From Trains to Paper: The Pain of Losing What Built a Town

Although decades apart, witnessing huge industrial losses in two deeply southern settings is enough economic trauma for a lifetime.

My hometown of McComb lost many hundreds of jobs when the Illinois Central Railroad Co. closed its maintenance shops in the 1970s. Those jobs had literally built the city, founded in 1872.

Despite the legendary “City of New Orleans” passenger train roaring through there twice a day, there’s no current portrayal of the McComb railyard’s monumental commercial activities of the past.

Thankfully, a dedicated corps of local volunteers took it upon themselves to construct an artifact-filled railroad museum replete with memories of times gone by. When an arsonist burned it to the ground, they rebuilt it.

The current domicile of Blakely, Georgia, wasn’t a “mill town” at its founding in 1825. The

Georgia-Pacific paper mill that recently shut down and turned loose 550 workers was established in the early 1960s and was instrumental in helping Blakely grow, chiefly under other owners before G-P bought it in 1990. However, the strong shoulders of agriculture built the state border town’s economy, and remains a stalwart sector today.

Blakely and Early County constitute peanut country as one of the nation’s leaders in growing the legume, most of which ends up in peanut butter that helps to feed the world. (Peanut trade groups have donated 5 million jars to poor nations worldwide since 2010.)

This is also cotton country, but with no comparison to the more substantial yields of the vast Mississippi Delta.

As with the McComb railroad workforce, it wasn’t the workers’ efforts that doomed the Georgia industrial plant. At

Georgia-Pacific, the above-average payrolls went to highlyskilled mechanics of every sort imaginable who produced “containerboard,” used to fortify multiple types of cardboard boxes.

The same stripe of mechanically-skilled employees toiled in the McComb shops. There’s not many machines that those workers couldn’t tear down and put back together.

A charge has been leveled in the environs of Early County, Georgia, since it closed that while the paper mill’s employees lived up to their end of the deal, the company failed to spend the necessary money to keep it viable in today’s papermaking world.

In its news release announcing the closure,

Georgia-Pacific admitted, “We do not believe the mill can competitively serve our customers in the long run.”

Obviously, only Koch/

Georgia-Pacific could have remedied that state of inadequacy over time.

Suffice it to say that the Blakely community’s tranquil life was violently shaken at news of the shutdown. Some displaced workers have found new jobs; it isn’t known how many haven’t. There’s a Mississippi factory similar to the one in Blakely that’s also operated by

Georgia-Pacific, a newer so-called “sister plant” making the same product with a workforce of about 250. It is located The August GORDON

at Monticello in Lawrence County, 20 miles east of Brookhaven along the Pearl River and U.S. 84. The urge to interject “hmm” right here is strong.

Georgia-Pacific was Early County’s leading taxpayer, covering an astonishing 40-percent of property levies, worth about $6.5 million. Who will be left to take up that tax mantle—-taxpaying citizens, of course, many of whom have already protested their new property tax evaluations. Koch/

Georgia-Pacific is expected to protest its own evaluation and bill for the next cycle of taxation. Local property tax evaluators believe the company’s army of lawyers will come claiming a “diminished value” of the property. “It’s going to be devastating,” David Bridges, an expert on Southwest Georgia’s economy, said at a townhall concerning the mill’s closing. He added, “This community needs to move forward and not just move on. Move on, means give up and quit. You can’t give up and quit.”

---Mac Gordon is a native of McComb. He is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.