Blacksmith shop and crew, Danaher Lumber Company, ca 1916 (KINSEY 138)

Caption on image: Danaher Lumber Co., Darington, Wash. No. 1 PH Coll 516.879The Danaher Lumber Company was in business until ca. 1923. When C.D. Danaher moved his logging operations from Michigan to the northwest around 1909, he already had extensive northwest holdings. Danaher had purchased a mill from Abraham Coon Young after the panic of 1893. Danaher eventually acquired mills in California, large tracts of timber throughout the Northwest, and logging camps at Darrington and Port Orchard, Washington. During 1918 and 1919 his mill turned out forty million feet of cut lumber making it the fourth largest mill in Tacoma. Despite the size of his operation, however, Danaher remained uninvolved in the usual lumbermen’s associations. For example, Danaher was not listed among the attendees of the 8th (1916), 9th (1917), or 10th (1919) annual Pacific Logging Congresses. The Congress was probably the most anticipated event among west coast lumbermen. Danaher was apparently not active in the West Coast Lumberman’s Association, either. Throughout the summer of 1917, Danaher made several attempts to run his operations with strikebreakers but those attempts were often thwarted by IWW pickets. Danaher made one final attempt to use strikebreakers with disastrous results. On August 25, the "worst forest fire in the Northwest this season . . . occurred in the camp of Danaher Lumber Co." The fire "not only burned a quantity of fallen timber, but it destroyed some twenty-two logging cars, a couple of skidders and various other equipment. At one time the fire covered an area of more than five miles. The Sound Timber Co., operating close by, lost some logs." The editors of the West Coast Lumberman did not identify the cause of the fire, but the wobblies Industrial Worker’s editors made great use of it: "the Danaher Logging Co. [sic] had a few of Brown’s Timberworkers trying to do some logging. A donkey was upset and a fire started by the scabs that did several thousand dollars worth of damage. Danaher fired all the scabs, and stated that he would not hire another one." The cause of the fire was significant enough to the editors of the Industrial Worker to be repeated again in October. The IUT men who had caused the fire had allegedly been recruited by the union to work as strikebreakers in the camps: "The first success of this yellowish-brown outfit was at Dannaher’s [sic] Camp. . . . A bunch of scabs broke the IWW picket line there and went to work, with the exception of seven Italians who learned that a strike was on and went to the pickets to line up in a real union." But, as the editors argued, these IUT "scabs" were not loggers and "when they were used to haul fallen logs they upset the donkey, causing a forest fire loss." The superintendent fired the men and "vowed he would never again hire that breed of scabs." Soon after it was announced in the Industrial Worker and later in the West Coast Lumberman that Danaher's operations were running on an eight-hour day, contrary to the ten hours called for by the Lumbermen's Protective League. Danaher had good fiscal reasons for his "frantic efforts" to keep his camps running. In June 1917, according to the West Coast Lumberman, Danaher Lumber Company purchased for its Camp Two a "steel spar Lidgerwood logging engine" capable of yarding one hundred thirty thousand feet of logs per side per day. By October Camp Two was averaging two million feet per month. Camp One was using two tree rigged Lidgerwood skidders and was averaging three million feet of timber per month; the camp record of two hundred thirteen thousand feet in a single ten hour shift had been made just prior to the July shutdown. Investments in equipment and its maintenance required at twenty-five percent or more of a lumberman's capital and that equipment would deteriorate rapidly in the damp Northwest woods if not used and maintained; therefore, Danaher could hardly afford to allow new equipment to remain idle during the strike. [Source: "It’s Time for All Lumbermen to Spruce Up!": Lumbermen and the Four Ls. Julie Holcomb, Senior Thesis in History, Pacific University, May 1999. http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/dept/students/holcomb/ ]
Subjects (LCTGM): Blacksmiths--Washington (State); Forge shops--Washington (State); Lumber industry--Washington (State); Danaher Lumber Company--People--Washington (State); Danaher Lumber Company--Facilities--Washington (State); Snohomish County (Wash.)