Un-American and yet, totally American | Company Towns
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2024
- There's a tendency to think about company towns as a quaint relic of the past, something that disappeared a century ago. But company towns aren't just some quirk of American history, they are American history.
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Books
The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills that Shaped the American Economy (2010)
Hardy Green
amzn.to/3x5c1JE
Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams (2006)
Michael D'Antonio
amzn.to/3DCNU7E
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (2009)
Greg Grandin
amzn.to/3paZ11H
Documentaries
Company Town (2016) - www.kanopy.com/video/company-...
American Experience: The Mine Wars (2016) - www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexpe...
Slavery by Another Name (2012) - www.pbs.org/video/slavery-ano...
Mysteries of the Abandoned S2 E7 "Amazon Ghost Town" (2018) - amzn.to/3dka17g
The Amazon Awakens (1944) - www.imdb.com/title/tt3623476/
TH-cam Videos
The History (and Return) of Company Towns | Prism of the Past - • The History (and Retur...
Company Towns are BACK! Now they're "Innovation Zones" - • Company Towns are BACK...
Nevada Bill Will Allow Companies to RUN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT - Dystopia Speedrun - • Nevada Bill Will Allow...
Reinventing Company Towns in Nevada - A Lesson from Labor History in Why People will Suffer - • Reinventing Company To...
Disney's Perfect Town - • Disney's Perfect Town
Why Facebook is Building a City - • Why Facebook is Buildi...
Facebook Is Building A City For Its Employees - • Facebook Is Building A...
Company Towns feat. The Trillbillies - • Company Towns feat. Th...
Skagit Tours -- North Cascades Explorer Tours (closed caption) - • Skagit Tours -- North ...
Life in a company town - • Life in a company town
Episode 25: Company Scrip (A History of Central Florida Series) - • Episode 25: Company Sc...
Governor Sisolak’s 2021 State of the State Address - • Governor Sisolak’s 202...
Movies and TV
South Park S22 E9 "Unfulfilled" (2018)
South Park S22 E10 "Bike Parade" (2018)
October Sky (1999) - amzn.to/3og47u8
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) - amzn.to/32gfaeb
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) - amzn.to/3q9kI2m
Websites
innovationzonefacts.com/
thenevadaindependent.com/arti...
thenevadaindependent.com/arti...
www.heraldnet.com/life/three-...
hersheyarchives.org/encyclope...
www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/wo...
www.history.com/news/hersheys...
www.seattle.gov/light/DamTour...
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Video Credits -
Pocahontas (1995) - amzn.to/3K5sR18
Photo Credits -
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Production Assistant - Rozarah
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Research Assistant - Jesspsettle
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Music - Michael Cotten
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Title Card Art - PoetheWonderCat
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Hashtags: #history #capitalism #antiwork #unions #unionization #labor #jobs #tradeunions #smartcities #innovation
0:00 Introduction
4:09 Lowell, MA
7:01 Pullman, IL
11:00 Hershey, PA
19:28 Coal Camps, WV
28:39 Gary, IN
32:08 Fordlandia, Brazil
43:00 Single Enterprise Communities
48:36 The Future and Conclusion
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So, Pullman's whole theory was that if you provide your employees every need they'll stay loyal. Then he charged people for their every need and then didn't provide enough salary for that even and then was shocked that they didn't remain loyal. Huh.
its exactly what happened in every other attempt at an Owenist settlement, he really should have figured out that it was a stupid idea. I mean, everyone else gave up on it FIFTY YEARS EARLIER
@@caoilfhionndunbar One would think it should have been immediately obvious that not ever doing the thing you thought you should would not work the way you hoped.
Shocking, yeah?
What a surprise!?
Loyalty is expensive. Servitude is cheap.
The fact that people cheer on Elon Musk's desire to build a company town makes me so very concerned for the state of our education system and common sense in general.
Just because he has money doesn't mean he's smart
@@undrwatropium3724 you can say that for ALOT of people man.
I personally think Elon musk is very intelligent. Although money does do things to people, gives them delusions on how the world works
@@remmyboyce8072makes them think they know better than you.
Mr Beast too
That part about company towns being so capitalist they successfully monopolise an entire region reminded me of this quote: “like all good businessmen, he understood the immense power of an open market. And so like all good businessmen, he avoided them whenever possible.”
everyone in the 'free market' is trying to make it as un-free as possible for every other player. (also, markets =/= capitalism. KB is actually wrong to say that they started being anticapitalist, they were just anti-market, which is totally consistent with capitalism and often encouraged by it)
@@bonomthorn8557 There's different kinds of capitalism. Free market capitalism and crony capitalism. Free market capitalism seeks to create an even playing field where competition necessitates efficiency. Crony capitalism seeks the opposite; to centralize production and limit free competition as much as possible. The reason people say cronyism is "less capitalist" than the free market is because centralizing production and eliminating competition makes it basically socialism by a different name. Free market capitalism is the type of capitalism which is distinct from opposing ideologies.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69 So, from a Marxist angle, this idea that free market capitalism and crony capitalism are fundamentally different is kinda missing the point. Marxists argue that all capitalism, regardless of its flavor, has the same endgame: the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.
Free market capitalism, where everyone supposedly competes on an "even playing field," still leads to inequalities. Over time, the big fish eat the little fish, and you end up with monopolies or oligopolies. That's not an accident; it's built into the system. The competition you’re talking about inherently creates winners who then use their power to keep winning - that's how capitalism works.
Crony capitalism is just what happens when those winners use their power to cozy up to the state to protect their interests. But that’s not some weird offshoot; it's a natural evolution of capitalism. The idea that free market capitalism is pure and perfect while crony capitalism is a perversion is a bit of a fairy tale. Marxists would say both forms of capitalism are about maintaining the dominance of the capital-owning class over the working class.
And calling crony capitalism "basically socialism" is way off the mark. Socialism aims to democratize production and give workers control, not to centralize power in a few hands like crony capitalism does. Crony capitalism isn't socialism; it's just capitalism with fewer masks on.
So, from a Marxist view, capitalism in any form inevitably leads to a concentration of power and wealth, creating the same core problems, just with different window dressing.
@@observer5615 I understand what the Marxist view is. I just think its incredibly naive. Instead of recognizing what the real problems with capitalism are and addressing them, the Marxists want to skip to "late stage capitalism" by a different name. In terms of power structures, centralizing power in the hands of the state and centralizing power in the hands of a few megacorporations that have de-facto control over state policy are little different. If you centralize power over a country's labor force and limit the options that people have, you make them more vulnerable to exploitation.
The idea that monopolies are inevitable is another part of Marxist dogma I don't agree with. The people in power certainly have an incentive to create monopiles if they can, but that's not always possible. For a monopoly to exist, there needs to be some barrier to entry into the market that is prohibitive enough that competition doesn't get involved. The more inefficiently a monopoly operates, the more they exploit people. the more financial incentive there is to enter the market. Monopolies can occasionally occur naturally, but history is full of failed attempts to create monopolies. The vast majority of monopiles are created and enforced by state regulation. Going "welp, its just inevitable that this happens under capitalism" is to ignore the impact we could have by getting corporate money out of politics.
Now, do I think that free-market capitalism is some perfect, pure thing that would fix everyone's problems if they just embraced it? Definitely not. Capitalism is a system with pros and cons like any other. It can lead to short-term thinking. It can incentivize pollution and environmental degradation. But it can also lead to extremely efficient industry, and economic prosperity at all levels of society. We have seen periods where the economic conditions of the working class have improved dramatically under capitalism. Capitalism needs some level of regulation to work. Its a tool that's effective in some areas, but harmful in others. But all of the upsides of capitalism (improving economic conditions for the poor, efficient industry driven by free competition) only exist under free-market capitalism.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69that makes no sense. what would be the mechanism for ensuring an even playing field outside of government intervention and regulation, also known as centralization? cronyism is exactly what happens when the free market is free. when you exist in constant, uninsured opposition against all others you are going to seek to consolidate as much power as possible in order to protect yourself. that’s not socialism, that’s pure capitalism. socialism puts the social issues of a community as a priority over capital, while under capitalism capital takes priority over social issues.
