Pretty sure company towns were run by greedy corporations that could get away with their creation in a time without legislation. A lot of good people and small children lost their lives fighting company towns.
Re: Ludlow : "...the culmination of a bloody widespread strike..." My grandfather was involved in the Mid-Continent strike, which wasn't as bloody but he was blackballed from working in oil again.
J.D. Rockfeller II was a notorious Social Darwinist ( the founder of some Social Hygiene organization so probably also a eugenicist ). Eugenics was a Progressive idea.
Many company owners - Henry Ford being one of them - ran company towns for Progressive/Utopian reasons.
Some mining towns would not have existed had the miners had to have arranged their own housing and depend on random strangers to provide supply.
Of course some had to "sold their soul to the company store" but it's like most things - a spectrum and not a given. And it was not all just about greed. It was more likely to be about stubbornness, anyway.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
...as for the U.S. Dollar argument. Previously on Hacker news https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10455681