Salaried Personnel (1922)

The 1920's were a transformative period at the Hudson River Mill and within the Corinth community as the residual effects of the 1921 Paper Strike lingered throughout the decade. The process of assimilating the many strikebreakers who ultimately sought to make Corinth their home was complicated by the deep social and political divisions within the community left in the strike's wake. Former strikers who eventually managed to secure jobs at the Mill were forced to work alongside, and sometimes as subordinates to, the very men who had helped International Paper defeat the unions. The Mill's salaried personnel, whose non-union status kept them on the job during the entire conflict, suffered less economic hardship than the strikers had to endure and might have been the one group in the community least affected the acrimonious climate created by the strike. 

IP Management Dinner (1921)

The heavy financial loses incurred by International Paper after 1921 served as one measure of the Company's cost of fighting the strike and installing open shop conditions in its mills. Total Company revenues plummeted from $22,000,000 in 1920 to just $1,113,519 in 1921, of which only $134,465 came from mill operations. 1922 was worse year financially, with IP reporting an net operating loss of over $1,000,000. Not until 1923 did the Company begin to return to profitability when $5,500,000 in total revenue was recorded in its annual report to stockholders. Another measure of the financial cost of the 1921 Paper Strike to International Paper can be found in its stated cash surplus, which was reported as almost $33,000,000 in 1920, but was less than $15,000,000 at the end of 1923. It was these publicly reported financial losses that helped to energize the locals at the Hudson River Mill in their belief that the 1921 Strike might eventually be won.

Nurses in First Aid Office (1927)

Workers at the Hudson River Mill in the 1920's were the beneficiaries of an employee welfare program instituted by International Paper in 1923. International Paper hoped its efforts would assuage any developing worker discontent and prevent the reemergence of the unions in its mills. IP's version of "The American Plan" of operations - an industrial strategy that was implemented by numerous companies across the country in the 1920's - consisted of employee benefits that included partially paid death and disability insurance, nurse-staffed first aid facilities, and the formation of Employee Mutual Benefits Associations in each of its mills. Employees were also invited to serve on committees that effectively represented a Company union. An important component of the new face that the Company sought to present to its employees after the 1921 Strike was its new publication, The International Paper Company Monthly. Begun in late 1923, each issue of The Monthly included general Company news and featured short articles by employee correspondents at each of its mills that were intended to promote and preserve harmony between the Company and its workers. The Hudson River Mill was featured inrichly illustrated articles in 1924 and 1927.

A combination of shifting economics and emerging market forces led to a decline in the production of newsprint in America in the 1920's that directly effected operations at the Hudson River Mill. Pulpwood resources in the Northeast began to decline in the 1910's, particularly in New York State where laws regulating the Adirondack Park essentially set aside 3,500,000 acres as a "forever wild" forest. American paper manufacturers increasingly turned to Canadian forests for new timber resources, but emerging laws in the Canadian Provinces soon placed restrictions on the export of pulpwood to the United States.

No.4 Paper Machine Crew (1920)

International Paper President Phillip Dodge, frustrated by the inability of the Company to import pulpwood into the United States cut from its Canadian-owned lands, was also incensed by the refusal of the United States Congress to maintain a protective tariff on imported Canadian newsprint. While the Company by 1920 already owned or leased nearly 3,000,000 acres of Canadian forests for its pulpwood needs, maintaining a presence in the newsprint industry after World War I also required the construction of new mills in the Canadian provinces. Consequently, International Paper's move into Canada began in 1919 with the construction of a mill at Three Rivers, Quebec, a fully integrated newsprint production facility that would also manufacture its own mechanical and chemical pulp.

In addition to the relocation of the newsprint industry to Canada that was underway, the conversion of the Hudson River Mill from newsprint to specialty papers was fueled in the 1920's by the increased demand for magazines and catalogs. The conversion from newsprint to specialty papers at the Mill, and ultimately to coated papers, was aided by the development of a new bleached groundwood process that allowed for the production of new grades of printing paper whose quality was comparable to that produced by the more costly chemical pulp process. These new groundwood papers featured high opacity and were capable of handling color, both characteristics that were required in modern publications. The substantial production capacity of the Hudson River Mill's groundwood plant and its lower operating costs made the Corinth Mill the first of International Paper's existing newsprint plants to be converted to higher quality specialty papers, beginning in the late 1920's.

Core Plant (1958)

The conversion process began in 1929 with the rebuilding of No. 1 and No. 4 paper machines and the installation of two, 145"-wide supercalendars that could produce a finish on one-side of the paper. The smaller No. 5, 6, 7 and 8 paper machines that remained from the days of the Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company were converted for specialty paper production in 1930. By 1931, a total of eight paper machines with totally rebuilt Fourdrinier and dryer sections were running specialty papers, and six supercalendars were adding finish. A plant for bleaching sulphite pulp was built in 1938, and the bleached groundwood mill was expanded at the end of the decade. By the mid-1930's, the Hudson River Mill had been fully converted to specialty paper production.