As a lifelong resident of the Chicagoland area, I have been to the Pullman neighborhood and been to his gravesite. Fun fact about his grave, it is reinforced with steel and concrete to prevent any disgruntled former employees from blowing it up.
challenge excepted!
i mean nothing can stop them now since we have stronger, more dangerous stuff to blow it up
how nice of pullman to give the workers an indestructible gender-neutral public toilet!
that's all part of the american dream.
@@AWESOMERACECAR2013 He was really ahead of his time, true trans ally!
Home ownership was an impossible dream for most miners... and an impossible dream for modern minors
Yet, they keep voting for Republicans or Uber conservative Democrats….and wonder why their life sucks
@@mr-vet those damn demoRats!!!
@@mr-vet That's a feature of American Politics, not a failing of the younger generation(s) voting in Republicans and Blue Republicans. American Politics are "Winner take all", which leads to a two-party Duopoly that inevitably pushes in the direction of the more ruthless party. in this case, Conservatism.
We don't have a choice but to vote for "The Guy I Hate Less" because any meaningful alternative (a Progressive or a Leftist) simply cannot exist in such a hostile ecosystem in which outgroups are viciously attacked and ostracized (Red Scare, Yellow Terror, etc etc)
@Safwaan thank you for being so succinctly based
@@mr-vet cuz the democrats don't have their interests in hand?
The amount of times “federal troops” is mentioned in the context of domestic intervention in this video is…something.
Remember, one thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on is that the USA is a capitalist country.
United States of America: With a Government like us, who needs terrorists?
@@LexYeen based
Capitalism owns the government. Always has. It wouldn't exist without government intervention constantly on it's behalf. Don't let Dems, Republicans, Libertarians, and other Liars tell you foolish nonsense about "free markets" and "small government". They know their power is only as good as the US military's eagerness to subjugate, enslave, and murder their own citizens.
@@LexYeen the democrats at least pay lip service to unions.
My first job in IT was.... sigh... in 1994. Most of my coworkers thought that unions were for idiots. They would actually say "we don't need them anymore". I later came to realize that most, if not all, of my coworkers didn't go to a community college while working, like me, to earn their degree. Most had affluent families and went to "name brand" (lol) schools. I couldn't get over how much they felt like a company could never get over on them or they'd never be in a position where they would need help from their union. The crazy thing is that it went farther than that. They were all completely anti-union from the top down. God forbid that they ever found out that I was a Democrat back then. I probably would have been fired on the spot.😅 Generational wealth... ...must be nice.
It's capitalist propaganda. How far it goes we will never really know because we live inside it. Even the idea of buying a house and car, having kids, then your kids buy a house and car. Usually with the help of bank loans. Then also education itself. same deal. i'm not against education though but if you ever go to college you can see how much of it is about making money
I don't think it was a Democrat vs. Republican thing. I'll bet my life that many of those same people were deeply liberal themselves, and proudly gave their money to social justice movements.
Now, if they found out you were a leftist, that's a different story...
They probably never worked for a company that was purchased by private equity groups…
It's still like that even to this day. Ppl say those things because they've never been put in a position where they're overtly being mistreated.
Hey, don’t worry. Some of us rich kids actually have brains. When time comes to eat the rich, I’ll bring the silverware.
I'm so sad that the farmers fought the workers instead of going up against the single guy that caused the problem in the first place :(
Tale as old as time
We're still doing it.
Look at how many people freak out at the idea of paying a living wage to retail/restaurant/service workers. "OMG THAT'S BARELY LESS THAN I MAKE!" Yeah, and you're underpaid, too.
Blame the people at the top who hoard all the wealth for themselves, not the people one step below you who want a few more crumbs.
@@cymond reminds me of the company that paid every employee a lot of money but everyone the same so some people quit because people with "lesser" jobs earned as much as them
Yeah, one of the reasons I began hating people at the top
@@tomlxyz It wouldn't bother me if people "below" me make the same.
It would bother me if the people who work hard get paid the same as the lazy employees. In that case, why work hard?
At my old job, the shift lead managers only made $2/hour more than the cashiers, but they had about 3x more work assigned to them, with 3x as much stress. I've seen a lot of Reddit posts about people asking for demotions back to regular customer service because the extra stress outweighed the slight pay increase.
Ah yes, running an entire city on Blockchain. I totally can't imagine how that will go horribly wrong.
i'm a cryptobro and even i don't understand how that'll work.
love to pay for groceries with crypto, have it take fifteen minutes, and by the time the transaction completes it's not enough to cover the price any more
@@ashen_dawn bUt iTs DEcEntraLizED
Dogcoins are the only legitimate use of blockchain.
Its almost funny and not sad having watched folding ideas video on crypto (nft)
The last segment came pretty close to discussing Disney's original plan for EPCOT, which was an old-school style utopian company town merged with midcentury futurism.
Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow
Well that and -ashism
Oh man don't mention the D word... lawyers... lawyers as far as the eye can see.
@@awlomthesheepermen what is ashism?
@@elliot04877 put a f in front of it
The tugboat part is unbelievable. I can’t believe they were knowingly screwing the people so badly they hatched a scheme to escape in case the people ever found out how badly they were getting screwed.
I feel like that's what programs like SpaceX are.
"[Hershey] as a completely self made millionaire with no help from his family.", right after saying how he started 3 companies with loand and kitchen help from his family...
The line delivery is so exquisitely dry.
Also glad to hear that he didnt forget people who helped him in his will😊
The farmers beating the sugar out of the strikers joke made me laugh way harder than it should have
Damn hicks
More like beeting the sugar out of them.
Yeah so did I
I loved that part. Nothing like farmers beating down some ugly bolsheviks.
fash is the ideology of small business
Meanwhile in the UK, Bournville - the company town of Cadbury - is considered one of the single nicest places to live in the entire country, having been developed specifically in response to the awful and cramped conditions of Industrial Britain. The company gave good working conditions and wages, didn't charge for the use of their facilities and even provided healthcare in a time when the government didn't. It peacefully transitioned into not being company-owned in the year 1900, going to a local trust. This is in keeping with a lot of the, especially for the time, very ethical treatment of business and workers that Cadbury had.
If you're going to do capitalism, get Quakers to do capitalism, apparently.
Sadly, quakers aren’t ruthless enough to have enough market share
Saltaire being another company town, on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal to house and provide for the mill workers. Built by Titus Salt.
Elvis Costello wasn't as nice to Coolock Ireland.
Jamshedpur in India is another example. Started by the founder of Tata group as a Steel city, it has diversified now and no longer a company city, though Tata group is still a large employer. It is a mid-sized city (by Indian standards), well planned, good infrastructure, schools, sports facilities and the like in a part of the country that is otherwise not the most developed.
@@teteteteta2548 Yeah, sadly Quakers are a good example of how tolerance can be turned against you. As the regions they settled in the US became more affluent (Quaker capitalism is actually REALLY good for trade), other religious groups figured out how to move in and take over.
It is amazing to me how something as magnificent as a union is often so misunderstood and negatively portrayed. I will always be a member of a union in my field of work, because I know how powerful they are, how much they've done, and how much people have given for them to exist at all
The class war between worker and capitalist is one of history's oldest tales. I wonder when it will end. (I say when, because capitalism is inherently unsustainable by its own design, due in part to finite resources and automation)
There are a lot of corrupt unions that take advantage of workers and embezzle money from the coffers for personal gain. Many years ago I worked on a case involving the IBEW and Grayson Capitol. The guy was seen literally rolling out with stacks of cash. He was found guilty as hell. There are corrupt unions feeding politicians as well.
There are many good unions as well. I certainly do not want to paint them all with the same brush. It's usually the bigger unions that have the same leadership for decades that start running afoul of the law. Many unions are still necessary today.
it's not really surprising. the side with the most money wins the media war, and that wins the culture war. combine this with the fact that things are only now starting to get really bad people really didn't think much about needing unions before now.
Unions have a ton of upsides, but never discount the negatives. A lot of unions over the years gave in to corruption and formed rather unique toxic work environments, encouraging laziness over work ethic. This mismanagement has only fueled the capitalist rhetoric against unions
If you want unions to be truly effective, you need to address the problems that have arisen from them.
