former. Perhaps the golden age woulc come in by the back door of the eight-hour issue, if its introduction could be arranged by volunteering rather than coercion. To be sure, Disque, though in basic agreement with Parker, dis trusted the man increasingly as details of the mid-January fiasco came out. Their former amiability was not regained. The fact remained however, that Parker had advanced Disque's fortunes. For one thing, the War Department was now committed to approval of the eight-hour day for the Northwest once lumbermen offered to accept the reform. For another, as a completely unanticipatable dividend from Parker' misfortune, the lumbermen now trusted Disque more than ever. 32 The colonel, to his credit, sensed this shifting of opinion. Alert to the pres ence of opportunity, Disque moved swiftly to realize whatever promise the revised situation offered. Though still barred from the Inland Em pire by the sluggishness of Army fiscal officials, Disque might now hope for even greater laurels than enlarged jurisdiction for his command, iJ he won the eight-hour prize. 31 Disque to Suzzallo, Jan. 23, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. 32 Entry, Jan. 22, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. k to' Chapter u Breakthrough In some strange way, Disque had completely escaped association with the eight-hour efforts of Parker and Suzzallo so far as the lumbermen were concerned. For example, on January 17, the day the ruinous story broke on Parker's abortive adventure, the powerful lumberman and state senator, Bloedel, who was also Disque's close adviser at this time, wired to U.S. Shipping Board chairman Edward N. Hurley. Deeply concerned over lumber output because of his need for boatbuilding woodstuffs, Hurley was impressed with Bloedel's recommendation that "centralized authority be given a military head for government lumber production for all [procurement] departments stationed on the Pacific Coast, preferably Colonel Disque." According to Bloedel, Disque "has secured the whole-hearted support of all operators and employees through the . . . Loyal Legion." Once granted over-all authority, Disque could force sawmill owners, who presently ignored government orders in favor of more profitable private contracts, to hew to the patriotic line. 1 In a similar vein, lumberman Ames helped to form a committee of the Lumbermen's Protective Association, charged with fending off any imposition of the eight-hour day. The Association's president and the secretary of Ames's company was Grammer, who was well known as Disque's supporter. Grammer was placed in charge of the anti-eight- hour committee. He reported to Ames late in January that Disque "has arrived at the conclusion personally that we are not in danger of any I.W.W. strikes this year." Therefore no eight-hour reform was necessary to prevent strikes. It also appears from Grammer's report, as sifted through Ames, that Disque was letting it be known that Parker and Suzzallo were the culprits behind the recent effort to bring that reform into practice. Ames concluded that lumbermen were "inclined to look upon it here from the standpoint that our position ... is a strong one," and that the abortive eight-hour attempt was "simply carrying out the tactics that the administration officials have pursued all along, of trying to wear someone out and gradually get the weak ones to give in, and 1 Bloedel's wire and others quoted in Hurley to Labor Secretary Wilson, Tan. 22, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 207 208 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE finally get the object the labor unions are striving for by the voluntary action of mill men and loggers." 2 Disque apparently agreed with men of such viewpoint — unofficially, of course. The noteworthy fact is that he was actor enough to convince these suspicious, intelligent, influential lumbermen that he was with them on the inadvisability of the eight-hour day. Although Parker and Suzzallo were already feeling the effects of the blame that Disque was letting them shoulder, they, too, continued loyally to support him. Suzzallo, as a state official holding the politically exposed position of president of the University of Washington, bore the brunt of the lum- bermen's ire. On January 27, Grammer's committee met with other groups of west coast lumbermen and with Bloedel at Seattle. Hereto- fore, as chairman of the state defense council, Suzzallo had enjoyed an automatic entree to similar deliberations among the operators, as he did to AFL meetings. But now Suzzallo's secretary reported to Governor Lister that he "was unable to get into the [lumbermen's] meeting." Thinking it best to let tempers cool, Suzzallo decided to devote the next ten days to a tour of the campuses of the state universities of Oregon and California. Before heading south, he had "a long talk with Disque," and then postponed the projected tour for a day. The colonel, strictly confidentially, told Suzzallo that he "does not think the situation can be settled except on the 8-hour day basis." Disque's attitude "is absolutely all right," Suzzallo wrote Lister. "Dr. Parker, as well as the lumbermen, are getting behind Col. Disque and it looks as if the problem would be solved in that way." Clearly, Disque was talking out of both sides of his mouth on the eight-hour issue. His histrionics achieved success. Although Suzzallo did not know it until later, the meeting of January 27 from which he was excluded was vitally important. The lumbermen there, representing the hard core of the Protective Association member- ship, agreed to "let Col. Disque determine from day to day what should be done on the labor problem in the industry." 3 Disque, through his native mastery of backstage maneuvering, had achieved the first real breakthrough after nine months of weary effort. The eight-hour ques- tion was now in his hands for decision, not by government fiat, but rather through the voluntary delegation of power from the most power- ful lumber producers on the coast. No wonder Disque had not wanted to disturb the preliminaries which had brought him this vote of con- fidence, through raising the eight-hour issue earlier in January. 2 Ames to Talbot, Jan. 25, 1918, copy in Disque Papers. 3 All data from an undated, unsigned memorandum for Governor Lister, Lister Papers. Contextual factors make its reliability unquestionable. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 209 That night Disque called Suzzallo and Parker to his Portland office and told them of his success. The two university men, however hurt they must have felt at their isolation from affairs and at their exposure to the lumbermen's ire, leaped at the opportunity to further Disque's chances for a victory. They at once wired Secretary Baker, undoubtedly with Disque's approval. "We feel that this understanding between the industry and the War Department will save the situation as fast as is necessary for effective spruce production." They recommended, as had lumberman Bloedel, that Disque have "full power" over all western lumber matters. 4 Then Suzzallo continued south and Parker entrained to follow the Salzman group to Washington, D.C. Their recommendation was particularly attractive to President Wil- son and his Cabinet heads. During the preceding four weeks Wilson had "taken over" the nation's railroads. Fuel Administrator Harry Garfield had restricted consumer manufacturing in order to conserve coal; Food Administrator Hoover had set forth his austerity program. Public re- action to these impositions was far from universally favorable. Western congressmen had added criticism because of the reported plan of the President to stipulate the eight-hour day in the lumber industry. Now, if Disque, at the lumbermen's request, accepted responsibility for all matters in that industry, it got the administration off the hook at least on this exacerbating subject. If Disque "succeeds in getting the sufficient supply of spruce and fir to meet the needs of the Government, the con- templated [eight-hour government contract stipulation] recommenda- tion will not be pressed," Labor Secretary Wilson informed Senator Hiram Johnson. Disque wanted a preliminary matter taken care of before he let the Wilson administration slide off the hook. Through Suzzallo, he let Frankfurter know his terms. The SPD-4L funds, which had been de- layed somehow and which were needed before Disque could expand operations inland, must be forthcoming. Once this pecuniary block was removed, Disque would bend every effort to have the lumbermen volun- tarily agree to the eight-hour day. Frankfurter suddenly found the necessary amount in some War De- partment budgetary hideaway. Disque could now move the SPD and the Legion eastward into the Inland Empire at his pleasure, and he set the machinery into motion at once to do so. 5 At the same time he saw 'Suzzallo and Parker to Baker, Jan. 27, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. A note in Disque Papers states that Parker, before sending this telegram to Baker, read it to Bloedel over the telephone for confirmation as to accuracy. 5 Wilson to Johnson, Feb. 3, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Suzzallo to B. H. Hornby, Jan. 28, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. 210 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE to it that lumbermen east and west of the mountains learned that the Legion was henceforth of larger moment in northwestern lumber affairs — that he was the single most important government official con- cerned with production in the tall timber region. Frankfurter was apparently shocked at the colonel's sudden ascent in importance and recent assertions of independence. Distrusting over- blown military power as a threat to democracy, Frankfurter tried once more to tie down the SPD organization while at the same time sanction- ing the reformist goals that Parker had planted in the Legion. Neither Frankfurter nor Parker realized that the 4Ls flourished only where the SPD prepared its way. In a recommendation of January 28 to Secretary Baker, Frankfurter wanted Disque committed to immediate introduction of the eight-hour day, to an "educative campaign" for lumberworkers, to the "correction of conditions in [lumber] camp[s] that require correction," and, last, to the use of soldiers as part of the labor force in the lumber industry only as the Secretary of Labor and "a representative of the Aircraft Board such as Dr. Parker . . . should agree on." 6 Frankfurter could not yet know (Parker was still traveling eastward) that Disque believed that the lumbermen were far more interested in the soldier-workers of the SPD as a source of labor than in the uncertain supply of the civilian Legionnaires. The reforms that Frankfurter's memorandum proposed came first only if the lumberworkers were con- sidered to be the primary or sole problem. As Disque saw things, how- ever, the workmen were one part of the equation, the producers being equally important. No doubt Disque supported the commitments Frankfurter wished to impose concerning the eight-hour day, the educa- tion campaign, and the correction of substandard conditions. The colonel, however, wanted to control the timing of these programs. There was room for adjustment on this difference. No capacity for accommodation existed, however, concerning the last point Frankfurter made, that Parker should act as a governor over Disque's employment of the SPD's soldiers. Apparently Parker had not informed Frankfurter of his growing estrangement from Disque. The unfortunate inclusion in Frankfurter's recommendation of Parker's name as the nominated monitor on Disque's use of the SPD was to the colonel a gratuitous insult akin to a slur on his personal and profes- sional honor. Without question Frankfurter had not intended it as one. 6 Frankfurter, ms. "Memorandum for the Secretary of War," Jan. 28, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 2 1 1 He had only wished to insure that a civilian voice was retained in the highest reaches of Disque's expanding para-military empire, not to prick his sensitive skin. 7 However insulted, a colonel does not normally defy the wishes of an assistant to the War Secretary. Disque, however, realized that he was in an unusually strong position. His supporters among the lumbermen were amassing weight on his behalf among western congressmen. Persh- ing's cabled demands for airplanes were increasing the sensitivity of the War Department to the need for great amounts of spruce. Disque felt able to fend off the proposed Frankfurter restriction. Through Leadbetter, alert in the War Department, Disque received a copy of Frankfurter's fourfold recommendation to Baker on the night of the 28th, only hours after the Secretary read it. Later that night Disque let Baker know that he accepted fully the first three of Frank- furter's stipulations, and that he would have included them himself in any formal statement of his purposes. But if he had to operate under the fourth point of Frankfurter's recommendation, then Disque would throw up the assignment and leave the Army.' Probably Disque had little fear that Baker would, or could, force the issue. Almost all lumbermen had accepted Disque, personally, as their overseer. If the government wanted to exploit successfully and quickly the breakthrough that he had made, based upon the trust offered him by the lumber operators, then it would have to be through him. It was obvious by the next morning that Disque had won out. To Labor Secretary Wilson, Baker reported on the new developments, omitting all mention of the proposed Frankfurter restriction. "This seems a rather satisfactory settlement of the situation," he wrote. "Do you not think so?" The Labor Secretary did. He, Baker, and General Squier, among others in the Cabinet and Defense Council, agreed that Disque should have a free hand in the West in order to spare the ad- ministration what Baker called "further trouble" and yet bring forth more spruce. Disque waited to hear from Leadbetter the good news of this decision. Armed with this substantial reinforcement, he then telegraphed Gompers: Lumber operators in Northwest have placed decision on eight hour basic day in my hands and will accept it upon [my] request. I am sure it is but a short time before it will be accomplished, but it is urgent that [the] matter stand 7 "Carleton Parker" folder, undated memorandum, Disque Papers. 8 Copies of exchange of telegrams, Jan. 28-29, 1918, folder labeled "Leadbetter Wires," Disque Papers. 212 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE without further order[s] or news items from Washington. Believe me our plans are working to satisfactory end, and trust your confidence in me is such as to halt further [AFL] activity in Washington [state] for time being. 9 Having fended Frankfurter off, Disque was trying the same trick with Gompers, who w r orried Disque because of the two hats he wore. Disque not only wanted Gompers to keep AFL organizers clear of SPD-Legion activities for a while, but also, in his capacity as labor representative on the Council of National Defense, to dim the publicity spotlight that the Committee of Public Information had turned on the Northwest. For a few hours it appeared that Disque had overreached himself. Gompers was exacerbated at the peremptory tone of Disque's wire, Leadbetter reported on the 29th. All Gompers was waiting for, before unleashing a thunderbolt on Disque's head, was for General Salzman and Parker to arrive at the War Department with what was widely assumed would be a report unfavorable to Disque. "He [Gompers] expects Parker to blast you," Leadbetter gossiped across the Army's telegraph lines to the west coast. 10 Whatever the truth of Leadbetter's implication that Gompers, Frank- furter, and Secretary Baker were desirous of an adverse report on Disque from Parker, events followed a different course. On the 31st, having reached the capital, Salzman and Parker reported that "Colonel Disque has the confidence of the best people on the [Pacific] Coast." His SPD and Legion units deserved all the support that the Board and the Army could offer. Certainly, so far as intra-Army affairs were concerned, the SPD must have priority over all other military units stationed west of the Mississippi. Salzman noted that he and Disque had agreed on the men to form the council of advisers for the colonel, which the Board had earlier stipulated — prominent lumbermen who were experts on logging and milling techniques. So far as the labor problem was con- cerned, which to everyone in the room meant the eight-hour day, Disque had promised Salzman that "the labor situation would remedy itself without [the need for] interference from Washington [D.C.]." Frank- furter listened and apparently made no objections. 11 It was utter triumph for Disque in terms of bureau infighting. In a wire to Suzzallo, Baker signaled the remarkable victory of the unknown 9 Baker to Secretary Wilson, Jan. 29; Wilson to Baker, Jan. 31, 1918, file 33/574-A, RG 280, NA; Baker to Squier, Jan. 29, 1918, file 33/574-B, ibid.; Disque to Gompers, Jan. 29, and Leadbetter to Disque, Jan. 29, 1918, Disque Papers. 10 Leadbetter to Disque (telegram), Jan. 29, 1918, and a far longer letter of that same date, in "Carleton Parker" folder, with copies in telegraphic abstracts, Disque Papers. 11 Ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 180, RG 18, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 2 1 3 colonel over far weightier bureaucratic critics like Frankfurter and Gompers, by asking Suzzallo to continue all possible cooperation with Disque. Between the end of January and mid-February the Aircraft Board approved the considerable expenditures, many of them unau- thorized, that Disque had already vouchered on behalf of the SPD and the Legion. Subsequent resolutions named the lumbermen who had been closest to Disque since his arrival in Portland two months earlier as the Pacific Coast Committee of the Aircraft Board, formally desig- nated to serve under Disque and authorized to exercise in the West all the undefined powers of the parent Board. Henceforth Disque was empowered to employ the authority of the Secretary of War in letting spruce contracts. Similarly, within the Army the Provost Marshal Gen- eral and Quartermaster personnel were directed immediately to honor Disque's requisitions for men and supplies. The adaptation of Van- couver Barracks as a training and staging area for the SPD received top priority. 12 Frankfurter and Parker, still uneasy over Disque's reliability, though unable openly to resist him, decided to maintain close oversight on his subsequent activities. Secretary Baker, in accord that the continental expanse was too great to permit men in the War Department to "judge the possibilities" accurately, agreed that Parker should return to the West at once and add to his mediation and teaching schedule the job of maintaining surveillance over the surprising colonel. At the end of January, Parker in fact became what Disque had erroneously suspected him of being earlier — a spy. 33 Parker's reports during February reflected the fact that northwestern press generally was favorable to Disque's policies. So far as the eight- hour issue was concerned, Parker admitted to Suzzallo, who seems to have been let in on the secret of Parker's assignment, that "Colonel Disque realizes the eight-hour business is merely temporarily in sus- pense. He is trying to find a solution for it." 14 This was accurate reporting. Gently, with as little noise as possible and as painlessly as he could, Disque was trying to reopen the eight-hour question. Immediately after his triumph at the Aircraft Board, he had 12 Ibid., 182, 188, 199, 210-11. The Board's resolution of Feb. 12, 1918 (telegraphic copy in Disque Papers) dealt with the budget question. It is not in the National Archives file. Disque had feared himself liable for almost $50,000 in bills until this passed. Other data in Baker to Suzzallo, Jan. 31, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. 13 Suzzallo to Disque, March 7, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Baker to Secretary Wilson, Feb. 3, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Cornelia Parker, American Idxll, 182-84. 14 Parker to Suzzallo, undated, ca. Feb. 15-20, 1918, "Carleton Parker" folder, Disque Papers. 2 1 4 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE circularized all Legion secretaries. He "recommended" to those picked senior noncommissioned officers of the SPD that it was time for dis- cussion among Legionnaires on the acceptability of an eight-hour day, at 80 per cent of the existing wage rates, but with two additional hours guaranteed at overtime rates. 15 Unsurprisingly, discussion followed at every Legion affiliate. While Disque was busily building up a groundswell of opinion among Legionnaires in the West, the information Parker sent to the War Department on SPD-Legion activities was inspiring discussion back east. Delicate preparations were under way in government departments dealing with railroad labor problems and with questions of labor standards in munitions and cantonment projects. Disque's reintroduc- 1 tion of the eight-hour controversy for lumberworkers unsettled the plans afoot in the other disturbed war industries. On February 8, Gen- eral Squier wired Disque a soft-toned "recommendation" that again set the colonel's teeth on edge. He was to "advise" the Secretary of Labor in the future before making any public move in labor matters, especially on the eight-hour front. 36 It seemed to Disque that the recently discarded Frankfurter restric- tion was being revived. The colonel's suspicions of Parker grew larger. Disque's lumbermen friends furthered this attitude. They alleged that Gompers, fearing that the Army would steal glory from the AFL by championing the eight-hour reform, was exerting pressure through Parker against free action for Disque. Actually the admonition from General Squier was occasioned by some lumbermen, not labor men. The dissident minority among the lumber producers, who had opposed the grant of authority to Disque over labor matters, had exerted political pressure on the War Depart- ment through congressmen as soon as Disque's circular on the eight- hour day came to hand. Ames, as example, saw in the circular proof that Disque was dominated by Gompers' agents, Parker and Suzzallo. 17 Disque jumped to the conclusion that Parker was the nettlesome cul- prit, which opinion suited lumbermen very well. When Parker returned from the East, his estrangement from Disque was marked. Commenting happily on this, Ames again felt confidence in Disque, which had been diminished by the colonel's eight-hour 13 4L Bulletin No. 7, Jan. 29, 1918, WLPB files, RG 1, NA. 16 Squier to Baker, Feb. 8, 1918 (marked "copy to Disque"), file 33/574-B, RG 280, NA; Louis Wehle, Hidden Threads of History (New York, 1953), 55-60. 17 Ames to Talbot, Feb. 2, 1918, Box 36, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; entry, ca. Feb. 5-8, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 215 feeler. "Disque is trying to do the right thing by the lumbermen," Ames wrote. "I think he is still with us." 18 Once again Disque's extraordinary good fortune is evident. As before, he, the Legion, and the SPD emerged from this little ruckus free of taint. Others, Parker particularly, received and accepted blame. There- fore, many lumbermen who had earlier worried over Disque's eight- hour circular dropped remaining suspicions as they observed his un- friendliness to Parker. Lumbermen were obviously increasing their status with the colonel. Their place in his formal advisory council was a sign of better times for the producers. It was also a sign of a shift in attitude at the White House and in the War Department as well as on the west coast. President Wilson was as determined as ever to steer clear of a "draft" for civilian labor. Com- pulsory arbitration in his opinion was no solution at all to the unceas- ing labor difficulties that plagued the war effort. Proposed congressional legislation, looking to a "draft" of all labor, would consume excessive time at best, and inevitably would involve virulent partisan, class, and sectional strains that Wilson wished to gloss over. Therefore, the Presi- dent was moving toward the creation by executive order of a media- tion and adjustment commission for use in war industries, similar to Parker's old Cantonments Commission, which, hopefully, would act swiftly to fend off labor trouble. Early in April, Wilson created the Na- tional War Labor Board, headed by former President William Howard Taft and Frank P. Walsh. The operative policy of the Taft-Walsh Board was, in Wehle's words, "that there would be no strikes or lock- outs." For the first time, however, organized labor as such received official recognition. Meanwhile, common gossip in the Northwest during February was that President Wilson overestimated the power and influence of the AFL. After all, the 1917 agreement that Gompers had made with War Secretary Baker, eschewing strikes, had proved useless. In February 1918, when Parker returned to Portland from Washington, D.C., with accounts of the shift in White House thinking, Disque saw little reason to hold labor organization of the Northwest in higher regard than was true back east. Far better than the President, Disque understood the frailty of the AFL locals on the Pacific Coast. Therefore, he re- sented more than ever the arrogance of Gompers, as he erroneously saw it, represented by General Squier's restrictive telegram of Feb- ruary 8. 19 1M Ames to Talbot, Feb. 4, 1918, copy in Disque Papers. ^On the Taft-Walsh Board, see Wehle, op. cit., 55; Maxwell Raddock, Portrait of 2 1 6 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Some reports Disque heard in February of the impending new Taft- Walsh Board had it that all labor matters would come under its pur- view. These rumors turned out to be unfounded. But they further unsettled Disque, who suspected that support for the proposed board and for the expansive powers attributed to it came from his enemies, who wished to strip the SPD-Legion apparatus of its unfolding labor relations functions. Some lumbermen grew restrained in their attitude to Disque, and he supposed this was because the board was rumored to have the lumber industry on its agenda. To counter this adverse development, Disque set up a little political charade, a game in which he was exhibiting considerable skill. He had his lumbermen friends arrange for the Portland Chamber of Commerce to telegraph the War Secretary, inquiring if the threat of imposition of the eight-hour day by the War Department was really quiescent. Baker, replying, pub- licly stated that the "eight-hour workday . . . will not be pressed if lumbermen in cooperation with Colonel Disque produce sufficient spruce and fir for Government needs in aeroplane and ship construc- tion." If, on the other hand, production continued to lag, then Baker would resort to alternative policies, including, Disque supposed, other leaders than himself and other organizations than the Legion and SPD. 30 Disque felt himself to be at a crossroads. The Baker telegram set an indefinite but short time limit before the intrusion of the new labor board of which he was hearing. Before it came into being, Disque believed that he would have to display an SPD-Legion solution for the labor difficulties of the lumber regions. Failing in this meant failure in his mission and surrendering control to other hands. Even partial failure held evil portents symbolized by the recent "intrusion" of the Secretary of Labor in SPD affairs, as General Squier had specified. The most hopeful augury Disque saw was a weakening in the ada- mant anti-eight-hour stand of some of the most rigid lumbermen. Like Disque, most lumbermen were apprehensive over the new labor board of which they too were hearing disturbing rumors. Disque's industry advisers spread the word that the timber operators were far better off under the existing SPD-Legion dispensation, even if it included an eight-hour day, than they would be otherwise. How much weight could an American Labor Leader (New York, 1955), 112-113. Disque's views are in his entries for Feb. 2-10, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. On the shift in Wilson's views, see Roger N. Baldwin's reminiscence (1953-4), I, 58-60, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, wherein he notes that the President and Secretary Baker in February 1918 lost interest in civil liberties matters. 20 Baker to Portland Chamber of Commerce, Feb. 7, 1918, file 33/574-B, RG 280, NA; Disque's reaction in entries, Feb. 2-10, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 2 1 7 lumbermen have in a vast national mediation structure in which giant producers such as steel and petroleum were also represented? Disque at least offered an organization where only lumber interests were in- volved. At Disque's behest, the large lumbering operations that Poison, Mark Reed, and the Weyerhaeusers conducted announced eight-hour work schedules to become effective in mid-February. Capitalizing on the publicity attending this event, Disque called a series of conferences with lumbermen. At these meetings he stressed the theme that the eight- hour corporations were going to receive the most substantial SPD and Legion assistance at his disposal, as well as other advantages such as transcontinental railroad space priorities for their products, which he promised to obtain. Indignant, stubborn lumbermen like Ames grumbled that it was little short of blackmail. He and others of like mind would stand firm on the ten-hour day. But such staunch principles eroded swiftly. Probably with SPD and Legion encouragement, many lumberworkers quit ten-hour firms in favor of putative eight-hour jobs. Disque saw to it that Legion locals at the eight-hour facilities received special atten- tion so far as improvements in working, messing, and living conditions were concerned. Some ten-hour men tried to fight. They threatened to raise wages wildly and to pay fat bonuses to recruit scarce labor, but even standpatters like Ames had to admit that these expedients were futile. The lumbermen's unity was falling apart in the face of Disque's determined onslaught, Ames regretfully acknowledged. To cap it off, the IWW was threatening to renew the on-again, off-again strike, cen- tering attention on the ten-hour firms. AFL men stated that in the event of a strike they might picket only the ten-hour holdouts. 21 At one of these meetings of early February most lumbermen decided to accept what they could no longer prevent. But the stubborn anti- eight-hour minority still blocked an admission of surrender. "The thing got quite tense," wrote Ames. To prevent an outbreak of fisti- cuffs among the 275 angry lumbermen, a committee of twenty-five was appointed. This committee was to have two weeks to seek a solution acceptable to the main body of the lumbermen, who would reassemble on the 25th to consider the committee's suggestions. Everyone at the meeting seemed pleased to leave the vexed subject to the committee. 22 Disque announced that he was entraining immedi- 21 All data on the foregoing in folder labeled "February 1918 Operations," Disque Papers. 22 Ames to Talbot, Feb. 16, 1918, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 2 1 8 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ately for the War Department to report on events; his private purpose was to ascertain more definitely where he stood in the favor of those in power and where the SPD and Legion would fit into the altering labor mediation picture. He planned to return by the 25th, in time to learn the lumbermen's decision on the eight-hour workday. Ab- senting himself during the critical fortnight to come permitted Disque to escape connection with the acrimony that would attend whatever decision the committee reached. Naturally, however, Disque did not leave the committee unguided. He entrusted his advisory council of lumbermen with a delicate, con- fidential task. They were to warn their colleagues on the committee that unless Disque was empowered to impose the eight-hour day, the Legion and the SPD could extend no further promise of labor or other aid. Instead, Disque's dual Army organizations would retract opera- tions. By implication, AFL organizers would swoop in where Legion locals now existed. The now-shattered lumbermen's ranks could not withstand the depredations of AFL and wobbly raiders. Labor strife, certain to result, would keep lumber output low. Profits from the gov- ernment's vast lumber purchasing programs would go by default to southeastern and Canadian producers. Certainly, government spokes- men would damn the recalcitrant northwesterners as unpatriotic and greedy men, who preferred to close timber operations rather than to offer workers a decent scale of hours at work. To underline the message, on the day before he left Portland for the East, Disque met rather ostentatiously with Marsh and Young of the AFL. Lumbermen could not know how warily the two> Federation executives behaved with Disque. 23 Nevertheless, Disque still had doors to the AFL to use if lumbermen refused to open ways to labor peace. His gamble under way, Disque began the long train ride from the Columbia to the Potomac. He kept in touch with his advisory council- men and with SPD subordinates by telegraph. At every railroad stop Disque, cigar clenched between his teeth, received and sent wires. He realized that however well informed he might be, he was all but help- less to affect the course of events. Holding his impatience in check, he waited out the seemingly endless miles. Finally arriving at the War Department, he met with Secretary Baker, General Squier, and Coffin. Disque stressed the dramatic nature of what was in the making across the continent. He asked if he would have full charge of northwestern lumber production affairs, including 23 Entry, ca. Feb. 10-15, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 219 labor matters, without interference, if the lumbermen capitulated on the eight-hour day and accepted it as the keystone of a reformed labor standards policy. Disque also inquired if the SPD-Legion apparatus would remain independent of the new mediation organization being assembled at the capital. Baker replied affirmatively to both inquiries, Then General Squier let slip the fact that Parker had been report- ing on Disque to the War Department. Disque was outraged. He offered to resign. Dissuaded by the others, he asked for a promise against a repetition of such overseership, which reflected so directly upon his honor as an officer. Secretary Baker capitulated at once.' 4 Barely mollified, Disque prepared to return to Portland to learn the outcome of his all-or-nothing gamble on the eight-hour-day ques- tion. He took with him a deep sense of injured pride and resentment at what he felt was inexcusable betrayal. His newer friends among the lumbermen had long believed that Parker was Gompers' tool. Now it seemed to Disque that they had been correct. As his train hurtled westward, Disque was losing, out of personal pique, whatever respect he had once had for the economist and for the leading personalities and purposes of the AFL, And, ironically, his firm support for the eight-hour reform, which would soon bring northwestern lumbermen to a critical point in their personal and corporate relations with one another, was again swiftly ebbing away. Winter storms and the bottlenecked, eastern-flowing railroad traffic delayed Disque's train almost from the minute it began its westward course. Impatient at the frequent halts and slowdowns, Disque again employed the telegraph to keep abreast of events in Portland, where on the 25th three hundred leading lumbermen assembled. The eight- hour question dominated the agenda. Disque knew by telegraphed reports he received that his supporters among the lumbermen, along with SPD officers, were circulating in the audience, pleading for a show of trust in Disque and for a delegation to him of "real power," as Ames reported the scene, instead of "pleasant generalities." 25 Disque heard from Grammer that his presence was necessary. "Re- gret your delay," Grammer wired, "We are anxious to submit proper recommendations before March 1st." So was Disque. Their anxiety, however, was unnecessary. The ten-hour men were wearing out fast, reduced to petulant fussing by the abrasive attrition of the preceding ^Disque to Parker, March 1, 1918, same to Suzzallo, same date, Suzzallo Papers; Secretary Wilson to Baker, Feb. 21, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 2r> Ames to Talbot, Feb. 28, 1918, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 220 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE nine months. Disque could take advantage of this weakness, but he did not create it. Lumbermen like Reed, Poison, and Grammer, having become convinced of the need for reform, were "wearing down" the emotional commitment against its institution that had for so long dominated in the employers' councils. "Even those operators with whom it has been a religion not to grant the eight-hour day," Disque recalled soon afterward, ". . . guaranteed that they were going to stand behind it and . . . cheerfully to back it up."" 8 To help this sentiment along, Disque, still on his laggard train, telegraphed Secretary of Labor Wilson for assistance. Wilson wired a California pine producer on the 26th, and saw to it that Disque re- ceived a copy of the following message to forward to Portland: "My understanding is that the lumber producers of the Northwest will comply with any requirements that Colonel Disque . . . may impose relative to the hours of labor ... I shall not press the [imposition of the] . . . eight-hour workday [by fiat] if the arrangements [to be] made with Colonel Disque [at Portland] result in a sufficient supply [of spruce and Douglas fir] being obtained." 27 Not everyone in Wilson's administration was equally dedicated to Disque's success. Even as the colonel's train neared Portland, Frank- furter made another effort to block his way. Apparently he still feared that Disque was amassing too much power, which would predictably increase further if the eight-hour line was won. In addition, he ap- peared to be concerned that Disque was leaning too much to the side of the lumbermen. Frankfurter now proposed that the semiautonomous command struc- ture of the SPD be disbanded. The division's troopers, he suggested, should be transferred en bloc to existing regiments stationed in the Northwest. The lumberworker-soldiers might still find employment as labor supplements, but their officers, once removed from the aegis of the SPD, would be more easily subjected to the oversight of the War Department's civilians. This last-minute onslaught by Frankfurter received Secretary Baker's scantest consideration. A possible breakthrough on the seemingly im- penetrable eight-hour front, achieved without obvious coercion from 20 Disque in Minutes of the Convention of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumber- men, March 4, 1918, Portland, Oregon (n.p., n.d.), 14; Grammer to Disque, Feb. 21, 1918, Spruce Production Section, Equipment Division files, RG 18, NA; and Ames to Talbot, Feb. 28, 1918, copv in Disque Papers. ^Wilson to C. S. Smith, Feb. 26, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA, with copy in Disque Papers, with notation that the copy, received while en route to Portland, had been sent to Grammer, who spread its significance around at the meeting with telling effect. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 22 1 the Wilson administration, was sweet news to the Secretaries of War and Labor. They decided that alternative schemes like Frankfurter's must await news of the success or failure attending Disque's current bid. He would have his chance to lead the lumbermen. 28 After all this, Disque was again unsure that he wanted it. The long hours of the tense westward train ride gave him too much opportunity to nurse the bitterness derived from the news he had garnered that Parker had been spying on him. Then a wire from Leadbetter reached Disque's train, telling him of Frankfurter's new effort to supplant the SPD. Leadbetter embellished his coded account with a conclusion that both Frankfurter and Parker were Gompers' minions. "I am quit with Parker and with his friends," Disque noted. He un- critically accepted as truth Leadbetter's assertion that Frankfurter was motivated by prolabor considerations, rather than out of a concern for keeping military power in its proper place. "I will not be made a fool of by the labor men," Disque continued, in a brief record he made of his distressing thoughts. Feeling his honor besmirched, and with it that of the Army, Disque came to> an absurd and, fortunately, tempo- rary conclusion. He decided to oppose the eight-hour-day plan that the Portland assembly was readying to approve. 29 Mere pique swung Disque to this erratic tack. Parker had always insisted that the eight-hour banner was a charismatic symbol, capable of rationalizing the chaos attending labor-management relations in the lumber industry. Anything Parker approved was now anathema to Disque. Had Disque continued in this resolve, he would have wrecked the Portland conference. His prestige was clearly adequate to defeat a measure he opposed, even if it was not yet lofty enough to effect every- thing he favored. Opposing the eight-hour proposal would at once have brought the ten-hour minority to his side. Continued dissension would perpetuate indecision. New strikes would occur. Greater efforts would be exerted by internal security agents and by vigilantes to crush the renascent wobblies. An inevitable further decrease in spruce pro- duction would have to be recorded. When Disque's train finally reached Portland on the morning of February 27, half a day late, he was still moodily determined to hold on the ten-hour line. But Hamlet was a part foreign to Disque's nature; he was no injured innocent seeking frustration but a man geared to 28 Secretary Wilson to Baker, Feb. 21, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 20 Leadbetter's telegram, Feb. 22, in "Leadbetter Wires" folder; and entries, Feb. 22, 23, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. 222 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE achieving concrete results. Whatever his present antipathy to Parker, Disque had learned well the lesson Parker preached — that improved production of spruce could be achieved only after the eight-hour day stabilized labor-management relations. Last, Disque quickly realized that the lumbermen, still wearily in session at Portland, were offering him an opportunity to lead them in a patriotic crusade. It was more than he could resist. 30 His train had barely come to a halt in Portland's station when Gram- mer met him to bring him up to date on what was taking place at the conference. Without stopping for lunch, Disque hurried to the meeting hall. "He immediately went into session with the committee of twenty- five," Ames reported that day, "and it was 2:30 in the afternoon before Colonel Disque and the committee . . . were ready to talk to the gen- eral meeting." 31 What Disque truthfully reported was that very reluctantly he had been persuaded by the committeemen to go along with them and to recommend to the assembly an eight-hour day for the lumber indus- try in the Northwest, to commence March 1. "I did not force the idea on the operators," Disque insisted soon thereafter "although from the beginning ... I have been a thorough believer in the principle of a basic eight-hour day, having put it into operation in some large manu- facturing plants where I was in charge." But that had been in Michi- gan, in peacetime, and in a situation where Disque's word was law. With a war on, and with men overseas, many Americans wanted lum- berworkers to forgo the luxury of a short workday. Disque would not, however, obstruct the desire of the lumbermen in convention to effect the eight-hour reform. His only doubt was whether production would hold up under the hours reduction. If it did not, then other roads must open, perhaps the simple byway of guaranteed overtime at time- and-a-half rates. 32 Nothing could have been better calculated to impress his weary auditors than this obviously uncalculated reluctance to champion the eight-hour cause. Here, perhaps, was a man who deserved power be- cause, like the lumbermen, he was not sure that the power to control hours should exist at all, except in an employer. "The first resolution passed," Ames jubilated, "was substantially to leave the whole matter in the hands of Colonel Disque with authority to act." 30 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 443, quotes the 1950 recollection of Oregon lumberman Arthur Dixon, who heard from Disque in Portland in late February 1918 of the colonel's support for the ten-hour day. This seems incongruous until his anger with Parker is understood. 31 Ames to Talbot, Feb. 28, 1918, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 32 Minutes . . . March 4, 1918, 14. