Abstract
The model company town of Pullman was a social experiment that took utopian principles of intentional community and directed them towards a perfection of the capitalist system in America. This paternalistic effort on the part of industrialist George Pullman is well known as a social experiment that failed on a grand scale, as the model town became the site of a major labor action in 1894. This study uses archaeology and history to suggest that the town of Pullman was not simply an idealized community that served as a backdrop to a major labor action, but instead that the town actually created circumstances that elevated worker discontent that perhaps made workers more prone to take action against the company.
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Acknowledgments
This article is among the products of a very long collaborative effort in community archaeology and I am grateful to the community members and organizations that have supported archaeological work in Pullman over the years. I would like to especially thank the Pullman State Historic Site and staff, Mike Wagenbach, Linda Bullen, and Shari Parker, who have been incredibly supportive in all aspects of this project. I also thank Andrew Bullen for all his efforts in creating the Virtual Pullman Museum, which is a remarkable resource I have turned to again and again. These archaeological projects have all been field schools and I wish to thank my students and staff for all of their assistance in and enthusiasm for this project. I would also like to thank Andrew Bullen, John Burton, and Michael Marshall for their thoughtful comments on this paper, as this work has benefited from their insights and critique.
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Baxter, J.E. The Paradox of a Capitalist Utopia: Visionary Ideals and Lived Experience in the Pullman Community 1880–1900. Int J Histor Archaeol 16, 651–665 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-012-0196-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-012-0196-8