Buxton & Landstreet Building

In order to attract workforce of sufficient size for the rapidly growing industrial mining and railroad complex here in Thomas, the Davis Coal & Coke Company had to ensure that there are sufficient amenities here to support a workforce which included the basic necessities of life. So in your typical company town— coal, lumber, whatever— the company in question would form a subsidiary. In this valley, the Davis Coal & Coke Company formed the Buxton & Landstreet Company to operate a company store, and this was like a department store; it had clothing, furniture, food, everything. The basic necessities of life. It made it a little bit easier to attract workforce to a town like this. But employees of many coal companies, including this one, were paid on the onset in what was called script, which was currency good only at the company store. It provided a means of control for the workers, remember they had to purchase goods here. Perhaps you heard the old Tennessee earning song “I Sold My Soul to the Company Store,” that’s essentially what that meant. Being paid in script meant control of pricing of goods, which then lead to workforce accumulating debt. Labor laws of the 1930s outlawed the use of script in most places but company stores continue to operate in communities like this because provided in the essential service and this store was a company store until mining operations ceased in the 1950s.