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 223 Obstructionists tried "to stall off this thing for a week," Ames wrote, but the eieht-hour tide had set in too powerfully. Sensing the drift of affairs, and ably coached by Grammer, Disque sat quietly as hours passed. Around him lumbermen exhausted themselves in angry, incon- clusive arguments. Imminent dusk darkened the room. Then, as Ames reported it: Colonel Disque asked the lumbermen to pass three resolutions, which were really resolutions of confidence in him. First he suggested that a representative from each local of the L.L.L.L. be chosen at a meeting of the employees of each mill and camp, to meet him in Portland ... on Monday, March 4th. . . . This resolution was agreed to unanimously. Then he wanted to know if the meeting would approve whatever action he might take in the [eight-hour] premises, and this was agreed to unanimously. Then he wanted to know if the industry would agree to a maximum hourly wage to be decided upon by him after conference with the [employers'] committee of twenty-five and a confer- ence with the representatives of the L.L.L.L. locals, . . . and this was agreed to. 33 Adjournment for dinner followed. But Disque had no chance to eat. Instead he went with a few of the most prominent lumbermen to SPD headquarters in the Yeon Building. For three hours Disque, his staff officers, and the operators considered means to bring the resolutions just passed into effect as quickly and smoothly as possible. Convinced by his subordinates that the SPD and the 4Ls could handle the job, and now committed once again to the eight-hour day, Disque returned to the full meeting. It was 8:30 p.m. on the 27th when the committee offered the sub- stance of Disque's determination to the assembly. The lumbermen quietly heard his ultimatum that if they wanted him, the SPD, and the Legion to take care of their wartime labor needs, they must signal their desire by at once initiating the eight-hour day. He had "com- plete authority" from the War Department, Disque asserted, to stamp the government's seal of approval on whatever he felt was wise. Debate followed. Midnight came. Then the last of the holdout mi- nority either acceded or, like Ames, left the hall in disgust. The Ore- gon Journal's reporter described the "solemn stillness" that pervaded the room as, "on a standing vote, every lumberman present rose to his feet and by a unanimous decision, ordered an application of the eight- hour day to every mill and camp in the two states." Dozens of tele- grams like the following one went out from Portland in the early hours of February 28: In accordance with orders from Colonel Disque, who has just returned from -'Ames to Talbot, Feb. 28, 1918, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. This is the best firsthand account I have seen. 224 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Washington clothed with complete authority, and agreement at meeting of two hundred fifty or more lumbermen and loggers in Portland yesterday, all mills and logging camps in Oregon and Washington will operate eight hours only daily starting March first. Rate of wages will be determined and sent out from Colonel Disque's office within week or ten days after consultation with lumber- men's committee and representatives of employes from each Loyal Legion Loggers and Lumbermen local. Writing full particulars. 34 The breakthrough had been made. Disque, the SPD, and the Legion were indissolubly linked with this momentous advance in conditions of work embracing an entire region and an important industry. To be sure, the pressures of a world war were required to bring the employers to this reform. Even so, eight-hour sentiment won out at the February Portland meeting on the very personal basis that Disque was in com- mand of the SPD and of the Legion. However coerced, lumbermen would not go the whole way to Canossa unless Disque led them. They looked with deep suspicion on politicians generally and on President Wilson, his Secretary of Labor, and his Secretary of War in particular. Disque and the Army were acceptable as the torchbearers of the eight- hour reform because in the lumbermen's slanted view they seemed untainted by Gompers' hand, unlike the rest of the Wilson adminis- tration. It is very doubtful that any other individual or institution then in the labor relations picture could have broken through the scarified attitude of the lumbermen against the eight-hour day, in time to be useful in strategic terms. 33 Only Disque stood forth in seeming purity, untouched by the AFL's tentacles. His achievement was in gaining consent for the eight-hour day from the employers instead of imposing it on them. Congratulations flowed in on Disque, and they were sweet to his taste. President Wilson was "heartily glad" that Disque had won out, and Secretary of Labor Wilson echoed the theme. Herbert Hoover and Governor Lister sent flattering notes. Coffin boasted around the War Department that Disque was his protege, and was "proving him- self the man for the job." £8 If the eight-hour acceptance titillated officials back east, it was front-page news in the Northwest. Newspapers from San Diego north 34 Telegram in Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; and see Oregon Journal, Feb. 28, 1918; Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 443. 85 Portland Telegram, Feb. 23, 1918, surveys Disque's popularity. 3,3 Secretary Wilson to President Wilson, March 1, 1918; President to Secretary Wilson, quoting the President's telegram to Disque, March 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Coffin to Asst. Sec. War Benedict Crowell (copy), Feb. 28; Lister to Disque, March 7; Hoover to same, March 11, 1918, all Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 225 into Canada praised Disque's accomplishment, along with predictions that with the eight-hour day achieved, other problems would fall by the wayside. "All labor disputes have been settled," the Oregon Journal editorialized. "The mills producing spruce have been harmonized and coordinated." The Portland News prayed that strikes were now a thing of the past, and when March 1 came and ended without the walkouts that the IWW had predicted, the prayer seemed answered. Disque, the News writer somewhat incredulously asserted, "has per- suaded labor to accept him on faith." There were a few sour notes in the press. The Portland Telegram, voice of the most conservative lumbermen, would not recede from the position that an eight-hour limit was a basic error at a time when production increases were sought. 37 Disque was not surprised at asser- tion of independence. "As long as the rock-ribbed boys obey the eight- hours' ruling," he noted, "I won't worry." Nor was he taken unawares by the fact that the Seattle Business Chronicle insisted that the eight- hour reform had been unnecessary. "The [labor] trouble would have been settled months ago and there would have been no talk of lumber production impeding the war program, had the mill owners been let alone to handle their own affairs," the Chronicle?, publisher charged, adding that prolabor politicians and mediators, Governor Lister, Presi- dent Wilson, Labor Secretary Wilson, and Frankfurter, had broken down resistance until finally the lumbermen could hold out no longer. The wobbly press was equally critical. Its major theme was that the IWW had brought about the eight-hour day by its constant, decade- long exertion of pressure on the employers. There never was a strike planned for March 1, IWW accounts continued, and even had there been, it was no longer necessary. 38 Disque shrugged off these pinpricks. He was involved in far too im- portant work to worry over them. The eight-hour breakthrough was in effect a green light for the SPD and the Legion to run at their full power and speed. Disque, Coffin predicted to Assistant War Secretary Benedict Crowell, would soon be involved in "the greatest business enterprise ever instituted in the timber industry." The colonel must have full freedom of action so that he could decide matters at once and put "speed, punch, and efficiency into this effort." 39 37 Oregon Journal, March 1; Portland News, March 1; Portland Telegram, March 6, 1918. 38 Chronicle, March 2; Lumberjack Bulletin (supplement to Weekly Industrial Worker), March 9, 1918; Disque's note on a clipping from the Chronicle, undated, "SPD" ledger volume, Disque Papers. 39 Coffin to Crowell, Feb. 28, 1918, copy in Disque Papers. Chapter 12 Some Fruits of Victory With the eight-hour victory won, Disque faced the problem of adjust- ing the Legion and the SPD to the new conditions. These organizations, in a kind of caretaker function, had helped to keep lumberworkers relatively quiescent during the uncertain weeks since November. They had played significant roles in bringing the employers to acceptance of the shorter workday. Disque now intended the Legion and the SPD to be the major levers that would pry loose from the western mountains the spruce and other woods needed for the war. Growth in membership was the predictable first effect of the eight- hour victory on the SPD-Legion organizations. Disque had SPD officers at the ready in Portland's Hotel Tacoma on the night of February 28. As soon as the historic eight-hour conference ended, the division offi- cers moved in to sign up the lumbermen in the Legion. More than 150 producers, who employed over 8000 men, subscribed that night the simple Legion pledge: I, the Undersigned, in consideration of my being made a Member of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, do hereby solemnly pledge my efforts during this war to the United States of America, and will support and defend this Country against enemies, both foreign and domestic. I further agree, by these presents, to faithfully do my duty toward this country by directing my best efforts in every way possible to the production of Logs or Lumber for the construction of Army Airplanes and Ships to be used against our common enemies. That I will stamp out any sedition or acts of hostility against the United States of America which may come within my knowledge, and will do every act and thing which will in general aid in carrying this war to a successful conclusion. Few of the lumbermen who had wrestled that night with the eight- hour dilemma had, after two days of wearying argumentation, the in- ternal resources needed to withstand the SPD recruiters. Referring to the capstone of the eight-hour vote and to the new employer recruits for the Legion, Disque noted somewhat smugly to Suzzallo: "It was a good night's work." 1 Indeed it was. In many ways the manifold achievements of the 1 Feb. 28, 1918 (telegram), copy in Disque Papers. 226 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 227 Legion-SPD apparatus up to this point deserved approval. The official history of the Legion is not hyperbolic when it asserts that "the record of accomplishment of the Loyal Legion reads almost like an industrial fairy story." To be sure, the eight-hour achievement must be accounted the major victory that Disque had won thus far. It was substantial even had there been no other triumphs. The hours-of-work issue had for a quarter of a century brought every preceding effort at bettering employer-worker relations to disaster. Men on both sides of the labor-management fence had centered their sights on achieving this reform, or on resisting it. Now, after merely four months of effort, Disque had won the game. Even "the most stubborn [employers] yielded the point," the Legion's chronicler continued, and agreed to stand behind the eight-hour day, with time and a half for overtime. 2 However great the eight-hour achievement, by the end of February Disque, the Legion, and the SPD had won other substantial advances as well. These subsidiary benefits that the 4Ls and the SPD provided helped greatly, of course, in bringing employers to the point of assent- ing to the eight-hour reform, and brought lumberworkers to agreement on abjuring strikes and slowdowns. It is to this preliminary work performed between November 1917 and March 1918 that this account now turns. So far as the division was concerned, the weeks from November to the end of February were a fruitful time. Recall Disque's difficulties in December in obtaining soldiers and funds for divisional activities, and one reason for self-congratulation is obvious. The early difficulties the division faced were reflected in the opportunistic manner in which the SPD troopers were assigned to certain work. Referring to this ad- ventitious characteristic, the Legion's official account admits that "at various times in the history of the Division, as some special and par- ticular demand made it necessary, . . . military organizations were per- fected, which took the name of 'Provisional Regiments.' ' The "First Provisional Regiment" of the Spruce Production Division was brought up to a strength of a little less than 3000 men by the end of February 1918, and was maintained at about that level for the dura- tion of the war. This regiment was stationed permanently at Vancouver Barracks, where it served as a headquarters, guard, replacement, and training center. The men here lived in the most traditionally military 2 History, 21. 228 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE manner of any of the enlisted soldiers of the division. For example, the inspecting officers of the Western Department of the Army included the SPD headquarters at Vancouver on their agenda, and authority for courts-martial and quartermaster funds came to SPD officers from higher Army echelons at the Presidio. The Vancouver Barracks had a certain amount of its acreage given over to a drill field, rifle range, bayonet course, and the other impedimenta of an infantry training camp. 3 These traditional military functions are of little interest for this account. The First Regiment of the SPD, however, also performed some very untraditional duties. On any given day, more soldiers of this regiment were engaged in learning the use of power winches, industrial saws, and pulleys and cables; in mastering multigeared trailer-trucks; in piloting donkey railroad engines; and in testing the splitting characteristics of different woods, than were condemned to close order drill. The officer in charge of Vancouver Barracks and of the First Regiment was Major R. C. Hill, who evolved a comprehensive training program in woods- manship under the close guidance of Dean Hugo Winkerwerder of the College of Forestry at the University of Washington. Suzzallo had earlier informed Disque that Winkerwerder regarded the SPD-4L experiment in labor supplementation doomed to failure because job habits were wasteful and unscientific. The colonel replied by inviting Winkerwerder in to create a better curriculum at the barracks. Together with the forestry professor, Hill contrived ingenious on-job training devices. Hill was an effective amateur pedagogue and a stern disciplinarian. He brought in old-time lumberworkers as instructors in sawing, and old-line sheriffs to run the military police detachment. 4 Two other responsibilities of the First Regiment were even more untraditional. Throughout the life of the division this regiment kept approximately 10 per cent of the total divisional strength at Vancouver Barracks. This is only partially explicable by the training and other personnel functions it performed. More significantly, this overpropor- tion of headquarters assignment is accounted for by the fact that this regiment was considered to be the primary source of armed strength in the Northwest in the event that the Legion-SPD gamble failed to check the wobblies and a revolutionary outbreak occurred. Of this, the official Legion history states merely that "there had been some thought that the Regiment might possibly be required for riot duty, but no need ever z Ibid„ 14,67. * Winkerwerder to Suzzallo, Jan. 2, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Disque to Stearns, Jan. 4, 1919, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 229 arose." To suggest, as this official account does, that the First Regiment was "a strictly military organization, with strictly military functions," therefore strains the limit of truth. Even as a command for training soldier-woodsmen, the regiment was atypical. As a ready force to quell domestic disturbance, it was perhaps unique in American history since the Civil War. In its educative function, the First Regiment trained SPD officers as well as other ranks. Although an officers' training unit was not formally established until late in 1918, regularized though informal instruction was under way as early as December 1917. As little as possible was put on paper concerning the curriculum these officers enjoyed. New officers assigned to the division were briefed on their unusual and multitudi- nous duties and, when finished, were assigned to the other divisional units along with the enlisted products of the First Regiment's efforts. 5 Like the First, the division's Second Regiment was barracked at Vancouver. The Second Regiment was remarkably different, however. It was engaged in the end-process of milling spruce and fir. The origin of the Second Regiment goes back to the last months of 1917 when Disque toured the spruce stands of the Cascades in company with a party of lumbermen. He learned that the grain of the great spruce, unlike that of most trees, often departed from a straight-line pattern. Sometimes, indeed, spruce grain twisted around the core of a spruce tree like the stripes of a barber pole. Airframes required abso- lutely straight-grained spruce pieces, sometimes twenty-five feet long, to serve as a wing beam or a fuselage former. Trees that might reduce to such fine lumber were by definition none too plentiful. In addition, nature seemed to have complicated matters still further, and man's confused labor troubles merely compounded the natural difficulties. Isolated in stands deep in forests of other types of timber, the giant spruce trees preferred the most precipitous, rugged mountain terrain. Great sums of money would be needed first to cruise about the forests and to locate the spruce stands. Even when these were located, lumberworkers were too scarce to risk using on hazardous spruce -cutting operations. And once cut, the huge logs, even if lightened by riving — that is, by splitting the log to its heart and bringing only the best portions out of the roadless forest — weighed tons. Once such monsters were gotten to mills, the spruce might still be no good for airframe use. Traditional milling techniques too often ruined a fine log, or let in- 6 History, 67-69; ms. memorandum, undated, ca. Feb. 1919, "Summary Evaluation of the First (Provisional) Regiment," Disque Papers. 230 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ferior ones go all through processing, only to be discarded. In such instances, all the vast effort was wasted. Out of these pessimistic forebodings came the functional inspiration for the Second and the Third Regiments. Disque sent Captain O. P. M. Goss to the Dayton-Wright aircraft factory in Ohio and to the Curtiss aircraft works in Buffalo, New York. Goss reported to Disque on his return that the directors of both factories were perturbed at the sub- standard spruce supplies coming eastward and had suggested milling remedies to Goss. Disque accepted these new ideas. Winkerwerder surveyed spruce stands, marking likely trees for the SPD. Through Hawkins and Bloedel, seven lumbermen volunteered their services as missionaries. Disque commissioned four of them into the SPD and sent the septet touring the Northwest's mills. Each was able to recruit a few millers to the newer techniques. Thenceforth, spruce felled for government orders was directed to these cooperative mills. This was an improvement adequate to the low level of spruce output at the beginning of 1918. But Disque anticipated larger yields than even the improved commercial mills could handle. Therefore, em- ploying "volunteer" soldier-labor and using the old polo field at the Vancouver Barracks as a site, during December 1917 and January 1918 Disque built a "cut-up" plant, or mill, designed to employ sawing and planing machinery that would specialize in producing airframe- standard pieces. Through the Aircraft Board, he obtained priorities for the requisite machinery, and on February 7 Mrs. Disque threw the switches at the plant, setting its saws into action. Experts from the lumber industry and from the Northwest's univer- sities, especially Winkerwerder, had devised ever-improving ways of milling the spruce and of cutting the trees in the forests so that milling could go forward more efficiently. Within a few months the 90 per cent wastage rate was reduced to 40 per cent. The 5000 soldiers of the Second Regiment, working twenty-four hours a day at the government cut-up plant and at the great drying kilns that soon sprang up nearby to ready the cut wood for travel eastward, solved the processing prob- lem. In February 1918, its first month of operation, the plant shipped 35,000 feet of spruce. In October, almost twenty million feet went eastward. During the same months, the output of commercial mills remained almost unaltered. No evidence exists that the private entrepreneurs would have made much effort to raise their sights. Indeed, when late in December 1917 Disque announced a maximum price schedule for SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 23 1 rived spruce, equal to his estimation of the production cost at the government plant, private millers launched what Suzzallo called a "propaganda attack" against the SPD operation. According to Suzzallo, the mill operators "have failed to catch the spirit of your whole intent to make any necessary adjustments to get the supply. In it there is a natural commercial jealousy of a larger and more efficient company." For the most part, however, it appears that lumbermen, including millers, accepted Disque's intrusion into private enterprise because they recognized that no one else had proved willing to undertake the necessary job. Even The Timberman editorialized approvingly on Dis- que's milling effort. 6 The remainder of the division served in the field, either as members of the Third Regiment, concerned with transportation, or in one of the dozens of woodcutting "squadrons" which were the smallest units of SPD, and which were linked to the Legion locals. Transportation specialists of the Third Regiment were often detached to SPD squad- rons for special duty, so that by mid- 191 8, when the division's field units exceeded 1000 in number, a great administrative intermixing of the operational personnel had occurred. Modest and accidental causes brought the Third Regiment into being. A few trucks were needed to bring the soldier-builders at work in the cut-up plant from barracks to the site, and to pick up incoming machinery from railroad sidings in Portland, ten miles distant. From this minor role, SPD transport personnel spread out into ever larger areas and tasks derived from the unfolding pattern of SPD-Legion operations. As Disque's field men succeeded in raising log-cutting standards and rates of speed, the problem arose of how to get the increasing flow of spruce to the cut-up plant. Not only were existing roads inadequate, but also winter conditions made such transit haz- ardous and unprofitable for commercial truckers. SPD truckers filled in the gap, bulldozing the great logs through the rugged mountain forests to rough roads cut by SPD engineers — a subunit of the division that had to be created out of the need of the Third Regiment for passageways through the woods. Novel ideas concerning roadbeds, cat- erpillar treads, tires, winches, and block and tackle were tried out. New, giant trucks were later designed and bought for SPD use. Soldier- truckers employed these technological niceties where possible, but often ingenuity and sheer muscle power had to settle matters. By early February almost 1000 men were working in the Third Regi- 8 Winkerwerder to Suzzallo, Jan. 2; Suzzallo to Disque, Jan. 4, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Timberman, Dec. 17, 1917; History, 46-55, 69-70; Wilson Compton, "Production of Airplane Spruce," American Review of Reviews, LVII (June 1918), 629-32. 232 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ment, hauling the great logs from the forest camps to the "reformed" private mills or more usually to the Vancouver cut-up plant. Imme- diately after the eight-hour breakthrough, Disque assigned 1500 more men and officers to the transportation regiment, and 500 more a bit later. All through the remainder of 1918, almost 3000 SPD personnel were roadbuilding and trucking, or readying and operating the railroad spur lines that were replacing many of the primitive truck roads. By November 1918, the Third Regiment employed in its work 226 great trucks, plus 69 trailers, 110 small automobiles, and 12 ambulances; 19 "donkey" railroad engines and more than 100 flatcars were also under its jurisdiction. 7 The foregoing surveyed the work of the three regiments of the SPD, which were engaged in either milling, transport, or military adminis- tration. Taken together, these activities involved fewer than a third of the 30,000 officers and men who by mid-1918 composed the division. The large remainder were in one way or another concerned either with actual woodcutting, as components of an SPD squadron, or with re- cruitment for or direction of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumber- men. Either assignment involved SPD officers and enlisted men in most unusual intimacy with civilians. An SPD woodcutting squadron rarely exceeded 200 men in number. In February 1918, before the eight-hour victory spurted all SPD-4L operations, there were fewer than 200 SPD detachments at work in private camps. A month later the number of squadrons doubled. By the Armistice, 20,000 SPD officers and men were in the field, at more than 1000 sites. Although there were intervening administrative levels to keep check on these proliferating, isolated units, Disque kept close control in his own hands. His adjutant, Stearns, made the Yeon Building head- quarters the real nerve center for SPD field operations. Policy matters were sifted out of lower-echelon district offices and sent "upstairs" to Portland. Disque's insistence that strict and central Army control exist over the division's squadrons created a difficult bureaucratic situation. As the official history has it, "the sending of the soldiers into the woods introduced at once a big problem in military administration. . . . Every 7 Ms. "Summary and Report, Third (Provisional) Regiment, Feb. 1919," Disque Papers. The discrepancy in statistics of men on the regiment's duty roster, between those above and in History, 70-73, is accounted for by the fact that many men listed as on duty in woodcutting squadrons were actually in the Third Regiment's transport lists. The Fourth Regiment (operating another mill) did not come into existence until August 1918, and therefore does not really affect the development of this account. See History, 70. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 233 movement of every detachment, or indeed of every individual, required a separate order." It also required a lumberman, logger, or millowner willing to request that a detachment of soldiers be assigned to his plant or camp. Such a request, reaching the Yeon Building, went through a prescribed routing system, touching at the desks of a dozen officers, each of whom commented on whether or not the appeal should be honored. For example, a request for soldier-woodsmen had on it notations by the SPD's surgeon, attesting to the level of a camp's sanitary practices. The standard set by Army regulations for enlisted soldiers on garrison duty was required as the minimum which an operator must provide before an SPD detachment was permitted to set out for that employer's properties. Once the SPD gained a firm foothold in the West, Disque refused to compromise with this question of sanitation and health. Before he sent a single trooper into the Inland Empire, for example, he circularized all lumbermen, requiring that they meet the Army's standard. By the end of January 1918, medical and sanitation officers had surveyed 900 lumber camps and mills, revealing in many instances abominable conditions. 8 The senior SPD medical officer, Colonel J. W. Sherwood, commanded 31 officers and 126 enlisted aides in February 1918. A fourfold increase occurred in the medical branch by midsummer, and this number proved adequate to cope with all the division's needs. Every one of the SPD detachments that were sent out during the first weeks of activity had a medical officer or aide attached to it, a practice that soon proved to be impossible to maintain. Regular circuits of SPD encampments were established for the doctors, and several dental officers were added to the peripatetic staff. Disque did not, however, permit lowering of his requirement that for approval of a camp or mill for SPD soldier- workers, the owner had to clean the place up to the Army's standard. He must provide housing and latrine facilities of specified quality, as well as edible food. Captain T. Tharaldsen of the medical staff pre- pared a pamphlet on decent minima for camp living standards. Civilian cooks were provided with Army menus, tables on the required quantity and quality of foodstuffs per worker, and requirements for proportions of vegetables and fruits. When a camp cook improved to the Army's standards, he received a certificate to that effect. 9 8 History, 17, 21; on the Inland Empire, Suzzallo to J. C. H. Reynolds, Jan. 25, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. 9 History, 21, 74-78; ms. "Report on Sanitary Achievement," Jan. 1919, Disque Papers. Of course the medical officers were also responsible for maintaining hospitals. 234 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Once a request for an SPD detachment passed the headquarters medical officer's desk, it reached Major W. A. Welch, the Division Engineer. Welch had to comment on the spruce stands the applying firm had at its disposal, and on avenues open to transport that the camp or mill in question already had or that might be created for the trucks of the Third Regiment to use. Engineer officers also attested to the quality of sawing, felling, and milling equipment, flood and fire control apparatuses, and whatever else affected production or safety. Recom- mendations might be appended as to what equipment the SPD should furnish the private producer in order to increase his pace of work. Major Welch's officers were responsible for offering suggestions on ways generally to increase output, and they proposed selective and rived logging, the construction of spur railroad lines, and use of the cost-plus contractual system. All these were expensive and wasteful by civilian, peacetime standards. Taken together with the stimulation given to production by the other activities of the SPD and the Legion, they nevertheless resulted in the outpouring of spruce and other needed lumber in the requisite amounts, 10 With the medical and engineering officers' approvals obtained, the last major hurdles faced by a request for an SPD detachment were the scrutiny of two of the division's staff officers who learned early in the game to work closely together and who never forgot the need to do so. These two officers were the Intelligence Officer, who after January 1918 was Major F. S. Howes, and the Industrial Officer, a job given to a succession of men, none of whom measured up to Disque's exact- ing standard, and so really run by Disque himself or by Stearns under his constant oversight. The Industrial Office of the SPD was in charge of the Loyal Legion. It is in the SPD's connection with the Legion that the civilian-military interaction really assumed large proportions. Every SPD field officer in charge of a detachment of soldier-workers — and there were soon more than 1000 of these small units at work — also served as a local recruiting officer for the Legion. In addition, a staff of approximately forty SPD junior officers, who devoted their full time to recruiting work for the Legion, was directed in the division's Industrial Office. Some of them were also Intelligence officers, and all the recruiters' reports after March 1, 1918, were required by Disque's order to go over the Intelligence Officer's desk* 10 History, 10, 35-43; ms. "Reports by the Senior Engineer Officer, and Final Sum- mation," Disque Papers. 11 Confidential memorandum, Feb. 28, 1918, Disque Papers, on recruiters' reports; other data in Disque's ms. "Report on Intelligence Staff, SPD," ibid. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 235 Until late February 1918, the internal security function centered on picking out wobblies among the lumberworkers and maintaining sur- veillance over them. SPD recruiters for the Legion were confidentially instructed that this was more important than forming new 4L locals. Probably Disque estimated that employers, presently unconvinced of the worth of affiliation with the Legion, might alter their views as they learned of the exposure of wobblies. If this was the colonel's intention, it appears to have succeeded. For example, lumberman W. H. Talbot noted to a partner that "the result of Lieut. Bickford's efforts in solicit- ing members for the Loyal Legion ... at Port Gamble and Port Ludlow was certainly a very satisfactory showing. It is but natural that a few men in such a mixed crowd might refuse to sign up, but this has given you opportunity to get rid of these men who, if they had remained, might have caused some trouble and annoyance." At Emmett, Idaho, in February a Captain Farr of the SPD visited the Boise-Payette Lumber Company's mill, which had a long and sorry story of labor-management strife, and formed a Legion local. One workman, having joined, at once recanted and withdrew. Farr had the new Legionnaires inform the local state defense councilors of this offender. The sheriff was called in. He drove off with the recusant, but a long caravan of automobiles, bearing the millworker-Legionnaires, followed the sheriff's car. Fear of a lynching grew. The sheriff turned the hapless offender over to federal authorities, and Captain Farr ex- ploited the incident to prove to the millowners that an SPD detach- ment was needed both to work and to protect their property. In such manner the closest symbiosis obtained between Legion and division, civilian and soldier. 12 Perhaps the SPD junior officers who in the first weeks of 1918 were in charge of woodcutting squadrons or assigned to recruiting duty for the Legion were more ardent on behalf of the 4Ls than Disque himself. Recall his intermittent doubts concerning the survival value of the Legion. It seems definite that up to the time of the eight-hour break- through he kept a brake on the Legion's expansion. By mid-February, a few less than 40,000 were on the rolls of the Loyal Legion, overwhelmingly employees, of course, and scattered across the Northwest in more than 400 locals. Each local, it will be remembered, was governed by a secretary who almost always was an SPD noncom- missioned officer. In very many cases, a Legion camp, as noted in the 12 W. H. Talbot to "Ned," Jan. 18, 1918, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (June 1918), 16, has the public account of the Idaho situation. An Intelligence report, undated, offering full data, is in Disque Papers. 236 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE preceding paragraphs, was also a camp where an SPD detachment was stationed. Thus the Legion secretary had close to hand the comforting presence of a commissioned officer, in charge of the SPD troopers. As with the SPD squadrons, Disque kept as close supervision as possible over the unfolding policies of the Legion locals. For adminis- trative purposes, he divided the Northwest into Legion districts. Eight, under Crumpacker's charge, embraced the more thickly populated coastal strip. Four more were later located in the Inland Empire and were under the sometimes uncertain direction of Captain E. D. Birkholz. Clearly, up until the end of February 1918, Disque built the Legion reluctantly and cheaply. Even so, as enthusiasm for the idea grew among workers, owners, and SPD officers, membership soared. Robert S. Gill's membership statistics most closely match those that Disque himself accepted as correct: January 1, 1918, better than 20,000; Janu- ary 24, 35,000; March 4, 62,000. Still greater increases came after the eight-hour achievement, and after Disque determined that the Legion deserved a larger share of attention, energy, funds, and SPD manpower than he had heretofore afforded it. 13 The fact that the division's commissioned and noncommissioned officers recruited for Legion locals and were the secretaries permitted flexible and rapid expansion. In its formative weeks the Legion's pri- mary function was to keep the existing civilian labor supply stable. It sought to achieve this goal in three ways: First, it appealed to employee patriotism, relying heavily on the 4L pin, loyalty oath, and other symbolic display. Second, it improved the standard of workers' housing, messing, and working conditions to that specified by the SPD for its troopers. The employer-Legionnaires here played the important role of agreeing, before requests for SPD labor supplements were honored, to raise those conditions to the required level. Third, the Legion secre- tary kept known or suspected wobblies under surveillance, reporting on such miscreants as the local situation suggested, to the state defense councilmen, to the resident SPD detachment commander as well as to SPD headquarters, or to Justice Department agents. In earliest 1918 the jerry-built Legion was already proving its worth. 13 History, 25; Gill, "The Four L's in Lumber," Survey, XLIV (May 1, 1920), 165. Gill had been editor of the Legion's Monthly Bulletin. Disque's ms. "Report to the Western Department Commander," ca. Jan. 1919, Disque Papers, confirms Gill's estimates. See also Cloice Howd, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Industry, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Miscellaneous Series, Bull. No. 349 (Wash- ington, 1924), 78, 81; Edward Mittelman, "The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumber- men: An Experiment in Industrial Relations," Journal of Political Economy, XXXI (June 1923), 326. ;#: SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 237 It was holding stable the industry's work force during the winter, a season when thousands of men, rendered unemployed through nature's excesses, traditionally drifted away. Probably the patriotic preachments that Disque disseminated through the Legion secretariat played a sig- nificant role in attaining this end. 14 In January and February 1918 mere stability on the part of the exist- | ing civilian labor force satisfied Disque. Building the new Army mill > at Vancouver Barracks was an extraordinary achievement, and it alone demanded much attention. As a result of these accomplishments and the growing utilization of SPD troopers as labor supplements, spruce i output began to rise. It did not, however, increase quickly enough to keep pace with the onrush of military orders. Early in January, after a conversation with Disque, lumberman Ames reported that the colonel had predicted a rise in American and Allied spruce needs to thirty or even forty million feet a month. Even with utmost good fortune and the ultimate in 1 worker efficiency, existing industrial capacity could not hope to produce more than a fraction of such massive amounts. A month later, talking 14 For example, Bulletin No. 3 (undated, in Disque Papers) offers insight into the pressures Disque employed. According to this communication, the objects of the I Legion were: "l.To give every camp and mill worker and operator a chance to show his loyalty to the country of his birth or adoption, to the country which affords him oppor- tunity and protection. "2. To aid this country in every way possible in this crisis, particularly by speeding up the production of spruce and fir for airplanes and ships. "3. To render first aid to the boys who are flying in France, by giving them aircraft that outclasses anything the Kaiser can produce. "4. To urge upon each member the necessity of remaining constantly at the same local during this war. "5. To always remember that a day's lay-off means a day's work for the German rulers who started the war. "6. To point out, that in all history no set of men ever had as glorious an oppor- tunity to aid the cause of human liberty as is now presented to the members of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. "7. To emphasize the fact that citizenship in our country places the duties of Government upon each of us. "8. To place the interests of our country above self interests. "9. To stamp out sedition and prevent sabotage. "10. To give all members an opportunity to present any suggestions touching con- ditions within locals to the Government. "11. To give the Government a chance to show its appreciation to the members for their showing of loyalty. "12. To help make the world safe for democracy. 'A dozen axes in a Northwest forest can do more for humanity and civilization at this time than a regiment of rifles in France.' "BY AUTHORITY OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR Under Direction of Colonel Disque M. E. Crumpacker Officer in Charge" 238 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE again with Disque, Ames noted that "there is no question but what there has been quite a change of opinion and feeling." 15 Disque's "change in opinion and feeling" noted by Ames centered on the question of the desirable size and functions of the Legion once the eight-hour Rubicon was crossed. Here again Parker's influence was decisive, despite the fact that he and the colonel were now at odds. Weeks before, when Disque and Parker were still leagued in amiable accord, the professor had predicted to Disque that the Legion would soon bring the lumbermen to heel on the eight-hour issue. But, Parker insisted, this alone would not win enough workmen to the Legion's cause. Thousands of new recruits were needed for the lumber industry, to be drawn from young men just entering the labor market, from among women for mill, maintenance, and secretarial work, and from migratory and other workers presently on the road or involved in non- essential employment. Disque apparently disbelieved this pessimistic estimate, whereupon Parker submitted a report to this effect to Labor Secretary Wilson. He, like most persons in contact with Parker, was tremendously impressed by the academician's zeal and competence. When Disque jubilantly telegraphed the Secretary the good news of the eight-hour agreement, Wilson replied in unmistakably Parkerian terms: "Even with the con- cession of the eight-hour workday it will take some little time before a sufficient number of men can be attracted to [lumber] work." 10 It must not take too much time. As of late February 1918, when Disque won the eight-hour conces- sion, the Legion was primarily a patriotic organization which was involved in lumber production, under the SPD's officers. To raise pro- duction, the Army was bringing living and working standards in the lumber industry up to the level of an Army private. For the first time in the history of the industry, employers had concerted programs afoot to construct, rebuild, and clean up bunkhouses, mess halls, washrooms, and recreation sheds. "It is beginning to be a far cry from the Northwest logging camps of last year, before the Loyal Legion . . . was organized and living conditions for the men . . . were described as much the same 15 Ames to Talbot, Jan. 4, 1918, Box 30, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; same to same, Feb. 16, 1918, copy in Disque Papers. 16 Wilson to Disque, March 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. Parker's report to Wilson has disappeared from the records. Apparently Disque obtained a copy of it, perhaps through the ubiquitous Leadbetter, for the colonel refers to it in detail in a telegram to him, March 15, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires," Disque Papers. On Parker's influence over Wilson, see the views on the IWW in Secretary of Labor, Annual Report, 1918 (Washington, 1918), 20. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 239 as when the primeval builder was getting out materials for the Ark, to the logging camps of this season," the Legion's magazine properly boasted. "Ventilated bunkhouses, sanitary toilets, well drained camp sites, dry walks and tents, baths, reading and recreation halls, drying rooms and electric lights are coming to be the rule rather than the exception." In the absence of minimal creature comforts, not only was the physical health of the workmen threatened but the spiritual, patri- otic well-being was seriously degraded. There was "an absence ... of any spirit of cooperation or desire for betterment, or even loyalty." 17 Parker observed these beneficient developments closely, even though he was now removed from the policy center surrounding Disque. As the eight-hour success became increasingly imminent, Parker concluded that Disque was in position to move the Legion onto a loftier and still more meaningful road. In a memorandum to Suzzallo sometime in February, Parker proposed that Disque add an apparatus to the Legion capable of mediating disputes between employers and workers, to replace the present lack of system wherein appeals to patriotism an- swered all questions. A regularized mediation apparatus, Parker as- serted, might counterbalance certain tendencies within the Legion about which he worried. These were the excessively large role of mili- tary officers and the partiality toward the employers that Parker felt the SPD personnel exhibited. Thus far, whatever SPD-Legion personnel had done to heal open sores between employers and lumberworkers had been adventitious and local. The mere improvement in physical conditions attendant upon SPD cooperation eliminated many old irritations. With these reforms made, however, there was no indication that the Legion's directors contemplated tackling the important remaining areas of dispute. Further, Parker warned, these differences should not be settled from the heights of a military echelon. Martial decisions could not outlast the war. Army personnel were unschooled in labor relations and were likely • to worsen matters while trying to improve them. Basic labor-manage- ment decisions, he insisted, should come up out of the Legion, from the I civilians who formed its membership. Parker also alleged that SPD and Legion officials had thus far favored i the employers in such disputed matters as the 4L organization had undertaken to decide. This partisanship was less sinister than unavoid- > able. Lumbermen overawed the overwhelmingly youthful SPD and [ Legion officers. The lumber operators were mature men, successes in | the business world, persuasive and effective in discussion, and were 17 Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (May 1918), 12. 