Customer Reviews

Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest

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After living in the Pacific Northwest for 7 years I find this a very well written historical accounting of the development of the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Linda Carlson's style of writing makes you feel the hardships and the poor living conditions the people endured. She also included pictures that add a feeling for the way the people worked and lived. This helps develop the setting for those who are interested in the developments as they took place. She did her homework when she wrote this book. There is great detail about the towns right down to the furniture, the paint,how they differed from other towns and how they evolved as time went on all the way to the demise of most of these towns. A highly recommended book and hard to put down once you start reading especially if you like history. 5+ stars

This a book for every generartion.

The Seniors can relive parts of the life they lived earlier in their lives.

The Boomers can find verification for the tales their granparents told of early hard times and inconveniences.

The Young Ones can marvel at how real people lived without a car or TV.

When I think of company towns the image of control comes to mind; the past attempts at industrial-capitalists utopia culminating in Pullman Illinois and Ford Motor Co. dance halls and picnics. Company towns have been slightly romanticized in this way. My perception of employer-owned towns conjures ideas of small empires or kingdoms headed by an entrepreneurial patriarch with a tightly bound company check-book in one hand and an often cited Bible in the other. In her book Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest Linda Carlson tasks herself with addressing company towns with more detail in order to confirm some stereotypes and extract others to put them in context.

Company towns are difficult to categorize but this can be said about them - company towns flourished from the mid nineteenth century through the mid twentieth century; company towns were mostly extractive industries scattered about the wilderness; and company towns were mostly an agreeable place to live through good and trying times for the nation. Beyond that, as Carlson explains, "few generalizations can be made about company-town[s]..." (p. 35)

Company towns were a reasonably secure place to live during national economic tribulations like the Depression. The towns had inexpensive rent and the dining halls (whose quality would dictate the enthusiasm of the laborers) were adequate in their tastes and their plate sizes. The towns often had communal charities to aid residents who were enduring hardships (these hardships were often economic but just as often were the result of work related injuries). Bosses would employ old employees and provided for those who were hurt on the job. Company towns were often tied together through their isolation. They developed unique identities which were showcased through their charities and their club sports teams. Basketball and baseball were especially popular and town bosses often hired a man specifically for his skills with a bat or his agility on the court. Prices of commodities were not always inflated, living conditions were not always Spartan, and bosses were not always corrupt.

However, the fact remains, as Carlson dutifully explains throughout the book, is that the employees/town citizens were subject to the policies, politics, and desires of the employer/mayor. For example, a worker's sympathy towards unions would often result in termination and eviction (we must remember that the boss was also the landlord). Company towns, due to their authoritarian rule, were not usually havens of ethnic equality. There were few blacks in the towns if any, and if Chinese or Japanese workers were allowed in (they not always were) they typically lived on the outskirts of town and held service jobs.

The amount of research and data included in a book of such moderate length is impressive. However, the plentiful information has a few organizational flaws. Company Towns is organized into chapters based on topics; the company store, the dining hall, recreation, the bunkhouse etc. Then written is an explanation or analysis (often a mere few words) on the chapter topic of for a dozen or two different towns. The result is Carlson introducing and re-introducing certain towns many times throughout the book. This is also troublesome when the chronologies of town timelines were so different. I do not believe conditions in Port Gamble (founded 1853) should be compared to conditions in Richland (commandeered during the early 1940's). Furthermore, I do not believe it is even appropriate to place communities like Richland and the Coulee Dam which were operated by the government (though through many private contractors as well) with that of true company towns like Holden, Roslyn, and Selleck. I believe Company Towns would have benefited from a town-by-town analysis rather than a topic-by-topic analysis. This would have made more chronological sense and would allow Carlson to personalize and de-stereotype particular towns more affectively; as this was stated goal of the book.

Even still, Carlson, a Harvard Business graduate, has produced an interesting and unique piece of Pacific Northwest history. Company Towns would serve well as a starting point for scholars and recreationalists who wish to examine the strange circumstances surrounding the hundreds of company towns of the Pacific Northwest, many of which no longer exist.