Although Fred Mooney’s father was a miner, he started out working in the lumber camps at the age of 13.

I was 12 years old in January of the year the [timber] operation began in our area. When school was out I said to my father, “Dad, I want to go to work.” 

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” he said, “you’ll take care of the garden and the field this summer.”

 

So I moped and pouted for several days. Fences began to go down to make room for haulage ways; apple trees were used for hitching posts, and the horses and mules gnawed the bark from them. It developed that we were going to be confined to a very small garden insofar as tilling the soil was concerned. Eventually my father consented for me to work at stacking staves.  The rejoicing at the coming of the mills soon turned into bitterness and chagrin at the devastation wrought by the cutting and marketing of the timber. (Fred Mooney [Struggle])

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I was not yet physically able to take care of myself among the crowd, but several of them soon learned to their sorrow that I could toss a pebble with devastating effect and most of them let me alone. However, on the job where I was wheeling sawdust there were two men who seemed to derive an immense satisfaction from teasing boys. They both started in on me. –Fred Mooney 

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