Gyppo logger

File:DonkeyPuncher-Oct1941.jpg" on the job at a gyppo logging operation in Tillamook County, Oregon, October 1941]]

A gyppo or gypo logger is a logger who runs or works for a small-scale logging operation that is independent from an established sawmill or lumber company. The gyppo system is one of two main patterns of historical organization of logging labor in the Pacific Northwest United States, the other being the "company logger".

Gyppo loggers were originally condemned by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as strikebreakers. After the founding of a government-sponsored company union, the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, weakened the influence of the IWW on the logging industry, attitudes towards gyppos changed, and they came to be seen by the victorious bosses and scabs as a normal component of the timber business in a less ideologically charged context.

Etymology and context

File:Gyppo logging crew.jpg

The term "gyppo" is specific to the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada.{{cite journal|journal=Journal of Political Economy|volume=31|number=6|date=December 1923|title=The Gyppo System|author=E.B. Mittleman|pages=840–851|jstor=1822448|doi=10.1086/253566}} The word was introduced by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to disparage{{cite journal|journal=American Speech|volume=25|number=2|date=May 1950|title=Oregon Speechways|author=Randall V. Mills|pages=81–90|jstor=453898|doi=10.2307/453898}} strikebreakers and other loggers who thwarted their organizing efforts. The IWW currently uses the term to refer to "Any piece-work system; a job where the worker is paid by the volume they produce, rather than by their time."{{cite web|url=http://www.iww.org/en/history/dictionary|publisher=Industrial Workers of the World|title=IWW Union Dictionary|accessdate=August 29, 2012|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20111007121324/http://www.iww.org/en/history/dictionary|archivedate=October 7, 2011}} Mittelman quotes an editorial from the Industrial Worker on the subject:

At present the master class of capitalists call it 'contract labor,' 'piece work,' and other fancy names...For us, the proletarians, it is 'gyppoing' and it means all that the name connotes. The gyppo is a man who 'gyps' his fellow workers and finally himself, out of the fruits of all our organized victories in the class war."

The term "gyppo" was commonly prepended to form nicknames among loggers, e.g. "Gyppo Jake".{{cite journal|journal=California Folklore Quarterly|volume=4|number=3|date=July 1945|title=Idaho Lumberjack Nicknames|author=Henry S. Kernan|pages=239–243|doi=10.2307/1495817|jstor=1495817}}

The term lost most of its derisive connotation after the decline of the IWW's influence in the lumber industry.{{cite book|author1=John C. Hughes|author2=Ryan Teague Beckwith|title=On the Harbor: From Black Friday to Nirvana|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nbg1nGp9UrIC&pg=PA16|accessdate=29 August 2012|date=30 September 2005|publisher=Stephens Press, LLC|isbn=978-1-932173-50-5|page=16}}

The gyppo system

File:Tillamook gyppo logging.jpg

The "gyppo logger" is generally considered the opposite of the "company logger", who is employed by a lumber company or lumber mill at an hourly or daily wage and generally belongs to a labor union. Gyppos, on the other hand, work for themselves, run economically marginal operations,{{cite journal|journal=The American Political Science Review|volume=47|number=2|date=June 1953|title=State Administration of Natural Resources in the West|author=Vincent Ostrom|pages=478–493|jstor=1952034|doi=10.2307/1952034}} and employ a small crew on a fixed-price basis,{{cite journal|journal=Anthropological Quarterly|volume=50|number=1|date=January 1977|pages=31–38|title=Some Effects of Social and Economic Changes on Gyppo Loggers|author=David H. Williamson|jstor=3317385|doi=10.2307/3317385}} although they occasionally work for mills on a flat-rate, contract,{{cite journal|journal=American Sociological Review|volume=10|number=2|date=April 1945|title=Taming the Lumberjack|author=Norman S. Hayner|pages=217–225|jstor=2085640|doi=10.2307/2085640}} or piecework basis.

The IWW first introduced the term gyppo during the unsuccessful 1917–18 Pacific Northwest loggers' strike, which called for an eight-hour day for loggers, although undoubtedly gyppo loggers existed before this date. Gyppo was meant to be a reworking of "gypsy", to be without loyalty as in to the company, and also as these workers were portrayed as "gypping" or ripping off or stealing from others who towed the company rope. Because the strike was unsuccessful, after the loggers returned to work they called a slowdown. This tactic was so effective that in response the company owners instituted piecework or flat-rate pay scales. Pine timber in the Pacific Northwest is comparatively small and much of it is on government-owned land (disallowing the use of railways to transport logs); these conditions facilitate logging with small crews and portable machinery.

Technological developments after World War II made gyppo logging even more economically rewarding, especially the invention of gasoline-powered chainsaws, which were light enough to be used by a single person, and the use of diesel engines to power "donkeys" that had previously been powered by steam.{{cite journal|journal=The Western Historical Quarterly|volume=16|number=4|date=October 1985|title=The Social Context of Forestry: The Pacific Northwest in the Twentieth Century|author=William G. Robbins|pages=413–427|jstor=968606|doi=10.2307/968606}} Gyppos of this era also took advantage of the increased affordability of light industrial equipment, such as trucks and Caterpillar tractors, and typically employed family labor in order to keep their operations economically viable.{{cite journal|title=Lady loggers and gyppo wives: women and Northwest logging|author=Robert E. Walls|journal=Oregon Historical Quarterly|volume=103|number=3|page=362ff|date=Fall 2002}}

According to William Robbins, writing on the postwar timber boom in the Coos Bay region of Oregon:

The immediate postwar years in southwestern Oregon were the heyday of the storied gyppo logging and sawmill operator—the hardy individual who worked on marginal capital, usually through subcontracts with a major company or broker, and whose equipment was invariably pieced together with baling wire.

By the mid-1950s, over-extraction of timber had begun to reduce the economic incentive to practice gyppo logging. By the 1970s, environmental regulation and other economic changes in the logging industry had driven many gyppo loggers out of business. By the early 21st century, gyppo loggers were described as "an endangered species."{{cite book|author=John Vaillant|title=The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wNyhLe1igkkC&pg=PA36|accessdate=29 August 2012|date=3 January 2006|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-0-676-97646-5|page=36}}

Gyppo logger

Etymology and context

The gyppo system

See also

References

Further reading