IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ehsrev/v64y2011i1p237-255.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scrip as private money, monetary monopoly, and the rent‐seeking state in Britain

Author

Listed:
  • ELAINE TAN

Abstract

Scrip—promissory notes payable in goods at company stores—was issued by employers to pay workers, and was an important component of British money during the industrial revolution. As late as the third quarter of the nineteenth century, scrip issued by coal firms, which represented the foregone demand for official currency, was at least 9 to 24 per cent of the value of English country or Scottish banknote issues. In some areas, scrip was 38 per cent of the total wages paid. The state's suppression of this private currency to defend its seigniorage rents was in part the motivation behind the prohibition of the truck system in 1831.

Suggested Citation

  • Elaine Tan, 2011. "Scrip as private money, monetary monopoly, and the rent‐seeking state in Britain," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(1), pages 237-255, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:64:y:2011:i:1:p:237-255
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2010.00549.x
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timberlake, Richard H., 1981. "The Significance of Unaccounted Currencies," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(4), pages 853-866, December.
    2. Fishback, Price V., 1992. "Soft Coal, Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890-1930," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195067255.
    3. David J. Moss, 1981. "The Bank of England and the Country Banks: Birmingham, 1827–33," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 34(4), pages 540-553, November.
    4. Michael Collins, 1983. "Long-term Growth of the English Banking Sector and Money Stock, 1844-80," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 36(3), pages 374-394, August.
    5. Sylla, Richard, 1976. "Forgotten Men of Money: Private Bankers in Early U.S. History," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(1), pages 173-188, March.
    6. Tan, Elaine S., 2005. "Ideology, interest groups, and institutional change: the case of the British prohibition of wages in kind," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 175-191, December.
    7. Elaine S. Tan, 2006. "Regulating Wages in Kind: Theory and Evidence from Britain," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 442-458, October.
    8. Huffman, Wallace E & Lothian, James R, 1980. "Money in the United Kingdom, 1833-80," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 12(2), pages 155-174, May.
    9. Timberlake, Richard H, 1987. "Private Production of Scrip-Money in the Isolated Community," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 19(4), pages 437-447, November.
    10. George A. Selgin & Lawrence H. White, 1994. "How Would the Invisible Hand Handle Money?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1718-1749, December.
    11. Rockoff, Hugh, 1974. "The Free Banking Era: A Reexamination," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 141-167, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Howard Bodenhorn, 2016. "Two Centuries of Finance and Growth in the United States, 1790-1980," Working Papers id:11352, eSocialSciences.
    2. Bordo, Michael D., 1986. "Explorations in monetary history: A survey of the literature," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 339-415, October.
    3. Daniel R. Sanches, 2016. "The Free-Banking Era: A Lesson for Today?," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 1(3), pages 9-14, July.
    4. repec:jpe:journl:1495 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Howard Bodenhorn, 2017. "Opening Access: Banks and Politics in New York from the Revolution to the Civil War," NBER Working Papers 23560, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Rösl, Gerhard, 2006. "Regionalwährungen in Deutschland: Lokale Konkurrenz für den Euro?," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,43, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    7. Nuno Palma, 2018. "Reconstruction of money supply over the long run: the case of England, 1270–1870," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(2), pages 373-392, May.
    8. Samuel K. Allen & Price V. Fishback & Rebecca Holmes, 2025. "The impact of progressive era labor regulations on annual earnings and employment in manufacturing in the USA, 1904–1919," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 19(1), pages 249-278, January.
    9. Kris James Mitchener & Matthew Jaremski, 2014. "The Evolution of Bank Supervision: Evidence from U.S. States," NBER Working Papers 20603, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Peter J. Boettke & Alexander W. Salter & Daniel J. Smith, 2018. "Money as meta-rule: Buchanan’s constitutional economics as a foundation for monetary stability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 529-555, September.
    11. Gentier Antoine, 2013. "3 Comments on “An Austrian Defense of the Euro”," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 29-40, December.
    12. repec:bla:germec:v:4:y:2003:i::p:389-408 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Peter J. Boettke & Liya Palagashvili, 2015. "Taming Leviathan," Supreme Court Economic Review, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 279-303.
    14. Alexander William Salter, 2014. "Debt Erosion and the Market Process," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(3), pages 370-378, October.
    15. Randall S. Kroszner, 1998. "Lessons from a laissez-faire payments system: the Suffolk Banking System, 1825-58 - commentary," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue May, pages 117-120.
    16. Hillard G. Huntington, 2017. "The Historical “Roots†of U.S. Energy Price Shocks," The Energy Journal, , vol. 38(5), pages 1-16, September.
    17. Huntington, Hillard, 2016. "The Historical “Roots” of U.S. Energy Price Shocks: Supplemental Results," MPRA Paper 74701, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Michael D. Bordo & David C. Wheelock, 2010. "The promise and performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort 1914-1933," Working Papers 2010-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    19. Nina Stępnicka & Grzegorz Zimon & Dariusz Brzozowiec, 2021. "The Complementary Currency Zielony in Poland and Its Importance for the Development of Local Economy Entities during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-26, August.
    20. Laurent Le Maux, 2004. "L'émergence d'une banque supérieure sous le régime de la liberté bancaire," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 70(2), pages 193-221.
    21. Cyril Monnet & Daniel R. Sanches, 2015. "Private Money and Banking Regulation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(6), pages 1031-1062, September.
    22. Hugh Rockoff, 1991. "Lessons from the American Experience with Free Banking," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Forrest Capie & Geoffrey E. Wood (ed.), Unregulated Banking, chapter 3, pages 73-129, Palgrave Macmillan.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:64:y:2011:i:1:p:237-255. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehsukea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.