Labor at ‘Mother Warren’: Paternalism, Welfarism, and Dissent at S.D. Warren
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2004
Publication Title
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00236560410001679523?scroll=top&needAccess=true&
Abstract
This article describes the labor history of the S.D. Warren Company, a leading producer of high quality coated and plain publication paper that employed over 3,000 by the mid-twentieth century at its principal Westbrook, Maine site. The company was an anomaly, staying non-union for decades after paper had become one of the most unionized manufacturing industries in the U.S., particularly in its home state of Maine. The key to its success in rebuffing unionization and quelling dissent for over a century lay in a distinct mix of paternalistic and corporate welfare practices. Beginning with founder Samuel Dennis Warren, S. D. Warren's executives blended paternalistic familiarity with a nascent welfarism; his descendents and, later, professional managers continued and deepened this hybrid approach to eliciting employee loyalty and warding off worker dissent. S. D. Warren continued to rely on the paternalism of its mill managers and on various forms of generosity and leniency to stay non-union. The company's failure to adopt a systematic approach to supervision, combined with the expectations created by its paternalism, made it vulnerable to worker dissatisfaction and dissent. Such dissent erupted in a 1916 organizing drive and strike, which was nevertheless skillfully defeated by the company. Dissent emerged again in the 1950s and 1960s, when workers and paper unions made several attempts to unionize, finally succeeding in 1967.
Recommended Citation
“Labor at ‘Mother Warren’: Paternalism, Welfarism, and Dissent at S.D. Warren,” Labor History 45:1 (2004) 37-60. 2004 Labor History Essay Prize “Best Essay, U.S. Topic.”
