Mine towns
Subtitle: buildings for workers in Michigan's Copper Country
By: Alison K. Hoagland
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Minneapolis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9780816665662; 9780816665679
Other titles: Buildings for workers in Michigan's Copper Country
Description: From the Publisher: The first working-class history of domestic life in Copper Country company towns during the boom years of 1890 to 1918, Alison K. Hoagland's Mine Towns investigates how the architecture of a company town revealed the paternal relationship that existed between company managers and workers. The story of Joseph and Antonia Putrich, immigrants from Croatia, punctuates and illustrates the realities of life in a booming company town. While company managers provided housing as a way to develop and control a stable workforce, workers often rejected this domestic ideal and used homes as an economic resource, taking in boarders to help generate further income. Focusing on how the exchange between company managers and a largely immigrant workforce took the form of negotiation rather than a top-down system, Hoagland examines surviving buildings and uses Copper Country's built environment to map this remarkable connection between a company and its workers at the height of Michigan's largest land rush.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction. Negotiating paternalism in the Copper Country; title: Saltboxes and T-plans : creating and inhabiting the company house; title: The spaces of a strike : company buildings and landscapes in a time of conflict; title: "Home for the working man" : strategies for homeownership; title: Acquiring conveniences : water, heat, and light; title: Churches, schools, bathhouses : building community on company land; title: Preservation and loss : remembering through buildings.