The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills that Shaped the American Economy by Hardy Green (review)

Hardy Green’s The Company Town takes an exhaustive look at the history of corporate-developed communities across the United States. In tracing the growth, heyday, and collapse of these towns, Green argues that they are paradoxically un-American in concept yet essential to the spirit of American business. As a survey work, Green does his best to describe a wide spectrum ranging from 1820s Lowell, Massachusetts, to more modern examples of Google’s work campuses in California (a descendent of the company town that gives employees all the amenities of the old cities in one location).

Company towns as described by Green follow a few basic guidelines: they are generally tied to a single industry that dominates the local community’s manufacturing as well as to the single larger-than-life personality who runs that industry. Most towns also fall along the spectrum between what Green describes as utopia to “exploitationville” (6). Green argues that business leaders establish their towns in accordance to the availability of resources and labor supply, with high-profit ventures tending to be more utopian in their visions and offerings of welfare capitalism while low-profit, unskilled industries (such as mining) tend to exploit workers and disregard safety or health measures.

For Pennsylvania, the only company town Green discusses in detail is Hershey, which he categorizes as a “utopian” town. He notes the strong religious influences driving Milton Hershey to create his city in 1904. Unlike railroad car magnate George Pullman’s town, which grew up around the same time and set strict guidelines on living that only allowed employees tenuous rental of space, Hershey allowed outright ownership of homes in his city and furnished them with modern plumbing while also providing employees with parks, schools, a zoo, a library, a trolley system, and other entertainments. Hershey believed that cleanliness and attractions would appease employee needs and act as a barrier against evil, but at the same time his actions smacked of a company-led moral police that controlled all aspects of life in the town.

In later years, Green argues that the Hershey Company used this utopian veneer to mask resentment, labor unrest, and a company that struggled to keep up with modern business practices. In 1970 what had been created as a worker-recreational amusement park known as Hershey Park reopened as a theme park called “Hersheypark,” a move that Green calls a “Disney-style” surrender of its old personality (41). This turn toward tourism is a hallmark of many company towns that outlived their original intention. With deindustrialization a sad reality and many jobs associated with the factories and mills either nonexistent or moved overseas, some business conglomerates have turned to their past in order to make money from old relics. He notes that Hersheypark now includes simulated factory tours and a museum in addition to the theme park rides. This allows the Hershey Company to continue to control its image for the foreseeable future and maintain the appearance of a family- and employee-friendly atmosphere.

Readers expecting a thorough discussion of Pennsylvania’s factory towns will be disappointed as the section on Hershey makes up only a small fraction of the more than 200 pages of the narrative. The portions of the text devoted to Hershey, furthermore, are taken from secondary sources rather than any original research. Green cites Michael D’Antonio’s biography of Milton Hershey (Hershey: Milton S. Hershey’s Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams), Carol Off’s investigative exposé (Bitter Chocolate: The Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet), and Joel Glen Brenner’s The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars as well as the company history on the Hershey website and the “Hersheypark” page on Wikipedia. Sadly, while he makes note of the extensive company...