The Company's Total Control
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a distinct social structure emerged in the coalfields of West Virginia. Coal companies built entire towns from the ground up, often in isolated mountain valleys accessible only by railroad. By 1922, nearly 80 percent of West Virginia's coal miners resided in these company-owned houses. This arrangement gave the corporations great control over their workforce. The company owned the housing, the school, the church, and, most importantly, the store. These towns were unincorporated, meaning they had no elected officials or independent police.
The primary mechanism for economic control was "scrip," a private currency issued by the coal company. Miners were often paid in these metal tokens or paper notes, which could only be spent at the company store. This system ensured that a large portion of a miner's wages flowed directly back to the employer. The company stores often charged inflated prices compared to independent retailers, and the scrip system made it difficult for miners to save U.S. currency or shop elsewhere. Independent merchants who did accept scrip often did so at a steep discount, sometimes as high as 30 percent. This economic dependency frequently trapped families in a cycle of debt, a situation recorded in the song "Sixteen Tons" with the line, "I owe my soul to the company store." The social hierarchy was also physically mapped onto the town's layout, with managers living in larger homes in desirable locations while miners, particularly African Americans and immigrants, were segregated into less desirable areas.
The Holler's Fierce Independence
Living outside this system of corporate control were the residents of Appalachia's "hollers"—the local term for the hollows or small valleys between mountains. Before the large-scale arrival of coal companies, much of the region was defined by a subsistence economy. Families lived on land they owned, grew their own food, hunted, and foraged. Their economic lives were based on self-sufficiency and barter, not wage labor. This land ownership, however small the plot, was the foundation of their autonomy.
Life in the hollers was structured around kinship and community interdependence rather than a corporate hierarchy. Mutual aid was common, and social norms were enforced informally within the community. While cash-poor, these communities possessed a degree of freedom unknown in the company towns. They were not beholden to a company for their housing, food, or employment. The arrival of industrial capitalism created a stark choice: remain independent on subsistence farms or enter the cash economy by working for the coal companies and living under their rules. This created two parallel societies throughout the mountains, one defined by near-total corporate control and the other by a self-reliant independence.