Company Town: Potlatch, Idaho, and the Potlatch Lumber Company by Keith C. Petersen

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 161 introduced. Cooper concludes with a review of the commonalities of the situation of men and women workers in the period before 1920. Foremost was the handcraft nature of cigar making and the flexibility and autonomy this produced. Both men and women (despite unequal wages and gender-differentiated work cultures) were able to control their work conditions in ways that were almost unique among industrial workers. This possibility had disappeared by 1930. Cooper’s study makes extensive use of oral history as a source. Skillfully combined with the documentary materials she found, it contributes greatly to the subtly complex and systematic analysis, a remarkable contribution to the history of gender, technology, and work. Louise A. Tilly Dr. Tilly is professor of history and sociology at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research. A second edition of her study, Women, Work and Family, coauthored with Joan Scott, was published in 1987. She is currently doing research comparing work and family inequality among women tobacco and textile workers in France. Company Town: Potlatch, Idaho, and the Potlatch Lumber Company. By Keith C. Petersen. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1987. Pp. xix + 284; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper). In The Company Town in the American West (1965), James Allen drew attention to the dearth of historical studies on American company towns. More than twenty years later, and despite a multitude of com­ munity studies produced by the new social history, we know little more about the company town. Given the ubiquity of the company town’s presence on the American industrial landscape from the 19th to the mid-20th century, especially in the extractive industries of the Amer­ ican West, this neglect is both surprising and regrettable. Keith Pe­ tersen’s Company Town: Potlatch, Idaho, and the Potlatch Lumber Company endeavors to fill this historiographical gap through a detailed study of one of the West’s largest lumber company towns. Originating as part of the Weyerhaeuser syndicate, the Potlatch Lumber Company and its successors operated in this western Idaho lumbering community from 1906 until the early 1980s. The book’s greatest merit is its detailed reconstruction of the development of Potlatch as a company town in the early 20th century. Historians of technology will appreciate the meticulous description of the mill, its machinery, and the intricacies of the labor process in the early chapters. Using company archives and his considerable knowl­ edge of the lumber industry, Petersen also provides the reader with many insights into the social and economic rationales for establishing and maintaining a company town. Perhaps most important and 162 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CUL TURE illuminating is his account of the broad range of social facilities that the Potlatch Lumber Company provided its workers. The company operated its own school,jail, hospital, and medical plan, among other things. It also provided a wide range of recreational services and facilities such as a theater, library, gym, and organized team sports, especially baseball. A “townsite department” oversaw the manage­ ment of the town and supervised everything from recording births and deaths to controlling dogs. While Petersen’s attempts to re-create the texture of company town life are commendable, the book is marred by some important defects. The author relies heavily on company records and makes relatively little use of statistical or newspaper sources. Like so many works in forest and business history, it is very much history from the “top down,” with the development of Potlatch viewed almost solely from the perspective of company officials and the Weyerhaeuser family itself. Indeed, on a purely stylistic level, the flow of the book is interrupted by far too many biographical sketches and vignettes about the owners and operators of the company. Petersen is not uncritical of the Potlatch Lumber Company. He is frank about the entrepreneurial, antiunion, and idiosyncratic person­ alities of the men that founded and managed the company. He argues convincingly that the company unashamedly used its power to exer­ cise social control over its work force and inhabitants. Nevertheless, Petersen leaves the reader with the overall impression that the Potlatch populace was one big happy family. These conclusions are...