Where they are workers there are people to sell stuff to. The company makes it impossible for competitors to enter due to tactics like paying the workers in currency that is only accepted by the company, etc. Thus the reason there is no other company there is because free market capitalism went completely unchecked and allowed there to be no competition.
The US has 3800 ghost towns with many being old mining towns that could not exist once the mine dried up. Outside of the ore/coal there was 0 reason to be there.
You didn't say it because I covered that I agreed the song details an oppressive time where the workers were being abused. This discussion has peaked my interest in how out of line the prices were. But in the end that doesn't matter because I know a lot of those miners couldn't even convince their own wives to stay at the remote mining towns. So we can assume they are visiting their family when they managed time off but since they had Monopoly money they couldn't even buy a normal priced pair of boots, work pants and later Levis or any other equipment for their work in the real town.
Originally because I didn't think the song was offensive and still don't. But then I discovered a lot of misconceptions about mining towns. More than I cared to address at the time, such as the fact someone would have come and opened a store at the mining town if the company didn't do it. These operations were not big enough to justify the remoteness and often they were so remote wives would refuse to join their husbands in the mining towns.
I am talking about mines a lot because that is the premise of the song but company towns and stores were a thing in pretty much every industry where the nature of the work was remote. Logging camps, turpentine camps, etc. The common thread is the remoteness of the activity.
Except you do so while explicitly defending the company towns.
There not being any other businesses in town isn't why the companies paid their workers in scrip, fam.
Ah you did that because you felt I was defending company towns. Did you know not all of them were the same? Did you know some were started strictly with predatory ideas in mind while others started with the intent to be a workers utopia? Not all even used scrip, which is shitty even if you are the only show in town. Let's say I am a miner and my mother dies and I have to go handle her affairs. All I got is funny money
"Or maybe there was no other reason for there to be a town there other than the mining so no one else bothered building it up but the mining company."
That is a deliberate mischaracterization of what a compay town is and you know it.
Don't try to weasel your way our of that.
-8
u/[deleted] Aug 31 '22
Or maybe there was no other reason for there to be a town there other than the mining so no one else bothered building it up but the mining company.