Company Towns: 1880s to 1935

In 1800, 20 per cent of the American workforce was employed by another person; by 1900, the figure was 50 per cent; by 2000, 90 per cent. Employers were also taking on more people. In 1800, less than 1 per cent of the American workforce was employed in an organization with 500 or more employees; by 2000, the figure was 55 per cent.

The mills drew from a swelling stream of farm girls and boys as New England agriculture withered under the onslaught of high-productivity New York farmers. Mill profits created an ample supply of venture capital, with activist investors prospecting for opportunities. The most talented young men perceived that a flair for machinery could be a fast t

Many reasons are given to explain the massive industrial plant running out of customers, from excessive credit to Federal Reserve monetary policy. But it was impossible, given the global economic situation, to sustain the level of production that was constantly increasing between 1922 and 1927.

During the ensuing summer, a business section developed: a string of one- and two-story structures housing a bank, a general store, a Chinese laundry, and more, all of it resembling a mining outpost. On Christmas night of 1896, a fire broke out that…

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Earlier in the century, most people lived on family farms that looked and smelled like rural factories. Survival was a matter of brutally hard labor and lots of kids. Houses were painted once when they were built, if at all; yards were full of garbage and foraging animals; soap was for clothes, not for people. Accelerating growth in the 1840s and 1

Big companies began to build landscaped suburban campuses. Factories also moved out of cities to suburbs, taking jobs with them. The steady shift of white city dwellers into the suburbs, known as white flight, reduced the tax base of cities, prompting city governments to cut back on infrastructure, services, and schools in a cycle of urban decline.