The Company Town

A book review.

The prince of "The Company Town" is Milton Hershey, the chocolatier who dreamed of a city with "no poverty, no nuisances, no evil." Hershey, Pa., located far from the candy-craving crowd but surrounded by dairy farms, clean water and "industrious folk," was informed by the Mennonite values of Milton's childhood. Milton frowned on drunkenness and immorality on Chocolate Avenue. He despised the uniformity of other planned communities, so his streets, he decided, would exhibit more variety than his candy bars. Hershey provided a zoo, a library, a golf course, free schools, a model orphanage and a "cornucopia of benefits" for workers. "Employees seemed to find contentment in the well-appointed town of Hershey," writes Mr. Green. He also singles out Maytag (Newton, Iowa), bane of appliance repairmen, and Hormel (Austin, Minn.), bane of gourmets, as companies that, in their heyday, cultivated a sense of community.

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