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The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class
Part II, Chapter XVII
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1834. | 1837. | |||
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Sussex... | 18s. | 1d. | 8s. | 7d. |
Bedford... | 16 | 4 | 8 | 0 |
Bucks... | 16 | 11 | 8 | 8 |
Northampton... | 15 | 8 | 8 | 3 |
Suffolk... | 16 | 7 | 9 | 3 |
There is no need to draw, at any length, the moral of this episode in the industrial history of England. It is of the highest economical importance that pauperism shall not be made inviting. It is not necessary that any brutality of administration shall deter the worthy poor from public relief, but, in Prof. Senior's phrase, the situation of the pauper, whether in or out of the workhouse, should always be made less agreeable than that of the independent laborer. The workhouse test for all the able-bodied poor, and genuine labor up to the limit of strength within the workhouse, are imperatively demanded by the interests of self-supporting labor. One might, indeed, hesitate to carry the labor test quite so far as Pennant observed it in his Second Tour in Scotland, where he writes: "The workhouse is thinly inhabited, for few of the poor choose to enter: those whomever necessity compels are most usefully employed. With pleasure I observed old age, idiocy, and even infants of three years of age contributing to their own support by the pulling of oakum."*74 There is no reason that I know of, why the principle of the factory acts should not be extended to the poor-asylum, to excuse infants of tender years from work, or any danger to helpful labor in allowing repose to old age or idiocy; but wherever there is a possible choice between self-support and public support, there the inclination of the poor to labor for their own subsistence should be quickened by something of a penalty, though not in the way of cruelty or of actual privation, upon the pauper condition. "All," says Mr. George Woodyatt Hastings, "who have administered the Poor Law must know the fatal readiness with which those hovering on the brink of pauperism believe that they can not earn a living, and the marvellous way in which, if the test be firmly applied, the means of subsistence will be found somehow."*75
V. May the laborer be put at disadvantage through the form in which his wages are paid? A great deal of public indignation and not a little of the force of law*76 have been levelled at TRUCK. How, in an effort to treat the wages question systematically, are we to regard this practice?
To truck (Fr. Troc) is to exchange commodities, to barter. The truck system of wages, then, is the barter system introduced between the laborer and his employer. What objection can there be to this? How can it be supposed to injure the laboring class? I shall discuss this question at length, not more on account of its intrinsic importance, than because it affords an excellent practical application of important principles relating to the distribution of wealth.
The truck system may take two forms. First, there may be given to the laborer a portion of that which he actually produces, whether that product be suitable to his wants or not, leaving him, in the latter event, to exchange it as he can for whatever he may desire, food, drink, clothing, fuel or shelter. Second, under the truck system the laborer may receive, not what he produces, but what he is to consume; he is paid in commodities supposed to be more or less suited to his wants.
Both these forms of truck are as old as labor; but in the earliest times they were generally found not separate but united. What the workman produced he also desired to consume, and for his labor in tending sheep and cattle, and in sowing and reaping grain, he received wool for his clothing, and meat and bread for his food. And so to-day are the laborers of many countries mainly paid; and doubtless in the majority of cases the practice is both necessary and beneficial. But when distinction came to be made of labor as agricultural and as mechanical, and when employments came to be much subdivided, it would happen that a laborer's production was calculated to supply but a part only, or perhaps none at all, of his wants; for it might be that an artisan of Birmingham or Sheffield would be employed in making an article which he not only never used but never even saw used. Hence, if he were to be paid in kind, he would be obliged to sell or exchange the same for commodities more suitable to his necessities, and this, it will be seen, he might have to do at a very great disadvantage, having no place of trade, no business acquaintance, and no time to spend in bartering off his wares. So we find, in the fourth year (1464) of King Edward IV. of England, an act passed in which occurs the following:
"Also whereas, before this Time, in the occupations of Cloth-Making, the Laborers thereof have been driven to take a great part of their Wages in Pins, Girdles, and other unprofitable wares, under such price that it did not extend unto... therefore it is ordained and established that every man and woman being cloth-makers, from the (said) feast of St. Peter, shall pay to the carders, spinsters, and all such other laborers, in any part of the said trade, lawful money for all their lawful wages."
