Company store song

[Cornfed]

This is interesting.

[hypermak]

This is interesting.

There's a fantastic explanation of the meaning of the song in one of the top comments...

In case anyone's wondering what this song's about: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, due to the lack of transportation technology, it wasn't plausible for workers at industries in isolated areas like mines or mills to get up and get to work from home on time every day. This issue was solved by the creation of company towns, little villages built around such industries where the workers could live, complete with stores selling living necessities. However, many of them paid workers in scrip, which was only good at the company town stores, so the workers had to buy goods from these stores, which could gouge prices as much as they wanted. At some of the worst, buying the bare necessities costed more than a man could earn, leaving the workers there perpetually and ever-increasingly in debt to the companies.

The lament of the blue/white collar slave is still as strong as ever today...