You Had a Job for Life: Story of a Company Town

by Jamie Sayen

Overview

The life and death of a mill town

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512601398
Publisher:	University Press of New England
Publication date:	12/05/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jamie Sayen is a writer and environmental activist living in New Hampshire. He is the author of Einstein in America: The Scientist’s Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima. His new book, Children of the New Forest, will be published this fall.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Builders and Destroyers • The Life of the Town • Feeding the Mill • Making Paper • Prosperous Plant • Ratville, NH • Three Generations of Wemysses • Crown Prince • The Perfect Balance • The Dark Side • A Fateful Decision • End of an Era • The Worst Years • The Best Years • A Battle We Couldn’t Win • Controllables and Uncontrollables • F This • Epilogue: They Ruined This Town • Postscript: The Day When Corporate America Doesn’t Run Us • Acknowledgments • Notes • Index

What People are Saying About This

Lloyd C. Irland

“Between the photos and the interviews, the reader can feel the heat in the boiler room, the scalding chlorine fumes in the bleach plant, and the scrambling of the workers as they wrestle with a sheet break. The decades of uncertainty and worry as the mill’s job count slipped from five hundred to three hundred, and then to zero, mirrors the experience of hundreds of one-company towns nationwide.”

Bill McKibben

“This remarkable account made me think of Studs Terkel and his classic oral histories—but it also made me think of all the blather about working-class communities in the wake of the Trump election. Jamie Sayen has replaced the blather with fact, and it’s a powerful portrait.”

Linda Upham-Bornstein

“Sayen’s work gives voice to the real-life consequences of deindustrialization in a northern New Hampshire paper mill town. The oral histories bring a human element to an all-too-familiar story, enhancing our understanding of community and our place as public citizens.”

Editorial Reviews

This remarkable account made me think of Studs Terkel and his classic oral histories—but it also made me think of all the blather about working-class communities in the wake of the Trump election. Sayen has replaced the blather with fact, and it’s a powerful portrait.” 

Bill McKibben

Through this remarkably engaging oral history and its many colorful stories of characters, pranks, and conflicts, the reader comes to know the people whose lives were dominated by the mill, and the devastating impact upon them and the town when the mill ceased to operate.

From the Ground Up

[A] heartbreaking history.” 

Wall Street Journal

Sayen captures brilliantly how the closing of paper mills impacted not just jobs, but people’s sense of community, of hope, and of belief in the American dream. He offers also a path forward for economic revitalization. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what happened in many rural and factory towns and what we should do about it as a nation.

Ro Khanna

It includes labor disputes and the women's struggle for equal pay, the financial machinations that passed ownership through multiple hands over its century in operation, and the bare hands of workers building it all from the ground up. It is all so vivid you can almost smell the sulfur on their skins.” 

800-CEO-Read

"Through this remarkably engaging oral history and its many colorful stories of characters, pranks, and conflicts, the reader comes to know the people whose lives were dominated by the mill, and the devastating impact upon them and the town when the mill ceased to operate."-- "From the Ground Up"

"Sayen captures brilliantly how the closing of paper mills impacted not just jobs, but people's sense of community, of hope, and of belief in the American dream. He offers also a path forward for economic revitalization. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what happened in many rural and factory towns and what we should do about it as a nation."--Ro Khanna, US representative from California's 17th congressional district

"[A] heartbreaking history." -- "Wall Street Journal"

"It includes labor disputes and the women's struggle for equal pay, the financial machinations that passed ownership through multiple hands over its century in operation, and the bare hands of workers building it all from the ground up. It is all so vivid you can almost smell the sulfur on their skins." -- "800-CEO-Read"

"This remarkable account made me think of Studs Terkel and his classic oral histories--but it also made me think of all the blather about working-class communities in the wake of the Trump election. Sayen has replaced the blather with fact, and it's a powerful portrait." --Bill McKibben, author of Radio Free Vermont

From the Publisher