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Company Store, Martin, nondated.
flipFlip to Company Store employees, Footedale, 1948.
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A black and white photograph of a wooden company store with a large porch. Two employees and several small children stand on the porch. One employee stands on the steps extending from the left of the porch. One man stands in front of the store, to the right of the photograph. There is a sign above two windows that reads: Crescent Supply Co.

Credit: Courtesy of Coal and Coke Heritage Center, Penn State Fayette, www.coalandcokepsu.org/

"Well we had check [chit] or chinky money. It was aluminum. They had a dollar; they had fifty cents; they had a quarter; they had nickels; they had dimes; and they had pennies. Now in many mines that had paper [money], what they called scrip … You went down to the company store, and we'd ask, ‘We want a dollar". Mother sent me and my sister down to the store, and she'd write out a list. Charlie would look it over and say, ‘Well your father don't have no coal out, so I can't give you a dollar, but I can give you fifty cents." Ok so we take the fifty cents and go back and tell Mother that's all we got. See, you could get fifty cents worth of soup meat or bones at that time. They give you bones; you didn't have to pay for that. The soup and the noodles was the mainstay, let me tell you that right now. You had soup for dinner, and you had soup for supper, and if you wanted a snack, you had soup too." Adapted from an Oral History of Steve Butchock

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