17. Coal mines and company towns in Appalachia added to the reputation for poverty
The coal mines which were built to retrieve the fuel for the growing United States by both strip mining and deep excavation did more than just scar the landscape. They contributed to the impoverished reputation of Appalachia. They paid wages as low as they could get away with, and in the absence of competing jobs, they got away with paying next to nothing. What they did pay they recovered through the establishment of company towns, with supplies available for purchase only from company stores. Generation after generation of Appalachian families grew up with the male members’ only employment opportunity being the same mine at which his father, and grandfather before him, had worked.