There’s a pervasive sense of betrayal in areas scarred by mine, mill and factory closures. Steven High’s One Job Town delves into the long history of deindustrialization in the paper-making town of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, located on Canada’s resource periphery. Much like hundreds of other towns and cities across North America and Europe, Sturgeon Falls has lost their primary source of industry, resulting in the displacement of workers and their families. One Job Town takes us into the making of a culture of industrialism and the significance of industrial work for mill-working families. One Job Town approaches deindustrialization as a long term, economic, political, and cultural process, which did not begin and simply end with the closure of the local mill in 2002. High examines the work-life histories of fifty paper mill workers and managers, as well as city officials, to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of the formation and dissolution of a culture of industrialism. Oral history and memory are at the heart of One Job Town, challenging us to rethink the relationship between the past and the present in what was formerly known as the industrialized world.

Winner of the 2021 Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award Winner of the 2021 Maine Literary Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics John Leonard Prize for Best First Book Finalist for the 2021 New England Society Book Award Finalist for the 2021 New England Independent Booksellers Association Award A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Chicago Tribune top book for 2020 “Mill Town is the book of a lifetime; a deep-drilling, quick-moving, heartbreaking story. Scathing and tender, it lifts often into poetry, but comes down hard when it must. Through it all runs the river: sluggish, ancient, dangerous, freighted with America’s sins.” —Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland Kerri Arsenault grew up in the small, rural town of Mexico, Maine, where for over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that provided jobs for nearly everyone in town, including three generations of her family. Kerri had a happy childhood, but years after she moved away, she realized the price she paid for that childhood. The price everyone paid. The mill, while providing the social and economic cohesion for the community, also contributed to its demise. Mill Town is a book of narrative nonfiction, investigative memoir, and cultural criticism that illuminates the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease with the central question; Who or what are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

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.

Absentee owners. Single-minded concern for the bottom line. Friction between workers and management. Hostile takeovers at the hands of avaricious and unaccountable multinational interests. The story of America's industrial decline is all too familiar - and yet, somehow, still hard to fathom. Jamie Sayen spent years interviewing residents of Groveton, New Hampshire, about the century-long saga of their company town. The community's paper mill had been its economic engine since the early twentieth century. Purchased and revived by local owners in the postwar decades, the mill merged with Diamond International in 1968. It fell victim to Anglo-French financier James Goldsmith's hostile takeover in 1982, then suffered through a series of owners with no roots in the community until its eventual demise in 2007. Drawing on conversations with scores of former mill workers, Sayen reconstructs the mill's human history: the smells of pulp and wood, the injuries and deaths, the struggles of women for equal pay and fair treatment, and the devastating impact of global capitalism on a small New England town. This is a heartbreaking story of the decimation of industrial America.

Since 1908, the corporate giant now known as Champion International has operated a pulp and paper mill along the banks of the Pigeon River in Canton, North Carolina. As a result, during most of those years, this once-sparkling Appalachian stream has been virtually useless except as an industrial sewer - foamy, foul-smelling, molasses-colored. By polluting the river, the mill that brought prosperity to Canton stunted the economic growth of the downstream communities in Cocke County, Tennessee. Although public pressure to clean up the Pigeon surfaced intermittently, it has been only in the years since 1985 that two organizations - the Pigeon River Action Group and the Dead Pigeon River Council - have mounted a sustained drive against the ongoing pollution. Today, following a multimillion-dollar upgrading of the Champion mill, the Pigeon River is cleaner but hardly pristine. Moreover, there is little evidence that Champion carried out its modernization for any reasons other than economic ones.

In August, 2017, the death knell sounded for yet another troubled American manufacturer: Appleton Coated, a historic paper mill in the Wisconsin village of Combined Locks. The mill and its parts were sold to a receiver who planned to sell them for scrap, eliminating hundreds of jobs and devastating a community. But then the unlikely happened. Dedicated union workers teamed with a lone local official to leverage an obscure legal strategy proposed by a community-minded attorney to stop the sell-off, enable a profitable new business plan, and save a cherished way of life. Now that local official tells the story behind this remarkable turnaround. As county executive of Outagamie County, Thomas Nelson is a progressive Democrat fighting for workers' rights in one of the Republican-leaning areas that have made his home state a battleground in national politics. One Day Stronger is an inspiring saga of how people power can triumph even in the face of indifference and outright hostility from powerful political forces. As the Appleton Coated mill and its workers struggled, Governor Scott Walker and his allies in the state legislature focused instead on channeling billions in state funds to Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics firm offering job promises that would soon prove hollow. It took a groundswell of community anger-along with creative legal and political maneuvering by the United Steelworkers union and their local supporters-to force the receiver who'd taken control of the mill to change course, reviving its business prospects rather than shutting it down forever.Today the mill in Combined Locks is going strong again. But similar companies continue to face threats like the one that almost destroyed the mill. Author Nelson explains the crucial role that labor unions have traditionally played in making prosperity widely available to American families-and how they can do the same in the future through partnerships with forward-looking businesspeople and political leaders committed to economic justice.In a world where corporate greed and financial engineering have crushed the dreams of countless Americans, One Day Stronger offers a road map for fighting back-and winning.