Shredding Paper

G. Hillard Michael

Description

From the early twentieth century until the 1960s, Maine led the nation in paper production. The state could have earned a reputation as the Detroit of paper production, however, the industry eventually slid toward failure. What happened? Shredding Paper unwraps the changing US political economy since 1960, uncovers how the paper industry defined and interacted with labor relations, and peels away the layers of history that encompassed the rise and fall of Maine's mighty paper industry. Michael G. Hillard deconstructs the paper industry's unusual technological and economic histories. For a century, the story of the nation's most widely read glossy magazines and card stock was one of capitalism, work, accommodation, and struggle. Local paper companies in Maine dominated the political landscape, controlling economic, workplace, land use, and water use policies. Hillard examines the many contributing factors surrounding how Maine became a paper powerhouse and then shows how it lost that position to changing times and foreign interests.Through a retelling of labor relations and worker experiences from the late nineteenth century up until the late 1990s, Hillard highlights how national conglomerates began absorbing family-owned companies over time, which were subject to Wall Street demands for greater short-term profits after 1980. This new political economy impacted the economy of the entire state and destroyed Maine's once-vaunted paper industry. Shredding Paper truthfully and transparently tells the great and grim story of blue-collar workers and their families and analyzes how paper workers formulated a "folk" version of capitalism's history in their industry. Ultimately, Hillard offers a telling example of the demise of big industry in the United States.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Local history
• Industrial relations
• Labour economics
• History of the Americas
• Labour

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501753176
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

SHREDDING PAPER

SHREDDING PAPER The Rise and Fall of Maine’s Mighty Paper Industry

MîChàEl G. HîllàRd

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 America

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—Maine. | Strikes and lockouts—Paper industry—Maine. Classification: LCC HD9827.M2 H55 2020 (print) | LCC HD9827.M2 (ebook) | DDC 338.4/767609741—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012030 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012031

To Marcia Goldenberg and the women and men of Maine’s mighty paper industry who made their own history

The mill. The rumbling, hardbreathing monster made steam and noise and grit and stench and dreams and livelihoods—and 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 Were the Kennedys

Contents

Preface: “A Cloud of Rocks” Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Detroit of Paper

Par t 1RISE OF MAINE’S MIGHTY PAPER INDUSTRY THE  1.  A Rags to Riches Story  2.  The Paradoxes of Paper Mill Employment

Par t 2 TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP CHANGE IN MAINE’S MIGHTY PAPER INDUSTRY AND THE RISE OF A NEW MILITANCY, 1960–80  3.  The Fall of Mother Warren  4.  Madawaska Rebellion  5.  Cutting Off the Canadians

Par t 3RESISTANCE, AND FOLK FINANCIALIZATION, POLITICAL ECONOMY  6.  Fear and Loathing on the Low and High Roads  7.  The High Road Cometh  8.  Memory, Enterprise Consciousness, and Historical Perspective among Maine’s Paper Workers

Epilogue: Paper Workers’ Folk Political Economy versus Neoliberalism

Notes Index

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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, women, and children gathered at dawn to block a train loaded with twentyseven boxcars full of paper, in a doordie last stand to win a monthlong strike against Fraser Paper Company. The action was a confrontation between the Frenchspeaking community of Madawaska, Maine, and a Canadian company that had hired Englishspeaking American managers to rationalize production and raise profits. Despite the presence of children 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 1 “rocks!” One of the teenagers present, 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 2 was almost like an eclipse out there, the sky was so full of rocks.” 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 company CEO, and workers regained shop floor rights taken away in the previous three years.  In October, 1975, a ragtag group of independent, 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 Englanders)formerfarmers,whoseoncelucrativeuseofnewchainsaws and skidders (large tractorlike devices for hauling felled logs out of the woods) had devolved into the economic distress of what woodcutters saw 3 as “pulp peonage.” New outofstate owners of Maine paper mills had squeezed these nominally independent employees, as pulpwood prices

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