American company towns are named for their owners. Unlike Pittsburgh or Houston, named to honor an individual, unlike Boston or Portsmouth, named for towns once known by their founders, unlike Philadelphia or New Haven, named for what they were hoped to become, Kohler and Pullman and Hershey all bear simply the names of the men who created and, more importantly, controlled them. The steel-making town of Roebling, New Jersey, was called Kinkora when it was founded in 1905. But the original name of the site was soon forgotten. By a "natural process'' (1) the name of the family that built it became synonymous with the town itself.

Perhaps the Roeblings would have preferred to call their town Kinkora; though they accepted the change they did not initiate it. It is said that when the architect Samuel Beman suggested to George Pullman that his new town be called "Beman," Pullman suggested a compromise: the first half of his own name and the last half of Beman's. (2) Kinkora was apparently renamed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which "said it was Roebling and stamped the tickets that way." (3) But the official name of a town occupied solely by the employees of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company -- whether or not the company chose it -- can only be a symbol of the equation by those residents of employment and community. Indeed, it would have been impossible to forget that relationship. From the Roebling School at the town's entrance to the Roebling Inn on the riverfront it was overwhelmingly clear why, and for whom, the town existed.

Wide, paved streets on a rectilinear plan, brick houses, all of similar type, the central circle with bank and general store, all marked Roebling unmistakably as a company town. In the center of the grassy circle stood the town's water tower, a cylindrical shaft that provided a prominent symbol of the industry that had created the town. Equally visible from the circle, at the end of Main Street, was the mill's Number One Gate, through which the entire work force passed every day. In the gatehouse was both the employment office and the police station, quietly but powerfully asserting the economic and political control of the company. A further reminder were the concrete posts which stood at the end of each street. On them were stamped the words "Private Property." Once a year, chains were connected from post to post, to prevent any "claims of adverse use and to retain [the town's ] identity as private property." (4)

In 1885 Richard Ely wrote of the town of Pullman, Illinois, "At the termination of long streets a pleasing view greets and relieves the eye -- a bit of water, a stretch of meadow, a clump of trees or even one of the large but neat workshops." (5) From the center of Roebling the vistas offer a more symbolic view. On the east, the plant gate; on the north, the park provided for the workers' enjoyment; on the south, a row of identical homes; on the west, the ball park where the town team played. Every direction showed a different aspect of the residents' life, and every view a reminder that those aspects were all provided by the company.

As they did not necessarily intend to name the town after themselves, the Roeblings insisted that simply because they were building a town, that did not mean they intended to build a model one. John A. Roebling's Sons Company had been manufacturing wire rope in Trenton, New Jersey since 1850, and had established their reputation with the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, opened' in 1883. They had built two large complexes of shops in Trenton, but had not made their own steel until, as Washington A. Roebling said, "it had become apparent more and more that if we did not make our own open-hearth steel we would soon be left behind in the race." Importing steel rods from which to draw wire was unreliable, and none could be bought in the United States. (6) In 1904 the company bought 250 acres in Florence Township, Burlington County, ten miles south of Trenton, on which to build new mills. The site was bordered on the north by the Delaware River, and on the south by the Camden and Amboy Railroad, both considered advantages by the company. However, the labor supply was poor: the town of Florence had only 3000 people, and, once the plant was built, among workers commuting from Trenton, "it had been found that by frequently being late employees were losing time in starting work." (7)

"Perhaps the most troublesome feature of Kinkora (so named at first) was the utter lack of houses where the working men could live," Washington Roebling said. "This could only be overcome by building an entire town, a so-called Model Town." (8) When the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted a study of housing by employers in 1916, they reported that most company towns were built for the same reason: "Employers undertake to house their workmen primarily because there is a dearth of houses." (9) From the beginning the Roeblings stressed that the town was strictly a business proposition, and that "we are doing only what we are driven to do bv force of circumstances."

As the Roeblings told the New York Herald in 1906:

Having determined upon Kinkora as the site for the expansion of our mills we were forced to build houses for the men to live in who will be employed there. Inasmuch as we had to build houses anyway, we are building as well as we know how, and incidentally are providing some other things for the benefit of out employees. (10)

Their insistence that the town was "viewed purely from a commercial standpoint echoes that of George Pullman, who in 1880 built a new railroad car works and a surrounding town near Chicago. Like the Roeblings, Pullman had achieved both fame and a business reputation with a remarkable engineering feat when he literally lifted the Chicago Loop out of the mud. Later his Palace Cars became symbols of luxury, but of his town Pullman merely said: "The object in building Pullman was the establishment of a great manufacturing business on the most substantial base possible, recognizing ... that the working people are the most important element which enters into the successful operation of any manufacturing enterprise." (11)

Pullman expected to make a 6% profit from the rents he collected. But despite his "strictly business" attitude, Pullman planned his town with more in mind than a monetary return on his investment. The town was widely considered to re a "model" one because of the luxury of its design and facilities. The homes, Pullman said. were "of such character and surroundings as would prove so attractive as to cause the best class of mechanics to seek that place for employment in preference to others. We also desired to … exclude all baneful influences, believing that such a policy would result in the greatest measure of success ... from a commercial point of view.'' (12)

The town of Pullman was obviously designed to attract and influence workers as well as to house them. The Roeblings may have had similar plans for their new town, but they were less aggressive about promoting them:

We shall charge enough in rents to provide a fair interest on our investments in houses and their surroundings. While the store, for instance, will not be conducted for the purpose of making a profit, there is no thought of running it at a loss ... It is pure business for us, though we would not go into it if we did not find it good business, and if the men find it as good business for them we shall be satisfied. (13)

While the Roeblings conceded that they were doing more than was usual for their workers, they were quick to relate their seeming generosity to capitalist principles. Everything the Roeblings did in their town was based on "pure business." Far from concealing this hard-boiled attitude, they flaunted it, and, in fact, expected their workers to share it.

Pullman, a supporter of the model tenement movement, believed that "everything depends upon surroundings," and that living in a well-built house in a town with parks, a library, a theater, and an absence of bars "elevated and refined" the working man. (14) The results he hoped to achieve were described -- in fact, presented as reality -- in a brochure on Pullman written for the World's Fair in 1893:

Imagine a perfectly equipped town of 12,000 inhabitants ... bordered with bright beds of flowers and green velvety stretches of lawn ... a town where the homes, even to the most modest, are bright and wholesome and filled with pure air and light, a town, in a word, where all that is ugly, and discordant, and demoralizing, is eliminated, and all that inspires to self-respect, to thrift and to cleanliness of person and of thought is generously provided. Imagine all this ... and you will then have some idea of the splendid work, in its physical aspect at least, which the far-reaching plan of Mr. Pullman has wrought. (15)

Though the town of Roebling fulfilled the same criteria (with the exception of saloons) as Pullman did, the Roebling brothers were wary of attempting to create anything like the "Pullman system," (16) or of labeling themselves as anything other than good businessmen: "We certainly are not posing as idealists or reformers ... we are not giving anything away and the men will be getting only what they pay for." (17) But in reality, if not in avowed intention, Roebling rivaled Pullman, at least in the quality and completeness of its program. As late as 1945, it was considered a model town:

A sandy tract, unattractive and unproductive, was transformed into a beautiful residential community ...The town has been well planned, with attractive parks, flower gardens and recreation centers. 2000 children attend the large and spacious red brick school. A national bank, theater, post office, and hospital have been provided, as well as a police department [and] a well-equipped fire department. (18)

Nonetheless, the Roeblings denied any interest in "welfare work" or "paternalism," ascribing all the town's facilities to good business sense. If George Pullman was suspected of economic motivation behind his altruism, the Roeblings evidently preferred to be accused of the reverse.

