Merle Travis - Sixteen Tons (original version) from 1947

Yessir, there’s a-many a Kentucky coal miner that pretty near owes his soul to the company store. He gets so far in debt to the coal company he’s a-workin’ fer that he goes on fer years without being paid one red cent in real honest-to-goodness money. But he can always go to the company store and draw flickers or scrip -- you know, that’s little brass coins that you can’t spend nowhere only at the company store. So they add that against his account and every day he gets a little farther in debt. That sounds pretty bad, but even that’s got a brighter side to it.