VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

The model coal company town of Gary, West Virginia, for at least two decades in the early 20th century, was the scene of an annual garden and yard competition. The town was developed by the United States Coal and Coke Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, and was designed by architects from the Westinghouse Corporation. It was laid out to provide every house with a garden and yard despite the rugged conditions of the region. Gardens and yards were part of a widespread effort to beautify the coal company towns, as several articles in the trade magazine Coal Age in the first three decades of the 20th century attest. A beautiful town attracted and facilitated the retention of more skilled workers and their families. Providing land, seeds, fertilizers, tools, and training to the miners were some of the aspects—probably the least expensive—of social welfare programs developed by coal companies during the coal towns’ paternalistic phase from World War I until the Great Depression (Shifflett 1991). Other reasons were behind the promotion and rewarding of gardening. It was a way to keep wages low; families could save money by growing their own vegetables and sometimes selling them to the company store. Growing vegetables helped workers’ families survive through unemployment which could last months, but it served to indirectly control miners’ activities who would spend their free time gardening rather than in saloons or engaging in union activities. It also exploited the labor of women and children. Coal company interest in profitability and control were manifested through the domestic landscape. Workers families were content although aware of the reasons behind their benefits. This paper explores Gary’s contentious landscapes as the product of a deliberate effort to shape the built environment for profit and control as well as profitable subsistence farming.