It is the size of a half dollar and weight is 2.85 grams. Did the goverment make the coin? I know it is damaged but, I just want to know about it's use. I was told plantation owners used them and that it was a hundred years old. I can't look it up because, I don't know what it is called.
W. L. Rankin Lumber Company, Mars Bluff, South Carolina - could also be a token given to wage laborers as part of their pay and good for trade in the company store. Late 1800's?
Probably used by employees in Rankin's store. It was common for companies like this to pay their workers in company tokens in lieu of hard cash. They could only shop in company owned stores as no one else would redeem them. Win-win for Rankin...lose-lose for the employees. At some point this practice was outlawed. Bruce
I was confused why companies in that time period would have taken money and time to print for advertising. The fact it was for trade and although light weight, pretty durable. The coin has been in my possession for more than fifty years. The teacher I asked to look at it then told me it was probably a hundred years old.
Cool story. I'm guessing at the age of the coin - based it on a google search that turned up an obit for Mr. Rankin from 1904? or 1908? (can't remember, too lazy to look again ). I think it said he was in his 30's and was the owner of the lumber co. I suppose the lumber company could have outlived him and that the token could be from a time period after his death.
This was a common practice among small coal and lumber companies. These companies were typically in remote areas. They would supply their workers with housing for which they charged rent, a company store for buying food and other goods with inflated prices, and sometimes medical care as well. Being in remote locations there was almost always no competition for the company owned businesses. The company owned everything in town. If you lived there, you worked for the company. No other choice. The company would pay in their own scrip. You could use the scrip to pay your rent and at the company stores and other company businesses. Prices would be kept high enough that the workers basically lived paycheck to paycheck and were often in debt to the company. You couldn't shop elsewhere because the next closest store might be thirty miles away, by horse and buggy. A two or three day trip. Then you had no money they would accept. Even if you could save part of your pay, it was still in scrip which was worthless anywhere except in the company town. As long as you owed money to the company you could not leave. And even it you got out of debt all you had was scrip. The scrip was typically NOT convertible into US currency. So even if you could get out of debt you had no money to be able to go anywhere else. In effect the company store/scrip system provided the company with a slave labor force. Workers would marry,raise children, and they in turn would go to work for the company because there was no other choice. The workers couldn't rebel against the company either. A "troublemaker" could find himself without a job and no way to make a living. Other people in the town were unlikely to help him lest the company decide they were troublemakers too. The company scrip system flourished from around the late 1880's until it was outlawed by the courts in the 1930's. The line from Tennesse Ernie Ford;s song Sixteen tons alluded to the helplessness of the company worker. "You load sixteen tons* and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company sto'. (store) * Sixteen tons of coal was the typical amount a coal worker could manually load into a hopper by hand in a day.
