While browsing through a list of insurance companies for job search purposes, I was struck by how many have some variation of lumberjacking in their name. We have the “Catholic Order of Foresters”, “Woodmen of the World Life Insurance”, “Lumberman’s Mutual Guaranty”, and many others. I suppose lumberjacking is a hazardous occupation, but so are driving stock cars and singing rap, and I don’t see those in the names of insurance companies. What gives?
Lumbering was a bigger profession 100+ years ago, when the name of the insurance company may have been chosen.
Woodsmen of the World was a fraternal group around 1900, when the insurance company was founded, no doubt.
Driving stock cars and singing rap just wasn’t mainstream around 1900. 
Come back in 100 more years and you might find a different set of circumstances.
All right, I was being a little facetious about stock car drivers. 
But there had to be other equally dangerous occupations 100 years ago–blacksmithing, for example, or steelworking. Never once do they turn up as names of insurance companies! What is it about woodsmen???
Well, lumber gathering is a fairly communal trade. You are living away from civilization (aside from the civilization you build to support the lumber community), whereas other professions are in cities where you have all the infrastructure. As a result, lumberjacks and lumber companies had to provide for themselves… the obvious outgrowth of communal organizations is the result.
For the record, there are a lot of other organizations based around, say, steel workers. Largely regional, I’d suspect. Some certain famers groups, some lumber groups in other areas, some industrial organizations and unions, etc, have all spawned oddly named companies. I’m sure in 100 years people will be wondering about the names of computing-related groups all over California.
There is some Freemason-ish society that have ‘woodsmen’ or something like that in their name…I can’t recall what they are called now, but I do remember that their tombstones usually are made to look like a tree stump, and that there are a lot of them in graveyards in certain parts of Texas and Oklahoma.
Found it, more widespread than Texas and Oklahoma.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~zimm/headstones_of1.htm
This is one of their tombstones. They are called the Woodsmen of the World.