LOGGING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 December 1924, Page 12

LOGGING.

THE HARDEST WORK IN THE WORLD. : There are many tasks which, cannot yet be done entirely by machinery and in which nian-power must be used! Logging is, an instance in point, declares T. C. Bridges in the Daily Mail. You can out down trees by steam saw, river it takes men to- run them down to but when yon get them down to the the sea. In all the long list of human employment there is probably no other which entails such tremendous muscular strain*,/such a combination of strength and activity as is required, iii running logs down.a river Swollen by the spring floods. The .water, white with show broth, runs at tremendous, speed, (and for miles the loggers may have tcDfollow at a- rail. Then-.comes a sudden jam, and the men in their caulked boots have to leap from, log to log, balancing for dear life above the icy flood, and using their “peavies” with desperate energy to force out the key log and loosen, the everpiling mass behind them. _ This 'savage straggle may last for three weeks on end, during which food and sleep are seized only in snatches, and the workers’ clothes are never dry oil their backs.

A well-known writer once told me that oyster-dredging on the American coa.st was the hardest work in the world. The two dredges were wound in by ha.nrl, and that everlasting winding , balanced on a swaying deck, was wicked work. The moment one drecine was aboard the oysters had to he “cubed;” and the whole eight men of the crew were working against time from dawn till dark. dock labourer’s job is another which entails tremendous physical effort. A .steamer’s time is money, and when cargo is being disenarged not one moment must lie wasted bv those : engaged. The amount of work that can he done in one day is almost incredible. I remember an inquest on a dock labourer who died '.suddenly on a Chelsea wharf at whmh it stated that or the day of his death he had unloaded from a barge no fewer than 33,000 wood paving blocks.