The Pullman plan, aside from "ennobling and refining" the town's inhabitants, (19) was also intended to solve labor problems. If the workers had decent housing, recreational, cultural, and educational opportunities, Pullman believed, they would be less likely to organize, make demands, or threaten to strike. The Pullman car works, which employed largely skilled workers, most of whom by 1893 belonged to the American Railway Union, had a history of labor unrest. While the Roeblings had labor troubles of their own -- the Trenton plant was first struck in the 1870's -- the Pullman boycott of 1894 seemed to convince them that a company town was not the answer. Charles G. Roebling, president of the company, told the New York Herald:

We are not building at Kinkora with any thought that improved conditions of living will lessen the danger of strikes. We do not believe that what we are doing would affect that situation one way or the other. The attempts to carry out ideals in the National Cash Register works, in Pullman and elsewhere, have surely not been encouraging to employers, and we are going ahead without any illusions in this regard. (20)

But any company town provides powerful weapons for use against labor organizers and other undesirables, and Roebling was a model town in that respect as well. Despite their disavowals, the Roeblings no doubt agreed with the sentiments expressed in 1908 by Iron Age magazine, the journal of the iron and steel industry:

It goes without saying that laborers whose home surroundings are attractive and pleasant and who can enjoy to probably the fullest extent the comforts of life compatible with the circumstances of wage earners, are likely to prove more efficient than those who are otherwise domiciles. There is incentive on the part of the men to become more and more proficient so that their term of service may be lengthened and they and their families continue to enjoy the privileges and comforts which come from a residence in the model village provided for them. (21)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that this same reason was the one most frequently cited for building employee housing: "the desire for a stable supply of labor, married men particularly, and the belief that a more efficient labor force would thereby be secured." (22)

The higher quality of life in a company town attracted workers; once they arrived the structure of the town controlled them to the advantage of the employer. The idea of mutual benefit to employer and employee is reflected in the Bureau's comment that "some of the reasons given [for building worker housing] show clearly the exploitative character of the undertaking, while others express a vague and conventional humanitarianism." (23) In designing their town, therefore, the Roeblings provided their workers with much more than was required, but they also provided themselves with all the mechanisms of control. Only men employed at the mill could live in the town. The houses were rented, not sold, and leases stated that "said tenancy may also be terminated at any time upon one week's notice by said John A. Roebling's Sons Company." (24) Even when the town was completed it could not house all the workers at the Roebling plant -- in 1916, 800 men, or only 40% of the 2000 workers lived in the town (25) -- but because of the quality of the town's accommodations there was a constant waiting list. This allowed the company to admit only men with the "longest service and best mill record" to the town. (26)

The success-of the town, however, lay not only in establishing control, but-in gaining the workers' consent to that domination; that is, in achieving a labor force that was both stable and contented. "The company tries to make life in the town pleasant enough so that [the worker will] be glad to jive there, and think he has a good job," one observer wrote. (27) Everything the Roeblings built served their dual purpose: to maintain their control and the consent of their workers.

The Roeblings wrought their transformation on Kinkora in 1905, at a total cost of $4 million, leveling the sandy ground to construct the plant, which originally consisted of three open hearth furnaces, a blooming mill, a rod mill, two wire mills, an annealing house, and tempering and galvanizing shops. When the works were completed, the town was laid out before the mill gates. The site was on a bluff overlooking the Delaware River, but, as the 'Bureau of Labor Statistics report commented, "Although situated in rolling country presenting interesting possibilities for layout, the town is nevertheless laid out in rectangular fashion." To this the Roebling replied that the grid gave every house a southern exposure. With no space restrictions, the streets, as in most company towns, were wide, the majority being 80 feet across. "In a few of the more carefully developed towns, distinction has been made between principal and minor streets," the Bureau said, and in ,Roebling the two principal cross streets, Main and Fifth Avenue, were 100 feet wide, a median strip-planted with grass running down the middle. While the same report stated that in company towns "dirt streets prevail," (28) Roebling's streets had macadamized driveways and sidewalks of crushed stone with wooden curbing. They were cleaned and lit by the company. (29) The houses, again as in most company towns, were set well back from the street.

In the buildings themselves, "substantiality seems to be the keynote of the whole enterprise," Iron Age noted, as the entire town was built of brick with slate roofs. (30) While this was unusual for company towns -- the majority of houses in northern iron and steel towns being frame and only 23% brick -- it resulted in an "extremely low maintenance cost" for the company as well as protection against fires. (31) (The company had had several severe fires in their Trenton plants.) In the first year, aside from the hotel and general store, the company built 72 houses; the next year the total grew to 241. (32) The federal census of 1910 showed that the population of Florence Township had grown from 1900 by 2776 people, to a total of 4731, compared to an increase of only 33 persons between 1890 and 1900. (33) by 1912 there were 312 homes, and, when the last houses were built in 1921 (34) there were 767 in all, housing 1400 Roebling employees and their families, a total of 4000 people. (35)

The houses, of ten different types, were built to reflect three broad categories of the company hierarchy. Fronting the mill gate, at, the east end of town and closer to the noise of the scrap yard, (36) were two rows of houses built "en bloc" intended for "foreign laborers." (37) In blocks of ten, these houses had two stories, containing four rooms and an attic, heated by stoves. The toilet was in a shed extension at the rear. Like all the houses in Roebling but, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unlike most company towns, these had running water, were lit by gas and connected to the sewer. Only 11.4% of company houses had, as Roebling row homes did, indoor toilet, sewer, and running water facilities. (38)

Between Fourth and Sixth Avenues the company built semidetached "cottages," varying in size from six to nine rooms, for the skilled steelmakers. The majority of these houses had three-piece bathrooms. Those built in 1909 and after had electric light, (39) whereas the row home on Third Avenue did not get electricity until 1937. (40) The larger houses had a laundry in the cellar. On Riverside Avenue, looking onto the park, were six large houses, Georgian in style, built for company supervisors and heads of departments. These were freestanding, with "eleven rooms; bath, reception hall, butler's pantry; …cypress trim, natural finish, steam heat, electric lights. Two stories and attic; laundry in cellar." (41)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that in general "rents of company houses are moderate and well within the means of the low-paid wage earner," and that in Roebling specifically, the rents were "fixed to meet the ability of the different classes of tenants to pay." (42) In 1908 a row house rented for $8.50 per month, (43) but by 1916 the rent had been raised to $9.50 (44) and by 1924 to $13, or $15 for a house on the end of a row.(45) Semidetached houses rented in 1916 from $10.50 for a six-room house without bath to $22 for a nine room house. The supervisors' homes in 1908 cost $25 a month. On average, Roebling's rents annually were 7.2% of the houses' cost -- giving the company a 4% gross return on their original investment in housing of $1,520,000. (46) The rents, Iron Age was quick to point out:

are based on the cost of each [house] , and are so proportioned that the interest on the original investment is but a small amount after deducting the cost of operation. The entire idea is to afford to the employees ... a maximum of convenience and comfort in the way of living accommodations for the amount of capital invested, and to meet all reasonable requirements. (47)

Whereas rents in Pullman, which was also praised for the substantiality of its design, included a "surcharge on beauty" that meant in 1892 mechanics were paying one-third and more of their wages in rent, (48) Roebling's rents were considered by observers to be lower than ordinary: "A man with a family need not pay more than $8 to $14 a month for a separate house for which he would have to pay twice that rent in Trenton," the New York Herald said, (49) and in 1924 Iron Age reported that "rents are so much lower than for similar accommodation …that there is a constant waiting list." (50) Utilities, with the exception of gas, were free, and no one paid taxes. Furthermore, rents did not escalate steadily, which suggests that they were linked to wages, which fluctuated often. In September, 1921, the rent of a Third Avenue row house dropped from $13.50 to $11.50 per month, and did not rise again until 1926. (51)Many families, however, took in boarders, as in Pullman, probably to help pay the rent. The company stated that no more than six adults could live in one house, and regular inspections were made to prevent overcrowding. (52) But John Sabo, a Hungarian immigrant who arrived in Roebling in 1912, recalled living, even after his marriage, with a "boarding boss," who had nine people living in his four-room house. (53) As part of the Roeblings' anti-paternalist stance, however, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that "contrary to most company practice, the company collects its rent monthly at its real estate office and does not deduct it automatically from the wages of an employee unless he so requests." (54) The company scrupulously avoided "script" or anything resembling it.

