One mill, now owned by Verso Paper Corp., makes the paper for Martha Stewart Living, National Geographic, Cosmopolitan, and other magazines. It’s a big plant, built by International Paper in the sixties. The other mill is older and made of brick and stone. It’s called the Otis Mill, and it was built by Hugh Chisholm, the founder of International Paper, in 1896. Back then it was a prodigy—THE LARGEST PAPER MILL PLANT IN THE WORLD, according to a headline in the Lewiston Weekly Journal, which was exaggerating, but only a little. The Otis Mill has produced all sorts of paper over the years—paper for postcards, ornate playing cards, wallpaper, copier paper, inkjet paper, and the shiny, peel-off paper backing for sticky labels. Now, though, the Otis Mill doesn’t make anything. The paper industry is in a slump. The new owner, Wausau Paper, shut down one of Otis’s two paper machines in August 2008. The number of employees dropped from about 250 to 96. Then, this spring, Wausau’s CEO, Thomas J.
What do You think about The Way The World Works: Essays?
