Reflections on Company Towns

Maintaining a functioning company town requires a delicate balance on the part of the overseer. As the examples of Pullman and Homestead show, when a company is so completely involved in the lives of a its workers imbalances can lead to catastrophe. Although company towns can lead to an increased quality of life for its workers and residents, it also limits their freedom. When everything within the city limits is owned by the same company, variety can easily become scarce.

On the producer side, however, the idea of a company town is a promising concept. For one, you can help ensure that your workers are well provided for, thus increasing productivity. Also, the money you pay workers will largely be paid back to your company through groceries, compounding profits on profits. It also allows you to, perhaps unfortunately, exert a rarely paralleled amount of power over your employees, influencing all aspects of their lives.

For example, in Pullman the company that owned the town exerted a lot of control over the everyday lives of it's residents/workers. South of Pullman though, in Granite City (near St. Louis), this was not the case. Granite City, unlike Pullman continued to thrive until the 1950's. Whether this was because of their more laisse-faire approach or because Granite Ware products remained popular much longer than Pullman car I don't care to speculate. It is, however interesting to think of this two very different contemporary company towns.

(Sidenote: After Pullman, Eugene Debbs was imprisoned in Woodstock, Illinois, which is also where I went to high school. This really makes me wonder why in APUSH we studied the Homestead Strike of 1892 so much instead of the Pullman Strike of 1894, which which the community I was learning in had such an interesting connection.)

Misplaced Vaudeville

This summer, while I was working as a cashier I read, among other books, Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Last weekend, I finally saw the perhaps more famous film adaptation (which in my opinion wasn't as good as the novella). One of the several things that I wasn't a huge fan of was the portral of Mr. Yunioshi. I realize that the movie was made 50 years ago, but the overblown stereotypical depiction of him seemed unnecessary and forced. At times he did provide some comic relief, but not in the MacBeth Porter kind of way. Problems with political correctness aside (which I have no real intention on touching on) it just seemed like an unnecessary distraction.

This is what I think separates the book from the movie in the case of Breakfast. In the novella, Capote writes like a more concise Hemingway; succinct and almost journalistic. The prose is beautiful, and by the end of my workday I was almost done with the book. The movie, on the other hand, felt like it ran long, and in comparison didn't have the same movement. A great example of this is the aforementioned Mr. Yunioshi and the role he played in the film. In an article I read today called Ethics, Stereotypes, and Holly Golightly (Link Here) Mr. Yunioshi's role is described as excess vaudevillian humor, common in the works of the films director Blake Edwards. It then goes on to discuss the place for and ethics of comic stereotypes in the author's opinion. It's an interesting and relevant article, especially when it points out how pervasive comic stereotypes are in film and television, often in the name of self-deprecation (e.g. Tyler Perry & Woody Allen).

Altruism and Aid

The class discussion on Friday about whether doing something that helps the less fortunate is self-motivated reminded me of an article my friend had to read for his African Studies Class. It is a satirical piece called "How to Write about Africa." (Link: Click here) In it there are a ton of stereotypes writers utilize to evoke pity and guilt. Here's an excerpt:

"Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction)."

This article, although satirical, brings to light the very mentality that was mentioned in class. People don't only do nice things because it helps other people. They do get attention. They do feel good about themselves afterwards. It would be foolish not to take these outcomes into consideration when trying to discern one's motivation. At the same time though, I think a lot of people really do care too.

Why Were They Elite? Conspicuous Consumption

In Perfect Cities, it talks about how the elite class was in and of the middle class, and yet defined itself through expensive things like high fashion items from Europe or funding an opera. I think this is an important point in American History. Basically, this is to say that there was a class of people that gained utility (or happiness) from spending money. Not even necessarily from the things they spend the money on, but the actual act of spending money gave these people utility and this mentality continues today. While this was happening in Chicago and New York, there was an economist that grew up in Nerstrand, right down the street from Northfield, that was about to change economic thought forever. This man was Thorstein Veblen.

Although he was considered for a position at St. Olaf, his religious views (or lack thereof) prevented this him from being hired. So he settled for Carleton. Then he went to University of Chicago to teach, where he published Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899. In this book, Veblen turned the neoclassical economic model upside down. Literally. This guy had upward sloping demand curves. He said that there is a leisure class, would conspicuously consumes goods solely because they are expensive, and that by consuming them they set themselves apart from the lower classes. One of these goods was having leisure time. If you had time to just lay around or travel it meant that you were well off enough to not be constantly working.

But what did this conspicuous consumption do to the demand for expensive, unnecessary goods in the lower classes? It raised the quantity demanded. All the elites were doing it, so it because popular and as a result the working class emulated the upper or leisure class, except the working class didn't have the means to do so, thus keeping them in the working class. I believe that this holds true today, but this shift in American culture happened right around the time we are currently studying. This summer, I worked at a carwash. I was one of the only employees there that was working there seasonally while on break from school. The rest of the guys worked there to provide for themselves and their families. Believe it or not, you don't make a ton of money working at a carwash. However, I also happened to be the only one there without a new smartphone. The owner had an iPhone, the manager had an Android, and the guy in back that vacuums and is essentially illiterate, and the guys out front that dried the cars all had smartphones too. Out of all the people mentioned, maybe the owner would be considered part of Veblen's Leisure class. The rest, mostly recent immigrants, were just emulating. Maybe it's the American way.

(Read about Veblen and Saint Olaf: here)

Why Coherence is Important

Taken from The Book Bench: Worst College Essays 1989:

"Nicholson has become a chomping-machine of language, recycling stock phrases, appropriating whatever drifts into his path. His words are nothing but echoes; but, as André Topia writes of the nameless narrator of the “Cyclops” chapter in “Ulysses,” the words are struck from a matrix, an idiom of the voice which destroys and sublates their origin. In “Ulysses” and in “The Shining” there is “this phenomenon of near possession which makes the Nameless One, though re-saying the already-said, seem to be bringing it into existence for the first time. He becomes its origin and founder.” The text is the absurd writing of one determined to write all the same, to produce text, to sign whatever texts come his way. Each line of text bears his own signature, “Jack”; he writes to saturate the void with his own subjectivity. But this “writing project” does not cheerfully consume the boundary between text and play. It is hermetic, a pure and rather fragile exertion of writerly will which is shattered by the intrusions of its only reader, the woman named Wendy. Jack would have been content to type for ever and ever and ever. But the spell is broken, and he stalks way. In the Gold Room, the fatally disconnected under-zone of play, he finds a fin-de-siècle soirée in progress; after a drink of Jack Daniels, he dances about for a bit—if you will, a cha-cha on the floor of the Grand Hotel Abyss."

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/10/worst-college-essays-1989.html#ixzz1bFJm1pep

The article talks about a writing trend of "incomprehensible pseudo-Derridean gobbledygook" that swept through colleges in the late 80's. This hits on a point I don't think was mentioned in Style. Although this paragraph obviously lacks coherence, it does it on purpose. Great writers can and usually do disregard a lot of the "rules" of writing as presented in style. The difference between them and college students like me is that they're just that: great writers. They can do so because they've already mastered the rules. After I read A Farewell to Arms I was trying to using the Hemingway run-on, punch sentence combo all over the place. This included places where I shouldn't have like religion essays and biology test questions. Although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and by mimicking and playing with the decadent prose of a favorite author with its flowing phrases and alliterative cadence every once in a while you may create a masterpiece sentence fit to appear in a Hemingway novel full of emotion and expression extolling the very feelings you wish to express. Or maybe else you won't.

(See what I did there?)

The Other Side of Westward Expansion

According to a new book by Susan J. Matt, America didn't expand because of a bunch of pioneers who heard the call of the wild and headed West, but instead by a bunch of individuals that would be more at home singing Camp Granada and sobbing than extolling the virtues of Manifest Destiny.

This book, Homesickness: An American History, goes on to tell of how this theme of homesickness continued all the way up until very recently, and now there seems to be a return to the old sentiment as well. Here's an article I read today from Slate talking about these trends: Slate Article. This idea is interesting to think about in context to Helga as well last years theme of frontierism. Although homesickness when disembarking from home seems like it would be obvious, it doesn't seem like the fact that immigrants or pioneers are leaving their family and well established home to come to America or head west is really in the front of one's mind when they're reading the history books.

"Are we there yet?"

Wanderlust in Quicksand

In Quicksand, it seems like Helga always wants to be somewhere different than where she is. This is a feeling I can relate to, although for very different reasons than Helga. Helga is often unhappy, and thinks that by relocating herself her problems will automatically be left in the place she just left. She learns of course that this is not usually the case. Her problems are not a product necessarily of the location in which she resides, but instead a result of forces of discontent inside of herself.

I on the other hand, love to travel. I'm not talking in the normal way either. Most people like to go on vacations to new places where they can relax and see new things. This is only partially why I love to travel. For some reason, I inherently relish the "traveling" part of it too. Not just the being there, but the getting there and getting back too. Generally people don't like going to the airport or riding on trains and really just want to arrive at their destination. I personally enjoy that transit, and the more modes of transportation the better. I compare and contrast subway and bus systems every time I'm in a new city.

For example last spring break I told my parents I planned on going to take a bus to the Cities, walk to the Megabus stop, then get a ride to Madison where they could pick me up. This wasn't good enough for me though, so instead I bought a new overnight bus ticket, got a ride to the airport with a friend, hung out at the airport because I had some time to kill before my 10:30pm departure, took the light rail to the Mall of America to get some dinner, took the light rail to the Megabus stop, overnighted from Minneapolis to Chicago, then took a train to as close to home as I could and had my friend pick me up. It was a lot of traveling from 4:00 PM to 9:30 AM but I loved the whole thing.

I think for me traveling really comes down to the adventure of it. When you travel there's a lot that one can't control. If a plane is late you can't do much about it but make the best of it. And in accepting this vulnerability to the forces at work there is a freedom. This may be why I like to travel alone though too. For a college visit 2 years ago I flew out to Philadelphia by myself and then took a train to meet my cousin, with whom I would stay for the night. I realized early on in that excursion that I was completely in control of what I could do in that no one could tell me what train to take or which route to walk, and at the same time I was completely vulnerable to the systems of transportation I was utilizing. And since then I've had this uncontrollable urge to buy a bus or train ticket on a whim to a city where I may or may not know anyone solely for the thrill of traveling.