As well as providing free water, sewers, and electricity, the company painted and wallpapered the houses every three years, and handled all repairs, which, according to the lease, had to be reported within five hours. Residents could choose their wallpaper from among several types, or, if they preferred a more expensive pattern, pay the difference. (55) The company's maintenance policy, offering complete service, was generous but inflexible, with no room for residents' initiative. John Sabo recalled that when a resident painted her front door for Easter, the company repainted it a few days later and told her "the next time you do that you got to move out of here." (56)

The company kept up the grounds as well as the houses. All Roebling's houses had both front and back yards, "a patch of green grass to remind a man that God made the world," as one observer said, (57) behind which ran an alley from which the company collected trash. A crew of over 100 men, under the "village manager" Raymond H. Thompson, were "constantly engaged in laying out streets and walks, mowing grass and otherwise maintaining that condition of neatness and order which is a noticeable characteristic of the place." (58) The planting more than almost anything else drew praise for the town. "The town on the whole has made excellent use of trees, vegetation, and natural growth for beautification," the Bureau of Labor Statistics said, though in general the Bureau felt that "another feature of the company town, which it shares with most other communities, has been its disregard of the advantages of planting trees, grass and shrubbery as beautifying elements." (59) Maples were planted along the streets, and fruit trees in the back yards and park: "Where tangled weeds and bushes grew," a Roebling biographer wrote, "today a charming park overlooks the Delaware River, and fine shade trees line well-paved residential streets." (60) Though the park had been designed for the residents' enjoyment, the company had something to say about how they enjoyed it: John Sabo recalled that no one was allowed on the grass in the park. (61)

The company also had certain standards for individual gardens, for which they at first resorted to incentives: "In former years it was difficult to make the foreign inhabitants understand the need for keeping their yards clean," Iron Age reported in 1924. "In particular, they would dump garbage in piles." A company-sponsored contest for the best back yard, with "substantial money prizes-, soon transformed the "erstwhile dumps" into "luxuriant gardens." (62) The Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, said that "the company does not think that prizes for gardening help very materially." (63) Perhaps more useful in insuring clean yards were the terms of the houses' lease, which stated:

1. He will provide a galvanized iron garbage can and place all kitchen and table refuse therein. Ashes, tin cans, waste paper and rags to be placed in a separate galvanized can. These cans to be put on the Alley daily.

2. No kitchen refuse or solid matter of any kind to be emptied into water closet.

And, more importantly,

5. For a violation of any of these rules and regulations, the tenancy hereby created shall cease, determine and end, and said Company ... shall be the sole judge of any such violation. (64)

While the company went to great lengths to keep the town neat in appearance, they made it clear that they expected their employees to share their concern.

In addition to the homes built for families, the company built two "Workingmen's Hotels" on Fourth Avenue, where single men or men waiting for their families to arrive from Europe, who did not want to live with a boarding boss, could rent rooms. Paul Englund, who moved to Roebling as a child in 1907, recalled that his father, one of the first steelmakers, lived in the boarding house while waiting for his family to come from Massachusetts. (65) Other boarders may have been young men who came to Roebling from Europe simply to make some money and then return to their home towns. John Sabo recalled that there were many such temporary residents, and that in fact he himself had always intended to return to Hungary. (66) In 1908 room and board in the Workingmen's Hotel cost $2.50 a week. Each hotel had a sitting room, dining room and kitchen on the first floor, and "at the counter near the entrance are periodicals, cigars and other equipment, such as is found in the usual hotel lobby," Iron Age noted. (66a) The rooms were carpeted, steam heated and lit by electricity. A variety of temporary housing, usually for recent immigrants, was also erected due to lack of space in the town. From 1910 to 1912, for example, Russian and Roumanian immigrants were housed in barns in the park, and houses on West End Avenue, so far west as to be outside the town, were used as temporary homes by childless couples waiting to move into the village proper. (67) As the town grew, however, the temporary housing was torn down and even one of the Workingmen's Hotels was converted into a post office and hospital.

At the junction of Fifth Avenue and Main Street, on the town's central circle, stood the company store, one of the first buildings constructed, and opened in 1906. As is typical of company towns, it sold everything Roebling's residents could possibly need: furniture, dry goods, food, and even liquor. Unlike Pullman's Arcade (accorded the dubious honor of being one of the first shopping malls in America), departments within the store were not rented to individual merchants, but administered by the company itself through managers. Samuel Major was the head of the entire operation, with two clerks under him when the store began in 1906, with nine families in town. By 1908 there were 22 clerks for 1400 people. The Roebling store operated on a cash basis, though credit was extended for one week, "depending upon the credit of the customer," (68) thus saving Roebling's workers from "the grievance which has been one of the sharpest thorns in the flesh of the miners," as the New York Herald put it. "No script will be issued by the Roeblings." (69) The company's control may also have kept the store's prices comparatively lower than in Pullman, where the company charged a fairly high rent for space in the elegant Arcade. And just as the Arcade had some business competition in Chicago's Loop, (70) Roebling faced "strong competition by reason of the stores in Trenton ... and by the fact that peddlers are permitted to sell their goods through the streets." (71) Private businesses, primarily butcher shops, also sprang up across the railroad tracks, on Knickerbocker, Norman and Alden Avenues. The company continued the general store, however, until 1930, when the food departments were turned over to the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. (72)

The department which attracted the most attention was the store's bakery, which operated until 1926. It was labeled "model" by outsiders almost as quickly as the town was: "The arrangement, equipment and general conduct of this bakery has won for it the commendation of the State Inspector, who has pronounced it 'the finest in the state,"' Iron Age reported. The building's design included large picture windows through which to view in progress the finest baking in the state. The loaves produced were two ounces heavier than a "regulation loaf," and most of the bread was "the Hungarian loaf of rye, which is extensively used by the foreign employees." (73) The Roeblings reportedly told Charles Moser, the baker, to "bake the best bread you can, with the least profit to the company." (74) The idea of supplying workers with fresh-baked bread daily roused profound excitement in observers:

The baker's wagon, loaded to the very top of the canvas cover, goes through the town and the workers' little children run homeward from it with two, three, four loaves altogether as big as themselves. Crescent rolls ... are sold here for two cents apiece. (75)

Bread and rolls not sold the day they were baked were burned, and one clerk who was discovered to be giving bread to children instead of burning it was fired. (76) While the bakery may not have been conceived as a profit-making venture, the Roeblings obviously did not intend it to be a philanthropic enterprise.

Aside from the bakery and the general store itself, the building on the corner of Fifth and Main also housed the drug store, the barber shop, the first hospital, and upstairs, the first real estate office and a large meeting room used for movies, dances, and church services. The barber shop was "presided over by the only native of sunny Italy in the place," as Iron Age put it, (77) Joe DeVincentis or, popularly, "Mango the Barber." (78) Despite the fact that in 1910 Italians were the second largest group of immigrants in New Jersey (behind Germans), and in 1912, more Italians (9857) emigrated to New Jersey than any other nationality, there were no Italians in Roebling, (79) whose population in 1918 was 75% foreign-born. (80) Paul Englund, who worked in the company employment office until he became head of industrial relations, did not remember any Italians applying for work at the plant. (81) But the Roeblings did employ Italians at their Trenton mills, and their experience there may have led them to exclude Italians from Roebling. "On one occasion," Washington Roebling wrote, "a band of 200 murderous Italians, armed with knives, made a raid through the mill driving everyone put." However, the Irish, who in Trenton were "tabooed as mischief makers," were employed at Roebling. (82) The barber shop, regardless of the nationality of its proprietor, seems to have done a good business; its "five shining chairs are always full," one observer wrote. "Roebling has the best barbered lot of foreign-born workmen in America." (83)

The doctor's office, facing onto Fourth Avenue, and the three bed ward were "fully equipped with the latest appliances." The doctor -- until 1923 Paul L. Traub, a former pharmacist - charged a dollar for the first visit and made house calls. Accidents that could not be handled in Roebling were sent by horse and wagon (and later in the company ambulance) to Trenton. (84) By 1924 the hospital had expanded and moved to Workingmen's Hotel #2, as had the post office. There were two doctors, a nurse "constantly in attendance," beds for four patients, and an operating room with an X-ray machine. The company's attitude toward employee use of the medical facilities was as up-to-date as the hospital itself. "The men are encouraged to make use of the facility, even for slight injuries, as a means of avoiding infection," Iron Age reported. (85) In the same year the company took out group life insurance for its employees, which in the first year paid $156,700 to the families of 48 workers, none of whom had died as the result of a plant accident. (86) In the case of disabling accidents, a Roebling resident recalled, the company Provided an alternative job. (87) "When you are sick there, they look after you," an observer wrote, "which is also good business." (88)

The company's absolute control over the town gave it the resources to handle its problems more easily than could an ordinary community. During a 1907 typhoid epidemic, the company boiled huge amounts of water at the mill; the disinfected water was then used by the residents. In 1917 the influenza epidemic was combated by putting iodine in the town's water supply. (89) During the Depression, while the mill was running only three days a week, the company extended credit on both rent and food. "I got two years behind on my rent and no one ever asked me for money," Stanley Fors, who came to Roebling in 1907, recalled. (90) The company also ran a relief center in a house on Second Avenue' where food and clothes were distributed. When necessary, the Roeblings were willing to suspend their "no give-away" policy, but only when overt paternalism was likely to -- and did -- elicit a grateful rather than resentful response.

