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The Company Town in the American West by James B. Allen

1967; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 1; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1967.0022

1948-7142

Thomas Andrews,

American History and Culture

Reviews 313 gested, and thereby he increases our respect for the average Mormon pioneer, for Arrington’s evidence makes clear that when Brigham Young’s ventures turned out badly, the losses were absorbed by the hard-working Mormon common people. With remarkable resiliency and self-denial, those simple, devout farmers accepted each new setback and thereby enabled the church to clear its debts. R o d m a n W. P a u l , California Institute of Technology The Company Town in the American West. By James B. Allen. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966. xvii + 205 pages, $5.95.) The plaintive cry “I owe my soul to the company store” is familiar enough, but a history of that store and of the company-owned town that controlled it has long awaited full and adequate exploration. James Allen has taken the important first step in this direction with the publication of his doctoral thesis. In the process of locating nearly 200 company towns in eleven western states and carefully describing each in a forty-page section appended to his survey, the author has rescued the subject certainly from neglect and quite possibly from oblivion. The plan of the volume is ambitious. Allen faced a formidable task in gathering the necessary materials, and he is careful to point out the limita­ tions imposed upon his research. The disappearance of many company-owned towns, the inaccessibility of corporation documents, and the complicated nature of official company records have curtailed somewhat his effort to mine the potentially rich sources of the subject. Regrettably, his attempt to overcome this disadvantage has led him to attach an undue importance to personal correspondence and interviews —much of which has to be accepted uncritically. Moreover, the frequent reliance upon company publications and the occasional neglect of standard sources, as in the coverage of the southern Colorado coal-mining towns, for example, further call to question the validity of the conclusions reached, tentative though they be. Generally, however, Allen has gathered his material competently; it is his presentation that leaves more to be desired. His vertical approach to the lumber, copper, and coal-mining towns in the opening chapters is too fragmentary, being at times merely a lengthened shadow of the information contained in the appendix. In these early pages the author’s style smacks most noticeably of the dissertation. It is not until his later horizontal analysis of the company town’s social, economic, and political problems that Allen more nearly approaches the pleasing style he attains in his recent article, “The Company Town: A Passing Phase of Utah’s Industrial Development,” Utah Historical Quarterly, (Spring, 1966). 314 Western American Literature But it would be unfair to judge the book solely on these merits. Allen’s study is important to western and economic historians as a pioneering survey of the company town and not as a “penetrating analysis of that peculiar in­ stitution.” The strength of the work lies in the questions it raises, and it will maintain its importance to western economic history only as long as they remain unanswered, for the data collected in the answering process will undoubtedly alter many of the tentative conclusions reached by the author. The cycle would then have run its course. Allen is to be commended for launching the process. T h o m a s F. A n d re w s , Pasadena College A Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony. By Charles A. Siringo. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966. 143 pages, $1.70.) It is always a pleasure to encounter an old friend in fine new raiment, and to realize that he has lost none of his pristine vigor. This true-life classic of frontier days has of late been readily available only in a pocket edition whose small type on cheap paper adds nothing to the pleasure of reading. Thanks to the University of Nebraska Press this Bison Book is now available, in a modestly priced edition which takes full advantage of Carl Hertzog’s eye-pleasing typography and the striking illustrations of Tom Lea. The only serious fault to be found with the new edition is the...