building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

The cotton mill, invented in England within the last twenty years, is a
signal illustration of the general pro position which has been just
advanced. In consequence of it all the different processes for spinning
cotton are performed by means of machines which are put in motion by
water, and attended chiefly by women and children, and by a smaller
number of persons, in the whole, than are requisite in the ordinary
mode of spinning. And it is an advantage of great moment that the
operations of this mill continue with convenience during the night as
well as through the day. The prodigious effect of such a machine is easily
conceived. To this invention is to be attributed essentially the immense
progress which has been so suddenly made in Great Britain in the
various fabrics of cotton. 155
The concrete result of this reflection on machines to process cotton was to cause
the radical transformation of city landscapes in the north of the United States. The
theoretical remarks advanced by Hamilton led indirectly to some entrepreneurs
convincing themselves they could dedicate their resources to the construction of a
town‐factory: urban models, which would act as “capitalist utopia”, in contrast with
the economic types, together with settlements based on land exploitation.
The myth of a “perfect” economy, as described by Hamilton in his Report, shows the
model of the company‐towns. The company‐towns interpreted the idea of a limited
urban form. In some respects, they were not inspired by egalitarian models, they
were not the result of social demands, nor did they represent town planning forms
of redemption as opposed to religious utopias. They were simply tools for capital,
entities organised for the purpose of making the workers’ job more efficient. The
myth of these manufacturing cities as purely economic models was only to be swept
away by the Civil War. As a result, the typical manufacturing economy of the
northern states during the first half of the nineteenth century was subsequently to
be reconverted using far more diversified solutions. In an essay published in the
book La città americana (1973), Francesco Dal Co sustains that “some of these
principles remain, however, in the company‐towns of the Laissez faire era, which
acquired a precise political function in the capitalist system and became an internal,
economic tool, typical of the process of accumulation” 156 . One of the last examples
155 Ibid., p. 18
156 DAL CO, Francesco, published in CIUCCI Giorgio, DAL CO Francesco, MANIERI ELIA Mario, TAFURI
Manfredo, La città americana dalla guerra civile al New Deal, Laterza, Bari, 1973, p. 218
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