TY - JOUR
T1 - Did Coal Miners “Owe Their Souls to the Company Store”? Theory and Evidence from the Early 1900s
AU - Fishback, Price V.
N1 - Funding Information:
Journal of Economic History, Vol. XLVI, No. 4 (Dec. 1986). © The Economic History Association. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507. The author is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia 30602. Funding for this research was provided by a National Endowment for the Humanities Travel-To-Collections Grant and a Research in Economic History Grant from the Arthur Cole Foundation. I greatly appreciate the help provided by the staffs of the Hagley Museum and Library and the West Virginia Regional and History Collection in the University of West Virginia Library. In particular, John Rumm and Richmond Williams aided me greatly in the data-gathering stage. Helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper were provided by Lee Alston, Lynn Bryant, Cletus Coughlin, Claudia Goldin, Robert Higgs, James Kau, Sumner LaCroix, Douglass North, Anthony O'Brien, Randal Rucker, Mark Schmitz, Georgia Villaflor, John Wallis, Ronald Warren, Paul Wilson, Gavin Wright and two anonymous referees. The paper also benefited from comments offered during presentations at the Harvard Economic History Workshop and the 1985 Economic History Association meetings in New York. 1See Curtis Seltzer, Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry (Lexington, 1985), p. 19; David Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922 (Chicago, 1981); and Anna Rochester, Labor and Coal (New York, 1931).
PY - 1986/12
Y1 - 1986/12
N2 - Although coal companies may have tried to exploit a local-store monopoly, company-store prices in nonunion areas were appreciably limited by competition from other stores and mines in the same labor market. Company stores persisted in part by lowering transactions costs. Prices at company stores were generally similar to those at nearby independent stores, and higher wages may have compensated for higher store prices at isolated mines. Conditions varied, however, with labor-market tightness. Miners were generally not in debt to the store, nor paid entirely in scrip. Scrip was an advance on payday, when miners received cash.
AB - Although coal companies may have tried to exploit a local-store monopoly, company-store prices in nonunion areas were appreciably limited by competition from other stores and mines in the same labor market. Company stores persisted in part by lowering transactions costs. Prices at company stores were generally similar to those at nearby independent stores, and higher wages may have compensated for higher store prices at isolated mines. Conditions varied, however, with labor-market tightness. Miners were generally not in debt to the store, nor paid entirely in scrip. Scrip was an advance on payday, when miners received cash.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0022050700050695
DO - 10.1017/S0022050700050695
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84976015396
SN - 0022-0507
VL - 46
SP - 1011
EP - 1029
JO - The Journal of Economic History
JF - The Journal of Economic History
IS - 4
ER -