Esau In The Coal Mines Of Appalachia

 

This post and the practice of Esau in the coal mines is rooted in the story of Esau and Jacob from the King James Version of the Bible.  The Biblical story also has serious implications in the coal fields of Appalachia as reported by several independent scholars and writers and has been corroborated numerous times both by individuals of advanced age who lived and worked in the coal mines of Appalachia and by their offspring, especially the daughters of these coal miners and their wives.  First we will read a key portion of the Biblical story from Genesis 25: 21-34. Then we will discuss how it applies to the history of the Appalachian coal fields.

²¹ And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.  ²² And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the Lord. ²³ And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.  ²⁴ And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.  ²⁵ And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.  ²⁶ And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.  ²⁷ And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.  ²⁸ And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.  ²⁹ And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:  ³⁰ And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. ³¹ And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.  ³² And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?  ³³ And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.  ³⁴ Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

 

 When we examine the story from the Bible, we see that Esau and Jacob were intended to become leaders of two different "nations" of people and that Esau was the first born which in Biblical times meant that he was intended to inherit the entire estate of his father Isaac.  But, as the Bible states in the story "the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger". This Biblical mandate that the elder should serve the younger is brought about because Jacob is a mighty hunter and Esau, the elder, is eventually forced to sell his birthright to his younger brother in order to keep from starving.  A question which many people ask about this story is "what is pottage?".  Basically, pottage is either a soup or a stew and the "lentiles (sp)" from which it is made are a relative of beans which are not commonly eaten in America but are available and I actually sat at my kitchen table yesterday and "looked", to use an old Appalachian expression, some lentils for a pot of bean soup, or pottage, if I may say so.  So the upshot of the Biblical story is that Esau was forced to sell everything he stood to inherit in order to eat.  Now, let's move on to how this story came to be played out in Appalachian coal fields, coal camp towns, and coal company stores.  

During times of unemployment, strikes, or in events when miners were injured, sick, or otherwise unable to work, coal companies and the coal company stores would not allow the miners and their wives, who were usually the ones who did the shopping, to continue to receive merchandise or scrip from the company store unless the miner was owed money.  Therefore, no work, no money owed, no scrip, no food for the family.  The coal companies did not do any miner any favors and when the work stopped the pay and the food also stopped.  But a system developed in many, if not most, of the coal company stores which came to be known as Esau in which the wives or daughters of temporarily non-working miners could be issued some scrip or food based on the scrip system which was administered in most cases by coal company employees who were often actually contracted employees of one of the coal security companies such as Baldwin-Felts or Pinkerton.   For those of you who do not know about the scrip system, it was a system by which coal companies created their own form of money, scrip, with which they paid their employees and scrip was only good in the stores owned by the particular company which issued the scrip.  At times, it was possible for employees to sell scrip outside the company at vastly discounted rates much in the same way, in recent years, food stamp recipients have been able to sell food stamps.  

The system which developed in these coal companies and their stores which came to be known as Esau was used at times when miners were either killed, injured, striking, or otherwise unemployed and had no money or scrip with which to feed their families.  Since coal miners usually worked long hours six, or even seven, days a week, their wives or  teenage daughters were usually the people who went to the company stores to buy groceries for the family.  Under ordinary circumstances, the woman wishing to make a purchase would go to the pay window and ask for some amount of scrip for groceries, select her items, and pay for them at the counter with the scrip.  Another slightly different system might have the purchaser simply sign a ticket for the amount of her purchases and the tickets would be recorded in the paymaster's book against the employment record of the minor.  In either case, it was not uncommon for a miner to work weeks, or even months, without ever actually receiving any form of payment in his pay envelope on payday.  It was more common for miners to receive a statement in the pay envelope which showed hours worked or tons of coal loaded, amount of pay earned, amount of scrip issued or purchases made subtracted from the amount earned, and a running total of the amount the miner owed the company hence the line in the famous song "I owe my soul to the company store".  

The Esau system worked in a very different manner and supplies or scrip were only issued to female members of the miner's family and records were kept in a different book, the Esau book.  When the wife or teenage daughter of an unemployed miner needed food or other important purchases, she would go to the company store, ask an employee for what she needed be told there was no scrip available in her husband or father's name, and then be told by the employee who was always male and usually a contract employee of one of the hired "security" companies that there was a way she could get what she needed.  She would then be taken to some isolated section of the company store, forced to have sex with the male employee, and the amount she owed the company would be recorded in the Esau book.  This system has been documented by several coal mine writers and historians over the years including West Virginia Public Broadcasting's Catherine Moore and Michael and Carrie Kine who produced stories of the Esau system as it operated in the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County, West Virginia.  Catherine Moore documented this story about the Esau system as told to her by Joy Lynn, the owner and tour guide at the Whipple Company Store in the days when it was being operated as a museum: 

"We’ve had multitudes of women and tell us as little girls they remember their mothers coming to the company store and one of the things that a lot of more the lovely ladies had to do was come upstairs.  Some of the young girls had the stories shared by their mothers stating that they would be escorted in the shoe room. There would be a selected guard that would be waiting for them and they would receive a brand new pair of shoes with no accountability other than to perform whatever the service the guard wished to have in lieu of pay.  We had one woman in particular share with us that her mother was a young girl about 25 years old and bought her first pair of shoes here and the women’s entire life those shoes remained in the shoe box on her closet shelf never to be worn and she refused to wear another pair of shoes her entire life.  She made her shoes out of cardboard, newspapers and twine.”  (WV Public Broadcasting, Catherine Moore, October 23, 2013)

