Scrip

Photographs of 800 different pieces of coal scrip, all from Harlan County, Kentucky. In 1910, the L&N pushed its railroad into remote Harlan County, Kentucky, opening up access to billions of tons of coal, the fuel that ran everything during the Industrial Revolution. Coal did it Street lights from coal gas, coke for the steel mills, power for the new national electrical grid.The country's richest men and largest corporation rushed in-Ford Motor Company, U. S. Steel, Chicago Edison, International Harvester, Peabody Energy, the Mellons, the Carnegies, the Delanos, bringing with them a system they had Scrip.What if you didn't have to pay the workers? Not really, not in cash? What if you could make your own currency and make it worth whatever you wanted to? Scrip was a system designed to pay workers in pinto beans and corn meal from the company store, and make billions in profits for the coal companies."SCRIP" exposes how wage theft worked and left the coal counties impoverished.