Coal Mining Companies

Company Towns and Debt Peonage: Corporate Control of Coal Mining Communities

1890-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC | Importance: 8/10

Pennsylvania coal companies established hundreds of “patch towns” where corporations owned all housing, stores, and infrastructure, creating systems of debt peonage that trapped workers through company scrip and inflated prices. Coal operators “controlled employment, housing, local …

Coal Mining Companies Coal and Iron Police Pennsylvania Coal Operators labor-suppression corporate-power economic-coercion gilded-age institutional-capture

Alabama Initiates Convict Leasing: Slavery by Another Name

1866-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC | Importance: 9/10

Alabama Governor Robert Patton authorizes convict leasing, declaring that Black prisoners “should feel the hardship of labor in iron and coal mines” rather than mere confinement. The state begins leasing prisoners to private companies that pay monthly fees while providing minimal food, …

Robert Patton (Alabama Governor) Alabama State Legislature Coal Mining Companies Railroad Companies prison-industrial-complex systematic-corruption institutional-capture racial-injustice