Hardy Green was born into the lower middle class in Memphis, where he spent his formative years being schooled in conventional thinking, conformism, and the racial panic that passes for conservatism in the United States. He has slogged for newspapers and magazines, taught college-level historys, and endeavored to make unions serve the true needs of American workers. He has written two books--"The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills that Shaped the American Economy" (2010) and "On Strike at Hormel" (1990).
In an effort to keep out the “foreign virus,’ last night Trump banned all visitors from Europe but not from the U.K. Presumably that means he can still get to his golf course in Scotland. Republicans blocked a bill that would have offered sick Americans 14 days of emergency paid sick leave.
One can watch the PGA Players Championship live on Twitter, so no deprivation there. But the National Basketball Assn. suspends its season altogether. Then follows a snowballing number of cancellations of public events. Museums, concert venues, churches, universities, etc. begin turning everyone away. Major League Baseball suspends all operations, including spring training. (The PGA tourney is cancelled at the end of the day.) In California, Disneyland has closed down for only the fourth time in history. In New York State, gatherings of more than 500 people are disallowed. In the city, restaurants are told they must provide more space between tables, effectively halving their capacity.
Popular movie actor Tom Hanks, who plays TV kid crush Mr. Rogers in a current flick, announces that both he and his wife have COVID-19. (They are stranded in well-prepared Australia, a blessing.) Germany’s Angela Merkel says that 2/3 of that country’s population may eventually be infected. Italy has ordered almost all nonessential businesses to close.
1,240 people in 42 states and Washington, D.C., have tested positive for the coronavirus and at least 37 have died.
Here, the Quaker Oats with raisins and maple syrup seems just fine as usual. It’s a sunny day whose quiet is interrupted only by the haunting call of an owl or possibly a dove.
Hours pass. Then, Em and I split a packet of Sapporo Ichiban noodle soup for lunch.
We watch a streaming video interview with London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The UK has employed some tortured logic to justify no lockdown or quarantine, just life as usual for those who feel themselves to be unaffected. Unlike China or, say, Italy, the initial locus of infection was scattered, not limited to one location—therefore, no lockdown is needed, Khan explains several times. Huh? The questioner says one might well argue that there’s all the more reason for keeping people apart. But Khan insists that he and temporary pal Boris Johnson are on the right track.
As Trump often says, we’ll see what happens.
The federal government is still preoccupied with economic worries rather than health matters: The Fed announces it will pump more than $500 billion into short-term bank funding. Stocks surge more than 1,000 points. But by the end of the day, the gloom gathers and stocks have their worst day since the 1987 crash, with the S&P down 9.5%.
A crony of Brazilian top tomato Jair Bolsonaro was photographed hanging out with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last weekend. (He sported a hat reading “Make Brazil Great Again.”) Today, it is announced that said crony has COVID-19. What me worry? avers Trump, who is said to be still contemplating holding a mega-rally in Florida next week.
I anticipate increasing public irrationality—people lashing out at Chinese and other “foreigners” amid a pronounced turn to religious nuttiness. In Camus’ The Plague, copies of predictions said to have come from various soothsayers (Nostradamus was popular) and saints were widely circulated, especially after printing companies noted the rich profits to be made. Organized religion waned. The Day of the Dead was ignored—as each day for the plague-bound city was a Day of the Dead.
Dinner: Progresso pot-roast soup (weak), baked potatoes with loads of butter and sour cream (must keep morale up), homemade hummus with water crackers, green salad with radishes and grape tomatoes.
Evening entertainment: Morse investigates two murders—an artist and a wealthy French art collector.
We are learning a lot about standing in lines: lines to vote, lines to get food.
Another idle day looms. 46 degrees and sunny, so what’s to complain about?
Biden wins the prized Michigan primary along with Mississippi, Idaho, and Missouri. Bernie apparently wins North Dakota. Washington state remains too close to call.
Hundreds of ballots remain uncounted from the California primary held on Super Tuesday over a week ago. Why? States continue to close polling sites even as giant lines snake into those sites remaining open. Yet there are no barricades or riots in the streets. The people are so beaten down it’s a wonder that anyone votes.
In Russia, Putin pushes legislation that will allow him to serve for an additional two six-year terms when his tenure expires in 2024. In the event, his term in office will be longer than that of Stalin. In 2036, I would guess he’ll look and act even more of a fossil than Joe Biden. Will he still strip off his shirt and ride horseback?
Meanwhile, on the plague front, two British MPs including the health minister, three Australian Grand Prix formula one race drivers, and several members of the Arsenal football team are self-isolating after being diagnosed with the coronavirus. Arsenal! Things are getting serious.
The Bank of England cuts rates to the lowest in history.
In Europe, empty plane “ghost flights” have become a phenomenon. In most countries, airlines that fail to utilize at least 80% of assigned takeoff or landing “slots” risk having these reallocated to a competitor. Everywhere, ticket prices are plummeting.
The U.S. now has more than 1,000 cases of the virus, according to the Times, with more than 170 in New York, which has the third-highest total among states after Washington and California. But no one has died in New York yet. In deep-red Arizona, 48% of citizens disapprove of Donald Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The World Health Organization officially deems the outbreak to be a pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, offers nightmarish numbers in testimony before Congress. “”If we are complacent and don’t do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up…many, many millions,” he said. COVID-19 is ten times more lethal than seasonal flu, it seems.
The Dow closes 1,460 points down, off 20% from its February high. It’s now a bear market.
Dinner coming soon: a bacchanalia of leftovers. Half a meatball each plus a smidgen of pasta; asparagus; half a baked potato each with lots of sour cream; and more green salad.
Tonight’s entertainment: episode 6 of the Swedish suspense drama, Twin; one episode of new Spanish show Felix; another old Miss Marple.
A moderately cloudy, windy, and colder day here in East Hampton. Oatmeal with honey for breakfast, and soonish I will doff these pajamas and take a shower.
At 12:04 p.m., an unbreakfasted Emily lingers in bed reading Twitter and assorted news reports.
Business Insider says that the U.S. has had only 5 coronavirus tests per million people, with the UK at 347 tests per million people.
The Dow opens 800 points up before dropping 900 points. Bargain-hunters can’t get a break. (By the end of the day, stocks will rally, regaining half of Monday’s losses.)
France warns its citizens that cocaine will not protect them from Covid-19.
New York state is setting up a “containment zone” perimeter around New Rochelle, with the National Guard set to disinfect public spaces and deliver food to the quarantined, “immuno-compromised” populace.
The White House, they say, will push for federal aid to oil-shale companies hit by the virus/market shocks. It seems that a Trump chum lost billions yesterday when oil prices tanked.
East Hampton is very quiet in early March, the only sounds are occasional birdsongs and, in the afternoon, the wordless vocalizing of children at play in nearby backyards. Aaa-aaaah—um why umps ahhhhh! On rare occasions, a motorcycle or truck roars by. Back in the city, kids released from Washington Irving High School and gathering near the 14th St. subway entrance, will be making their daily 3 p.m. racket. But it could be, as I read on Twitter, that the city is more and more deserted, with a perceptible September 11-like feel.
Will an anxious people turn out for the Democratic primaries slated for six states today? The press lords are eager for another Biden sweep and Bernie bust, from Michigan to Washington state. Meanwhile, Biden incoherence and senility is a trending theme on social media: He confuses Angela Merkel with Teresa May, mistakes his sister for his wife, and seems frequently unable to finish a sentence he has unwisely begun. Then he gets furious—a lot like our then-slow-to-learn niece who, at age 3, would throw violent temper tantrums when she couldn’t come out with the words required to express a thought.
Both Biden and Bernie have called off rallies planned for Ohio. The Tucson Festival of Books and Tokyo’s Cherry Blossom Festival, among thousands of other events, have been cancelled. McDonalds, Starbucks, and Door Dash have begun offering “contact-less” deliveries, with the grub left just outside your door.
And speaking of food: tonight’s dinner will be more spaghetti with meatballs and salad.
Entertainment: Miss Marple solves two murders committed at a gathering of a large, eccentric family living, naturally, in a posh giant house. Several little puzzles are left hanging. Bad editing?
