THE COAL TOWN SYSTEM (Trailer) ~ American Experience | PBS West Virginia (1.13.16)

West Virginia coal operators built small, company-owned towns for their miners to live in. The coal towns were almost always unincorporated; there were no elected officials, no independent police forces. Owners hired private detective agencies to watch over their workforce. Company towns were also untethered from the free market competition owners usually championed.

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Transcript
0:04
Rosemary Feurer: A coal town really is almost an instruction ground for exploitation.
Mine workers can see it very directly and their families see it very directly.
They take all the risks. They bring out that coal and it's producing wealth for people who don't live there.
0:27
Narrator: The coal towns were almost always unincorporated; there were no elected officials,
no independent police forces.
Owners hired private detective agencies to watch over their workforce.
Company towns were also untethered from the free market competition owners usually championed.

Operators often paid workers in company currency, called scrip.
They forced mining families to shop exclusively at the company store,
which they stocked with food, fuel and clothing,
even the tools and blasting powder required on the job.
They set the prices of all those goods to assure a profit,
a hedge against operating losses in the mines themselves.
1:13
Carl Starr, Sr.: They paid you with their money.
You bought your food off of 'em unless you wanted to take a dollar scrip and sell it for
75 cents government money and lose a fourth of your wages.
They was oppressed all the time.
1:35
Ellis Ray Williams: If they give the miners a raise then they're going to raise the rent
and raise everything, the cost of food in the company store, and raise the clothing
and everything so you actually, you're right back where you started from.
1:51
Jean Battlo: When a miner went to pick up his check they had what was called a check-off list.
"Your house belongs to company," we'd check that much off,
"You, you bought your groceries here this month at the company store," we'd check that off.
By the time they finished the check off there was very little, little left.
2:15
Chuck Keeney: The only options that you have once you're kind of trapped in that system
is to keep your head down, and do what you're told, or stand up and fight.
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"The Mine Wars" premieres January 26, 2016 on American Experience PBS.