William Hamilton, vice president of the Paper Union, addressed a large and enthusiastic crowd at Forbush Hall on State Street on January 15. He urged workers to organize, because machines had made it impossible for artisans to compete. A cobbler, he explained, could make one shoe while a machine turns out thirty. Since workers have only their labor to sell, they must join together to assure that they receive the highest price for that labor.
Work at the mill resumed on January 16, and the labor problems appeared to have been resolved by the hiring of “non-union” men to fill the “vacancies.” “For the past ten days,” the Democrat reported on January 25, “new families have been moving into town to replace the union men that went out and refused to return. A large number of men have given up their [union] cards and returned to their old posts. It is understood that in a few cases the company has refused to take back some of the old help. A large number of girls went out with the old hands and their places are filled by townswomen, in several instances, wives of the officers have stepped in to help out. The non-union [should read “union”] men deserve credit for conducting their affairs in a quiet manner and making no attempt to interfere with the new men that have been engaged to fill their former jobs.”
The finishing room in 1905. Are these women strikers, replacements, or wives of officers? (Courtesy GREAT)
Five weeks into the strike, Hamilton again wrote to the Democrat: “Those who have never worked tour work in a paper or pulp mill, and do not know anything of its hardships, the demoralizing effects, physically, morally and mentally, of working thirteen hours a night, six and seven nights a week, are not expected to sympathize very strongly with the men, but they would if they ever had gone through the experience several months or years.” Hamilton acknowledged the worries and pressures mill owners and managers suffered, but added: “The paper makers have had the sixty-five hour per week system, or the ‘Saturday night off’ for six months previous to the trouble. This ‘Saturday night off’ is something which all paper makers tour workers, very much desire, and are naturally sensitive on this point, especially when a move is being made to deprive them of it. Even the offer of extra pay is little inducement, for the benefits in the way of rest, health, and opportunities are of more value to the tour worker than a money consideration. It is because of this hardship of long hours night work in paper and pulp mills, that many such concerns throughout the country are adopting the three tour system, or eight hours per day.”28 There were no further reports on the strike in the region’s only newspaper.
Groveton’s economy continued to boom. Fred Taylor opened a grocery store on May 19, 1906, which remained in business until 1960. Construction on the town’s sewer system began that summer. The Locals correspondent noted: “The new sewer is progressing finely. One gets quite an idea of Italy by going down West street and going through their quarters. So far they are a very quiet and orderly lot of men.”29 With the arrival of cold weather at the end of October, the sewer construction ceased, and the Italian laborers returned to Lewiston, Maine.
For a decade, the fledgling Groveton paper mill shared the Upper Ammonoosuc River and the forests of the surrounding landscape with the Soule and Weston sawmills. After 1905, Odell Manufacturing operated alone. Weston never recovered from a boiler explosion in 1901, and it sold off all its Northumberland assets to Odell Manufacturing on August 22, 1904. Soule Lumber did the same in a series of three transactions between October 14, 1905, and October 14, 1907. Henceforth, the Odell mill would face no significant local competition for the price of labor or wood fiber. The mill dominated the regional economy thereafter.
In the summer of 1907 the Odell mill purchased a new paper machine from Pusey and Jones. Number 3 paper machine, reputedly the largest in the world, required the construction of a new building that doubled the mill’s size and also included a new beater room, boiler house, turbine room, and finishing room. A century later, Number 3 produced the last reel of paper ever made in Groveton.
A barefoot crew on Number 3 paper machine. It seems incredible that men would work in such a dangerous and toxic environment barefoot. (Courtesy Jim Emerson)
Some of the Italians who had come to Groveton to build the town sewer remained in town working at the expanding mill. The Democrat reported early in 1908: “Much excitement has been caused this week by disturbances among the Italians employed on the Odell Mill addition. There have been reports of highway robberies of a sensational character, escapes, arrests and police court hearings, but nothing has developed. If there is any truth in the claims made action has been stalled by the refusal of parties to make complaint. It is rather a mixed-up mess requiring the services of Sherlock Holmes.”30
That April, several of the Italian workers, having spent a Sunday at a local “resort,” were walking along West Street. Vito Ratta purportedly had developed a romantic interest in the seventeen-year-old daughter of his landlady. As Ratta and his companions passed the house, they began arguing. The young lady attempted to persuade him to return to his lodgings with her. He refused, and a moment later Ambrozio Chiaravattati reputedly shot him with a revolver. The assailant vanished, and the victim succumbed to his wound the following day.31 There were no further reports on this tragedy in the Democrat.
On November 26, 1909, the Groveton Advertiser published its first issue. For the next decade, both the Advertiser and the Democrat would chronicle the doings of Groveton in a haphazard way. Neither paper regularly offered feature articles, and most news from that era must be gleaned from the columns of the Locals. The March 11, 1910, issue of the Advertiser contained this suggestive classified ad: “Notice: We will be in Groveton every Tuesday preceding the Odell Manufacturing Co. payday, where we will be pleased to transact legal business at reasonable rates. We make a specialty of collections. . . . No collection, no charge. We will be located temporarily at the police court in the office of Wm. Hayes. [Signed] Libby and Coulombe, attorneys at law, Gorham, N.H.” One can imagine the games of cat-and-mouse between mill workers and collection agents.
In 1912, the prospering mill replaced the original Number 1 paper machine, installed in 1891, with a J. H. Horne and Sons paper machine, which, despite its relative youth, would be named “Number 1 Paper Machine.” The new machine produced a sheet 106 inches wide and was almost identical to Number 2 machine. Both were 205 feet long and 13 feet wide; they produced approximately eighteen tons of paper a day, at a rate of between two hundred to four hundred feet per minute. Number 3 machine, by contrast, was capable of over one thousand feet a minute. In 1913, Odell installed a bleach plant that enabled it to turn out white paper. The bleach plant would be rebuilt in 1919 when the acid tower was added, and again in 1928.
Groveton’s numerous saloons stirred controversy as far away as Franklin, New Hampshire, in the autumn of 1913. A temperance man from that downstate town alleged that since a saloon license went into effect on May 1, “Groveton has become a plague spot.” He claimed that men were found passed out along streets and in the yards of respectable citizens. Lancaster teetotalers also condemned the public drunkenness in the mill town. The Groveton Advertiser admitted that Groveton had a drinking problem, but noted that most of those arrested in Groveton hailed from Lancaster. It accused Lancastrians of hypocrisy: while censuring Groveton’s saloons, “Lancaster people like our money, taint and all,” as evidenced by the swarms of creditors in Groveton every payday.32
Democrat, July 15, 1891. (Note: owing to poor quality of microfilm “283” feet is probably correct. Possibly it could read 233.)
Democrat, September 23, 1891. It is likely that many accidents and injuries went unreported.
Democrat, February 10 and 17, 1892.
Democrat, July 20, 1892.
Democrat, July 31, 1895.
Democrat, March 23, 1966.
Democrat, May 6, 1896.
Democrat, June 3, 1896; June 10, 1896.
Democrat, July 22, 1896.
Democrat, January 30, 1901.
D
emocrat, July 17, 1901.
Democrat, April 10, 1907.
Democrat, October 9, 1907.
Groveton Advertiser, March 16, 1910.
Groveton Advertiser, October 11, 1910.
Democrat, September 1, 1897; November 8, 1905; February 28, 1906.
Democrat, May 26, 1897.
Democrat, May 4, 1898.
Democrat, April 20, 1898.
Democrat, October 5, 1898; October 19, 1898.
Democrat, November 1, 1899.
Democrat, May 12, 1897.
Democrat, April 6, 1898.
Democrat, December 14, 1898.
Democrat, December 27, 1899.
Democrat, February 10, 1904.
Democrat, January 11, 1905.
Democrat, February 8, 1905.
Democrat, July 25, 1906.
Democrat, January 8, 1908.
Democrat, April 29, 1908.
Groveton Advertiser, September 3, 1913; October 29, 1913.
Chapter Five
RATVILLE, NH
“CONDITIONS ARE QUIETER at Groveton than they have been for some time,” the Democrat reported in July 1917. “One carload of strike-breakers has left town and Charles Kelley of Colebrook has been appointed superintendent of police. This combination has worked to stop some of the disorder that was creeping out at intervals. . . . There have been occasional records of assault that resulted in police hearings. In one instance a shot was fired and the offender was held for aggravated assault to await the grand jury.”1
The longest strike in the Groveton paper mill’s history had begun on May 10, 1917, five weeks after the United States entered World War I. Four hundred and fifty striking mill workers, members of Local No. 41 of the International Brotherhood of Paper Makers and Local 61 of the Pulp Sulphite Workers and Mill Workers Union, shut down the Odell mill. The Advertiser’s correspondent predicted a short strike. A week into the strike Odell agreed to two of the strikers’ three major demands: wage increases and an eight-hour workday of three shifts to replace the eleven-hour day shift and thirteen-hour night shift. Willard Munroe, co-owner and manager of the mill, who had moved his family from Maine to Groveton when the strike began, refused to recognize the union, vowed to keep the mill closed for a year rather than yield, and imported Boston police officers to guard the mill and village.2
While strikers, led by a band, paraded around town to honor a visiting union leader, the mill began to import strikebreakers. The Paper Makers Journal, published by the United Brotherhood of Paper Makers, alleged that Odell had brought in a number of carpenters from Lewiston, Maine, who were members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, “under the protection of imported gun-men and so-called detectives.”4 The strikers were furious Odell had granted raises and an eight-hour workday to scabs after denying them to longtime workers.5
Mickey King’s grandfather told him about the strike: “There was this woman, Mrs. Lavoie; she was very outspoken about the scabs. I guess she had gone to church with a buggy, and someone had said something, and she hollered, ‘You scab.’ And she took the horsewhip to him, sitting in the buggy. She didn’t get him real good, but it made them angry. She was hanging out clothes, and they shot at her a couple of times.”