The first building to be erected in Roebling, as in Pullman, was a hotel: the Roebling inn on Riverside Avenue. Each housed, by design, the only bar in the community. Both Pullman and the Roeblings wanted to regulate their workers' drinking, but each approached the problem differently. George Pullman was determined to instill the virtue of temperance, if not abstinence in his employees, but he recognized that simple prohibition was not the answer:

Take strong drink away from men who have been accustomed to it, and not furnish something to fill the gap is all wrong -- there is a want felt, a vacuum created and it must be filled; to do this we have provided a theater, a reading room, billiard room, and all sorts of outdoor sports, and by this means our people soon forget all about drink, they find they are better off without it, and we have an assurance of our work being done with greater accuracy and skill. (91)

The bar at the Hotel Florence (named for Pullman's daughter) was technically open to all, but working men rarely went there. They may have been reading or playing sports instead, but more often they simply could not afford the bar's prices, let alone overcome its intimidating elegance. George Pullman set the hotel's tone by having a suite of rooms permanently reserved for him, and in the 1890's he went one step further by hiring a Baron von Fritsch to run his hotel in a suitably elegant manner. The town's reputation as a showplace brought the hotel a good business from tourists during its early years, and the Pullman Palace Car's reputation for luxury required its hotel to provide the same. (92)

The Roebling Inn, however, seemed to get plenty of business from the workers. The Roeblings hired John W. Stone, a butcher from Frackeville, Pennsylvania, to run the hotel, where he sold whiskey and beer he bottled himself. Customers exchanged their money for tokens to be spent at the bar; the bartenders therefore handled no money. (93) In the basement were billiard tables and a bowling alley. Aside from Saturday night business, men working in the rod mill, given a half-hour break for every half-hour of work because of the intense heat, walked over to "Stoney's Inn" to fill their lunch pails with beer. (94) To the Roeblings, this was to be expected and even condoned. The need to drink, they felt, was part of a working man's character, inevitable and immutable. It was also a working man's right, and understandable that the men would want to exercise it. In the Roebling's rhetoric the men's drinking almost becomes a source of pride, as it was-equated with-how tough their employees were. Further, the Roebling's stated attitude that the men's time out of the mill was their own necessitated a more liberal policy than Pullman 's. "Haven't they a right to get drunk out of hours if they want to?" Charles Roebling reportedly said. "That's their business, not mine. If you had to work nine or ten hours before anc open-hearth furnace I know damned well you'd get drunk yourself." The Roeblings attempted to control, rather than abolish, drinking:

There is no use in trying to make a mollycoddle out of a mill man. When he wants a drink he's going to get it, especially the foreign born. We don't propose to pick his drinks for him. If he wants whiskey, it's a good sight better for us that he should be able to get it here like a human being than to trail into Trenton and take a chance with the stuff that goes over the bars where a workingman drinks. The whiskey here isn't gilt-edged but it's decent and worth what it costs. (95)

The Roebling "system" was regarded by observers as something of an experiment, but a worthwhile one all the same. As the New York Herald said:

If the hopes of the Roeblings are fulfilled their will be the only bar within more than a mile of their city. Semi-official assurances have been given that no other licenses will he issued in the neighborhood, leaving a clear field to the club bar to work out its own salvation. (96)

Underlying the company's concern over drinking in and of itself was its effect on the efficiency of the men. While the company maintained that "after quitting time he's his own boss," they nonetheless tried to control and even mate money from the workers' recreation. (97) The desired result. as one observer said. was that "it kept the men from going to town to battle with the 'embalming fluid, and not showing up for the customary three days." Such a system may have improved the workers' quality of life, but above all, the attempt to keep the hotel bar as the only saloon in town "too was good business." (98)

Observers of the town were struck not only by the seemingly liberal policies of the company, but by the resources with which they provided the workers. That a planned town could appear to be so complete was remarkable. Roebling was "a real town with real inhabitants," the Roebling family biographer wrote, (99) and another writer added that "all the needs of the employees can be met within their own town."(100)"The town has spread out now so that it looks no more like a toy city," John Kimberly Mumford wrote. "Always as you pass through Roebling you encounter some new institution built to make it seem like a regular place." (101) Though the Roeblings claimed to have no interest in their employees' leisure time, they sponsored a variety of recreational activities and facilities. Aside from the Roebling Inn, there was a recreation center on Knickerbocker Avenue, built in the early twenties, with nine pool tables, bowling and a lunch room.(102) On Main Street the company built a large assembly hall with 900 seats, where movies were shown and plays put on. The company viewed the selection of entertainments as "a problem which will work itself out naturally," as Charles Roebling said. "When enough persons are living here it will-be profitable for vaudeville shows to include it in their programme, and without doubt the men will get up entertainments of their own. Out we have no desire or intention to take part in the village life to that extent." (103) Nonetheless, guidelines were imposed: Iron Age reported in 1924 that "two men from the mill are given virtually a free hand in providing entertainment, being made to understand at the outset that clean plays only will be allowed." An occasional educational film or lecturer was brought in, but "for the most part, the men's own selections prevail." (104) The rows of seats were removable, so that dances and banquets could be given. The stage curtain, however, remained: a huge painting of the Roebling's most famous achievement, the Brooklyn Bridge.

On the second floor of the assembly hall, behind the balcony, was the town library, with, as Iron Age noted, "not only fiction but history, science, poetry, biography, religion, etc. The total circulation for the past twelve months was 22,157 volumes, or 72 for each of the 308 days the library was open." (105) If these books were in English (and the magazine would certainly have mentioned it if they were not), it is worth asking, despite the magazine's impressive figures, just who was reading them. The Industrial Directory of New Jersey reported that in 1915 Roebling's population was 75% foreign-born. (106) The state immigration commission said that in 1912, 21% of arriving immigrants were illiterate. Though the commission also reported that 322 of 456 companies surveyed said that 75% or more of their foreign-born workers "spoke or understood simple English," it seems unlikely that many of Roebling's workers would have had the language skills necessary to use the library to the extent that Iron Age claimed. (107) It may have been the schoolchildren of Roebling who were checking out books at such a rapid rate. But in this case it seems probable that if Roebling's workers "would rather have steady work the year around at decent wages than all the libraries in the world," as Charles Roebling said they did, it was because they were unable to take advantage (108) of the one library they were given.

