Company Town

This one's been sitting in my thrown-in pile of photos for a long time, but after scanning and blowing it up, I'm not so sure I filed it correctly.  Yes, the woman is interesting, but it was the background that has made me question my original opinion.  I grew up in coal and steel country in western Pennsylvania, and when I was a child, it didn't take long to learn the difference between a small town and a company town. 

The classic company town  was built by the coal mine or the steel mill as housing for it's workers.  Most of the houses looked pretty much alike, rent was deducted from your paycheck, and as long as you were a worker in good standing with the company, you had a home.  If you got fired or quite, you were expected to move out in a day or two.  If you went on strike, you'd get evicted.  For some companies, retirement brought a small pension that included your home.  For others, retirement required having a son who went into the mills or mines who took over your home and allowed you to stick around. 

Some company towns were little more than rural slums, while others were quite nice.  I've been in coal towns were the houses were simple, wood frame affairs, that even when they were new, offered little more than dry place in the winter.  Vandergrift, a town not too far from where I grew up was designed by Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot, the same firm that designed New York City's Central Park.  In the end, most of the mills and mines let housing go as a benefit and sold all the houses off.  And if you didn't have the money, well the mine was more than willing to float a lone at an extremely high rate of interest.

So, the houses in the background look similar enough that they could have all been built for company housing, and in most company towns, one house could only be distinguished from another by the street number near the front door.