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1 company towns in the americas An Introduction oliver j. dinius and angela vergara The company town, a planned community owned or controlled by a single company, has symbolized the power of industrial capitalism to exploit natural resources and transform society both in its vast ambition and its remarkable futility. It has represented the ambitions of industrialists and social reformers to transform working-class culture and impose work habits that could increase labor productivity and diminish social conflict. It has embodied the vision of architects and urban planners for new spaces of human habitation that promised —but not necessarily accomplished—improvements in living conditions for working families in material, social, and spiritual terms. Company towns have symbolized the controlling presence of industrial companies, but they have also been the site of working people’s struggles to improve the conditions of work and build communities on their own terms. The essays in this volume examine the economic, political, social, and cultural history of company towns in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, and the United States to illustrate the impact—often uneven and contradictory—of processes of industrial modernization on working people throughout the Americas.1 The title of this volume unites two concepts, “company towns” and “the Americas,” whose definitions and analytical use are still matters of scholarly debate. This volume does not resolve those debates, but it clarifies the concept of “company town” by exploring a spectrum of cases, and it shows by example how a focus on the Americas enriches our understanding of industrial modernity at both the micro and macro level. The introduction prepares the ground by providing a brief history of the company town with particular attention to its importance for the industrial development of the Americas. Moreover, the introduction explores past uses of the term “company town” and discusses similar analytical concepts used in the scholarly literature. The review of the scholarly literature focuses heavily on the historiography of labor in the Americas, which has been the main line of investigation on company towns and the people who 2 • o. dinius and a. vergara inhabit them. The individual contributions that compose this volume strongly reflect that scholarly tradition, as is evident in the last part of this introduction, which lays out the structure of the book. The brief presentations of the chapters identify themes that have dominated the debate of company towns such as, to name a few examples, the role of company stores, the importance of control over space, an emerging “sense of place” among inhabitants, and the transformation into union towns. company towns and the americas Company towns have been an integral part of the rise of industrial capitalism since the early nineteenth century.2 New technology, sources of energy, and the expansion of markets made possible the establishment of large factories and required the extraction of natural resources on a large scale. While employers preferred to locate their factories near existing population centers, they often had to create the infrastructure to be able to exploit natural resources or manufacture industrial goods in places that lacked extensive urban development. To recruit and establish the material conditions for the retention of a workforce in isolated areas, they built accommodations and provided basic services such as health care, education, and recreational facilities for workers and their families. Company towns thus owed their existence to the same economic rationale that drove all investment by industrial capitalists: production and profit. Social ideas also played an important role. Company owners hired architects and engineers to design model towns and established offices to assist the residents in their daily lives in order to exercise a degree of control over local society. They hoped to insulate workers from class and political conflicts, increasing productivity, and achieving social harmony. While social ideology often shaped the town’s design and internal organization, the company’s administrative practice always had to make concessions to the town’s unique physical, political, and cultural environment.3 The first experiments with industrial company towns and associated welfare programs took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Western Europe. Robert Owen introduced social reforms inspired by his utopian socialism in the Scottish textile town of New Lanark. In France, the brothers Eugène and Adolphe Schneider tried to preempt labor strife at the Le Creusot iron works by expanding company housing and social services. In the United States, companies experimented with model industrial towns throughout the nineteenth century.4 The New England textile machinery company...

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