On March 5, Emily and I fled New York City for our East Hampton cottage, our car loaded with canned goods, cold remedies, and a few clothes. How long will we stay? We are in a self-quarantine, fleeing the spreading COVID-19, the China-originating coronavirus that threatens humanity across the planet. By March 9, the novel virus had spread to two-thirds of U.S. states, with nearly 600 cases and close to 20 deaths. Frightening accounts of passengers trapped aboard infected cruise ships and of Draconian lock-downs in China and Italy crowd out stories about the Democratic presidential race. Thousands of employees are being told to work from home, schools are shuttered, conferences and mass celebrations (SXSW) have been canceled. The governor of New York has declared a State of Emergency.
In many previous epidemics, worried populations had limited information about the sickness, depending largely upon gossip. Now, we are both connected to the internet and we play an informal game of “top this”: I read her a headline about the latest fatalities in Iran, she counters with a tidbit about Trump-administration ignorance and ineptitude. “Mike Pence presided over an AIDS epidemic in Indiana, where he delayed a needle-exchange program saying he had to pray on the issue before making a decision,” she says.
Attendees at a recent Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference where there was an infected participant are outing each other, compiling McCarthy-like lists. Was Betsy Devos in the same room as Mr. X?
(It will later be revealed that the infected attendee had purchased a $5,750 “gold” package granting him access to backstage reception rooms where members of Congress and other high-profile figures mingled.)
Stock indices are in free fall. Oil prices drop 20% and the Dow by 2,000 points.
Here, Emily and I have very limited physical contact with the outside population. Since the only germs present are germs we brought with us, I’m not sure we must practice the furious hand-washing and avoidance of face-touching that health authorities advocate. How long can the virus linger on tomato sauce cans or containers of Purell? Nine days? Dunno.
Emily reads me a tweet suggesting that they’ve halted trading on the stock market. “I’m not sure that’s true, but that’s what this tweet says,” she adds. In spite of the internet, uncertainty reigns.
Inevitably, that has stoked activity on the part of digital mischief-makers and profiteers. Rumors circulate that COVID-19 was cooked-up in a lab in China with the intent of undermining the government in Taiwan. One “miracle mineral solution” flacked on Facebook and Twitter is “the same as drinking bleach,” according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Like the Trump Administration, officials in previous outbreaks have begun by downplaying the seriousness of the illness. In Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague, the Prefect initially institutes woefully inadequate regulations and posts Panglossian communiques. Even as springtime flowers proliferate, hospital wards fill to overflowing and new facilities are required.
Trump, meanwhile, joins the Internet worrywarts with his own outbursts of disinformation. Apparently, the whole thing is a “hoax.” “Anyone who wants a test can get a test,” he has falsely preached. He has called the World Health Organization’s estimated fatality rate of 3.4% “a false number,” adding that “my hunch” is that it will be under 1%.
And as usual, Trump praises himself: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
Only four days into our self-imposed exile, dietary displeasure looms. Last night we split a can of Progresso vegetarian soup, supplemented by small green salads and baked potatoes. The Nido Purificada—condensed milk—seems ok, and I’m prepared to eat boxed Kraft macaroni & cheese. Remember when you had that as a child and actually liked it? But fresh veggies are a problem, and a trip to IGA in Amagansett seems in order to get lettuce, celery, and other produce. (We ended up spending $105.99, thanks to such necessities as Destrooper pure butter almond thins, a tub of sour cream, and one package containing 24 rolls of Cottonelle toilet tissue.)
Dinner: spaghetti & homemade meatballs, salad.
Entertainment: a streaming video of Elaine May’s miserable, frenetic 1976 buddy flick Mikey and Nicky (like watching “Night at the Improv” featuring the pointless antics of two amphetamine-addled yobs) and a pretty good episode of the BBC TV show MI-5.
Everything is up to date in Paris, France–or just about everything, as I saw in a recent visit. The once ubiquitous Gitanes and Gauloises have made way for the increasingly popular cigarette electronique.
One of the multitude of bookstores dotting the Paris landscape.
