[Jack Simth]

Coal, specifically; not gold, in West Virginia (although the same thing happened in many, many different forms over the years with different stuffs - many mined minerals, sharcroppers, and the like). Basically, though, it was a way for wealthier landowners to get labor dirt cheap - the company rents the equipment (be it land and or tools) to the workers; pays them in script (good only at the company store) and then (as the company has a monopoly on redeeming the specific script) charges whatever rates they feel like for such things as food, clothing, doctor bills, building materials, and such. Come the end of the month (sped things up to a day to make it a little more obvious, and shorten the session) the miners/sharecroppers/whatever were paid in script, which they then spent at the company store - but as the company store knew what everyone was paid, and could charge whatever they liked, it was a very rare thing for a miner/sharecropper/what have you to get ahead (had someone rolled a 15 or better, I would have had them actually get gold - but it didn't come up, so....) - so they fell into debt. Day after day, year after year; after a point, they'd joke that they couldn't die now, as they owed their soul to the company store (I made this part slightly more literal...). In many ways, it was a way to get what was essentially slaves after slavery was illeagal. Took a little more bookeeping, though.