Through the Lens (Story of Mine Scrip)
In my research to write this series, I came across the word, “scrip.” It is a term used to describe the form of payment miners received for their labor. After the civil war, mines quickly began to multiply, especially in the new state of West Virginia. Coal mines were being dug in remote places. Land was cheap and future coal barons from outside the state began to realize that a vast future of profit lay beneath the hills of the state. Only one problem, the remoteness of the land where the mines were to be build. But with the development of mines, methods to move the coal out of the valleys quickly came. Miles of rail roads were being build every day solving the problem.
Still, the remoteness of the mines posed a problem for the mine owners and their employees. Stores and banks were far away in the cities along the rivers. Around 1880 the development of scrip was the answer to both problems. At first scrip was a good way to pay miners and the company stores were a way for the miners to purchase supplies for their families. For a while this arrangement worked well.
But somewhere along the line, unscrupulous mine owners began to realize they could control their employees with scrip. Miners would become indebted to the company store. That was likely to happen in the back hollows of the hills. In fact, some company stores made more profit from the stores, than the coal from the mine.
Scrip was and advancement on a miner’s wages. That fact allowed the mines to pay in currency they printed. In rare cases where a miner did not fall behind in money owed to the company store, he could be paid in U.S currency.
I knew very little about mine scrip before I met up with an old friend, Ed Quirk. He explained he was a collector of mine scrip going back to the 1920s. He asked if I was interested in seeing his collection. I eagerly accepted his offer. A few days later we met at the Chronicle office. Ed brought along a three ring binder filled with mine scrip and pit tags.
He also brought along a book titled, “Edkins Catalogue of United States Coal Company Scrip.” The volume contained 400 pages of information of mines in West Virginia and the many different scrip used in the state in the first half of the 20th Century. It is estimated during this time over ten thousand variations of scrip were minted. The amazing thing about his book of West Virginia scrip is, that there is a company book of the same size that documents all the scrip in the rest of the United States. It is amazing our state had as many as the rest of the country during scrip usage.
During our talk, Ed explained that miners were restricted to using the scrip they were paid at only their company store. If a miner was caught spending the scrip in other company stores. They were terminated. And if the miner was able to spend the scrip at another store, it was discounted nearly 40%.
Miners sometimes had no choice. They were expected to purchase their picks and shovels, clothes and carbide light from the company store. If the company store was out of any items, the miner had no choice but to go elsewhere. Miners purchased dynamite, drinking water and tools at the store. And if their tools needed sharpening by the black smith, they were charged a fee. The scrip, and remoteness of the mines kept the miners virtually indentured to the mine owners.
Eleanor Roosevelt visited our state several times. The conditions in which miners and their family’s lived was appalling to the First Lady. She reportedly said, “Mine scrip was the worst evil this country ever had.”
Ed explained if a mine operator came across a boy of ten, he would tell his parents, “bring him around to the store, we’ll fix him up with some mining clothes and tools. He can start to help you out.ã Sure enough, the boy was outfitted to go into the mine. But even before he entered the mine, he owed the company store. Younger children were employed to pick rocks out of the coal pile. They were paid a few penny’s a day in scrip.
Scrip came in many shapes and designs. Each mine had their own scrip design. Scrip came in 1Ç, $1, $5 and $10. Some were round, others octagon with scallop edges. The minted scrip was made from iron, copper, brass, plastic and some paper script or coupons. One company in Pennsylvania used aluminum to produce scrip. It was soon stopped. Some miners found aluminum scrip could be easily counterfeited. When the company took them to court for counterfeiting. The court dismissed the charges. After all, mine scrip had no real value and was not official currency backed by the government.
With the passage of time, towns began to grow around mining camps. And the scrip which miners were paid became part of the local currency. This led to problems. One local store owner who had collected scrip from miners for payment of goods accumulated several hundred dollars in scrip. He then took it to the mine owners and demanded he be paid legal U.S. currency. The mine owners refused and the store owners took them to court. The court ruled, that since the mine recognized and issued the scrip as tender and it had value to them, the business owners was owed the money. This ruling and the other with counterfeiting shook the mining companies and made the payment with scrip less desirable.
One more thing helped to bring company stores to an end, the mail order catalog. Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward gave miners opportunity’s to reach outside their isolated communities and purchase needed items like shoes and clothes at a fair price.
Mine scrip was always questionable as to its legality, but the owners of mines had great power with the government. It is also believed that mine scrip and the hardships it caused was one of the primary factors in the development of unions in the isolated mining community’s. By the 1950s scrip was no longer being used for compensation of wages. State and federal laws made it illegal.
What started out as a good idea was transformed into a way of controlling miners for nearly sixty years. It seems that the life of a miner and his family for six decades was a struggle to survive. The job was hard and difficult and the locations of many mines was remote and gave them no other options.
Last fall I traveled to Farmington to talk with families of miners affected by the 1968 mine explosion. Before leaving the area, I drove a couple miles outside of town. There, along the road over grown with weeds and broken windows sat a non-descript block building. It was the abandoned company store. The same store where relatives waited for days to learn the fate of their loved ones. A sobering sight to see a darkened store where miners once traded their lives for scrip as I see it, Through the Lens.