Lunch-goers in the vicinity of the city’s stock exchange can choose the Brasserie De La Bourse or, for the ironically inclined, the Café des Initiés (Café of Insider Trading). On the streets, teens jostle each other and squeal “Oh, my God,” much as if they were in New York or another U.S. city.
But in one respect, Paris seems out of step: Bookstores are everywhere. In the enchanting passages, or covered shopping streets, near the Palais Royal, art-book dealers nest next to stalls trading in used volumes. On the Boulevard de la Opera, there’s even a Brentano’s—shades of New York in the 1980s. The Marais district has Mona Lisait (get it?) among others, while on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, two chains run by the father and son team of Joseph Gibert and Gibert Jeune compete with multi-story outlets that recall New York’s wonderful Eighth Street Bookshop of yore.
Haven’t they heard? Books are dead, non? Or does the City of Light have a bright idea that has dimmed in America?
Kindles must be around in Paris, but I saw few of them—or for that matter, few thumb-twiddling smart-phone texters/walkers. Honestly, though, on the RER train, which I took a lot, I saw few readers of any kind, book or periodical.
And then there appeared a subtle if all too ominous portent lurking
Would Catherine de Medicis have an iPad today?
over the aristocratic Place des Vosges, clearly visible from No. 6, Maison de Victor Hugo: Two-foot high Helvetica type on a nearby wall reading simply “iPad.” Big Brother is indeed coming, as Apple’s own Super Bowl advertisement suggested many years ago.
Were Wrigley’s chewing gum and Spam really essential World War II products? Their makers made a persuasive case that they were, particularly after they became staples of the K-Rations that fed 40% of U.S. soldiers–as well as providing nourishment to the likes of Pablo Picasso and Lord Rothschild.
My most recent Bloomberg Echoes piece tells the story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/how-k-rations-fed-soldiers-and-saved-american-businesses.html
At Lowell, an elaborate system of canals was used to power a large number of textile mills.
“Nothing of Francis Cabot Lowell’s utopia has stood the test of time,” asserted architectural historian John Coolidge in 1942. The textile cities of central New England, including Lowell, Lawrence, and Manchester (N.H.) were “sports in the general line of American industrial evolution, transitory as ideal communities, unimportant as models,” he concluded.
Not so fast, I say. It’s not totally clear what Coolidge, who was writing in his book Mill and Mansion: A Study of Architecture and Society in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1820-1865, had in mind. But whether or not Lowell served as a model, many of its features reappeared over several decades—indeed over a couple of centuries–in industrial settlements from coast to coast.
Let’s quickly review the Lowell formula.
First, what would become a large-scale industrial town was built from scratch on mostly undeveloped land. In 1821, when would-be developers Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, and Paul Moody visited the site of the future city, there were no more than a dozen houses and a couple of canals circumventing the falls of the Merrimack River, intended to make the river navigable. Quietly purchasing the land, and putting together an initial store of $600,000 in capital, they began the Merrimack Manufacturing Co. This initial venture would be joined by multiple other firms in the next several decades—firms sharing interlocking directorates and similar management structures, marketing their textiles via the same Boston commission houses, and paying identical wages. The town itself, buildings and streets, was to a considerable degree, designed by the manufacturing company’s “treasurer,” or on-site chief executive, Kirk Boott.
Secondly, the technology employed at Lowell borrowed existing methods but vastly improved upon it. Famously, both Samuel Slater of Rhode Island and Francis Cabot Lowell spent time at British factories and attempted to memorize just how such gizmos as Arkwright water frames worked. But the importance of such piracy can be exaggerated: Innovation and improvements were key to success; and equal in importance to the technology at work on the factory floor were the hydraulic innovations that led to an elaborate system of canals and water power.
Thirdly, there was the matter of the labor force. Throughout the 19th century, America suffered from a labor shortage, and this was particularly the case in the early years of the U.S. industrial revolution. Rhode Island addressed this issue by using children: Samuel Slater’s first mill on the Blackstone River at Pawtucket had a workforce of seven boys and two girls, ages seven to twelve. The Lowell capitalists famously looked elsewhere—to a pool of unmarried young women recruited from across the rural areas of New England. These young ladies were housed in boardinghouses under the strict supervision of older women “boardinghouse keepers”; they observed curfews, spent their leisure hours attending improving lectures, writing verse, and playing the boardinghouses’ pianos; and they were required to attend church.
