Abstract
In Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine’s Mighty Paper Industry, economist Michael Hillard uses the history of Maine’s paper industry to explain the history of capitalism and labor relations in America in the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. Hillard proposes that, from the perspective of workers’ “folk political economy” (p. 4), which he deduces largely from oral histories, there were “good and bad capitalisms” (p. 212). Using this method, he explains three stages in capitalism: paternalism, antagonistic unionism, and neoliberalism. These stages also form the organizing framework of the book. The idea of good and bad capitalisms, and Hillard’s riveting writing on the labor process and labor conflicts, simplifies historiographic and economic debates and makes them entertaining. For these reasons, the book is a useful review of core issues in modern labor history. Simplification has drawbacks, however, because there are causes and effects of these changes in capitalism, and the rise and fall of Maine’s paper industry, that do not fit into Hillard’s framework.
Hillard’s three-part argument could describe many industrial American states, but using Maine is important because paper production is partly a rural industry with a history that is less well known than steel, auto, or coal production. Shredding Paper covers several paper companies but the S.D. Warren mill located in Westbrook is central to the argument.
In Part 1, Hilliard explains how Warren was able to create one of the biggest paper mills in the world by the 1880s, largely by taking advantage of Maine’s abundant natural resources and new sulfite paper production technology. Paper production supported communities of workers—as many as 3,000 in Rumford in 1906—and a population of rural contract loggers and truckers (p. 26).
Those employed at Warren between the 1890s and 1950s remember this as a good place to work because of paternalism (or welfare capitalism), a common practice in some Progressive-era workplaces. Paternalism benefited some workers, but the practice was also employed in order to avoid strikes and unionization. Between 1908 and 1912 there were a number of these worker actions in Maine’s paper industry, led by the International Brotherhood of Paper Makers and the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite, and Paper Mill Workers. The memory of paternalism at Warren had long-lasting effects in workers’ folk political economy, inspiring “filiopietism” (p. 204), or reverence for the founders and for paternalism.
Hillard walks readers through the production process, writing a business history from the bottom up. Workers’ skills, passed down from older to younger, kept the factories running. Hillard’s oral histories reveal shocking details about work, worker–management relations, and by Parts 2 and 3, heroic instances of worker resistance.
Paternalism belongs in the good capitalism category but it had problems, Hillard explains. Its goal was to maintain managerial control. Workers withstood dangers, grueling schedules, and some died, yet the workforce remained loyal. Favoritism, nepotism, sexual harassment, and discrimination against French Canadians and Franco Americans were institutionalized.
Many mills were not paternalistic and when the New Deal reformed labor relations, some mills unionized. These events are the theme of Part 2. The sometimes antagonistic but mutually fruitful union–management relationship between 1960 and 1980 was typical of this time period across industrial America. During this period, shareholders were concerned with making money but they were passive in management and did not seek short-term profits at the expense of employees. The atmosphere of worker militancy eroded the feelings of paternalism at Warren and, after the company was bought by Scott, the mill unionized in 1967. Hillard accounts several instances in which fair contracts were won by direct action. Families lay their bodies on railroad tracks in Madawaska, Maine, in 1971 to halt production (p. 132). Both antagonistic unionism and paternalism were in the good capitalism category. They gave workers care and security. The latter even gave workers a modicum of democratic control.
Throughout the book Hillard provides information on pulp procurement. Logging and trucking were exhausting, dangerous jobs, more so than mill work. Loggers’ and truckers’ contractor status meant they were legally unable to organize, and they were passed over by labor regulations such as the 1936 Fair Labor Standards Act. Mills and landowners could quell labor unrest through the threat of importing Canadian guest workers. Truckers formed the Maine Woodsmen Association in 1975 and blocked the border to prevent importation, but unlike mill workers, loggers gained little through militancy.
Part 3 describes the titular fall of the industry, which Hillard blames on a neoliberal management style that blossomed in the 1980s. Neoliberalism is a much-debated term in the historiography, but Hillard lends clarity to it by focusing on the workers who lived through and resisted it. In the folk political economy, neoliberalism meant globalization and “shareholder capitalism,” or the prioritization of shareholders’ profit over other stakeholders. Neoliberalism created two routes of change: the high and the low road (pp. 165–166). The high road meant management attempted cooperation with workers to cut costs and increase profits. Even when productivity gains were made, however, the high road did not guarantee security as Scott workers learned in 1992 when the plant was shuttered despite cost reductions (p. 195). The low road was simpler: Mills fired workers and moved production south or abroad. A new national labor relations atmosphere made strikes the tools of management, allowing them to perform massive layoffs. Between 1986 and 1987 in Jay and Rumford more than 1,500 workers were fired (p. 165).
In Parts 2 and 3, Hillard brings fresh scholarly attention in captivating narrative form to Maine’s labor struggles—struggles that have not received much attention in the field of labor history. Maine workers established what Hillard, borrowing from historian Lawrence Goodwin, calls a “movement culture” (p. 179). Resistance shows that workers understood the concepts of good and bad capitalisms. The memory of good capitalism provided workers with inspiration as they fought for positive changes.
The schema of good and bad capitalism denies some historicity, however. Hillard does not explain that the abundance of pulpwood in the region was a creation of historical Native- and Euro-American land use patterns. Forests were not inevitable or everlasting. Maine’s water resources, also altered over time, gave the state a crucial advantage. Fossil fuel technology, like globalization, diminished Maine’s regional advantages. Paternalism and New Deal unionism were good for some stakeholders but their success came at the expense of other factors, such as forests, aquatic ecosystems, and even mill town community members, many of whom suffered long-term negative health effects because of paper production. For these reasons, the study of capitalism must be broader than the study of labor history or labor relations. Hillard’s schema of good and bad capitalisms is a useful conceptualization and ideal for teaching, but at least one other important layer of analysis could be included here to give a fuller account of capitalism’s change over time.