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Cover image of Capital's Utopia
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Capital's Utopia

Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1855-1916

Anne E. Mosher

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In the 1890s the Apollo Iron and Steel Company ended a bitterly contested labor dispute by hiring replacement workers from the surrounding countryside. To avoid future unrest, however, the company sought to gain tighter control over its workers not only at the factory but also in their homes. Drawing upon a philosophy of reform movements in Europe and the United States, the firm decided that providing workers with good housing and a good urban environment would make them more loyal and productive. In 1895, Apollo Iron and Steel built a new, integrated, non-unionized steelworks and hired the...

In the 1890s the Apollo Iron and Steel Company ended a bitterly contested labor dispute by hiring replacement workers from the surrounding countryside. To avoid future unrest, however, the company sought to gain tighter control over its workers not only at the factory but also in their homes. Drawing upon a philosophy of reform movements in Europe and the United States, the firm decided that providing workers with good housing and a good urban environment would make them more loyal and productive. In 1895, Apollo Iron and Steel built a new, integrated, non-unionized steelworks and hired the nation's preeminent landscape architectural firm (Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot) to design the model industrial town: Vandergrift.

In Capital's Utopia: Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1855-1916, Anne E. Mosher offers the first comprehensive geographical overview of the industrial restructuring of an American steelworks and its workforce in the late nineteenth–century. In addition, by offering a thorough analysis of the Olmsted plan, Mosher integrates historical geography and labor history with landscape architectural history and urban studies. As a result, this book is far more than a case study. It is a window into an important period of industrial development and its consequences on communities and environments in the world-famous steel country of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Reviews

The incorporation of historical geography enhances this engaging micro-study of US industrialization.

A richly written, vivid description of the complex relations between capital, individual agents, and place-making in a period of industrial restructuring.

I highly recommend this book, thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and expect that many others will do the same.

Mosher's fine book examines one of the most important ways that technological change shapes human society.

This is a wonderful book that places an important model city in the larger context of the constantly evolving societal and geographical relations between capital and labor.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
272
ISBN
9780801873812
Illustration Description
19 halftones, 17 line drawings
Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Vandergrift's Antecedents
Chapter 1. Experimentation in the Kiskiminetas Valley Iron Industry
Chapter 2. Apollo's Uneasy Transition From Iron

List of Illustrations and Tables
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Vandergrift's Antecedents
Chapter 1. Experimentation in the Kiskiminetas Valley Iron Industry
Chapter 2. Apollo's Uneasy Transition From Iron to Steel
Part II: Vision, Plan, and Place: The Creation of Vandergrift
Chapter 3. The McMurtry, Olmsted, and Eliot Plan for Vandergrift
Chapter 4. Settling the Vandergrift Peninsula
Part III: Gauging Vandergrift's Success
Chapter 5. The Steel Strike of 1901
Chapter 6. Growing Pains for the "Model Town"
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
Featured Contributor

Anne E. Mosher, Ph.D.

Anne E. Mosher is an associate professor of geography and co-director of the Global Affairs Institute's Space and Place Initiative in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.