THE GLEN MANUFACTURING
COMPANY
(later known as the International Paper Co.)
The Glen
Manufacturing Company came to Berlin in 1885 and purchased the privilege
locally known as the “Great Pitch” privilege of Daniel Green, and built
their first mill which the town voted to exempt from taxation for a term
of ten years, and in all probability this was one of the best
investments the town ever made, as the company has steadily increased
their plant until today they are said to have the largest newspaper
plant in the world.
Their first
paper machine was set running in the spring of 1886 and was named after
Col. C. H. Taylor, of the Boston Globe. In 1887 they made an addition to
their first mill, giving them three paper machines. In the same year
they purchased a mill which had been operated for a short time by the
White Mountain Pulp and Paper Co., which they incorporated with their
mill No. 5. No. 3 was erected in 1889, in 1890 another machine was added
to No. 1, in 1891 No. 4 was built. In 1892, No. 5 and No. 6, their
sulphite pulp mill in 1893 and when the improvements now in process of
construction are completed they will have eight paper machines, making
about 125 tons of paper per day, using more than 30,000,000 feet of
spruce timber per annum. They own about 100,000 acres of timber lands
and contract for the cutting of their own timber so that their
facilities for obtaining their raw material are unequaled by any other
large paper mills in the country and for this reason they are able to
manufacture at an advantage over those less favorably situated. They now
have a complete plant manufacturing everything that goes into their
paper, the sulphite pulp taking the place of the rags which were
formerly used in small quantities to give the requisite toughness. They
make about fifty tons of sulphite pulp per day and after the present
improvements are completed the output will be further increased to
ninety tons per day with sixty-five tons of ground wood pulp. This pulp
soaked in water and a certain percentage of sulphite added thereto is
then passed through the paper machine, a great mass of machinery in
which the moist pulp passing over felts and screens and between warm
cylinders and over various appliances for drying out the water, finally
comes out at the other end of the machine in the form of a wide sheet of
pure white paper, ten feet wide, on the largest machine in the Glen
mills and is wound up in a great roll ready for the printing press, at
the rate of about three hundred feet per minute. The Glen paper
machines, when all are completed, will probably turn out nearly one
hundred thousand square feet of newspaper every minute and run day and
night continuously, twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week.
In about two months they make paper enough to encircle the earth around
the equator with a belt ten feet wide. They have had continuous
contracts with the Boston Globe and the New York Tribune ever since the
first mill in
Berlin
was built, and their paper is used in newspaper offices from
Maine
to Texas, and in the British Isles. Their payroll is about $6,000 and
they give employment to five hundred men. They are directly connected
with both the Boston & Maine and Grand Trunk railroads, by their own
railroad tracks, and they have in constant use three locomotives of
their own by which all the shifting of the cars is done around their
mill yard. They have also erected many cottage houses which are rented
to their employees making what is locally known as “Glen Village,” and
in countless ways they have contributed directly and indirectly to the
prosperity of the town.
The present
officers of the company are John L. Hobson of
Haverhill,
Mass.,
president; H. M. Knowles of Boston, Mass., treasurer; I. B. Hosford of
Haverhill, Mass., general manager.
Now if
anyone has the curiosity to get a bird’s-eye view of the Glen Mills and
Village, just go up on Berlin Heights or part way up Mt. Forist and he
can see all the mills and the railroad tracks in every direction all
through the mill yard and can see those busy locomotives shifting the
cars from one place to another wherever wanted, so that one could form
some idea of the vast amount of business done in these mills. Now what a
curiosity it would be if anyone could start at the head of these mills
where the spruce logs, great and small, are rolled from the cars, hauled
into the mill, sawed into the required lengths and so follow them
through all the different processes which they have to pass through
until at the far end of the paper machine this great sheet of pure white
paper is being rolled up ready for shipment, and remember that but a few
hours before, this beautiful paper was in those spruce logs or perhaps
growing in the woods. Truly this can be said to be one of the wonders of
the last part of the nineteenth century.
From
"Recollections of Early Berlin" by Bailey K. Davis, 1897
