{"id":45921,"date":"2019-05-04T10:40:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T15:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45921"},"modified":"2019-05-04T10:40:47","modified_gmt":"2019-05-04T15:40:47","slug":"the-company-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45921","title":{"rendered":"The Company Store"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.peakprosperity.com\/the-company-store\/\">The Company Store<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Leaves almost nothing to live on<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the song\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/zUpTJg2EBpw\"><em>Sixteen Tons<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Merle Travis (and made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford), the idea of the \u2018company store\u2019 referred to a system of debt bondage that effectively trapped workers within an unfair system designed to harvest all of their labor at very low cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>You load sixteen tons, what do you get?<\/p><p>Another day older and deeper in debt<\/p><p>Saint Peter don\u2019t you call me \u2019cause I can\u2019t go<\/p><p>I owe my soul to the company store<\/p><p><em>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sixteen Tons<\/em>&nbsp;\u2013 Merle Travis<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How exactly did the company store system operate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Under a scrip system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers that could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings.<\/p><p>Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay.<\/p><p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sixteen_Tons\">Source \u2013 Wiki<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This model was simple enough to understand.&nbsp; \u201cPay\u201d your workers with scrip vouchers, then sell them your marked up goods at the company store, pocketing a nice profit. On top of that, force your employees to live in company housing, too,&nbsp; also at terms very favorable to the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Add it all up and the workers found themselves in perpetual service to their employer. No matter how hard and long they toiled, there was nothing left for their own private benefit after all was said and done.&nbsp; The company succeeded in skimming off any and all&nbsp; \u2018excess\u2019 for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This vast unfairness eventually led to the formation of unions as well as to regulations providing protection to the workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Company Store Leaves almost nothing to live on In the song\u00a0Sixteen Tons\u00a0by Merle Travis (and made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford), the idea of the \u2018company store\u2019 referred to a system of debt bondage that effectively trapped workers within an unfair system designed to harvest all of their labor at very low cost. You [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[151,25792,21328,195,19702,299,2241,303,305,2242,426,1595,25794,1482,536,2218,5420,730,25793,25795,868,875],"class_list":["post-45921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-commodities","tag-company-store","tag-corn","tag-debt","tag-farm","tag-farming","tag-farmland","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-foreclosure","tag-inflation","tag-logging","tag-merle-travis","tag-mining","tag-money","tag-peak-prosperity","tag-scam","tag-silver","tag-soybeans","tag-tennessee-ernie-ford","tag-wealth","tag-wheat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45922,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45921\/revisions\/45922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}