The Company Town (38 page)

There are contemporary stirrings in this direction. “Social entrepreneurship” has become a hot trend in business-education circles. For example, in 1998, faculty at Harvard Business School and a select group of corporate executives began an effort to get corporations to address social needs, from public education to inner-city job creation. Harvard's Initiative on Social Enterprise sponsors forums on corporate social responsibility and offers fellowships to recent Harvard B-school graduates who are launching enterprises “with a central focus on creating social value.” The Harvard effort is global in orientation, favoring Third World betterment (Milton Friedman would howl), but it also encourages involvement with domestic projects such as early-childhood literacy programs. Faculty member Rosabeth Moss Kanter describes the thinking behind the initiative, along with the benevolent efforts of many U.S. companies, in her recent book,
SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good
.
³

The
Stanford Social Innovation Review
, published by that university's business school, considers the same matters as the Harvard project. Recent articles probe corporate philanthropy, nonprofits management, “responsible” investing, and developing-world concerns. Along with the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, the
Review
sponsors a yearly Momentum conference, where social entrepreneurs and philanthropists connect and discuss issues. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania also sponsors conferences and courses on social entrepreneurship.
⁴

Additionally, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates made headlines in 2008 with a call for “creative capitalism” to help solve the world's problems. The suggestion was hotly debated online and ultimately in the pages of a book,
Creative Capitalism
, compiled by journalist Michael Kinsley. Observing a similar impulse, numerous companies are often cited for their social contributions, including Southwest Airlines, Costco, and Google. These corporations, in the words of Harvard Business School professor Nancy F. Koehn, “meet the needs of a broader set of stakeholders than shareholders.”
⁵

Such contemporary projects, though, take little recognition of the historical record, which shows a long tradition of business social experimentation and efforts at social betterment. Business utopias of the past and present have not always succeeded—many, in fact, were colossal failures. But particularly in these recession years, when the temptation is to bear down ever harder on those who have managed to keep their jobs, there should be a greater recognition of this strain in U.S. culture and civilization. Today's social-enterprise champions could do worse than to reflect upon the diverse experience of America's company towns.

This book is the product of many years' experience and reflection. As a native Tennessean, I have long been acquainted with Oak Ridge, the daunting atomic city in the far eastern part of the state. In the 1970s, I lived in Massachusetts and became familiar with the imposing brick mills and decaying tenements of such factory towns as Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, and Adams, Massachusetts, and Manchester, New Hampshire.

In the 1980s, I traveled to the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia on numerous occasions—to such places as Roanoke Rapids and Kannapolis, North Carolina; Darlington, South Carolina; Columbus, Georgia; Galax, Virginia; and Cordova, Alabama, as a member of the staff of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. But it was later in that decade that a company town—and company-town culture—made its greatest impression on me, in Austin, Minnesota. I spent many weeks there as a member of a consultancy that worked with labor organizations, and I traveled with Hormel union local members to Dubuque, Ottumwa, and Sioux City, Iowa; Fremont, Nebraska; Dakota City, South Dakota; and other meatpacking towns. It was also during that time that headlines trumpeted traumatic industrial events in such locales as Watsonville, California; Morenci, Arizona; Mahwah, New Jersey; and Flint, Michigan.

Over the decades, I also passed through Gary, Indiana; Dearborn, Michigan; Hershey, Pennsylvania; Amana, Iowa; Pawtucket and Woonsocket, Rhode Island; and Corning, New York. And I became aware that there existed no general history of the company town in America. This book is an effort to right that situation.

The list of friends and colleagues from whom I learned about such places is long. It includes Tom Herriman, Sandra Cate, Bob Gumpert, Gretchen Donart, Victoria Williams, Ed Allen, Ray Rogers, Jim Guyette, Peter Winkels, Carole and Jim Apold, Merrill Evans, Peter Rachleff, and Dick Blin.

Onetime
BusinessWeek
colleague Christopher Farrell and former Rhodes College history professor James Lanier read the manuscript and made very useful suggestions. Any errors or omissions in the book are, of course, my fault alone. My agent James Levine was an early believer in the project and immediately made useful suggestions for additions. My editor, Tim Sullivan, was ever helpful with ideas and is probably due extra remuneration for his ready encouragement and emotional support during dark moments of that unhappy year, 2009. Other Basic Books stalwarts who provided invaluable service include publisher John Sherer, publicity director Michele Jacob, marketing director Rick Joyce, and Internet marketing chief Peter Costanzo, who provided advice and technical expertise in support of my halting efforts in the digital realm. And finally, none of this would have been possible without my loving and ever-responsive wife and soul mate, Emily M. Bass.

1
William F. Nolan,
Hammett: A Life at the Edge
(New York: Congdon & Weed, 1983), pp. 13, 75-77; Melvyn Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW
(New York: Quadrangle Books, 1969), pp. 186-187; Dorothy Gallagher,
All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), p. 65.

2
Dashiell Hammett,
Red Harvest
, in
The Novels of Dashiell Hammett
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 3.

3
Ron Chernow,
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
(New York: Random House, 1998), pp. 378-379.

4
John Gunther,
Inside U.S.A
. (New York: New Press, 1997), pp. 166-172. Originally published in 1946.

5
John Markoff and Saul Hansell, “Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power,”
New York Times
, June 14, 2006.

6
Housing statistic in Stuart D. Brandes,
American Welfare Capitalism 1889-1940
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 38.

1
Henry David Thoreau, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” in
Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau
, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Modern Library, 1937), pp. 340-341. Originally published in 1839.