During the first few decades of the 20th century another form of paper production was begun at the Hudson River Mill. It was based on former Mill superintendent Theodore Elixman's design for a paper core that replaced the heavy steel cores that were being used for paper shipped to customers. The cores were made of spiral wrapped, heavy brown "core paper" with steel end caps. After Elixman left the International Paper around 1905 to found his own paper core-producing company in downtown Corinth, International Paper patented and produced a similar paper core design, ultimately producing them at the Ft. Edward, New York plant. When International Paper closed that mill in 1937, core production facilities were moved to Corinth. After 1937 the Hudson River Mill yearly produced as many as 8,000,000 feet of shipping cores for all of IP's Northern Division Mills, as well as for outside customers.

The flood that wiped out the crib dam at Palmer Falls in 1913 also produced such significant damage downriver at Albany that it gave rise to a movement to control the waters of the Hudson River.

Spier Falls Workers (1902)

The Hudson River Regulating District was created in 1922, and by 1930 the twenty-nine mile long Sacandaga Reservoir had been created by the damning of the Sacandaga River, the largest tributary of the Hudson that emptied into the River five miles north of Corinth at Luzerne. While the campaign to dam the Sacandaga Reservoir was advanced publicly as a means of reducing the flood threats posed by the Hudson River each spring, the Sacandaga project was part of a broader regional initiative to control the waters of the upper Hudson River that received strong support by hydro-electric interests, paper manufacturers, and other downriver companies that used the Hudson for power. The management of the Hudson River actually began with the building of a dam at Spier Falls in 1903, and included the new dam at Palmer Falls in 1913, the Sherman Island Dam in the 1920's, the Sacandaga project in 1930, and Stewart's Dam built on the Sacandaga River in 1951, just downriver from the Conklingville Dam that created the Sacandaga Reservoir.

The Sacandaga Reservoir was designed to impound the heavy spring run-off and then release it over several months into the Sacandaga and Hudson Rivers to power a new hydro-electric facility and to create a predictable year-round flow downstream at the Hudson River Mill and to mills further south. The end of the seasonal water fluctuations on the Hudson was also a boon for the Hudson River Mill for it allowed for the discontinuation of pulp lap manufacture and storage, and led to the conversion of the Curtis Mill from pulp manufacturing to hydro-electric production. By 1938, the Curtis Mill housed ten 1000-watt generators that produced electricity to help supply the energy demands of the Hudson River Mill.

Energy-intensive operations at the Hudson River Mill that required the production of more electricity also demanded the production of more steam. The Mill increasingly came to rely on large amounts of coal and fuel oil to power boilers whose steam was needed for the dryer sections of the paper machines and for producing sulphite pulp. By 1943 the Hudson River Mill had installed its 8th boiler with the capacity to produce 100,000 pounds of steam per hour. And by the early 1960's, the Mill was consuming 23,000,000 gallons of fuel oil each year.

Other significant changes implemented in the 1930's had a direct and lasting impact on the operations at the Hudson River Mill. The Mill shifted from day operations to a twenty-four hour work day schedule in the early 1930's as paper workers had to adjust to the three-tour system that required employees to work the 11 PM-7 AM night shift for the first time. This change improved the efficiency and productivity of the Mill by eliminating machine "downtime" between startups, but the operation of the Mill on the three-tour system also created life-changing routines for both paper workers and their families. Nonetheless, even during the darkest days of the Great Depression, the Hudson River Mill still managed to operate at least three days per week.

The conversion to high quality coated papers began at the Hudson River Mill in 1941 with the installation of a single, off-machine coater to produce papers that could be used for products like can labels and wallpaper. Off-machine coating technology was used until 1947 when the No. 2 paper machine was converted to coated paper production with the installation of an on-machine roll coater. The Hudson River Mill thus became the first of IP's mills to use this new roll-coating technology that was eventually replaced by on-machine blade-coaters.

Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company Building (1948)

The conversion of No. 3 machine was begun in 1951, and No. 4 paper machine followed in 1956 when the production speed of both machines was increased from 800 to 1250 feet of paper per minute. At this time the Hudson River Mill was the only International Paper Company mill producing coated paper. Between 1947 and 1957 Hudson River Mill machines Nos. 2, 3 and 4 produced a combined 562,000 tons of coated paper, most of it for mass circulation American magazines. A plan for the further expansion of coated paper production at the Mill was executed in 1957 when the No's 6 and 7 machines - installed by the Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company in the 1880's - were removed and the towered Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company structure built in 1888 was razed. In its footprint, a 500-foot long structure was built to house a single paper machine.

In 1958 construction was completed on No. 11 paper machine, designed and manufactured by the Beloit Corporation and considered to be the state-of-the-art in coated paper manufacturing technology, capable of producing a 208-inch wide sheet at a speed of 2300 feet per minute.

No.11 Paper Machine (1958)

By the time Nos. 2, 3, and 4 paper machines had each been upgraded from roll to blade coating technology in 1964, the Hudson River Mill's 1650 employees were manufacturing 175,000 tons of coated paper each year. No. 10 machine was manufacturing 8,000 tons of wrapper and core paper, and the Mill's core plant was producing 8,000,000 feet of spiral wound paper cores annually. While in ensuing years these paper machines would be upgraded and a major Mill modernization program was completed in the 1970's, No.11 would be the last new paper machine installed at the Hudson River Mill.