Their behavior was closely watched, with companies able to fire any operatives charged with immoral conduct such as drinking alcohol or attending dance classes. In exchange, the workers’ pay–$12 to $14 per month in the 1830s—compared well with other alternatives. (After 1850, the workforce became more mixed, and increasingly immigrant workers of both sexes were employed.)
Let’s jump ahead in time a bit—to 1942. In that year, another would-be developer of a massive industrial complex arranged to take possession of 56,000 acres of farmland in East Tennessee. The methods involved were a tad more ruthless, for this time, management was the United States government, and its enterprise was the development of the atom bomb.
Employing the governmental prerogative of eminent domain, the government went into federal court and filed a “declarations of takings,” which had the effect of abruptly evicting the farmers who occupied the area. Some got as little as two weeks’ notice that they had to get out; some were told they’d better get a move on, because the government was building an artillery range and soon bombs would be falling on their former property.
As the farmers left, some crossed paths with the thousands of construction workers who were coming to build a new city: Oak Ridge, one of three supersecret locations central to the Manhattan project.
Technology: Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project depended to a degree upon existing technology, developed in university laboratories. But really, the nuclear scientists there and at Los Alamos, N.M., and Hanford, Wash., were pioneers. Three vast factories appeared at Oak Ridge, each doing different things: At the complex of 268 buildings known as Y-12, electromagnetism was employed to split uranium atoms, isolating the U-235 isotope from U-238. The 42-acre gaseous-diffusion plant, K-25, attempted to part the isotopes employing a different method. The relatively small X-10 plant concentrated on the manufacture of plutonium.
Perhaps one of the most striking similarities to Lowell lay in the workforce, its housing and recreation. Among the great number of workers at Oak Ridge was a large pool of unskilled young women, many of whom were housed in dormitories.
Much of the work done by Lowell’s women was unskilled labor; at Oak Ridge, the work performed by the “hillbilly girls,” as they were condescendingly known, required even less skill: In fact, in the words of the Manhattan Project public-relations officer, they had “not the faintest idea of what their jobs were about.” Many sat in a control room, on stools spaced far enough apart to discourage communication, and for 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, silently adjusted dials that controlled the electromagnetic process. They were purposely misinformed about the actual product and punished if they asked questions or showed any initiative.
As at Lowell, the government organized all housing and construction—including thousands of single-family homes, 14 dorms, 3 apartment buildings, schools, and churches—along with recreation that included movie houses, bowling alleys, a library, and a riding academy. For the “hillbilly girls,” the environment was even more restrictive than that at early Lowell: Dorm rules barred cooking in the rooms, consuming liquor, gambling, and receiving visitors of the opposite sex. And they were watched, not merely by boardinghouse keepers but by military guards.
To be sure, there was much about Oak Ridge that was unlike any other town existing before or since. 75,000 people worked there during the height of World War II, having moved there without any idea of the work to be performed—all top-secret. It was a totally closed community, surrounded by wire fences and lookout towers and guarded by 5,000 police. Even so much as a letter to a relative that disclosed too much about goings-on would get you fired—and kicked out of the community.
All the same, my point is that company towns from the time of Lowell and right up to today have always had a lot in common.
Here’s another case—this time, a textile town in the Southern U.S.
The Cannon company town of Kannapolis, N.C., in the early 20th century.
In 1933, a reporter with Fortune magazine felt he had discovered something unusual in American life during a trip to North Carolina.
Visiting the town of Kannapolis, founded two decades earlier by the Cannon textile company and slowly expanded, the reporter found it “Like a medieval city, [standing] aloof and self-contained in the midst of empty country, suspicious of strangers, loyal to its feudal lords.”
Kannapolis, he reported, was the biggest unincorporated town in America, with some 15,000 inhabitants, and “every foot of it is owned by the mills.” The town consisted of hundreds of tidy, white-clapboard millworker houses, 7 huge textile factories, the company-funded Cabarrus Memorial Hospital, a company commissary, the Cannon Memorial YMCA, and a newspaper, The Daily Independent, owned by the Cannon family. Although the police were on the county payroll, all other functions normally performed by government were under Cannon’s purview—fire-fighting, street maintenance, trash collection, schools, and utilities.
