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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
In 1873 John M. Kohler, an immigrant from western Austria, settled in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a small town near the shores of Lake Michigan about forty miles north of Milwaukee. There he founded the Kohler Company. Initially the company manufactured agricultural implements, then expanded to the production of enameled kitchenwares, and finally enameled plumbing fixtures. The manufacture of agricultural implements and kitchenwares was early discontinued and today the company is widely known for the production of plumbing fixtures.
1. For the early economic development of the Kohler Company, see Eblen, Trudi, “A History of the Kohler Company of Kohler, Wisconsin, 1871–1914” (Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1965).Google Scholar
2. Information on “garden cities” in the United States can be found in Clarence S. Stein, Toward New Towns for America, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966). Kohler Village is not mentioned.Google Scholar
3. Kohler of Kohler News (hereafter cited as KKN), August 1929, pp. 11, 15.Google Scholar
4. Kohler Village: A Hopeful and Stimulating Example of American Community Life (Kohler Company, 1925). This was the second in a series of promotional pamphlets published by the Kohler Company and should not be confused with the Kohler of Kohler News, a monthly magazine also published by the company. Other promotional pamphlets were published in 1920, 1928, and 1939.Google Scholar
5. Kohler Village (1925), p. 15.Google Scholar
6. Ibid., p. 45–46.Google Scholar
7. For literature on Owen, see: Harrison, John F. G., Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969); Podmore, Frank, Robert Owen: A Biography (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1906). An excellent brief introduction to Owen and his followers is Harrison, John F. C., Utopianism and Education: Robert Owen and the Owenites (New York: Teachers College Press, 1968). The best account of Pullman is Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
8. Kohler Village, pp. 8, 10–11. Color photographs of these murals are reproduced in the Kohler Village (1925) pamphlet.Google Scholar
9. Ibid., p. 9. Notice the solid quality of the images used to describe these murals. The description suggests that the quality in the working man which company rhetoric most valued was perseverance. The worker was expected to be a “steady worker” rather than an entrepreneur. Ambition must not degenerate into opportunism.Google Scholar
10. Ibid., p. 21–23.Google Scholar
11. Ibid., p. 45.Google Scholar
12. For biographical information on Kohler, John M., see KKN (December 1954), pp. 3–7; KKN (November 1943); and The Kohlerian, August 3, 1939, p. 5. The Kohlerian was a newspaper whose origins are obscure. The first issue appeared on July 28, 1938, and was called the Kohler Village Gazette. On November 3, 1938, the paper became the official organ of the Kohler Workers' Association, a company-sponsored union. Some time after this the name was changed to The Kohlerian. Although ostensibly a private venture, The Kohlerian was supported with Kohler Company funds. The present village paper, People, like The Kohlerian a weekly paper, is published by the Kohler Company for the village. Scattered issues of The Kohlerian can be found in the Kohler Public School library, the only library in the village.Google Scholar
13. The Kohlerian, August 3, 1939, p. 5.Google Scholar
14. KKN (November 1943).Google Scholar
15. Biographical information on Walter Kohler, Jodok can be found in the Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography (Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1960), p. 212; see also KKN (December 1954).Google Scholar
16. KKN (May 1935), p. 9.Google Scholar
17. Ibid. See also KKN (June 1937), p. 5.Google Scholar
18. KKN (May 1935), p. 9; see also The Kohlerian, August 3, 1939, p. 5.Google Scholar
19. KKN (January 1923), p. 7; KKN (May 1927), p. 9.Google Scholar
20. Single teachers are often housed in the company-built and maintained American Club, a dormitory for unmarried workers in the factory. One of the present faculty members of the Kohler Public School, when asked about company influence on the school, said “They don't control us, but since the tax base provided by the company pays about 85 percent of our salary, we feel a certain loyalty to the company” (Interview, May 15, 1968).Google Scholar
21. Uphoff, Walter H., The Kohler Strike: Its Socio-Economic Causes and Effects (privately printed, 1935), pp. 103–4, 118.Google Scholar
22. Ibid.Google Scholar
23. Of course the family's actions were basicly paternalistic. There was, however, a slight difference between the Kohler brand of paternalism and, for example, that of Pullman, George. Pullman justified the creation of his company town in plain business terms — a happy and healthy worker was an efficient and productive worker — and consequently tried to provide living accommodations for as many workers as possible. The Kohlers, on the other hand, possibly because they did not have to justify their actions to stockholders, did not emphasize the economic argument. Instead their rhetoric (and their actions) stressed worker initiative and responsibility. The Kohler views had the effect of building a stable community of individual homeowners but, eventually, also contributed to worker dissatisfaction among those employees who were excluded from the village. For a discussion of Pullman, see Buder, Pullman (see note 7, above).Google Scholar
24. KKN (November 1916), inside front cover.Google Scholar
25. Ibid. (September 1919), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar
26. Ibid.Google Scholar
27. KKN (October 1919), p. 11.Google Scholar
28. KKN (May 1930), p. 3.Google Scholar
29. Ibid.Google Scholar
