No, that refers to purchasing the basic necessities at the company store that somehow always cost more than what the company paid in scrip ‘’‘wages’‘’ and the company store being extremely happy to allow workers to buy on credit that they knew the workers would never be able to pay off.
Speaking of company towns in Oregon, the biggest and best known was Vanport, on the Columbia between Vancouver, WA and Portland.
Desperate for housing for his new workers at his shipyard and annoyed by the local housing authorities slowness, Henry Kaiser just bought the land and started building in 1942. He was somewhat visionary, putting in community centers, parks and such. He also didn’t care about race which riled many locals.
Vanport was soon the second largest city in Oregon. As the war wound down, so did the population but it became housing for returning veterans after the war.
It was flooded out of existence in 1948. Less than 6 years in existence.
(MrsFtG’s mother was a welder at the shipyard. She had a long bus ride/walk between her non-Vanport home and work.)
Just to be clear because of the subject of this thread, Ithaca Hours were in no way company scrip.
Forms of generic scrip have both a fascinating history and a tremendous range of form. The difference between Ithaca Hours and electronic gift cards is small. Trading stamps, most famously S&H Green Stamps, are a variation, as are coupons, and government food stamps. Check out ebay for collectibles; the older ones go for lots of money today, ironically.
These dates have to be misremembered, even beyond the fact that no one has come up with an example. The U.S. outlawed scrip in the old sense in 1938.
During the Great Depression, scrip became common as merchants tried to keep their doors open.
Scroll down to the bottom of this web page for an incomplete list of the towns, cities, and states that issued their own currencies.
We recently took a tour of the Lackawana Coal Mine near Scranton, PA. Fun fact:
16 tons is the daily quota of coal each worker was expected to pull out of the mine each day. So like moving a 50lb rock every minute for ten hours.
The company store agreement was pretty shitty. Your employment got you company housing, but you had to pay for everything else (boots, helmet with the little headlight thing, clothing, dynamite, blasting caps, etc). If you were injured, “worker’s comp” basically consisted of dragging you out of the mine at the end of the day and leaving you on your family’s doorstep in whatever condition. If no member of your family could work in the mine, they were evicted.
So basically slavery.
Pretty much.
The eponymous “sixteen tons” refers to a practice of initiating new miners. In the mid-1920s, a miner tended to haul eight to ten tons per day, whereas for new miners, other miners would slack off so the new miner could “‘make sixteen’ on his very first day.”[8]
Well, regardless of which source is correct, in practice it was almost impossible for a miner to reach their quota. Depending on how much the formal liked out, they could reject part of your haul for any number of reasons (too much coal dust, too much rock, coal is too black, etc). Failing to make quota usually meant a dock in pay.
Did you mean “the foreman liked you”? My own typing is so typo-infested, I’ve gotten skilled at reading what should be.
And in some mines, sometimes people stole your coal.
I toured the Coal Mining Museum in Cape Breton several years ago. They told us that each miner would shovel coal into specific mine carts, and then hang a tag on the cart to identify who it was from. The carts weren’t counted until they reached the surface, and whoever’s tag was on it got the credit. So every now and then, some asshole would see an opportunity to swap tags, and steal a load of coal from one of the other miners.
So basically their whole lives were just awful.
Similarly, in the south when the textile mills started springing up in the late 1800s/early 1900s, the ‘company towns’ were often referred to as ‘mill villages.’ And they were looked down on by the local townies, as you had these country bumpkins coming in from all over the county/state/neighboring states. “Lintheads,” as they were called. I guess if you were raised on a farm, you saw what the next 40, 50, 60 years of your life were going to be, and mill work, tough as it was, at least offered the chance of a better outlook, if not for you, maybe for the kids.
Speaking as a proud offspring of multigenerational lintheadery.
indeed
wasn’t Kaiser also in Bay Area? And had health plan?
See the link in my post. Kaiser had multiple shipyards in two areas. He also got into aluminum and steel production and automaking. Kaiser-Permanente was started as a health plan for his employees. Not your stereotypical industrialist.
A gutsy move in an environment like a coal mine. Getting caught at (or even suspected of) pulling that trick is surely listed by the Surgeon General as likely to decrease your life expectancy
One way to increase the weight of a cart is to leave a badly beaten body in it.