New Books in Economics Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, "Company Towns: Industry Power and the Historical Foundations of Public Mistrust" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Mar 22, 2026
Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, a political scientist at the Hoover Institution, studies how mining shaped local politics. She discusses coal’s role in weakening municipal capacity and privatizing services. She recounts historical corruption, persistent local mistrust of government, party realignment in coal regions, and surprising mid-century outmigration that reshaped political life.
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How Coal Rapidly Remade Rural Communities
- Coal boom transformed rural subsistence areas into populous, industrial mining communities.
- Migration from Europe and domestic movement created prosperous early 20th-century towns with company-built infrastructure and higher wages when unions existed.
Why Coal Firms Replaced Local Governments
- Coal companies preferred private provision of schools, roads, and services rather than building local government capacity.
- Because mines relied on low-skilled labor and were often the only major taxpayer, companies kept services private to protect profits.
Coal Caused Long Lasting Low Local Capacity
- Counties with large coal industries developed systematically smaller local governments and fewer public employees.
- Census and local government data show the coal industry's arrival causally reduced government size starting in the 1880s, persisting by some measures into the 2000s.
