“Another accident happened while I was there on a Manchester rewinder,” Berube continued. “I had just come in and relieved the crew that this guy had worked on, and there was blood all over the floor, all over the rewinder. He caught his hand in the reel there on that rewinder, and they got him out all right. He still kept his arm, but he lost most of his hand and everything on it. I don’t know how many operations they done on him. That was a mess. We had to come in and clean that up after they took him out.”
Dave Miles and Lawrence Benoit had been working only a couple of years as fourth or fifth hands on old Number 1 and Number 2 machines when they experienced the ultimate horror in a paper mill on May 28, 1955. The two machines stood side by side, and when one crew was having trouble and the other machine was perking along, the latter crew lent a hand. Following some repair work on Number 2, its crew was struggling to get it to work properly. Amie Bean, a well-respected machine tender on Number 1, was trying to tighten up the paper on Number 2 when he slipped and fell and was pulled into the machine between the great dryer roll and the smaller felt roll.
Benoit said: “I was right from me to you when he went in there. Horrible. When he hit that thing, it sounded like somebody took a sledgehammer and hit that dryer. All it was was his feet sticking out. Evidentially, the roll was too high, so you’re reaching down too far, and it caught his hand and hauled him right in. Stopped that machine dead. The dryers were still going, but it shut the felt right down. There was so much pressure with him in. It was awful. I’ll never forget that. We got a great big pipe wrench, and we tried to back up the dryers, but we couldn’t do it because back then they had just Babbitt bearings and stuff. And the weight was tremendous. They got the millwrights down there as fast as they could. They took the roll out, and that dropped the thing down and then slacked the felt off, and then pulled him out that way. They claim he died on the way to the hospital; I think he was dead before that. There was blood all over the felt. Wemyss was mad because they made him cut the felt off. Of course it was big money for a felt. After that, I went down to clean the mess up. Part of his ear was laying in the pit. I remember that.”
“It was horrifying,” Dave Miles shuddered. “I didn’t eat for a few days afterwards. We thought he was still alive. We found out afterwards it was just, what do you call it? Nerves, I guess it was. I think we shut down for a day. It was horrifying.”
Scientists did not implicate the bleaching process of pulp mills with dioxins until 1983, eleven years after the Groveton pulp mill had been shut down. Peter von Stackelberg, “White Wash: The Dioxin Cover-Up,” Greenpeace 14, no. 2 (March/April 1989), http://www.planetwaves.net/contents/white_wash_dioxin_cover_up.html.
Chapter Four
PROSPEROUS PLANT
WILLIAM THOITS and James Sivret of Northumberland and Pearson G. Evans of Gorham announced in April 1891 plans to construct a paper mill that used the new chemical process to make pulp out of wood chips. They acquired land along the banks of the Upper Ammonoosuc River from the Weston Sawmill on May 12, 1891, and additional land from the Soule Sawmill on May 14. Two weeks later, they broke ground for the new pulp mill.
“The foundation of the pulp and paper mill is approaching completion,” the Democrat reported in a lengthy account buried in the Locals column that July. The office and a fifty-by-twenty-foot machine shop had been completed. The north wing of the mill, 197 feet and six inches long and 62 feet wide, would be one story tall and house two paper machines. A small building joined the north and south wings. The south wing, measuring 283 by 56 feet, would house the four-story pulp mill on the west end and the boiler room on the east end. To minimize the threat of fire, the boiler room would be built of brick, covered by an iron roof. The mill planned to install four 150-horsepower boilers, with room to add three additional boilers. Two engines north of the boiler room would power the machines and illuminate the mill. Once running, the mill expected to employ seventy-five men. The pulp mill intended to use waste wood from the neighboring sawmills and four-foot pulp logs. The Concord and Montreal Railroad was laying tracks to enter the building from the west between the north and south wings. Additional railroad tracks would run between the office and the north wing.1
The following week, four masons were adding 5 feet a day to the planned 125-foot smokestack. On July 23, Thoits, Sivret, and Evans sold the mill property to Groveton Mills (which they controlled), and, that same day, the new corporation took out a $25,000 mortgage on the mill from the Norway Savings Bank in Norway, Maine. In mid-August, the Locals column reported that the mill was making progress, but it was not expected to make paper until cold weather. In mid-September, the chimney was completed; the exteriors of the buildings were nearing completion, and the engine rooms were almost ready for the installation of the boilers. On September 16, the Locals noted “a man named Wells” fell thirty-two feet in the pulp mill and broke an arm and suffered a serious back injury.2 This is the earliest known report of an injury at the mill.