This is the first English act aimed at the truck system. Between that and the act of 1st and 2d William IV. (c. 37) intervened nearly four centuries, during which this system, in one or both its phases, prevailed in respect to a great part of English labor, and apparently the British Parliament has not even yet done legislating about it.
I have said that the second form of truck is where the laborer is paid in commodities supposed to be suitable to his wants as a consumer, irrespective of the question whether he has helped to produce the identical articles or similar articles himself. This is done where board is given as a part of wages, but truck to this extent was expressly excepted*77 from the prohibitions of the great English truck act—namely, that of William IV., already referred to. Another form of partial payment which is in the nature of truck, is the allowance of perquisites and privileges, such as the keep of a cow, the gleaning of the wheat-field, the cutting of turf, and others which we have had occasion to mention in speaking of the difficulty of estimating the real wages of the laborer. This kind of payment prevails, from the nature of the case, mainly in respect to agricultural labor, and agricultural truck was not forbidden*78 by the act of William IV. One form of agricultural truck deserves especially to be noted. It is found in the beer or cider allowances so prevalent in England.*79 The farms in that country where such payment is not stipulated or is not customary would doubtless be found, on a count, to be in a decided minority. In many cases the allowance is in amount reasonable, if we assume that the use of these drinks in any quantity at all is desirable; but in a vast number of instances the figures of these allowances as reported are startling to minds unfamiliar with the statistics of beer-gardens. In some places Mr. Purdy reports*80 that the men have from 2 to 4 quarts of beer daily; women and children half that quantity. The cider-truck would seem to be carried to a far greater extent. Mr. Edward Spender states*81 that the agricultural laborers of the cider-producing countries, particularly Herefordshire and Devonshire, receive from 20 to 50 per cent of their wages in cider! Eight to twenty pints a day he indicates as the actual range.*82 With such a state of things, no wonder Mr. Spender can quote the statement of a medical gentleman, long resident in the cider district, that "the failure of the apple crop has the same favorable effects on the health of the laborer as the good drainage of a parish has on the health of the inhabitants generally."
But the form of truck which has especially excited the opposition of the working classes, and which has been stringently prohibited*83 by law in England, is the furnishing by the employer to the mechanical laborer, of goods for his personal and family consumption, the charges for the same being set off against the wages due. It is of truck in this sense only that we shall hereafter speak.
The custom of part-payment in goods, which at one time prevailed almost universally in many districts in England and very generally in the United States, did not fail to find excuse for itself in the supposed advantage of both parties. It was claimed that, in many branches of industry, the proximity of stores and shops kept by persons disconnected with the employers could not be relied on to the degree required for the supply of the laborers' wants. This plea was urged with most assurance, and probably with the greatest degree of truth, in respect to truck-stores for navvies engaged upon canals and railways, as the gangs employed on such works are, from the nature of the work, continually shifting their place, and often pushing into districts settled sparsely or not at all. At the same time, evidence was presented in the Commons Report on Railway Laborers (1846) going to show that the supposed necessity for truck did not exist even here.*84 But as the building of canals and railways had reached no great proportions in 1831, when the act of 1st and 2d William IV. prohibiting truck passed, this department of industry was omitted from the enumeration in that act, and the truck system was kept up in full vigor on the canals and railways of the kingdom long after it had ceased elsewhere, or had sunk into an illicit traffic maintained, under disguise and at risk, by the least reputable employers.
The department of industry which, next to that mentioned, put in the strongest plea for truck, was coal and iron mining. In the nature of the case, works of this character are found principally at considerable elevations, upon difficult and broken ground, and often at considerable distances from market towns.*85 Hence the proprietors were not without a show of reason in holding that the prompt and sure supply of a large and perhaps fluctuating body of workmen required that shops for the sale of the necessaries of life should be established in immediate connection with the works themselves.
