Village President and Chief of Police, Maurice Jones, immediately moved to appoint special police deputies for service on what essentially became a Village militia. While Jones asserted that local police had the responsibility to maintain order within the Village and not outside law enforcement agencies, the primary function of the special deputies proved to be offering resistance to all Company attempts to successfully resume operations at the Hudson River Mill.   Over the next two months Jones deputized a total of 270 men, of whom 266 were strikers.    Patrolling the community in groups of twenty-five deputies in eight hour shifts, twenty-four hours a day, the Village police force often harassed and assaulted potential strikebreakers, Company employees, and any citizens who were unsympathetic to the strike. While the force also sought to protect loyal citizens from harm, the real function of the Village police was unmistakable. Yet the Village militia created by Maurice Jones also served as a generous form of taxpayer-paid strike relief. The strikers who comprised the force, who were paid five dollars from the Village treasury for each eight-hour shift that they worked, realized collective earnings of nearly $10,000 over a two-month period.

International Paper's outrage at the creation of such a large Village police was understandable considering that its contribution to the Village tax base amounted to sixty-three percent of the total Village budget in 1921.  The Company had been ineffective in challenging the exercise of Jones' authority as Village President until townspeople proposed a referendum to raise $20,000 to pay for additional deputy salaries.  Jones had not only exhausted his police budget by mid-August, but funds that had been diverted from other Village budgets to pay for the police force had been depleted as well.  

Framing of Strikebreaker Housing, 1922

International Paper's attorney, Ransom Gillette, supported by affidavits sworn by three Corinth citizens, petitioned Superior Court Judge James McPhillips in Glens Falls for an injunction to stop the Village referendum. McPhillips, who later would be exposed as a Director of Corinth's Curtis Pulp Company with whom International Paper had a contract to supply wood pulp that was void in the event of a strike, granted the injunction that stopped the referendum. The injunction effectively put an end to Jones' police force.  With the special Village force disbanded, it became much easier for International Paper recruit strikebreakers. Some of these men came to the Mill under contract from as far away as Michigan.

IP Office on Pine Street Before 1921

The injunction against the Village, which was a legal strategy that International Paper would use successfully once more in Corinth, served to intensify striker resolve and initiated a period of community violence that would characterize life in the Village of Corinth for more than two years.  The threatening environment that existed for strikebreakers made it necessary for International Paper to create a self-contained community for its replacement workforce inside the fortified gates of the Hudson River Mill.  Strikebreakers lived in make-shift dormitories, ate in a Company mess hall, and were entertained in a room that doubled as a movie theater and as a venue for professional boxing matches.  The Company's new employees the Mill in large groups and only under the escort of the Company's armed agents. Strikebreakers were forced to reside exclusively within the confines of the Hudson River Mill for nearly one year until the Company succeeded in leasing and buying a few houses adjacent to the Mill to serve as worker housing. By March of 1922, International Paper had begun construction of a large, two story wood-framed building across the street fromit main office Pine Street to serve as a worker dormitory.

Interior of Strikebreaker housing, 1922

By October 1, 1921, not one Corinth striker had broken rank, and International Paper had yet to shape a stable and effective workforce. Although the political and economic benefits of the Village police force had been lost with the September injunction, strikers and sympathetic Corinth citizens had settled into a routine for resisting the Company with random acts of personal intimidation and violence. Legitimate means of resistance were exercised as well, as Mill manager Charles Walker was kept on the defensive by the Corinth Fire Chief whose authority to inspect the plant for fire code violations brought him to the mill on a weekly basis.    The Town of Corinth's Board of Health, with union activist and Village President, Maurice Jones, serving as an ex-officio member, was also in a position to exercise its official authority to frustrate the Company by investigating potential health problems that were reported at the Mill.

A test of the Board of Health's authority came when an outbreak of typhoid fever was reported at the Mill in the late winter of 1922.  Maurice Jones moved immediately to seek Board action to close the plant, but it balked in sympathy with the objection of Dr. Stanley Wark, a Corinth dentist who spoke on behalf of Interantional Paper.  After a wild public debate ensued on the typhoid issue, the Board reached a compromise position by asking the New York State Board of Health to investigate health conditions at the Mill.  Maurice Jones's public effort to use the typhoid outbreak as a way to force International Paper to shut down was eventually frustrated by an unsympathetic State Board that ruled that conditions at the Mill did not threaten community health.

Main Street in Corinth Before 1923

In late 1921 International Paper Company's counsel secured a second court injunction from Judge McPhillips to prevent Hudson River Mill strikers from picketing in the vicinity of the Mill or gathering anywhere in the village that had the intent or effect of interfering with International Paper's business. Court documents suggest that a broad-based community support existed for the strike in Corinth, and that regional support took the form of boycotts of International Paper that made it difficult for the Company to obtain food and provisions to supply the its replacement work force. The sweeping effect of the injunction, which even restricted free speech that contained anti-Company expressions, proved to be a major blow to the local unions.  Company counsel Ransom Gillette used the injunction to aggresively prosecute members of the Palmer locals and Corinth citizens for any and all violations of the order.