Number 1 paper machine was installed during October and November. It made a sheet five feet wide and produced seventy-five feet of paper a minute. The Democrat crowed on November 25: “They have one of the largest and finest machines ever built.” The mill’s new chime whistle sounded for the first time on November 21, and on December 23, the Democrat reported: “The paper mill is now in operation and some very fine paper is being produced.”
Early in the new year, Groveton Mills secured a second $25,000 mortgage from Norway Savings at 6.5 percent interest, due in one year. The paper machine was shut down for a few days of changes and repairs early in February; it restarted on February 12. The mill was using waste wood from sawmills to fuel the boilers and, eventually, the pulp mill.3
The Locals correspondent reported on March 23, 1892, that the mill had been shut down for the past week. “It is hoped,” Locals added, “that it will soon be running again with an increased force.” Ominously, an April 6 report informed readers that the mill had been running for two days “to run out some partly run stock.” From May to October, there were periodic, hopeful reports that the idle mill was expected to start up again soon. In July, Locals assured its readers: “This time it will have money enough behind to keep it moving.”4 In October there was welcome news that the mill expected to add two hundred men to the workforce.
There was no further mention of the Groveton mill in the Democrat for nearly three years. The Coos County Registry of Deeds suggests an explanation for the silence. On October 3, 1893, Norway Savings Bank filed for foreclosure on the long-idle paper mill. Foreclosure was granted on January 27, 1894, and Groveton Mills, quiet since early 1892, was defunct.
The July 24, 1895, issue reported that John Mitchell, superintendent of Odell Manufacturing Company—the new name for the Groveton paper mill—and C. C. Wilson and wife had lodged at the Melcher House for a few days. A week later, the Groveton Locals columnist reported good news: “Paper making is progressing finely at the Odell.”5 Odell’s books from around July 1895 reported that E. M. McCarthy, who was general manager of construction, earned $3 a day, and a regular mill worker earned 75 cents a day and took home $21.38 a month for 28.5 days’ work!6
Five Maine investors, George B. Bearce and John D. Clifford of Lewiston, Charles Wilson and Samuel R. Bearce of Auburn, and Frank Purrington of Mechanic Falls, had paid Norway Savings $35,189.14 for the mill on July 16, 1895. This sum represented the unpaid portion of the two $25,000 mortgages taken in the mill’s first year. Four months later the five men sold the mill to the Odell Manufacturing Company for $75,000. They, of course, were the officers and owners of Odell Manufacturing. In 1897 another prominent Lewiston businessman, Willard Munroe, joined the Odell Manufacturing Company as treasurer. Munroe’s association with the mill would continue until his death in 1938. For the final two decades of his life, “Willie” Munroe was the dominant mill owner.
