# Company Town A **company town** is a place where a single company is the main employer and also owns most of the housing and stores. Often it runs the local government too, formally or in practice. ## The American record Company towns grew up around mines, mills and factories in the nineteenth century. At their peak there were more than 2,500 in the United States, housing about 3 percent of the population. The best known is Pullman, built outside Chicago in the 1880s by the railroad-car maker for about 6,000 workers and their families. When the Panic of 1893 hit, the company cut wages but not rents. The result was the [[Pullman Strike]] of 1894. A federal commission called the town's paternalism un-American, and in 1898 the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the company to sell the town. The form declined from the 1920s as public schools, parks and libraries spread and the New Deal raised wages and encouraged home ownership. The standing criticisms were paternalism, monopoly pricing at the company store, the use of housing to control workers, and the absence of elected local government. ## The return The company town never fully disappeared. [[The Walt Disney Company]] has long controlled the two tiny Florida municipalities inside Walt Disney World. The new example is [[Starbase]], the [[SpaceX]] launch site in Texas, which became a city in May 2025 with a SpaceX vice president as its first mayor. ## Why it's on the map The company town is the American precedent for what the [[Network State]] movement proposes: a place where the employer, the landlord and the government are the same entity. The United States has run this experiment before, at scale, and ended it through strikes, courts and public investment. See the [[Network State Experiments Roster]] for the current attempts. ## See Also - [[Starbase]] - [[Pullman Strike]] - [[Fortress Futurism]] - [[Special Economic Zone]]