But the opportunity to add to the profits of manufacture the profits, and (through the unscrupulous exercise of the influence and authority of the employer) more than the ordinary profits, of trade, did not suffer truck to be confined to departments of industry presenting so much of an excuse for the system as the building of canals and railways, and the mining of coal and iron. Truck long prevailed, to a vast extent, in connection with many branches of manufacture, and in many communities, where no reason but the greed of employers existed for the practice. Workmen were compelled to buy at the master's store, on pain of discharge. Sometimes hints accomplished the object; sometimes threats were necessary; sometimes examples had to be made. However strong the disapprobation of the workmen, or of the larger community around, the profits of truck were so enormous as to overcome the scruples and the shame of many employers. Those profits were five-fold. First, the ordinary profit of the retail trader, large as that is, and larger as we know it becomes, in proportion to the ignorance and poverty of the customer. Second, there was a great diminution of ordinary expenses, due to the compulsion exercised. The trader, who was also the manufacturer, did not have to resort to costly advertising to draw custom, to maintain an attractive establishment in a convenient location, or to keep up an efficient body of clerks and attendants. The only advertisement needed was the ominous notice to trade there: the store might be the merest barn, the service might be reduced to a degree involving the greatest inconvenience, and even hardship, to the customer.*86 Third, it seems to be abundantly proved, by the evidence before the several commissions and committees, that the charges at the truck-shops were generally higher by 5, 10, or 15 per cent than at the ordinary retail stores. Fourth, the employer, having the absolute control of the laborers' wages, incurred no bad debts such as eat up the profit of the open trader. Fifth, the quality of the goods furnished was likely to be as best suited the interests of the employer, who, for the best of reasons, feared no loss of custom.
Such was truck in England before the act of 1st and 2d William IV.; and there can be no question in the mind of any candid person who peruses the painful evidence adduced in the course of the several inquiries which took place before and after that legislation, and who carefully considers the nature of the case, that, whether the system be intrinsically mischievous or not, abuses*87 shameful and even horrible were perpetrated under it. Doubtless there was much passionate exaggeration by men smarting under its evils, as there was in respect to the abuses of the old unreformed jails; to the wrongs of American slavery; to the outrages of the Confederate prison-pens; but if the simple truth respecting truck in England in the early days of this century could be written out, it would form one of the most painful chapters in the long and dreary story of "man's inhumanity to man."
Another wrong which it is charged is done to laborers through the form of their payment, is by the so-called rental by the employer to the laborer, of the tools and machines necessary to production, the wages being stopped to the amount of the "rent." This alleged abuse attracted attention from economists and legislators in England particularly in connection with the hosiery manufacture, and we will, for brevity, draw our illustrations wholly from that branch of industry.
The system of Frame Rents, as exposed by the evidence before the Commission of 1844 and the Committee of 1855, was this:
Instead of the employer hiring laborers to work upon his own machines, paying them net wages for their service, the knitting is let out to middlemen upon contracts; "the middleman supplies the workman with frames and other machinery, sometimes belonging to himself and sometimes hired of the manufacturer or other owner, and when he settles with the workman, he deducts out of the gross price per dozen of the work performed, first, a sum as rent for the use of the frame; secondly, a sum for winding the yarn, which is a necessary operation for each workman; a third sum to remunerate himself for the use of the premises where the work is performed, and for the standing-room of the frame; and a fourth for his trouble and loss of time in procuring and conveying to the workman the materials to be manufactured, for his responsibility to the manufacturer for the due return of the materials when manufactured, for superintending the work itself, and for his pains in sorting the goods when made, and in redelivering them at the warehouse of the manufacturer." The language quoted is that of the Committee of 1855.
