For instance, in the Great Lakes states, where the lumber industry probably reached its highest development, the work of the average logging crew was done much in this way: A gang of choppers would first go through the woods clearing the way. After them would come the sawyers, one man carrying in an axe for marking the direction of each tree‘s fall and a wedge to use, if necessary, in guiding it, while two others would fell the tree with a crosscut saw. (Paul was the inventor of the two-man saw used in logging, and Ole made up a number from his plans for use in his camps.) The saw having done its work, as the tree began to topple the sawyers would get back out of the way, giving a loud yell, "Timber-r!" as a warning to anyone else nearby, and the great trunk would come swishing and crashing to the ground.

Then would come the scaler, who would measure the fallen trees into the proper log lengths, and the sawyers would cut them at his marks. Next, the skidding crew or swampers would clear the way for the teamsters, who would drag or haul the logs to the stagings by the stream. Winter was always best for logging, for then the logs could be easily skidded over the icy roads which had been made slippery by sprinkling water on them until they were paved with hard and solid ice.

At the stream the deckers would pile the logs on the skyways, from which, in the spring when the freshets filled the stream with swift water, they would be dumped to float down-river on the big drive. When the time of the drive came, the entire crew would join in following it, riding the logs with calked boots and carrying pike pole or peavy, fighting jams and snaking stranded logs off the banks all along the way. When the logs finally reached the booms of the sawmill toward which they were headed, the logger‘s work was over, and he usually celebrated the ending of the drive in a grand and glorious manner, fighting out old grudges accumulated during the winter and otherwise enjoying himself.

That is something of the way a logging crew usually works. Of course, Paul had the help of the remarkable Babe and of such mighty woodsmen as the Seven Axmen, and he did things in his own peculiar way, which no one else could hope to imitate. In the main, however, the camps of later years were organized much after the fashion that he established.