From the Trading Post to Amazon · Episode 2 of 12 · 23 min
Company Scrip: When Your Boss Paid You in His Own Money
In coal camps and logging towns the employer owned the house, the store, and the money, and scrip was wages you could spend in only one building. The episode follows the truck system from Pullman's model town to the Appalachian coalfields, anti-scrip laws and court fights, the Fair Labor Standards Act rule requiring cash wages, and the violence at Ludlow and Matewan, while weighing revisionist economics showing smaller markups than folklore claims.
Who's who
- George M. Pullman+1 more episodeSleeping-car magnate whose model town led to the 1894 strike
- Price V. FishbackEconomic historian who found company-store markups smaller than folklore claims
- David Alan CorbinHistorian who saw the company town as an instrument of control
- Sid Hatfield+1 more episodeMatewan police chief who confronted Baldwin-Felts agents in 1920
- Cable TestermanMatewan mayor killed in the 1920 confrontation
- Merle TravisSongwriter who wrote Sixteen Tons
- Tennessee Ernie FordSinger whose 1955 recording made Sixteen Tons a hit
Where it happens
- Pullman, Illinois+2 more episodesModel company town built in the 1880s
- Ludlow, Colorado+1 more episodeSite of the 1914 attack on a striking miners' tent colony
- Matewan, West Virginia+1 more episodeSite of the 1920 shootout over evictions
- Appalachian coalfieldsHeartland of company stores and scrip
Timeline
- 1894Pullman Strike, May 11 to July 20
- 1901Supreme Court upholds Tennessee's anti-scrip law in Knoxville Iron Co. v. Harbison
- April 20, 1914Ludlow attack leaves at least nineteen dead
- May 19, 1920Matewan shootout kills ten
- June 25, 1938Fair Labor Standards Act requires wages in cash or par instruments
- October 17, 1955Tennessee Ernie Ford's Sixteen Tons released
Still debated
Historians dispute how much more company stores charged, with a folk range of 20 to 50 percent against survey findings of a few percent to about ten. Whether chronic debt to the store was typical or only for some workers is also argued.
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