ACT Reading Quiz
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1 When the mill owners posted the new wage scale
2 in the spring of 1884, they added a small
3 clause permitting workers to be paid partly in scrip,
4 redeemable only at the company store. Few workers protested
5 openly, and turnover among laborers actually declined in the
6 months that followed. Company ledgers, however, reveal that prices
7 at the store rose nearly nine percent that same
8 year, while the wages listed on paper stayed unchanged.
9 Local newspapers of the period made no mention of
10 unrest, focusing instead on the mill's expanding order book
11 and its record shipments of cloth to southern ports.
12 Only decades later did descendants of the workers describe
13 the scrip system, in family letters, as a form
14 of quiet bondage that kept them tied to the
15 company long after their debts should have been paid.
It can reasonably be inferred that the low turnover among mill workers in 1884 most likely reflected:
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