@@thelouster5815 They are subject to the same pressures as any power structure, which is the case for decentralization
As a resident of Flint, Michigan, the single enterprise community thing hit home. GM ran this town to the point where half of our streets and public buildings and parks are named after big wigs at General Motors and/or the separate companies that came together into GM. They were basically the only employer, and the town was booming when they were booming, and they offered great pay, benefits, and hell if you worked there long enough they’d give you a free car when you retired. That all went away when they all but left (there’s only one factory in flint and that closed for a bit), and now Flint is riddled with the symptoms of a rust belt city
As a fellow Michigander this whole video was just way too familiar
As a Michigander who moved to Michigan after the recession and de-industrialization I have no idea what any of you people are taking about. Did the roads ever not have potholes, and why does so much stuff in this state have reference to cars, I’ve never seen a single car factory in the 5 years I’ve lived here.
@@maximgruner well potholes will always be a problem with our weather. There so many references to cars in our state cuz Ford and GM made their homes in Michigan for decades, especially in the metro Detroit area and Flint. Flint especially used to have factories all over town, including the giant Buick City (Google it). There’s still a factory on Flint’s west side, dunno so much about Detroit area as I’m not from there but I know Pontiac and surrounding towns have become a major hub for Amazon and other shipping companies.
@@sonole3 I hope Pontiac St in Flint is the road which heads toward Pontiac… aww, it’s not a major street headed toward the place with that name at all!
@@sonole3 Potholes will always be a problem when there's too many asphalt/concrete roads. It's the classic trap - it looks cheap enough to build... but maintaining it very quickly dwarfs the original investment. Most roads should not be made of asphalt, but of course, we got the massive oil and car lobby wanting everyone to pay their bills ;)
I grew up in a Walmart town. Company towns still exist. 30% of the town worked for the distribution center. The rest worked at the truck stop to feed the truckers who hauled the goods to the Walmarts. I don't go home any more.
When I saw that Amazon was trying to revive the concept of company towns a shiver went down my spine I wasn't taught about company towns in public education despite being a mile away from hershey a infamous company town and thus had to crawl through the mountains of info myself and I came out having a vile hatred of them and a better understanding of how my state came to be, it's a shame more won't have a similar reaction just because they were never taught the honest history of the places they live in
Right? And I had only heard about Amazon after I saw "Sorry to Bother You."
4
You will very much be interested in "Private Cities".
Anarcho Capitalism and other weird capitalism-"shit" is very much developing rn, sadly i cant point you to a good starting point, as all the scientists and journalists i got to know that through are german.
I know though, that german institutions and rich US-Americans are setting up the first examples in honduras rn, your favorite breadtubers will have talks on that ^^
Oh, apologies ahead, i feel your rage man, i didn't intend to ruin your day
@@MannIchFindKeinName nah your cool modern society is filled with this kinda bs and history is made to repeat itself wether by malicious intent or plain ignorance
I also had a horrific experience when I went to DemSocialist LA
As a non-American, these clear up a lot about the "old America atmosphere" in films and various stories we read at school
What specific stories are you talking about?
@@jaserader6107i dont know what stories they meant, but but so much self righteous anger and violence makes no sense at all to non Americans.
I used to work at the hershey museum and learning abt the town history was fucking insane. Also they gave us a prepared statement to give if anyone asked about hershey's child slavery cacao sourcing "allegations"
What was it?
You cant say you have a prepared statement and not give it!
@@SilverMe2004 this was in like 2016 when i was fresh outta high school so i dont remember exactly but they gave us a paper with canned responses to various questions people might ask about the origins of herhseys cacao. Making sure to carefully dance around either confirming or denying these allegations while citing the third party organizations who had certified the ethics of the company or whatever. It was really weird because literally no one ever asked me anything about it lol but it made me feel soooo uncomfortable abt working there. Like i was on the front lines of distributing pro cacao farm child slavery propaganda
"The new site manager decided to switch to an all-American cuisine"
"The Brazilian workers were furious about the long wait and disgusting food"
LOL
It would’ve been good white christian food of the time. Probably something foul like lime jello salad with peas, mayonnaise, and cut up hot dogs.
@@tomatochemist I want to die
@@tomatochemist sounds delicious
Thats because food is a very important part of our culture and living, its sacred to us to sit around the table with our families or friends and enjoy a homemade meal at lunch
And we are usually really proud of our cuisine, we are always trying to convince gringos to eat them lmao, specially snacks like coxinha, brigadeiro, bauru etc 😋
@@BurnTheTeddy Absolutely, food is a big part of culture. Would’ve been better if they’d hired local staff to make food the workers would’ve been used to and been happy with!
The slight tartness in most American chocolate isn't just a flavor difference, it's a natural preservative also found in butter and a lot of cheeses which is part of why Hershey took over. Their chocolate was cheaper because it was easier to safely store and ship.
My chocolate is tart? Is my life a lie?!?!
🎶 if you like the dentist drilling cavities! Choco! Chocolate Cheese!🎶
This is why American chocolate tastes awful
@@melissamarsh2219 It doesn't taste awful, just different. The butyric acid flavor is often sought after in cheese.
European chocolate really can't stand a mild warm day without melting. It tastes great most of the time, but if you selling it in Florida and California, you simply can't have it.
i had a friend who went to milton hershey school in PA for awhile when we were kids. it was bad in the ways you can imagine a private christian boarding school that recruited poor kids probably would be. we grew up in west virginia and they would send recruiters to our middle school to recruit students. it's funny, we were right near the place where the great railroad strike started and our school books still focused more on reframing the civil war as a matter of states rights rather than tell us anything about the important labor history of wv. this video was really great, thank you for making it and i hope you and your family are hangin in there!
"He framed his factory in the amazon as civilising missionary work rather than as a colonial plantation"
Funny thing is, all colonial endeavours were framed this way lmao
yup.💔 Heartbreaking.
Arguably they’re identical in function
There's different historical context at work each time, but yeah, that's generally what causes people to believe that their colony is a good idea
The same mindset exists today in mission foundations and corporate globalization, and to a lesser extent in foreign aid and charity programs
That’s why these corrupt people are so big on religion…a means of controlling.
You can bet your bottom dollar Trump has no interest in establishing a relationship with Jesus Christ
Because he knows most of the “leadership” of these churches don’t believe either.
This statement triggers the lamentation deep inside the hearts of Native Americans.
If you live in a town that is having only one primary source of employment and if that source goes tits up and the town goes empty, yeah it was company town. I am not talking solely about US by the way, Magnitogorsk was the USSR version of company town with the worker dorms not even including kitchens as it was assumed that all food will be provided by the steel mill cafeterias . On side note I would love to see our host play Democracy 4.
There was\is a ton of such single-industry company town in ex-USSR and most of them are abandoned since USSR collapsed. There was like 3 such towns around the city I was born in and to my knowledge they are all ghost-towns now.
detroit?
I'm from Rochester, New York and can confirm this.
Antarctica is nothing but company towns XD
holds up since the main critique of the ussr is that the state just took over the role of the bourgeoisie and made mild reforms
“I owe my soul to the company store” ..lot of mining towns here and when you got paid in company bucks which you could only buy things from the company store, you could never get ahead. It was a brutal existence where they literally have the boss mansion high on a hill lookin at you
Hershey Resident here! It’s really cool to hear the history talked about outside of the town itself. There is a museum in town now which goes over most of this information, only mildly sanitized. The effects of the company town are definitely still felt, as resident of the town proper are usually more affluent than the surrounding farming communities. Great video!
It sounds similar to my experience working in a ski resort. While they still pay you in dollars your rent is automatically taken from your pay, you can use your id to buy stuff directly from your paycheck, and every business within the village is owned by the company, also the isolation helps make sure most of your wage stays within the company
I live in Summit County, Colorado, and Vail Resorts has come under fire for underpaying employees, gobbling up all of the affordable housing, and stacking people in that housing like sardines. They’ve recently lost a lawsuit over not paying their employees their full wages.
Remember when your boss gripes about the nefarious nature of unions/government telling him how to run his business, that if he could, he'd pay you nothing and charge you to use his bathroom. If he's an MLM boss, you'll pay him to work for him.
Hey, your boss is killing your boredom, and in a climate-controlled building! That's gotta be worth something in the free market! .
But, sadly, someone out there in the world would probably try this logic. If they haven't already!
So there can't be competition from better companies with better bosses that people would work for instead?
@@Cacowninja Why not both?
@@xero2715 What do you mean?
The original idea for EPCOT would have also been a batshit crazy example of a company town. Definitely worth looking up.
Defunctland's video on Walt Disney's original concept for EPCOT sums things up quite nicely.