240 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE necessarily the advisers to the SPD field officers. Simultaneously and paradoxically, many of the SPD's personnel had adopted the rookie soldier's familiar pose of contempt for civilians. Troopers professed scorn for the lumberworkers with whom they often shared tents and jobs, deriding them as slackers and cowards. The employers, however, escaped contumely. The result Parker discerned was a growing assumption on the part of many lumbermen that the Army was on their side. Probably the willing- ness of many operators to go on the eight-hour schedule was derived in part from confidence that the SPD and the Legion were allies in the fight against encroachments from below. However understandable the sources of these attitudes, they exposed the entire government program first to criticism and ultimately to defeat, Parker warned. Disque would be unable to get the needed new supplies of labor if the present pattern continued in the Legion's ways and in the SPD's leanings. Having depicted the pessimistic possibilities, Parker offered a way out. Again a seeming paradox emerges. Parker advocated that Disque must tighten his control over the Legion's secretaries and the SPD's squadron commanders. At the same time, he strongly recommended that Disque permit the Legion membership to run the organization's internal affairs through a system of representative industrial democracy, which would include a mediation apparatus. The best way to impose policy upon the Legion secretaries was for Disque to set down precise industry-wide standards from above. In this way, employers and local secretaries no longer need confer on establish- ing local standards. Parker offered as example the question of exact specifications for living and messing facilities, wage rates, and safety standards. The general formula of Army minima obviously had precise meaning to Disque and to Army regulars. But to the war-service SPD officers and noncoms and to the employers who wrangled over local applications of these standards, there was no precision. Overawed by the employers, Legion personnel in too many instances were being dealt poorer hands than should obtain, Parker asserted. Centraliza- tion would permit impartiality to replace partisanship. Standardization would also mean that workmen, knowing the grass to be no greener elsewhere, would stay in one place, perhaps even long enough to sink roots in communities and generally find places in society. As soon as possible, the Legion must shift away from its military parentage and attain a practice of representative democracy, Parker counseled. Rank-and-file Legionnaires should be able to initiate, discuss SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 241 ratify, or reject "peripheral policies" not affecting production goals, where the Army's needs must, of course, rule. Lesser concerns, however, should be amenable to more popular action. Parker wanted Disque to establish a Legion hierarchy adequate to sustain this more sophisticated and complex pulse. He proposed that the membership of each Legion local should select a standing grievance committee. This committee w r as to receive complaints, weigh them, and bring them to the attention of the employer. Failing to find satis- faction here, the committee might return the matter to the whole mem- bership of the local. Appeals deriving from this local process could then go upw r ard to a district committee of the Legion, which would be elected from among members of the locals and would serve as a permanent mediation apparatus. Still further, Parker proposed that Disque call Legionnaires — employers and worker-members alike — together in fre- quent, industry-wide conventions, where questions of broad policy could be dealt with in open and democratic ways. The conventions would offer a broad base of popular support for Legion activities and give the lie to critics who claimed that dictatorial repression was at work. Disque at the same time might also benefit by tightening his control over the Legion secretaries. Better yet, Parker suggested that the very office of the secretary be considered obsolete. Secretaries had served a useful enough purpose in the formative weeks of the Legion's fitful life. But Parker doubted that they could transcend the pro-employer partisanship that many had already exhibited, or adjust to a Legion rhythm that w r as more rapid than that of a mere patriotic society dedicated to holding the line in labor relations. Stalemate had originally suited the purposes of the Legion. But re- form of the lumber industry could not be achieved merely by uplifting living standards to the level of an Army private, however much of an improvement that was. Higher goals existed. An extraordinary oppor- tunity was at hand to effect a permanent reformation of a great indus- try spanning a vast region, and this was at the same time the best way to succeed in reaching the wartime production goals. By regularizing in the Legion a mediation apparatus that would outlast the war, Disque might create a model industrial democracy. History could yet record him a pioneer, leading the exacerbated Northwest region, long equated with the South as the most retrograde section of the nation in this regard, into a new era of rationality in its labor relations. It was a mission worthy of the Army and Disque. Parker concluded his ringing appeal with the admonition that Disque 242 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE must first signal his prowess by enforcing the eight-hour day. Then, following Parker's guidelines, the colonel should build the Legion-SPD team into what was in effect an Army-run labor union, embracing the vast northwestern timber region, all trades and skills of its workmen, and the expertise of the employers and operators, With evident sadness at having to reach this judgment, Parker concluded that "the AFL is unacceptable to the present generation of lumbermen. After Germany is defeated, there must be something at hand here to keep wobblies in check on the one side and to hold the rein on the unprogressive em- ployers on the other. If there is no middle alternative, then this region and this industry will I think return to chaos worse than existed before the war. It will be worse because all the hurts of the war period will increase hatreds." 18 During the first weeks of 1918, Disque was too busy, and too hurt over the unhappy drift of his relationship with Parker, to give much thought to this wide-sweeping proposal. He could not fail to observe, however, the remarkably incisive way in which Parker had analyzed the course of events. To his credit, Disque did not let his personal estrangement from Parker get in the way of his responsibility to em- ploy the best advice on hand in achieving the immediate goal of bettered spruce output. As Parker had foretold, the eight-hour breakthrough of late February resulted in an immediate boom in Legion enlistments by both workers and employers. Having won the government's author- ity to act and the employers' assent to whatever he wished to do, Disque now decided to offer the swiftly augmenting ranks of the worker- Legionnaires a modest share in the formulation and ratification of Legion policies. 11 ' On March 1, Disque ordered that every Legion local form a "con- ference committee" composed of three members, one of whom was the Legion secretary, the other two elected by the membership. The con- ference committee was to> cope with purely local problems and the grievances of individuals. Next in an ascending hierarchy, Disque ordered the creation in each of the Legion districts of an appeals com- mittee, formed of six persons, to hear matters arising from the locals' conference committees that were not satisfactorily dealt with there. Three members of each six-man district committee were to represent 18 Ms. "The Legion," in "Parker" folder, Disque Papers. A covering letter, undated, from Parker to Suzzallo refers to Parker's hope that Disque see the document. 18 Entry, Feb. 28, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. Legion membership reached 80,000 by June 1, 110,000 by July 1, and 125,000 by Oct. 1; see Gill, "The Four L*s in Lumber," loc. cit., 165. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 243 the employers, and Disque reserved the right to choose these men. The other three were to represent the workmen. By Disque's order, all the Legion secretaries in a district were to* choose the three employee delegates to the district committee. In effect, Disque would control all six members of the district committee through his power to nominate the employer delegates and his authority over the Legion secretaries who chose the employee members. The loftiest level in the Legion's grievance and mediation apparatus that Disque ordained, next to himself, was the Industrial Relations Section of the Legion's Central Council. Disque specified Major P. Abbey as its permanent chairman. Each district committee sent one employer and one employee delegate to make up the twenty-four-man total of the Central Council. In the event of disagreement on this high level, final appeals might then go on to Disque himself. Obviously, the voice of the Legion rank and file was heard loudly only on the local level, in the election of the two members to form the conference committee alongside the appointed, uniformed secretary. From here on up Disque's controls grew tighter. Yet the official chron- icler of the Legion makes the unqualified statement that this "admi- rable" plan "takes in the employee, and gives him an equal share in shaping the policy of the entire industry." On the other hand, the Disque structure represented real progress if not perfect industrial democracy. Nothing like it could have been achieved before the war. This was as close to a union apparatus as the lumbermen would move, and it required a global conflict to bring them to this much. Disque's orders of March 1 set this intra-Legion adjustment apparatus into motion. 20 He intended to have the committee hierarchy function- ing because later that week, on the 4th, the first convention of repre- sentatives of the worker-Legionnaires would assemble. Disque wanted this convention, the symbol of the industrial democracy that Parker had advocated, publicly to approve the new internal Legion machinerv. The colonel anticipated that the Legion members would be grateful and obedient. He did not expect them to threaten his control over the brand-new committee organization. Considering the small amount of time available to prepare for the 20 History, 25; ms. order to all SPD and Legion officers, confidential, regarding the committee structure (this is not a title but rather a penciled description on this two- page document), March 1, 1918, Disque Papers. In a 1954 reminiscence, John P. Frey, president of the International Molders Union, recalled of Woodrow Wilson that he liked Gompers, but had little real sympathy for unions; Oral History Research Office, Columbia University. Perhaps Disque believed that the President would approve this para-military alternative. 244 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE March 4 convention, and the inexperience of his staff officers in such matters, Disque put on quite a show. He rented a large ballroom in Portland's biggest hotel and had it festooned with flags of the United States and Allied governments and with the Legion's hastily conceived and wrought insignia. A military band sounded martial airs as the worker-representatives, almost all chosen by the SPD noncoms who served as Legion secretaries, filed in at midmorning. Portland's Mayor Baker was on hand to make a florid plea for patriotic effort and to introduce Disque to the 461 delegates, representing the 62,000 Legion- naires. The colonel, rising in turn, spoke in a more restrained manner. He took on a pose of winning candor, dealing first with the wobbly alle- gation that the Legion was financed and controlled by the lumbermen. Disque admitted that employers had offered to pay all the Legion's expenses. But though the organization now cost the Army more than $15,000 a month to run, it was and would remain a public charge. It was not going to be the creature either of capital or of labor, he promised. There would be no privilege for any person, group, or class in its ranksr 1 Expanding on this theme, Disque warned that he would permit no profiteering by capital or labor. Henceforth the SPD's purchasing officers were going to buy every foot of wood cut in the Northwest, reselling only unneeded stock to private manufacturers. Any increases in costs of production would raise prices to the government. To prevent this from occurring, Disque was going to see to it that the SPD cur- tailed profits to the lumbermen and that wage rates, after being adjusted upward to a fair level through the Legion, remained restrained. Speaking now to quiet the protests of those lumbermen who were unhappy about the eight-hour day, Disque stated to the assembly of workers: "Your employers have sacrificed their personal ideas and are going to play the game and the big purpose of this meeting is for you to get into the game and to play your part." Eight hours of work must be eight hours on the job, not portal-to-portal. Malingering must cease at once, so that the shorter workday should not result in lower output. This was only fair, he continued. Higher wage levels would soon be announced. Army blankets, free of cost to the lumberworkers, were on 21 The Bellingham Herald accepted this protestation without qualification: "The fact is," the Herald's editor wrote on March 23, "that Colonel Disque ... is in the hands of nobody but Uncle Sam. It is highly to his credit that he has harmonized capital and labor in the Northwest. . . . He has struck a death blow at disloyalty by, in a few weeks, organizing a loyal legion of lumber workers with a membership of 66,000. That is why the I.W.W.'s are seeking to discredit his work." SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 245 their way for distribution. SPD inspectors and medical and dental officers would soon be touring 4L camps to see to it that lodging and messing facilities were maintained at a high standard and at uniform charges. "We owe it to you men to see that conditions are sanitary . . . and that you have proper bedding, drying room, and bathing facilities," he concluded. And then, following Parker's advice of weeks earlier to shed a mantle of democratic procedure upon the proceedings, Disque threw the meeting open to questions from the floor. Almost at once a subject came up that Disque would rather have held off. According to the minutes of the session, "The question was raised of having the local secretaries elected instead of selected [by the SPD officers] as formerly, as very often there is no cooperation between the selected secretary and the members of the local." Major Stearns, acting as master of ceremonies, tried to slide off to another, safer query. But the suddenly vibrant audience demanded a vote. Helpless to resist further if the promise and appearance of democratic participation were not obviously to be broken, Disque saw Stearns record a unanimous ballot in favor of popular election of the secretaries. Disque put as brave a face as possible upon the outcome. He explained to the assembly that "the reason for not doing this before was that there had been no one to elect them, but hereafter it would be arranged to have them elected." With this the meeting reached a new level of sweet accord. The dele- gates resolved that since on February 27 the employers had decided to place "the entire control of the labor problem" in Disque's hands, the lumberworkers of the Legion also accepted his leadership and, eschew- ing strikes, promised "to comply with any decision Colonel Disque might make." Disque left this meeting perturbed at the unsettling of his plans for the secretaries, and possessed of a new respect for the lumberworkers. Perhaps for the first time he realized that these men were not going to be sheep, even about gaining benefits. 22 22 Minutes of the Convention of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, March 4, 1918, Portland, Oregon (n.p., n.d.), 1-18. Reflecting Disque's new-found respect for the workmen, History, 20, states: "Few more interesting or more spicy conventicles could be gotten together than these meetings of the men from the mills and the woods. They are great debaters. They 'make it snappy.' They speak briefly and very, very much to the point, as a rule. They are apt to forget parliamentary procedure, and not always is the motion before the house spoken to. When the crowd becomes weary of a speaker, or dis- approves heartily of what he has to say, they invite him to 'Sit down!' with so little of uncertainty that he usually sits. But as a rule it is straight talk, level-headed talk. They know what they want to say, and how to say it with forcefulness. Gram- matical solecisms are freely indulged in, but somehow this seems rather to add to 246 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE It should have been Eden for Disque. Never before had the Northwest known such surface harmony. All sides in the lumber industry appeared to have come to amicable terms. Between February 27 and March 4, Disque in a single week had received votes of confidence from both employers and workers. His accomplishment shone in bright contrast to the sordid confusion on most production fronts and to the ferocious vigilantism that was elsewhere directed against wobblies. Patriotism, the consensus seemed to be, had achieved a rational stabilization of the violent lumber industry. Disque, a New York Evening Post article judged, had practiced "a kind of efficiency we should like to see in all government departments." He was to be congratulated, the writer con- tinued, for demonstrating "the wisdom of a liberal, democratic policy as contrasted with the narrow, intolerant, and vindictive policy" that had plagued the Northwest for so long. Disque was congratulated — by the Army, by the President, and, of primary significance to this account, by Gompers. "Yes," the AFL head agreed with Disque, "the organization of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen for service in spruce and other timber production for our country's war needs" had been an act of industrial statesmanship on Disque's part that Gompers was anxious to acknowledge. North- western AFL locals took their cue from Gompers and praised Disque for having bettered labor standards. The region's newspapers almost without exception for once echoed an AFL line. According to the Port- land Oregonian, the March 4 convention marked "an epoch in the re- lations of the employer and employed." Disque was clearly "a diplomat of the first water," the account continued, "for he has shown he knows how to . . . get contending elements to work together as a team." The Oregon Journal exulted that "All labor disputes have been settled," and the News offered a similar tribute, remarking that Disque had "come to Portland, a stranger. . . . He was fooled, doublecrossed, and lied to. But he played straight with employers and employees alike. " £S His impressive convention performance temporarily endeared Disque even to some lumbermen like Ames and Talbot who had looked askance than to detract from the speaker's 'punch.' However, it is by no means an unlettered gathering. Many of the men are constant readers, and have splendid vocabularies. It is doubtful if there could be held a convention of the workers of brain or brawn in any line, with the exception of those with whom public speaking is more or less professional, that would show as much forensic ability." 23 Robert Bruere, "The I WW in the Pacific Northwest," New York Evening Post, undated, ca. March 1918, clipping in Labor Department files, RG 174, NA; Gompers to Disque, April 12, 1918 (copy), "AFL" folder, Disque Papers; AFL Weekly News Letter, March 16, 1918; Oregonian, March 6, 1918; Oregon Journal and Portland News, clippings dated only March 1918, in Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 247 upon his "complicity" in bringing the eight-hour workday to the North- west. In their view, Disque had squelched the worker-Legionnaires, who had "got a little cocky" with the eight-hour victory, by reminding them that this meant eight hours of full work and that production must be increased. Talbot professed his renewed respect for the colonel. But, Talbot and other lumbermen wondered, what of the other regulations that Disque had announced at the convention? Did the colonel have the power to impose housing standards, for example, as well as wage and hour specifications upon all lumbermen? Had the assembled operators in February given Disque these authorities, or merely the single power to bring in the eight-hour day? Might it not be time for the exacerbated lumbermen to show Disque that he could not ride too roughly over them? Learning of such derogations of his authority, Disque let it be known through his lumbermen friends on his advisory council that his author- ity came from the Army, not from the businessmen of the Northwest. According to Disque, he had "absolute authority ... as a war meas- ure . . . to do all these things," Ames reported on March 15, and he noted that Disque "privately told other people that he had absolute authority to go the limit in order that the mills may be operated and the government get their [sic] wants taken care of." 24 Disque was well aware that he was stretching the truth concerning his authority, and by a wide margin. But he felt that he could not let this challenge on the part of a few lumbermen go by. He was displeased that after he had surmounted the seemingly impregnable eight-hour obstacle, all the fruits of victory did not fall at once into his hands. His new troubles, Disque realized, were part of the problem surrounding the Legion's secretaries, which the March 4 convention had brought to public attention."' The issue of the secretaries now served to push him further away from the position of neutrality concerning capital and labor that he professed to hold, and always insisted he had maintained. There were some disgruntled government officials as well as dissatis- fied lumbermen. Suzzallo, for example, fumed at Disque's calm accept- ance of all the credit for the eight-hour breakthrough. The Johnny- come -lately colonel, in Suzzallo's opinion, was merely exploiting path- ways that he and Parker had blazed at considerable hazard to their academic futures. Having snatched the prize, Disque might have ac- * Talbot to Ames and reply, March 8; Ames to Talbot, March 15, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; Disque to Leadbetter, March 5, 1918, copy of telegram, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, Disque Papers. ■ Entry, March 5, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. 248 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE knowledged that other arms had made it possible for him to grasp it. And so in a telegram to War Secretary Baker announcing the decision at the eight-hour conference, Suzzallo had carefully held on to a share of the credit. "Glad to report that our plan of adjustment has worked out exactly as we hoped when we made a recent compromise [recom- mendation to the lumbermen] to leave everything to Disque." Similarly, to Secretary of Labor Wilson, Suzzallo had wired that "Colonel Disque was a great aid in bringing this result about." But, Suzzallo continued, \ it had been himself and Parker, the Labor Secretary, and the President's j Mediation Connnission — the civilians, in short — who had won the day, rather than the soldier. 28 Perhaps Suzzallo, knowing of Frankfurter's recent attempt to main-i tain civilian control over the SPD and the Legion, and aware that the report of the President's Mediation Commission was ready to be re- leased, hoped to start an intra-Cabinet fight over the Legion. The Mediation Commission's report contained an outspoken condemnation i of the intransigent attitude that until very recently most of the lumber- men had shown toward the demands of their workers for better condi- tions and fewer hours of labor. When it appeared within the next few days, the report would be sure to raise the anger of the lumbermen, who had just given in at Portland and accepted the eight-hour day and the Legion with all its reformist implications. That report was now obsolete as a guide for government officialdom because of the improved attitude of the lumbermen. Suzzallo, in his irritation with Disque, ignored this fact. President Wilson did not ignore it. "It is certainly singular," the President noted to the Labor Secretary, "that immediately following our conversations in the Cabinet the other day [concerning the Mediation Commission's views on the Northwest's labor needs] the lumbermen should have instituted the eight-hour day." Admitting that he was "heartily glad," the President sent Disque personally a congratulatory telegram which the colonel treasured. 27 Clearly, so far as the White House was concerned, the sweet moment of victory must not be marred by an intragovernmental squabble. 20 E. J. Griggs to Suzzallo, Feb. 27, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Suzzallo to Secretary Baker, Feb. 28; to Secretary Wilson, Feb. 28, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 27 Secretary Wilson to President Wilson, March 1; President Wilson to Secretary Wilson, quoting the President's telegram to Disque, March 2, 1918, both in file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. The Disque Papers have the President's telegram. An editorial in West Coast Lumberman, March 1, 1918, indicates that the Mediation Commission report was quite capable of irritating the operators. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 249 This was the cue that the Labor Secretary followed, although he was careful to specify in his answer to Suzzallo that others besides Disque deserved recognition for achieving the Portland breakthrough. Secre- tary Wilson congratulated Suzzallo, "Colonel Disque and your other associates" for inducing the lumbermen to go on the eight-hour day. 28 Probably Suzzallo would have let matters rest. But Disque learned of Suzzallo's halfhearted praise of him. First Parker, then Frankfurter, and now Suzzallo had swung from professed friendship to hostility. Disque could no longer contain himself. Inspired by the successes of the February 27 conference, and frantically readying for the March 4 meeting of the Legion employees, Disque decided to force matters. On March 1, he sent Parker a stiff, formal note, suggesting that it was little wonder that the professor had been avoiding him since his return to the west coast. The guilty conscience of a spy explained Parker's reticence. Yes, Disque knew that Parker had been "gumshoe- ing" over him. The knowledge was a cruel blow because the implica- tion of Disque's untrustworthiness was undeserved. Disque asked that Parker in the future act in an aboveboard and gentlemanly manner. If he could not stop his spying activities, Disque icily requested Parker to inform him of the nature of the reports he was submitting, so that rebuttals might be prepared. Repeating the theme in a briefer note to Suzzallo, and in a telephone message, Disque described how Parker's activity had angered him. He hoped that Suzzallo was not connected with it — a somewhat disingenu- ous comment, for Disque already knew of Suzzallo's connection. "Gum- shoe" work, Disque stated, was a contemptible activity for a man of honor. His code as an Army officer made him recoil disgustedly from its practitioners. He stated during the phone conversation that while he was determined to break completely with Parker, "who is Frankfurter's man, and therefore impossible to have confidence in any longer," he would still like to have Suzzallo's cooperation. And Disque concluded by asking sarcastically whether Suzzallo believed that Parker would have the courage to face his wronged erstwhile friend. 29 Suzzallo chose not to reply to these insinuations during the telephone conversation. Instead he waited several days before he wrote a letter to Disque. In it, he contradicted the colonel on each point. There had never been a lack of confidence on his or on Parker's part concerning 28 Wilson to Suzzallo, March 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA, with copy in Disque Papers. 29 Disque to Parker, March 1; to Suzzallo, March 1, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; transcript of telephone conversation with Suzzallo, ca. March 3, 1918, Disque Papers. 250 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Disque. They had consistently upheld Disque at the War Department J and at the Council of National Defense. "We believe in you," Suzzallo insisted. Yes, Parker had spied on Disque. But he had done so under orders. He would not specify whose orders these had been, but instead insisted that there had been no "unfair gumshoeing" going on. Suzzallo fre- quently received requests from federal agencies to check on their west I coast representatives. So did Parker. The overseeing of Disque's work was merely another reflection of the crazy mixture of national and state i officialdom that was taking place everywhere in the country. Receiving this, Disque telephoned Suzzallo once more. He corrected Suzzallo. Parker's reports had carped at the growth of military power over civilians that the Loyal Legion seemed to him to represent. Further, Disque charged that Parker had seconded Frankfurter's recent attempts to curb Disque. But enough of that, Disque said, interrupting himself. He no longer needed Parker. But he felt that Suzzallo had been misled by Parker. Disque still trusted Suzzallo and wanted his cooperation as head of the state defense council. And he reminded him that among the i lumbermen now coming into the Legion were some of the most influ- f ential men in the state, who were in a position to affect the university's destiny. Ending his conversation, Disque could not resist a parting shaft. His animadversions against Parker were proved true, he said, because the professor had refused to come forth to defend himself. He had let Suzzallo plead for him. This was the attitude of a craven. Disque had gone much too far. Repeating on the telephone his de- nials of a sinister purpose motivating the surveillance over Disque, j Suzzallo told the colonel why Parker was silent. The man was dying. 30 Parker had simply worn himself out in his country's service. Instead of troubling to placate Disque when the first signs of rupture had ap- peared in their once-cordial relationship, Parker had plunged ahead in his mediation work. He had showed signs of strain, debility, and ex- haustion, but nevertheless he continued with the endless grind of con- ferences into the first week of March. At a council table where he was trying to fend off a threatened walkout of longshoremen, he collapsed. For ten days, while the western newspapers sang Disque's praises, the real architect of the Legion and of the eight-hour achievement grew 30 Suzzallo to Disque, March 7, and transcript of telephone conversation, Disque- Suzzallo, March 9, 1918, Suzzallo Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 25 1 increasingly weaker. His wife and doctors tried to sustain his strength against the onslaught of influenza. But his reserves of strength were too depleted. He died on March 16. Some lumbermen, keen enough to discern Parker's primary role in guiding Disque, felt that his passing had not occurred too soon. "No doubt he will be missed by a good many people," W. H. Talbot com- mented, "but not in our particular line of business." 51 Quite probably, Parker would not have objected to that judgment at all. Somewhat surprisingly, a good many lumbermen did miss Parker. The Seattle Business Chronicle, heretofore vitriolic in its estimates of the man, found reason now to praise as well as to bury him. This re- versal of editorial attitude was not a mere prissy refraining from censure of the dead. Rather the editor, through Suzzallo, was made privy to some of the accomplishments that Parker had wrought, and to certain of the restrictions under which he had labored. Parker, the Chronicle 's editor concluded, was as much a war casualty as any soldier. His ap- parent prolabor stand was the result of the need to obey orders from above. "Naturally," the obituary continued, "there arose in the com- munity the impression that he was a Socialist." On the contrary, Parker was "economically sound." A renowned social scientist, he had been a brilliant mediator because he was nonpartisan in the cases he adjudi- cated. His intimates knew, the writer went on, that Parker eschewed radicalism of any sort. At the time of his death, he was embarked upon the preparation of a popular essay containing his economic views, which the Chronicle was to have published. Now it would not appear. But even in its absence, everyone in the Northwest had reason to re- member Parker with fondness and respect. Not Disque. Ferreting out that Suzzallo had inspired the Chronicle eulogy, Disque telephoned him to complain that Parker even in death was scoring a point on him. Parker, the colonel insisted, was precisely what most lumbermen still believed him to have been — a tool of the AFL and of Gompers. Rigid in his bitterness at the dead man, Disque expressed no public regret at his passing. In the official History of the Legion, published after the war under Disque's close supervision, there is no mention of Parker at all. Still furious at having had his integrity questioned, im- placably hostile to any individual or organization that contemned his honor as a man and as a soldier, Disque neither forgot nor forgave. 31 On Parker's illness and death, touchingly described, see Cornelia Parker, American Idyll, 186-89; other data in Ames to Talbot, March 18; Talbot to Ames, March 26, 1918, Box 31, Paget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 252 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE With Suzzallo, Disque maintained a cautious relationship of official cooperation for the duration of the war. Though Disque would have welcomed a closer tie, Suzzallo, finally as unforgiving as the colonel, would not permit it. The university president gave freely of himself to aid Disque, and saw to it that his defense council and faculty per- sonnel cooperated with the SPD-Legion organizations. Neither man, however, welcomed the other to any of the numerous social or civic functions that each oversaw. Suzzallo was henceforth out of the spruce supply problem. 32 As Disque had come to see matters, this left Gompers as his chief foe. 32 Transcript, Disque-Suzzallo telephone conversation, ca. March 25, 1918, Disque Papers, indicates that the two men exchanged rather stiff language before reaching the tacit agreement to steer clear of each other. The Chronicle editorial on Parker is March 23, 1918. Chapter ij Round One with the AFL "I am in the best position of any one in the Army who is involved in aviation," Disque estimated late in March. Explaining to Leadbetter the reasons for this optimistic view of his personal fortunes, he adverted first to the unhappy battlefield situation. The Kaiser's legions, strength- ened by Russia's defection from the Allied cause, threatened to over- run all France. Italy reeled from reverses and, needing help instead of providing it, further lessened the probability of Britain and France holding firm on the Western Front. Although almost a year had passed since the United States had entered the war, the first units of the AEF to see action were only now finding their way to the trenches. Aloft, the anticipated tidal wave of American-built warplanes had failed to develop even into a trickle. Frustrated and indignant, Americans were beginning to demand the reasons for the failure of the overtouted airplane production program. Allegations of fraud, profiteering, and waste grew common. Investi- gators began to scour factories and forests, seeking villains. Tarnished reputations littered the industrial scene. But not Disque's. Just as popular disillusionment became firmly rooted concerning almost every other person assigned to airplane pro- duction, Disque pulled off the eight-hour coup and staged the dramatic Legion convention. Immediately thereafter, spruce output began to soar. From less than 200,000 feet cut in August 1917, the SPD-Legion organizations and the Northwest's unenlisted workers supplied ten million feet in March 1918, and twelve million the next month, of far higher quality than in 1917 and at a lower unit cost. Along with this substantial achievement, the wobbly "menace" had dissipated, and the Northwest's "labor problem" had been stabilized if not solved. "Secre- tary Baker is grateful," Leadbetter advised Disque. "The rays of sun- shine that you send him are the only bright spots he sees." 1 Disque realized the strength of his position within the Army when on one of his trips to the East he heard uniformed colleagues pillory 1 Leadbetter-Disque exchange (telegrams), March 23-27, 1918, copies in Disque Papers; on investigations, see Palmer, Baker, II, 181-83. 253 254 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE j the President for being concerned at all over labor and radical senti- I ment. These same officers praised Disque for recruiting wobblies into the Legion rather than excluding them. "I expected trouble on this," Disque admitted, "but got applause instead." 2 At the War Secretary's office and at Army headquarters, Disque be- came a minor hero. George Creel saw to it that the publicity potential of Disque's success received its due. Creel enlisted the services of Robert Bruere, a member of the President's Mediation Commission and a man of Parkerian views on the wobblies, who prepared a series of penetrating and widely popular articles on the wobblies and on the constructive manner in which they had been handled in the Legion. Disque had taken statesmanlike steps in industrial relations, Bruere argued, which other officials would do well to emulate. Having "ruth- lessly cut away a lot of red tape" and having "smashed all kinds of Army precedent," Disque was "getting out spruce! This looks like American efficiency at its best," Bruere wrote. The tenor of Bruere's articles was repeated in the American Review of Reviews, Army and Navy Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Col- lier's Weekly, and Scientific American. Disque received kudos for wel- coming employers and workers, including wobblies, into a mutually profitable and honorable relationship with the embattled government. The picture of the hard-fighting, lantern-jawed professional soldier driving through the detritus left by decades of civilian mismanagement and emerging with a solution that promised the regeneration of thou- sands of villainous wobblies into good folk, plus millions of feet of cut lumber, pleased the popular imagination. Disque was the honest cavalier come to rescue the community. "There is none of the odor of graft or profiteering which arises from the Eastern end of the [aircraft production] business," the Portland Oregonian remarked. After coaching by Disque early in the spring, one writer for the Re- view of Reviews asserted in the June 1918 issue that Disque had won labor and management completely. Remarkably, SPD soldiers were cutting wood at civilian wages "without antagonizing civilians." Disque had built eighty-seven miles of logging roads and twenty-five miles of industrial rail lines thus far, thereby opening the ways to at least two billion feet of spruce. Eastern brokers, wholesaling the lumber to manu- facturers, reduced the costs from $15 a thousand feet to less than $1.50, because of the far higher output of better quality and the regularity 2 Disque to Leadbetter, April 15, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, Disque Papers; "The President and Tom Mooney," Literary Digest, LVII (April 13, 1918), 14; Major Edmund Leigh, Army Intelligence, to General Squier, March 27, 1918, RG 18, NA. ' SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 255 of shipments. Many thousands of cubic feet of invaluable freight-car space, heretofore wasted in individual car loadings and because of poor milling techniques, were now saved despite far greater amounts shipped, by the improvements of the SPD's cutting plant. The rail trip to the East was now ten rather than fifty days, for Disque's office allocated traffic priorities in close cooperation with "federalized" rail- roads. Scarce materials that the operators needed came when required, through the efforts of Disque's purchasing department. And all was accomplished without strikes or acrimony, because of the Legion. 3 No wonder that the War Department and the Council of National Defense approved almost anything that Disque asked for at this time. Authority flowed to him to let the SPD build a spur railroad across the Olympic Peninsula to connect with privately owned rail lines and spruce tracts; to build or repair truck roads to logging camps; to erect another cutting mill equipped with the very latest machinery to eke out more straight-grained lumber from a log; to sign all necessary cost- plus contracts; and to hurry on the educational work of the Legion. President Wilson allotted Disque $100,000 from his "President's fund" for this last purpose. By the end of April, Disque was also empowered to sell any surplus and substandard lumber that piled up due to the selective logging policy he had approved, as well as to set the prices at which the government would buy all timber output. He became the purchasing and inspecting agent for a substantial share of the ship- building, barracks, and furniture construction agencies of the nation. 4 Considering the powers afforded to him from the Army and the Air- craft Board, and those delegated to him by the lumbermen and timber- workers, Disque was indeed well on his way to becoming "a sort of godfather" to the industry. There can be no doubt that in the emergency occasioned by the war, such powers had to be vested somewhere. There is equally little doubt that Disque welcomed their accumulation in his own hands. For ex- ample, sensing the need for favorable publicity, Disque cooperated fully with the press representatives that came to him. Public plaudits 8 See Clay, "The Man Who Heads the 'Spruce Drive,' " Inc. cit., 635; and Wilson Compton, "Production of Airplane Spruce," in the same issue of Review of Reviews, 629-33. Bruere's articles, reprinted by the CPI and in the New York Evening Post, are filed in RG 174, NA. Disque collected all these and annotated them, as well as clippings from the following that carried the same laudatory message: Army and Navy Journal, June 29, 1918; Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1918; Collier's Weekly, April 20, 1918; Scientific American, June 22, 1918; Portland Oregonian, May 14, 1918. On Bruere's views, see Roger N. Baldwin's reminiscence, II, 286, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University. 4 All data in "Authorities" folder,' Disque Papers. On Clallam County (Peninsula), see ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 240, RG 18, NA. 256 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE and support from his superiors were sweet balms, and were necessary lubricants in the complex intergovernmental structure for him to carry out his manifold responsibilities. They also enabled him to resist what he felt were unwarranted attacks from his enemies, who with Parker's death were symbolized in his mind by Gompers and, to a lesser degree, by Frankfurter. Having become a homefront hero, Disque could not have chosen a better time to resist aggression, whether real or fancied. Civilians were an unstable, chancy lot for a soldier to cope with, by Disque's reasoning, and those running the Aircraft Board were not living up to the initial high opinion that he had formed of them. In any case, the SPD, as an Army unit, had no business operating under a civilian group like the Board. Striking in March while his praises were being widely sung, Disque tried to throw off what he felt was the checkrein of civilian officialdom. He recommended to the Board that the SPD henceforth be independent of its authority and rate as any other division of the Army. The SPD must "settle down," Disque argued plausibly enough. In its present condition it was a bureaucratic hybrid. It was of the Army, yet a creature of the civilian Board; a drawer of water for civilians yet, i literally, a hewer of wood for military purposes. Operating on military lines, the SPD would function better administratively. Unless clarity was achieved, Disque feared that efforts might continue on the part of selfish persons to gain control of the direction in which the SPD and its Legion offshoot moved With this suggestion of bringing the SPD-Legion apparatus wholly into the Army fold, Disque was trying in part to accomplish what he stated, that is, to improve the administrative logicality and efficiency \\ of his headquarters. He was also trying to set the stage for fixing the Legion into the wartime scene so that it might endure after the war as a protected segment of the military institution. The evidence sus- taining the credibility of the latter motivation is fragmentary but fas- ! j cinating. In a private notation concerning the resolution of separation that he had submitted to the Board, Disque wrote: "If this passes, future plans go forward." A few lines later: "Legion-Army arrange- ment, in infantry?" And last: "Legion must look to future in Army." Further evidence indicating that some of Disque's civilian colleagues were aware of the drift of his thinking rests in the reaction of the Board. Frankfurter strongly recommended against Disque's suggestion. Per- haps the major reason was the undercurrent of concern that Disque should not drift too far from civilian oversight. The Legion was already SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 257 hitched to the Army's star through the SPD. Therefore, the division was better kept in view by retention of its affiliation with the Aircraft Board. The Army-run labor relations organization that the Legion had become was too tender a proposition to be left to the generals during the war. Postwar continuation was not even in the cards that the Board's civilians were using. Although the Board again congratulated Disque for his recent ac- complishments, its members respected Frankfurter's negative judg- ment. The SPD would remain astraddle civilian-military authority. And Disque had another score to settle. He was a patient man. All through 1918 he returned to this idea of transferring the SPD-Legion organization wholly into the Army. He even had Legion conventions pass resolutions calling for such an arrangement, in one instance provoking a counterblast from J. W. McDonald, vice-president of the AFL's timberworkers locals. 5 Later, Disque's detractors inferred that in seeking independent divi- sional status for the Legion-SPD, he was merely reaching out for a brigadier's star. Proof is as elusive on this minor point as it is on the far graver implication that he hoped to keep the Legion in the Army's ranks after the war ended. One way or another, however, it is clear that after the breakthroughs of February and March, Disque was de- termined that he was going to run the SPD without "interference." 