Atop the company’s Mill No. 1, a huge illuminated sign proclaimed the town’s sole purpose in life: THE LARGEST MANUFACTURER OF TOWELS IN THE WORLD, it read.
Charles Cannon, described by the Fortune reporter as “the foremost figure” in the U.S. textile industry and as a “round-faced, ruddy, and nervous” executive, was head of the company and virtual lord of the town from the 1920s until his death in 1971. Such was his power locally that, in 1969, The Wall Street Journal likened “Mr. Charlie” to Monaco’s Prince Ranier.
So you can see that, like Lowell and Oak Ridge, company control was all-enveloping.
Also like Lowell and Oak Ridge, Kannapolis was a city built from scratch. It took existing textile-making technology—but the Southern mills constructed at this time were not saddled with old equipment, and had the advantage of being able to acquire state-of-the art looms. And like the two places that I have mentioned before, southern mill towns depended upon unskilled labor—often that of children.
Coal-mining towns, from Ohio to Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Colorado, shared many similar attributes: all housing owned by the mine owning companies, all law enforcement and government, any health-care facilities or recreational facilities, owned and controlled by the companies. Included were Urey and Nanty-Glo, Pennsylvania; Jenkins, Harlan, and Wheelwright, Kentucky; and Logan, West Virginia. Many coal and copper mining towns went Lowell or even Kannapolis one better: In these, workers were required as a condition of employment to live in company-owned housing, and often required to shop at The Company Store. They were often paid in company-issued money, or scrip—which was redeemable chiefly at the company store.
By the 1850s, the Lowell companies had ceased to require workers to live in company owned housing. Nor was there the same effort at “moral policing”—no more required church attendance for example. But Lowell’s original impulse to subject the morals of workers to close scrutiny was imitated elsewhere.
Making chocolate on Main Street in Hershey, Penn.
Like these many towns I have already mentioned, Hershey, Penn. was built beginning in 1904 from the ground up as a home for chocolate maker Hershey Co. Founder Milton Hershey turned to the relatively remote Pennsylvania site for its proximity to dairy farms (needed for milk chocolate), a thrifty and industrious work force (which included many women), and as a place where he could erect a town where there would be “no poverty, no nuisances, no evil.” The factory was spread over 18 buildings, and the accompanying worker houses were equipped with indoor plumbing, central heating, and electricity. Workers were given a cornucopia of benefits, from insurance and medical coverage to a retirement plan. The company donated property and buildings for local schools and churches, including the Hershey Industrial School, a residential facility for orphan boys.
But there would be no democracy: Milton Hershey himself served as mayor, constable, and fire chief. Moreover, he was his own “moral police,” riding around town and taking notes as to which houses were not being well-maintained and receiving reports from private detectives as to which employees indulged in alcoholic refreshment.
Gary, Indiana, constructed beginning in 1906 by the United States Steel Corp., was also build from scratch. In need of further industrial capacity, the company paid $7.2 million to anonymously purchase a desolate stretch of Lake Michigan shore across the Indiana state line from Chicago. Again, the task of drawing up the town itself was left to the plant engineer. With the works occupying eight miles of shore frontage, the town was laid out as an unvarying grid, with subdivisions plotted out adjacent to the various U.S. Steel plants.
Steel labor—and coal mining for that matter—was performed primarily by men. And steel towns, from Lackawanna, New York, to Weirton, West Virginia, to Sparrow’s Point, Md., tended to be pretty rough-and-ready places. You couldn’t really enforce a moral code among such roughnecks, most managers seemed to acknowledge: “You can’t make a mollycoddle out of a mill man,” said Charles Roebling, head of Roebling Steel which in 1904 built the town of Roebling, N.J. Nevertheless, Judge Elbert H. Gary, chairman of U.S. Steel, was inclined to try to impose moral order in the city that had been named for him: For example, when an entrepreneur proposed opening a movie house in a company-owned building, Judge Gary agreed only if the company was allowed to review all films and allowed to veto any viewed as too racy. The movie house, it was further agreed, would also double as a venue for church services on Sunday.
