Sixteen Tons

"Sixteen Tons" is a song about the misery of coal mining, first recorded in 1946 by U.S. country singer Merle Travis and released on his box set album Folk Songs of the Hills the following year. A 1955 version recorded by 'Tennessee' Ernie Ford was on the b-side of his cover of the Moon Mullican standard, "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry". However, it was Ford's "Sixteen Tons" that reached number one in the Billboard charts, besting the performance of the competing version by Johnny Desmond. Another competing version by Frankie Laine was released only in the U.K. where it gave Ford's version some stiff competition on the charts. On October 17, it was released and, by October 28, it sold 400,000 copies. On November 10, a million copies had been sold. The record had sold two million copies by December 15.

The well-known chorus runs:

:You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?

:Another day older and deeper in debt.

:Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;

:I owe my soul to the company store...

According to Travis, the line from the chorus "another day older and deeper in debt" was a phrase often used by his father, a coalminer himself.

This and the line "I owe my soul to the company store" is a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this system workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with unexchangeable credit vouchers for goods at the company store (usually referred to as scrip). This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or apartment buildings, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay.

In 2005, General Electric ran a series of ads for its new "clean coal" campaign featuring the song.