In the fall of 1895, construction of Odell’s sulfite mill commenced under the direction of E. L. Savage. T
he following May, the Locals correspondent reported the new mill owners were spending $125,000 to expand the mill. Two new digesters were nearly ready for operation, and a second paper machine, costing about $40,000 and manufactured by Bagley and Sewell of Watertown, New York, would begin to make 106-inch-wide rolls of paper by July 1. Three new 150-horsepower boilers would increase the mill’s steam capacity to 1,000 horsepower. A two-story repair shop, measuring thirty-seven by sixty-five feet, would soon be built. Three “large engines,” capable of 350, 110, and 100 horsepower, would power the additions. When completed, the pulp mill would produce thirty tons of dry pulp a day, and the paper machines and finishing room were expected to turn out twenty to thirty tons of paper daily. The mill employed 120.7
By June 1896, the expanding mill’s 160 employees had broken records for paper production with thirty-five tons, “more last month than any month since the mill started.” The report continued: “Everything about the mill has the appearance of thrift and industry.” The new machine shop had been completed, and work had begun on the wood room, where machinery would be installed to chip pulpwood. A storehouse for lime and paper, detached from the mill building for purposes of fire safety, was completed.8
Odell Manufacturing Company paper mill, ca. 1906. The digesters are in the tallest building. (George Vervaris Collection, courtesy GREAT)
The July 22, 1896, Democrat reported the pulp mill had started up successfully; unfortunately, “Quite a serious accident occurred at the Odell Mill Saturday [July 18]. Geo. Parks, foreman in the beater room, had his arm severed near the wrist by contact with machinery.”9 This is the first known report of a serious accident inside the mill.
The rate of injuries and deaths in industrial America before about 1920 was appalling. Eventually, more enlightened safety procedures, shorter working hours, the rise of labor unions, and safer machine design dramatically reduced the accident rate. In the fifteen years between 1896 and 1910, there were literally scores of reported injuries due to falls from high places, flying machinery, falling lumber, burns from fires and burst pipes, railroad yard accidents, and, of course, from operating the machines in the mill. Routinely, Groveton mill workers—mostly men—lost fingers and suffered burns. All too often they suffered head wounds, crushed or amputated hands and feet, and serious cuts from finishing-room cutting machines.
Of the twelve deaths at the mill recorded by the local press between 1901 and 1960, six occurred in the decade ending in 1910: Benjamin Mountain, a wood room worker, succumbed five days after being caught by a screw pulley and “hurled with great rapidity around the shaft” in January 1901.10 George Taylor died in an unknown accident six months later.11 George Smith was killed while threading the calender on Number 2 paper machine in March 1907.12 Sixteen-year-old Albert Moulton, working by the Brooklyn Dam, apparently fell asleep and rolled into the river in October 1907.13 Edmund Gardner, also a teenager, was coupling cars in the railroad yard in March 1910. His foot was caught “in the frogs of the switch,” and the car severed his leg, leading to his death.14 Frank Tibbetts, a sixty-year-old oiler, said to work in the mill 365 days a year, died mysteriously: “It is supposed that in some way Mr. Tibbetts fell upon a belt which carried him over a pulley, breaking his neck, one arm, several ribs, and crushing his skull.”15
And then there is the sad case of Billie Downing. In August 1897, he lost his third finger in the mill. There was no report on how he had lost the other two digits. Late in 1905, his foot was caught in machinery and two toes were amputated. Three months later, his hand was mangled in machinery. “He seems to be fated,” the Locals correspondent concluded.16
On May 19, 1897, the mill made 26.5 tons of paper, a new one-day record.17 In late August, nineteenth-century Groveton’s greatest engineer, Charles Richardson, and his work crew raised the mill’s new eight-ton smokestack. An 1898 profile of Richardson noted that, during the previous thirty-five years, he had constructed dams, bridges, and mills, raised thirty-four smokestacks, demolished twelve smokestacks, and built the four-hundred-foot-long Bethel (Maine) Bridge. Owing to his careful practices, his work crews had suffered no accidents in all those years.18
In April 1898, the paper mill announced it would build several houses on lots on the Heights, north of the tracks and mill. The Locals correspondent opined: “This will make it lively for Groveton and looks as if they [the new mill owners] mean to have a permanent business.”19 By early May, the Groveton Land Heights Company had laid out streets on the hill. In October, the mill’s plans to erect a large building between the coal sheds and the machine shop provoked the Locals correspondent to complain: “Mr. Wells of Lewiston, Maine has the contract to build the new building for the Odell Mfg. Co., while several of our home carpenters are idle.”20