@@moviemaestro800defunctland slaps in general
Those mini-wars between miners and corporate and/or government forces is mildly terrifying. I knew things were bad back then, but I didn't realize just how bad they got. Thank you for another informative video, as always.
Stay well out there everybody, and God bless you friends! :)
lol "back then". lmao!!
even though i live in the great lake region i read enough union and railroad battles to know it gets very old.
look up the homestead riot near pittsburgh
@@0fficialdregs Thanks for the recommendation! I just looked it up and read a little bit about it. I'll try to read some more about it later this evening.
@@Numba003 you will be shock how crazy that riot was. smh
@@0fficialdregsI'm assuming that government intervention through military force on the owners side was a factor here as well?
My family was at Ludlow, heavily involved in the union side and somehow survived the torching of the tent city. It's really cool to hear the story of the coalfield wars told here.
More Coloradans need to learn of our history fighting for Unions and Worker's Rights. We've always been a hearty working class state, and the efforts of the common man to secure better conditions for their comrades must be known.
When I was 11 we moved to a town where 3M was the main employer. 3M would give higher-ups loans to buy expensive houses in Rolling Acres; if they ended up leaving town, 3M would absorb the debt on the houses. This created a culture that could be felt at every level. Everyone knew their pecking order in the town.
@benjamin bessette why? 😅
3M the company that poisoned the eastern Minnesota water table
I used to give historical tours of Hershey, and something about it being a corporate town never sat well with me. Milton Hershey was by no means an awful person, but I remember talking about the bank at the center of town and how just beside it was the company store. So employees would cash their checks and go directly next door to buy groceries from a store that was owned by Hershey. There’s so many stories like that, but it always felt like a cheeky joke we’d tell. Kinda makes me feel weird now.
Edit: He basically told an hours worth of history in 10 minutes. 11/10
I used to work at Walmart, and more than once I cashed my check at the front counter , turned around and had to buy groceries and stuff and many checks never left the store
@@TheGibbie shoplift
@@javiercantu9271 not worth the only means of income one has
As long as they don’t print “hersheys dollars” they can skirt that weird line
i live like 20 minutes from hershey and didn’t know that. crazy
I literally just finished reading October Sky and it goes into detail about the company store and the credit used. I had never heard of mining company towns until I read that... and even then I didn't know there were that many.
I didn’t know or realize ‘Company store’ was a thing until I saw the movie ‘Joe vs the volcano’ with that depressing intro with workers toiling towards a coal factory and the song playing in the background.
I went on TH-cam to see what people thought of that scene and started learning about ‘corporate towns’ from then on.
The point is, I think we all learn the horrid truth of laissez-faire Capitalism, in one form or another and if we are not observant enough can see history repeat itself.
I was hoping for some mention of Epcot (whose concept changed considerably even during Walt Disney's life) and the three cities created for the Manhattan Project.
Last podcast on the left on spotify had an amazing series on the Manhattan project and multiple parts of it had good portions of the plants and the british side as well
Edit: I´m sorry for your lost, KB. :(
Regarding the "family emergency": I hope everything will be fine. I wish you and your family all the best in the world! No need to apology for christmas references, KB. It´s fine! Your humor is awesome and the more, the (knowing) better! ;-)
He's not late for Christmas, just really, really early.
51:45
He later said it was a death so unfortunately it's not fine
@@iwilltouchyourtoes ... I literally gave the timestamp, if RCP wanted to change their comment, they already would have
@@willhendrix3140 I edited my comment. Thanks for mentioning it... What a tragedy :(
As someone who has lived in a state with a heavy history of coal production and dependency, I'm glad to hear people talk about how company towns that operate entirely on scrip operated. Even today these communities entirely depend on the company for any money as most other employment options are unavailable, essentially giving these companies a ton more power over their workers. Whenever I see a "tech town" or a suggestion for an Amazon company town, I can't help but think about how shitty they already treat their workers - and how worse it could get if they were allowed to do so.`
Yeah, I moved out of Facebooktown (Menlo Park) just recently. Can confirm that people all the way down to the schoolkids became entitled pricks over the years since... you guessed it... 2011.
"What do you mean demand is down this quarter? How are we going to continue to grow profits? Jacking up prices in town 30% should do it."
@@star_seraph What's entitled pricks have to do with corporate oppression?
@@sunkintree The heirs of the facebook people moving in are the entitled pricks!
I'm saying corportate oppressiveness is heritable if not checked, and that a corporate town fosters a generally toxic environment even today.
You really can't compare white collar company towns with those of blue collars
The Reedy Creek Improvement District is a rather unique and fascinating entity, which could probably fill an entire 30-60 minute video essay all on its own!
When a history teacher of mine who used to live in the Soviet Union, we asked what it was like, she said "a company town but on a country size scale."
Funnily enough, every time they poll older Russians who lived in the Soviet union, they overwhelmingly say they preferred living under communism.
That’s terrifying 😅😮
It's really funny to see what is the resemblance between a socialist command economy and the natural endpoint of unchecked capitalism.
Probably including the millions dead
Soviet Union = state capitalism
yeah right, except for mass murder, gulags etc.
I know many towns where Walmart came in, ran local businesses under, and their employees live in trailer parks. Good example of company towns.
That and Amazon. Its awful.
Having expensive local stores and people who would rather work at a Walmart doesn't sound better to me.
@@jtbrown51 Seriously. There are no stores that sell baby goods around here anymore. Walmart and Amazon are your only options, and Walmart knows it, so now it seems they've marked up prices for everything from clothes to formula. Of course, this is impossible for me to prove, since all the competition is gone...
@@greengandalf9116 he means the example is a good example, not that its good for that to happen
@@greengandalf9116 people don't "rather work at a Walmart", what happens is the presence of a Walmart destroys the other options so people have no choice but to work at a Walmart.
The Company Towns remind me of how Aramco built entire settlements in Saudi Arabia for foreign (mostly American) workers to keep them separated from the local Saudis. However, in that case it was mostly to keep American ideas out of Saudi hands and minds.
Also overseas American military bases! ☕️Even in the smallest town in the country where we couldn’t find cheese there were American military bases with McDonalds 🙃
My dad knew the guy who ran the local still in one of those towns.
I imagine Westerners and their families would quickly become dissatisfied or unruly if they had to live in Saudi neighborhoods and be held to the same laws and social structures of the Saudi host.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Protecting their sphere you mean... Eat my shorts, America.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 You do realise those people don’t actually want you there? The government’s just want to be lazy with who runs their military.
Imagine being a group of construction workers, putting your heart and soul into building a brand new town, and the company calls it "Gary"
P.S: Much love to you KB.
Imagine if you're a construction worker named Gary...
But it gave us Michael Jackson!
There wasn't a single thing on this video that was new to me. At some point in my life I've learned most of this stuff in school, college, or random youtube videos. However, putting it all together like this was pretty damn awesome. Great job and thank you for the informative videos. Especially the ferret based ones!
In school, well, the classmates of mine didn't really pick up the fact that they're own General just went on a vacation after failing his revolution.
I was just blowing up. They literally didn't say a word about it. The members of the revolution kept getting executed while he just vacated to the US.
Last year it was the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain and yet it was barely mentioned anywhere in mainstream media. Thank you Knowing Better for shinning a light on this frequently overlooked topic!
Dude. You really did the damn thing. This video is so good. You really painted a picture of how the modern workforce came to be and all the repercussions of these often forgotten historical events. Props dude.
Keep in mind 99% of US businesses are considered small business, under 500 workers, and contribute to 44% of the GDP, those numbers are widely accepted and easily researched.
So it begs the question how much of the modern workforce is actually affected by this history given that 2021 saw the highest number of new business applications in history, although surely the pandemic had an effect, it has been trending upward for a decade.
@@beentheredonethatoriginals5673 what is the point of your comment? Not being confrontational, just trying to understand what you're trying to say.
@@vova5450 sure, my point is that the "modern workforce" is primarily comprised of small businesses that literally change day to day to best meet the needs of the market. Nowhere on earth is it as fluid as the US, it cannot be, we are by far the most diverse country in the world, which is one of our great strengths.
So the video focuses on the modern workforce in an oppressive light that is true only for a fraction of our citizenry. Anybody can, if willing, move to any part of the country and become part of the middle class simply by joining a trade. I was an electrician and made prevailing wage, which is 30 to 50 dph depending on the market. So this video doesn't address small businesses, trades, only large corporations.