30. In 1919, for example, the KKN announced that “one feature that is going to add to the value and interest of the school is the frequent exhibition of moving pictures.” These movies, described as “educational,” were really designed to attract men to the classes. They were often comedies, with Harold Lloyd particularly popular (KKN [October 1926], p. 11).Google Scholar
31. KKN (October 1919), p. 26.Google Scholar
32. KKN (March 1917), p. 6. Throughout the 1920s these features appeared in one of the spring issues of the KKN, usually in the months of May or June.Google Scholar
33. Examples may be found in almost any issue of the KKN during the 1920s. The article by Eugene Lamb, the first in a series, is found in the January 1917 issue, p. 12.Google Scholar
34. The clubs are listed as affiliated with the Kohler Recreation Club on the inside front cover of the KKN for March 1925.Google Scholar
35. KKN (June 1923), p. 8; KKN (July 1926), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar
36. This account has been pieced together from various issues of the KKN. See especially the issues of July 1926, pp. 4–6; September 1929, pp. 8–10; and October 1929, p. 10. The October 1929 issue carries a picture on page one which makes it quite clear that the “Senior” band is composed of older men.Google Scholar
37. KKN (November 1943). This was the memorial issue dedicated to Marie Kohler.Google Scholar
38. Ibid., p. 3.Google Scholar
39. There are obvious parallels between the career of Marie Kohler and that of Addams., Jane An excellent discussion of Addams can be found in Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 3–37. These women, often trained in liberal arts colleges, may represent a different force in reform movements than persons trained in the new universities. Those interested in these “carriers of culture” should also look at Burgess, Charles O., Nettie Fowler McCormack (Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1962), an excellent study of the wife of a famous inventor and industrialist.Google Scholar
40. KKN (November 1943), pp. 3–5.Google Scholar
41. KKN (May 1925), p. 3.Google Scholar
42. Ibid.Google Scholar
43. KKN (June 1919), p. 8.Google Scholar
44. KKN (July 1935), pp. 3–5.Google Scholar
45. KKN (May 1925), p. 5.Google Scholar
46. KKN (September 1932), p. 3. The colonial American studies of the school children are also discussed in this issue. Additional reports of Better Homes Week activities can be found in the spring issues, usually May or June, of the KKN. Google Scholar
47. KKN (March 1929), p. 5. See also KKN (April 1930), pp. 3–9.Google Scholar
48. KKN (March 1929), p. 9.Google Scholar
49. The Kohlerian, August 3, 1939.Google Scholar
50. Interview with Miss Lucille Thomas, May 15, 1968.Google Scholar
51. Ibid.Google Scholar
52. For a specific example of how historians have treated the progressive education movement, see Lawrence A. Cremin's discussion of the Gary, Indiana, school system. Cremin barely recognizes that Gary schools operate in a company town but rather stresses William Wirt's and Randolph Bourne's enthusiasm for the schools and their lineage from John Dewey (Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School [New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1961], pp. 154–60).Google Scholar
53. Statistics on the growth of special courses (manual arts, home economics, commercial, and agricultural) may be found in Education in Wisconsin: Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1924–1926 (Madison: State Department of Public Instruction, 1926), p. 10. Agriculture courses showed a decline during the decade from 1915 to 1925. All other special courses listed showed an increase with the greatest increase occurring among commercial courses.Google Scholar
54. KKN (March 1929), p. 7.Google Scholar
55. KKN (April 1930), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar
56. Ibid.Google Scholar
57. In 1920 the population of Kohler Village was 403; by 1930 the population had grown to 1,747.Google Scholar
58. The taxable income reported by the company in 1911 to the State Income Tax Commission was about $14,000. (This and the figures that follow have been rounded off.) Except in 1918, when a war contract jumped the earnings to $800,000, the taxable income between 1912 and 1921 averaged about $250,000 per year. In 1922, because of a housing boom in the United States, the earnings leaped to $1,500,000. Earnings continued to grow until 1930 when the company reported a $150,000 loss. These statistics, which apply only to intrastate earnings, are found in Walter Uphoff, The Kohler Strike (1935), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar
59. KKN (January 1931), p. 11; KKN (February 1931), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar
60. Ibid.Google Scholar
61. The Kohler strike is treated in Uphoff, Walter H., The Kohler Strike (1935). Uphoff has expanded his account of the 1934 strike and added a long treatment of the 1954 strike in Kohler on Strike: Thirty Years of Conflict (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966). Uphoff is fairly objective but it is clear that his sympathies are with the strikers. Sylvester Petro gives the company side of the 1954 strike in The Kohler Strike: Union Violence and Administrative Law (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1961). All three volumes, it might be noted, are in the Kohler school library.Google Scholar
62. Uphoff, Kohler on Strike (1966), p. 38, footnote.Google Scholar
63. See Uphoff, The Kohler Strike (1935), p. 11, for Walter Kohler's testimony.Google Scholar
64. A brief biography of Ruth Miriam De Young Kohler may be found in the Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography. See also Who's Who in America, vol. 27 (1952).Google Scholar
65. Programs for the Distinguished Guest Series are on file in the Kohler Public School library.Google Scholar