A photographic gallery run by the company was undoubtedly popular, especially, Iron Age reported, among the "alien element" who were "fond of being photographed, particularly with grandiose backgrounds. Hence the photographic gallery is run by one of them who understands their idiosyncrasies and their language." The magazine praised the company for the "psychology used" and "tact exercised" toward Roebling's immigrants. "Their characteristics have been studied and their wishes are respected in every way which is not detrimental to the village." (109) In this case, the photographer provided allowed Roebling's Eastern European immigrants to record groups and events important to them. Photographs printed in a Roebling Diamond Jubilee publication included the organizers of the Hungarian Home (a social club), the Hungarian baseball team, a band called the Slovak Slow Five, the first Roman Catholic communion class, and the Guba family, in national dress, at "Carpathian Xmas." (110)

Like Pullman, the company also encouraged more strenuous pursuits. From the beginning the town had tennis courts, bowling alleys, and a baseball field with a grandstand that seated 1500 people. The company sponsored a semi-pro football team, the Blue Centers, as well. (The name appears to have been taken from a type of steel cable produced by John A. Roebling's Sons.) Active during the 1920' s, the team was successful and popular in the community. "Their winning ways got them into Atlantic City's Convention Hall for several seasons," the 75th anniversary newspaper reported, "and the whole town followed them by special train, busses and cars." (111) Mention of team players reveals that participation was not limited to one ethnic group. Paul Englund was president of that team and his brother a player, (112) but so were "the Ledgers, Charlie and Clarence, Rung [Andrew] Drangula, Hecker Miller, Tates Pinder, the many Swedes, Doc Culley, Bogdanyi, the many Kostrubs." The company-sponsored baseball team had a similar variety of nationality: "Pop Frankenfield, the Chance boys, John Potpinka, John Kish, the Salagas and Kostrubs." (1l3) The annual Fourth of July game against the R.D. Wood Foundry team from Florence alternated between Florence and Roebling, and drew a large crowd as part of Roebling's yearly Fourth of July celebration. (1l4) Other teams included the "Roebling Bulldogs" football team and the 1932 Hungarian baseball team. (115)

The Roebling company was more than willing to provide recreational activities for their employees, as it suited their own need -- to keep the labor force under control -- as well as the employees'. As Iron Age put its:

Participation in sports is encouraged, particularly for the younger men, as a way of "letting off steam," and avoiding the effects of their having too much time on their hands. (116)

The company insisted that in recreation, just as in everything else, they were not "giving anything away." Bowling at the recreation center cost ten cents per game, Iron Age reported, as a means of "making each player appreciate what he is getting." (117) The business ethic was the rule in Roebling.

By virtue of owning the entire town the Roeblings were responsible not only for the workers but for their families as well. The company's screen division, the New Jersey Wire Cloth Company, employed many of the town's women. Many other residents had large families: at feat 17 had ten children or more. The first school, grades 1-3, began in 1908 in a row house on Third Avenue, with a teacher commuting daily from Trenton. (118) Grades 3-6 were held in a room in Workingmen's Hotel #2. In 1914, however, the company, with the township, built a school building for grades 1-8 on Knickerbocker Avenue, which was then administered by the township. Though the school expanded in 1923, older students continued to be transferred to Florence Junior High for one year and then to Burlington High School. By 1924 there were 1100 children in the Roebling school, and another 100 in the Catholic school.(118a) In 1925 the Roebling P.T.A. formed. (119)

The company also provided recreational opportunities for the children outside of the school. Boy Scout Troop Number 1 formed in 1913 with 32 members, all but four of whom were obviously Swedish, German or English. This may have been due to a lesser number of immigrant children in the town, having not yet been sent for by their fathers, or because those who were there did not speak English. Frank Miller, foreman of the rod mill, was one of the early scoutmasters, (120) and the company built the troop a "hut" on the bluff overlooking the river, which described by one writer with its big meeting room, its open as "perfectly corking mouthed fireplace, its mounted deer heads, and banners, and books and guns and spears and all the other junk the boy soul loves." All this equipment, however, did not come without a lesson attached. "For a long time the company gave the boys too much. Then it woke up to the fact that half the sport of being a scout was to do things. So the Scouts were told of they wanted to keep the clubhouse they'd have to work for it." The troop apparently did so by helping to maintain their hut and the park, undoubtedly impressed with the fact that the company always expected something in return. (121)

Impressing that position and others the company took on the town's children, while desirable in itself, had a secondary value through indirectly influencing the adults. As Iron Age said:

Much influence on the older people is exercised through the children ... what they learn in school, at the 'movie,' in the library, is much of it faithfully transmitted -- translated of course into the foreign tongue -- and its effect is seen ... The second hand influence thus exerted has taught the management the importance of keeping 'on the right side' of the youngsters. (122)

The importance placed by Roebling's residents on ethnic clubs, holidays, and festivals may have been an attempt to preserve that heritage in the face of the "Americanization" of their children.

Not every facet of life in Roebling was determined by the company. Within the limits prescribed by the employer, the employees adapted and responded to the conditions of the town. A major factor in shaping their response, however, was the company's housing policy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that "a certain amount of race segregation is enforced in a few company towns," and quoted one employer as saying, "The different nationalities usually prefer to, and as a rule do, live mainly to themselves." (123) That employer could well have been one of the Roeblings, for the town they built was divided into strict ethnic neighborhoods. The row houses and_smaller semidetached cottages on Second, Third and Fourth Avenues were designated for the "foreigners" -- Hungarian, Slovak, Roumanian, Polish and Russian immigrants. The "Americans," earlier immigrants from Sneden, England, Ireland and Germany, lived from Fifth Avenue west, with the exception of Fifth and Sixth Avenues south of Knickerbocker, which, with its blocks of row houses, was an Eastern European enclave and known as "Gypsytown." (124) For newly- arrived immigrants, living with others who spoke their language facilitated their adaptation to the, new town and job, and this, according to the company, was the reason for institutionalizing ethnic neighborhoods. In the town's early years this may have been accepted by the residents as being in their best interest; later, however, when Eastern European families saved enough money to be able to afford the houses on Fifth Avenue and westward, their attitude became one of resignation. Hungarians, Slavs and Russians simply were not given the opportunity to live in better housing and it was an unchangeable fact. (125)

Though "nationality neighborhoods" perpetuated ethnic identity, the company did attempt to "Americanize" their workers. English language instruction was provided, and workers were encouraged to take out citizenship papers. "The county court swore in hundreds at a time," the 75th anniversary newspaper reported. (126) One resident recalled that an argument between two men was settled when a third intervened, saying, "He's right because he has citizen papers and you don't." (127) Favoring workers with American citizenship eventually became a policy rather than simply an attitude. Watchmen had to be American citizens and be able to speak, read and write English. (128) In 1937 the company agreed to the employees' union demand that they hire only citizens. (129) This did not appear to be enforced, however, until 1939, when the company fired 100 "aliens" from their Trenton and Roebling plants, who had been employed less than ten years, with the promise to rehire 130 them if they took out citizenship papers within two months. (130)

While there was no language barrier between black and white workers, the company nonetheless housed all its black employees on Railroad and Amboy Avenues, literally across the tracks from the main part of town. The company also built a recreation center in the neighborhood. This separate but equal treatment drew praise from contemporary observers:

Over on one side are the Negro quarters. They have everything anybody else has, including a recreation house -- and when they recreate, they just recreate. (131)

In the mill, blacks in general held semi-skilled jobs in the tempering shops or at the furnaces in the steel mill. None became supervisors or foremen. but Paul Englund recalled that "they were not just tied down to general labor." (132)

In limited job advancement, blacks were no more restricted than "foreigners." Just as housing was assigned by ethnicity, job placement and advancement depended an nationality. This practice began with the opening of the mill. To build and operate their new open hearth furnaces, the Roeblings hired a Swedish engineer from the American Steel and Wire Company in Worcester, Massachusetts. With him came eight other steelmakers, referred to throughout the town's history as the "original nine Swedes." or the "fabled nine Swedes," who arrived in 1907 and ran the first three furnaces that were built. Their families soon followed. At the same time, workers from the Roebling plant in Trenton, mostly English and German, began to move to the town. To attract skilled workers, the company paid all moving expenses. (133) The town grew primarily through the arrival of immigrants, who later sent for families and friends. John Sabo came from Hungary in 1907 to stay with his sister in Franklin, New Jersey. After working and traveling, he came to Roebling in 1912 when a friend, already working as a wire drawer, promised him a job. "I saw the town, everything nice built.... He sent me a letter -- come on, I got a job for you." (134) The immigrants were Hungarians, Slovaks, Russians, Roumanians, Lithuanians and Poles. In 1912 the Industrial Directory of New Jersey reported that--Roebling employed 1440 men, 1200 of whom were Hungarian, 100 Russian, and 100 Lithuanian. (135) In 1918 the same publication stated that 75% of Roebling's 2000 workers were "foreign born people" (136) in 1924 Iron Age estimated the immigrant population to be 70% of the total. (137)

