Providing Essentials in a Company Town
Potlatch Lumber company officials
aimed to provide employees not only with an attractive town, but also with basic essentials geared to
draw high quality workers. Potential employees were screened to bar undesirable elements from the
community. This procedure regulated both the work force and the town, for only employees and their
families could live in Potlatch. First, ideal workingmen should be married; family men were considered
more stable than bachelors were. Second, the consummate workman was of northern European descent.
Finally, men stood a better chances of finding employment if recommended by someone Potlatch officials
knew. Company officials also physically segregated less desirable residents from more preferred ones.
Most bachelors lived isolated from married residents in boardinghouses built just for them. Greeks,
Italians, and Japanese were also sequestered in small cottages and boardinghouses.
Some Potlatchers did live better
than others, but every resident had access to basic services. For example, Potlatch's educational
system gained a reputation as one of Idaho's finest. Laird believed that a superior school would be
an incentive for attracting dependable, familied employees. He believed in hiring the finest teachers
available, and Potlatch attracted them more easily than most small communities. Incentives were high
pay and low rents. In 1921 the company constructed and furnished a house for single women teachers
and an eight-room "family house" that was usually leased to married teachers. As a result of these
benefits, the community's schools had good instructors and an enviable reputation.
Just as important as schooling
was medical care. The company withheld one dollar per month from each worker's pay, turning the
sum over to its doctor. In return, he performed all necessary medical treatment. In 1907 the company
constructed a small hospital in Potlatch, and in 1923 they remodeled a boardinghouse, transforming it
into a community hospital.
The Potlatch library began in
1908 as a public reading room in the basement of the Union Church and Potlatch officials contributed
monthly stipends. In 1930 the company also provided a building. With the exception of a few years
during the Depression, the company gave a monthly donation, allowed rent-free use of the building,
and paid the librarian's salary.
Laird converted the basement
of a combination livery stable/theater into the town's first gym. Then in 1916 company directors
constructed Potlatch's largest frame building. With a full-sized, maple-floored basketball court, lounges
and club rooms, an office, showers, and locker space the Potlatch gym was one of the best equipped in
the Inland Empire. The gym became a significant social center, a place not only for sports but also
for plays, dances, card parties, and other gatherings.
Perhaps no company town entity
is more widely known than the company store. In 1907 the commissary moved into the Mercantile,
one of the largest store buildings in the
