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• Revisiting enterprise politics in the interwar Hungary: The case of The Rimamurány–Salgótarján Iron Works Co.: Worker‘s lifestyle and rate of living on the colony of the steel factory in Salgótarján before the World War II.

  151-166

  Réka Várkonyi-Nickel

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  The Rimamurány–Salgótarján Iron Works Co. in Salgótarján started to run up from 1871. The
  people who lived in the workers’ colony of the Steelworks in Salgótarján differentiated themselves
  from the rest of the local residents not only spatially but also in their appearance, as a result of
  their higher standard of living. At the begining of the 20th century the major streets of the colony
  (Acélgyári Street) had macadam or stoned surface and were lit with public street lightning. The
  duty of the socalled Dwelling Master was to guarantee neat, clean, tidy streets within the colony.
  Steelworkers had more opportunity to visit the shops and barbershop than those men who lived
  within the downtown. This difference was partly due to their higher income and partly due to
  the fact that the services of the comany’s shop and the barber at the colony were much cheaper
  than those of other local barbers since it was ordered so by factory management. Workers’
  houses were up to the standards of the time, they did not pay rent or just a very low price and
  workers had a possibility to build their own garden houses on the land of the company. All this
  fundamentally changed in the second half of the 1940s owing to post-war lack of raw material
  and Socialist ’modernization’ and uniformization. The period of communist dictatorship after
  World War II, nationalization of the works and Socialist ’modernization’ created trauma at the
  colony.