Cruising the Paine Lumber Company Historic District in Oshkosh Wisconsin

 

Screenshots and video by Retiring Guy

 Paine Lumber Company Historic District

Oshkosh contributes a chapter to the United States' ugly labor history.

Strung along the east bank of the Fox River, these row houses recall an important chapter in Wisconsin labor history—a bitter strike at the Paine Lumber Company and the firm’s subsequent experiment in corporate paternalism. The company was established in 1853, in an era when the smokestacks of sawmills, sash and door companies, and furniture factories lined the banks of the Fox River. By 1908, Paine had become the world’s largest sash and door manufacturer. It employed more than 2,200 people at its peak in 1929. Many of Paine’s workers lived in these company-owned row houses, which owed their origins to violent labor strife. In 1898, local woodworkers engaged in a fourteen-week-long, industry-wide strike for a minimum wage of $1.50 per day, the abolition of labor by women and girls (with whom the industry replaced men, at much lower wages), a weekly pay-day, and recognition of the Amalgamated Woodworkers union. The lumber company imported scabs, primarily German Russians, who were enticed to stay by adopting a new policy of corporate paternalism. These recruits made up a large part of the company’s workforce in the early twentieth century.

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