@@beentheredonethatoriginals5673 "anyone can move anywhere in the country and get any job they want" is certainly an opinion that exists.
@@smoglin2369 yes it absolutely is. I've moved cross country twice to take part in opportunities not available in the state I worked in, and took my family with me. One move was more successful than the other, but with literally millions of trade jobs seeking workers today, this option is more open than ever.
I live in VA - about fifteen minutes from an old coal camp. My ex's grandmother lived there until she died - she just bought the house she had been living in after the coal camp closed. She kept the numbers on the bedroom doors and everything. The stories people told about how hard it was to afford anything at all were so sad. I still remember seeing my dad and grandfather's lunch boxes with UMWA stickers on them. They made mining equipment.
You know, as someone who lives in West Virginia. I can imagine all of these coal towns probably did a lot of damage to our state’s overall wealth.
Of course I remember being somewhat taught about these towns, but I was never was told how long they lasted. And what I am hearing is they went on through the 1960s.
oh mining towns has it worse.
i’m not american so all i associate west virginia with is john denver and now take me, home country roads is stuck in my head
When KB posts, I know it’s gonna be a good day. I spent the last three days binge watching the back catalogue for the millionth time, wondering when there’d be a new video lol
true facts
Yep you go to the channel to see if you missed a video and end up rewatching them all
I just found the channel for the first time yesterday! It’s always great to find to find an excellent series that is actively updating
Oo I know that feeling
I know the feeling...that’s been me for the past month or so
Fun fact - one of the reasons corporate campuses were developed in the late 40s and early 50s was to hedge against the fear of nuclear attack on major metropolitan cities. Many of these companies (HP, IBM in particular) held huge govt military contracts and saw themselves as military targets
Wouldn't that just lead to the campuses themselves becoming targets in addition to the cities?
@@russelldoty2743 yea but they only got so many nukes, you know
@@russelldoty2743 Even more so. That would be why you move the business out of the city.
This is an amazing history lesson. Ostensibly about company towns, it reveals so much more.
I feel like I learn more in a 1hr of a knowing better video, then I did in all of school.
Pretty normal, actually...
for fuckin' real.
The coal workers took to wearing red bandanas so that all the workers knew who was on their side. Hence the origin of the term Redneck.
In Matewan, bulletholes from the Coal War are still visible in the back of the building housing the Coal War Museum
I'm pretty sure "redneck" is Southern in origin, i.e. a poor white man whose neck got red from working in the sun all day
Redneck was originally a term from early modern England that was used to make fun of the communities in southern scotland and northern ireland who had church congregations outside and thus got rednecks. When the scots irish migrated to appalachia and later the south and texas this nickname stuck for rural americans even if they werent all of this scots-Irish heritage
Growing up in Hershey, the towns entire economy is in some way related to Hersheypark, the candy factories, Milton Hershey school, or the medical center.All of which wouldn't exist without Milton Hershey. He is talked about like a local hero, everyone grows up hearing about him. Almost anyone working in town, has worked at one of these places.
Worked in sanitation at the park for 2 years and the company thinks that giving us Hershey Park and resorts gift cards is a proper reward... one of the worst jobs I've ever been in.
Live near Corning ny when I first moved here I applied to a job there unaware how big this company is and everything they do. all cell phones that have touch screens use Corning designed glass. They use glass and ceramics and build everything. Most combustion engines have ceramic uses and lots of fiber optic cabling has connections to Corning.
I went with a different job but they hired the mythbusters to do their freaking welcome video. Most people I know that work there are happy but it made me uncomfortable with how many strings they could pull and how much power they had as a single enterprise town.
If anyone would be considered a hero in Hershey, PA; you'd think it'd be Wilt Chamberlain.
That's the kinda shit that makes my spidey-sense tingle.
@@milesclay2209 I can concur. I’ve worked some shitty jobs, but working at Hershey park was definitely the worst
I've never liked the term "Human Resources" because it sounds like a company is treating it's employees as objects rather than people.
I've also never liked the idea of companies having any "control" over aspects of your life outside of work. It's like treating you as a child. It's usually in the form of helpful "benefits" like health insurance, retirement, and to this full extreme, housing. Just give me a higher salary and I'll get my own insurance, retirement account, housing and everything else.
I mean..
They ARE treating employees as objects rather than people
The phrase "HR is not your friend" exist because it's true.
They only "help" you because not doing so exposes the company to a lawsuit, but their true purpose is to maintain employees appeased enough they don't become a liability, employees are a resource, and while it's true HR tries to keep thing running smoothly, if they decide you're worth the effort, they'll drop you like a hot potato and put the next smuck willing to put up with whatever Management demmands in your place.
All we are to anyone with money or power is a body, some of us are skilled bodies, but that's all we are and have been since we stopped being tribes of people
Being an adult means doing a lot of stuff you don't like.
Some of these things are useful to do with a large group, though. For instance, many health insurance companies will give a company a deal, where they will pay below-market rates, since they are bringing in hundreds or even thousands of their workers. This would be far more expensive, and administratively taxing, if every single employee went out and got their own plan.
Of course, many of these issues would be solved by a single-payer system, or benefits being provided by a union, but it's better than nothing at all.
@@wiretamer5710 Yes, but I would like the option of doing that stuff myself instead of the company. Also, it's not natural for there to be as much bureaucracy as there is now.
Its kinda cool that it took you almost a whole year to complete your series about Jamestown. Its nice to be abble to rewatch the four videos.
Loved that "capitalism goes full circle" bit. That's what people who talk about "free and unrestrained capitalism" never seem to get. It'd never, ever stay there, and quickly devolve into the sort of dystopia those company towns represent.
If we entertain the thought that every company nowadays either goes bankrupt or bought by a bigger company, at the end of this development there would be either one or several few super concerns that own everything. When was the last time a big american company successfully got broken up by force? The last time the government tried to do that was 2001 and it failed.
That's why much of the scaremongering about socialism is ultimately a criticism of capitalism itself.
Companies are structured like autocracies. Letting a company rule a town, the obvious result would be a hellscape autocracy.
Much like how socialism quickly devolves rapidly into dictatorships. Both extremes are bad.
I feel a lot of this is because the phrase "free market" is a complete misnomer. To get a free market, one needs strict consumer protection regulations, low (but nonzero) wealth inequality and perfect information, all things unregulated economies fail to achieve.
A very slight historical inaccuracy. The first English colony in North America was Roanoke, which was rather mysteriously lost. It was a government funded (at least as far as I know) expedition, with woman, and children.
And, even if it was successful, probably would've just been a much-earlier version of Jamestown in terms of its raison d'être... But in North Carolina.
I grew up close to Procter & Gamble’s headquarters, and specifically right next to one of their major business centers. Neither of my parents worked for them, but they had an enormous impact on our everyday lives. They brought in a ton of revenue for their city (which I lived directly outside of), to the point where they annexed a large amusement park that used to pay taxes to my township. My school district struggled with dangerous levels of crowding because they couldn’t afford to expand, but people brought into work for P&G often lived in our school district. Also because of all the people they bring, house prices have gone up tremendously. It used to be in neighborhoods right next to the business center, but it’s expanded to my mom’s neighborhood, where now many people who have been there for decades can’t afford their property taxes. My mom has had to take out loans on the house just to make ends meet. It honestly sucks, especially because we almost always lose to the nearby city school in competitions because they have so much more money…
My Uncle was a labourer who worked on a 3,000 unit apartment complex in the Netherlands which was financed by the German car manufacturer Volks Wagon.
Meanwhile over here in the UK a well known supermarket chain took on the trustees of Cadburys, Bournville, UK to add a liquor store to a nearby retail outlet and lost. Even though the land wasn't owned by the trustees.
There's more of this to come on both sides of the Atlantic.
Thanks a lot for talking about Fordlândia!
As a Brazilian, I can tell you, it was seen as a great sign of national development and patriotic effort during WW2, it was the biggest symbol of the rubber industry that aided the allies after Malaya was occupied and a symbol of Brazilian-American friendship. We definitely don't hear the other side of the story, including the poor worker's rights, as it was unfortunately common practice until the 1980s.
