The Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age ed. by John S. Garner

Abstract

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE. Book Reviews 619 The Company Town: Architecture and Society in theEarly IndustrialAge. Edited byJohn S. Garner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. 245; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95. Conference papers do not invariably make a good publication, but on this occasion, with efficient editing and an introduction by John S. Garner, they combine to provide a remarkably effective overview of the development of the company town. Garner defines the company town as “a settlement built and operated by a single business enterprise,” and he describes them as being characteristic of societies in the early stages of industrialism. They tended to develop where entrepreneurs in new or expanding industries found it necessary or desirable to equip their workers with houses and other amenities within easy reach of their place ofwork. This could be done in a very minimum fashion, although it was not long before visionaries like Robert Owen at New Lanark in Scotland recognized the opportunities for social engineering that were created by the company town. By the end of the 19th century such “enlightened” employers had devised a wide range of responses to these opportunities and contributed thereby to the promotion of healthy town life, garden cities, and the whole ethos of town planning that has come to assume such importance in the 20th century. There are seven contributions to this collection, which together cover a wide range of company towns, with three “case studies” in Europe and four in the New World. The first essay, by Bruce Thomas, is a vivid and informative narrative of the rapid growth of the South Wales ironwork­ ing town of Merthyr Tydfil, dominated by four great companies, all competing for land on which to house their workers—and to dump their industrial waste. Then Garner contributes a fascinating study of the mid-19th-century chocolate empire of Jean Antoine-Brutus Menier (1795-1853), based on Noisiel-sur-Marne. The third European study is by Mats Ahnlund and Lasse Brunnstrom on Scandinavia, describing the “Bruk” communities that grew up to work metals, textiles, and lumber in thickly forested regions. The American contributions deal with early New England mill towns (Richard M. Candee); 20th-century mill towns in the U.S. South (Margaret Crawford); mining and lumbering towns in the western United States (Leland M. Roth); and the nitrate and plantation towns of Chile and Argentina (Olga Paterlini de Koch). The contributors sustain a high level of discursive narrative, indicat­ ing the many interconnections between their subjects and the general social and cultural conditions of industrialization within which the company towns developed. Inevitably, their sample is small, but they admirably justify their contention that company towns are important and reward close study. Although Garner is correct in identifying the company town as a characteristic of early industrialism, the selection of case studies demonstrates that this stage occurred at different times in the places concerned. It is also worth noting that company towns did not simply disappear in later stages of industrialism. As the scale of 620 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE operations grew larger and more complex and became associated with big conurbations, the physical need to find accommodation for one’s workforce declined, and the paternalism of the company towns was increasingly resented. But the possibilities demonstrated in these model communities for good housing, sensible planning, the separation of “living” from “working” zones, an infrastructure of good drains and services, and the well-balanced provision of urban amenities were all taken up and assimilated into the town-planning process that has been accepted as a matter of course in all the advanced industrial nations in the 20th century. In a sense it is true to say that we have all benefited from the example of these pioneering communities. R. Angus Buchanan Prof. Buchanan is director of the Centre for the History of Technology at the University of Bath. Harrisburg Industrializes: The Coming ofFactories to an American Community. By Gerald G. Eggert. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Pp. xix+412; illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00. Most histories of industrialization in the United States have focused either on the episodic or on the largest cities and the businesses...