For "foreigners" as well as for "Americans," kinship or ethnic networks were the route to a job. John Sabo's friend took him to the mill and got him a job on the labor gang which took care of the park. Three days later, Mickey Madden, the boiler foreman, "come down and he look at me and say, 'Hey, come here.' I say, 'What you want?' He say. 'How bout coming down tomorrow morning starting in the pipe gang -- pipe fitter.' I say, 'Yeah, sure.'" (138) Stanley Fors, whose father was one of the first steelmakers, simply started to work with his family. "I started in the open hearth when I was sixteen. At first I was a test boy, under my Uncle Larsen, another of the nine Swedes." Raymond Carter, who moved to Roebling as a child in 1905, started in the wire cloth department, as he said many others did. (139)

Though most men got their jobs in the same way, they did not advance together. John Sabo continued in the pipe gang until 1955; his son started in the cleaning house and then moved to the storeroom. (140) But Stanley Fors moved up to first helper and then melter foreman. (141) Paul Englund, whose father was also one of the nine Swedes, started as an office boy in 1915, later becoming head timekeeper and then head of industrial relations. His father had become a supervisor. Evidence on this point is hard to obtain, however; aside from the (142) lack of company records, some employees will confirm the connection between ethnicity and job advancement and some, perhaps from pride deny it. But for those of the correct ethnic group, advancement was possible. "As a general thing he educated his own foremen," Washington Roebling said of his brother Charles. "Very few came from outside. By this method we had men attached to the place and faithful to the management. A carpenter soon became a millwright, a plain wiredrawer soon became a foreman, office men put in charge of stores." (143)Paul Englund recalled that "we also had people work up from the ranks who were supervisors of the rolling mills division, and supervisors of the tempering division, and supervisors of the wire division." (144)

In 1926 the company instituted a "foremanship training program program" Its purpose was to "afford the foremen the privilege of studying more intimately their positions in the organization, provide an opportunity for developing leadership qualities, and for studying modern methods of handling labor and materials." Rather than furnishing a real course for advancement, however, the classes seemed designed for those who had already made it: in the class' fourth year, the enrollment (which was voluntary) was of foremen, assistant foremen, superintendents and office executives. Yet it served the purpose both of those men and of the company. The men believed the course was "helping to fit them for larger responsibilities," and benefited them in that "this program has been the specific mean of discovering and utilizing individuals now enjoying more responsible petitions, who might not otherwise have been promoted." The gains listed for the company might double as those resulting from the control inherent in a company town:

Economies have been effected, general policies of the company have been more accurately interpreted in the affairs of every day, better human relations have been established, a greater pride is manifested in production, evidences of increased loyalty abound, and a noticeable reduction of waste has occurred. (145)

The company had again conflated personal benefit with the needs of the business. The extent to which they succeeded can be seen in the fact that "we found that the foremen preferred to have the meetings in the evening rather than on company time, as their minds are then free to enter into the subject, and are not divided between the class and the immediate operation of the department." (146) That the company did not therefore lose their services during the time the class would have taken hardly needed to be mentioned.

Enforced by the company in housing and jobs, ethnic segregation was naturally found in social organizations as well, beginning, obviously, with the church. George Pullman built a church in his model town and then rented it out to those congregations who could afford it. Roebling, with a greater variety of nationalities, had a larger number of denominations, though with smaller memberships. The company provided space, free of charge, from the beginning of the town, at first in the Workingmen's Hotel and then in the meeting room of the second floor of the general store building. The Hungarian Reformed congregation first met in the boarding house in 1909. 30th the Methodist and Swedish Methodist church met above the drug store; Paul Englund's parents arranged for a Swedish minister to come from Philadelphia every week. (147) Sixteen men met in the home of John Lichvarcik on Third Avenue in 1912 to form a Greek Catholic church. They also met above the drugstore until 1914 when they built the Saint Nicholas Greek Catholic Church on the corner of Roland and Norman Avenues. Its membership was primarily Slovak (148) and Roumanian. Money for Saint Nicholas' and all other churches was raised by their congregations with no help from the company, although the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 1916 42.5% of companies housing their employees assisted in building churches. (149) Saint Mary's Roumanian Church, a Hungarian Reformed Church, Saint Michael and Gabriel Orthodox Church, and Holy Assumption Catholic Church were all built in the Alden-Knickerbocker neighborhood. Holy Assumption graduated its first communion class in 1916. Roebling Methodist was built, also from members' donations, just before World War II. (150)

These churches, with their clubs and church halls, provided an alternative social structure to that provided -- so completely -- by the company. Social life outside the bounds of the company program also flourished in the bars of the Knickerbocker area. Just as neighboring Kensington had many bars patronized by Pullman residents -- to the company's annoyance -- the neighborhood across the railroad tracks in Roebling. off company property, was full of bars for the working men, as well as private businesses. The 75th anniversary newspaper lists nine different saloons and liquor stores by the early 1930's, in an area two blocks long and one block wide. In the same blocks were the ethnic clubs and church halls: the Russian Club, Slovak C1UD , Saint Mary's Club, and the Hungarian Home. (151) Though the company believed that "the whole theory of the control" should be "let each man live where and how he wishes; let him buy where he wishes; let him do with his time as he wishes," as Iron Age put it, "the presence of this 'outside community"' raised "several serious problems in control both of radicalism and of liquor." (152) But the company's power over the rest of the community gave it strong leverage over this "outside" one. Other social groups, not directly linked to the ethnic clubs or churches of the Knickerbocker area, were also active in Roebling. The Industrial Directory for 1912 lists the Odd Fellows, Shepherds of Bethlehem, Patriotic Order Sons of America, and Hungarian Workmen's Society as local organizations. (153) The Civic Association, of which Paul Englund was president, planned social events and dances at the Roebling Inn or assembly hall. The Blue Center Minstrels put on skits in the assembly hall, and Marshall's Sand (a family organization) performed in the park on summer weekends. The Volunteer Fire Company was a social as well as civic group. In these organizations, as well as in traditional ethnic festivals, Roebling residents created their own social structure, outside the control of the company. But the influence of company policy remained in that organizations and social functions were largely segregated by nationality. Paul Englund recalled that both Northern and Eastern Europeans used the park, but at different ends, and that ethnic festivals such as Hungarian grape dances, were "strictly a foreign unless a supervisor or somebody was invited, the other affair people wouldn't attend it, because they didn't get an invitation. Of course, they didn't care about that, because if they had an affair, they wouldn't necessarily invite the foreigners." (154)

Just as social groups initiated by the employees were an important alternative to those set up by the company, the private businesses that are up in the Knickerbocker neighborhood filled needs of the employees that the general store did not. The earliest shops, in houses on Knickerbocker Avenue, burned down in 1913 but were soon rebuilt. The predominance of butcher shops -- Mike Timko's, Csanyi Janos', Joe Bordas'. Bogdanyi's, Vajda's, Sandor's, Szucs', Bernath's, Mitre's, Madar's -- suggest that the company either was unable or unwilling to sell fresh meat at a reasonable price. (155) But the primarily Eastern European proprietors may mean that shopping habits were linked to ethnicity, as one observer thought: "In Roebling it is the foreigner who is the best customer in groceries and butcher's meat. He buys chickens instead of beef brisket, and not one chicken, but two or three. It is he who buys the Hood River apples and the grapefruit." (156) A third explanation is suggested by the presence, until 1930, of an Acme market with all Hungarian speaking clerks on the corner of Knickerbocker and Norman Avenues. (157)

A language barrier may have led the immigrants to avoid the company store, despite its credit policy. Aside from the Knickerbocker business district, "hucksters," usually local farmers, sold produce and meat from wagons in the streets. Company policy toward these "peddlers," Iron Age reported, was that "so long as these people behave themselves they are encouraged, for it is felt wise by the management to avoid all appearance of constraint." (158)

In Roebling, it seems, there were no rules, until they were broken. When they were, the company had powerful recourse to exercise "necessary control": eviction. As Iron Age said:

In a number of cases it has become imperative to get rid of radicals who had come in and were stirring up trouble. Residents of the village are not permitted to harbor such elements and when they have done so, they had to leave the village, taking the radicals along. This is one of a number of ways in which complete control of the physical entity of the village enables the management to free it from trouble. (159)

