Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments:
Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments.
Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state's economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday.
The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services.
The measure to further economic development with the "alternative form of local government" has not yet been introduced in the Legislature.
[...] The governor's economic development office did not respond to questions about the zones Wednesday.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 07 2021, @02:10PM
Except, of course, by leaving without telling said company where you were going, you didn't have to stay or pay off those alleged debts. Seriously what could the company do to you? Send the Pinkertons? Waste a bunch of money in a court to get blood from a stone? Unless the target had that money somewhere, it would be a losing and very unprofitable proposition for them even for the purpose of scaring the rest of the miners.
The US was notoriously fluid when it came to such things back then. I find it remarkable how poorly founded some of these myths are.
Strikes and other protests that were put down with military force are well documented. People who chose to stay under abusive circumstances because that was better than the alternatives are pretty well documented.
But so are miners moving from one mine to another and few examples of large debts to the company store. In the references to this paywalled article [cambridge.org], we have the following:
Doesn't sound to me like a number of the problems alleged in this thread such as being forced to stay and work, company store debt, company scrip, etc were widespread practices.