Building the Workingman's Paradise

BUILDING THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE The Design of American Company Towns • I I MARGARET CRAWFORD VERSO London. New York CONTENTS Vll Acknowledgments 1 Introduction PART I The Industrial Landscape Transformed: 1790-1890 11 1 Textile Landscapes: 1790-1850 2 The Company Town in an Era of Industrial Expansion 29 3 Welfare Capitalism, Housing Reform, and the Company Town 46 61 4 Designers and the "New" Company Town 78 5 The Search for a Style PART II Designing the "New" Company Town 6 Americanizing the Garden City: Grosvenor Atterbnry and Indian Hill 101 7 Redesigning the Mining Town: Bertram Goodhue and Tyrone, New Mexico 129 8 Professional Solutions: John Nolen and the Standardization of Company Town Planning 152 9 Regional Alternatives: Earle S. Draper and the Southern Textile Mill Village 174 Conclusion: The End of the Company Town 200 Notes 213 Index 240 1 TEXTILE LANDSCAPES 1790-1850 Shortly after the American Revolution, the question of industry entered the American consciousness. Although American cities, thriving with entrepreneurial activity, already amply demonstrated the effects of private commercial enterprise, the few industries that existed - mining, iron working, and lumber milling - were located in remote settlements, far from the scrutiny of most Americans. However, even these isolated industrial activities aroused suspicion. Puritan clergymen and nearby farmers attacked their purely economic motives and destructive technologies, seeing them as violations of the social and religious values necessary to an agricultural economy.' Once the introduction of mechanized industry became imminent, local conflicts about the value of industrialization expanded to a national scale. Both sides in this hotly contested debate wer~nced that decisions about American industrializatIon would set an irrevocable __course for the new nation. One reason for the intensity of the discussion was the example set by the English model of industrial development. Although Americans regularly committed industrial espionage in an attempt to acquire England's patented industrial secrets, they worried about the .., harmful social and physical effects of England's industriAl transformation. Concentrated in the North-West, textile manufacturing had produced filthy, crowded, and chaotic cities such as Manchester. and Leeds, where a new class of industrial wage-earners lived and worked in wretched conditions. Ways of avoiding these horrors preoccupied advocates and opponents of industrialization alike. Zachariah Allen, a strong supporter of American industry, concluded a horrified account of his tour of the English textile districts by exclaiming, "God forbid ... that there ever may arise a counterpart of Manchester in the New World."2 These debates identified a fundamental contradiction in American capitalism that would be posed again and again over the next century and a half: the conflict between the market " BUILDING THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE rationality of industrial development with profit as its ultimate consideration, and the social rationality that religious, ethical, or democratic principles demanded. Theoest- known positions in these debates, those of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, simply echoed these polarities. Hamilton's advocacy of "manufactures" was based on his conviction that economic growth should be a national priority. He feared that, without the economic power generated by industrialization, the United States would be unable to defend itself.Jefferson focused on the dangers an industrial proletariat posed to the egal- itarian class systemhe believed was necessary to a democratic order.? While Jefferson and Hamilton argued about the conditions under which industrialization should be undertaken, more practically, associations to promote "manufactures" formed, and venturesome entrepreneurs started to construct textile towns." peculaLive representations of the form American industry would take, these ~arly company towns encapsulated in physical form the contradiction between economic and social rationality. On the one hand, the "model" company town attempted to ameliorate purely economic concerns with social and physical planning, and on the other, the "economic landscape" directly translated the technical and social necessities of industrial production into a eL- tlernent form. Whether driven by ideals or built solely for prof t, com pany towns expressed the ten- sions inherent in their creation, and invariably became sites of struggle. A industrialization proceeded, conflicts between capitalists and workers over the rganiza- tion of production were exacerbated by conflicts over living conditions. Civil society also imposed its own int~rests - first, through expressions of public concern; later, by invoking the power of the state to investi ate and re te conditions in coo1pan towns. From the beginning, employers used paternalism to resolve the contradictions such controversy exposed, attempting to reconcile their interests with those of their workers to the satis- faction of outsiders. Employers used their control over workers' daily lives to impose vanous types of structured dependency. Although "paternalism" refers to all varieties of "enfo~,~edbenev~lence" ~hat inter~ere with a p~rson's liberty of action for that person's good, employe I s rarely Just practiced paternalism, but linked their actions to a broader justificatory ideology - a "discourse of benevolence" that directly addressed concerns about the negative social effects produced by IIldustnal development and capitalist social relatu:J:lS..Frequently adjusted to fit the changing realities of American capitalism, both pater'nalistic practIces and the .discoursc of benevolence changed considerably over time. Ironically, however, the IIltensIty of paternalistic relationships often heightened the ten- sions already present III the hierarchical social order of the com pany town and led to further disruption. ~ , '2 TEXTILE LANDSCAPES: 1790-1850 THE MODEL TOWN Even before Americans had fully mastered the techniques of textile manufacturing, the first "model" company towns were under construction. In the sence of Tactical ex erience. advocates of both the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian positions propose Ideal solutions. Two early model towns, Paterson, New Jersey, and HumphreysviJIe, Connecticut,' served as concrete demonstrations of these opposing theories of physical and social planning.' ~h towns claimed to offer comprehensive answers to what their sponsors antjcipated would be the important questions posed by industrialization. Although neither accurately forecast the form American industrial development would eventually take, their alternative forms introduced the basic issues that subsequent discussions of company towns would debate. Like later model towns, they were influential partly as the result of the publicity they received. Both the inflated claims of their sponsors and the outraged responses of their crit- ics posed their benefits and dangers in extreme terms, establishing a tradition that would continue into the twentieth century. In August 1792, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, and Tench Coxe, his Assistant Secretary, both militant advocates of American industrialization, hired Pierre L'Enfant, recently discharged from his work on the new capital at Washington, to design a grandiose industrial town for a site on the Passaic River in northern New Jersey.7 The new town, officially sponsored by the Society for Useful Manufactures, was to furnish tan- gible_proof that importing: industrial capitalism would not necessa~se England's "dark satanic" mills on to the virgin landscape of America. In his Report on Manufactures, Hamilton proposed establishing large-scale manufacturing units financed by substantial 1 amounts of capital and regulated by the state. In opposition to the laissez-jaire English I' approach, Hamilton emphasized careful control and extensive planning. Projected onto a tabula rasa, his visionary "national manufactory" would be a highly rationalized settlement.' Hamilton's ambitious plans depended on capitalizing the town at the unprecedented sum of one million dollars, at that time more than the total worth of all corporations oper- ating in the United States. Although cotton textiles, identified as a "critical sector of extraordinary importance in establishing industry," would provide its economic base, the proposed town would produce a full range of manufactured products. Since the Great Falls of the Passaic, 77 feet high, generated enough waterpower for an unlimited number of fac- tories, the Society bought 700 acres and optimistically incorporated a city 6 miles square in anticipation of future growth. Hamilton's enthusiastic prospectus attracted investors from as far away as Amsterdam and convinced the state of New Jersey to charter the corporation, invest 10,000 dollars, and exempt it from taxes for ten years. In return, the town was named '3 BUILDING THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE after its governor, William Paterson. With more than 250,000 dollars pledged, development began9 . ., L'Enfant's plan matched Hamilton's ambitions. Ignonng existing structures, he projected a visionary scheme, which local newspapers predicted would "far surpass anything y~t seen in this country." L'Enfant adapted the diagonal plan of Washington to the site s rugged topography, planning a capital of manufactures organized around a series of broad diagonal avenues, 200 feet wide, radiating from an elevated point in the center of the town: "I

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