Landscapes of capital: Culture in an industrial western company town, Clarkdale, Arizona, 1914--1929

As a company town, produced from bare ground through the combination of capitalism, Progressivism and welfare capitalism, Clarkdale, Arizona demonstrated clearly the interaction of these three forces in the early twentieth century West. William A. Clark and his United Verde Copper Company (UVCC) built Clarkdale primarily for the pursuit of economic profit. Consequently, a study of Clarkdale reveals capitalist power structures that influenced cultural interactions as shown through analysis of the landscapes capitalists fashioned in the built environment, labor, education, and the industrial environment. In turn, these environments reflect back on the larger themes of laissez-faire development, Progressivism, and welfare capitalism.;The relationship between labor, leisure and welfare capitalism formed a landscape that was a manifestation of the town's industrial complex. Within the smelter, UVCC controlled labor, while outside the company also managed leisure activities. Clarkdale's built environment reflected smelter labor hierarchy as well as Progressive ideals, and use of amenities depended on where a person was in the company hierarchy.;Through the landscape of Clarkdale's schools, UVCC controlled its employees and their children. The placement of schools in the town as well as the configuration of their built environment and the curricula taught all combined to influence cultural values and reinforce social order among residents.;The landscape of smoke had an environmental impact on Clarkdale and the surrounding areas. UVCC officials were more concerned with production, avoiding lawsuits over agricultural damage, and disguising their smokestack output than the potential impact the smelter was having on residents.;UVCC directed Clarkdale's landscape from its inception through the first third of the twentieth century. Looking at the town through the lens of capitalism, it is possible to discern attempts to impose hegemony and influence that make it clear this was no legendary western terrain. Although the town is quaint and appears, at a glance, to have been a remote early twentieth century Southwestern frontier outpost, analysis of Clarkdale's early landscape exposes this impression as a myth. It was a large industrial complex run by a company that controlled its employees through a melange of capitalism, Progressivism and welfare capitalism.