They had years of experience. He had started with more theory than experience. He was beating them at their own game; largely, he believed, because he came to it with a fresher point of view, a policy based on an understanding, partly reasoned, partly intuitive, of how the logger working for a day's pay feels about his work and the man he works for. For years before the war, loggers in B.C. coast camps had lived and worked under conditions they were powerless to change. Any sort of accommodation, any sort of food, the lowest wages they could be compelled to accept; that was the logger's portion. The Norquay camps had been better than most, but Rod knew they were bad enough. The logger was hardy, strong, patient, skilful, by a process of elimination. The war changed conditions without changing the logger's essential qualities. With labor scarce, with timber production a military as well as an economic necessity, with organization in the air, the B.C. logger took the whip hand. His memory was tenacious of old wrongs. He did not ask, he demanded, and his demands were grudgingly conceded because his employers were taking huge profits in airplane spruce, in exportable fir and cedar, in shipbuilding material. And although the timber market took little count of the Armistice, the employers did. With the first demobilization, with the first infiltration of discharged soldiers into the labor market, industrial war was secretly declared. They set out to tame the militant logger who thought that he was entitled to bathtubs, clean sleeping quarters, grapefruit for breakfast if he desired it, and the maximum wage for an eight-hour day. But the logger did not tame easily. Individually he was a wide-shouldered person with language and spirit to match the muscles developed in the woods. He did not submit without a struggle. Collectively he was organized to fight, and he fought with the only weapons available. The season of 1919 was a period of disputes, grievances, abortive wage cuts, strikes, sabotage, all that goes with a labor war,--a war that in 1919 and well into the next year was a series of lost battles for the employers and corresponding bitterness on their part.