In October 1898, the pulp mill produced forty-eight tons of sulfite pulp a day. Fifty two-horse wagons were making two to four trips a day to deliver four-foot pulpwood logs to the mill. In the fall of 1899, the mill built an addition for two new boilers to augment the seven already in operation. “Quite a good many changes have been made recently by the company,” the Locals correspondent cheerfully reported, “and everything is running in apple pie order. The company have the reputation of making the best paper and pulp in the northern country, and for the past two years, they have been unable to fill their orders; and at the present time are weeks behind with them, which speaks in high terms of their management.”21
As the new owners pumped substantial capital into the paper mill, the village of Groveton boomed. At a contentious town meeting in March 1895, residents voted $600 to pay for street lighting, and they approved a proposal to establish a high school. In September, water pipes were laid the length of Main Street. A Village Improvement Society raised money for a public library, a town clock, and a drinking fountain. The covered bridge over the Upper Ammonoosuc was completed in the spring of 1896. Twenty trains a day roared in and out of Groveton. On State Street, Lowe’s Opera House, with a seating capacity of twelve hundred, celebrated its gala opening on May 5, 1897. Locals reported: “The hall is tastefully frescoed in shades of pale pink, green, and cream.”22 Four large town clocks, which would be landmarks for the next seventy years, were installed in the Opera House tower in July.
That month, the Groveton Tavern, under the management of H. S. Goodwin, opened for business on the southwest corner of the intersection of State and Main Streets. The new hotel advertised the telephone installed in its office. In the fall, work began on a Catholic church on State Street opposite the Opera House. Burt May’s Billiard Parlor opened on November 9 in his new State Street building; he rented apartments on the second and third floors. Soon he was advertising: “Smoke the ‘Odell’ 5¢ cigar at May’s Casino only.”23
View from the Upper Ammonoosuc River of the Odell Manufacturing Company paper mill before the 1907–1908 additions. (Courtesy GREAT)
“About 100 woodsmen came into town Saturday night [December 23, 1899] to spend Christmas and to do the town,” Locals re
ported, “but some of them got done before they got fairly started and decided to return to their camps which they did at once.” Mill workers could also be rowdy, as Locals noted: “The paper mill was shut down for Christmas, and so were the bars. Too bad, wasn’t it, boys? We will try not to have too many shutdowns at once hereafter.”25
A special report to the Democrat, titled “Prosperous Plant,” described operations at the Odell mill in early 1904. Ten of the mill’s furnaces burned coal and generated about one thousand horsepower. The mill consumed two railroad carloads of coal a day, approximately fifty-eight tons, at an annual cost of $200,000. A wood-burning furnace required nine cords a day.
Odell Manufacturing had recently filled in a “foul smelling swamp and muck hole” for its new wood yard. Fifteen railroad cars delivered about 165 cords of pulpwood a day. A five-man crew threw the logs onto a five-hundred-foot-long, forty-foot-high “carrier” with an endless cable, run by a twenty-five horsepower engine that “catches the wood as it is thrown from the cars into the trough and carries it to the several openings at the top where it is dumped from the sides.”
The glowing report on the status of the mill concluded: “The employees as a whole are very well satisfied and have recently received an increase in pay. They are working under amiable superintendents, and the output from this mill is something immense. Their products are shipped to nearly every state in the union, some even going to California. A corporation like the Odell Manufacturing company is a great benefit to the town and Groveton should be proud of it.”26
Relations between the amiable superintendents and satisfied workers deteriorated over the following year. Prior to June 1904, the night shift had worked thirteen hours a day, six days a week, including Saturday nights and into Sunday mornings. That month the Saturday night–Sunday morning shift was eliminated. When management attempted to reinstate the old hours, fifty papermakers declared a strike on January 7, 1905, claiming that this was “more than they could endure.” “Townsman,” a sympathizer with the strikers, wrote to the Democrat: “Men that are use [sic] to taking charge of laborers should have tact enough to be leaders of men, instead of drivers. I have had experience enough in taking charge of men to know that if you treat them like men they will be men. You undertake to drive them and you will soon find where you are at.”27