PORTLAND, Maine — The most pressing question after the closure of three paper mills in Maine this year: “What now?”
Municipal and state officials say potential buyers are still sniffing around shuttered mill properties and related assets in Old Town, East Millinocket and Bucksport, but there’s an air of uncertainty hanging over each facility that represents not just jobs but the long history of an industry in which Maine’s workers and woodlands have been No. 1.
“These are private companies but they’ve had such a public place in our state,” said Michael Hillard, an economics professor at the University of Southern Maine who’s writing a book titled “The Rise and Fall of the Paper Plantation.” He expects to publish in 2016.
Hillard said the book looks back at what happened to the “crown jewel” of Maine’s economy and documents the more recent history during which he said other countries — notably China — poured public money into research and development of papermaking technologies that have helped their industry leap ahead.
“There is a thinkable economic scenario in the last 25 years that could have done a lot more to save what has been the crown jewel of our state’s economy,” Hillard said.
Hillard takes the long view after his research into Maine’s paper industry that has involved poring over company minutes from the early 20th century and interviewing more than 150 people about their experiences.
It’s a long history that in recent years has come up against economic forces beyond Maine’s borders, beyond U.S. borders and beyond the borders of magazines, newspapers and printed financial statements.
“Industries don’t last in one place forever,” Hillard said. “Paper is a great example of this. The industry takes root and prospers for 100 years and then the ground shifts from underneath it and then it’s all gone… you’re taking the communities that were really prosperous and cutting the heart of them and you have a shell of what it once was.”
That’s an open wound for the communities where companies shuttered mills this year, but Hillard said it’s the result of a trend that was exacerbated in the recession that hit in late 2007.
“That hit manufacturing in the U.S. quite hard and, with these older industries, when they get knocked down, they don’t really rebound or respond because of those long-term forces,” Hillard said.
Hillard’s pending book comes after about 15 years of research into the industry that was the “crown jewel” of the state for more than 100 years, he said, during a period when S.D. Warren’s mill employed more than 3,000 people. It earned the name of “Mother Warren,” Millinocket was the “Magic City” and East Millinocket the “Town that Paper Made.”
Hilliard said that history comes to bear on the state’s politics, too. Less than a month before Maine voters elect the state’s next governor, the closures have demonstrated the unique role that paper mills play in the state’s economy and public consciousness, he said.
“There’s something inherently radical that conservative politicians feel it is a role of government to help find new investors and find new partners to keep [mills] going,” he said.
Despite those efforts, the long-term trends of international commerce and declining demand for paper foretell significant and lasting changes, according to Hilliard.
“The deindustrialization doesn’t mean the end of life [there] for people, but they won’t have the prosperity that they once did,” Hillard said.
The closures of mills will make it hard for the communities they leave in their shadow to retain younger residents, Hillard said, but there’s one resource Maine has that endures.
“Sometimes it seems like a hackneyed thing to say that there’s a work ethic [in Maine], but I’ve done long interviews since 2000 with over 150 people and I just see it over and over again, and that work ethic is instilled from a young age,” Hillard said. “There’s a reason why industry went there.”
Hillard said he thinks such a work ethic and resourcefulness will help people adapt.
“It means a smaller economy,” he said. “And one in which sometimes people do better than just get by.”