---

Copyright University of Nevada Oral History Program 2002 We encourage researchers to use this material. To view our use policy, please check our Web site or call us at 775/784/6932. Erma Godbey: Another thing that was very interesting in the early days of the construction of Boulder Dam was Six Companies script. Many of the men that came to work were, because of the Depression, flat broke or so nearly so that they didn’t even have work clothes. The Six Companies got a commissary started just as quickly as they could, and they issued paper script in little booklets. A man could get script after he had worked enough to earn even only one or two days’ pay. After one day’s pay, he might be able to get a five dollar script, or he could even script up ahead as long as he had a job. Many, many families came into Boulder City and they could call the time office or they could go into the time office and find out how much the man had coming and then they could get script up ‘til that day’s work and go to the Six Companies’ store and buy the necessities of life in clothing or in food. After the Six Companies store was built, they had refrigerators and stove and things like that, that you could buy. The only things you couldn’t get were automotive parts and gasoline. There were quite a few people that did quite a business in discounting script. If a person wanted gasoline or a new tire or something, they would get the script and then get somebody who was willing to buy it from them. Usually, that was discounted plenty high- -about twenty percent, because you could buy a five dollar script book for four dollars. I never did use Six Companies script because my husband didn’t work for Six Companies, but I used to buy the script. However, I never had the nerve to discount it, because I felt these people were having a rough enough time without having to pay that way. It was just as good to me as it was to anybody else, because I could get just as many groceries with script as anybody else could. Later, they made the Six Companies script in a coin. They had a picture of the dam on them. And it said Six Companies, Incorporated. They were about the same size as our regular money. They had fifty cents and one dollar denominations.

---

Before You Build the Dam	Politics of Building the Dam	Construction of the Dam
Controversy over Naming the Dam	Oral Histories	A Last Look at the Hoover Dam