Company Towns: Pullman, Hershey, and Saltaire

When factories were built far from cities, industrialists built towns around them, and the results ranged from gentle utopia to open conflict. Titus Salt gave Saltaire solid stone houses, a church, and a hospital.

Milton Hershey funded an entire town and school trust with chocolate profits. George Pullman owned every brick of his Chicago town, including the rents.

When wages were cut in the depression of 1893 but rents were not, the Pullman strike of 1894 stopped rail traffic across half the country and ended in federal troops. The lesson learned across a century: workers make better neighbors than tenants..