OP-ED: The debt problem that haunted miners
“… I owe my soul to the company store.”
The finger-snapping 1950’s song “Sixteen Tons” performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford tells the story of a luckless coal miner who works and works while digging himself deeper into debt, all because of meager wages and the credit he’s used to buy food and clothing at the company store in the “patch” where he lives.
It was a real problem for many coal miners, especially during the lean, Depression-era years of the 1930s. In 1935, during a daylong hearing at the White Swan Hotel in Uniontown, the issue of recurring debt was aired. Ralph Bashore, state Secretary of Labor and Industry, presided.
This is how things went:
First off, Uniontown attorney Anthony Cavalcante stated the case of Pat Rafter, a Frick Coal and Coke Company miner from Smock. Rafter’s pay the previous two weeks had been $40, of which all but three cents was deducted to help cover a portion of his debt to the company store. Rafter was not paid up, Cavalcante pointed out; he still owned the store over $100.
A highlight of the hearing’s morning session occurred when Cavalcante and the 40 miners in attendance agreed to a Bashore plan to a limitation on deductions of 10% per pay.
Thomas Moses of Frick remarked that current deductions, such as they were, were the result of the miner himself agreeing to them.
B.N. Upham, president of Pittsburgh Mercantile Coal, noted instances when a miner’s pay fell so low the company deducted nothing. In that case, a 10% deduction would be a hardship.
F.R. Walton of Frick’s Union Supply Store insisted “at no time do we make deductions on past bills … until all current expenses have been paid.”
Bashore was perplexed by the Walton formula. Money owed is money owed. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Walton, that system leaves nothing for the man as far as his family is concerned.”
Walton retorted, “I would not enter into an agreement that is satisfactory to one or two individuals when the present agreement is now satisfactory to over 25,000 people. We will not make any promises to make any changes.”
Frick’s Moses interjected that the debt problem should be handled on an individual basis. “A man who needs more money ought to have it, and we try to help him. We are friends with these men.”
“None of us are making money,” Moses said. “Our stores are going into the red.
“It is the individual man who must be dealt with, and you can’t agree to 10%, or 2% or 1%, and make it work.”
After this things went downhill. Leo Duncan of the Oliver Supply Company spoke up. “I see no reason at all for this ballyhoo,” he vented.
Upham chimed in. “They say the store takes all their money…. We do not take anything. They spend it. It has been hell the last ten years.”
Moses commented, “If a man cooperates he gets” some money. “We have some [miners] who have to be handled like children.”
Did Moses realize, Bashore inquired, that most Frick miners at some point draw state relief?
“They have gone on relief,” Moses replied, “because it was available, and because it was a gift.”
Bashore asked Moses and the others to submit a list of officials who might work out an arrangement with the miners.
“You have my answer,” Moses replied with brusque self-assurance. Debt problems should be worked out individually, not collectively, he said.
Later, Moses told Bashore that the meeting had been “unfair.”
“Mr. Moses, I consider your attitude one of obstruction.”
“I consider yours in the same light.”
Moses and his compatriots in the coal and coke business soon walked out of the hearing, the debt problem unresolved and the issue mired in bitter disagreement.
Richard Robbins is the author of Troubled Times, from which this has been excerpted. Volume two of Troubled Times will be forthcoming in Spring 2027. Robbins can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.