On August 19, an arsonist burned one of the mill’s barns on the meadow near the B&M Railroad bridge, below the Weston Dam, downstream of the mill. Four days later, the Associated Mutual Insurance Cos. sent H. B. McClune to survey the entire mill. (A framed copy of McClune’s handsome and informative floor plan hung in the mill’s office for decades.) At the end of August, James Prosser, a foreman in the fire room, was electrocuted in the coal yard. He left a widow and seven children.
Berlin mill workers brought their traditional Labor Day parade to Groveton, where “one of the largest holiday crowds ever seen” marched around town, enjoyed baseball games, speeches, a picnic, an evening band concert, a speech by Berlin’s mayor, and “a dance under union auspices in the Opera House.” The union reported that proceeds from the Labor Day parade had paid off all bills and netted a surplus of $104.36 that went to the strike fund. The Advertiser’s sympathetic report of the Labor Day festivities concluded: “Considering the feeling caused by the strike situation the day was remarkably free from disorder.” Nevertheless, it reported Everett Mayhew was stabbed in the left shoulder by a strikebreaker, and two or three other men were arrested “for minor offenses, or no offense at all, according to different views of the case.” The following morning while waiting for a train, Lee Whitcomb was hit in the face.6
In early October, the Advertiser reported that Numbers 1 and 2 paper machines were running twenty-four hours a day, while Number 3 was operating ten hours a day. The pulp mill was cooking sixteen hours a day, and all departments outside the mill were working overtime. The old blacksmith shop near the B&M tracks on Main Street, recently used by the mill as a mess hall for its scab force, was damaged by fire on October 21. Firemen were forced to break into the locked firehouse because, the Advertiser surmised, the key had been stolen. A second fire in the same location occurred later that day.
The shipping department crew in 1914 when the mill was prospering. (Courtesy Doug White)
Throughout the fall and winter, strikers and management traded barbs. The union accused the mill of blacklisting strikers trying to find work in other mills in northern New England. In December the Paper Makers Journal gleefully reported: “After a desperate struggle all summer, they failed to get the whole supply of logs from the river, and at present there is over ten thousand cords frozen solid in the upper river awaiting the spring freshet which will clean everything in the onward rush for the great waters of the Connecticut.” The following month, the union reported that the mill was suffering from a “scarcity of fuel as well as a scarcity of labor. What the management of the Company at Groveton expects to achieve by continuing the strike is beyond common sense reasoning.”7
Management charged the union with bad-faith bargaining and misuse of funds, while the union blasted the mill for buying up all available firewood and refusing to sell to non-employees. Early in December, the Advertiser reported that three families had moved to Groveton from Troy, New York, and that more than a dozen other families had moved to town in the preceding month to work at the mill. Three days before Christmas, an early morning fire in the mill’s stockroom caused $100,000 in losses. The 120-by-50-foot building was separated from the rest of the mill by a brick firewall.
The strike continued into 1918. Insufficient shipments of coal, presumably due to the war effort, forced the mill to operate only part time in early February. In March, E. H. Macloon, an executive with the Groveton Power and Light Company and chairman of the local Public Safety Committee, expelled Alfred Deering, who was accused of being an organizer for the IWW, the radical International Workers of the World union.
“There has been no change in the general strike situation,” the Groveton correspondent reported in the Paper Makers Journal in March. “The company are as hard up for help as they were last summer and the mill is in a desperate condition, in the machine room it looks like a junk shop, and from all reports they are junking the best part of it. The boiler room reminds one of a submarined fishing schooner where there had at one time, some human being lived and worked but at present they are all dead ones.” The correspondent claimed the pulp mill was in worse shape than even IWW saboteurs could have made it. Two digesters were “entirely out of business,” and the acid room was in terrible shape.8
The union reported that there was scant activity at the mill during the spring, and in August 1918, a union report from “Ratville, NH” noted that most st
rikers had found other work, and that the “large machine,” Number 3, had not been in operation for eight weeks. Thereafter, the strike continued, albeit at a low key. The Paper Makers Journal reported in September 1919, “At the present time we have no expenses, but the strike is still on.” Sometime before June 20, 1920, the strike had been called off.9
The mill owners never achieved the sort of control over the lives of their employees owners of classic company towns achieved, but Odell’s managers took several steps designed to weaken the threat of a well-organized labor force. Odell had been operating a company store in the old Soule store since about 1907. The October 1917 issue of the Paper Makers Journal reported: “The Company here has a soup house for their Boston rats, where they are fed like cattle and housed on the same plan the company hogs are, every hog for himself. . . . We call them the union scabs from Kennebec.”10 The following year, the mill constructed single-family houses on Odell Park for employees to rent.
Bitterness over the strike festered for decades. Jim Wemyss Jr. encountered it in the late 1940s: “I can only tell you one thing. It was like the Civil War in the United States. Brothers against brothers, and sisters against sisters, and mothers against their daughters. It did a terrible thing to this town because some were mad that the mill was on strike, and some wanted the mill on strike. It’s a town here. Just one town. They never got over that. I even had that thrown at me twenty-five years later. That’s when Willie Munroe became famous.”