Word: paper
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Mead's 800-acre Fine Paper plant is the city's largest employer, with 2,500 workers. One day last year the plant ran an ad for extra crew members; 10,000 people applied for about 50 slots. That's because the jobs are secure, the benefits good and the starting wages well above the area's average of about $6.50 an hour...
They're buying better cuts of meat, says the butcher, but driving an extra 100 miles to get a better car deal; saving money on toilet paper at Wal-Mart--"I never did that in the '80s," says a local businessman--so they have extra to spend on a better breed of golf club. The deli owner was confident enough to start her own business, but is worried enough that she doesn't yet dare raise the price of a liverwurst above $3.50. The local bankers see people with as much as $70,000 in charge-card debt, which could...
...year. The next morning, Charles and Shirley Warner come in to buy their grandchild a swing set and walk out with $476 worth of green wrought-iron furniture. "I don't do this much, but my work is good," says Charles, who toils nearby at the huge Mead Fine Paper plant. In March, Orem sold every bag of Easter candy he ordered. That wasn't supposed to happen. Since then, flowers are up 15%; shoes up 25%; even men's clothing, usually a dog, is way up. Orem can't keep enough shotguns and rifles in stock. Though he carries...
...with changing technology are finding fewer and fewer plants that will hire them: they don't want the $5.50-an-hour jobs, but they don't have the skills for the $12-an-hour ones. Richard Rahrle is one who made the adjustment. He has worked at the Mead paper plant since 1963; the original control room where he worked, which mixed the pulp and dyes and other ingredients that go into the paper, became obsolete once the new computers arrived in 1993 and did it faster and better. "I'd never touched a computer in my life," Rahrle says...
...author, a Washington Post editor, gets a lot right about reporting, from Truell's woozy bravado to the knowledge that a new owner may stride into the newsroom any morning and start counting paper clips. The ethical dilemma he presents is real too, though a bit overstated. Truell learns that the missing French microbiologist is on loan to China, working unwillingly on a deadly project. He needs to be rescued, and so does the world. His CIA contacts ask if Truell, who's headed for China, will take on the derring...