Fun fact, although it was abandoned after 1945, Fordlândia today has 3000 people living on it. The settlement was reorganised in the 50s and 60s and the worker's housing became their official property. Belterra was never abandoned by the people living there (as you know, they were mostly married. And the soil is amazingly fertile) and as of 2020 it has 17,839 inhabitants
EDIT: A year after this comment, both me and my mother found work at separate corporate campuses XD
Are you from Pará?
@@sohopedeco Minas Gerais
Are they still producing rubber?
@@BadWebDiver apparently, yes, there's a few people still on the trade. But the economy is much more diversified, especially in Belterra
I like how this topic connects to a lot of your other topics, such as the religion videos since a lot of these company towns started off in Europe as utopian Christian planned communities. Also, how exporting business company towns were a cause for American militarism abroad such as what butler saw. The self help topic bleeds into this as well as many of these towns as you said claimed to help the inhabitants. The Cult topic also fits into company towns well.
Yay got a gold star for KB! I was wondering if you can do a video lateral to this one in topic. A video on youth “ help” camps and it’s industry. These range from private schools with an emphasis on character repair or development, to dude ranches, to military youth boot camps, to isolated “tough love” youth camps. These all have in common having no choice in being sent there, and being in a spectrum of controlled Environment. I think these became popular in the 70’s as a response to youth hippie culture and the perceived breakdown of older authority, but stretches back way further I think. Race may also play a role in sending young black boys through the court system to these types of youth reform camps/schools,
And your statist bullshit is better? The problem is centralized top-down hierarchical systems of command and control, not the entity or focus behind the effort. One may be company or religious and not be those things or not company or religious, aka communism, and be those things. You leftist authoritarians despise anything outside the dictatorship of the state.
@@zacscalafini6545 That would be an excellent topic! I have a lot of knowledge about these from "professional interactions" with them, and that is one bizarre industry.
@the collier report
communism and dictatorship are incompatible, if everyone is equal, there can not be one or a select few above all others. Dictatorships that have called themselves communist or socialist were in reality either state capitalist or economically fascist.
Communism is anarchist (and will therefore never work in practice on a large scale), and socialism is inherently democratic: the only ruler who can have any authority under socialism is one who is chosen by the people to represent them, and who is at the mercy of the people to retain their power.
Any system where the masses are exploited for the lazy elite to live in luxury, regardless of how that elite has manifested itself (e.g. royalty, wealth, politics, warfare), is wrong.
The American Dream is a lie under capitalism, for hard work is not what determines success under capitalism. Capitalism is a predominantly a system where those who already own wealth, particularly in the form of capital, can profit from thise who provide the hard work. Hard work creates wealth, but under capitalism that wealth does not go to the benefit of the worker, but to the benefit of the owner of the capital.
Even the foundations of capitalism are being eradicated by the products of capitalism:
-Companies backed by so much wealth that they can operate at a loss until their competition goes bankrupt and they have a defacto monopoly thereby eradicating the forces of competition of the free market that were suposed to make the best products thrive.
-products that beed to deliberately be made not too good and not last too long because if they do, you won't have a reason to ever buy new products
-copy rights and patents which provide monopolies on a product (again harming the principles of the free market), as well stifling innovation and creativity as they prevent others from improving and building on the patented/copyrighted design and even can halt new independent designs because they suposedly are too similar to somethig that a massive company holds the patents/copy rights to.
-Companies blaming potential workers for lack of employees rather than adjusting their wages up to the market rate.
-etc.
Capitalism has always been and will always be a sytem intended to benefit the owners of capital at the cost of others.
Combine that with the fact that wealth and capital are inherited, and it becomes obvious that capitalism is just an economic hereditary oligarchy pretending to be an economic meritocracy.
It cannot be fixed, as it would cease to be capitalism the moment it doesn't benefit the capital owning elite at the cost of the working and middle classes.
We can, however, take inspiration from concepts associated with capitalism, and learn from the mistakes and failures of capitalism, as well as from other ideologies, to come up with something better.
A system where hard work, creativity and innovation actually pays off.
A system where people are provided with the basics to survive and thrive.
A system where people can find the way they can best contribute their skills and talents.
A system which actually rewards, facilitates, and stimulates merit.
@@thecollierreport want some dressing for that word salad, Adolf?
As a very Brazilian Brazilian I say: NEVER try to take away our cuisine or cachacinha, these things are sacred to us
This was a very informative video, I spent all my childhood in a company town, not in America, but in India. My father was an engineer at a nationalised coal mining company which takes pride in powering the nation. We did not have those company stores and all that you find in american company town. there were company canteens, they were for employees only, pay using cash, and this was in the company workplace premises.
The trade unions have power and they are not shy of flexing it, i still remember they used to organise strikes and community meetings. They invited more and more people to join the union, everyday i went to school , at an intersection, i saw a huge dark red board with sickle and hammer emblem, announcing the presence of the union, contact details, name of the organizers etc. during my childhood they were enjoying so many benefits, free power in company allotted housing, and many more. The locals have benefitted a lot from the unions. There was no school in that remote location, the unions and executives pushed the company to establish a reputed public school, this school which has been giving outstanding students since its inception. People turned their lives around like in the movies, from a nobody in remote india to moving abroad with their children.
Company towns remind me of overseas US military bases. Little enclaves of America all over the world
They remind me of the company towns they made in the banana republics haha
I didn't know this model was also used in the US, i assumed it was only used in the plantations overseas.
Guam is a huge military base, and american samoa is just a marine creator island, the only way to get fully american citizen ship from ironically "an american territory" is joining to the marine corps or get married with an continental american
More like Disneyland... ever seen the price of a bottle of coke in disneyland
They could also remind you of the US military writ large. The healthcare, bonuses and pension are all provided for retention because the job is unpleasant, the pay is a little low and the skill are not universally transferable. When the skills are transferable, the bonuses can go up and the contracts get longer see pilots and any advanced electronics technician training. For a while during the transition to digital telephone systems, the advanced training for a telephone technician was so valuable on the civilian market it required a 10 year reenlistment to attend.
@@CapPotato388 *company dictatorships
The Amazon thing made me realize that Amazon only exists as it does because of the damage done to the postal system.
Had Congress not launched an all out assault in the name of their friends who believe any non profit service ever is heresy justifiably punished by exterminatus, Amazon wouldn't be able to market so heavily on their delivery services, they'd just be relying on the already existing infrastrure.
Frankly truck delivery and freight delivery within the US should probably be folded in too since there isn't really a reason why the USPS shouldn't be handling anything that needs to go anywhere within the US.
@Nicholas Time USPS is actually pretty incompetent. Many employees that have worked in plants or stations will tell you that. One of the guys on the docks got written up because a truck driver just wanted to play on his phone. So the guys supervisor wrote him up because the mail was late despite the fact the truck driver ignored him... And the union rep sided with the boss and gave the guy a warning.
Similarly, anyone who has held the position of a Postal Support Employee could tell you how incompetent their leadership is or how supervisors refuse to communicate with each other or compete with one another and sabotage each other
@@sketchstevens5859 Refusing to sabotage each other is a good quality
@@cameronrichardson1576 No... I mean they sabotage one another, compete with each other and refuse to communicate. Sometimes a day supervisor will call everyone two hours early or four hours early just so he can make things difficult for the night supervisor that follows him up. One time my supervisor has explicit orders to space out how much mail he was supposed to run ... but he was petty and ran none of that mail for two days so it was a big pileup
@@sketchstevens5859 but is it fair to compare the USPS of today, an organization that was handicapped and forced to hemorrhage money since the 80s/90s and say “the state solution for delivery is ineffective”. The USPS of before was reliable, expedient, and quite cheap to operate to the point that it made a profit for the government.
@@The_Faceless_No_Name_Stranger organizations with a profit motive will always be more efficient than a non-profit. If the expectation is to save 3% each year you behave differently than if want to maximize your entire budget even if you don't need it. Add in that it's typically more difficult to fire government and union employees and you just can't compete.
Any tangible change needs to happen at the cultural level, which is really hard in a country as splintered and diverse as America that is quickly shedding any kind of shared American identity. Americans tend to work to clock. There's a "put in my 40 and go home" mindset. You need to change that mindset at a cultural level. Look at Germany. They look at working more hours as a sign of incompetentance so there's a culture wide mindset to get work done as quickly as possible.
