Gyppo logger

A "donkey puncher" on the job at gyppo logging operation in Tillamook County, Oregon. (October 1941)

A gyppo logger (sometimes spelled "gypo logger") is a lumberjack 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 the organization of logging labor in the Pacific Northwest, 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, gyppos were seen as a component of the timber business in a less ideologically charged context.

Etymology and context

Crew of gyppo logging outfit, Tillamook County, Oregon, October 1941

The term is specific to the Northwest. Its etymology is certainly unrecoverable at this date. According to E.B. Mittelman it "may be a derivation from the Greek word, signifying vulture, or may simply be a derivation or corruption of the word gypsy." In either case, notes Mittelman, "it has something of the cunning or predacious in it." The Greek etymology is lent some plausibility by the fact that big lumber companies tried to use Greek workers, who wouldn't cooperate, to break a strike organized by the IWW in Everett, Washington in 1917.

The term "gyppo" was commonly prepended to form nicknames among loggers, e.g. "Gyppo Jake." The word was introduced by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to disparage 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." 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 lost most of its derisive connotation after the decline of the IWW's influence in the lumber industry.

The gyppo system

File:Tillamook gyppo logging.jpg

Loading logs onto truck for transportation to mill. Gyppo logging operations, Tillamook County, Oregon, October 1941

The term "gyppo logger" is opposed to the "company logger," who is employed by a lumber company or lumber mill at an hourly or daily wage and generally belongs to a union. Gyppos, on the other hand, work for themselves, run economically marginal operations, and employ a small crew on a fixed-price basis, although they occasionally work for mills on a flat rate, contract, or piecework basis.

The IWW introduced the term "gyppo" during the unsuccessful 1917-8 Pacific Northwest strike for the Eight-hour day for loggers, although undoubtedly gyppo loggers existed before 1917. 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. The pine timber in the Pacific Northwest is comparatively small and a lot of it is on government land (disallowing the use of railways to transport logs). Thus the 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. These later gyppos 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.

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, overextraction of timber had begun to reduce the economic value of 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 had been described as "an endangered species."

See also

• Sometimes a Great Notion