8 If his plans for hitching the SPD more closely to the Army were presently unrealizable, Disque did not hesitate to try to make the Army's stamp on the Legion indelible while the war lasted, and no one in the spring of 1918 could say how long that might be. The first step was to maintain control of the internal government of the Legion, which served also as its internal security and mediation machinery. On March 4 the convention of lumberworkers had gotten out of hand and won popular election of the Legion secretaries to replace the original arrangement of appointment from Legion headquarters. Until the secretaries were again brought to Disque's heel, the Legion suffered in his view from an excess of democracy, at least on the level of each local's conference committee. 5 March 8, 1918, ms. "Minutes of the Aircraft Board," I, 240, RG 18, NA; entries, March 8, 9, 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers; Minutes of the Convention of Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen at Portland Auditorium, August 5, 1918 (n.p., n.d.), 44; McDonald in International Union of Timberworkers, Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention (Seattle, 1919), 37. 8 A cautious echo of his sentiment is in his "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," System, XXXVI (Sept. 1919), 380. 258 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE On March 7 Disque sent General Squier a long telegraphic report on the subject, which, taken together with his resolution to the Air- craft Board requesting separation of the SPD from the civilian Board, vividly reveals certain undercurrents in Disque's thinking. He warned Squier that election of Legion secretaries inescapably introduced a po- litical element into the organization. Would-be secretaries might seek votes in politician's fashion, by offering favors to backers within the Legion's ranks. Corruption of the Legion's purposes and of the Army's standards must follow. Then, adverting to what was probably foremost among his concerns, Disque warned that minions of the AFL, the IWW, and employer groups, enjoying financial backing and the support of claques within the Legion, would seek election as Legion secretaries in order to further the interests of their sponsors. The Army would then be dragged into partisan wrangling which he had thus far skirted. Until he regained control of the secretaries, Disque could not prevent this dread develop- ment, but only sound the alarm. 7 It brought an unanticipated and undesired result. Next day, the Aircraft Board requested Army Intelligence officers headquartered at Camp Lewis, Washington, to investigate the Legion, the SPD, and Disque. Disque's informant at the capital, probably the indefatigable Leadbetter, unearthed the sense of this request through his labyrinth resources, and warned Disque of what was afoot. The informant "guessed" that Gompers and Parker, the latter then still alive of course, were behind this resolution of inquiry. 8 Overdriven by the unceasing pressure of work and already prickly on the issue of secret investigations, Disque was outraged anew at what he considered to be Parker's perfidy and Gompers' overweening influ- ence in the government. Mere courtesy would have demanded that the launching of any inquiry into official performance be as open as an Army officer expected from a military commission. Instead, as Disque saw it, his civilian superiors of the Aircraft Board were so abject before Gompers that they lost all sense of military dignity and unleashed secret spies on him. It must be recalled that this was a time when, for Americans at least, the security and espionage apparatuses of our day were inconceivable. Personal honor was a vital possession of which men still spoke un- ashamedly. Doubtless, no one at the War Department was conspiring 7 Disque to Squier, March 7, 1918, copy of telegram, marked "Private wire — to be coded," Disque Papers. 8 Unsigned telegram to Disque, March 9, 1918, copy in "Leadbetter Wires," Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 259 against Disque or was trying to loft the AFL into a dominant position in the Northwest. The important point is, however, that Disque be- lieved that he was under a foul attack from his erstwhile friends. Few who knew him could doubt that he would fight back. Preparing to retaliate, Disque considered several courses of action. Perhaps he might renege on his promise to the Legionnaires on March 4 to permit the election of secretaries. This was impermissible, he quickly decided, from his sense of personal integrity and because it might destroy the men's confidence in him. Instead Disque chose a more courageous, yet subtle course. With complete candor he threw open the SPD's and Legion's records to the Army's inspectors, gave them unrestricted access to personnel and members, and refrained from building the Potemkin villages that the professional soldier knows how to exhibit to inquisitive superiors. Disque gambled that the SPD and the Legion were in such condition that no camouflage was needed. Perhaps it was not too great a gamble. Beyond the physical evidence of his accomplishments, Disque had a trump card in the person of the officer in charge of the inquiry. Major Edmund Leigh of the Plant Protection Section of Military Intelligence was an old friend. The two men had been working closely together on the Pacific Coast ever since the preceding November. Their common concern was, of course, effec- tive antisabotage operations. In several instances Disque had "lent" Leigh SPD troopers to serve as guards for exposed public utility centers, bridges, and communications lines. In return, Leigh had supplied Disque with Intelligence operatives who bored into Legion locals and into SPD detachments to check on the trustworthiness, loyalty, and efficiency of civilian Legionnaires and division soldiers. American Pro- tective League agents became available for Disque's use through Leigh's intercessions with Thomas Burke. Disque and Leigh had the warmest professional regard for each other. 9 As it turned out, Leigh's investigation of Disque's operations be- came a weapon in the latter's armory to add to the force of his drive to regain control of the Legion secretaries. If the Leigh inquiry was, as Disque imagined, originally an attack, Disque converted it into a superb defense of his policies. For a man who eschewed politics, Disque was performing on a high level of intergovernmental political efficiency. 9 Disque risked censure from the Army commander of the Western Department, who objected to the SPD troopers usurping the functions of his command. One com- plaint resulted in a telegram from Squier to Disque, Feb. 1, 1918: "If it becomes necessary for you to use Signal Corps troops purely as guards you should have an understanding with the Department Commander"; Disque Papers. The Disque- Leigh accord is best described passim in Washington State files, APL Papers, UCLA. 260 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Leigh's report, in the preparation of which Disque played the role of major information source, was a carefully reasoned, not uncritical, but overwhelmingly favorable judgment on Disque, the SPD, and the Legion. It asserted that Disque and his organizations had saved the Northwest from a holocaust of sabotage and had dried up the wobbly menace. The colonel's invitation to the IWW to "join the Legion" had crippled the wobbly appeal of being the last resort for the un- wanted. Legion secretaries had kept close watch on the thousands of known wobbly-Legionnaires in the more than 500 mills and camps now affiliated with the 4Ls. Erstwhile hotbeds of wobbly incendiarism were now centers of patriotic purpose. The Legion, Leigh stated as the judgment of the whole Northwest, "is a wonderful organization." For the Army it was particularly wonderful. In addition to getting out spruce now in adequate quantity, it was also an incredibly inex- pensive intelligence apparatus. That was true because each secretary of a Legion local was a soldier of the SPD. Watching wobblies, he also symbolized patriotism. Patriotism was "the Religion" that Disque had realized was needed to stabilize labor conditions in the woodlands. But now that popular election of the secretaries was coming in, "the Army stamp" on the Legion would blur. "The spirit that holds it [together] will be gone." In its place, strife would return. Labor would win out in one camp and employers in another as elections for secre- taries proceeded. Ethnic, racial, and religious bigotries would play dismal roles. To prevent this, or the possible election of "a Red" as secretary, Leigh, undoubtedly in agreement with Disque, concluded that the Army must not relax its grip on the Legion. To be sure, election of secretaries must unfortunately go forward as had been promised on March 4. It was necessary to work now behind the scenes and to reduce the functions of Legion secretaries, in order to minimize the many dangers Leigh and Disque saw in the operation of industrial democ- racy. First, the elected secretaries should no longer exercise "security" functions, have access to confidential Army circulars, or in any way work with SPD troopers. Secretaries would be reduced to merely clerical functionaries. Second, SPD squadron commanders must pick up the para-military security, morale, and propaganda functions that the civilian secretaries would drop. Division field officers must also maintain discreet monitorship over the civilian secretaries whose camps they shared. Third, for those logging sites where no SPD detachment was stationed, but where Legion locals were in operation, this over- SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 261 seer function would require SPD officers to ride circuits and serve as supervisors of the elected civilian secretaries. With this intermediate military apparatus within the SPD to harness whatever tendency elected 4L secretaries might show to run wild with the "civilian" Legion, the Army was safe. In any case, the Legion's hierarchical mediation structure that Disque had already developed, though yet uncompleted and untested, was probably adequate to blunt thrusts from echelons lower in the organization. In arranging with Leigh to bypass the elected secretaries in security matters, Disque was playing it safe indeed. 10 Having surveyed Disque's past accomplishments and present pros- pects, Major Leigh came to the biggest worry for the immediate future. Both AFL and IWW spokesmen were claiming credit for having won the eight-hour day. Disque and Leigh believed that this claim was an opening gun in an anticipated barrage from both workers' organiza- tions that could have only one objective. "The [labor] leaders have their eyes on the Legion with its 62,000 members and are awaiting only the opportunity to switch it to them," Leigh reported. "From past ex- perience it requires no imagination to understand what will happen if the I.W.W. obtain control of any number of [Legion] locals. The same is true of the A.F. of L. Once [Army] control is lost, with it will go the confidence of the operators, and the old sores will be reopened." The Legion, Leigh concluded, must be "protected from both the I.W.W. and the A.F. of L." u Disque had swung way around from his earlier views on Gompers. Nursing old sores from the fancied Frankfurter-Gompers-Parker con- spiracy against himself, still disturbed over the unanticipated March 4 vote on the election of Legion secretaries, and irritated at the Aircraft Board's refusal to release the SPD from its increasingly unwelcome oversight, Disque had concluded that the AFL was behind it all. In the colonel's distorted view, Gompers was ready to take over what Disque had laboriously built Disque accepted as evidence for this unwarranted conclusion the images drawn out of his own hypersensitive personal pride, which led him to believe the allegations of rumormongers like Leadbetter. It is an index to the limitations of Colonel Disque for the job that he had stumbled into, that he translated personal pique against Gompers 10 Leigh to Squier, March 27, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA. In History, 25, the chronicler admits that the Legion mediation apparatus never had to pass a dispute all the way up to Disque, but asserts that this harmony obtained out of the democracy of the Legion. The reverse seems to be the case. 11 Leigh to Squier, March 27, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA. 262 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE into Legion policy against the AFL. This inadequacy of Disque's temperament is further highlighted by his own inability ever to admit or even recognize that in early 1918 he swung the Legion into delib- erate anti-AFL activities. "I believe in unions," Disque insisted after the Armistice, alluding to a charge that he had employed the Legion for anti-AFL purposes and out of subservience to lumbermen. He was always bitter at this allegation. To a confidant, Sherman Rogers of Outlook's editorial staff, he described himself after the war as having been ever a neutral be- tween capital and labor, devoted neidier to Weyerhaeuser nor to Gompers. "The promise made in 1917 was a square deal for both sides," Disque wrote Rogers. 12 Ringing the changes on the theme of claimed SPD-Legion neutrality on class issues, a Legion assembly which met in August 1918 to adopt a constitution offered a curious and insightful statement on its actual ambivalence concerning unions. According to this statement: The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen is not a Labor Union in the common acceptance of that term, but is purely a patriotic association of both operators and operatives engaged in this essential war industry. It has not and will not countenance the use of any facilities at its command for either the organization or disruption of legitimate Labor Unions, nor is it to be consid- ered dual to or antagonistic toward any existing legitimate union. 13 It is exceedingly difficult to say, from the printed primary sources and the standard secondary surveys of these matters, just how the August formula was actually applied. In June, Disque publicly advised SPD officers not to interfere in non-4L meetings held at Legion camps. At the same time, however, he ruled that if members of a Legion local joined a separate labor organization, he would at once withdraw Legion recognition of the errant local. So far as Disque was concerned, it was "impossible that two [labor] organizations can exist [together] and accomplish the same result." 14 That Disque had to counsel his subordinates to keep hands off non- Legion organizers is an indication that hands were laid on. Here it is necessary to mark a difference in 4L policy concerning IWW recruit- ers and those of the AFL. Legion ways toward wobbly organizers were ^Disque, "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," loc. cit., 380; to Rogers, April 28, 1922, Disque Papers. 13 Cloice R. Howd, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Industry, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Miscellaneous Series, Bull. No. 349 (Washington, 1924), 82. Howd was a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. "Charlotte Todes, Labor and Lumber (New York, 1931), 143. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 263 frankly antagonistic, with the hearty approval of AFL spokesmen; Legion attitudes toward Federation personnel were less open and less consistent. Concerning the wobblies, recall that mere membership in the IWW was no bar to Legion membership. Organizing for the IWW, however, was understood to be prohibited. Therefore, wobbly spokesmen op- posed the acceptance of Legion membership. Knowing this, SPD re- cruiters for the Legion did their best to bring acknowledged wobblies in. In one instance a camp foreman placed a can of tar on a stove when a wobbly refused to sign the Legion oath. A crowd gathered, but an SPD officer told the men not to carry out their tar-and-feather- party intentions on the nonjuror. "It would be a blot on the Four L's," he is reported to have said. The officer then made a "jingoistic spiel," whereupon the assembled "scissor bills fell over each other to sign up in the Four Hells," a wobbly journalist recounted. Once the cere- monies were completed, the new Legionnaires wanted to "mark up" the recalcitrant wobbly. The SPD lieutenant now had no objection to this. "If they [wobblies] won't line up," he is supposed to have said, "knock their block off." 15 Only wobblies objected to such summary treatment. Almost no one listened to their complaints that they were roughhoused and that the presence of SPD soldiers intimidated lumberworkers, who became Legionnaires only to escape attention from the troops. Undoubtedly, in some instances wobblies were railroaded into the Legion. Once in, red-card holders were kept under surveillance but were pretty much left alone so long as they worked and abandoned proselytizing. This was the catch, of course. Ardent wobblies found it difficult to stop preaching against the wage system and the war. 16 Such stubborn souls ran headlong into Disque's security apparatus, if they did not fall prey first to intra-Legion kangaroo courts. This was all right so far as Disque was concerned. Apparently it was also well enough in the opinion of almost all Americans. The civil rights of wobblies were simply not a matter of moment in the United States in 1918. For his part, Disque was satisfied that the wobbly "prob- lem" was both handled and solved on the level of the Legion local. Lacking champions in high places, the wobblies were controlled by the Legion locals. ir ' Semi-Weekly Industrial Worker, Jan. 12, 1918. 10 Ralph Winstead, "Enter a Logger," Survey, XLIV (July 3, 1920), 476-77, on a wobbly's reaction; newspaper account in Lumberjack Bulletin (supplement to Weekly Industrial Worker), April 6, 1918. 264 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE It was simple enough. In the last days of 1917, Disque secretly cir- cularized Legion secretaries (who were then, of course, his appointees) and SPD recruiters. Their first task, he advised them, was to convert erring workmen to proud, productive Legionnaires. If all efforts failed and a Legionnaire malingered, or spoke against the 4L effort, the rebel was to lose his Legion card and his job. A second confidential bulletin from Disque's office admonished Legion secretaries: It is a part of your duties to aid your more credulous brothers in resisting the malign whisperings of enemies in your camps and mills. Pay no heed to the nonsense that you are signing away your constitutional rights by taking the Legion's pledge of loyalty. Such stories are enemy stories, the work of spies and traitors. Your pledge to the government leaves you as free a citizen as you were before signing and the pledge is only a visible and tangible evidence of loyalty. You are upholding the constitution in aiding the Republic. It is your indi- vidual duty to combat such sinister propaganda. The Headquarters of this Division looks to you to prevent all acts of sabotage and sedition. This duty the government expects of you. To prevent all "aid or comfort" to the enemy in any way. 17 Never a menace to the security of the nation, by early 1918 the north- western wobblies were either cowed or contented within the Legion's ranks or driven away from the lumber regions. The fight against them had resulted in a ridiculously easy victory for the Legion. Probably the patriotic appeal, at which Disque became something of an expert, combined with suppression, and the raising of physical standards in lumber camps and mills were, as Parker had foretold, adequate to diminish the superficial disaffection that passed for wobblyism. 18 The AFL-Legion relationship was almost exactly opposite to that which obtained with the wobblies. Federation strength in the north- 17 Bulletin No. 1, Dec. 29, 1917; No. 2, no date, ca. Jan. 15, 1918, Disque Papers. 18 John S. Gambs, The Decline of the I.W.W. (New York, 1932), 36-44. As examples of Disque's development as a patriotic exhorter, note the following speeches, quoted respectively from Four L Monthly Bulletin, I (March 1918), 5-6; I (Sept. 1918), 6: "The life of your nation and the safety of the world is largely dependent upon the future performance of the men interested in this bulletin [regulations] and reduction of production by willful neglect on the part of either employer or em- ployee in any camp or mill in the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest is no less treason than would be a strike or disobedience of orders among sailors or soldiers. Just claims of employers and employees will arise, but a fair and just means of solving them has been found and a square deal is guaranteed. In the future no one will be allowed to block the lumber requirements of our country." ", . . and while the rifle and bayonet and the smoke and the fiery glory of the battle field would be welcome to most of these soldiers in the silent woods, they will have a splendid part in the victory when it comes. And it is coming — with the toot of the spruce locomotive and the crash of the falling trees and the shriek of the saws and the long trains of clean, clear spruce that builds the battle fleets of the air, the war eagles that carry the glad tiding of freedom to all the world." SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 265 western lumber camps, unlike that of the IWW : was almost nonexistent, yet on the national level the AFL had potent champions close to the heights of political power. Wobblies, however pacific, were being harassed by almost every government agency except the Legion; AFL organizers, though blessed with the seal of high government approval, were no more welcome in Legion camps than IWW counterparts. Disque never concealed the fact that he did not want the AFL recruiting among Loyal Legionnaires. Adverting to this at a Legion convention of lumberworkers in August 1918, he argued that when he had arrived in Portland the AFL lumber local could muster hardly 200 members. "Therefore," Disque continued, "I had no right to con- sider that it played a big part in the war program." Quite apart from this, there should never have been any difficulties between the 4Ls and the AFL, Disque asserted. He and Gompers had "a complete and sympathetic understanding that the unionizing of the timber industry [by the AFL] would not be pressed during the war." 19 As of the first weeks in 1918, this agreement seemed to be operating. Harmony attended Disque's initial contacts with northwestern Federa- tion personnel. AFL spokesmen in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho offered sentiments welcoming him and the Legion, promising coopera- tion, and encouraging Federation members to join the Legion. Yet, only a year later the president of the Oregon State Federation declared that the 4Ls held all workers in a common bond of servitude. Timber- workers' vice-president McDonald, accurately noting how he had coop- erated with Disque at first, condemned the Legion as a "danger to free American institutions." Gompers and Disque had become open enemies. The "complete and sympathetic understanding" of the fall of 1917 had completely broken down. 20 AFL writers have unhesitatingly pinned the blame for the breakdown on Disque. Their charges center on the theme that he favored the employers. This antiunion bias exhibited itself in far more positive ways than merely keeping AFL organizers out of Legion camps. SPD officers and men intimidated and abused Federation officials, the asser- ln Minutes . . . August 5, 1918, 41. 20 International Union of Timberworkers, Proceedings of the Second Annual Con- vention (Seattle, 1919), 37, for McDonald; and see, too, Idaho State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Convention, January 13-16, 1919 (Boise, n.d.), 12; Oregon State Federation of Labor, Year Book, 1919, Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Convention held in Auditorium Hall, Portland, Oregon, January 6-11, 1919 (n.p., n.d.), 20, 24; Washington State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of the 17th Annual Convention Held at Aberdeen, Washington, June 24-28, 1918 (Tacoma, n.d.), 73. 266 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE tions agree; Legion secretaries inspired and conducted attacks on AFL meeting halls; and Disque either condoned or inspired these excesses. 21 It is now appropriate to inquire into the validity of these allegations, and to ascertain, as evidence permits, why men at SPD and AFL head- quarters behaved as they did. Perhaps the stubborn obscurity which, as Professor Nichols suggests, has thus far beclouded accounts of the Disque-Gompers relationship may lift a little. Professor Tyler has pointed out that criticism of Disque by the AFL was only to be expected from a competitor for members and power and that, nevertheless, while the war lasted Federation leaders refrained from open attacks on Disque despite their disillusionment concerning his course. 22 Actually, AFL executives worked behind the scenes against Disque during the war as well as complaining about him to captive audiences in the labor press. The colonel did not altogether imagine opposition from the AFL hierarchy. In August 1918, for example, C. O. Young, the chief AFL organizer whom Gompers had assigned to work with Disque ten months earlier, lodged a formal complaint against him with the War Labor Policies Board of the War Department, a new agency with Frankfurter in charge. According to Young, in February 1918 Disque had betrayed the AFL, broken his personal word to Gompers, and grossly and im- properly exceeded the authority of an American Army officer. He charged that in order to get the eight-hour concession from the em- ployers, Disque had secretly promised them "that he would . . . prevent organization of the men working in the lumber industry into unions." All the anti-AFL harassment that followed was the natural consequence of Disque's fulfillment of that commitment, Young contended. 23 - 1 The most highhanded of the SPD's officers was undoubtedly Captain E. D. Birkholz, the Legion's district officer for the ever turbulent Inland Empire. When some miners struck, he went with SPD troopers to their meeting hall, promised them representation on a committee with employer's delegates, but said that if they con- tinued the strike the draft would call each man not working. On another occasion Birkholz, leading SPD troopers and Legionnaires wielding 2 x 4's and pick handles, broke up a Timberworkers' organizing meeting that was being held outside a Legion camp. According to the account by Idaho Federationists, the captain said: "I am an . Army officer and I have come here to disband this union and by God I am going to do it." Disque later ordered him to desist from such blatant openness but Birkholz was never punished. See Idaho State Federation of Labor, op. cit., 15, 55-56; Washing- ton State Federation of Labor, op. cit., 9, 150. A fellow officer, then Lieutenant Walter S. Johnson, remembers only that "there was a Lt. Buckholtz [sic] over ini Idaho who got off the beam a little on his responsibilities, but none of us considered it required more than proper curtailment and direction out of Army [i.e., SPD] headquarters at Portland." Letter to author, May 7, 1962. -Nichols, Legion, 82-83; Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 446-47. 23 Young to Henry M. White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 446-47, accepts the assumption that deliberate harassment occurred, but blames only overzealous subordinates. Ke ignores the question of an alleged bargain to win the eight-hour day at the price of keeping AFL organizers excluded. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 267 Young was correct in linking the decline of the Federation's oppor- tunities in the woodlands with the eight-hour crisis of February-March 1918. Yet there was no Disque-employer conspiracy. What Young left out of his overly thin equation was the deterioration of Disque's rela- tionship with Parker, Disque's own growing conviction that he was the victim of a conspiracy (he never thought of himself as a perpetrator of one), and the immensely important question of what officials at the War and Labor Departments thought Disque's attitudes to be. Disque had left the impression at the national capital and with Gompers that he was sympathetic to the goals, methods, personnel, and policies of organized labor, meaning, of course, the AFL. This wide- spread conviction had played a substantial part in securing him the spruce assignment. Following his departure to Oregon, the Army leadership saw u> it that this impression was sustained; General Squier in February assured War Secretary Baker that Disque "is in direct communication with local [i.e., northwestern] labor organizations." The purpose of this insistence was to smooth Disque's way in the West as much as possible toward the realization of the Army's goal of raising spruce output. But the effect was to cast Disque as more of a union champion than he actually was. "I think that they go too far," Lead- better warned Disque. "Gompers told me that having you at Portland is the same as having one of his own men there. "* Aware of this exaggeration, Disque did not trouble to call a halt to it. At the same time that he countenanced hyperbole, however, he refrained from outright deception. Having arrived at Portland, he almost ostracized the AFL representatives on the scene — Young, Gomp- ers' chief field man, and Marsh of the Washington state federation and defense council. Yet neither Marsh nor Young saw anything much amiss at this time in Disque's addiction to lumbermen. Since he was new to the complexities of lumber technology, it seemed quite natural that he should surround himself with lumbermen-experts. After all, Disque's first purpose was to raise spruce output, not to solve labor problems, and Gompers had told the Secretary of Labor that he agreed with this priority." 5 Disque later estimated that the AFL men felt confident of their access to him so long as he and Parker were working in harmonious and effec- tive partnership. As it became clear during the first twelve weeks of 1918 that Parker had lost his once-intimate status with Disque, the Federation men grew increasingly strident in their criticism. It was 24 Squier to Baker, Feb. 8, 1918, file 33/574-B, RG 280, NA; Leadbetter to Disque, March 3, 1918, copy of letter in "Leadbetter Wires," Disque Papers. -•Labor Secretary Wilson to Baker, Jan. 31, 1918, file 33/574-A, RG 280, NA. 268 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE J their aspersions, Disque was sure, that lay behind Frankfurter's attempts to limit his authority and finally to unseat him, as well as behind the exacerbating secret investigations made of him. Yet he was aware that the AFL organizers, as Young stated it, "did not in any way interfere with the 4Ls.' ,2 ° Of course they did not, for they could not have done so even had their leaders wished them to be obstructive. The AFL was simply too weak. And Disque, respecting power and dedicated to its exercise in i spruce production, took up with the lumbermen because they were the locus of power in that industry, as well as because of his estrangement from Parker. The fact remains, however, that Disque did not promise the lumber- men that he would adopt an anti-AFL policy in return for their agree- ment to an eight-hour day. This way of securing the reform would have been the way of weakness. Instead, Disque acted from a reservoir of supposed strength. In addition to exerting all the pressures that have been detailed in earlier chapters, he inferred that if lumbermen refused the eight-hour concession he would commandeer lumber property. The record indicates that Disque came to an open anti-AFL policy for the Legion more from personal pique with Parker and Frankfurter and, through extrapolation, with Gompers, whom he identified with them, than from any secret agreement with the lumbermen. During the lumbermen's momentous eight-hour convention in the last week of February, Disque had his SPD subordinates spread the word that he had the power, under national defense legislation already in existence, to take possession of any industrial property or processed material promised for the government's use and then withheld. Com- pensation would come later. Recall that Disque had just arrived hurriedly and dramatically from the War Department. Not one of the fatigued lumbermen, apparently, thought to check on the accuracy of his insinuations of the power to command private property. Instead, the assumption was that he could do as he threatened, and that he would hold off such dire action only if the assembly agreed to the eight-hour day. 27 26 Disque to John D. Ryan, March 23, 1919, Disque Papers; Young to Henry White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. ^Disque to Asst. Sec. War Stanley King (telegram, copy), March 15, 1918, Disque Papers. Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 445, errs in suggesting that it was during the February meeting that Disque requested Senator Chamberlain of Oregon to introduce "a coercive requisition bill." In February Disque actually believed that he had such power. Not until a month later, learning that his honest assumption was wrong, did he make recourse to Congress. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 269 The extent of acceptance of Disque's claim to power becomes evi- dent from the fact that of the hundreds of lumbermen involved, many of whom were notoriously "ruggedly individualistic," only one man openly declined to obey the decision of the convention to go on the eight-hour day. Disque had expected far more trouble than this from holdout employers. Indeed, on March 1, nervous, unsure, and near exhaustion, he had waited in his Portland office for reports on how many lumber facilities refused to accept the new schedule, fearing news of disaster. But by noon, incoming reports from SPD and Legion personnel had made it clear that the eight-hour day was in effect everywhere in Wash- ington and Oregon, and in the Inland Empire, with the single excep- tion noted. "This means," Disque wired Leadbetter, "that we now know the real worth of the Legion and the Division. I propose to ex- pand both organizations so that we may retain what we have won." 28 There would be no more vacillation on Disque's part concerning the utility of the Legion. His wire to Leadbetter (of which only a small portion is quoted) indicates that in his own thinking the lumbermen gave way on the eight-hour front in order to keep the Legion and all its benefits, not out of fear of their property being commandeered. Still, Disque wanted publicly to punish the lone holdout among the employers. First he removed whatever 4L and SPD personnel were working at that lumberman's plants and, through federal railroad administrators, deprived the recusant of prior guarantees of scarce boxcar space. Then on March 15 he wired the War Department "regard- ing the possibility of having to use the power of commandeer to bring into line one . . . recalcitrant operator." To Disque this stubborn lum- berman was "without support or sympathy in any direction." It was beyond his capacity to attribute any scruple of principle to the dis- obedient operator; rather he saw in his action proof of unsavory politi- cal partisanship and an inferior standard of private morality. The lonely holdout, Disque stated in his wire, was "an operator of impor- tance with Republican political affiliations" who would "break faith with me and with all other operators." Commandeering of the rascal's property must follow "in order to prove value of eight-hour day." On the last point Disque might have been correct. Some standpat producers like Talbot of the important Pope-Talbot corporation were "firmly convinced that if an employer refuses to abide by this order Colonel Disque is without proper authority to enforce the eight-hour day." It was just possible that the single holdout against the new ar- 28 March 1, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires," Disque Papers. 270 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE rangement might, unless punished, gain recruits among his wavering colleagues in the industry. "One man's rigidity," Disque advised Lead- better on the 15th, "may become the symbol for a crusade against government intervention in private business affairs," 29 With his warning spurring the War Department to action, only four days elapsed from the receipt of Disque's inquiry before the Judge Advocate General of the Army ruled that no existing legislation em- powered a military officer to requisition private property. This adverse decision did not, as feared, greatly affect Disque's standing among the lumbermen. In addition to being motivated by patriotism, most of the operators had in fact accepted the eight-hour day in order to keep the benefits the Legion and SPD brought them, not out of fear of losing their property. Nevertheless, after this decision on March 19, the War Department at Disque's urging gained the cooperation of Senator Chamberlain of Oregon, who thereupon introduced his famous (but unsuccessful) "commandeering" bill, dealing specifically with the lum- ber properties of the Northwest. 30 At the height of Disque's uncertainty in March over whether the lumbermen would abide by their commitment and go on the eight-hour work schedule, a foul blow hit him from an unexpected source, as he later saw matters. In his own words: "We thought that the agitators had been eliminated, but about March 19th a new enemy appeared. A newspaper gave a column to a writer who evidently had only one pur- pose, and that was to create doubt and distrust in the minds of loyal woodsmen. The article was headed 'Mill Workers Not Yet Sure of 8-hour Day,' and went on to show that all I was trying to do was to fool you men in the interests of the 'Lumber Barons,' " Disque stated flatly that the article was written by "an A.F. of L. official." 31 A few errors marred Disque's reporting. The newspaper article to which he referred appeared in Bellingham on March 1, not the 19th, ^Talbot to Ames, March 8, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; Disque to Leadbetter, March 8, 15 (to be routed to War Department), 1918, "Leadbetter Wires," Disque Papers. 30 U.S. Army, Opinions of the Judge Advocate General of the Army (Washington, 1918), II, 186-88; Asst. Sec. War Stanley King to Disque, March 25, 1918, Disque Papers; Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 445; and see Robert Bruere's article on the Chamber- lain bill, and Disque's connection with it, in New York Evening Post, undated, ca. March 20-30, 1918, clipping in Labor Department files, RG 174, NA. Chamberlain at the same time submitted a bill giving Army courts automatic jurisdiction over "spies." President Wilson and Attorney General Gregory threw their weight against it, and it died by April 18. Charles Warren resigned from the Justice Department because it did not pass. See J. L. O'Brian to Gregory, April 18, 1918, file 189083, RG 60, NA; C. Frey to A. M. Briggs, April 22, 1918, APL Papers, UCLA. Disque doubtless knew of this, but apparently made no move to gain lumbermen's support for the Draconian measure. 31 Minutes . . . August 5, 1918, op. cit., 9-10, 42. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 27 1 and there is no way to know if the AFL had anything to do with it. Disque's anxiety over the one holdout lumberman is explicable in rela- tionship to this shaft from the press. If he had not brought about com- pliance with the eight-hour commitment, the AFL, the wobblies, and the standpat lumbermen would have laughed him out of the Northwest. In view of these dreadful potentialities, the open fierceness with which he rebutted the maligning Bellingham article is understandable. In the first issue of the Legion Monthly Bulletin, which appeared in mid- March, 1918, Disque took an entire page to "Reply to Unjust Charges." He also utilized the occasion to put at ease the fears of some lumbermen that in initiating the eight-hour day, he had acted as Gompers' agent. He drew some boundaries that he warned Gompers not to cross. "Any effort," he wrote in the Bulletin "on the part of any organization or institution, to* take advantage of the membership of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen to advance their own interests would, to my mind, result in greater damage to this country than the presence of a similar number of enemy spies in our midst, and will not be tol- erated." 32 There were many other lines of more conciliatory spirit in this article, but Disque let the quoted sentence stand, knowing that every Legion secretary and most Legionnaires would read it, and act accordingly if AFL organizers came by. The predictable nature of that reaction by Legionnaires was pointed out in an allegedly spontaneous letter to the Bulletin's editor — a somewhat remarkable document considering that the periodical was still unborn when the letter was written. In it, the self-identified lumberworker-writer waxed indignant that any man should criticize Disque. The proper treatment for such a miscreant, he suggested, "be he rich or poor," was "to have a choker placed around his worthless neck, run up to a high lead, and be left there over night." 13 To his credit, Disque did not wait for the Bulletin before throwing down the gauntlet to Gompers. On March 12, he addressed a lengthy private letter to the AFL president. In disingenuous manner, he "in- formed" Gompers that the Legion had won the eight-hour day and was rapidly and substantially raising the income, living, working, and safety standards of all northwestern lumberworkers. Employers, enjoying the unfamiliar delights of a stable labor force, "are willing to go much further in granting [such] concessions." Then Disque got to the heart of the matter. His subordinates had reported attempts by AFL organizers to "unionize membership of the " Bulletin, I (March 1918), 8. 33 "Logger Defends Division," ibid. 272 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Loyal Legion." To be sure, Disque admitted, in earlier intercourse with Gompers he had depicted himself as one in whom there "was no per- sonal objection to union labor . . . who . . . had seen the benefits of union labor in more than one instance." That attitude had not changed. But events had changed conditions. It would now be "a fatal error" for Disque to "permit" the Federation to recruit members in the Legion's camps. "Almost without exception the operators . . . will resist to the limit any attempt along this line," Disque continued. The lum- bermen, having granted the eight-hour day "through patriotic and other laudable motives," would feel betrayed if their acceptance of the Legion was made a device "to unionize their operations and I agree with them." Disque asked Gompers to hold off any recruiting attempts for the duration of the war. 34 A month later, on April 12, Gompers replied noncommittally, merely congratulating Disque on having seen the wisdom of seeking the eight- hour reform. But in the meantime, the AFL's organizers had continued their work, against considerable and deliberate interference on the part of Legion officials, which Disque had authorized. Disque decided to try another round directly with Gompers. On April 20, he wrote him again, asking him to have Young, the AFL's chief organizer, stop his recruiting work in Legion territory so long as the war lasted. Then Disque held out a bait. If Gompers would issue the order, Dis- que would guarantee that once the war ended the Legion would dis- band. "It is then believed," Disque asserted, "that organized labor should be able to convince all parties concerned, providing it is rep- resented by the proper kind of leaders, that they are the logical heirs." But if the Federation persisted in its efforts to bore into the Legion while the war was yet on, then Disque must conclude that "it was di- rectly contrary to the best interests of the Government," and do all he could to thwart the AFL's wartime exploitation in the northwest lum- ber area. 35 Was Disque dissimulating in this half-promise to close down the Legion when Germany quit, and to pave the way for the AFL to take its place? Or was this a belated realization that his Army functions ended when the war emergency did, and perhaps had already exceeded their due bounds? Still another alternative, did Disque propose passiv- ity on the part of the AFL for the war's duration, a period of unguess- able length, hoping that this immobility might develop into catatonia, thus leaving the postwar field open to the Legion without competition? So far as can be determined, Disque was sincere in his offer to 34 Disque to Gompers, March 12, 1918, Disque Papers. 35 Gompers to Disque, April 12; Disque to Gompers, April 20, 1918, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 273 Gompers. In April he was not yet converted to carrying out a postwar mission for the Legion, although he was tending that way; he was not yet converted to frank antiunionism, although he was turned toward that unhappy road. Events later that spring and throughout the remainder of 1918 set Disque firmly in an antiunion direction. He grew convinced of the existence of a conspiracy against himself. Evidence that Gompers had rejected his bid for compromise decided him. Back east in Washington the war administration was undergoing an upheaval as mounting criticism of production inadequacies forced the President to reassess policies and shift personnel. He placed the general oversight of production matters in a War Industries Board headed by Baruch, while John D. Ryan, the "copper king," became Director of Aircraft Production as well as chairman of the old Aircraft Board of the Council of National Defense. Disque's friends, Coffin, Deeds, and Squier, whom he thought of now as his "protectors," were superseded at the highest policy levels of the War Department. Disque did not know Ryan. Unfortunately for Disque's peace of mind, Ryan ascended to his high post just as accusations of monstrous graft and waste in the aircraft industry, including the spruce supply end, became common. Reading of the new "czar's" promise to clean house, Disque became increasingly short-tempered and suspicious. Any opposition or criticism seemed to him to reflect the existence of plots against him, in which Gompers played the role of archschemer. Then, in mid-May Frankfurter was named to head a new War Labor Policies Board. Disque's uncritical suspicions deepened. When General Peyton March, known to every Army careerist as Pershing's great foe, became Chief of Staff, Disque saw in the event final proof of evil. "I am sur- rounded by enemies," he worried to Leadbetter. 