Catherine Moore's telling of the story is corroborated in Michael and Carrie Kline's "Esau in the Coalfields: Owing Our Soul to the Company Store" in the book "Written In Blood", edited by Wess Harris.   In that article, the aforementioned Joy Lynne relates the following story: 

"Just off the ballroom on the third floor of the store is a smaller room toward the back of the building.  In early photographs it's the only curtained room.  It served as a fitting room, so it has been frequently told, where women were accompanied by one of the guards from the first floor to try on shoes they had seen displayed in the shoe department.  A woman, of course, seldom had money of her own and barely enough scrip or credit at the company storeto cover the week's groceries and rent.  So when she got up to the shoe room she found it furnished with a cot upon which the guard encouraged her to sit while trying on the shoes.  When the door shut behind her, she found herself alone with the guard...Over the past several years we've had eight or ten women refer to this as the 'rape room'.  After they got their lovely shoes they would have to pay for them in this room."  ("Written In Blood", edited by Wess Harris, pp. 19-20).

On the website Appalachian History.net, Dave Tabler recorded this story from Wes Harris, the editor of the the book mentioned above, "Written In Blood": 

 “Esau was issued only to women, and it was a form of scrip that would enable a women to purchase food for her children during the time that her husband couldn’t work. But it was only good for 30 days, and if her husband went back to work within those 30 days, then the company in their kindness would forgive the debt. And if he did not go back to work at the end of 30 days, then the scrip became a loan that was due and payable in full on day 30. And of the course the women didn’t have jobs or scrip or money, and so they had to pay it back—and it was a collateralized loan—and the women themselves were the collateral. Their physical selves would be used to pay the debt.” (Dave Tabler, "Esau Scrip and The Shoe Room, AppalachianHistory.net November 6, 2013)

The West Virginia singer and songwriter Mary Hott related this story about forced sexual servitude in the coal fields to the website MorganCountyUSA.org about her understanding of Esau and how it caused her to study the system and record an album containing several songs about the practice: 

 

Singer and songwriter Mary Hott of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia was listening to the report. “I heard the radio report on the Whipple Company Store,” Hott told This Week in Morgan County. “People were telling stories – rape, torture by mine guards, to keep control, to keep the miners and their families under control, to keep out unions.” (Mary Hott on The Devil In The Hills of West Virginia" on MorganCountyUSA.org February 28, 2020)

Although some academics have publicly questioned these reports, most of which were originated in the works of Joy Lynn and her husband at the Whipple Company Store during the days in which they operated it as a museum,  the concept of Esau has been corroborated by other legitimate writers and historians including Janet W. Green in an article on the website West Virginia History entitled "Strategies for Survival: Women's Work in the Southern West Virginia Coal Camps"

In interviews with coal miners' wives who lived in housing owned by coal companies during those years, women reported that wages were not stable in the mining life. To meet the challenges of uncertain wages and work shut-downs, women raised gardens on available land, preserved food, and, if necessary, sewed underwear for their children out of flour sacks. Women earned cash by taking in boarders and laundry, selling butter and eggs, and serving as bootleggers and prostitutes.  (Janet W. Green, "Strategies for Survival: Women's Work in he Southern West Virginia Coal Camps" West Virginia History, Volume 49, 1990)

 On her official website, Mary Hott, the singer mentioned above, gives this explanation of her motivation to record her album and makes an attempt to confront historians and writers who doubt the stories arising from Joy Lynn, Michael and Carrie Kline, and Wess Harris. She also provides links to the three academic articles written by Catherine Moore. 

"The idea for this music project was sparked in October 2014 after I heard a rebroadcast of a Halloween week special on WV Public Radio on haunted buildings in the state. The featured haunt that morning was the Whipple Company Store in Fayette County.  The broadcast also introduced the discovery of “Esau Scrip” which was publicly unknown at that point in time. The series of three radio stories by Catherine Moore initiated the ongoing controversy among some historians over the very existence and purpose of Esau scrip and piqued my curiosity." (Mary Hott, "Devil In The Hills: Coal Country Reckoning")

 While it is easy to understand why some historians and writers might question these stories without further empirical evidence to support them, it is also common knowledge that victims of sexual oppression, sexual abuse, and assault are generally very reticent to discuss their victimization and most of the victims are either already dead or elderly.  I have also learned from Wess Harris himself that the Whipple Company store is no longer being operated as a museum, has fallen into decrepitude, and is now owned by an individual who is connected to the West Virginia coal industry and might well have personal reasons for suppressing such stories about the Esau system in the coal fields.  I grew up within three miles of a large coal camp town in Eastern Kentucky and spend several years working in the coal fields of West Virginia and I had never heard of the Esau system until I read "Written In Blood" which is a major source of these stories.  Without a doubt, oral historians in the coal fields of Appalachia should make a concerted effort to learn the whole story of Esau in the coal fields.  How accurate are the extant stories about it?  Was it widespread in the coal fields beyond the Whipple Company Store?  Do the living wives and daughters of Appalachian miners corroborate the stories being told by the aforementioned sources.