So, to sum up, whether or not Lowell served as a model for company towns across the U.S.A., you can see a number of themes reoccurring: Towns built from scratch in undeveloped areas, with companies not only erecting buildings and streets but responsible for every kind of institution, from churches to recreational facilities, and even taking the place of government; the use of the latest technology; and a frequently paternal, even Big-Brotherish attitude toward workers, many of whom were women or children.
What about today? Are there still company towns being created?
In the fall of 2009, Google announced it was erecting a new corporate campus on Silicon Valley’s NASA base at Ames that would include employee residences. The Silicon Valley Mercury News estimated that housing there could take up 10% of the new campus’s space, meaning perhaps 60 2,000-sq.-ft. dwellings.
On top of that, the newspaper said, Google was encouraging the city of Mountain View, California–the location of its much discussed Googleplex–to transform the area around its headquarters, adding more housing and shops. The Googleplex already offers a smorgasbord of workplace amenities, from free food to nap rooms, that give work a homey, warm-nest feeling—and makes employees feel that they never need to leave.
Facebook's new home will replace the old Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, Calif.
Then in February, 2011, Facebook announced that it is moving its headquarters to the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California, and initiated a “community dialog” about how to develop the place. This August, The Los Angeles Times reported that construction there was booming, and that the complex would soon feature a score of merchants, from gourmet eateries to hair parlors, catering only to Facebook employees.
“It is the 21st century company town,” announced Silicon Valley futurist Paul Saffo. Yes, indeed: Both the Google and Facebook efforts sound more than a bit like the communities begun by Nathan Appleton, Charles Cannon, Milton Hershey, Elbert Gary, and many others.
Lowell was the first company town in America, and some say its “utopian” model was soon forgotten. Not so, I say: The Lowell model, from its use of young women workers living in dorms to its strict “moral code,” influenced other company towns, from Gary, Indiana, to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I’ll post my remarks on this blog in days to come.
Forming up at the Arcade building in Pullman, Ill., the National Guard prepares to confront strikers in 1894.
The history of company towns in the United States featured many labor battles fought over intertwined issues of wages and living conditions. So it was in Pullman, Ill., where in 1894 a strike broke out over wage cuts–and high rents at company-owned housing.
The master race? Photo by Gabriel Gonzalez, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
From our early years, many of us learned about the perils of sloth and the rewards of industry from the Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” You remember: The grasshopper idles away the summer and pays the penalty when winter comes; meanwhile, the ant, who has spent the same period toiling and accumulating, survives and prospers.
In the 1840s, Karl Marx put a new spin on this legend, transforming the grasshopper into a parasite. As in Aesop, Marx’s ants/workers slave away and create value—but their surplus value is effectively stolen by the grasshoppers/idle rich, who claim the treasure as a reward for their “organizational talent.” In Marx’s rendering of history, this stockpile of surplus value—capital–would become the mechanism for the brutal transformation of civilization during the Industrial Revolution.
Marx’s analysis would be widely adopted by the labor and socialist movements. “Is there aught we have in common with the greedy parasite?” asks the 1915 workers’ anthem, “Solidarity Forever.” Of course not. The workers did all the work, while the plutocrats “have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn.”
Now, Mitt Romney has offered yet another interpretation of the fable: It’s the ants who steal from the productive grasshopper.
In the now-infamous video taken at a private fundraiser, the GOP presidential nominee says that 47% of Americans “believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” Rather than laboring away, the ants have become wastrels thanks to the nanny state. Meanwhile, the grasshopper and his ilk provide the initiative, risk-taking, and talent that keep society afloat.
Of course, there’s nothing really new in this script–it dates back to Dickens and beyond. Ronald Reagan gave the story respectable new life in the 1980s, assuring us that the very rich were the truly productive class. That was why “supply side” economics would save society: Reward the top ranks and they will create new industry, showering the rest of us with jobs and wealth.
But thanks are due to Mr. Romney for reminding us that this sort of country-club class consciousness still exists…at least behind closed doors. The grasshopper thanks you too, Mitt.
