>I may be wrong, but I believe in the US, the coal mining companies constructed these as well. This led to the workers essentially becoming indentured servants. [citation needed]

Yep. It also led to one of the bloodiest government orchestrated massacres in US history when striking miners were cleared from their homes in Ludlow, Colorado by the national guard [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre