Original Benham store replaced in

Control of government. Because of their size, prestige, and financial resources, the owners of company towns were easily able to persuade local, state, and federal politicians to establish and enforce laws compatible with corporate objectives. Just as easily, large corporations could get those responsible for law enforcement to ignore many legal mandates. The owners of company towns feared government intervention in their operations almost as much as unionization, and used their towns to persuade lawmakers that all was well in the coalfields (hence the name model towns).  

Control of institutions. The doctors, nurses, teachers, preachers, small businessmen, and recreation directors employed in company towns were, in essence. 

Control of women. Coal towns provided scarce employment opportunities for women, and these were carefully allocated on the basis of perceived loyalty to the company. Women who passed muster could find jobs as housekeepers and cooks in the company-mn hotel or in the homes of mine managers or local professionals. Others could work as health aides in the hospital, teach in the schools, or work as clerks in the company store. Often a woman s access to paid employment was linked to her husband s cordial relationship with mine management. When a miner was injured, his wife most often nursed his wounds, for if he became disabled, the entire family could lose its home and livelihood. Thus, both the paid and unpaid work of women supported the operation of model towns in the coalfields. 

Control of children. Families who wanted work for their male children were also in the thrall of the coal operators. Jobs were often available for boys as mule tenders, trappers (ventilation operators), or shale pickers who cleaned the coal as it left the mine. These sources of extra income were important to working families, and were assigned by the mine managers in return for worker loyalty. Children in school were also under the implied threat of company sanctions. Tardiness, skipping school, and any form of juvenile delinquency were seen as a threat to the social order of the town and could result not only in the student s expulsion from school, but also in the whole family s being evicted from a company town. 

Historian Curtis Seltzer has written that mine owners preferred to envelop miners in a total environment, the better to control their behavior. Mining became an occupational prison from which there was no escape, upward or outward (Seltzer, 1985 20). But the regime of social control imposed by coal operators was by no means absolute in the company towns of the Appalachian coalfields. The region has a strong tradition of independence and resistance that functioned despite the best efforts of the operators (c.f. Fisher, 1993). 

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