The Stampers’ rugged individualistic ideals clash with the logging union’s struggle against the power of an industrial company. The union that Evenwrite and Draeger work for represents the force of a collective of working-class residents of Oregon to assert and protect their rights. Their antagonist, Wakonda Pacific, is a profit-driven and selfish company, with little concern for the workers’ well-being. Wakonda Pacific has no problem going behind the union’s back to seek out the Stamper family; and the Stampers have no problem being strikebreakers, who continue supplying the company with logs. Unlike the union, which explicitly looks out for the collective, the Stampers are driven by their own independence. As the strike squeezes the town’s residents, they resentfully recall bemoan that the Stampers are “cuttin’ full time” and making money rather than living up to the words of Jesus Christ, who preached that “‘Man’s got to live, Brother,’ ‘Yes, but ‘not by bread alone’” (51).

The struggle between the collective and the individual is not limited to the union dispute. The novel explores more generally the conflict between the desire to act with free will and the necessity of living in a world with other people in aspects not directly related to the union conflict.