"Radicals" undoubtedly meant labor organizers. Whether because of their extraordinary control over the type-and behavior of their workers, or because of actual satisfaction among employees, the Roebling plant had a fairly calm labor history, though not as calm as their press made out. The Roeblings' attitude toward unions was that of their day. "His principles were that of the open shop. He fought the unions," Washington Roebling wrote in a memorial to his brother Charles. (160) His own view was that "with union management the walking delegate becomes the real master; he dictates the hours of labor, hires and discharges men, stops piece-work and reduces everything to the lowest efficiency." (161) As Roebling was seen as a model town, the Roebling company was perceived as a bastion of the open shop. "They have had none [labor trouble] of more than trifling importance in the sixty years since the first little wire plant was built in Trenton," the New York Herald said in 1906. (162) "In all that time," another observer wrote, "save for some insignificant incidents, the Roeblings have been free from the nightmare of 'labor troubles.' It may be because its workmen have nothing to complain of." (163)

The Roeblings' apparently smooth relations with their employees may have been facilitated by the frequent contact between management and labor. The three Roebling brothers had all had actual mill experience under their father, and their sons did likewise. According to the Roebling family biographer, Karl G. Roebling (the son of Ferdinand W. Roebling, treasurer of the company) started in the mill after graduation from college "at the bottom of the ladder as an ordinary millhand, from which he worked his way up through the various departments." (164) Similarly, Paul Englund recalled that his father had trained Charles Roebling Tyson, the grandson of Charles G. Roebling and later president of the company. "They put him under the wing of my father to learn something about making the steel Of course, my father didn't know his background at the time. He certainly got a kick out of him after he got to know him." (165) Charles Roebling himself made weekly visits to the plant and town. "The boss say, never say I sell this town ... Anybody say for sell this town, ... he fire him," John Sabo recalled. On another occasion, Roebling confronted a scrap worker found asleep on the job. When the man pointed out that there was no scrap for him to work, he was told to go back to sleep. (166) Whether or not these stories were true, they obviously served to convince Roebling's residents that the men who owned the company were both concerned for the town and fair to its residents.

There were, however, labor "incidents" at the Roebling company, beginning in 1875 when fifty Englishmen struck over a new process requiring less skilled labor. "This was the forerunner of many a subsequent strike," Washington Roebling said, "especially when we began to employ many-different nationalities -- Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Scandinavians, Croats, Russians, Roumanians, Greeks ... The hardest test comes when it is imperative to reduce wages in hard times. It requires courage then to face a band of infuriated men." The new and seemingly unstable labor force of immigrants, unlike the Germans the company had previously employed -- "a peaceful and tractable race" -- may have made the Roeblings more willing to undertake a company town, though they continued to protest that they would not have built it had they not been forced to; as Washington Roebling lamented, "The man who owns a town often wishes he had never been born." (167)

The control the Roeblings had in their Roebling plant made the workers there less "troublesome" than in Trenton. The policy of the company on unions was clear. "We don't have no strikes," John Sabo said. "Anybody talk about a strike ... company fire him right away -- get out of here, town. They don't have no stuff like that." (168) Conditions in the plant, however, as well as living conditions, were also better at Roebling than at Trenton, as Washington Roebling noted:

Compared to Trenton, the Roebling works seem to be quiet as the grave, yet the efficiency is double. There is an absence of street noise, of teams handling freight, the railroad trains are farther off, buildings are larger and further apart, there is an absence of the busy crowds surrounding the main office, or the gangs of yard men seen in Trenton matters move on a more majestic scale. (169)

Nonetheless, in August 1915, wages of 87¢ per 100 pounds of draw wire were cut to 37¢, due, the flew York World said, to "scarcity of orders and because the price of tempered steel has dropped." Ten men who demanded the former wage scale be restored were promptly fired. When the company refused to rehire them, 200 men in the soft wire department went on strike. (Other newspapers reported-the number as 106.) "Many of the workmen are Hungarian," the paper explained, "and there is some agitation among them because the firm is understood to be working on orders for the allies.' (170) The company, however, was "not affected in the least," the Newark Eagle reported the next day, by the strike. "Their places, it is claimed, are being filled." (171) Occurring so soon after the founding of the town, the firing of one to two hundred employees could only be an extraordinarily powerful warning for the rest of the workers as to the consequences of striking. The Newark Eagle subsequently described what happened to the strikers:

An exodus of former employees, ousted from their homes here by the Roebling company, after they had gone on strike, has begun. Many families are quitting the town for Trenton or other nearby cities ... Some of the strikers, who were notified to vacate their houses yesterday, are still in possession, and agents of the company ... have threatened to put them into the streets. (172)

This graphic account undoubtedly reflects the emotions that those who witnessed it must have felt. It seems highly probable that the acquiescence that characterizes Roebling employees' attitude toward housing and job advancement, and their enthusiasm for the "extra" services the company did provide, had their roots in the strike of 1915.

Whatever lessons were learned during the 1915 strike, there was no further labor strife at Roebling until the end of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee drive in 1941. Even then, it appeared that Roebling's employees were reluctant to join the union. In 1933, perhaps in anticipation of outside organizing attempts, the company instituted the Roebling Plan of Employee Representation. Elected from each department and "natural subdivision" of the company, representatives were required to be non-supervisory, twenty-one years old and American citizens. An equal number of "regular and special representatives of the company" were appointed, and the joint committee served to settle grievances after other procedures had failed. In 1937 several employee representatives, with the company's consent, reformed the Plan into the Roebling Employees' Association, in an attempt to comply with the National Labor Relations Act. (173) Regardless of its name and its apparent compliance with the law, Roebling employees nicknamed the Association the "chocolate drop union," referring to its inability to gain any benefits other than those the company voluntarily granted.

The S.W.O.C. began its drive for John A Roebling's Sons in 1937, and first won the Trenton plant. "They organized first up there," Paul Englund recalled, "and it was that gang that came down here and raised hell with us." (174) There were, however, workers in Roebling actively organizing: in 1939, the same National Labor Relations Board case that disestablished the Association for being "company-dominated" and found the company guilty of "interference, restraint and coercion" against the S.W.O.C. considered a discrimination charge against Roland Goddard. A Roebling resident, he had been fired, then rehired but demoted, allegedly for involvement with the S.W.O.C. Though the N.L.R.B. ruled that there had been no discrimination and that Goddard had been demoted for cause, the same "implied threat" that the N.L.R.B. found in a letter sent to all workers by Roebling's president, concerning S.W.O.C. membership cards, undoubtedly remained with Roebling's workers. (175) The S.W.O.C. collected enough cards to press for an election in April, 1941, but when picketing began in front of the mill gate at Roebling, the men were largely from Trenton. The mill remained in operation, staffed by a "skeleton crew" who either crossed the picket line or slept in the plant. (176) When a riot broke out in front of the gate on April 16, the company turned fire hoses on the picketers until a worker cut the hose with an axe. (177) The New York Times later reported that a dozen people had been "injured in disorders." (178) On April 21, the N.L.R.B. ordered an election to be held, (179) and on May 1 the men went hack to work. In the election, at both plants, on May 20, the Steelworkers were voted in by a two-to-one margin. (180)

Unionization, even if unwilling unionization, marked the first breakdown in the Roebling "system." Although Paul Englund recalled that the company's relationship with the union was "very, very good," the introduction of an outside bargaining agent into employer-employee relations could only weaken the company's absolute control over nearly all conditions of life in Roebling. Ultimately, this outside agent precipitated the end of Roebling as company town. In 1947, when the Steelworkers protested a proposed rent hike, the company decided to sell the town, which had been running at a loss for several years. (181) 600 of the town's 754 tenants purchased houses. (182) For the first - time, however, Hungarians and other Eastern Europeans were able to move to the west side of town. (183) Because this meant that a Northern European family, given first refusal, had been unable to afford the home purchased by an Eastern European family, this breakdown of ethnic segregation became a source of pride among Eastern European residents. But it marked the end of the old paternalistic relationship between the company and its employees, a relationship which ended for good in 1953, when the Roebling family sold John A. Roebling's Sons to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

Those who visited and wrote about the town of Roebling perceived the Roebling system as largely, if not completely, successful. The Roeblings' achievement, to them, was in emulating Pullman's external beauty while avoiding its internal conflict; the company managed to overcome the dilemma inherent in such towns, identified by John W. Reps:

Where the towns were built and managed in a spirit of paternalism, as at Pullman, the physical results might be pleasing but the towns lacked the sense of true communities in the social-political sense. On the other hand, where the companies did not attempt to dominate the social and political aspects of community life, as at Gary, the physical results were often deplorable. (184)

The Roeblings' true achievement, however, was that, unlike at Pullman, the residents of the town shared the outsiders' enthusiasm. They, like Iron Age, believed that their participation in the system of control benefited them as well as the company; that is, they believed they had a good life and that the company cared about them.

