Company Towns: 1880s to 1935

Roosevelt Administration’s New Deal dealt the final blow to end American company towns by raising minimum wages, encouraging industrial self-governance, and pushing for the owners of company towns to “consider the question of plans for eventual employee ownership of homes”.

The workers formed a committee and on May 7 went to Pullman to ask to have the rent lowered. On May 7 and 9, they were flatly refused. Three of the committee members were then terminated. This caused the workers to declare that they were going to strike, and on May 10, 1894 they walked off of their jobs. Then on May 11, 1894 the Pullman Plant close... See more

To a lesser extent the New Deal also reduced the need for employee housing by transforming housing finance to a lower-interest, lower-deposit system making home ownership more accessible to the working class.

Pullman Palace Car Company was famed for its sleeper and luxury rail cars that it manufactured. One of these manufacturing locations was in Pullman, Illinois. George M. Pullman founded the town of Pullman as a place where his workers could live.

Traditional settings for company towns were for the most part where extractive industries existed– coal, metal mines, lumber — and had established a monopoly franchise. Dam sites and war-industry camps founded other company towns. 

Company towns often become regular public cities and towns as they grew and attracted other business enterprises, pool transportation and services infrastructure. Other times, a town may not officially be a company town, but it may be a town where the majority of citizens are employed by a single company, thus creating a similar situation to a comp... See more

Company towns 1880s to 1935 In some situations, company towns developed out of a paternalistic effort to create a utopian worker’s village. Churches, schools, libraries, and other amenities were constructed in order to encourage healthy communities and productive workers. Saloons or other places or services believed to be negative influences w... See more

The problem arose when after the panic of 1893 the workers of Pullman received several wage cuts that on the average added up to twenty-five percent. These cuts were bad in themselves, but when coupled with Pullman’s actions of not lowering the rents for his company owned homes in Pullman, the laborers began to unite.

The Pullman Strike was the first national strike in United States history.