About 100 years or so, during the industrial revolution, workers threatened their job-givers for the shitty living conditions that were forced on them. Now their descendants gleefully put themselves under the same conditions and would probably even embrace living in company towns. How sad is that.
Company towns were less exploitative than this. In those, the company gave you a house (if married, certain term, yada yada). Some company towns were actually really nice.
Hm, it would actually be interesting to read what the contracts looked like for one of those "company towns": what pay was, what was paid for outright (did you pay rent at all? Was there a purchase option on you house, some sort of "rent until you buy" thing?
But, yeah. Those company towns gave you a house, and enough generally to support a family on (otherwise it wouldn't be a town). Sometimes paid for your children's education as well.
"Sillicon Valley: making Guilded Age tycoons seem reasonable and deeply caring about their employees well being"
Edit:
When we say "relgious right", do we count the Gores? Who campaigned against explicit lyrics in Music? In 1985? Boston, a hardly historically Republican Town, was famous up through the 1960s for banning, resulting in the phrase "Banned in Boston" becoming popular.
I'd advise to be careful about getting caught up in historical whitewashing: there's a tendency to turn issues with mass bipartisan support (remember, both parties were anti gay marriage until, oh, 2010 or so, and Obama remained a pretty committed Drug warrior) or for Democrats to suddenly, in the recollection, becoming Republicans (see, the "flipping" of the south, which saw basically zero Southern Democrat congressmen converting to Republicans) when those issues turn against the current way the democrats would like to frame themselves.
Last edited: