12/25/2023 0 Comments Factory town mining layer![]() Generations of workers raised their families in Scotia however, in the mid-1980s, Pacific Lumber’s longtime owners sold the business, and in 2007 the new owners filed for bankruptcy. Pacific Lumber maintained all of the town’s housing, which was rented to company employees at affordable rates, and even gave residents presents at Christmas. From the 1890s to the 1980s, Pacific Lumber was owned by a family with a paternalistic view toward its employees and Scotia earned a reputation as a desirable place to live. Scotia, California: One of the longest-surviving company towns in the United Statesĭeveloped in the 1880s by the Pacific Lumber Co., which needed housing for its loggers and mill workers, this Northern California town was named for the Nova Scotian lumberjacks who were among its early residents. Today, while Steinway Village has merged with other neighborhoods, the Steinway factory remains in place, producing more than 1,000 pianos each yearĥ. Additionally, Steinway constructed an amusement park that drew thousands of New Yorkers to the area on weekends, developed streetcar lines linking his settlement to other parts of New York and eventually headed a committee that planned the city’s subway system. However, as a further means of making money, he rented and sold homes and land in the village to non-employees. There, across the river from Manhattan, William Steinway also established a village with housing for his workers, which gave him some control, as he could evict anyone who went on strike. Eager to get their employees away from the anarchists and socialists who were “continually breeding discontent among our workmen and inciting them to strike,” according to William Steinway, one of Henry’s sons, the family constructed a complex, including a foundry and sawmill, on 400 acres in the lightly populated Astoria section of Queens, New York. ![]() By 1870, the thriving Steinway & Sons needed more space, but the company’s success had also made it a target of labor agitators. In 1853, German immigrant Henry Steinway founded a piano-making business bearing his name in lower Manhattan. During the Great Depression, he launched a building campaign that kept hundreds of people employed and resulted in the addition of a large hotel, sports arena and other public structures to his model town. In 1909, Hershey, who was childless and had a limited formal education, established a local boarding school for orphaned boys. With streets named Chocolate and Cocoa avenues, the new town featured a wide variety of affordable, modern homes that workers could rent or own, a trolley system, public schools, social clubs, an amusement park and zoo. Due to the remote location of the factory, Hershey also constructed a town for his employees, intending it as an industrial utopia that reflected his progressive beliefs. He built a factory complex near his birthplace in rural Pennsylvania, in part because the area’s dairy farms offered access to an ample supply of milk. In 1900, Milton Hershey sold the successful caramel candy business he’d founded in order to become a pioneer in the mass-production of milk chocolate. Saloons and town meetings were banned and Pullman even had the final say on which books the library stocked and what performances the theater put on. Workers, allowed only to rent their homes, could be evicted on short notice and faced random inspections by officials. The community won national accolades and by 1893 had 12,000 residents however, some who lived there chafed under Pullman’s iron rule. Residences had yards, indoor plumbing, gas and daily trash removal, rare amenities for industrial workers of that era. The town featured more than 1,000 homes, public buildings and parks. ![]() He intended for his planned community to help prevent labor unrest, attract a skilled workforce and increase employee productivity by providing a clean, orderly environment away from the vice-filled big city. In 1884, George Pullman completed construction of a new manufacturing complex and town on 4,000 acres of land south of Chicago for the employees of his flourishing Pullman Palace Car Co., founded in 1867 to build luxury railroad sleeping cars. Pullman, Illinois: An ambitious social experiment that failed
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