Reader’s Corner

Orion is based in the Northeast, among many “ghost towns” that are stunned and struggling remnants of the company towns they used to be. It takes a LONG time to recover. So Hardy Green’s The Company Town was of particular interest. The author, a labor historian, tells the story of the American economy and of capitalism, via engaging stories about company towns, including textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, tire plants in Akron, and right up to Google’s Project 02 in The Dalles, Oregon.

Publisher’s Weekly‘s advance review:
“Labor historian Green tells the story of American capitalism as played out in the rise and fall of the “company town” in this engaging book. From the tent cities of Appalachian coal fields to the model villages built for New England mill workers, the company town was once a common feature in the American landscape, with a legacy that can be seen in Google and Microsoft’s high-tech campuses. Marked by the domination of a corporation over the lives of its workers, company towns also became scenes of social control and experiment: capitalist utopianists like candy-maker Milton Hershey strived to create communities that would improve worker productivity, moral rectitude, and docility. If the book has a flaw, it is its overemphasis on the (admittedly colorful) personalities and philosophies of the corporate barons at the expense of the workers’ themselves, whose lives are sketched in the abstract but whose voices are rarely heard. With that caveat, the book provides a valuable perspective on a well-worn history, detailing the heinous, lofty, and occasionally absurd ways companies have tried to shape their workers’ lives beyond factory walls.”

The Company Town
The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills that Shaped the American Economy
by Hardy Green
Basic Books