His trip to Camp Lewis threw him at once into the midst of the lumber difficulties of the Northwest, which lasted for months. The big strike in the lumber industry was on when he arrived. He wrote: "It is a strike to better conditions. The I.W.W. are only the display feature. The main body of opinion is from a lot of unskilled workers who are sick of the filthy bunk-houses and rotten grub." He wrote later of a conference with the big lumbermen, and of how they would not stay on the point but "roared over the I.W.W. I told them that condemnation was not a solution, or businesslike, but what we wanted was a statement of how they were to open their plants. More roars. More demands for troops, etc. I said I was a college man, not used to business; but if business men had as much trouble as this keeping to the real points involved, give me a faculty analysis. They laughed over this and got down to business, and in an hour lined up the affair in mighty good shape."
I wish it were proper to go into the details here of the various conferences, the telegrams sent to Washington, the replies. Carl wrote: "I am saving all the copies for you, as it is most interesting history." Each letter would end: "By three days at least I should start back. I am getting frantic to be home." Home, for the Parkers, was always where we happened to be then. Castle Crags was as much "home" as any place had ever been. We had moved fourteen times in ten years: of the eleven Christmases we had had together, only two had been in the same place. There were times when "home" was a Pullman car. It made no difference. One of the strange new feelings I have to get used to is the way I now look at places to live in. It used to be that Carl and I, in passing the littlest bit of a hovel, would say, "We could be perfectly happy in a place like that, couldn't we? Nothing makes any difference if we are together." But certain kinds of what we called "cuddly" houses used to make us catch our breaths, to think of the extra joy it would be living together tucked away in there. Now, when I pass a place that looks like that, I have to drop down some kind of a trap-door in my brain, and not think at all until I get well by it.
Labor conditions in the Northwest grew worse, strikes more general, and finally Carl wrote that he just must be indefinitely on the job. "I am so home-sick for you that I feel like packing up and coming. I literally feel terribly. But with all this feeling I don't see how I can. Not only have I been telegraphed to stay on the job, but the situation is growing steadily worse. Last night my proposal (eight-hour day, non-partisan complaint and adjustment board, suppression of violence by the state) was turned down by the operators in Tacoma. President Suzzallo and I fought for six hours but it went down. The whole situation is drifting into a state of incipient sympathetic strikes." Later: "This is the most bull-headed affair and I don't think it is going to get anywhere." Still later: "Things are not going wonderfully in our mediation. Employers demanding everything and men granting much but not that." Again: "Each day brings a new crisis. Gee, labor is unrestful ... and gee, the pigheadedness of bosses! Human nature is sure one hundred per cent psychology." Also he wrote, referring to the general situation at the University and in the community: "Am getting absolutely crazy with enthusiasm over my job here. . . . It is too vigorous and resultful for words." And again: "The mediation between employers and men blew up to-day at 4 P.M. and now a host of nice new strikes show on the horizon. . . . There are a lot of fine operators but some hard shells." Again: "Gee, I'm learning! And talk about material for the Book!"
An article appeared in one of the New York papers recently, entitled "How Carleton H. Parker Settled Strikes":—
"It was under his leadership that, in less than a year, twenty-seven disputes which concerned Government work in the Pacific Northwest were settled, and it was his method to lay the basis for permanent relief as he went along. . . .
"Parker's contribution was in the method he used. . . . Labor leaders of all sorts would flock to him in a bitter, weltering mass, mouthing the set phrases of class-hatred they use so effectually in stirring up trouble. They would state their case. And Parker would quietly deduce the irritation points that seemed to stand out in the jumbled testimony.
"Then it would be almost laughable to the observer to hear the employer's side of the case. Invariably it was just as bitter, just as unreasoning, and just as violent, as the statement of their case by the workers. Parker would endeavor to find, in all this heap of words, the irritation points of the other side.
"But when a study was finished, his diagnosis made, and his prescription of treatment completed, Parker always insisted in carrying it straight to the workers. And he did not just tell them results. He often took several hours, sometimes several meetings of several hours each. In these meetings he would go over every detail of his method, from start to finish, explaining, answering questions, meeting objections with reason. And he always won them over. But, of course, it must be said that he had a tremendously compelling personality that carried him far."