Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine's Mighty Paper Industry PDF
Preview Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine's Mighty Paper Industry
SHREDDING PAPER SHREDDING PAPER The Rise and Fall of Maine’s Mighty Paper Industry Michael G. Hillard ILR PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress . cornell. edu. First published 2020 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of Amer i ca Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Hillard, Michael G., author. Title: Shredding paper : the rise and fall of Maine’s mighty paper industry / Michael G. Hillard. Description: Ithaca [New York] : ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020012030 (print) | LCCN 2020012031 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501753152 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501753176 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501753169 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Paper industry— Maine— History—20th century. | Paper industry workers— Maine— Economic conditions—20th century. | Paper industry workers— Labor unions—M aine. | Strikes and lockouts—P aper industry— Maine. Classification: LCC HD9827.M2 H55 2020 (print) | LCC HD9827.M2 (ebook) | DDC 338.4/767609741— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020012030 LC ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020012031 To Marcia Goldenberg and the w omen and men of Maine’s mighty paper industry who made their own history The mill. The rumbling, hard-b reathing monster made steam and noise and grit and stench and dreams and livelihoods—a nd paper. It possessed a scoured, industrial beauty as awesome and ever changing as the leaf- plumped hills that surrounded us. It made a world unto itself, overbearing and irrefutable. — Monica Wood, When We W ere the Kennedys Contents Preface: “A Cloud of Rocks” ix Acknowl edgments xiii Introduction: The Detroit of Paper 1 Part 1 THE RISE OF MAINE’S MIGHTY PAPER INDUSTRY 1. A Rags to Riches Story 15 2. The Paradoxes of Paper Mill Employment 46 Part 2 T OP-D OWN AND BOTTOM-U P CHANGE IN MAINE’S MIGHTY PAPER INDUSTRY AND THE RISE OF A NEW MILITANCY, 1960–80 3. The Fall of Mother Warren 95 4. Madawaska Rebellion 117 5. Cutting Off the Canadians 140 Part 3 F INANCIALIZATION, RES IST ANCE, AND FOLK POL ITIC AL ECONOMY 6. Fear and Loathing on the Low and High Roads 165 7. The High Road Cometh 180 8. Memory, Enterprise Consciousness, and Historical Perspective among Maine’s Paper Workers 201 Epilogue: Paper Workers’ Folk Pol iti cal Economy versus Neoliberalism 212 Notes 219 Index 279 Preface “A Cloud of Rocks” Between 1965 and 1990, dramatic confrontations punctuated Maine’s paper in- dustry. These confrontations included: • On August 9, 1971, nearly one thousand men, w omen, and children gathered at dawn to block a train loaded with twenty-s even boxcars full of paper, in a do-o r- die last stand to win a month- long strike against Fraser Paper Com pany. The action was a confrontation between the French- speaking community of Madawaska, Maine, and a Canadian com pany that had hired English-s peaking American man ag ers to rationalize production and raise profits. Despite the presence of c hildren and women on the tracks, a frustrated contingent of Maine state troopers teargassed the crowd, unleashing a riot. With tracks resting on a massive bed of rocks, men, women, and children retaliated with what was at hand. Striker Bob Gogan, a ring leader in local guerrilla actions against Fraser during the strike, remembered that someone in the crowd yelled “rocks!”1 One of the teen agers pre sent, Phil Dubois, recalls: “I could remember a black cloud of rocks . . .”; a state trooper on the other end described the moment— “Oh, my Jesus, you had a moment there . . . it was almost like an eclipse out there, the sky was so full of rocks.”2 Strikers chased off the police, destroying both police cars and two train engines. The strike ended a month later with a modest but momentous win for strikers. Fraser’s owners fired the new com pany CEO, and workers regained shop floor rights taken away in the previous three years. • In October, 1975, a ragtag group of in de pen dent, mostly conservative men, employed by paper mills as contractors to cut millions of pounds of pulpwood, swarmed paper mills across the state with picket lines for the first time, attempting to shut down the entire industry. Loosely affiliated with a new group called the Maine Woodsmen’s Association (MWA), the protest was a spontaneous rebellion of Yankee (local WASP New En glanders) former farmers, whose once lucrative use of new chainsaws and skidders (large tractor- like devices for hauling felled logs out of the woods) had devolved into the economic distress of what woodcutters saw as “pulp peonage.”3 New out- of- state owners of Maine paper mills had squeezed these nominally in de pen dent employees, as pulpwood prices ix
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