38 Expecting blows from the East, he built up his defenses in the West. Seeing enemies everywhere, he turned as never before for defend- ers and comfort to his new friends among the lumbermen. But Disque was aware of his strength more than of any weakness. He accepted the lumbermen as allies, not as his masters. So far as Disque was concerned, the Legion would be no one's servant. His difficulty lay in making realities conform to what he thought were his sincere commitments to neutrality in class differences and to the need for better industrial democracy. 36 May 28, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires," Disque Papers; data on reorganization in Palmer, Baker, II, 185-205; U.S. Secretary of Labor, Annual Report, 1918-1919 (Washington, 1919), 125-26; Frankfurter, "The War Labor Policies Board," American Federationist, XXV (Sept. 1918), 797-98. Chapter 14 Building an Anti-Gompers Barricade Frankfurter reached his new eminence on May 21, almost precisely when Disque felt the first shocks from the anticipated assault from Gompers. This conjunction represented planning between his promi- nent antagonists in the East rather than coincidence, Disque believed. His evolution from an admirer of Gompers to a suspicious, wary foe took place within the single year of their acquaintanceship. As ever with Disque, he did not set out on a new pathway without a guide. Parker had led him toward an attitude of sympathetic understanding of workers' organizations as instruments capable of rationalizing the disproportions in the power relationships between employers and em- ployees. Disque agreed that when, as in the lumber industry, this imbalance grew too large, a third force was needed. War's emergency necessitated that this neutral middleman be a federal agency. The Army had to step in to end the lumber slowdown, and the Legion had come forth out of that martial intercession. Now it was clear that the Legion and the SPD together had set things working. Was the task of Disque's extraordinary organizations therefore completed? Parker's teachings had undergone a transformation as they sifted through Disque's intelligence and personality. Perhaps it is unremark- able that this should be so. After all, only a little more than a year separated the colonel from fifteen years of military service and from his brief tenure as the enlightened despot of a state penitentiary. Disque was still the professional officer, committed to new goals as romantic as those that commonly inspire military careerists. He had been moved by the program Parker had sketched, of rationalizing the chaotic labor relations in lumber and of uplifting the physical standards of many men. More important, his heart had been touched by the vision of the Loyal Legion forwarding patriotic purposes while at the same time rehabilitating thousands of victims of the wobbly heresy. Disque had become something of a visionary by the early spring of 1918. But he had cut himself adrift from Parker, his first prophet. An obscure, able young journalist, Charles Van Hemert, helped to fit Disque out in new missionary's robes and to gild them even more 274 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 275 brightly in patriotic hues. Moving quickly into the vacated niche close to Disque, Hemert guided him smoothly toward an antiunion stand. Disque met Hemert in December 1917 when the younger man was on assignment out west from the Boston Transcript, writing a series on the wobblies. They became friends at once. Lumbermen also like Hemert. He made no bones about his admiration for them and his antipathy to unions. Cooperating closely with lumbermen, Hemert had R. D. Merrill look over his articles before publication so that nothing would go east "that might in any way stir up the animals." The Parker-Frankfurter reformer type were the "animals" of the Hemert-Merrill lexicon. 1 Early in 1918, Disque exploited his rocketing status at the War De- partment and had Hemert commissioned into the SPD with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Thereafter, Hemert was almost constantly at Disque's side, performing for his patron a public relations function that is common today, but that was a novelty in those simpler times. He also became Disque's chief mentor on philosophical matters. Labor unions, in Hemert's fervent view, were no better than the wobblies, no less un-American and socialistic. Gompers was financing the IWW's efforts to free Tom Mooney, he insisted. He and Disque corresponded on the question of sending American soldiers to Russia, and Hemert was against it, fearing Bolshevik contamination. He wanted every man in the AEF, not merely officers, to undergo a loyalty test. Hemert begged Disque to lend the SPD and the Legion to a crusade at home, to keep America white, Christian, and free of unions. 2 Ac- cording to Thomas Burke, Hemert, in his heartfelt sermons against unions appearing in newspapers, had "done more to give publicity through the press of the country from Seattle to New York of their evil activities than any other person that I know of." Without question, his antiunion animadversions had some effect on Disque. To be sure, Disque never became a misanthropic bigot like Hemert. At the same time, however, predisposed out of personal animosity toward Gompers, Disque did accept certain of his new subordinate's premises concern- ing the impossibility of working usefully with any union. Hemert also offered him something more positive. 1 Merrill to E. S. Grammcr, Nov. 19, 1917, Box 8, Merrill & Ring Papers, UW. 2 "Van Hemert" folder, Disque Papers, contains a large number of memoranda that passed between him and Disque, serving to exchange their ideas, and this description is derived from this source. A good deal of digging failed to unearth anything else about Hemert, save that a business partner of his, Ralph Horr, was "mysteriously shot," and his assailants went unapprehended. Hemert apparently blamed this tragedy of late 1917 on agitators, and dedicated himself to a search for better modes of labor-management relations. See Weekly Industrial Worker, Feb. 23, 1918 (article, "Are Mob Leaders to Be Rewarded?"). 276 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE An early apostle of the "American Plan," Hemert envisioned the Legion as the chief postwar weapon in the Northwest against the closed shop desired by the unions. Open to all seeking employment, the Legion would maintain the American dream of individual opportunity and merit rewarded by advancement. Yet, and seeing no contradiction in his logic, Hemert also preached the need for continuing the Legion into the postwar years as a venture in enlightened paternalism by the employers, in which they would substitute for ruinous competition a rational cooperation in setting prices and allocating selling areas and production quotas. Dominating the industry through control of the Legion, the employers, Hemert claimed, would seek the common good. Seeking it, they would exclude labor unions, which were incapable of just measures or lofty goals. Agreements, not strikes, would achieve fair wages, decent conditions, and adequate profits, without inter- vention by government. All "selfish" elements — wobblies, union or- ganizers and members, and merely profit-conscious employers — could be punished on behalf of the common will. All this might come true, Hemert preached, if during the war the SPD and the Legion cauterized the canker of unions. Hemert charmed Disque with a vision that was not uncommon at the time and that would grow mightily during the ensuing few years, of a return through entrepreneurial cooperation to the values of a simpler, purer America. This reborn old order would be classless and harmonious. It would avoid the excesses of the Adam Smith past as well as the perils of the Marxist future. In it, workers would offer loyal and obedient service and receive adequate returns for labor. The lumbermen would immunize employees against radical slogans and union recruiters through a program of "Americanization" and by cen- sorious oversight. Knowing best what was beneficial for their employees, they would achieve these goals through common action. The Legion would be the stage on which the postwar drama of harmony that Hemert crafted would be played. He hoped that when the war ended and the Army and the government withdrew from the woodlands, the lumber operators and "most workmen, educated to patriotism by the wartime work of the Legion," would seek to keep the organization functioning. 3 3 Hemert to Disque, June 1, 1918, "Hemert" folder, Disque Papers. After the Armistice, Hemert became a prominent self-styled industrial relations expert, wedded to the open shop and the "American Plan." See ibid., and Burke to Disque, Aug. 16; Hemert to Burke, Aug. 28, Oct. 19, 1918, Thomas Burke Papers, UW. See also Ray Stannard Baker, The New Industrial Unrest: Reasons and Remedies (Garden City, 1920), 99-122; Robert Lively, "The American System," Business History Review, XXIX (March 1955), 81-96. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 277 Impressed by Hemert's prophetic tone, Disque paid it the compli- ment of emulation. Speaking to a Legion convention in August, he asserted that he had "long held to the idea that America must gradually become more democratic in every phase of its life, and I have noticed that we are gradually doing so." Every great man running the war — Wilson, Schwab, Ryan, McAdoo, Pershing formed Disque's roster — had come up the Horatio Alger ladder. Surely Legionnaires did not want "the loafer and dead-beat to get all the good things in life that the industrious man can earn." There was no pretense or attempt at concealment. AFL officials had taken on a satanic cast in Disque's view as his self-estimation had gained saintly attributes. The opposition that Disque had suffered from within the war-swollen bureaucracy back east could have derived only from evil men with vicious motives. "Men who will start labor troubles today," he told a Legionnaire audience, ". . . are traitors and they won't hesitate to betray their own friends when it comes to a question of self-interest." His own hurt thus exposed out of his conviction, furthered by Hemert, that Frankfurter, Gompers, and Parker had betrayed him, Disque turned savagely on his detractors and imagined persecutors. AFL organizers, he said, are "selfish agitators, seeking to promote their own interests." He continued with a diatribe in which he rang the changes on secret "slush funds" paid to "so-called labor leaders to keep them quiet." Referring to his erstwhile coadjutor Marsh, but adverting indirectly to Gompers, Disque asked rhetorically: "Now, what kind of an organization do you expect with such a liar at the head of it?" 4 Yet it must be said for Disque that he descended to labor-baiting with something more in mind than merely monopolizing all power over labor in the Northwest for himself, the Legion, or the lumber- men, or waging a war against alleged personal enemies. He took to castigating the AFL out of a conviction that its personnel were less dedicated to getting out spruce and helping to win the war than he thought was proper. Further, Disque attacked Gompers defensively as he saw it, to stave off offensives against himself. Last, Disque sought to slay the dragon of organized labor that he had newly discerned, in order to make real another dream that he had come to believe in, which would endure beyond the war and had purposes transcending increases in woodcutting. Parker had taught him the delights of dreaming about achieving wartime efficiencies in industrial output by improving in- 4 Minutes of the Convention of Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen at Port- land Auditorium, August 5, 1918 (n.p., n.d.), 7-8, 10-11, and passim. 278 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE dustrial society. Disque required a purposeful vision for happiness. With Parker gone, he found a new oracle in Hemert. The journalist brought Disque the same comfort of purpose and rectitude that Parker's carefully researched conclusions had afforded. Hemert further offered the advantage over Parker of not trying to execute a multitude of government duties that sometimes conflicted with Disque's. The SPD-Legion commander was delighted that Hemert quickly gained the respect of the region's top lumbermen, without whose support the wartime mission of the 4Ls and SPD could not succeed. In order to advance that mission, and in accord with a recom- mendation of Hemert to make this move, in the spring of 1918 Disque brought several of the most prominent lumber operators into close official association with the Legion and the division. Which purpose came first in Disque's thinking — wartime production or postwar per- fection — is a question that the historian's techniques cannot answer. Probably both shared an uncertain ratio of significance. What is certain is that Disque was easily able to gain military com- missions and advisory appointments for his new intimates among the ; lumbermen. His first SPD subordinates had been Army careerists like able, devoted Major Stearns and inventive Lieutenant Crumpacker. But as of March 1918, Disque relegated these men to responsibilities involving purely Army administrative matters; Stearns became his chief of staff, for example, while Crumpacker's oversight of the Legion was fixed on procedural and fiscal concerns. 5 Substantive questions henceforth became increasingly the jurisdic- tion of the new cadre of lumbermen who, as uniformed officers or civilian counselors, drew together in a tight circle around Disque. He did not become their puppet. Disque was his own man always. But he believed that his new friend Hemert and the influential lumbermen who now dominated SPD headquarters shared with him a dream of a finer kind of business ethic. 6 Disque retained this conviction for the rest of his lifetime. In 1923 he proudly described in the following terms the lumbermen who, ac- cepting commissions in the division, became important in the develop- ment of the SPD and, through it, of the Legion as well: "Major Everitt I G. Griggs, SPD Mgr. of fir production. President, St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Co. One of the largest operators on West Coast (Democrat); 5 See Stearns' report to Disque on division of authority at SPD headquarters as of May 1918, "Stearns" folder, Disque Papers. 6 See Edward Chase Kirkland, Dream and Thought in the Business Community , 1860-1900 (Ithaca, 1956), a study whose theme needs pushing forward in time to cover the years through the 1920's. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 279 Lt. Col. G. E. Breece, SPD Mgr. Lumber Production. President, West Virginia Timber Co., operating 10 important lumber manufacturing plants in the country. One of the master manufacturers of lumber in the United States (Republican); Major Watson Eastman, Mgr. of Logging Operations, SPD, President W T estern Cooperage Co., one of the largest operators in Oregon (Republican); Major E. S. Grammer, SPD director of Hoquiam cut-up plant, superintendent, Puget Mills Company, president, Lumbermen's Protective association. An expert, especially on unions. (Republican)." Of lumbermen who remained in mufti, but who established what Disque proudly called "intimate, trusting, and honest relations" with him, the most significant, again as Disque described them, were "H. S. Mitchell, Mgr., Vancouver cut-up plant. Mgr., Crosse tt-Western Lum- ber Co., one of the big manufacturers on the Columbia River (Repub- lican); Mr. Mark Reed, Director, Spruce Production Corporation. President, Simpson Logging Company of Washington. Probably the largest in the world. (Republican — delegate to the Republican Na- tional Convention, 1920); Mr. Amos Benson, Director, Spruce Produc- tion Corporation, retired logger who had spent his life logging and became independently wealthy by it. (Republican); Mr. J. J. Donovan, Director, Spruce Production Corporation. Vice-President, Bloedel-Don- ovan Lumber Co., one of the largest producers in the U. S. (Repub- lican)." 7 Without question, these were able men. Their abilities impressed Disque, and probably their wealth did as well. Success had ever been his touchstone. The lumbermen drawing close around him exuded the evidence of achievement. To the colonel, reflecting on his lifetime of underpaid service, the rewards for their labors that these lumbermen had received were testimonies to their moral worth as individuals. Disque would never have sustained these lumbermen had they ex- pressed to him the brazen motives stated by a minor operator, Paul Page, at the first postwar Legion convention. "The most attractive thing about the L.L.L.L. to me," said Page, "is the bitter fight made against it by the American Federation of Labor. . . . The thing that the industry is confronted with is I.W.W.ism, Bolshevism, and American Federation of Laborism. . . . We must form some militant plan to com- bat that element." Nor would Disque have lent his weight to the method of operation proposed by another small-scale lumberman, who at the same meeting suggested concerning "agitators" that "one of the first things that the organization [the 4Ls] should ... do is to educate 7 List in "Hon. Fred W. Gillette" folder, Disque Papers. 280 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE these men. We should have a pretty good sized man in each local to handle the agitators as they show up, and if we cannot change their line of reasoning to coincide with ours the big man can do a little bit of work along that line which will accomplish our object. . . . The men need to be enlightened." 8 No hypocrite, Disque himself employed the verb "to enlighten" in its orthodox sense. The Legion would be the instrument of illumina- tion, not coercion. And because he had come to distrust the alternative source of light that the AFL offered, Disque determined for this rea- son also to resist what he felt was the unfair invasion of Legion terri- tory that Gompers began in mid-March. Even Gompers felt impelled to move cautiously in matters concern- ing the touchy Legion commander and the explosive lumber industry. But move he must. The northwestern locals of the AFL expected action. Friends in Army Intelligence alerted Disque early in March to the fact that AFL preparations were made to convert Legionnaires into Timberworkers. The first step would be for the Federation to claim more loudly than ever the credit for having won the eight-hour prize, and, if the claim was believed, to capitalize on the resulting gratitude among lumberworkers. Later in March a New Republic article ap- peared that argued the need for the federal government to recognize the AFL in all contracts, and to require its participation in collective bargaining, "for the construction of an administrative machinery that will substitute negotiation . . . for strikes." 9 Parker had long since sensitized Disque to the weight that the New Republic carried among the New Freedom's front-runners in the na- tional capital. A Legion secretary, MacDonald Denman, who in previ- ous years had some brief journalistic connection with Hemert, obtained space in the New Republic to retort that the AFL represented no one in the Northwest. Denman's article also praised Disque as a construc- tive statesman. In an editorial in the same issue, George Soule lashed out at legislators who had defeated Senator Chamberlain's comman- deering bill, which Disque favored. 10 In the succeeding issue of the influential journal, another editorial on "Colonel Disque and the I.W.W." stressed the statesmanship of his 8 Transcript of Jan. 6-8, 1919, Loyal Legion Convention, University of Oregon Library. 9 Major Edmund Leigh to General Squier, Feb. 9, March 27, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA; "Spruce and the I.W.W.," New Republic, XIV (Feb. 23, 1918), 99-100. 10 Denman, "Majority of the Lumberjacks Are Not I.W.W. ," and Soule, "Senatorial Sabotage," both in New Republic, XIV (March 30, 1918), 265-66. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 28 1 decision to enroll the wobblies in the Legion, rather than to flail them with the Legion. Continuing, the writer, probably Herbert Croly in this instance, indirectly pointed an admonishing finger at Gompers. Despite Disque's achievement, he warned, there was still a "possi- bility" that some of the lumber operators might break the eight-hour agreement on the ground that they could not be bound to any such agreement either with the detested Federation or with the radical wobblies. 11 These were strong guns. Disque was delighted at the praise of poli- ticians and war leaders and of the Progressive theoreticians of the New Republic 's staff. He was further pleased when Thorstein Veblen's official report to the Food Administration on how best to decrease wobblyism among migratory farm workers, while increasing farm pro- duction, suggested the creation for that purpose of something strik- ingly like the Legion, even to War Department sponsorship. 12 Disque began to resolve in his own favor whatever doubts he may have had concerning his split from Parker. Hemert hammered on the theme that Disque was an industrial philosopher, a statesman of a new order of cooperative democracy. Disque obtained a copy of Walter E. Weyl's The New Democracy, perhaps at Hemert's suggestion, and dog-eared the pages on "The Industrial Program of the Democracy." 13 Acting on Hemert's advice, Disque authorized the creation at SPD headquarters of a magazine, the Loyal Legion Monthly Bulletin, as a disseminator of regulations and morale-building sentiments and as a vehicle for the expression of Disque's thoughts. The Bulletins uni- formed editors were, unsurprisingly, adulatory in their treatment of their commanding officer. The sheer coincidence of the Bulletins first issue appearing in March, along with the heart-warming New Re- public material and copies of Veblen's flattering report, might have 11 "Colonel Disque and the I.W.W.," New Republic, XIV (April 6, 1918), 284-85; Disque to Leadbetter, April 12, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, Disque Papers, including suggestion concerning Croly. Gompers hit back at the New Republic in American Federationist, XXV (Aug. 1918), 687-88, but only after his split from Disque had become public. 12 Leon Ardzrooni, ed., Essays in Our Changing Order by Thorstein Veblen (New York, 1934), 319-36. In its original typescript form of 1918, the essay entitled "Farm Labor and the I.W.W." had an appended document that Veblen and Isador Lubin, his co-investigator, intended as a substantiation of their suggestion on the need for a 4L-like group for farm workers. This appended item is a Legion wages-hours- conditions agreement. A photostat of the complete essay, including this appendix, which does not appear in the printed version cited above, is at the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations Library. The original is in RG 174, NA. 13 Mrs. Disque kindly afforded me access to his Weyl volume. Disque obtained it in February 1918, and apparently gave it close and repeated attention during the ensuing years. Weyl, The New Democracy: An Essay on Certain Political and Economic Tendencies in the United States (New York, 19i2). 282 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE turned the head of a stronger man than Disque. At the least, this concatenation of literary praise, in addition to giving Disque avenues of counterattack against Gompers, increased the colonel's conscious- ness of rectitude. By the same degree, his certainty grew that anyone who opposed him, or even criticized overmuch the details of his op- erations, was part of the unholy, unpatriotic conspiracy against him that Hemert insisted was the cause of all his troubles. 14 At this juncture, in mid-May 1918, an editorial in the April issue of the American Federationist, Gompers' official journal, came to Disque's attention. After reviewing the history of northwestern labor strife, the editorial congratulated the nation on the eight-hour break- through, which was "another achievement for [organized] Labor." This infuriated Disque, but, after all, an editorial in the AFL maga- zine preached only to the already converted. Much more important, Gompers had also reached out for a wider audience. A letter he wrote to the head of Washington's Timberworkers repeated the claim that the eight-hour achievement was really gained by and for the AFL. In early May thousands of copies of this letter appeared all over the Northwest. It was reproduced as throwaways, on billboards, and in newspapers. Copies "seem to be spreading broadcast in this section of the country," Disque complained. 15 The next assault was not long in coming. Within a week after distribution of the Gompers letter, "several dozens of A.F. of L. orga- nizers appeared at Loyal Legion camps and mills," Disque noted angrily to the AFL president. Using as their chief appeal the claim that the AFL had won the eight-hour and other reforms that the Legion was instituting, these organizers busily set to work recruiting Legion- naires into the Timberworkers. When questioned by SPD officers con- cerning their activities, they declared that Disque had given them permission, through a prearrangement with Gompers, to enlist men of the Legion into the AFL affiliate. On being pressed to prove this assertion, they argued that no Army officer was empowered to restrict the activities of civilians at a nonmilitary site. A Legion camp was not an Army encampment. Lumbermen reacted angrily to this energetic campaign by the AFL. Deputations of employers gained quick access to Disque through their colleagues on the 4L advisory council. At heated meetings, the irate 14 This assertion is undocumentable save by inferential comments Disque makes in his small notebook, Feb.-June 1918 entries, Disque Papers. 15 Disque to W. D. Clark, Timberworker secretary, May 10, 1918, "A.F.L." folder, Disque Papers, which also contains the editorial in American Federationist, XXV (April, 1918), 308-309, with notation that Disque did not receive a copy until mid-May. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 283 operators argued that when they joined the Legion, approved the eight-hour reform, and committed themselves to clean up conditions in their camps, they had agreed to deal with the United States Army, not with Sam Gompers' Timberworkers. Unless Disque cut off the Federation recruiters, the lumbermen intended to walk out of the Legion. In mid-May, a situation existed that might turn the clock back more than a year. So far as Disque was concerned, there was only one possible response to this threat. 18 He moved swiftly to check what seemed to him an unwarranted in- vasion of Legion home grounds. A confidential order w r ent out to Crumpacker, and through him to SPD unit commanders and Legion secretaries, "to maintain the quiet efficiency of your camps." Taking advantage of an injunction just in from national defense council head- quarters "to conduct a vigorous and persistent campaign ... to arouse the loyalty of each citizen," Suzzallo swung the impressive weight of the Washington state defense council apparatus into line behind Disque. County sheriffs and city police chiefs found reasons to harass the AFL organizers for alleged infractions of parking, peddling, and other local ordinances. Scherer, briefly returned to the Northwest after weeks away, saw to it that Justice Department agents checked the draft status of the organizers. Reed had American Protective League coun- terspies carry out loyalty checks on the Federation personnel and main- tain close surveillance over them. As Young, Gompers' chief organizer, described it, "Disque's representatives tried in various places to prevent our organization by intimidation." And, he added ruefully, they suc- ceeded. 17 Under orders from Gompers, Young hurried to Portland in the first days of June, to complain to Disque at such treatment. The colonel was unavailable. Refusing to be shunted aside, Young finally got in to see Crumpacker. After much time-consuming oral fencing, "we were told," Young reported, "that it was his opinion that there would be no legal restrictions to the [Legion] men joining a union, but [Crum- packer] was under the impression that the Loyal Legion would answer the purpose of the union." Here was the nub of the issue. If Disque still saw the Legion merely as a temporary, wartime instrument to raise production of strategic 18 Disque to Gompers, June 10, 1918, and Disque's memorandum on meetings with lumbermen, May 25-June 5, 1918, both in "A.F.L." folder, Disque Papers. "Young to Henry White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; American Protective League files on Oregon and Washington, RG 60, NA; Council of National Defense Bulletin No. 99, June 11, 1918, owned by the author, on suppression of dis- loyalty. On work of Suzzallo and Scherer, "Confidential Reports" on Oregon and Washington, Scherer Papers. 284 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE raw materials through patriotic means, there was no need for a col- lision with the Federation. On the other hand, if, as Crumpacker inti- mated, Disque now had larger plans for the Legion, there would be no room for the American Federation of Labor after the war, provided the Legion could keep the AFL men out during the war. "Thus we got our first intimation," Young worried, "that it was quite possible we should clash over programme." 18 Neither Disque nor Gompers wanted an open clash, however, and so for a while both men temporized. AFL attempts at organization slowed or in some instances were suspended, though at Legion head- quarters Young continued to insist that the Timberworkers had every right to recruit in 4L camps. Disque and his subordinates continued to employ Crumpacker's fuzzy formula as stated to Young — that there was no legal impediment to AFL recruitment in Legion locals, but there was just no need for it. Disque wanted time so that the new production hierarchy growing up in the national capital might establish itself. Then men in the West would know who really ran things under the new dispensation. During that interval, Disque's status would inevitably rise if spruce output kept growing, and both would increase, the lumbermen in- sisted, if he kept the AFL out. Once adequate spruce supplies were assured, his reputation would ascend so high that no one in the gov- ernmenc would dare attack him, Hemert asserted. Certainly Gompers, whose dedication to winning the war was patently sincere, would not take further open issue with an agency that was producing essential materials to that end. But, Disque wondered, did this give him suffi- cient strength to engage in a behind-the-scenes clash with Gompers, with any hope of success? All through the weeks of spring, Disque and his councilors discussed this question. After all, Gompers was a powerful figure in Wilson's administration and an old hand at bureaucratic infighting. He would, Disque worried, have access to the new labor relations apparatus then growing up in the national capital, centering on Frankfurter's War Labor Policies Board and the Taft-Walsh War Labor Board. Disque, on the other hand, was, as ever, uncertain of his own status at the War Department, especially since the shifts in leadership there. Still, he was not afraid of coming to grips with Gompers. But he wanted better weapons with which to fight than ascending lines on spruce production graphs, however potent they might be. 18 Young to White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 285 Hemert had ready an improved item for Disque's armory. If war- fare developed between the Federation and the Legion, it was probable that the 4Ls would be accused of being a militaristic, dictatorial orga- nization. The best counterweight to any allegations of "Prussianism" was to create within the Legion open channels of discussion for the membership, so democratic as to render absurd any charges of jack- booted oppression. Democracy in the Legion would be more impres- sive since it would represent unskilled as well as skilled workers, employers as well as hirelings, unlike the traditional, stratified con- stituencies of the AFL. Concentrated in one region, the Legion could assemble relatively large numbers of members on fairly short notice. Such assemblies would scotch AFL and wobbly cries of suppression and sustain Disque in his dealings with the new mediation apparatus of the Wilson administration. Moreover, Legion-wide conventions would tend to improve the internal efficiency of the organization, by diffusing throughout its membership a sense of participation in policy formulation. By the same token, local sores too touchy for rational solution could be dealt with by Legionnaires en bloc, presumably with less rancor and with greater objectivity. It was past time, Hemert argued, for the Legion to don a democratic cloak. The separate sessions held by the employers in February and by the employees a w r eek later had performed effectively. But the facade of unanimity then constructed was beginning to show cracks. The local committees that had been formed were running wild in some instances. Legion secretaries were now elected, and though circuit- riding SPD officers from Disque's headquarters oversaw their security work, they could not sit in on every session of a local's grievance group. There were just too many meetings for effective monitorship to be exercised. At the Puget Mills Company's plants, for example, the grievance committees met far too often for the happiness of the company's man- ager, Ames. They demanded the immediate realization of the pay scales set forth in the 4L bulletins, and the same standards for housing, messing, and working as were enjoyed by the SPD troopers assigned to work alongside the civilian woodcutters. "Now as a matter of fact this is a very bad thing," Ames complained, "for the employees to have too many meetings and too much discussion about any matters." Ames, and other lumbermen of like opinion for whom he was speak- ing, argued that Disque must corral this runaway democracy. Un- checked, the locals' committees were "drifting toward permanent [dem- ocratic] organization." The natural tendency of the committees was 286 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE toward "final and eventual affiliation with the American Federation of Labor," Ames warned. In the "old days" the lumbermen would have handled a matter like this "on their own, simply and with no fuss." But Disque had made that impossible. Now it was up to the colonel to prevent his Frankenstein from running amok. He must get control of the local committees and of the elected secretaries. 19 Hemert insisted that control was best achieved from the top, but in apparent openness rather than through ordinary military command fashion. Establishing the appearance of a larger degree of popular consent in the Legion, by means of conventions, would perfect the mediation apparatus that had developed since March. This in turn would go far toward convincing employers and workers that their self-interests were involved in keeping the AFL out during the war and the Legion alive after hostilities ended. To be sure, Hemert be- lieved that employees and operators should meet separately. Prewar passions were still too raw between them to permit of joint sessions. But this was a mere detail. Even separate meetings would raise the banner of industrial democracy higher over the Legion, while en- hancing Disque's opportunities to keep "a firm hand" at the helm. 20 It was in every way a well-calculated appeal. Disque's touchstone was now the Progressive one of rationality in industrial organization. His goals were now swinging toward plans for the postwar years. And just recently he had experienced what in his view was another unwarranted blow from the AFL. Back in March, when Disque realized that his plan to sever the SPD-Legion connection with the civilian Aircraft Board was being blocked, he had tried an indirect route to the same goal. He requested the United States Attorney in Portland to rule on whether the Legion was an integral part of the Army. An affirmative decision would mean success in cutting the Legion's umbilical cord to the civilian war bu- reaucracy that he now distrusted, and in knotting it firmly to the War Department structure he understood. Disque had other reasons for making this move. A ruling that the Legion was intrinsically part of the military structure would bring the Espionage Act into play. Then Military Intelligence agents, American Protective League counterspies, and Justice Department field men, already working within the Legion and the SPD, could seek evidence 19 Ames to W. H. Talbot, March 15, 1918, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW (copy in Disque Papers); Hemert, ms. "Memorandum on Conventions," undated, ca. June 1918, "Hemert" folder, Disque Papers; Major Edmund Leigh to General Squier, March 27, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA. 20 Ms. "Memorandum on Conventions," Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 287 adequate for prosecutions under the punitive sections of that law. Per- haps, too, the Espionage Act might then apply to "outside agitators" who were interfering with the Legion's work, as Disque saw matters. It may have been that he was contemplating employment of the Espionage Act against AFL organizers. There is no question that Disque was furious at rumors common in the Northwest, which he believed the AFL men were spreading, to the effect that "when a worker joins the Loyal Legion ... he forfeits his civil rights; that he becomes virtually an enlisted man." 21 The Portland federal attorney sent Disque's request on to the Justice Department. There it moved on through channels to the War Depart- ment. In the "lunatic asylum" of the home office of the military estab- lishment, where literally thousands of war-service officers and civilian officials were struggling to reduce the flood of administrative paper to order, the request for information fell by chance onto the desk of a brand-new officer of the Adjutant General's staff. This officer did not know of the existence of the Loyal Legion. He therefore concluded that it did not exist. An official reply to this effect went back the same day to the office of the Attorney General. There, a clerk, authorized to sign the At- torney General's name in routine matters, sent a telegram to Portland: "Adjutant General's Office seems to know nothing of any such organi- zation." Pacific Coast newspapers got hold of the story. For a few hectic days Disque was busy establishing the fact that the Legion did have a legitimate tie to the Army through the SPD. The story that the Legion was not after all a part of the Army spread rapidly through the timberlands. Its velocity was given added impetus by the Attorney General's signature on one of the communications making this asser- tion. Naturally, wobblies and AFL men helped disseminate the de- lightful implications. As alert as they, Disque wired Leadbetter to hurry a revised state- ment from the War Department. If one was not quickly forthcoming, the Legion would be hurt, perhaps mortally. Employers would have no reason to obey pay schedules; lumberworkers could ignore their commitment to give up their migratory habits; AFL organizers would pay no heed at all to SPD orders excluding them. Some of the more mettlesome grievance committees at several Legion locals were already 21 Disque in Minutes .. .August 5, 1918, 13. Logic suggests that Disque had the AFL in mind. He knew well enough that the I WW was no threat and that German spies were nonexistent. If this logical analysis is correct, the possibilities for damage in Disque's planning are staggering, especially when one considers the wider-ranging potentials in the Sedition Act addition in 1918 to the 1917 Espionage Act. 288 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE beginning to adopt postures of independence from Disque's oversight. Unless checked quickly, these committees, encouraged by the false rumor, might set themselves up as autonomous creations and affiliate with the AFL or even with the I WW. 22 Disque's depiction of the probable results of this opera-bouffe affair seems hyperbolic, stemming more from wounded pride than from logical analysis. Yet the sober judgment of an Army Intelligence officer, assigned at Disque's request to investigate the matter, seconded his opinion on the possible consequences, though not on any AFL con- nection with the disturbing report from the War Department. 23 The incident of the erring telegram helped to> convince Disque of the need for popular Legion conventions. If mere accident could come close to cutting the Army's tie to the Legion, it was time for the Legion to build its own support from within, rather than to depend upon sustenance from the outside. Once a firm flooring existed, the Legion could stand alone. And so Disque overcame his reluctance to chance the possibility of another unruly convention, like the one of March 4. Since then, he had built up the mediation apparatus within the Legion, staffed mainly by his appointees, which bypassed elected secretaries. Even if some members of the higher-level committees of the mediation slate, which also theoretically served as the internal governance of the Legion, were elected rather than appointed, Disque believed it to be so structured that he could still direct its agenda and personnel. Open conventions, therefore, were far less a risk in June than in March. Disque believed that he had learned how to stage-manage the Legion and that the conventions, if properly handled, could become a new and major weapon in the arsenal he was assembling to fight Gompers. If Disque built the Legion strongly enough, it could survive during the war and after it without its Army connection. Future events might prove that Hemert was correct and that the Northwest needed a permanent, post- war Legion to retain the labor-relations benefits the war had brought. The convention method seemed to be the best way to accomplish this. In the last days of May, Disque came to a decision. He issued orders for Major Stearns to prepare the first of these conventions. Meanwhile, he would make another try for a negotiated peace with Gompers. Perhaps there could be an item on the agenda of this convention cele- 22 Federal Attorney Rankin, Portland, to Attorney General T. W. Gregory, March 6; Gregory to Rankin, March 7, 1918, file 190657, RG 60, NA; Disque to Leadbetter, March 15, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, Disque Papers. 23 Major Edmund Leigh to General Squier, March 27, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA; Disque to Leigh, April 15, June 1, 1918, "C. P. Stearns" folder, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 289 brating the end of what was becoming an open jurisdictional battle between the AFL and the Loyal Legion. 2 ' On June 10, Disque addressed a lengthy letter to Gompers, which was a mixture of threats and appeals. AFL men must stop implying that the Legion was not a part of the Army, Disque pleaded. It was untrue and unpatriotic. Second and more important, he protested the much publicized way in which Gompers had taken credit for winning the eight-hour day. The AFL, Disque stated "unqualifiedly," could never have won that glittering and elusive prize. It was ungenerous of Gompers to pose as the victor. Continuing, Disque asked Gompers to rein in the Timberworkers' organizing activities among the Legion members. If he would not, he must accept responsibility for the resulting collapse of spruce produc- tion, for the lumbermen would not stand still for Federation recruit- ing. Disque then used a phrase that he repeated two days later in a public letter to a subordinate SPD officer: "Any attempt to nullify the true purpose of the L.L.L.L. at this time must be considered as German propaganda." 25 If Gompers did not comply, Disque threatened "to disband the Loyal Legion . . . and in so doing to state frankly that they have been exploited by the Timberworkers Union in what I feel to be a most unpatriotic manner." This was Disque's trump card. Without the Legion, the prewar chaos in the Northwest would return. Spruce pro- duction would drop. Backed by the patriotic aura of his uniform and exploiting the manifold avenues of antiunion expression available in the newspapers and periodical press of the nation, Disque would blame these consequences on Gompers. Explaining why this dire choice was necessary, Disque for the first time admitted to Gompers that the Legion was bending toward goals traditionally associated with labor unions. "It is not possible that two organizations can exist in this industry during the War period," Disque asserted, "both of them ostensibly for the purpose of insuring produc- tion and fair treatment of labor and capital." The choice was up to Gompers. Disque insisted that he was serious about quitting if Gompers withheld the "full cooperation and com- pliance" that was necessary. 29 24 Disque's memoranda on meetings with councilors, May 1918, small notebook, Disque Papers. 25 Disque to Lt. Col. H. T. Bull, June 12, 1918, in the Legion's Monthly Bulletin, I (June 1918), 17. 26 Disque to Gompers, June 10, 1918, "AFL" folder, Disque Papers. A year later 290 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Was Disque in earnest about disbanding the Legion if Gompers refused to surrender unconditionally? Or was this a bluff, made in the confidence that Gompers would not dare to call his hand and that the Army would never permit him to abort the fruitful 4L organi- zation? Logic offers a probable answer to the latter query. The issue was not what the Army would permit but what Disque chose to do. So far as most lumbermen and timberworkers were concerned, he was the Legion. His resignation would have triggered the withdrawal of almost all employers and of a majority of worker-members from the organiza- tion. Disque was aware of this. 27 And he was not bluffing. He actually in- tended to resign his commission, and by that act probably force the dissolution of the Legion, if Gompers would not agree to keep his Timberworkers out of the picture. On June 10, the same day he wrote to Gompers, Disque secretly drew up a letter of resignation from the Army and an accompanying statement condemning Gompers for forc- ing the step. He sent copies of these documents to War Secretary Baker's office, along with a notation that a second set of copies was on its way across the transoceanic cable to Pershing. On June 22, at the first "convention" of the Legion since the February-March con- claves that gained the eight-hour triumph, Disque intended to make his resignation public. 