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One example of a Du Pont town is Seaford, Del., an oldtime oyster fishing village, where the company built its first nylon plant in 1938. Instead of transforming sleepy Seaford into a grim, grimy industrial community, Du Font's coming has turned the town into an attractive outpost of suburbia, with its own Du Pont-built country club and nine-hole golf course, a choir and community concerts, schools of dancing and ballet, a new 40-bed hospital and a $180,000 Roman Catholic church. Unlike 19th century company town citizens, whose houses huddled close to mine or mill, two-thirds of Du Font's 2,900 employees commute to work each day from communities in a 50-mile radius.
While the automobile has enabled workers to live—and shop—where they choose, higher wages and Government-backed housing loans have enabled millions of Americans to own their own homes. Few towns today are owned lock, stock and barroom by any company. Weary of worrying about rent and retail markups, employers have sold whole towns outright, e.g., Kennecott Copper Corp.'s company houses in four western states were traded off last December for $5,000,000. (The U.S. is even unloading its atom towns, recently announced plans to sell Oak Ridge, Tenn. and Richland, Wash.) In most cases companies selling housing are glad to plow their investment back into worthwhile community projects. Cannon Mills, which in recent years has encouraged employees to buy and build homes in 50-year-old Kannapolis, N.C. (pop. 28,000), has given money and land for a number of the town's 84 churches, built a golf club for its 14,000 employees, and contributed most of the cash for a civic auditorium.
Stop Sign at "Venus Alley"
No oldtime company town in the U.S. better typifies industry's modern attitude than Butte, Mont. For more than 70 years, on the "richest hill on earth," Butte's copper miners and mining operators were locked in a bitter feud that often flared into shootings, lynchings, street battles and mass sabotage. The town was grimy and corrupt, demoralized by frequent shutdowns, cynically proud of its sleazy clip joints. But after a costly strike in 1946, an industrial engineering company was hired to find out what ailed Butte. The survey that resulted rapped Anaconda Co. for its neglect of community responsibilities, e.g., recreation and education.
In quick succession Anaconda backed a housing program that provided homes for 650 families, v. 150 houses completed in the previous 15 years, invested in a hospital, a civic auditorium and a $400,000 club where C.I.O. miners were soon bowling and drinking beer with the once-hated "sixth floor boys," i.e., Anaconda executives. The company also cooperated in clamping down on "Venus Alley," helped slash the worst VD rate west of the Mississippi to 3.2 per 1,000 residents. Today, in the town John Gunther once called "the only electric-lit cemetery in the U.S.," signs in merchants' windows proclaim: "Butte is my home. I like it."