A company town is a place where all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets, and recreation facilities.
Some company towns were established to improve living conditions for workers, but many have been regarded as controlling and/or exploitative.[1] Others were not planned, such as Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, United States, one of the oldest, which began as a Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company mining camp and mine site 9 mi from the nearest outside road.
Paternalism
Paternalism, a subtle form of social engineering, refers to the control of workers by their employers who seek to force middle-class ideals upon their working-class employees. Many nineteenth-century business people considered paternalism as a moral responsibility, or often a religious obligation, which would advance society while furthering their business interests. Accordingly, the company town offered a unique opportunity to achieve such ends.
Although many prominent examples of company towns portray their founders as "capitalists with a conscience", for example, George Cadbury's Bournville, if viewed cynically, the company town was often an economically viable ploy to attract and retain workers. Additionally, for-profit shops within company towns were usually owned by the company, which was unavoidable to its isolated workers, thus resulting in a monopoly for the owners.[2]
Although economically successful, company towns sometimes failed politically due to lacking elected officials and municipally owned services.[3] Accordingly, workers often had no say in local affairs, and therefore felt dictated to. Ultimately, this political climate caused resentment amongst workers and resulted in many residents losing long-term affection for their towns. Such was the case at the company town of Pullman, Chicago in the 1890s.
History of American company towns
Pullman lesson
Although many small company towns existed in mining areas of Pennsylvania before the American Civil War, one of the most significant and most substantial early company towns in the United States was Pullman, developed in the 1880s just outside the Chicago city limits. The entirely company-owned town provided housing, markets, a library, churches, and entertainment for the 6,000 company employees and an equal number of dependents. Employees were not required to live in Pullman, although workers tended to get better treatment if they chose to live there.
The town operated successfully until the economic panic of 1893 when demand for the company's products declined, and Pullman lowered employee wages and hours to offset the decrease in demand. Despite this, the company refused to lower rents in the town or the price of goods at its shops, thus resulting in the Pullman Strike of 1894. A national commission formed to investigate the causes of the strikes found that Pullman's paternalism was partly to blame and labeled it "Un-American".[4] The report condemned Pullman for refusing to negotiate and for the economic hardships he created for workers in the town of Pullman. "The aesthetic features are admired by visitors, but have little money value to employees, especially when they lack bread." The State of Illinois filed suit, and in 1898, the
Model company towns
During the late nineteenth century, model company towns materialized as enlightened industrialists recognized that many poor workers were living in appalling conditions. These industrialists wished to combat the unsanitary and congested conditions common to working-class districts to create better living conditions for workers.[8] Model company towns such as Port Sunlight (1888) and Bournville (1895) were influential in regards to their building and planning innovation. The ideas generated from these model towns are regarded as having a significant influence on the Garden City movement.[3][9]
The model company town is concerned with creating a productive and prosperous company. Enlightened industrialists believed this could be achieved by providing a healthier residential environment for their employees. Planning a model company town involved the fusion of new notions of house design and layout.[10]
Examples (by country)
Belgium
Having bought the mining concession of Grand-Hornu in 1810, French industrialist Henri De Gorge soon realized the need to accommodate the growing workforce of his expanding business. He commissioned architect François Obin and, after his death, Bruno Renard, to build a functional complex in a neoclassical style. Grand-Hornu became one of the world's first purpose-built company towns. It was abandoned in 1954 after the mine was closed. It currently houses a museum of contemporary art and temporary exhibitions. Grand-Hornu is one of the four industrial sites in Wallonia that were listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2012.
Brazil
Fordlândia was established by American industrialist Henry Ford in 1928 as a prefabricated industrial town in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil. It was intended to be inhabited by 10,000 people, but it failed, and the city was abandoned in 1934.
Canada
See also
- List of company towns
- College town
- Mill town
- Monotown, a similar phenomenon in Russia
- Railway town
- Corporatocracy
- Housing cooperative
- Public housing
- Wage slavery
- History of social housing in France
- Kibbutz
Further reading
- Barenberg, Alan. Gulag town, company town: Forced labor and its legacy in Vorkuta (Yale University Press, 2014) in Soviet Union/USSR.
- Bowen, Dawn S. "In the shadow of the refinery: an American oil company town on the Caribbean island of Aruba". Journal of Cultural Geography 36.1 (2019): 49–77.
- Carson, Doris Anna, and Dean Bradley Carson. "Mobilities and path dependence: Challenges for tourism and 'attractive' industry development in a remote company town". Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism 14.4 (2014): 460–479.
- Neumann, Pamela. "Toxic talk and collective (in) action in a company town: The case of La Oroya, Peru". Social Problems 63.3 (2016): 431–446. online
- Raianu, Mircea. ""A mass of anomalies": Land, Law, and Sovereignty in an Indian Company Town
References
- Allen Seager. Company Towns The Canadian Encyclopedia, February 6, 2006, retrieved September 18, 2021^
- Crawford, M. Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns London & New York: Verso, 1995^
- J.S. Garner. The Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age Oxford University Press, 1992^