28 Just what happened at the War Department and at AEF headquarters upon receipt of Disque's communications is unknown. The nature of Baker's and Pershing's reactions is inferable, however, from the evi- dence afforded by events at the June 22 Legion meeting. Disque did not resign from the Army. Instead, he quoted a telegram from Baker, extolling the Legion. "It has been conducted with the guidance and assistance of the War Department and is a vital and integral part of this Department's program," Baker stated. "Any at- Disque cited this letter to congressmen who insisted that he had been Gompers' creature. He did not divulge its contents, however, merely stating that he had com- plained to Gompers about AFL activity "in no uncertain terms, explaining to him . . . it had to stop." Hearings, II, 1402-403. 27 Indeed, he worried over it. A conviction of his indispensability among the Legion's membership argued ill for the success of his new plans for the Legion to continue into the postwar period. This was another reason he favored development of the convention idea — to provide for succession of leadership and for a shift from Army sponsorship to civilian operation. See his memorandum, "The Legion's Con- ventions," undated, "Hemert" folder, Disque Papers. 28 These documents, marked "confidential and personal," were misfiled in "SPD Audit" folder, Disque Papers. Apparently Disque told no one of his intention to resign; at least none of his intimates refer to this. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 291 tempt to undermine its usefulness I should regard with the most serious concern. . . . The Loyal Legion has the approval and support of the War Department." 20 This telegram was in part an official rebuttal from the War Depart- ment to the rumors that the Legion was not a part of the Army. But its purpose w r as also to inform Disque that he had no reason to resign. The weight of the civilian and uniformed bureaucracy of the War Depart- ment and the Army was with him in his struggle against Gompers. Disque thereupon marked on his copy of the letter of resignation that he had prepared: "Cancelled; not needed." The June 22 convention moved on to other matters, and Disque exulted in triumph. There was no question that it was a substantial if partial victory. Reviewing these matters with Hemert and on another occasion with lumberman Ames, Disque guessed that he would have won even without recourse to Pershing. The Legion was just too successful as a productive expedient, and thus too precious to the War Department, for the Army to abandon it. That Pershing, having been appealed to, strongly sup- ported Disque is undoubted. Surely Secretary Baker had no wish to defy the wildly popular Pershing in this matter. Baker had probably brought the President in for final decision, Disque guessed, and together they had "unofficially requested" Gom- pers to stop "interferences" with the Legion. Disque surmised from the tenor of Baker's telegram that Gompers had agreed, however reluc- tantly, at least so far as he himself was concerned. Henceforth, Disque reasoned, whatever AFL lieutenants did, he would not have to fight the Federation chieftain. Disque wondered why Gompers had failed to play a trump card of his own. If Gompers had forced the issue and defied the President and War Secretary, Disque might not have felt free to resign after all. Had he done so, the AFL could have condemned him as disloyal just as he would have denounced the Federation for causing his resignation. One wonders if Disque would have had the courage to face publicized charges that he had dropped the Legion merely out of jealousy of the Federation. He was thin-skinned and took criticism poorly. But Gom- pers had not seen this card, or had refused to risk playing it, and the hand had gone to Disque/' 29 Minutes of the Convention of the Inland Empire Division of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, June 22, 1918, Spokane, Washington (n.p., n.d.), 4; tele- gram in Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (June 1918), 17. 30 Disque told some of these details to Ames; see Ames to Talbot, July 11, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; Disque's memorandum on Gompers' lost oppor- tunity, small notebook, Disque Papers. 292 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE One battle won did not take a campaign. After receiving Baker's telegram of support and before leaving for the June 22 Legion conven- tion, Disque had waited anxiously to learn whether Gompers would continue to fight him personally. An AFL national convention was under way at St. Paul from June 10 to 20, and Disque very much wanted news of the proceedings. He assigned an SPD officer to attend the meet- ings, cautioning him to pay special attention to any statements by Gompers. The reports from St. Paul, so far as public utterances were concerned, made Disque breathe easier. All that Gompers said about the Legion was that it had had his blessing during its infancy, and that Disque had achieved remarkable results thus far. The Federation's report for the year took its tone from Gompers. It offered hosannas on the achieve- ment of the eight-hour day and carefully skirted the vexed question of whether Disque or the Timberworkers had won it. 31 But another report from Disque's secret agent at the St. Paul AFL meeting chilled the warmth of his pleasure and killed whatever chances might have existed for harmony between him and Gompers. During the Federation's proceedings Gompers and his chief field organizers had met in private sessions, and at one of these closed assemblies Gompers had provided $30,000 to finance continued AFL organizing work in the Northwest. The AFL president was still determined to win over the Legion. His strategy was to have the Timberworkers continue to bore into the 4L locals without the official sanction of the Federation. Claim- ing that its constituent members were autonomous in such matters, Gompers could enjoy immunity from any future accusations that Dis- que might put forth on AFL recruiting activity within the Legion. Having this information, Disque discounted the moderate tone that had prevailed at the Federation's convention. He was confirmed anew in his distrust of Gompers. When he entrained for the Legion conven- tion at Spokane, he w r ent girded for war, not peace. 32 It is noteworthy that Disque's persisting bellicose attitude toward Gompers was in this instance based on military intelligence, not the lumbermen's persuasions. Disque would carry on the fight against the AFL as a soldier, not as an instrument of the employers. Combatting ;jl Report of Proceedings of the Thirty-eighth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor, Held at St. Paul, Minnesota, June 10 to 20, 1918 (Washington, 1918), 78-80. This moderate tone is echoed in Selig Perlman and Philip Taft, History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932 (New York, 1935), IV, 396-97. 32 On the 530,000 accusation, see Disque's confidences to Ames, in Ames to Talbot, July 11, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. Disque did not further disclose his possession of the report on this fund for two months; see Minutes . . .August 5, 1918, 11-12. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 293 the Federation, he now firmly believed, was a necessary preliminary to keeping the spruce production rate rising during the war, as well as to realizing the postwar harmony in labor-management relations that the Legion would bring to the Northwest. At Spokane, addressing 690 representatives of 25,000 newly recruited Legion lumberworkers of the Inland Empire on the morning of June 22, Disque lashed out at the AFL and at Gompers. A really loyal Loyal Legionnaire, he stated, "must rely exclusively upon this organization . . . throughout the period of the war to accomplish those things that are in your interests. We are not going to try to compete with any other organization in this country." Then, after reading Secretary Baker's telegram on the official relationship of the Legion to the Army, Disque reminded the men that "every time there is a labor disturbance in this country it is as good as a victory for the Kaiser." That afternoon, after various committees of the convened Legion- naires had expressed a catalog of grievances and discussed possible solutions for them, the unanimous sentiment of the members was that the Legion was "the proper agency for control of all labor conditions." Disque, the men resolved, was the person to run it. And they pledged that, in addition to abjuring strikes, they would henceforth make the settlement of most grievances a matter of general Legion concern, in- volving district and SPD headquarters levels, rather than try to solve them on the local level. The Legion, in short, was again in Disque's hands. Matters had gone precisely the way Hemert had anticipated, Disque had hoped, and Ames had demanded. Vastly encouraged, Disque again addressed the men later that afternoon, and this time he spoke more frankly in some respects than he had earlier in the day. "Don't mistake this organization for a Union," he adjured the Legion- naires. Comparing the Legion to the AFL, he admitted in a patronizing manner that the Timberworkers was "a comparatively new organiza- tion." It had "done a lot of good," but it could never have won the eight-hour victory. Gompers and he were friends, Disque asserted. But friendship notwithstanding, he had written Gompers to warn him away from trying to exploit the Legion in the interests of the Federa- tion. "This organization shall not be used for that purpose," Disque stated. "If that is what you think it is for, disband it now." 33 There was no motion to recommend that the Legion end its organi- zational life. Instead, the vote of confidence in Disque's leadership 88 Minutes ... June 22, 1918, 1-5, 19-24, for Disque; 6-18 for committees. 294 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE stood. Jubilant at this considerable success, and the evidence it afforded of the real weakness of the AFL in the lumber areas, Disque prepared for the meeting on June 27 with the inland employers of the Legion. His first inclination concerning his address to the employers was to indulge in a self-congratulatory speech that would continue the frank anti-AFL tone of the June 22 meeting. But information coming to him between those two dates dampened his ardor for open clashes with Gompers. Not only was Gompers proving himself unconquered, but Disque's old enemy, Major Sligh, was stirring himself again to cam- paign against his successor at the helm of spruce production, in seeming concert with the labor leader. The evidence of Gompers' continuing vitality was manifest at a meet- ing on June 26 of the Washington state federation at Aberdeen. There it was charged that Disque had "interfered with and abridged the right of workers to bargain collectively." The union organizers alleged that he "listened more to the lumbermen (owners) than to the workers." Still worse in Disque's judgment, the AFL men at Aberdeen claimed that if he continued on the way he was going, the civilian Legionnaires were going to be reduced to the status of Army privates so far as civil rights were concerned. And last, the charge was made that lumbermen- Legionnaires were "openly declaring" that as soon as Germany quit fighting, they were going to "shut down . . . and starve the men back to lower wages and longer hours." These animadversions cut to the heart of Disque's new dream of being the architect of a permanent edifice of social justice and labor harmony for the Northwest. "It was apparent that I must counteract such propaganda," he stated soon after. The question was how to rebut it most effectively and yet not endanger himself unduly in what was becoming a two-front war. For, at the War Department, Major Sligh was making a similar charge of collusion between Disque and the em- ployers, and adding to it an assertion that Disque was incompetent. The Army's Adjutant General was investigating Disque as a result of these charges. While Gompers' strength remained unknown and while the outcome of this investigation was in doubt, Disque determined to soften his public statements. 34 Thus, Disque met with the inland employers of the Legion on June 27 in a seemingly chastened mood. Eschewing bombast, he restricted the business of the session to procedural matters, especially the perfec- 34 Minutes . . .August 5, 1918, 12-13, for Disque's comments on the Aberdeen meet- ing; Adjutant General Paul Giddings to Sligh, July 6, 1918, copy in Disque Papers. In "Conventions" folder, ibid., is the undelivered first draft of Disque's June 27 speech. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 295 tion of a committee structure among the employers to reach up to Legion and SPD headquarters, parallel to the workers' grievance and mediation organization sketched five days earlier. The session ended with the Inland Empire lumbermen offering Disque their thanks and "unqualified acquiescence to any and all rules, regulations and condi- tions now in effect or hereafter to be issued by Colonel Disque." 35 Despite all obstacles, by the end of June Disque had achieved a booming spruce production and acceptance of his overlordship by both management and labor. This acceptance was still provisional on the part of many employers and workers, however, and as yet Disque was not sure how far the government would support him if matters wor- sened with Gompers. He momentarily hesitated to test further the precarious structure that he had painfully assembled. Therefore, he secretly circularized SPD and Legion subordinates, warning them, ambiguously enough, that no one in either organization had authority "to break up meetings which are not directly Legion meetings," as quoted by AFL Timberworkers' organizer W. D. Clark. At the same time he issued a confidential call to employer-Legionnaires to meet with him at Portland on July 19, and to come armed with "ideas and suggestions for regularizing the Legion's governing apparatus." 36 These two documents indicate that Disque was stepping cautiously yet consistently. Restraining somewhat his subordinates' impetuosity toward AFL organizers, he was anxious to have the employer- Legionnaires hasten the development of self-government within the Legion. Once this was perfected, anti-AFL policies could not be blamed on Disque. And if matters came to crisis and Gompers forced him out, the Legion would survive with or without Army affiliation. Disque erroneously believed that only by fighting off Federation incursions could the Northwest retain industrial democracy as the Legion, in his view, was building it. At the beginning of July, happy news came to Disque that his stand- 35 Minutes of the Meeting of the Operators of the Inland Empire, Held at Spokane, Washington, June 27, 1918 (n.p., n.d.), 25-42; Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (July 1918), 12. 38 Clark to Frank Walsh, WLB chairman, July 15, 1918, WLB files, RG 2, NA; circular to lumbermen, June 30, 1918, "SPD Audit" folder, Disque Papers. Lumber- men, learning of his order to keep hands off AFL organizers for a while, feared that Disque was seducing them to accept the AFL and leading them toward the closed shop. "We have made ... all of the concessions we ought to make," argued Ames. "It looks to me as if organized labor, working through the authorities, have finally entered the wedge, and are continually tapping it, until finally it will be driven in out of sight, and the damage will have been done." Ames to Talbot, July 15, 1918, Box 36, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. 296 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ing at the War Department and in the changing war-production civilian bureaucracy was unimpaired, despite the criticisms of Gompers and of Sligh. Weeks earlier, Baker had ordered Scherer to confer with the new production "czar," John D. Ryan, who had inquired at length concern- ing Scherer's opinion of Disque. Scherer had told Ryan that Disque "had brought stability out of chaos" and "conciliated the extremists of both sides." Any weakening of Disque's monopoly in northwestern labor matters must result in immediate decreases in lumber output. Disque needed more power rather than less. Ryan, impressed, com- mitted himself to upholding Disque and to making a visit to the North- west as soon as possible. 37 During the first week of July, the Adjutant General's office completed its investigation of Disque, which Sligh had instigated. The judgment of the inquiry was that Sligh's charges "insinuating as they do that he [Disque] is incompetent and under the 'baneful' influence of the Weyerhaeuser Interests are without any foundation whatever." 38 With this encouragement, Disque no longer hesitated to do combat with Gompers. His threat was no longer to dissolve the Legion. Rather he warned lumberworkers who were so weak or wicked as to affiliate with the AFL's Timberworkers that they as individuals would be de- prived of SPD and 4L benefits. If too many Legionnaires in a local also held AFL cards, that 4L local would lose recognition. As Disque during the summer of 1918 continued expanding the convention method for governing the Legion and obtained further advantages for all Legion members, this became an increasingly powerful threat. 3 " The summer of 1918 was Disque's pinnacle of power. By August 1, enrollments in the Legion passed the 115,000 mark. Considering the manpower shortage occasioned by the draft and the pull of other, more lucrative industries, the Legion held a monopoly on the labor re- sources for the lumber facilities of the Northwest. The Legion's flag flew all over Washington and Oregon and in the western parts of Idaho and Montana. Spruce from Legion camps and mills flowed eastward in an ever-growing stream. This was also the period when, at Legion conventions on July 19 and August 5 and 12, Disque successfully altered the 4Ls into an organiza- tion with unionlike characteristics. It was no mean feat to transmute :!7 Scherer to Baker, May 13, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. Disque did not receive a copy until July 1; see his notation in small notebook, Disque Papers. 38 Adjutant General Paul Giddings to Sligh, July 6, 1918, copy in "Record Extracts" folder, Disque Papers. 39 Details in W. D. Clark to Frank Walsh, July 15, 1918, WLB files, RG 2, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 297 this jerry-built product of the Army's emergency need for labor into what appeared to be a joint effort of management and labor, with the Army retaining hold of the reins. As these summer w r eeks passed, Disque shifted "his" Legion into ever franker anti-AFL postures. In his own mind, he had only one immediate motive for doing so. The Legion promised to get out enough spruce for the Army's needs; the Federation did not. Without spruce, the war was surely lost. "Did you think . . . that the war was over in August, 1918?" he asked a congressman a year later. "Was there anyone on earth who did not think we were getting whipped then?" 40 To Disque, the nation faced defeat in battle in the autumn of 1918. There was no longer time for indirection. While the AEF bled at Chateau-Thierry, the SPD would not quail before the AFL. 40 Hearings, II, 1562. Chapter 13 Crisis and Compromise Meeting with 224 lumbermen at Portland on July 19, in the third Legion convention, Disque brought forth a resolution "perpetually" to bar AFL organizers from Legion camps. Cooler judgments prevailed, however, and his outspoken proposal remained buried. Though Disque grumbled to Ames that the lumbermen were grown exceedingly tim- orous, he approved a seven-point program that was the outcome of the mid-July sessions. 1 This program was hailed by the Portland Oregonian and others as "A Revolution in the Lumber Industry." It was, in effect, a rough draft of a constitution for the Legion, admitted that the Legion had plans for the postwar years, and incorporated the sense if not the specificity of Disque's animosity toward the AFL. The July 19 program endorsed the open shop, the eight-hour day "both now and after the war, in the interest of industrial peace," and the hierarchy of mediation committees that Disque had built up. While the war lasted, Disque was to be "sole arbitrator" in appeals from lower Legion levels and in matters of production policy. In the event of his absence or incapacity, the next lowest level — the "general committee" (later called the Headquarters Council) — was to select a temporary sub- stitute. It was also charged with choosing a permanent successor to Disque for the postwar period. Disque proposed that the employer-Legionnaires "initiate" local committees at once — a simple task, since essentially similar appointive units had been active since March at his instigation, and in most cases these were merely endorsed by the locals to continue under the new dispensation. In those instances where new slates were needed, Disque cautioned the employers, perhaps unnecessarily, and the SPD field men to see that only proper men were nominated. By his definition, com- mitteemen should be selected only from among American citizens and 1 Ames to W. H. Talbot, July 20, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW, on Disque's efforts to obtain a stronger anti-AFL position; and memoranda in "A. F. of L." folder, Disque Papers. Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 442-44, infers too much pre- arrangement between Disque and the lumbermen on July 19. There was actually much give-and-take. Also Tyler confuses, undoubtedly because of space limitations, the July 19 and Aug. 5 conventions. 298 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 299 men "who are actually engaged in work in the woods or in the mill." 2 Professional union organizers would not do for membership on the committees that would henceforth "run" the Legion. The next step was for Disque to call another convention, this time of the workmen-Legionnaires, so that they might ratify the program approved by the employers. Readying such a call, Disque learned that AFL personnel were protesting against w r hat he had accomplished, and Federation organizers, one SPD squadron commander reported, were out in strength. Unsurprised, Disque determined to fight. 3 The alarmed AFL men were also combative. They took the position that Disque had promised Gompers that the Legion would work in harness with the Federation. Now here it was, frankly preparing for a postwar future. Roy Southworth, president of the Oregon Timber- workers, inquired of Disque "why your department has not consulted our organization upon this step." Receiving this message, Disque was too angry to reply personally, and delegated the task to his newly appointed SPD subordinate in charge of industrial relations, Major Abbey. The major denied that the AFL had any part to play in defining the Legion's present role or future plans. He parroted Disque's "line" that the Timberworkers "w r as not in the field" when the Legion set to work. The AFL had never accom- plished anything; the 4Ls had gained the eight-hour day and many other benefits for the lumberworkers. In this reply to Southworth, Disque, through Abbey, flung an open -Portland Oregonian, July 20, 22, 1918; Legion Bulletin No. 63, July 20, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. The resolutions are conveniently available in Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Aug. 1918), 6, and are as follows: "First: For the open shop — the right of any man or woman to work where capable and needed. "Second: For the basic 8-hour day, both now and after the war, in the interest of industrial peace. "Third: For a conference committee of employees in each plant, to be selected by the employees for conference with their employers on local questions. "Fourth: For a general committee of employees and operators to be selected as Col. Disque may designate to act on all general questions. "Fifth: We request Col. Brice P. Disque to act as sole arbitrator and agree to abide by his decisions on all labor questions that may arise during the continuance of the war. "Sixth: The general committee provided for in Article 4, shall prepare and publish general regulations to govern labor conditions throughout the industry and provide such amendments and revisions as conditions may warrant from time to time. "Seventh: In the event of the incapacity of Col. Disque to act as arbitrator during the period of the war, the general committee shall have the power to select his successor and also to select an arbitrator for postwar periods." 3 Disque to Leadbetter, July 20, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, Disque Papers; Capt. R. H. Barnwell to Disque, file 166-11.4, RG 120, NA. 300 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE challenge to the AFL hierarchy. He advised the Federation that a call had already gone out to the "laboring men" of the Legion to meet on August 5 for the purpose of ratifying the seven-point program that their employers had granted on July 19 "on a silver platter." Abbey enclosed a copy of that program. "I feel sure that after you have read same you will agree that what has been accomplished is quite construc- tive for the laboring man," Abbey asserted smugly, and concluded that "there is considerable doubt as to the wisdom of any organization entering the field at this time to try and displace the Loyal Legion." 4 As though to indicate the consequences of such foolhardy competi- tion, Legion and SPD personnel at Sandpoint, Idaho, began to dis- charge all employees at 4L-affiliated camps and kilns in the area who were also members of the Timberworkers. Complaining of such treat- ment to Frank Walsh of the War Labor Board, AFL organizer W. D. Clark alleged that Disque had put the Legion up to these and other unfair tactics, encouraging employers to cut wages below the very scales recently set by the Legion and to work men longer than eight hours without overtime. Complainants were fired. The grievance com- mittees were a sham. The Legion, Clark charged, was exceeding any warrant of law and justice.' Nearby, at Coeur d'Alene, long a center of labor contention, SPD officers had let it be known among assembled Legionnaires that membership in the Timberworkers was akin to dis- loyalty to the nation, "and that it would count against them after the war." Disque's subordinates urged any AFL members who were also Legionnaires to throw away their Timberworker cards or else get out of the Legion camps. They added that any able-bodied man without a lumberworking job was going to be drafted. 6 It is noteworthy that nowhere in this catalog of wrongs, or in other lengthy criticisms of Disque that will be described later in this chapter, did the AFL men in 1918 denounce him as a tool of the lumbermen. In Young's words, "Disque has not played fair with us. We feel that he has absorbed the ideas and concepts of the lumbermen, whereas he has not associated much with the laborers." To his critics in 1918, Disque was a partisan, a Prussian, but not a puppet. The Legion threatened "autocratic domination" over the Federation "in coopera- 4 Abbey to Southworth, July 30, 1918, NWLB files, RG 2, NA. A copy of a memo- randum to Abbey, undated, Disque Papers, sets forth the line Disque wanted Abbey to follow. 5 Clark to Walsh, July 15, 1918, NWLB files, RG 2, NA; American Federationist, XXV (Nov. 1918), 1010. 6 Resolution of executive council, Washington State Federation of Labor, Aug. 9, 1918, to Labor Secretary Wilson, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Idaho State Federation of Labor, Proceedings . ..Jan. 13-16, 1919, 15-16. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 301 tion with employers' ideas"; it was not then seen as an instrument of class warfare. Disque's critics asserted that he was an embodiment of militarism who interfered excessively in civilian concerns; they did not castigate him as a mercenary of the employers. So far as the AFL accounts run, Disque had come by his promanagement views openly and honestly, if unfortunately. It was unfair that an official, vested with great power, should favor one of two contenders; unfair, not sinister. 7 Disque and the Legion were becoming threats to the civil liberties of all Americans, this bill of wrongs stated, not partners in a conspiracy designed to enrich the few by wrapping up as a gift to the lumbermen the Northwest's labor supply. In the words of a resolution of the executive council of the Washing- ton state federation, directed to the Secretary of Labor, it was time for the Wilson administration to intercede. The President was committed to the support of organized labor, which had sustained him. Now one of the President's officers was transgressing the due bounds of demo- cratic behavior. Disque's course could lead only to renewed discord. No soldier should "prevent civilian workmen in the timber industry from exercising their civil right to belong to a trade or labor union." 8 At last, someone had used the words "civil right." The heart of the matter was exposed, too late. Or perhaps it is better to say that the concept of a civil right involving the privilege of unionization was both tardy and premature for Wilson's war administration. Consider, as ex- ample of this ill-timing, a statement in 1921 of Newton Baker's, offered in reply to an accusation that in 1918 he had employed the Legion- naires as strikebreakers. As a matter of fact, I did nothing in the spruce production business so far as labor was concerned without the advice of Carleton Parker whose knowledge of labor conditions in the North West and sympathy with labor, I should think would be sufficient guarantee. ... It amused me however to think of the mental constitution of a person who would think that in war-time a Secretary of War could hesitate to use strikebreakers, soldiers or any other coercive device to produce one of the necessary supplies upon which an army actually in the field and in peril had to rely. ... I had not used [the Legionnaires as] strikebreakers, but ... I would not have hesitated to use them if they were necessary to ac- complish the purpose. 9 7 C. O. Young to Henry White, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. 8 C. P. Taylor, secretary, Washington State Federation of Labor, transmitting reso- lutions of the executive council, to Secretary Wilson, Aug. 9, 1918, file 33/574-C RG 280, NA. 9 Baker to Florence Kelley, Dec. 16, 1921, National Consumers League Papers, Box 16, Library of Congress. 302 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE No doubt Disque felt much the same way. The difference between his position of the war months and that of Baker is that Disque was in command of the Legion, on the scene in the Northwest, and facing AFL organizers across the no-man's-land that then separated most Americans from sympathy with organized labor. Further, while there can be no doubt that, by the standards of a more recent and broader concept of liberalism, Disque and his subordinates acted in grievous error in suppressing AFL organizing attempts, it must also be said that the Federation in 1918 was in a peculiarly poor position to play the role of outraged virgin. The AFL's protest was designed to protect only one "civil right" — that of freedom for the AFL to recruit members. Of course, the need to secure this right was the basic responsibility of Federation officials. Union organizing did, and does, have implications for the liberties of all Americans. By adhering narrowly to this point, however, the AFL men pre- determined the audience they could gain. Only the small minority of craft unions were much interested in this plea, along with the infini- tesimal number of Americans who were organized to sustain the civil rights of all their countrymen. This puny enclave of opinion did not prevail at the White House, on Capitol Hill, in the Supreme Court, in the regular or war-emergency bureaus of the federal and state govern- ments, or in the vast majority of the private sectors of the American society. In a sense, Disque, careless of civil rights, and the AFL, careless of all privileges of citizenship save what concerned it, were prisoners of their time. To be sure, Wilson's war administration was the high-water mark of Progressivism. The magnificent statutory achievements of the years since 1901, including the Clayton Act, do not, however, exhibit much concern for what more recent generations of Americans consider to be essential civil rights. No doubt the AFL's appeal conformed more closely to the standards of 1918 than this discussion has allowed. One cannot feel that a general championing of the Bill of Rights by AFL spokesmen would have done them any better service than the narrow advocacy of their right to organize new AFL locals. Americans of 1918 were just not very interested in the rights of man or of union men. By this reasoning the problem of AFL organizer Clark was not that he was complaining about Disque on too narrow grounds. It would have been unrealistic to expect Clark to take the wider road of a defense of general civil rights. Clark's problem was that he had recently SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 303 denied to others the right he now claimed for himself. Knowing this, Disque could not be much stirred by the consistency or the depth of Clark's appeal. Clark was an adamant trade unionist, to be sure. He was also a virulent antiwobbly. In his complaint against Disque to WLB chair- man Walsh, Clark damned the colonel for restraining the Timber- workers from recruiting Legionnaires into the AFL. He added: "When the 4Ls first was organized in this [northwestern] country all the men joined it. They were forced to. Army Officers to the contrary notwith- standing. I myself am a member." Then Clark slipped. He put his appeal on the same low level of autocratic monopoly justified by the needs of war that Disque claimed for the Legion. "We were glad to join [the Legion]," Clark candidly continued, "believing that it would do away with the I WAV's." 10 The tragedy of 1918 is that Clark did not understand the schizoid character of his standards, and that Disque believed his Legionnaires to be of finer American stuff than Clark's Timberworkers. That both men were sincere lends an air of tragic comedy to the evidence. Complainant Clark had only recently joined with Legionnaires and SPD troopers in raids on wobbly offices. He had assisted in ungentle "paddlings" of wobblies out of Legion camps when they refused to take the Legion oath. Clark had no complaint to make against Disque until the July 19 Legion convention brought forth the resolutions indicating postwar plans for the 4L organization. At once Clark forgot his high valuation of the Legion as an antiwobbly device. In any case, the wobblies were now weakened beyond recall. Clark attacked Disque in July because he feared that the wartime Army affiliation the Legion enjoyed would give it an unfair advantage in the postwar scene. It was the July 19 program, the open-shop plank especially, that motivated Clark to protest, not the Legion's assaults on civil liberty generally. Alluding to this defect in the AFL's logic, Disque at a Legion meet- ing noted how r the Federation had cooperated with him until "the dis- loyal element [the wobblies] was eliminated from the lumber industry." Then, "without any coercion," Disque disingenuously continued, he was able to obtain "unanimous consent" for the eight-hour day. Im- proved camp conditions followed, and now the majestic structure of a regular grievance mechanism and Legion self-government was achieved. "We thought that the agitators had been eliminated," the colonel stated 10 Clark to WLB chairman Frank Walsh, July 15, 1918, NWLB files, RG 2, XA; see, too, Harry Scheiber, The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 1917-1921 (Ithaca, 1960), passim, on general theme of civil liberties. 304 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE regretfully. Unexpectedly, the "new enemy" had appeared. The AFL had started this unprovoked assault upon its former ally. There was no civil liberty issue involved in his controversy with the Federation, Disque always insisted. He thought it intolerable that some AFL critics were claiming that workers who joined the Legion were unknowingly forfeiting their civilian status and becoming virtually enlisted men. Denying this, Disque then asked why it would be so terrible were it true. "I want to say that an enlisted man in our army today is getting as fair treatment as any man and I regard it my duty to see that they do get it," he asserted. "In the old regular army I always considered it a duty to see that every enlisted man got a square deal and my men never doubted my ability to give it." 11 In the case of both Disque and the AFL, the concept of civil liberty involved in their dispute was deficient. The Federation wanted only a narrow area of immunity from interference by any government agency, or by private persons employing authority to prevent organizing activi- ties. For Disque, who thought that the "rights" of a private soldier in the prewar regulars and in the wartime mass Army were adequate for the maintenance of a democratic society, the Federation's allegations on this score were hogwash, merely given piquancy by the fact that the Legion was sponsored by the Army. It is another tragedy of America's homefront history of World War I that both were right. The deficiency of Progressivism was that its diverse champions sought one reform or another with almost no care for the freedom of others or of all, or for the liberty of expression that in America's past had been the precondition for brave leaps forward in the human condition. Disque had grown within one year to be a kind of social reformer, dedicated to achieving rational industrial rela- tions and to rehabilitating thousands of once-despised persons, through the medium of an Army-run labor union. To paraphrase Harry Golden, only in Wilson's America could Disque have dreamed this dream, and made it real. But the vision had no< concern for the enlarging sense of civil liberty that is one of the distinguishing characteristics of liberal- ism in the middle of the twentieth century. In the main, as has already been shown, the Federation's charges against Disque and the Legion were true. His subordinate Army officers of the SPD and the Legion's secretaries had deliberately and easily blocked the attempts of AFL organizers to recruit members. It had been 11 Minutes . . . August 5, 1918, 9, 13. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 305 ridiculously simple because the SPD and the Legion had developed such an efficient internal security apparatus during the earlier months of its crusade against the wobblies. First let it be said that most red-card holders gave no trouble at all, but took membership in the Legion and cut wood with a will. The Parker thesis worked out brilliantly in practice. Thousands of wobblies abandoned nomadism to become "scissor-bills" — faithful employees. In Legion camps, these men for the first time in their working lives were not shortchanged on their wages at company stores. They slept on sheets that were regularly laundered, ate edible food that was prepared by a trained cook who had been inspected by a doctor, used sanitary facilities that were cleaned and disinfected regularly, and even at times enjoyed access to a dentist. Disque brought to the woodlands the physical stand- ards that Army regulations prescribed for private soldiers. His peripa- tetic inspectors did their honest best to see to it that employer-members maintained those levels. A large amount of SPD headquarters business was concerned with enforcing Disque's ideas of adequate physical con- ditions. He did this job as efficiently as the numbers of his SPD per- sonnel, and the obstacles imposed by the rugged terrain and isolated nature of many camps and mills, would allow. 12 Sometimes lumbermen protested. In one instance Puget Mills Com- pany executives worried at a Legion order that all 4L affiliates buy only government-inspected beef. This meant that purchase had to be made in Seattle, the closest point where a slaughterhouse was located that boasted a government inspector. Increased costs might well "kill off the company stores." Considering this and similar regulations, Talbot of the Puget Mills firm complained that "having soldiers at our mills under Government regulations is quite an advantage under present labor conditions, but at the same time if the army doctor intends to carry out all of his suggestions, it will soon prove to be a nuisance and indeed work quite a hardship on the company." 13 Disque overbore these complaints. Workmen enjoyed far more than the eight-hour reform before the Legion ceased its work under Army auspices. Legionnaire-lumberworkers gained entrance into the twen- tieth century, so far as working conditions were concerned. Moreover, employing the essence of Parker's scheme, Disque extended the Legion's 12 The best sources for information on this phase of the Legion's work are the voluminous reports of the SPD's Inspector General, AEF files, RG 120, NA. They run from December 1917 through January 1919. 13 Talbot to Ames, Sept. 24, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW. A bulky folder full of similar complaints from lumbermen is in Disque Papers. 306 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE attractiveness for wobblies far beyond these substantial material re- wards. He saw to it that the despised "timber stiffs" found a sense of comradeship, of self-respect, and of purpose. The Legion's secretaries and the SPD officers decorated bunkhouses with patriotic slogans. Four-Minute speakers, ministers, film and stage stars, and beribboned Allied and American soldiers from "Over There" visited Legion camps. Disque brought the Legionnaires into the full stream of wartime America. He identified their activities with the irre- sistible pull of patriotic purpose. He made the Loyal Legionnaire, who probably had recently been a wobbly and an advocate of revolutionary ideology, into a loyal citizen. The evidence that this was the case is too weighty to be countered. Indeed, Disque had firmly to hold down sporadic efforts by some Legionnaires, both workers and employers, to oust former wobblies from 4L ranks, because this would have expelled a majority of the men. And when he learned that in a few instances wobblies who were not 4L members illicitly bought Legion insignia and wore them in order to gain the welcome of townspeople in rural communities near Legion facilities, Disque knew that he had won. What he gained was self-respect and social acceptability for the lum- berworkers generally. It was no small achievement, and Disque had a right to pride in his record in this respect. 1 * He enjoyed hearing such reports as the one from a Washington Legion camp where, the SPD officer asserted, former wobblies now "waited eagerly" for the evening "retreat" ceremony, and saluted the colors respectfully. When the SPD troopers drilled, civilian lumberworkers, noting vacancies in the sol- diers' ranks due to illness or other causes, insisted on being permitted to fall in and take part in the paradeground maneuvering. "Harmony between civilians and troops is evident" was the major theme of reports from SPD officers on how Legionnaires and soldiers got along. The result, in production totals, was notable. In terms of human dignity, it was incalculable. 15 14 Disque, "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," System, XXXVI (Sept. 1919), passim; Hearings, II, 1172. The Army's awareness of this achievement is seen in Special Agent F. B. Stansbury to Military Intelligence Chief Edmund Leigh, July 29, 1918, General Staff files, RG 165, NA. Consider, for example, the effect of a scheme by the Grays Harbor, Oregon, B'nai B'rith Lodge to pay $25 to the Legionnaire recommended by an SPD officer as "most attentive to duty." A panel of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish ministers joined later to spread this idea to every community in Washington and Oregon; Portland Oregonian, Jan. 9, 1918; "Churches" folder, Disque Papers. 15 Lt. E. J. Lee to Disque, Sept. 30, 1918, summarizing district reports of thirty spruce squadrons, file 166-11.4, RG 120, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 307 Inevitably, a few wobblies refused to be seduced. To deal with them, Disque had at his disposal the awesome strength that so easily held off the AFL. There were, first of all, the SPD squadrons themselves, totaling 30,000 men by mid-1918 and devoting most of their attention to wood- cutting. Though scattered in small units across the Northwest, these men were still soldiers. At every camp they constituted the unspoken force backing up the work of the local Legion secretary with the civilian lumberworkers. The troopers were at hand, armed, to suppress sabotage if it occurred. And, rifles abandoned for axes, they were a labor reserve if the dreaded strike call ever went out again. Disque was careful to keep up the strength of the SPD. In April, he perfected an arrangement with the War Department wherein each SPD squadron was increased in size from 150 to 250 members. This meant 4000 more men for the division, at a time when the AEF was scraping the bottom of available sources of drafted manpower. Defending his request, Disque stated that "this matter is vitally connected with my control of labor conditions here . . . and early action will help materi- ally in assisting me to maintain what is a very satisfactory labor condi- tion." He got his troops. This was in April, before the blow-up with the AFL leadership. Disque then anticipated no serious difficulty with that organization. But he was trained to expect trouble. For this reason, despite the War Department's grumbles that he absorbed an excessive proportion of commissioned officer strength in the SPD, he refused to adopt the sug- gestion of his superiors that he employ sergeants to head SPD detach- ments. "This is not advisable," he argued, "because of the delicacy of labor matters and liability [sic] of agitators getting in . . . among our men. To date we have not had one single unfortunate incident . . . and I regard it necessary that an officer be in every detachment." 