Contributing to the positive image, both in the press and among residents, were factors specific to the Roeblings themselves and the particular history of the company. One was the sense that, in Roebling, family history was repeating itself. As D.B. Steinman wrote in his biography of the Roeblings, "John Roebling, upon his arrival in America, planned and built the model town of Saxonburg in Pennsylvania. Seventy years later, his sons, carrying on the tradition, planned and built the model town of Roebling in New Jersey." (185) The town itself was recognized to have been designed by Charles Roebling himself, of whom his brother Ferdinand "always said that Charles had the building fever bad, no one could stop him, always building and building." (186) The town's park and extensive planting were attributed to his well-known love of botany, and their careful maintenance was thought to be due to his personal insistence.

Most important, perhaps, to the workers was the Roebling firm's reputation for the quality of its product. While favorable coverage of the company and town in the Trenton press was no doubt influenced by the Roeblings' social position and charitable contributions in that city, the Roebling reputation was based in the actual achievement of the Brooklyn Bridge, surely one of the most positive images of progress in American mythology. John A. Roebling's Sons also spun the cable for the George Washington and Golden Gate bridges. The pride in workmanship of which Roebling's residents speak today, and the satisfaction among the employees noted 'by contemporary observers, therefore, is perhaps attributable to the projects on which they worked. John Sabo's son, who worked in the mill from 1934 to 1973, recalled that:

I worked with the wire for the Golden Gate bridge. Then when I joined the Navy, and went out to the West Coast, I walked across the Golden Gate, rode across it, flew over it and sailed under it. There wasn't much more I could do about that bridge. When I sailed under it, going out to the Pacific, I looked up, I said, well, I wonder if I'll see it again. (187)

The symbol of work, already one of home and family, had become a symbol of America. The company, naturally, encouraged such equations. Not only was the Brooklyn Bridge on the auditorium curtain an ever-present reminder of the company's fame, but in 1908, when a statue of John A. Roebling was unveiled in Trenton's Cadwalader Park, the entire work force of both mills, 6500 employees, marched from the Roebling's Trenton plant to the park, (188) and John Sabo recalled that the company gave each man new overalls for the occasion. (189)

For those residents who look back on the town, like Paul Englund, John Sabo and his son, the perception of the company town as a good place to live is tinged with nostalgia since the sale of the town and company and the first closing of the mill in 1974. They have their triumphs to recall: the victories of the Blue Center football team, the glorious violence at the plant gate and the recognition of the Steelworkers, the successful infiltration of Eastern Europeans into the better neighborhood. They are grateful to have had a good and steady job; they are grateful to the company for getting them through the hard times of the Depression. Now, residents no longer know who lives in every house, the plantings and park are no longer looked after, there is a sense that the new generation at the mill doesn't care about their work.

The regrets that Roebling is no longer an "honest-to-goodness company town," as Paul Englund put it, could not exist without precedent during the time that Roebling was under the control of the company. The question in Roebling, therefore, is not whether its workers accepted corporate paternalism -- they did -- but why; nor whether the town functioned effectively as a system of control -it did -- but why the workers chose to accept that control by desiring to live in the town and enjoying doing so. Inherent in this question, so defined, is another, that of the validity of those positive feelings: whether Roebling's workers labored under a "false consciousness," believing they were well off when they really weren't, or whether they actually were what they believed themselves to be: happy. Yet surely to invalidate that community's shared belief in its goodness, from the necessarily removed perspective of the historian, is to be unfair to its residents. Despite economic, ethnic and class barriers, they were, after all, autonomous, though to an extent that today seems so limited as to be negligible. They did, ultimately, choose to live in Roebling. To say that they created the myth of their happiness in response to oppressive, unchangeable conditions -- as, say, in slavery -- is to ignore their freedom of choice.

The founders of Roebling, New Jersey, did not suppress that sense of choice, they exploited it. In both policy and their rhetoric presenting policy, the Roeblings' fostered their employees' sense of dignity and autonomy. While they provided a total environment to influence and control the workers, the Roeblings also allowed the workers to influence their surroundings within the larger framework. The Knickerbocker Avenue neighborhood of private businesses, churches and clubs was a vital outlet for ethnic expression and recreation. And, though the company promoted Americanization, it did not actively attempt to break down ethnic ties; the segregated neighborhood policy, while later stifling, in fact encouraged them, as did hiring through kinship networks.

The company reinforced this sense of freedom in their public recognition of the workers' rights as individuals:

The only requirement is for a man to do his work well and behave himself as a householder and a citizen. Otherwise we wish him to feel as free as if he were living in his own house on his own land. As far as possible we shall not interfere with his absolute freedom and nothing will be more thoroughly impressed upon him than this fact. (190)

The Roeblings' reiteration of their "pure business" attitude cast their employees as partners in capitalism rather than objects of paternalism; they were there to work, not to be "refined." Roebling, it seemed was a town governed by the principles of free enterprise, in which there must be a buyer as well as a seller. "We are not giving anything away and the men will be getting only what they pay for. They will be under no obligation to us as far as life in the city is concerned." (191)

Observers were delighted that capitalist principles rather than reforming philosophy had made Roebling so successful. "Roebling maintains no staff of highbrow sociologists to discuss the things capital should do in order to make labor's pathway broad and bright ... Making good rope, it is a good town, without any fanciful notions about 'welfare work.'" (192) By presenting the tow as a business venture in the best American tradition, the Roeblings avoided the stigma of paternalism, "the feeling, sometimes vague, sometimes strong, that the concept of a town in which an industry acted at the same time as employer, landlord, and governing agent somehow was contrary to American traditions," as John w. Reps has put it, (193) As the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported with some understatement, "There is a distinct absence of self-government in company towns,"(194) but the Roeblings' emphasis on the role of the workers as business partners undercut the feudal aspects of the enterprise.

That Roebling's success came with so large a population of immigrants heightened the achievement, The company's laissez-faire policy was "essential," Iron Age said, in the "assimilation into our body politic of the foreign element." A system based on sound American business principles was necessary to make immigrants into sound Americans:

Let each man live where and how he wishes; let him buy where he wishes; let him do with his time as he wishes ... [this] avoids the raising of that suspicion with which the average newcomer appears to regard our American way of doing things. It prevents him from feeling that the company is "keeping tabs" on him, both in the mill and out. And it gives him that liberty of action and choice which are essentially his if he is to become a worthwhile citizen. (195)

For immigrants, the Roeblings' language also gave them a sense of equality among ethnic groups -- in that everyone made the same deal with the company -- that the town's structure lacked, enough to allow Hungarians and Russians to feel that Roebling was their community as strongly as did Swedes. Moreover, for those who had left behind conditions much harsher than that of a company town, the rhetoric of independence, if not the reality, was often enough.

It was the rhetoric of a business deal, emphasizing the complementary roles of employer and employee and explicitly stating all attached conditions, that allowed Roebling's workers to identify positively with the town and company, and therefore to accept the negative conditions of life in the company town: ethnic discrimination, limited freedom of expression, lack of control over conditions of labor. If, as David Brody has said, "welfare work ... added the measure of betterment needed to win the steelworker's consent to the terms of his employment," (196) the Roeblings' presentation of the town added the measure of dignity needed to win his consent to the terms of life within it. The Roebling's ideology was that of the fair deal; their rhetoric underlined the workers' choice to take it or leave it, even as the conditions in the town pressured them to accept. But taking the deal, to Roebling's workers, accepting the capitalist hierarchy, was not acquiescence; it was an affirmation of their own status as workers. John Sabo's statement that Charles G. Roebling was "the best man in the United States," (197) is paying homage to a paternalist and a capitalist, but it is a statement of pride in his own role as well .