His founding and leadership of pulp and paper, fibre-ware, and light and power companies as well as banks and railways made him a dominant figure in Maine industry.

His legacy went beyond his reputation as a capitalist, however; he created the first forest management program for International Paper Company and developed a planned community for the workers in his mills which was a model for the nation.

By the time he was sixteen, he was able to buy out his former employer, hiring over two hundred newsboys to sell papers, magazines and books to railway and steamboat customers.

[2] With his knowledge of what customers were reading, Chisholm Brothers began printing travel guides and founded a lithograph company in Portland, Maine, moving to half-tone photographs and then eventually, in 1888, to picture postcards.

William Augustus Russell, who died suddenly in January 1899, after founding IP (with Chisholm), which was then the largest paper company in the world.

Chisholm went on to initiate the first forest management program for that company and developed a close relationship with the Yale University School of Forestry.

He was aware of the slums and stacked tenements near mills in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Lawrence and Lowell, Massachusetts, and became convinced that satisfactory comfort and amenities were both practical and enlightened.

Named after his ancestral home in Scotland and designed and built by architect Cass Gilbert, Strathglass Park in Rumford provided housing for many mill workers.