16 He kept his officers. He also kept up an arrangement with the Provost Marshal General by which experienced lumberworkers, if not deferable, were at once assigned to the SPD after being drafted. On the other side of that coin, Disque was able to manipulate the draft as an antiwobbly apparatus. Recall that local draft board personnel were volunteer civilians. In the Northwest many state defense councilmen were also on the conscription panels. In several instances, Disque notified cooperating draft board 10 Disque to General Staff, April 21, 1918, SPD Wires, Army Commands files, RG 98, NA. Note that the disproportionate ratio of officers to enlisted men in the SPD was not an indication of inefficiency but a reflection of Disque's need for supervisors over the Legion and for small-unit squadron commanders. 308 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE officials that a civilian Legionnaire was obstreperous, or that a wobbly, refusing 4L membership, was lurking in the area of a Legion facility. The named men received conscription notices in short order. The widespread opinion in the Northwest, as Suzzallo stated it, was that the Department of Justice "was useless" as an antiwobbly force. The Legion became the major reliance of the region for continued tranquility. Exploiting the identification between the 4Ls and the Army, Disque extended his effectiveness as a security policeman by cementing a close liaison with the large Military Police detachment at Camp Lewis, Washington. Responsible primarily for the suppression of sedition, sabotage, and vice in that area, the commanders of the military policemen cooperated with Disque by keeping surveillance over known agitators and by "lending" to the SPD trained police agents on certain occasions. 17 Information derived from these agents was supplemented by the reports of American Protective League amateur counterspies. Disque used several dozen APL agents as SPD officers and Legion secretaries, after letting them know that he expected compliance with his instruc- tions. SPD officers "arranged" elections at Legion camps so that APL agents were nominated and elected as 4L secretaries. By early 1918 the American Protective League had extended its web into most units of Washington's and Oregon's local governments. APL agents included many county sheriffs, city police, and state attorneys. Other Leaguers were members of draft boards and on the states' defense councils. Therefore Disque, through the APL agents he used as Legion secretaries, had ready to hand a security apparatus that gave the Loyal Legion toeholds on every level of the federal system. He could turn over to state or federal attorneys such evidence as the Legion secretaries col- lected on "troublemakers," or, through the War Secretary, reach high into the national bureaucracy and the Cabinet. The Attorney General, for example, the APL's nominal overseer, gladly permitted Disque to employ the League's northwestern units as he wished. 18 Linking the Legion to the Army, and keeping the former in check, the SPD was the vital martial chord that Disque controlled. He per- mitted no threats to develop for control of the division. Only thus, wrote the admiring secretary of the Timber Products Manufacturers' 17 Suzzallo to B. H. Hornby, Jan. 28, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Col. M. E. Saville to Commanding General, 91st Division, March 30, 1918, file 186701-49, RG 60, NA; Idaho State Federation of Labor, Proceedings . . .Jan. 13-16, 1919, 11-12. 18 Secretary of War Baker to Attorney General Gregory, April 24, 1918, file 186701- 49, RG 60, NA. See also Hyman, To Try Men's Souls, ch. 11; American Protective League Papers pertaining to Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, Special Collections, UCLA Library. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 309 Association, had Disque been able to succeed in "stabilizing labor, pre- venting strikes, and producing general harmony in the lumber indus- try." Wobblies had little chance against such an apparatus. Most were seduced by the charms of the Legion; the stubborn few who resisted were caught in the net that Disque was able to spread. The Legion was "flourishing," rejoiced an SPD squadron commander who was based at the traditional hot spot of Sylvana, Washington. "Management refused to keep or employ anyone not willing to join." 19 While Suzzallo quieted the worried inquiries of a few conscience- stricken persons, who asked if the reports of physical abuse of wobblies at Legion camps were true, Disque condoned all the antiwobbly activi- ties directed at those holdouts who refused the Legion's offer of pater- nalistic sanctuary. Whatever acts his subordinates committed, as in ap- proving in Legion circulars the "rough and ready justice" of the vigi- lantes in the Everett "massacre," Disque himself retained a public pose of tolerant restraint. 20 A mob destroyed a printing plant near Portland which was producing stickers for the IWW under private contract. Two men who led the mob enlisted in the SPD immediately afterward. Wobbly spokesmen demanded their delivery to civil authorities for prosecution. Disque held off from complying while weeks passed. Em- ploying his manifold connections in the Northwest's business world, he worked behind the scenes to get the owner of the wrecked plant to drop charges. Finally, Secretary Baker, embarrassed by the naked display of military power, "strongly recommended" to Disque that he give up the SPD troopers. He did. A civil jury at once freed them. Disque's pious admonitions to his subordinates to practice restraint at all times were commonly acknowledged to be inapplicable to "bad" wobblies who refused rehabilitation within the Legion. These caution- ary sentiments were also not to extend to AFL organizers. These were the facts behind the respectable facade that Disque built. 21 By mid-July Disque knew quite well that the wobblies were no longer a menace. Yet on July 22 he received from the Adjutant General of the Army an authorization that he had sought for weeks, and that he now 19 J. C. H. Reynolds of the TPMA to Washington's U.S. Senators, with copy to Disque, June 14, 1918, Disque Papers; report, Jan. 31, 1918, Capt. D. D. Hartman, CO., Spruce Squadron #35, SPD, file 166-11.4, RG 120, NA; Hearings, II, 1202. ^Suzzallo to G. F. Hagenbush, Jan. 4, 1918, Suzzallo Papers; Weekly Industrial Worker, Jan. 5, 1918; Richard G. Lillard, The Great Forest (New York, 1947), 298. 21 On Disque's admonitions, Portland Oregonian, April 9, 1918; Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Aug. 1918), 27; Legion Bulletin \ T o. 2, owned by the author; V. Tooley to Secretary Baker, Feb. 5, 1918, AAF files, RG 18, NA; and on the mob leaders, Weekly Industrial Worker, Feb. 23, March 23, May 4, 1918. 3 1 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE gladly welcomed. It was approval for Disque to "utilize such part of the force under your command as may be necessary to guard [public] utilities." Without German agents to worry over, and with the wobblies reduced to useful hewers of wood, there was only one possible source of danger against which Disque then had to stand guard. It appears that he expected there might be open clashes of arms between SPD soldiers and AFL adherents. 22 He reached this peak of hysterical overcaution as a result of AFL reaction to the July 19 Legion convention. Calming quickly to more reasonable levels, Disque concluded that the worst the AFL might do was to call a strike. If the Federation resorted to this action, Disque was ready to throw the weight of his security apparatus against it. He felt confident, as he should have, that he would win such a contest. 23 Disque was less confident that he could emerge victor from a struggle fought in the high reaches of the Wilson administration. Sure enough, at the end of July, AFL leaders in the Northwest prepared to carry the fight against him to the unfamiliar terrain of the new bureaucratic structure in the national capital. The Timberworkers convened in Seattle on July 30. They approved a strong resolution, condemning Disque, the SPD, and the Legion. It stated that President Wilson had guaranteed the AFL the right to form affiliates on government-contract projects. But the legitimate effort of the Timberworkers "is being hampered and bids fair to be entirely prevented because of the Legion." SPD and 4L officials were blocking recruiting by AFL organizers, and Legionnaires now feared to take out a card in the union. It seemed to hurt the complainants most that Disque blandly insisted that the Timberworkers were welcome to proselytize within the Legion — only not at the moment. Obviously, "the moment" was not forthcoming, and never would. The resolution charged further that on July 19 Disque had broken his earlier promise to Gompers to confer with labor men before setting standards for labor or establishing processes for mediation. He had transformed the Legion into a labor organization with pretensions to postwar permanence. What right did an American Army officer have to create an asserted labor union with one hand and to oppose a real one with the other? No excuse of "war emergency" justified such un-Ameri- can activity. The Legion was not a union but a militaristic organization 22 Stansbury to Leigh, March 12, 1918, General Staff files, RG 165, NA; telegram, "McCain" to Disque, July 22, 1918, Disque Papers, on authority to use troops. Note il that on Feb. 1, Squier, asked for this permission, had refused to grant it; see telegram that date, Disque Papers. 23 Disque to Leadbetter, July 24, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, Disque Papers I SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 311 lit operating in the Army's interests at the moment, but ready to be taken over by the employers "to hold autocratic domination over the work- men." Unless Disque backed off from his adamant stand against AFL proselytizing, the Timberworkers wanted War Secretary Baker to re- move him from his post. 24 Gompers' chief field man, Young, who had been observing Disque's work since the preceding November and who had inspired this policy statement, at once arranged to have similar resolutions emerge from sessions of the Seattle Central Labor Council and, within a fortnight, from the executive council of the Washington State Federation of Labor. Appearing before the Seattle group, Young touched on a theme that promised to bring the influence of the national AFL organization fully into the fray. He argued that if the Legion succeeded in monopoliz- ing the labor supply of the lumber industry, similar partnerships of government and business would occur in other large industries. 25 In his subsequent appearance before the Washington federation, Young took the position that Disque had irremediably become an anti- union man. While touring a shipyard with visiting celebrities in the preceding week, Disque had launched into a vitriolic tirade at observ- ing some idle men. According to this account, Disque blamed the pres- ence of the loafers on the AFL, and he told Marsh that "it will take years before the nation can overcome the wrong done to it as a result of the actions of trade unions during this war." Reminded that Presi- dent Wilson held a different view of the unions' contributions to the successful conduct of the war, Disque replied that "it was likely that the President was playing favorites with the unions because they had a great number of votes." Disque had made false charges, the state federation concluded. He must acknowledge his error or else the Army should replace him with "a man with more understanding of what is necessary to create indus- trial peace." The labor men authorized Young to carry the matter in their names to the highest levels of government. So far as Disque was concerned, open warfare had been declared. Though not overconfident, he believed he would win. Estimating his resources, he counted the lumbermen in his support, the 115,000 Legionnaires, the Legion's security mechanism linked to the Anny » Resolution, July 30, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; AFL Weekly News Letter, Aug. 17, 1918. 25 Gen. M. Churchill, Military Intelligence Director, General Staff, to War Labor Board secretary W. J. Lauck, Oct. 22, 1918, NWLB files, RG 2, NA, on extension of the Legion scheme to east coast longshoremen. This will be discussed in fuller detail below. 312 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE bureaucracy, and the tremendous asset of the wartime pressures toward patriotic goals. In his own thinking, "the weight of respectable people" was on his side. Against all this the AFL's Timberworkers could muster only a few hundred members who, employed almost without exception in Legion camps, were already known to him through the SPD's security apparatus. The national offices of the AFL would not provide the Tim- berworkers with much help, Disque estimated. Gompers did not want his name to be associated with any slowdown of vital war material. Having thus far kept out of the developing split between the AFL and the 4Ls, Gompers had no impelling reason to interfere so late in the game. 26 Young obviously agreed with this estimate of their relative strengths. Conscious of Disque's Goliath-like assets, he tried for a negotiated truce. Through Suzzallo's intercession he and Disque met in the first days of August. It was a tense meeting. The newspapers were playing up the Federation's demand for Disque's dismissal, and the colonel was furious. He launched into a tirade against the AFL, alleging that its organizers were slandering him. The Federation, by competing with the Legion, was unpatriotic. "More forcibly than politely," Young re- plied that Disque was in error. Disque blew up. "He was going to per- fect his new so-called union," Young reported, "and ... he would not countenance any other organization in the mills or camps." The meeting dragged on for four hours, rarely rising from this low level of invective. It adjourned without accomplishment. "We failed to get him to appreciate what it will mean to organized labor if it is denied the fundamental right to organize democratically," Young wrote in a weary spirit to the Secretary of Labor. Both men saw the breakup of their meeting as the last chance for a cease-fire between the AFL and Disque. The colonel left the conference determined to carry on the crusade against organized labor into which he had drifted, but felt that he had been forced. 27 Disque brought this militant, purposeful sense of vendetta to the Legion meetings of employees in August, which ratified the July 19 resolutions of the employers and initiated the new system of permanent, representative grievance and mediation committees for the northwest- 26 Seattle Central Labor Council resolution, July 30; resolution of executive council, Washington State Federation of Labor, Aug. 9, 1918, to Secretary of War, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Disque's memorandum on 4L strength, undated, "AFL" folder, Disque Papers. 27 Young to Henry M. White, to be transmitted to Secretary Wilson, Aug. 2, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Disque to Suzzallo, Aug. 2, 1918, copy in Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 313 ern timber industry. He stated at the August 5 convention, for example, repeating the theme two weeks later, that "selfish agitators" were trying to undermine his accomplishments. Not one of his critics "is a laboring man," he continued; "all of them are living on salaries drawn from funds created by labor unions through assessment." Union organizers were parasitical drones and all "other" unions except the Legion were unproductive mongerers of class-warfare doctrines. Unproductive men and organizations had no respectable place in wartime America, or in the better postwar nation that he hoped was going to emerge from the war. The Legion was striving to apply the Golden Rule to labor relations. Unions lived off discord. This difference, Disque claimed, was the reason why the AFL was fighting him. If the Legion succeeded, "there will be no chance for the smooth talker to live by his wits off donations of laboring men whom he tries to keep stirred up all the time." Employ- ing the "so you still beat your wife" argument, Disque concluded that only evil men would contest the superior claim of the 4Ls to a monopoly of jurisdiction in labor relations. These emotional diatribes against the AFL might have graced the columns of the antediluvian Business Chronicle of Seattle; indeed, the columns of that journalistic apostle of laissez faire now rang with Disque's praises. A Chronicle editorial extolled the Legion as "the ideal kind of labor union" because Disque was keeping it free "from the dominance of outside labor leaders and agitators." 28 It was at this juncture, the last week of July and the first week of August, that John D. Ryan appeared on the northwestern scene. He was touring the country in order to gauge for himself the status of war- time production. The new "czar" had heard good reports on Disque. As it happened, he and Disque hit it off at first meeting, and established a close personal relationship that was to endure long after the war. Ryan and the colonel traveled together over 1,500 miles of the Legion's expanding empire in a crowded fortnight and inspected almost 200 separate sites. During this expedition, Ryan stated publicly his con- viction that "the spruce situation is in good hands." 29 Now more than 28 Chronicle, Aug. 3, 1918; Minutes . . .August 5, 1918, 9-17; Aug. 19 convention in Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Sept. 1918), 7. 29 Portland Oregonian, July 31, 1918. A lumberman, Kenneth Ross, wrote Disque on August 16: "I surely wished you to have all the time possible to be with Mr. Ryan without interruption, for nobody appreciates more fully than I do what you have accomplished and with what you have had to contend. This had come to Mr. Ryan's notice before he visited the West, and I am sure that you now know . . . that he is fully aware of the splendid work you have done under the most trying circumstances." Copy in "Personal Record" folder, Disque Papers. 3 1 4 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE ever it had to be. Pershing had at last become convinced of the value of offensive air bombardment. The decision had been made at AEF headquarters that the United States must build for 1919 use a great fleet of large bombing planes, capable of reaching into the heart of Germany. To achieve this, the existing goal of ten million feet of prime spruce a month was ridiculously inadequate. The Legion and the SPD must now cut and ship three times as much, and the increased figure had to be reached almost at once. Disque, who had predicted such a rise, promised that the Legion would meet this added burden. 30 Here was a new reason, he felt, requiring that the AFL be kept out of the Legion's affairs. It was three times as important than before that there be no interruption in woodcutting. And here also was a reason impelling Disque toward compromise as well as toward continued combat. Ryan also had some happy news. President Wilson had confided to him that Disque henceforth need have no worries concerning congres- sional appropriations for the Legion. As long as the war lasted, the President would see to it that the Legion's funds were drawn from un- committed Army allocations. Failing in this, Wilson would supply Disque's needs from a special White House budget. "The purpose is plain," Disque noted. "The President wants to avoid a floor fight in Congress where Gompers' friends can become involved." Ryan also informed Disque that a brigadier's star, already belated, was coming through for him. 31 When Ryan left for the East, Disque knew that he had made a firm friend and found a strong supporter. He felt that he needed both. Trip- ling the production goals for the 4Ls and the SPD automatically made him a spotlighted figure in the unhappy war industry scene. Any critic would now be given a more responsive hearing, for officialdom would be intensely anxious to know of his progress and failings. In this con- gressional election year, politicians might easily swing to support Gom- pers in any clash. 32 Disque's expanding scale of operations was unquestionably exposing 30 Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Aug. 1918), 6. 31 Data on Ryan in "John D. Ryan" folder, Disque Papers, which also has the notation by Disque and details on a trivial but nonetheless embarrassing incident for the colonel. SPD officers gave an unrestrained belated birthday party for their commanding officer during Ryan's visit. They sang a delightfully salacious ditty that concluded with a prayer for promotion for Disque. In 1919, congressional investi- gators tried to twist this innocent product of indecorum into a devilish plot by Disque to employ Army officers to get himself promoted, and to enlarge the SPD to divisional strength for the same purpose. His star was overdue by all standards. See Hearings, II, 1891-92; 111,3225. 32 Memorandum to Ryan on labor problem, ca. Aug. 15, 1918, "Ryan" folder, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 3 1 5 him to criticism from some lumbermen as well as from competing labor union organizers. He was now granting cost-plus contracts in large numbers. Legion and SPD money and muscles were building truck and railroad spur lines that bid fair to open new stands of spruce, but cer- tainly enhanced the values of the private landholdings and transporta- tion lines into which they ran. The SPD and the Legion were becoming wondrously profitable adjuncts for a relatively few producers, especially the larger, more efficient corporations with expert managers and devel- oped processing and marketing facilities. Other lumbermen, less fortunately situated geographically or for other reasons, derived less financial profit from Disque's work, except for the general labor stability that the Legion provided. These opera- tors were becoming increasingly restive, Disque knew by report. Prob- ably only two factors prevented them from breaking out immediately into open criticism. Those restraints were their patriotism and their hatred for the wobblies and for the AFL. So long as the Federation remained a threat that the Legion kept barely checked, Disque was sure that the disgruntled lumbermen would retain more antipathy for Gompers' men than for himself. A live Timberworkers organiza- tion, if not too lively, afforded Disque the luxury of not having to fight a two-front war. 23 As Disque bent his efforts to meet the thrice-swollen production quotas that Ryan had specified, he therefore welcomed, in a sense, the anticipated onslaught from the American Federation of Labor. But, while needing the AFL as an enemy in order to keep unhappy lumber- men quiet, Disque did not want to waste too much of his strength in a fight to the death with this foe. He had calmed down considerably from his rage of the first days of August. If nothing else, Ryan's visit had sobered him to a realization that there would be energy enough only to achieve the new output figures, not to fight with Gompers. The conclusion seems inescapable that, taking all this into account, Disque wanted a compromise with the AFL despite his continuing bellicose public statements. He started a search for this middle way almost as soon as the renewed attack by the AFL was felt in Portland. On the same day — August 5 — that Disque won the Legion's approval for the new 4L constitution, Frankfurter, for the War Labor Policies 33 Ibid. After the Armistice, Disque's reasoning was proved correct. Many lumber- men, mostly small operators, volunteered information to congressional inquisitors that Disque had been in a conspiracy with large corporations to enrich them through favored policies of the 4Ls and the SPD. Hearings, I, 92, 96-97, 106-107, 112, 571, 631; II, 1176, 1222, 1293, 2270; III, 2342, 3214, 3525-27, and passim. The evidence against this is convincing. 316 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Board, took jurisdiction of the AFL's complaints against Disque. As- signing "the Disque case" to a Board researcher, Frankfurter wanted what he described as "authoritative and disinterested knowledge" of Disque's work in "the labor field." Unfortunately for Disque's sense of balance, Frankfurter chose as his investigator the recent president of the Washington State Federa- tion of Labor, Marsh. He was a good person for the task. His labor mediation work on the Washington state defense council under Suz- zallo had been so outstanding that, on Scherer's recommendation, Marsh had become a special assistant to the Secretary of Labor. But to Disque, Marsh was irreparably tainted with his Federation past. Seemingly lending support to Disque's slanted view, Frankfurter requested Marsh to consult with a current Federation executive, Wil- liam Short, whom Gompers weeks before had assigned to assist Young with the "Legion problem." Learning this, Disque's conviction in- creased that the civilians in charge of labor matters were, like Frank- furter, bent toward the AFL and were thereby in opposition to the Army's best interests. It is a pity that Disque did not read Frankfurter's further injunction to Marsh: "Certain reports come to us that he [Disque] is having a very good influence in gradually bringing the whole lumber industry to a better understanding of their problems," Frankfurter had wired. Further, according to Frankfurter, Disque was "establishing those intermediate steps from which the more advanced collective relation- ship issues." Because complaints had been received that required in- vestigation, Frankfurter simply wanted Marsh, since Parker's death the best qualified man in the lumber region, to do the job. Marsh advised Frankfurter that his strategy would be the Parker- like one of trying to bring Disque and the AFL complainants together in still another conference. "The two forces ought to and can be har- monized," Marsh told Frankfurter. Reason could still prevail, and a "program of mutual cooperation for the future worked out." 34 Marsh knew that the bitterness against Disque of his former col- leagues in the Washington state AFL organization was intense and deepening. He was aware that Timberworker officials Southworth and Canterbury had told Disque that "we are going to stand our ground against any invader." President Wilson had sent Frankfurter a memo- randum, deriving from a complaint he had received from the AFL field men concerning Disque, in which the major theme was a warning 34 Frankfurter-Marsh exchanges (telegrams), Aug. 5-24, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 317 of labor unrest worse than the wobbly troubles if Disque was not re- strained. 35 Despite this, Marsh and Frankfurter still held to their opti- mistic view that compromise was not only necessary but possible. That they did so was a reflection of their knowledge of Disque's character and accomplishments. This knowledge was widespread in the higher echelons of the war- swollen bureaucracy along the Potomac. When Hugh L. Kerwin, as- sistant to the Secretary of Labor, independently sent investigator G. Y. Harry westward to report on Disque, Kerwin, too, assumed that it would be feasible to arrange a joint meeting between Disque and the Timberworkers' officers "in endeavor to find ground for harmonious relations." Unfortunately, another Labor Department official, Henry White, chose this time to submit a report adverse to Disque, who somehow learned of this criticism. His awareness of "an enemy within the gates," as he called it, paraphrasing Teddy Roosevelt, set off his quick temper again, and upset the delicate negotiations under way that were de- signed to make possible conferences between him and the Timber- workers. White, Disque's new foe, was the immigration commissioner at Se- attle and had a long acquaintance with Young, Marsh, and other labor personages. An admirer of Parker, he had grown unfriendly toward Disque as coolness developed between the colonel and Parker. Learn- ing of Young's complaints against Disque, White, unasked, submitted his comments. First, he praised Young as an honest, patriotic, and perceptive indi- vidual. "I accept the conclusion that Col. Disque is doing everything to prohibit the employees in the [lumber] industry . . . from organiz- ing," White stated, after reviewing the evidence that Young had shown him. Disque was in the wrong and really ought to suffer removal for having erred. But even White, though deploring Disque's actions against the Timberworkers, concluded that "if he is doing his work well I think that all these matters could be well overlooked." 38 So far as Disque was concerned, this was the standard by which he 3r> Seattle Central Labor Council secretary James A. Duncan to President Wilson, Aug. 9, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Southworth and Canterbury to Major Abbey, Aug. 5; Canterbury to NWLB secretary W. J. Lauck, Aug. 5, 1918, all in NWLB files, RG 2, NA. 36 G. Y. Harry to Kerwin, Aug. 7, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; White to Kenvin, Aug. 12, 1918, ibid. Disque to Leadbetter, Aug. 30, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, Disque Papers, shows that Disque knew of White's wire. See, too, Assistant Attorney General S. J. Graham to U.S. Attorney B. E. Haney, Aug. 5, 1918, file 197019, RG 60, NA. 318 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE would accept judgment. The spruce was forthcoming in the needed amount. He wanted to be sure that everyone knew what he was ac- complishing. Inaugurating a campaign designed to amass as much popular support as possible, Disque showed that within a year of coming to the Northwest he had become a skilled practitioner of inter- governmental pressures and of public relations. His first tactic was to employ the Legion's tens of thousands of mem- bers, in their glittering new democratic raiment, in public displays of approval for his continuing overlordship. A Legion convention on August 12 voiced unanimous confidence in him, and deprecated "efforts to interfere or bring about any change in his administration of affairs." Legionnaire-lumberworkers provided letters for the 4L Monthly Bulle- tin, praising Disque's administration. Lumbermen of the Legion, wear- ing other hats as corporation executives or, in one instance, as the secretary of the Western Timber Products Manufacturers' Association, telegraphed Frankfurter and other officials involved in labor matters, insisting that for the remainder of the war Disque and the Legion should take care of the government's need for wood and the workers' need for protection and improvement. No other union was needed. 37 The SPD headquarters staff, guided by the smooth executive hands of Hemert and Major Stearns, saw to it that such sentiments reached friendly journalists, who were in most instances predisposed toward sympathy with the Legion out of their employers' editorial policies. And finally, Disque's friends within the Army, employing the weight of evidence provided by the Legionnaires, the lumbermen, the news- papers, and their own observations, sent in to the War Department conclusions that were overwhelmingly in favor of Disque. This is not to say that Disque did not deserve plaudits. In a very real sense he had helped to create what Military Intelligence agent F. B. Stansbury described as "A Revolution in the Timber Industry." America's crusade for democracy abroad was being paralleled by the upsurge of industrial democracy at home, Stansbury asserted, and the Legion was in the vanguard of this desirable tide. The Army had cause to be grateful to Disque. Stansbury reminded the General Staff, to whom he directed his report, that only a year before officials had been deeply concerned over the wobbly menace in the Northwest. Now that menace was dissipated, and Disque had done the job. Now the AFL was trying to strip Disque of the just fruits of what 37 On convention and letters see Monthly Bulletin, I (Aug. 1918), 9; I (Sept. 1918), 34; Frankfurter to Marsh, Aug. 23, 1918, quoting secretary of WTPA, C. H. Reynolds, to Frankfurter, undated, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 319 he had won and what it could never have gained, Stansbury continued. AFL organizers were seeking to slide into power on the shoulders of the achievements of the Army's Loyal Legion. The July 19 Legion pro- gram promised to make Disque's achievements a permanent advance in the way a giant American industry was organized. It was time for the Army and the nation to congratulate Disque, not to censure or remove him, as the Federation was requesting. And it was past time for the AFL to keep hands off the Army's own, Stansbury concluded. 38 To be sure, the Federation's side also received wide support, al- though it was patently impossible for the union men to exploit the patriotic sentiment and institutional links that Disque enjoyed. No wonder that Disque confided to lumberman Ames that he "did not care very much about any action that the AFL may have taken." Disque still intended to keep the Legion free of any associative taint emanating from the AFL, "as he had agreed with the employers and employees," Ames recorded. But behind Disque's facade of intractability were the impulsions toward compromise described earlier. He had been shaken when, on a quick trip to west coast Army headquarters at San Francisco during the second week in August, he learned that War Secretary Baker, over the protests of the General Staff, had turned "the Disque case" over to the civilians of the War Labor Board. Disque also learned that his brigadier's star was through the Senate, and would be his on October 1. Obviously, this was no time to muddy the government's water further. Ryan had been right. The kind of competition for public and official favor that Disque had been engaging in during the preceding few weeks had produced gratifying results, but had diverted too much time and energy from what must always be his primary concern — the supplying of gigantic quantities of spruce and other airworthy woods. 39 On his return to Portland from a Legion convention at Seattle, Disque called in Marsh. The colonel's recent animosity and intransi- gency had suddenly disappeared, Marsh happily reported. "I am grate- ful to you," Frankfurter replied relievedly. "I am glad Disque feels we 38 Stansbury to General Staff, via Leigh, July 29, 1918, General Staff files, RG 2, NA, containing reprints of two lengthy Oregonian articles on Disque, dated July 20, 22, 1918. Disque collected copies of the hundreds of individual and group expressions in his support; "Personal Record" folder, Disque Papers. They are far too extensive to quote. 39 Ames to Talbot, Aug. 24, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; other data in AFL Weekly News Letter, Aug. 21, 1918; Business Chronicle, Aug. 10, 1918; Baker to Canterbury, Aug. 15, 1918, with marginal query to NWLB secretary Lauck, NWLB files, RG 2, NA; on San Francisco trip, SPD Special Order #199, Aug. 22, 1918; on promotion, entry, Oct. 1, 1918, Ledger volume IV, Disque Papers; on need for com- promise, Disque to Leadbetter, Aug. 25, 1918, "Leadbetter Wires" folder, ibid. 320 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE are trying to deal wisely and fairly with the situation of which he is [but] a part." Marsh proceeded to exploit this unanticipated but welcome amia- bility that Disque now displayed. He arranged with Timberworker organizers, state defense councilmen of Washington and Oregon, and officials of the industrial safety commissions of the four states chiefly involved in Legion work, to meet with him and Disque during the first week of September at SPD headquarters in Portland. Whatever transpired there was kept remarkably under wraps. En- joying the unaccustomed privacy, the men who gathered in Disque's office for several hours each day of that week, and in some instances for night sessions as well, relaxed and spoke frankly. They finally arrived at a conclusion that Marsh, after the war, described as "in a measure, satisfactory." Essentially, on September 9 they reached a compromise recognizing the status quo. The Federation men implied that they would hold off further actual attempts to organize the Legionnaires, but would sus- tain the assertion of the right to do so. On Disque's part, SPD and 4L officials were to receive positive instructions not to interfere with the Timberworkers' organizers. These points meshed precisely with the powers at hand of the Tim- berworkers and the Loyal Legion. Undoubtedly the Timberworkers had the legitimate authority to organize where they could. But the Legion's strength stood in the way of that right. The Legion was a rival labor organization too strong to fight because of its Army affilia- tion; the AFL men had learned that they could not hope to break Disque's power — at least not while the war lasted. Seizing on that last consideration, the labor union's personnel set down the final point of agreement reached at the September 9 meet- ing: "As soon as the war ended . . . the Four-L organization as such would be withdrawn and the field left open to the Timberworkers' Union to continue its campaign of organizing the workers in the lum- ber industry." It seemed a brilliant solution. Frankfurter telegraphed his deep "sense of satisfaction to the union leaders and Colonel Disque." 40 Henceforth, while the war lasted, the Legion and the Timberworkers stood off at arm's length from each other. The Federation's com- plaints against Disque already on file at the War Labor Board or in 40 Frankfurter to Marsh, Aug. 24, Sept. 9; Marsh to H. L. Hughes and to Ed Stack, both Aug. 30, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA; Marsh in Washington State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Convention Held at Bellingham, Washington, June 16-21, 1919 (Tacoma, 1919), 9. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 321 the Department of Labor were quietly dropped, with a single excep- tion. This one complaint, Canterbury's, was somehow overlooked. At the end of September, Secretary Baker advised the Timberworker offi- cer that the War Labor Board "cannot take jurisdiction between rival organizations." Baker blandly referred Canterbury to the AFL national offices if he wished to carry the complaint further! 41 It was not carried further. Peace, it seemed, had finally come to the woodlands. The wobblies were obsolete; the AFL was quiescent. Disque's Legionnaires and SPD troopers accomplished miracles of effort, and success crowned their exertions. Spruce, fir, and cedar in more than the required amount of one million feet a day and of a sustained level of high quality moved eastward toward airframe fac- tories. The rewards, in terms of a military man, were substantial. By his mere protest Disque was able to cancel a projected labor exchange ar- rangement in which the civilians of the Departments of Labor and of Agriculture would have controlled the Northwest's undrafted human resources. He recommended, instead, that SPD headquarters was the proper locus for such a centralized employment service, and his sug- gestion might well have received approval had the war continued longer. Similarly, in September Disque was able quite easily to get approval for enlisting women into the Legion in clerical and housekeeping (literally) positions. He was the only unit commander of the Army to receive permission to issue a special call for volunteers outside the draft apparatus — for men over forty-five years of age with lumbering ex- perience to take commissions in the SPD to double its officer strength. On October 1 he received his coveted brigadier's star and permission to organize a combat-ready unit of the SPD for overseas service. The War Department authorized the creation of a Spruce Production Corpora- tion, which, by buying the region's entire lumber output and operating on business lines like the Shipping Board, effected vast economies in operating costs and in quickness of decision. Its shareholders and executive board consisted of Disque, his senior SPD officers, and his advisory council. Lumbermen liked it especially because the Corpora- tion's accounting system was geared to theirs and not based on slow, overly complex official standards. 43 41 Baker to Canterbury, Sept. 24, 1918, NWLB files, RG 2, NA. 41> Ames to Talbot, Aug. 22, 1918, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; "Spruce Production Corporation Minutes," Disque Papers; Disque's wires to General Staff, Sept. 20, 22, 1918, SPD files, RG 98, NA. 322 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE Disque was most pleased at the evidence of how the Army appre- ciated his work. In October, General M. Churchill, head of Military Intelligence, impressed "by the excellent results produced by the L.L.L.L. organization in the Northwest," and with the approval of the now friendly War Labor Board, commenced the preliminary work needed to establish a Legion on the east coast to function primarily among longshoremen, to combat the "wobbly-infested" Marine Trans- port Workers Association. The Canadian government instituted in- quiries looking toward the creation of a Legion in its lumber regions, under the direction of Canadian Army officers. By every standard of Disque and his military colleagues, the Loyal Legion was a tremendous success. "This organization . . . has been under way now about eleven months," Disque boasted in October. "There has not been a single labor disturbance that has come to my attention." 43 Then Germany surrendered. As the peace negotiations progressed in Europe, the Legion's postwar destiny became a matter of moment in the Northwest. 43 Gen. Churchill to NWLB secretary Lauck, Oct. 22; Secretary Baker to Churchill, Nov. 4, 1918, NWLB files, RG 2, NA; Disque in Meeting of Central Council of Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, at Portland Hotel, Portland, Oregon, October 16, 1918 (n.p., n.d.), unpaginated copy, University of Oregon Library; and see Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Oct. 1918), 14-15, 26, for similar statements on Oct. 18. Epilogue As rumors of impending peace grew stronger, the question came to the fore of continuing some of the extraordinary administrative inno- vations that the war had produced. Members of two such novel orga- nizations especially hoped to maintain official links with their parent federal departments after the war. One of these was the Justice De- partment's American Protective League. By the time of the Armis- tice the APL had cast a network of 300,000 amateur counterspies across the United States. Northwestern Leaguers formed a basic element in Disque's internal security apparatus in the SPD-Legion partnership. The second such organization was, of course, the Army's Loyal Legion. The Justice Department waited until after the Armistice to announce against maintaining the APL. 1 Disque, on the other hand, expected as early as September 1918 that, once peace came, the Army would cut off all connection with the Legion. He had no objection to such a severance. He did object, however, to what he felt was undue pres- sure exerted by the American Federation of Labor on the President to realize this separation. Probably Disque circulated among the Legion's higher echelons his opinion that, with peace, the SPD's soldiers and the Legion's Army directors would fade out of the Northwest's labor picture. At any rate, almost everyone in the Northwest seemed to assume that this would occur. Even with the upsurge of interest in the need for anti-Bolshevik strength, there was no serious discussion on the theme of the Army's remaining officially active in postwar Legion affairs. 2 What did predominate in northwestern discussion was the question of whether a Legion-like civilian organization should persist after the war, without Army affiliation, but retaining both employers and em- ployees in co-membership, along with the largely unused mediation and grievance structure that Disque had built. Peace would obviously bring severe economic problems to the Northwest. War orders would dry up just as homecoming veterans would add to the labor force, and 1 Joan Jensen, The American Protective League (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1962), 215-39. 2 Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Dec. 1918), is almost entirely devoted to the theme of Army removal. On the fear of "reds," see Robert Murray, The Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (Minneapolis, 1955), ch. 1. 323 324 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE labor unions would doubtless try to move in where during the war they had been excluded. The temptation would be strong among op- erators to cut back on the improvements in standards the Legion had wrought. The declaration of peace might well return the Northwest to a situation worse than existed before the war. The obvious alternative to prewar class bellicosity was to maintain the wartime "Americanization" and cooperative processes that the Legion had instituted. 3 Considerable pressure built up among Legion members in the autumn of 1918 for the organization to carry on. Work- men as well as employers seem to have favored this. That the need for cooperation was so generally assumed is of itself a tribute to the Legion's accomplishment. Agreement on the desirability of a postwar Legion at once brought Disque's role into question. Some lumber operators were troubled that he had exhibited no great concern over the Red Menace, about which they professed anxiety now that the German and wobbly threats were passe. Disque seemed absolutely unalarmed about Bolsheviks, the Busi- ness Chronicle disgustedly reported. Perhaps it would be best to find a substitute for him as head of the postwar Legion, more alert to new foes.