2
E. J. Hobsbawm,
Industry and Empire
(Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 56.

3
Gary Kulik, Roger Parks, and Theodore Z. Penn, eds.,
The New England Mill Village, 1790-1860
(Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1982), p. xxiii.

4
Kulik et al.,
The New England Mill Village
, pp. xxiv-xxv; Thomas Dublin,
Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), pp. 15-16.

5
Robert F. Dalzell Jr.,
Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 12.

6
Friedrich Engels,
The Condition of the Working Class in England
(London: Panther Books, 1969), pp. 80-96. Originally written in 1844.

7
Hobsbawm,
Industry and Empire
, p. 56.

8
Barbara Freese,
Coal: A Human History
(Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2003), p. 81.

9
Kulik et al.,
The New England Mill Village
, pp. xxv-xxxi.

10
Ibid., p. xxvi; Thomas Dublin,
Lowell: The Story of an Industrial City
(Washington, DC: Department of the Interior, 1992), pp. 21-32; Dalzell,
Enterprising Elite
, p. 6.

11
Nathan Appleton,
Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell
(Lowell, MA: B. H. Penhallow, 1858), pp. 1-14.

12
Ibid., p. 12-14; Dalzell,
Enterprising Elite
, pp. 38-44;
Correspondence Between Nathan Appleton and John A. Lowell in Relation to the Early History of the City of Lowell
(Boston: Eastburn's Press, 1848), pp. 5-11, 18.

13
Ron Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
(New York: Penguin Press, 2004), pp. 370- 374, 386-388.

14
Richard C. Wade,
The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 21, 190-195; Sam Bass Warner Jr.,
The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 70-71.

15
Harriet H. Robinson,
Loom and Spindle or Life Among the Early Mill Girls
(New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1898), p. 5.

16
Appleton,
Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell
, pp. 23-25, 32; Joseph Lipchitz, “The Golden Age,” in
Cotton Was King: A History of Lowell, Massachusetts
, ed. Arthur L. Eno (Somersworth, NH: New Hampshire Publishing Co., 1976), pp. 84-86; John Coolidge,
Mill and Mansion: A Study of Architecture and Society in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1820-1865
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 28, 183; Coolidge notes that, unfortunately, only a few quotes remain from Boott's diary, which is now lost.

17
Appleton,
Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell
, pp. 28-31; Dublin,
Women at Work
, pp. 20-22, 61-62, 133-134; Dublin,
Lowell
, pp. 36-39; Dalzell,
Enterprising Elite
, pp. 49-50; Coolidge,
Mill and Mansion
, pp. 32-62; Michel Chevalier,
Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States: Being a Series of Letters on North America
(Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Co., 1839), pp. 128-129; Robinson,
Loom and Spindle
, pp. 8-9.

18
Appleton,
Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell
, p. 16; Chevalier,
Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States
, pp. 133-142; Charles Dickens,
American
Notes
(London and New York: Cassell & Co., n.d.), pp. 55-58;
The Lowell Offering
, ed. Benita Eisler (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977), pp. 82, 161-162; Harriet Martineau,
Society in America
, vol. 2 (New York: Saunders and Otley, 1837), pp. 57-58.

19
For a discussion of nineteenth-century women's role as civilizing agents, see William R. Taylor,
Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character
(New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 118-122; Nancy Zaroulis, “Daughters of Freemen,” in
Cotton Was King
, pp. 107-108; Norman Ware,
The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860: The Reaction of American Industrial Society to the Advance of the Industrial Revolution
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), pp. 72-74, 107-110.

20
Dublin,
Women at Work
, pp. 35-40, 80; Dublin,
Lowell
, p. 40-50.

21
Ware,
The Industrial Worker
, pp. 74-78, 84, 148; Kulik et al.,
The New England Mill Village
, p. 265.

22
Dublin,
Women at Work
, pp. 86-107.

23
Ibid., pp.108-123; Ware,
The Industrial Worker
, p. 88. In 1842, the
Offering
was taken over by the
Lowell Courier
, which was controlled by the corporations. When revived in 1847 as the
New England Offering
, it was purely an organ of company propaganda.

24
Ware,
The Industrial Worker
, pp. 102-106, 149-151; Dublin,
Women at Work
, pp. 135-144.

25
Dalzell,
Enterprising Elite
, pp. 51, 69-81, 225; Dublin,
Lowell
, p. 67; Ware,
The Industrial Worker
, pp. 105, 152; Fidelia O. Brown, “Decline and Fall: The End of the Dream,” in
Cotton Was King
, pp. 143-144; Manchester, New Hampshire, planned and developed in 1837, was modeled on Lowell, and originally used a workforce of unmarried Yankee women living in boardinghouses. In the final decades of the century, the separate corporations there were merged into the Amoskeag Co., which for a time was proprietor of the world's largest textile factory. See Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach,
Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City
(New York: Pantheon, 1978).

26
Brown, “Decline and Fall,” pp. 142, 145-155; Dublin,
Lowell
, pp. 65-77.

27
Coolidge,
Mill and Mansion
, 2nd ed., p. vii; Louis Adamic,
My America, 1928- 1938
(New York: DaCapo Press, 1976), pp. 263-278.

28
Dublin,
Lowell
, pp. 82-89; Brown, “Decline and Fall,” p. 155.

29
Jack Kerouac,
The Town and the City
(New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1950), p. 46.

30
Coolidge,
Mill and Mansion
, 1942 ed., p. 113.

1
Stanley Buder,
Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880-1930
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 4; Sir Peter Hall,
Cities in Civilization
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), pp. 746-747. New York
population figures are complicated by the fact that the city was growing physically as well, absorbing Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond in 1898. For consistency's sake, the figures given are for the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx only.