Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine's Mighty Paper Industry

305 Pages·2021·7.97 MB·English

by  Michael G. Hillard

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
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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