* On the other hand, a commoner view seems to have been that Disque could play a useful role. Some lumbermen reasoned that the returning veterans were going to dominate politics for a while. If employers pinned their bets on a postwar Legion, they were backing an organiza- tion composed almost entirely of men who had remained civilians during the war, notwithstanding the martial overlay and links to the SPD. Would veterans accept direction and new ways of conducting their work from men they might consider draft-dodgers? They might work back into civil life and political obedience more smoothly if Disque stayed on at the head of the Legion and employed the prestige of his general's star. Perhaps the commonest view among employers in favor of keeping Disque was that held by Ames. If Disque stepped out at once, Ames worried, then the 4Ls would become a cat's-paw of the AFL. 5 So far as the sketchy evidence indicates, rank-and-file Legionnaires 3 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 448; Suzzallo, Capital, Management, Labor and the Public (Chicago, n.d.), 10-11, 15-21. 4 Chronicle, Feb. 8, 1920, on 1918 conferences with Disque on Red Menace. 5 Ames to Talbot, Nov. 22, 1918, and see Nov. 14, 23, 27, Box 31, Puget Mills Co. Papers, UW; on veterans, see speech of the Admiral Lines' industrial engineer J. C. Lindsey, Proceedings of Conference on Employment Management, March 24, 1921 (Workers' Education Files, UCB Extension Division). SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 325 seem to have fallen in line with the general tone of approval for a postwar Legion. Doubtless, this apparent unanimity reflected a de- gree of coercion. Only very brave men dared speak out against the idea when it was discussed in isolated logging camps, where the Legion- SPD organization represented the only functioning vehicle of expres- sion. It is difficult, on the other hand, to see why very much coercion would have been needed to elicit expressions in favor of the Legion. What alternatives remained? The wobblies were fragmented or "converted," with fruitless years of discord as the only product of brave, futile agi- tation. The AFL was even weaker, less appealing, and certainly no match for the Legion apparatus in regional prestige or record of ac- complishment. There were sobering causes for lumberworkers to worry over unemployment, job stability, and wage rates. One result of the 4L experience was that thousands of timberworkers for the first time had sunk roots in communities, acquired possessions, families, debts. The Legion's appeal was its promise of steady work, not industrial democ- racy, so far as most members gave it expression. 3 Whatever his subordinates felt, Disque himself was less positive about what to recommend on the question of a postwar Legion, the relationship of the Army to such an organization, and the nature of his own role in it. After all, at the September 9 "peace conference" he had committed himself to the AFL's people. By the terms of that agree- ment, once Germany surrendered, the Army was to cut itself off from the Legion and the SPD troopers must leave the forest camps. Obvi- ously, the AFL organizers intended to swoop in on the Legion mem- bership at the first signal that the soldiers were gone. No doubt Disque considered his September promise to the AFL almost as a breach of faith with the Legionnaires, but in early Novem- ber he saw no way out. Yet it appears that he was not totally candid on this point, even to himself. For example, when a suggestion came to him that the U.S. Shipping Board might pick up the sponsorship of the Legion from the Army, and oversee it into the postwar period, Disque encouraged the idea. This possibility, and other similar ones, failed to eventuate. He never admitted that in seeking to extend the Legion's lifetime through these abortive efforts to find it anodier spon- 6 Monthly Bulletin, I (Dec. 1918), 3-8; ms. "Survey of 4L Attitudes on Continuation After the War Ends," Disque Papers. This overview was conducted by SPD officers and through the pages of SPD district newspapers like On the Wing, which served the Puget Sound area. See its issue of Dec. 25, 1918. Probably this survey is the one Disque referred to in his letter to Commanding General, Nov. 23, 1918, #339, SPD files, RG 98, NA. 326 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE sor within the federal bureaucracy, he was overstepping limits that he had agreed to with the AFL in September. 7 Early in November, obeying the imperatives of the professional officer to be near the source of authority when the Army faced a cross- roads, Disque decided to go to the War Department in person. There he would seek counsel and decision. The day he reached the District of Columbia, Germany surrendered. Disque had prepared the SPD for this. Standing orders halted woodcutting operations; cancellation clauses in SPD contracts with lumber firms and mills became effective; Legionnaires called assemblies to discuss present problems and future prospects. 8 One of these meetings released the passions of oversensitive, proud, and anxious men. On the 16th, a closed meeting of members of the West Coast Lum- bermen's Association, who were almost all Legion members as well, resolved that "Disque retain supervision of the labor situation" at least for the ensuing three months. Nothing was said about the Legion or about the SPD. But immediately Timberworker representatives con- cluded that this was an opening gun in a campaign to renege on the September 9 promise to cut off SPD operations. Rumors flashed over the region that Disque intended to defy the AFL and to hold on to the headship of the Legion by keeping soldiers of the division on their present duties. Without affording Disque the common courtesy of ascertaining his side of the matter, Timberworker officials wired pro- tests to President Wilson against continuing "military control ... in the Northwest." Serious labor disturbances would ensue if Disque and the SPD's soldiers were not withdrawn, the protest warned. 9 At the War Department, Disque saw a copy of this telegram. As had occurred several times before during Disque 's overlordship of the Legion, emotional, unpremeditated reactions to events created policy. In this instance, the Timberworkers' minatory wire to the President evoked in Disque an angry response that was as thoughtless as the AFL telegram. On the other hand, as has been indicated, Disque was pre- disposed toward changing his policy on quitting the Legion at once, 7 War Department to Disque, Oct. 9, 1918, SPC Wires, RG 98, NA, on the Shipping Board; see, too, on alternative possibilities and his views on affairs, Disque's notations on Travel Orders #259, SPD, Nov. 5, 1918, Disque Papers. 8 SPD cumulative reports on cessation of activities, Nov. 11-30, 1918, unlabeled folder, Disque Papers. 9 Ms. minutes of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association meeting, Nov. 16, 1918, University of Oregon Library; telegram of C. Covert, Timberworker president, to President Wilson, Nov. 19, 1918, file 33/574-C, RG 280, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 327 and wanted only a reasonable enough excuse to do so. The telegram provided it In a long memorandum to the head of Army aviation, Disque coun- terattacked in a bitter mood. He frankly exposed the sore heart of the matter. The AFL protest, he insisted, was not what it professed to be, a lance against militarism. After all, the SPD was already disband- ing, by his orders. The lumbermen had not asked for a reversal of the demobilization process. All that was involved was a request from em- ployer-Legionnaires that he stay on as head of the 4Ls, maintaining "general supervision . . . during [the] transition period only." There- fore, the AFL telegram was actually a personal attack on himself. Everyone in the Northwest knew that so long as he stayed on in charge of Legion affairs the Timberworkers were unwelcome. He and the AFL men hated one another, Disque acknowledged quite frankly and, it appears, somewhat proudly. What, he asked rhetorically, were the sources of this reciprocal an- tipathy? Disque asserted in response that the Legion had proved itself immensely superior to the AFL organization. He noted that the Tim- berworkers did not now demand that the Legion die, only the SPD. The AFL men wanted the Legion to live, rudderless, so that they might absorb its membership and take credit for all its accomplishments. This obnoxious telegram now before the War Department was de- signed "to open a way so they may make their big drive to unionize the Loyal Legion," Disque charged. He would not permit it. "This I propose to prevent," he stated, "as a personal matter, so long as I am here, if possible." The AFL's organizers were unworthy of the Legion. "I regard them as unpatriotic in every sense of the word and seeking purely selfish advancement." Not so the Legionnaires. Disque was certain from the results of "a careful survey" by SPD officers that almost every Legionnaire wanted the 4Ls to endure as a wartime legacy to the postwar years. Truly "loyal" Legionnaires had no love for the AFL. The Army was in honor bound to respect this attitude of the 4L membership. After all, the Army had nurtured the Legion from infancy to its present brawny strength. In withdrawing its SPD woodcutters, could the Army disregard altogether the wishes of the Legionnaires, who had made the success of the division pos- sible? Like himself, Disque asserted, the Army had integrity on the block in this matter. Merely keeping him on duty for a little while at the head of the Legion, before the Spruce Production Division formally expired, would gratify the wishes of the Legion membership 328 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE and at the same time display a united military front against the AFL. 10 With this blast delivered, Disque returned to Portland. He carried with him the expected decision of the Secretary of War that the Army was to cut all ties with the Legion. By implication, however, Disque could set the timing for that severance. He was to have his wish to see the Legion through its transition period, to what future form, if any, no one then knew. Disque was delighted that the Army high com- mand was not after all going to play the craven before the AFL. Back on the west coast, Disque told an assembly of employer-Legion- naires on December 6 that the Army could not maintain any perma- nent association with the Legion. No branch of the national govern- ment, especially the Army, had the right in peacetime "whereby it can enforce or inflict itself upon such [labor] combinations as we are talking about." He then burst out in an impassioned condemnation of "autocratic and tyrannical" labor organizations. More soberly, Disque next came to the point at issue — just when the SPD was going to clear out of the Northwest. In this public speech Disque set a limit of from three to four months. Until then, although all SPD enlisted men of the field detachments would long since have returned to civil life, some division officers would remain on duty, closing off contract matters, disposing of surplus Army property, and — the heart of the controversy — assisting Legionnaires to take charge of their own destiny. In Disque's thinking, by this timetable he was merely complying with the Legionnaires' request that he aid them during the transition period. He was not setting the stage for a totally civilian 4L organiza- tion that, standing on its own, would continue his recent anti-AFL policy. Certainly Disque was not masterminding matters so that he would have a permanent post in the Legion. His course, as he saw it, had been open and aboveboard. He had been frank to the Secretary of War, to the General Staff, and to the public through the December 6 Legion meeting, concerning his personal antipathy to the AFL. Now, if the Timberworkers would exercise some patience for the next twelve to sixteen weeks, the way in for the AFL was clear. 11 If the situation had held fast as of December 6, Disque intended to salve his pride by serving out the ensuing few months while essen- 10 Disque to Commanding General, Nov. 23, 1918, #339, and copy of Covert's tele- gram to President Wilson, routed to Disque, Nov. 22, 1918, both SPD files, RG 98, NA. 11 Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Dec. 1918), 7-8, 39-40, on Disque's speech, with fuller text, including quoted phrases, in transcript of the Dec. 6 meeting at University of Oregon Library. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 329 tially bookkeeping work was completed on SPD-Legion fiscal records. Thus it would appear, when he did bow out, that the AFL had not routed him. Rather, he would have conducted a successful rearguard actipn, which by definition precedes a defeat, but which entails no dishonor. While he remained on duty, the Legion would endure in a kind of limbo. The end of the affair would come when he resigned. Then the Legion, or what might be left of it by the end of another three to four months, would die. 13 There was logic in Disque's position. The affairs of 100,000 men could not be closed off with a snap. Considering the large sums the SPD had spent, careful bookkeeping was needed. Further, Disque's position as of early December recognized the fundamental fact that the Legion was basically linked with the SPD. The two organizations had grown together in fruitful symbiosis. Apparently he realized that with the rapid disappearance of the SPD, the Legion too should fade away. Any 4L organization shorn of its Army connection was destined to be remarkably unlike what had obtained during the war. Disque could not in December imagine a Loyal Legion without an SPD. But neither men nor measures would hold as of December. Disque ) was as hypersensitive as ever. The Timberworkers' officials were over- anxious. Bitterness stemming from events of the preceding year pre- vented effective communication. These two organizations, ostensibly dedicated to mediation, had lost the capacity to assume that the other was capable of good faith. In a situation where intransigence ruled, and where touchy, angry men were in charge of affairs, misunderstanding was not only possible but predictable. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Disque again altered his intentions. He required only a slight push to change his views and to make him decide to work positively for the survival of the Legion. It was characteristic of the man that often in his official career he was poised so as to be able to take any of several paths and that acci- dent determined the route. Now a push came to impel him along the Legion's road. He believed that the source of the jolt, determining his direction, was from the sorcerer's den of Timberworker headquarters. Thus impelled, Disque marched the Legion at quick step through a transition to civilian self-government. He never admitted that the guiding rhythm for the transformed Legion was later set by lumber 12 Entry, Dec. 10, 1918, small notebook, Disque papers, offers convincing evidence that this was Disque's intention. 330 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE operators. Instead he insisted, and undoubtedly believed, that he for- ever fixed a pace for the Legion that was attuned to patriotic airs. The following paragraphs describe why and how Disque took the last turning, so far as this account is concerned, on the road to self- deception. On December 11a northwestern newspaper carried a story allegedly copied from an AFL account, which implied that Disque had a finan- cial stake in the lumber industry. This explained why he had spon- sored the Legion a year earlier and now held so tenaciously to its reins. Three days later, Timberworker president C. Covert addressed a telegram to War Secretary Baker, complaining that SPD officers were touring the 4L "empire" in the interests of the lumbermen, and al- legedly forcing Legionnaires to vote for the Legion to continue. Baker sent Disque a copy of this charge with a request for his comment. Disque at once concluded that the newspaper allegation and the AFL charges were linked The general was furious that once again his honor had been im- pugned. Replying to Baker, he averred that he was not surprised at the charges. Permanence for the Legion interfered with the Timber- workers' "selfish ambition" to replace the 4Ls in the timberlands. But there had been no coercion of anyone. In open conventions of the Legion at Portland on December 6 and at Spokane on the 9th, to which Timberworker officers had been invited, Disque had announced that the Army no longer "had any official interest in their organization." But unanimous votes had begged him personally to direct the Legion during the ensuing few months. He had accepted, out of a feeling that the region would revert to the "dangerous" conditions of early 1917 without a directing head. Naturally SPD officers were still active in the Northwest, Disque continued sarcastically. Only a few dozen officers remained to the di- vision. They had a vast territory to cover in winding up affairs. Unlike union officials, his officers worked. They were not, however, coercing anyone. In the first place, they were too few to do so even were he to permit it. More important, the appeals emanating from Legion- naires for a continuation of the Legion were genuine expressions of opinion. How the "labor bosses" of the AFL must be "disappointed" at this "democratic" sentiment, he noted in the Legion Monthly Bulletin. Disque snapped back in angry rebuttal at the allegation that he had SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 331 enriched himself through his Legion command. He was poorer now than he had been a year earlier. The Legion had dealt with millions of dollars worth of property; the SPD had handled almost a billion dollars Hvorth of contracts. Yet no breath of scandal clouded the record of that performance. Such a charge as this could have only one source and one purpose. "Why," he asked bitterly in the Monthly Bulletin, "is anyone who unselfishly seeks a democratic solution to our indus- trial relations problems opposed to our organization?" 13 In this angry, rhetorical query, so typical of men who are convinced of the sanctity of their missions, but who are nonetheless frustrated in achieving their destinies, Disque found his own answer. It permitted him to rationalize the fact that he was breaking the promise he had made the preceding September 9 to cut off the Legion's work wholly and at once when Germany admitted defeat. By Disque's emotional reasoning it was not he but the AFL that had abrogated that commitment. By attacking the purity of his motives and by asserting untruthfully that he had profited financially from his Legion overlordship, the Federation's officials had revealed them- selves as unworthy of the respect that gentlemen owe to one another. In their underhanded maneuvering, as Disque saw matters, the Timberworkers' leaders, undoubtedly in alliance with Gompers, had managed to do more than to cast shadows on his accomplishments with the Legion. They had also succeeded in wrecking his last chance for what he wanted most in life — the completion of his career as an Army officer. 14 Back in April 1917, when he accepted the watchdog assignment from Pershing, Disque had foretold that such homefront duty would limit his future in the Army. Only officers with overseas records could hope for permanent high ranks in the shrunken peacetime military estab- lishment. Taking on the timber job nevertheless, Disque had achieved a success of such unexpected magnitude that he received a brigadier's star. With it, the auguries had brightened immensely for realizing the career he coveted. Now the AFL had killed that chance. For one thing, the Timber- workers had blackened his name before the public. Because Disque 13 C. Covert to Secretary Baker, Dec. 14; Disque to same, Dec. 16, 1918, #350, 365, RG 98, NA. The newspaper was the Bellingham (Wash.) Journal. SPD Weekly Bulletin, Dec. 21-29, 1918, 1-2; Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Dec. 1918), 23, have other data. u Disque alluded to these reasons for anger with the AFL in a letter to John D. Ryan, March 20, 1920, Disque Papers. He later accepted employment in a Ryan- owned corporation, a fact which critics concluded proved collusion, but of what is most uncertain 332 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE would not bow to Federation pressure to get out of the Legion's driving seat, its Capitol Hill lobby would block senatorial approval of a full colonel's permanent rank for him, and anything less than that was inadmissible. Anticipating either a veto of the colonelcy from vote- conscious senators, or Disque's refusal of a lesser rank, the Army would, he supposed, refrain from offering him either the higher or the lower one. He would be left in the most humiliating possible position for an Army officer — "passed over" in his temporary wartime grade, and forced to return to his peacetime junior rank or to resign by default. Ironically, he was being debarred from promotion because he had successfully executed his arduous mission. It was too much to bear. Disque deter- mined to get out on his own terms. On February 15, 1919, he handed in his resignation. Even after Disque became a civilian the AFL would not let him alone, he grumbled. 15 Its Timberworker locals kept up a steady barrage of criticism against him and the revamped Legion, now shorn of all military connection, but still resisting AFL affiliation. To be sure, this insistent hammering received little attention at the War Department, where Disque's point of view on the extent of his accomplishments largely prevailed. Nearby at the White House the President was far too engrossed in the complexities of League of Nations diplomacy to pay heed to this level of domestic concern. But across Pennsylvania Avenue on Capitol Hill the AFL and other critics of wartime policies found sympathetic attention. Elections loomed over the horizon. Republican congressmen were eager to strike at anyone who had gained reputations under the Demo- cratic administration. Opportunistic legislators began to dig into one obvious failure of the Wilson war organization, the fabulously expen- sive and spectacularly unsuccessful aircraft program. To be sure, l an investigation of this muddled effort was in order. Uniformed and civil- ian administrators, soldiers and industrialists, politicians and financiers, all had made a sorry mess of the aircraft production picture, more through ignorance than knavery. Unfortunately, however, congressional investigators who in 1919 dug deeply into the question of what went wrong with warplane production assumed that selfishness rather than ineptitude denied American flyers home-built craft. Congressmen investigating aviation included Disque, the Legion, and the SPD in their agendas. He was positive that Congress acted as 15 Disque to Ryan, March 24, 28, 1920, Disque Papers. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 333 Gompers dictated. There were plentiful expressions on record at AFL meetings requesting that Congress take a hand against Disque. It should have been obvious to him, however, that labor unions were less in favor in Washington, D.C., since the 1918 congressional elections than before. The "lean years" of weakness, lack of influence, and harass- ment were beginning for organized labor. Disque feared that unions nevertheless ran the United States.' 8 His experiences before a congressional committee inquiring into the aircraft program confirmed Disque in his distrust of the overweening power of the AFL. These experiences also made him wonder if political democracy was a steady staff on which to order the life of a great nation. Always apolitical heretofore, Disque espoused conservative policies and personalities for public office after his appearances before the congress- men. He bore tender wounds for the rest of his life — he lived until 1960 — from the rough handling the legislators meted out to him in 1919. They rehashed every touchy issue, explored every controversial decision, and dredged up as witness every enemy he had made. When he and some of his subordinates tried to explain to the congressmen why certain policies were followed, their statements somehow emerged twisted in the committee's report. Disque blew up each time he ap- peared on the stand in his own behalf. His temper, always at halfcock, could not calmly stand the grueling that came his way. For example, Disque argued that the SPD's soldiers received civilians' wage scales only because he thought that the Army should not provide cheap labor to private employers. Further, he proved that the War Department had approved this policy, not only as necessary but as wholly proper and within the powers of the Army. The congressmen insisted, however, that he had sponsored the high soldier-pay scales in order to enrich his lumbermen friends who, working on cost-plus con- tracts, more than added these wages to their charges against the Treas- ury. Though unable to prove this charge, the legislators did not feel restrained from repeating it. They rang the changes on the theme that the AEF's "boys" had been suffering for a dollar a day in France while the SPD's men cut wood at civilian pay rates. The delighted inquisitors 10 For anti-Disque resolutions by AFL affiliates, see Idaho State Federation of Labor, Proceedings . . .Jan. 13-16, 1919, 55-56; International Union of Timberworkers, Pro- ceedings of the Second Annual Convention, Seattle, Washington, March 31-April 1-2, 1919 (n.p., n.d.), 7-12, 22, 37-39, 40-44; ibid., Third Annual Convention, Spokane, Washington, March 16-19, 1920 (n.p., n.d.), 10, 43-44, 48-50; Oregon State Federation of Labor, Year Book, 1919, Proceedings of Sixteenth Annual Convention, January 6-11, 1919 (n.p., n.d.), 18-20, 39; Washington State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of Eighteenth Annual Convention, Dellingham, June 16-21, 1919 (Tacoma, 1919), 18-19,26. 334 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE recorded volatile overseas veteran Major Fiorello La Guardia's shocked reply: "Well!" 17 "Well!" is not the best answer that can be offered on the question of the rightfulness of some of Disque's policies. There is no reliable evi- dence of deliberate wrongdoing on his part. A generation of "revi- sionist" historians, taking their cue from the congressional investigations of 1919 and repeating the theme of collusion and conspiracy, have failed to do more than to footnote prejudgments. Note that Suzzallo, who by 1919 was no admirer of Disque, wrote then that during the war the SPD chieftain had "necessarily . . . barked some shins. . . . Every sore- head in the country is running to the [congressional investigating] com- mittee with their woes. . . . The airplane program broke down but the fault was not here." 18 Congress, by inference, sustained Suzzallo's judgment, for despite the sidelong looks cast at Disque's policies during the investigation, no action was taken on Capitol Hill. California Congressman Clarence F. Lea defended Disque in March 1920 in these terms: If the reader of the report will bear in mind that the man at the head of the spruce production effort had business intelligence, was patriotic, and of good intentions; that he was surrounded by men of like qualities and of long busi- ness experience and judgment in the lumber and logging industries, and as disinterested as men could be in the Northwest; that Gen. Disque acted in harmony with them in carrying out the operations of the Government and with their cooperation and advice, he will be protected against many of the inferences that otherwise he might draw. 19 In sum, the SPD-Legion combination had been an outstanding pro- duction success and a woodland organization of some epic characteris- tics. Further, it had ushered into the timberlands a form of collective organization that was new to the industry and to the region. There can be no question that out of this interaction the conditions of lumber workmen improved substantially. Achievement of agreement on the eight-hour day alone was a large victory. Of course, it took a war to do all this. Disque wielded the persuasive and coercive powers of the modern nation-state girded for war. He had the cooperation and good will of most loggers and lumbermen, of 17 Hearings, I, 136, and see II, 1435-36. The Disque Papers are in large part the evidence Disque brought together to submit in his own defense at these 1919 hearings. ^Suzzallo to W. Ladd and J. J. Donovan, Aug. 19, 1919, Suzzallo Papers. On Nov. 2, 1926, Suzzallo thanked Disque for supporting him in a fight that resulted in Suz- zallo's ousting from the University of Washington; it meant their personal reconcilia- tion; see Suzzallo to Disque of that date, Disque Papers. 19 March 6, 1920, Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 2 sess., 59. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 335 officials on all levels of the federal system, and of a labyrinthine secret service apparatus. The outcome of all this pressure was a sort of labor truce, enforced in the Legion by the overt appeal to patriotism and in the SPD by the potential employment of military force. No one could anticipate certain results of the wartime Legion experi- ment. By holding off the Timberworkers out of personal reasons that he had formed into Army-Legion policy, Disque helped to keep the AFL affiliate grievously weak. In suppressing the wobblies, or galvaniz- ing them into more respectable Loyal Legionnaires, he further strength- ened the relative position of the lumbermen. At the same time, the war experience with the Legion and the SPD taught these highly individual- istic lumber operators an unforgettable lesson. The northwestern pro- ducers learned how valuable and profitable business cooperation could be. Unrestrained prewar competition for labor, markets, and increased production had kept the industry fluctuating in uncertain wage, price, and output relationships. Disque had imposed rationality on this chaos. The Legion and the SPD had stabilized the labor force, set output quotas, enforced quality standards, fixed prices, and allocated market- ing areas. World War I was a kind of vast school for American entre- preneurs, in which the northwestern lumbermen participated. 20 In this sense, Disque, often the student, became in turn a teacher. He liked the role as much as the lumbermen enjoyed the fruits of his preachments. Disque was also always proud that he had marked out a middle way. Settlement of the wobbly "menace" took place in relatively moderate modes, considering the resort to vigilantism that was so com- mon elsewhere. This is rightfully a matter for pride. The Legion's stimulating efforts at the rehabilitation of the IWW social outcasts were far in advance of any comparable program. To be sure, Disque furthered the regeneration activities as part of the Legion's internal security and production purposes. This was true, too, of the mediation apparatus. In result, however, both had wider implications than internal security, probably in the main because there never was much of a menace to the security of the United States or to the mission of the Legion. With all this, Disque also achieved his primary mission of getting spruce, in mountainous amounts, to airplane factories. Despite the allegations of his detractors in 1919 and since, the record is clear that he was free of any taint of financial misconduct. The Legion emerged 20 Earl May, "A Model for the New Deal," Forum, XCI (March 1934), passim. Charles A. Dearing, et al., The ABC of the NRA (Washington, D.C., 1934), 146-75. offers the 1933 lumber code, which smacks amazingly of the 1918 ff. agreements that Legion producers made. 336 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE from the often sordid homefront production scene with a clean bill of health in money matters. Yet there is basic error though not guilt in the Legion's story. What- ever the achievements of his unique organizations, there is failure in Disque's erroneous conviction that the Legion's way was the wave of the desirable future. Disque had built a mediation machinery in the Legion. He mistakenly believed that he had invested it with an inerad- icable philosophy. Stemming from Parker's teachings, this view of the Legion's virtue was that the organization offered a neutral way to harmonize differences between workmen and employers in the postwar years. 21 Disque, however, fundamentally but unknowingly altered his men- tor's concept. From his wartime irascibility with the American Federa- tion of Labor, grown from the real or fancied personal insults that Disque felt he had suffered at its hands and from its champions, he concluded that there was never to be room in the labor heaven for any of Gompers' clan. Ironically, Disque thought of himself as a tough-minded realist. He had clawed his way "up" the hard way. Knowing men's vices, he be- lieved that he understood the way to virtue. Most of Disque's contempo- raries accepted him at his own evaluation. Here, the Business Chronicle asserted, was a man who eschewed theory and rejected "fantastic ideas." Yet what, in retrospect, could have been more fantastic than Disque's activities and his programs? That they worked for the exceptional cir- cumstances of the war convinced Disque that these ideas would endure in peacetime. In December 1918 Disque told his Legionnaires: "I be- lieve you have the most perfect industrial relations mechanism on the face of the earth." 22 He always believed it. Disque was not alone in being unable to see that the AFL rather than the Legion was on a better road to genuine employee representation, especially as CIO offshoots later developed industrial organization. For example, the gentle student of literature, Ralph Boas, wrote of the "new" Legion in 1921 that it "offers a plan for the settlement of the 21 Disque, "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," System, XXXVI (Sept. 1919), 383- 84 and passim. 22 See Disque's comments in his speeches in Legion Monthly Bulletin, I (Oct. 1918), 14-15, 26; I (Dec. 1918), 7-8, 39-40; Meeting of Central Council of Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, Held at the Portland Hotel, Portland, Oregon, October 16, 1918 (n.p., n.d.), unpaginated copy, University of Oregon Library; Chronicle, Oct. 19, 1918. The Business Chronicle, Dec. 14, 1918, reproduces several of Disque's speeches and offers perceptive editorial commentaries. See, too, Disque to Leonard Wood, March 4, 1920, "Wood" folder, Disque Papers; Disque, "How We Found a Cure for Strikes," loc. cit. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 337 labor problem on a large scale." It is, Boas continued, "the only large industrial organization in the country in which all questions of wages, hours, and conditions of labor are decided, not by the sole action of employers, . . . [or] by the warfare of strike and lockout, [or] by the more subtle warfare of sabotage and strike on the job, or by the arbi- tration of special commissions, but by elected representatives of all members of the industry pledged to cooperation." Similarly, as Tyler noted, the first "civilian" president of the Legion, Norman Coleman, a former Reed College English professor, ardently preached the supe- rior virtues of "fourelism." The fact remains, however, that soon after Disque dropped the Legion's reins they were picked up by the employer- members. The mediation mechanism that so entranced Boas became, in substance, enforcement of the no-strike pledge and the exclusion of the AFL. The capacity of men for self-deception is always remarkable. In 1933 some Legionnaires pointed to their organization as a proper model for the New Deal. Fifteen years later, in expectation that Thomas Dewey was to be President of the United States, old-time lumbermen-Legion- naires hoped to sway him to a general labor program akin to the 4Ls. So far as is known, however, no one save General Disque suggested that the Army create another labor organization during World War II or since. 23 Men who were his subordinates in 1918 are intensely proud of their work with the SPD and with the Legion, and look forward to a time when the 4Ls' lofty standards in worker-employer relations will again prevail. 24 Disque and those of his former colleagues who still survive him never admitted an anti-AFL animus in the SPD and the Legion. Paradoxi- cally, it is true that this partisanship, though it existed, remained re- strained while the Army retained its checkrein on the Legion. Once Disque resigned from the Army, however, to begin a long career as a business executive and apostle of the "American Plan," and the shrunken SPD became a mere surplus property disposal unit, the "civilian" Legion of the postwar years participated enthusiastically in the open-shop, nativist, antiliberal crusade. 23 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 448-51; Boas, "The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumber- men," Atlantic Monthly, CXXVII (Feb. 1921), 221-26; Cloice Howd, Industrial Rela- tions in the West Coast Lumber Industry, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Miscel- laneous Series, Bull. No. 349 (Washington, 1924), 78-96; May, "A Model for the New Deal," loc. cit., 162-67; Disque to the author, May 26, 1959. ^Disque to John D. Ryan, March 20, 1920, Disque Papers; Disque to the author, Feb. 27, 1959; Col. Cuthbert Stearns (USA, Ret.) to author, May 15, 1960, and former SPD Lt. and 4L recruiter Walter S. Johnson to author, April 24, May 7, 1962; and see, too, "Personal Control Works for Friden," Business Week, Sept. 3, 1960, 115 et seq. (an article on Johnson). 338 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE At the same time as the strength of the postwar Legion was exercised more nakedly against the AFL, its internal sinews shrank. The coercive pressures of Disque's troopers, of patriotism, of the threat to withdraw government contracts, were all gone. After the Armistice, as Tyler pointed out, all the Legion governors could do was to levy "increasingly futile . . . fines and expulsions" upon members who refused to abide by the production and labor standards agreed upon. 25 Somehow the 4Ls' wartime builders have refused to see the evidence before them regarding either the Legion of 1918 or the Legion of the years after the Armistice. It is to Disque's credit that the wartime organization offers the historian a superior record. By the early thirties the once great Loyal Legion was a pitiful remnant. Its leadership sought unimaginatively to adapt to the altered climate of governmental and public opinion regarding collective bar- gaining rights. New Deal legislation made the Legion untenable. It was dead by mid-decade. In addition to its other heritages to the postwar scene, the Legion experience contributed in full measure to a national hobby of the twenties — chasing down radicals. Here again a paradox exists. During the war, while the Army ran the Legion, vigilantism in the name of patriotism was remarkably subdued in the Northwest. But with the Armistice and the formal withdrawal of the Army from such matters, thousands of men with experience in wartime counterespionage work in the Legion, the APL, and the states' defense councils turned their hands to the Red Menace. The Northwest experienced this hysterical phenomenon in generous measure. It may have been that Gomrjers' lack of support for the Timberworkers' crusade against Disque derived from the former's growing concern over the Bolshevik bogey. In re- straining the Timberworkers, Gompers may have hoped that the Legion would keep the reds in check. 28 In any case, postwar Legion Legionnaires did their best to do so. The war had trained their generation in the use of repression and in the techniques of manipulating the power of government agencies on different levels of the federal system. An unhealthy and persistent canker was loose in the land. Bigotry concealed behind the flag, vicious- ness masquerading as missionary Christianity, became highly organized after the 1918 Armistice. For example, Seattle was a center of hysterical 25 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 449-51. 28 See Ralph M. Easly, head of the American Civic Federation, to T. W. Gregory, Jan. 9, 1919, file 190470, RG 60, NA. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 339 yet systematic antiradicalism. During the 1919 general strike in that unrestful city, Suzzallo picked up the old connections he had made during the war, and through his quiet efforts, armed sailors from nearby Bremerton convoyed trolley cars. Soon after, the admiral in command at the time became a Regent of the University of Washington. Even more sinister was the admission of misanthropic Walter Simmons, head of the reborn Ku Klux Klan, that his inspiration derived from wartime work of volunteer citizens in the internal security operations of the Justice Department and the Army. For this unhappy wartime education, President Wilson deserves a share of the blame. He refused to alter his nineteenth-century convic- tions to conform to twentieth-century reality. Dr. Joan Jensen, for example, properly concluded that Wilson was "determined to keep the military in a subordinate role yet he was unwilling to expand the civil- ian police force [of the national government]." 27 The result was that amateurs of the APL took on security duties that commissioned, re- sponsible hands should have grasped, while the SPD-Legion adventure expanded the Army's role in civilian affairs to an unprecedented degree. To his great credit, Disque kept the SPD tightly controlled and set its major goals in harmony with those announced by civilian directors of the war administration. The SPD did not threaten civil srovern- ment. But the SPD-Legion combination during the war did threaten and violate civil liberties. After the war, the Army was no more able than other American institutions to resist the temptations of maintain- ing the patterns that had been set in 1918. Some Army officers, having tasted the delights of heresy-hunting and of mixing in civilian matters, found them too good to abandon. As example, in 1922 a confidential circular went out from Vancouver Barracks, the old home base of the Spruce Production Division. This circular was addressed to the execu- tives of the Northwest's lumber corporations, many of whom, of course, were veterans of Disque's Legion days and officials in the "new" Legion. 27 On Suzzallo, see the folder on the 1919 strike in Suzzallo Papers; background on the Seattle scene in Murray, op. cit., 62-64; on Simmons, see Jensen, op. cit., 254, and the quotation on 259. 340 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE This is the circular: October 16, 1922 Headquarters Vancouver Barracks, Washington Office of the Intelligence Officer Confidential Copy Dear Sir: The Intelligence Service of the Army has for its primary purpose the sur- veillance of all organizations hostile or potentially hostile to the government of this country, or who seek to overthrow the government by violence. Among organizations falling under the above heads are radical groups as the I.W.W., World War Veterans, Union of Russian Workers, Communist Party, Communist Labor Party, One Big Union, Workers International Indus- trial Union, Anarchists and Bolsheviki, and such semi-radical organizations as the Socialists, Nonpartisan League, Big Four Brotherhoods, and American Federation of Labor. Not only are we interested in these organizations because they have as their object the overthrow of the government, but also because they attempt to undermine and subvert the loyalty of our soldiers. With a few scattered military posts in this part of the country, it is obviously impossible to cover all points as thoroughly as they should be, hence it is necessary in many cases to trust to the cooperation of law-enforcement officers whose duties and whose knowledge of a particular locality gives them a thorough insight into such matters. It is requested that you inform this office as to any of the aforementioned or other radical organizations coming to your attention under such headings as (a) location of headquarters, (b) names of leaders, (c) strength of organiza- tion, (d) activities of the organization, (e) strikes and methods of carrying on same, and (f) attitude of members. We will be glad to receive copies of pam- phlets, handbills or other radical propaganda spread in your vicinity. If from time to time you will keep me posted as to conditions in your vi- cinity, such cooperation on the part of yourself and your subordinates as the press of your duties permits will be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, W. D. Long (signed) 1st Lieutenant, 7th U.S. Infantry Intelligence Officer 28 As Tyler suggested, the Legion was "a curious sport." In final para- dox, it must be said of the Legion not that it lacked success, but rather that its time lacked sensitivity; not that its directors lacked accomplish- ments but that they lacked compassion. The Legion represents one of the few instances when a Progressive reformer, Parker, could actually 28 Professor Roger Daniels of the History Department, Wisconsin State College, kindly afforded me access to this fruit of his research. SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE 341 build at one stroke the embodiment of his reformist passion. Like Parker, like most of that generation, Disque was a romantic, who be- lieved that society could be logically, rationally, scientifically ordered. Under the peculiar concatenation of events during the war months, Parker and Disque tried to bring a measure of industrial democracy into the Northwest through the authoritarian medium of the Army. Whatever the romantic recollections of Disque and his wartime co- adjutors, the historian's verdict must be that the Legion should not have survived at all after the Armistice. It should have died then, as the APL did. The Legion's degradation came when the civilians took over. While the Army ran the show, the employers played a loud tune in Legion policy matters to be sure, but not the whole chorus. This is not to say that in the postwar years the Army should have continued the direction of the Legion. Tyler's judgment is correct. The Legion after 1919 was overdue for total burial. 29 At least let it be said that in its conception and wartime direction, the Legion's chieftains stumbled as men do who tread unmarked ways. Guided too often by emotion that they confused with principles, the men running the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen during the war months were honest enough, but were too unskilled, shallow, and rigid for the task they undertook. They were not, however, conspirators. A conspirator knows where he is going. 29 Tyler, "Loyal Legion," 450-51. 1200-7, '63(D7540s) UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 331.88L82S C002 SOLDIERS AND SPRUCE. ORIGINS OF THE LOY 12 025290401