In the immortal words of Peter Gibbons: "my only real motivation is ... the fear of losing my job. But ... that will only make someone work hard enough not to get fired"
My mom went to Hershey Milton boarding school around the late 80s and she absolutely loved it. Free access to the park, a wide variety of clubs and activities, she had a good experience with her house parents (they’re hiring now), and was very POC friendly. Plus if you went there you can have HELLA connections with some very successful people.
It’s so crazy how I learn of all the intersections of different topics there are when I tune into your channel. This one is so broad! I’ve seen some of your twitch streams, I know this takes a TON of work and time. I don’t think I could express with a simple comment how much I enjoy learning more about something I thought i knew about. Thank you.
Watching this after the "folding ideas" NFT video just makes you realize how much worse the idea of "innovation zones" are
I never knew about the Ludlow massacre and the associated coal wars until I moved to Colorado late last year.
Insane how this monumental page in the history of workers rights had been boiled down to a road sign off the side of I-25. I didn't even learn about it in my "20th century america" course in high school. Thanks for bringing it more into the forefront, more people need to know about these things
Why would the ruling classes want you to know these things? They hide it as well as they can
:o you had a 20th century America course? I got the last 3 months of my junior year and part of a college semester
@@PrincessNinja007 it was an elective course, otherwise you got the usual """history""" course that was an unironic telling of Knowing Betters most recent April fools video
Not surprising since American schools are pretty much designed to raise factory workers. Wouldn't want the kids learning about unionization before they are old enough to work, would you?
There's a monument as well, not just a sign, my wife and I stopped there and I explained it to her, she had never heard of it either. Rockefeller wasn't the only tyrant certainly, but there were none more ruthless.
lived near Gary my entire life, never knew it was considered a company town. This channel is really educating the hell out of me.
@19:55 It crazy realizing the song Sixteen Tons refer to mining towns in Kentucky, cause the song fits the mining towns of West Virginia so well as well.
The Outer Worlds reference in the end was spot on. When you started talking about space colonies being company towns, I immediately thought of Edgewater.
'If your'e upset you can always rent an apology.'
@@singletona082 A family forged in bureaucracy.
When capitalism ruins graveyard
I remember snoozing through class when we got to the subject of labor unions part in high school. Now that I understand how important it is to understand the background of these topics in how they parallel the attitudes and policies decades later, I'm glad that I found this video, which I will watch again.
They make it uninteresting so students don't throw up in revolt and disgust at the reality of it
i had elder's and learn from books 📖 ect. on both sides of the fence ( pro history and unions and anti government and unions ) and at 18y i was dummy ( your not the only one born after 1970's and osha ect. that just didn't get it ) and now wonder if i should have taken some of there warnings from them and the past as i made the mistake of thinking that scrooge ect. was dead 💀and gone guess not and i didn't realise that par-ark capitalism was a thing and a slippery slope for mischief, had i not seen the past/this video i would be on board with it as on paper it doesn't sound to evils
It took me awhile to realize just how important learning history really is. It wasn’t until the 1940s unit in AP US History when I recognized the fact that a lot of issues we’re dealing with now bear a shocking resemblance to things that have happened before, multiple times. And I’m reminded of it again when anyone on Twitter tries to propose “new” policies or ideas.
This story alone has connected many dots in history. I subscribed
I am amazed this hasn't been taken down yet. You're doing good work bringing awareness to this, so please keep it up.
If anyone is interested, the Hudson's Bay Company is still in operation today, mostly known today for its department store, The Bay.
or maybe it’s subsidiary, Saks Fifth Avenue
Yeah they have a badass show on Netflix about its early days called Frontier.
"The Bay" is considered synonymous with the Canadian retail economy.
Excuse me I was born and raised in Colorado, why has no one until now told me about the Coalfield war?? In fact, I didn't know about any of these company towns, either. History classes neglected to tell me some damn important stuff
Pretty sure that's by design
Same dude, I even had a civil war history buff for a history teacher and he didn't even mention this stuff. Like hello???
Shout out to Behind the Bastards podcast, gotta go looking for the dark side of history.
You do understand that highschool history is intended as state funded propaganda?
@@rutger5000 it's primary focus was to actually train you for your factory jobs way back when. Then turned into a way of educating into certain fields, electrician, automotive, carpentry, culinary. Which devolved to what you quoted. But I wouldn't call it state propaganda, I would call it federal funded propaganda as the states generally push the same bs.
The intro reminds me of how people in my family always seem to pass away in February. Which is also my birthday. So, every year since my 5th birth month, I've always been reflective of that,(or however you'd say that you feel sad) the whole month. Remembering the loved ones Ive lost. It's a good and bad thing tho. Sorry for rambling, I've also been drinking today, and can't help it.😅
Scrip also parallels heavily within game currencies in online games, as well as other such reward mechanisms.
Like.. no. No it doesn't. Except that you can only spend it in one place. That is the only thing those two have in common. That's like calling an Applebee's gift card scrip. No.
No. Stop it.
@@erisdiscordia5429 A good comparison, especially since there is a massive amount of money bundled up in Starbucks gift cards and the like. The point is that companies want you to invest in them in a way that you can't later retract or withdraw, and incentivize staying within that system. Having that card balance disposes people to come back to the establishment over an extended period of time and stay loyal to them, and if that company goes under the value of the card becomes worthless. And as that money is kept with them from the point of purchase they get to continue to grow and benefit. The entry point is just external money rather than labor. Its certainly not physically restrictive like company towns, but it still psychologically links you to that company.
@@okazakitomoya8903 And in spite of all those useless words, they are still nothing like Scrip. Fucking hell.
Like I said stop trying to make stupid ass edgelord comments that are demonstrably incorrect. I don't give a fuck what fluff you use to justify your head canon, it's incorrect on its face.
@@okazakitomoya8903 the important thing about scrip though is that it forces you to disconnect from the larger economy to pay for your livelihood. Game currency doesn't force you to buy clothes, food, equipment, etc, they don't have the authority to evict you from your home for whatever reason they want.
That's the difference, and it's a major one, one that makes them completely distinct in every way but how game currency is bought with real money and you can't do a reverse transfer
@@okazakitomoya8903 I mean, you make it sounds like a good comparison in theory; not in practice. Let's make a good comparison between in-game currency and real-life restricted money : Nobody, absolutely nobody, is forcing you to put your own money on a gift card. Hence the name implies, well, it's made to be gifted to someone. Personally I've never quite got it : why would you exchange X dollars for X restricted dollars?... Makes zero sense to me. If I buy a gift card then I want something that will incentivize me, like a free thing from the company, or 5% more money on it than what I spent, something like that. In-game currency is really similar : once you spent or load you can't get it back and if you load your balance it's limited to the game. But, again, nobody forces you. Script does force you, as Stuugie said, to disconnect you the larger economic system.
Even funnier when you realise that England was exporting their "excess poor", and stealing up land for resources.
Like, not only the USA, but all their other colonial holdings. India especially (off the top of my head). And the slave labour thing, I know of a despicable practice used in Australia (which I had to learn about by myself as an adult) which essentially kidnapped Pacific Islander people, and forced them into labour. Particularly in sugar cane harvesting in Queensland.
And not only that, I also think of the poorhouses of England. Who's conditions were so bad, a lot of of very poor people literally would beg a judge to be sent to a colony (most notably, Australia), rather than continue to endure.
It's a side note, but it's always what I see when "paternalist" ideas get brought up. It creates conditions so bad, you'd give up everything to escape. And it forces people to give up everything, because colonisation has harmed so many cultures and so much land.
British workhouses for the poor were designed to be so bad that people would do anything to stay out, ie a plot to avoid the full cost of supporting the poorest. However at the same time the Asylums were built with ideals (ruined by making them dumping grounds and overcrowding) of air and space, and in the country with their own farms (occupational therapy - whilst convenient for self sufficiency). Whilst the Quaker model communities in Bournville, Prt Sunlight, Saltaire etc were in the midst of wider towns and cities. Yes they had parternalistic expectations - no pubs, community social clubs and no washing to be hung out on sundays, but homes with sanitation, gardens to grow your own food etc were a huge contrast with overcrowded slums.
Yes colonisation was a bad thing. But I don't thing they ever claimed that to be more than trading led - rather than 'paternalism' .
