The iron master was also in charge of hiring skilled labor and investing capital in construction and maintenance of charcoal furnaces and forges for the refining and working of iron. Workers on the plantation were often not paid directly in wages. Rather, the master tallied an employee’s earnings on a balance sheet, which he then offset with purchases of merchandise from the community’s stores. Whereas the iron master lived a rather luxurious life with the opportunity to afford travel, tutors for his children, and expensive home furnishings, workers had few material possessions of their own. Workers were not well traveled outside of the plantations, and little news outside of the confines of the plantation concerned their daily lives. Notably, however, poverty was not well known on the plantations, even in times of economic depression, and workers’ wages in the United States greatly surpassed comparable wages in the European iron industry.