Industrial Peace Rally (1910)

The watershed strike of 1910 against International Paper took place in a climate where the IBPM was weak and paperworkers were still bitter over the 1908 conflict. Locals continued to operate in some mill towns after 1908 despite the rapid decline in union membership, and many ceased to exist altogether. Wage contracts with large paper companies were virtually non-existent. Although on the surface the union movement appeared to be in a state of irreversible decline, a situation that developed at the Hudson River Mill in March, 1910 demonstrated that many paperworkers still believed in the efficacy of collective action.

Cornelius O'Leary, a backtender on the Hudson River Mill's No. 4 paper machine and a member if IBPM Local No. 7, was fired on March 4, 1910 without explanation by mill Superintendent Charles Walker. On that Friday afternoon a group of eleven papermakers approached Superintendent Walker to seek a reason for the dismissal. When Walker refused to provide a rationale, the men threatened to leave their jobs unless either an explanation for the firing was given or O'Leary was reinstated. Refusing to change his position, Walker told the group that they might as well collect their final pay for he did not intend to explain the dismissal. With this response the eleven men left the paper machines in the middle of their shift and walked out of the Mill.

Birds-eye View of Corinth, ca. 1909

By the next day IBPSPMW President John Malin had arrived from nearby Ft. Edward. Malin addressed a joint meeting of the IBPM and IBPSPMW locals, telling the gathering that he had been authorized by IBPM President Carey to speak on his behalf in support of the walkout. By Sunday morning, March 6, paperworkers in the IBPM and IBPSPMW locals, with the support of both International Presidents, voted to go out on strike over the O'Leary dismissal.

Rail Spur Construction (ca. 1913)

International Paper attempted to resume normal operations at the Hudson River Mill on Monday, March 7 with salaried employees and a few workers who refused to honor the walkout, but soon recognized that additional workers would be needed. Just before midnight that day, a train from Saratoga carrying approximately seventy strikebreakers entered Corinth on the rail spur that passed through the center of the village on its way to the Hudson River Mill yard. As the train moved in the darkness through the community, it ran into barricaded tracks and an angry crowd that proceeded to dynamite two of its cars. The damaged train managed to retreat to Saratoga amid a hail of rocks and gunfire, miraculously without serious injury to any of its crew or passengers.

National Guard at Corinth Depot (1910)

Destruction of Company property and the harassment of anyone who attempted to enter the Mill continued for the next two days despite efforts by the Saratoga County Sheriff's Department and other specially appointed deputies to maintain order. On Wednesday, March 9, the Governor of New York State deployed Company L of the National Guard to Corinth to secure peace in the village and to protect the Company's property. International Paper also managed to secure a court injunction against members of the IBPM and IBPSPMW locals, preventing them from picketing near the Mill or in any way interfering with the conduct of Company business. In just five days the dismissal of a papermaker at the Hudson River Mill had escalated into a community conflict that produced both legal and military action.

News of the strike at the Hudson River Mill and its related violence spread quickly to locals in other International Paper Company mills in New York, Maine and New Hampshire. Several voted immediately to strike in sympathy with their brothers at Corinth. While the IPBPM and IBPSPMW were both weakly organized at the time, the timely notice that the AFL would finally grant the IBPSPMW's its own charter helped to motivate workers to support the locals at the Palmer Mill. What began as a walkout by eleven Corinth papermakers in protest of the firing of a co-worker had turned into a strike that affected five International Paper Company mills in three states.

National Guard Troops at Hudson River Mill (1910)

The strike ended after eleven weeks when an arbitrated settlement produced a singular victory for the unions as International Paper agreed to recognize the IBPM and IBPSPMW as bargaining agents and granted a five percent increase in wages. The strike and the settlement that followed were the first real demonstrations of solidarity between the IBPM and IBPSPMW. The immediate benefits that were realized, together with increased local organizing potential, produced dramatic gains in union membership. From a total union membership of 2,000 when the 1910 strike began, the ranks grew to 8800 by 1915, and to nearly 13,000 by 1917. In 1920 alone, IBPM and IBPSPMW membership expanded by thirty percent. The 1910 Strike proved to be a turning point for the union movement in the pulp and paper industry.

But the rapid expansion of the membership base during the 1910's can also be attributable to the economic and political exigencies of the World War I years, and not exclusively to an emergent expression of class-consciousness among paperworkers. The strong economy and nationalist sentiments that were a product of the War made companies like International Paper willing participants in the yearly union contracts in the late 1910's, agreements that largely provided paperworkers with consistent wage gains. A careful reading of statements made by President Phillip Dodge in International Paper's annual reports during the World War I era, however, makes clear that the Company's contractual relationships with the unions in the World War I era was due purely to expedience.