Correspondence between R.R. McCormick and Franklin A. Dean, Jr., 1912-04 - 1913-12

When Robert R. McCormick was elected president of the Tribune Company in 1911, he convinced its directors that the fast-growing circulation of the Chicago Tribune made necessary an assured supply of newsprint at the best possible price, and received $1,000,000 to build a paper mill. He and Warren Curtis, Jr., a paper mill engineer, chose a site for the mill at Thorold, Ontario, where in June 1912 work commenced on the construction of the Ontario Paper Company. This venture was the first of the Canadian operations undertaken by the Tribune Company--operations which grew to include two newsprint mills, thousands of square miles of leased timber lands, a transportation company, and two hydroelectric plants.

This collection consists chiefly of McCormick's correspondence with Warren Curtis, Jr., who designed and supervised the building of the mill, and other executives of the company during the construction and shakedown period. Highly knowledgable as a result of his executive and engineering experience as president of the Chicago Sanitary District (1906/1910), McCormick was intensly involved in the planning of the mill, and received highly detailed reports on every phase of the work in progress, to which he responded in equal detail. Twenty-three years later, when he was more busily engaded in publishing the Chicago Tribune, McCormick received even more extensive reports during the construction of the second newsprint mill, at Baie Compeau. (See box 5 of collection XIX-29 for this material.)