# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1927_S3
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

The Forest Primeval.

has a tendency to brutalize the children, Many of
them die young because of the hard conditions of

life to which they are exposed.

The Importance of Lumbering.

Of the basic industries, lumbering is surpassed
in importance only by agriculture. It represents an
investment of two and one-third billion dollars and
has in its employ about three quarters of a million
of persons to do the logging and milling alone, or
over ten per cent. of the wage-earners in all manu-
facturing industries.

Lumbermen are scattered from Maine to Wash-
ington and Oregon and from Michigan to the
swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama.
Probably sixty per cent. of the loggers are Scan-
dinavian and therefore of Lutheran rearing. These
more than 300,000 loggers should be the particular
objects of our Church’s care. Because of their
Tutheran rearing they thrust upon our Church a

Logging Camp in California.

DIG BS

peculiar responsibility, which we, however, have
done little to meet. The Bolshevists and I. W. W.
are far more busy among them than our Church.
These loggers and mill-hands need leaders, and
they seek leaders. And it is this very need and
desire for leadership that has given the various
“red” leaders such a following in the camps. ‘The
I. W. W. and other. organizers win these simple
lumber-workers over to their way of thinking
simply because no leaders come to them to tell them
the whole truth.

An Cpportunity for Our Church.

The Church has a wonderful opportunity among
these lumberjacks. Pastors and pastors’ wives could
do a blessed work among these isolated people, who
are living as they are to make living more tolerable
for the rest of us. We are of the opinion that in

Sawmill in Wisconsin.

CONCORDIA SEWINARY