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• 1 2016-12-28T13:51:40-08:00 The Colorado Supply Store in Colorado Fuel & Iron's Mining Camps 10 image_header 2017-01-04T13:48:03-08:00 The Colorado Supply Company presence in CF&I’s mining communities provided employees and their families with necessities such as food, gasoline, clothing and other household items.  The company stores also sold equipment and tools necessary for work including safety equipment, picks, and shovels.  With a few exceptions, the stores in the mining areas also served both as a bank and post office where the store manager served as post master.  In the mining camps, when necessary, the store system also operated boarding houses for single men and for married men whose families resided elsewhere. From the 1880s until 1902, the store enterprise managed eight different boarding houses.

  Scrip System

  Despite trying to balance working time with the demand for coal, mining companies throughout Southern Colorado sometimes lacked cash to pay their miners when payday came around. Miners were paid once a month in the early days of the company and in lieu of actual currency mining companies offered scrip, a form of company issued credit. It was with this credit that purchases could be made in the company owned stores. Employees needing advances on earnings could make purchases at the store, or, for a 5% charge, could receive scrip to purchase groceries or goods for their home.  On payday, the balance due the store was subtracted and any unspent balance was given to the worker in scrip. In order to obtain cash, the employee could work with a broker to sell their scrip for cash for a 15-25% fee. In 1906, a bi-monthly pay system was introduced to CF&I which lessened much of the demand for advanced pay.   
  
  Although the use of scrip in mining camps is heavily criticized (particularly the image of the company store as a vehicle of corporate oppression reaping profits and keeping the miners in a form of indentured servitude), some historians have supported the town system stating that the mining areas of Southern Colorado were generally remote and lightly populated, so it had few existing stores and employees needed to shop at the company store as there were no other alternatives. In addition, most mining towns were too small to support a profitable store, so independent stores were reluctant to move into an area. If an independent store was unwilling to assume these risks, it was left to the mining company to establish and operate a store. About half of CF&I’s mining camps were “open” towns which allowed outside businesses to operate within the town, including general merchandise stores.
   
  According to noted historian and author H. Lee Scamehorn, critics claimed that CF&I and the Colorado Supply Company used their own system of money to compel employees to trade in company stores which prevented local merchants from serving miners and steelworkers. CF&I management reiterated in its company publications that employees asked for cash advances only between paydays and that the profits reaped through purchases made with scrip were minimal for the store to continue to be self-sustaining. The use of scrip by the Colorado Supply Company was discontinued in December 1912 but was brought back for a short time during the years of the Great Depression and the massive layoffs that followed.
• 1 2017-01-04T15:24:54-08:00 Introduction to the Colorado Supply Company 4 plain 2017-01-05T07:50:29-08:00 The Colorado Supply Company was a subsidiary of Colorado Fuel & Iron, or CF&I, that operated stores in Pueblo Colorado and the numerous mining camps that operated throughout Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming by CF&I.  The company sold groceries, household goods, pharmaceutical goods, gasoline, and clothing among other things.  The stores also operated as post offices in most of the mining camps in which they were located.
       The Colorado Supply Company began as a subsidiary of CF&I’s predecessor company, the Colorado Fuel Company.  It opened its first store in September 1888 at the mining camp of Rouse, and the chain grew and evolved over the next several decades. By 1904, there were 31 stores under company operation in nearly every one of CF&I's mining communities. In 1908, the store system, with its wide customer base and 46 retail outlets, recorded $2,762,081.50 in gross sales.
  
       Unfortunately, the Colorado Supply Company did not last long past the middle of the 20th century.  The prosperity of the 1920s ended with an economic catastrophe of unparalleled length and severity-the Great Depression. CF&I, along with its company towns, was heavily hit by the Depression and closed 13 mines between 1922 and 1930. CF&I assisted the families by reducing rent costs, purchasing food and clothing to distribute to needy employees, and the company encouraged families to grow gardens for self-sustainability. Many retail units of the Colorado Supply Company were also closed as the company reduced mining operations. The Walsen store converted to a cash and carry system in 1931, but later closed when the volume of sales did not meet expectations. That same year, the Colorado Supply experienced its first major fiscal loss of $25,000 since its opening. Over the next decade, as the demand for coal for steel production and domestic use dwindled, the company began to close many of its mines and towns. The last store to close in Colorado was at Valdez in Las Animas County in 1960, and its outlet at the Sunrise, Wyoming mine closed in 1966. The Colorado Supply outlet in Pueblo succumbed to a fire on January 15, 1953, and never reopened.