18. The future was equally as bleak at the logging camps
Appalachia’s other big employment opportunity, other than sustenance farming, was in the logging industry, which engaged in practices similar to those of the coal industry, paying low wages, and collecting them back from the rentals on housing and the sales in the company stores. Those employed in the logging industry did not face the likelihood of early death due to lung disease, but enough danger existed to make the logging camps equally hazardous to the mines. The railroads offered some potential to escape the circle of paying one’s employer the money one had earned from him, but railroad jobs were more difficult to obtain in Appalachia, often filled by men who had learned their trade elsewhere along with the system.
