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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 1884093, member: 66&quot;]This was a common practice among small coal and lumber companies.&nbsp; These companies were typically in remote areas.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Being in remote locations there was almost always no competition for the company owned businesses.&nbsp; The company owned everything in town.&nbsp; If you lived there, you worked for the company. No other choice.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Prices would be kept high enough that the workers basically lived paycheck to paycheck and were often in debt to the company.&nbsp; You couldn&#039;t shop elsewhere because the next closest store might be thirty miles away, by horse and buggy.&nbsp; A two or three day trip.&nbsp; Then you had no money they would accept.&nbsp; Even if you could save part of your pay, it was still in scrip which was worthless anywhere except in the company town.&nbsp; As long as you owed money to the company you could not leave.&nbsp; And even it you got out of debt all you had was scrip. The scrip was typically NOT convertible into US currency.&nbsp; So even if you could get out of debt you had no money to be able to go anywhere else.&nbsp; In effect the company store/scrip system provided the company with a slave labor force.&nbsp; Workers would marry,raise children, and they in turn would go to work for the company because there was no other choice.&nbsp; The workers couldn&#039;t rebel against the company either.&nbsp; A &quot;troublemaker&quot; could find himself without a job and no way to make a living.&nbsp; Other people in the town were unlikely to help him lest the company decide they were troublemakers too.&nbsp; The company scrip system flourished from around the late 1880&#039;s until it was outlawed by the courts in the 1930&#039;s.</p><p><br /></p><p>The line from Tennesse Ernie Ford;s song Sixteen tons alluded to the helplessness of the company worker.</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;You load sixteen tons* and what do you get?</p><p>Another day older and deeper in debt.</p><p>Saint Peter don&#039;t you call me cause I can&#039;t go</p><p>I owe my soul to the company sto&#039;.&nbsp; (store)</p><p><br /></p><p>* Sixteen tons of coal was the typical amount a coal worker could manually load into a hopper by hand in a day.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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