Scrip

Scrip (sometimes in India called chit) is a term for any substitute for legal tender and is often a form of credit. Scrips have been created for payment of employees under the truck system, and for use in local commerce at times when regular currency was unavailable, for example in remote coal towns, military bases, ships on long voyages, or occupied countries in wartime. Besides company scrip, other forms of scrip include land scrip, vouchers, token coins such as subway tokens, IOUs, arcade tokens and tickets, and points on some credit cards.

Scrips have gained historical importance and become a subject of study in numismatics and exonumia due to their wide variety and recurring use. Scrip behaves similarly to a currency, and as such can be used to study monetary economics.

History

Company scrip was a credit against the accrued wages of employees. In the United States, where everything in a mining or logging camp was owned and operated by a single company, scrip provided the workers with credit when their wages had been depleted. These remote locations were cash poor. Workers had very little choice but to purchase food and other goods at a company store. In this way, the company could charge enormous markups on goods in a company store, making workers completely dependent on the company, thus enforcing their "loyalty" to the company. Additionally, while employees could exchange scrip for cash, this could rarely be done at face value. This kind of scrip was valid only within the settlement where it was issued. While store owners in neighboring communities could accept the scrip as currency, they rarely did so at face value, as it was worth less than that.