Yes well we all know that "Slavery, of Black People taken from Africa, is BAD". So there wasn't any slavery in Australia at all. The technique of kidnapping people from certain surrounding/Pacific Islands to be taken to Australia against their consent and forced to work for people that now "owned" them, was called "Blackbirding". So by calling something by another name, then everything is alright. ok. (Yes I have my sarcastic face on).
@@KiwiCatherineJemma there was no reason to bring african slavery into this. Slavery had always existed. No one had denied. African slavery had simply been the worst type of slavery to ever exist.
@@shinozaddy5939 i think its the fact that slavery is still practiced, I just don't think chattel slavery is prominent today (PLEASE CORRECT ME OF I AM WRONG).
I find it funny how kb apologizes to us about the Christmas theme. But he could have stuck with it throughout the whole thing and it'd be okay
Sorry for your loss and no need to apologise. This is another of your excellent videos so well worth waiting for!
The town I live in is basically becoming a company town. [Insert company name here] is already the largest employer and it’s growing every day with much of the workers being foreigners who contract with other companies and are here on visas so they don’t accidentally start a union. We (I work for the company) have gym memberships, health insurance, 401K, company transport to work, company housing for many, and we are even getting a company cafeteria as well soon.
I don't remember where I saw it, but I remember a comment saying "the five day work week was won with blood" or something similar, and that thought was only reinforced by this video and our history.
Growing up right next to Lowell, when reaching for something at the dinner table (usually across someone), we say "scuse my boarding house reach." This is ostensibly because the mill girls sat at long tables in their boarding house for supper. The legacy of Lowell as a company town even shows up in our speech
Hey, this might be a bit out there, but in any case, I just want to say thanks. Your unique way of rationally approaching, dissecting and re-evaluating "givens" in our lives has unleashed an (what feels like) an avalanche of realizations in myself, hopefully leading to a healthier, better life. Without wanting to sound too dramatic - just thank you, and I really look forward to more intriguing content! :)
I love your channel and videos KB ! thank you for telling the people's history which has been hidden from us and connecting the dots between contemporary life and our history and informing the world to how we got to this point. So compelling, I wish all of this was taught in schools. I am so grateful for the work you have put in to educate us on very important topics which shape our lives. With this knowledge may we build bridges into a better world, identifying cycles as they repeat themselves to navigate the future with grace, avoiding atrocity.
The reason Hershey chocolate tastes like baby vomit is because the milk they use is treated with Butyric acid, to make the milk last longer while being transported to Hershey's factory.
It's why American chocolates should be considered a cheese.
That's an urban legend perpetuated with shoddy journalism. For one, if the milk is being treated to preserve it for the trip the the factory it would be the farmers doing th treating no? But the farmers are all local so extended preservation isn't required.
The tang appears to be the result of the milk (that like all milk already has that acid in it) is cooked at lower temperature, while Europeans traditionally cook milk at higher Temps that result in the milk and sugars being partially caramelized. This in effect covers the tang that even European chocolate is bound to have, since all milk will have at least some of this acid in it.
As a Belgian, I felt personally insulted the first time I tried Hershey's "chocolate".
@@gaiusjuliuspleaser you guys only made the chocolate to get at the kids
@@luked4043 Hey, at least our slave-owning pedophile rulers were hereditary monarchs, not elected leaders.
@@gaiusjuliuspleaser I guess I hoped you would get the in bruges reference but okay. Beautiful country
Anti-union behavior is a primary factor in ruining the lives of many US citizens. Wages would be higher, salaries would be higher, we'd have better working conditions and safer, healthier lives with a a robust unionized labor force.
To qoute Peter Seeger;
🎶
”They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold
Greater than the might of atoms, magnified a thousand fold
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong”
Solidarity forever ✊🌹✌️
@@jabber1990 what union and how many of your coworkers are unionized
@@jabber1990 You are more than welcome to go work at a nonunion company. Or you can attempt to get hired as part of the management.
@@jabber1990 That’s a polite way of them telling you that you aren’t that special.
@@jabber1990 I think your first line in your response answered the question.
It speaks volumes about America when company scrip was still being paid in the 1960s considering that the practice was outlawed by the the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Fr
im from a small town near lowell that was built around a wool mill in the 1870s as a company town. a lot of my middle and high school teachers grew up in town, and in particular two of my older teachers were well known for going off topic and rambling about local history and a lot of their stories show how the aftermath of the company town played out, especially the various different churches reflecting different immigrant populations. even now, the area that my history teacher called 'the wrong side of the tracks' is still somewhat defined. we have the old clock tower and railroad tracks turned into a bike path through the center of town, and theres a ton of interesting history but nobody really talks about the way the mill operated as a company town
I loved how you've mentioned The Expanse the moment I thought to myself "This sounds like The Expanse". Which is also extra ironic because Amazon makes it (after Bezos saved it from cancellation even). Amazon is really good at making entertainment about how evil they actually are.
Also nice to know you're also a fan.
Was gonna comment something along these lines.
I thought the exact same thing but with The Outer Worlds and loved the reference at the end.
I d rather prefer company driven expansion then governmental one. You can get rid of a company, you cannot get rid of the government.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Thousands of years of reform and revolutions would like a word with ya.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 how long until a company becomes a government??
It's hilarious to me how many times it happens that a horrible curmudgeon comes up with an idea that just slightly boosts output for the person in charge, before we remember why it was a horrible idea (through realization or outcome) and have to fight to reverse it.
Company towns, scrip, low wages, long workdays, slavery, monopolies, there's just too many to count!
Not to mention the assembly line, predatory pricing (Walmart _and_ Amazon, 'great minds' I suppose), vertical integration (though Carnegie never reneged on that), and most of Thomas Midgley Jrs inventions
Yeah, but those things help already-rich people get a little more money in the short term, so it's good. It might make life miserable for the employees, but they aren't rich, so they don't matter. (...It's very upsetting to me that I feel a need to confirm that I'm being sarcastic.)
And we'll just keep beating them back. Until profit is dead and the powerful are extinct.
So whats your solution of a better world? How can we achieve it?
Sadly, this is how 'learning from history' works. The people who push for these ideas have not forgotten, they can look at their predecessors, see how it benefited them even after the fight, and hope to recreate that boon for themselves. It keeps happening because it keeps working.
Your videos are always excellent. Thank you.
Thanks for the very informative video
The Colorado Strike Song This song by Hayes expresses hope for the future, faith in collective struggle, and, above all, a
commitment to the justness of “fighting for our rights” and “fighting for our homes” against even
the most daunting foes.
We will win the fight
today, boys,
We’ll win the fight today,
Shouting the battle cry of union;
We will rally from the coal mines,
We’ll battle to the end,
Shouting the battle cry of union.
I only know “which side are you on”
was it written to the tune of "battle cry of freedom"? pete seeger wrote a trade union song to the tune of "battle hymn of the republic"
Billy Bragg wrote a song called "There is power in a union" (different from a song of the same name by Joe Hill) that chokes me up every time I hear it. It came out in 1986.
It's worth a listen if you've never heard it. I love that folk-punk sound that Billy has. It's a real banger no matter your politics.
The mill at Lowell is now a nice little museum. I've been there many times (I live about 20 minutes away). They run townwide art projects that are free and great for small children. The museum does a good job of showing how terrible working there was and doesn't shy away from the fact that our clothes today come from similar conditions in other countries.
Tragically, the museum closed. The Lowell Textile Museum had one of the largest textile collections in the US, and it's now scattered to private collections and various institutions around the country.
@@KRfromthePaleozoic Maybe we're talking about two different museums. The one I mean certainly does not have a large collection of anything except mill machinery, but it is still open, at least according to their website. I'm talking about the Boot Cotton Mills Museum. They are open noon to 5 every day. Tickets are $6 for adults, $3 for children.
@@KRfromthePaleozoic Oh, I see the one you meant closed in 2016. I was new to the area in 2016. I don't think I made it to Lowell until after that museum had already closed. I meant a different museum Lowell.
facts in Lowell schools every field trip is to the mills where they talk about how 9 year olds worked 10 days a week lmao
@@ratedpending I figured as much. Frankly, still to this day, there's not much else in Lowell.
I grew up in Gary IN. The homes within 2 or 3 blocks of the entrance to the "Big Mill" were very nice indeed. They were built by the Mill as a place for managers and other big deals in the mill.
Hey, thanks for this video! It was incredibly informative and helpful. I've been doing research into the history of the American economy, and this really covered a lot of useful ground.