Nancy Scola on our don’t-be-evil Internet overlords:
When I heard that Google was rolling out yet one more application, in the form of Google Buzz, the first thought that came to mind was that the Internet is starting to feel like a one-company town. I was soon online, catching up on the fascinating story of Pullman, Illinois. Built on the edge of Chicago by the Pullman Palace Car Company in the 1880s, the 300-acre town was the company’s answer to the industrial-age conundrum. How do you reap the efficiencies of gathering workers in one place without descending into urban chaos? Pullman did it by controlling everything. Workers and their families attended Pullman schools, shopped in Pullman groceries, and worshiped in Pullman churches.
All went along well enough in Pullman, it seems, until the summer of 1894. That’s when a wage riot was put down by U.S. marshals and army troops, according to a contemporaneous report by federal investigators I stumbled across. The Pullman Company’s paternalism was blamed for creating a repressive and unstable environment for workers.
