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.)