That this system of gross wages, with deductions to be made for the use of machinery employed and on the other accounts specified, was not necessary to protect the owners of the machinery was abundantly proved by the fact that in trades requiring the use of even more costly and delicate machinery, the plan of clear net wages prevailed. The real reason for the frame-rent system, as brought out unmistakably by the evidence, was the profit to be made from the use of the frames, owned partly by the manufacturers and partly by the middlemen. This was admitted by the manufacturers themselves, who even claimed that but for this profit they could not carry on their business in a depressed condition of trade.*88
The fact of rents so high as to make this profit often enormous was abundantly proved. Mr. Muggeridge presented authentic accounts of transactions where the annual rent charged approached, equalled, or even exceeded the value of the frames. Thus one workman in 22 years paid as rent upon a frame worth but £8 or £9 between £170 and £180.*89 Another paid ninepence a week for 30 years, on a frame costing at the beginning but £7, and requiring but £6 or £7 for repairs during the entire period. Still, again, Mr. William Biggs, a member of the Committee of 1855, had testified before the Commission of 1844 that during the two years 1835-36 his firm owned £8000 of frames; that the rents amounted to £5100, which, after deducting 5 per cent interest per annum on the capital invested, and the cost of all repairs and incidental expenses, left a clear profit of £1950, or 24½ per cent for the two years.
Such was the system by the admission of those interested in its maintenance. But there can be no question that abuses were easily perpetrated under it. "The amount of this deduction," says Mr. Muggeridge,*90 "is regulated by no fixed rule or principle whatever; it is not dependent upon the value of the frame, upon the amount of money earned on it, or on the extent of the work made; it has differed in amount at different times, and now does so in different places; the youthful learner or apprentice pays the same rate from his scanty earnings as the most expert and skilful workman in the trade from his of four-fold the amount." Moreover, the workman, obliged to hire the machine if he would have employment at all, was compelled, not infrequently, to pay the rent not only when prevented by sickness from labor, but also when no work was furnished him by the middleman, who had a direct interest not only in "spreading the work over a greater number of frames than were requisite,"*91 the amount given out being, accordingly, in some cases, "what would be three full days' work in a week, in others four, in some as little as two,"*92 but also in keeping inferior machines of antiquated pattern worn to the very edge of absolute inefficiency, since the less each machine could perform, the larger the number which would be required; and the more hands he could hold in dependence on him for an inadequate occupation, the more complete his control over these unfortunates; the more meagre the living they were able to get off their frames, the less likely they were to have either the spirit or the material means to remove.
I have given so much space to the questions of Truck and Frame Rents, both because of their prominence in the history of labor and in economical literature, and because they afford illustrations of certain very important principles in the philosophy of wages.
To the appeals of the working classes for legislation abolishing these systems, the economists of the Manchester school have replied with the doctrine of laissez faire. Asserting, as they did in their contest for free trade, the self-sufficiency of capital, they felt bound to vindicate their consistency by asserting the self-sufficiency of labor. To them truck and frame-rents were a mode of ascertaining the wages of labor; and they deemed the hours and methods of labor and the amount and kind of wages matters to be left to employers and employed,*93 subject only to the "law of supply and demand." By the operation of this law, they claimed, the employer gets the laborer's services for the least sum possible under the conditions of supply; and on the other, the laborer secures the greatest sum for his services consistent with the existing demand. The employer's least price and the laborer's greatest price are therefore the same, and no injustice can be done so long as both parties are left free by law.
It is, however, fairly a question whether the writers and statesmen of this school, in their valorous disposition to stand by their principle in every case where issue on it might be joined, have not mistaken their ground in the matter of frame-rents and truck. Surely, freedom of contract, on which the Manchesterians insist so strongly, does not involve freedom to break contracts or to evade contracts; nor does the most advanced advocate of laissez faire propose that breach of contract shall be left to be punished by natural causes—that is, by the loss of business reputation, by the withdrawal of confidence, or by public reprobation. But if exactitude of performance may be enforced by law without any interference with industrial freedom, why, pray, may not precision in terms be required by the law, as the very first condition of a due and just enforcement of contracts? Precision in terms is, however, manifestly incompatible, in the very nature of the case, with truck; for if the employer says to the laborer, "I will pay you for your work twenty shillings a week, but you shall take it in commodities at my prices," he does not in fact agree how much he will pay the laborer; the use of the term twenty shillings becomes purely deceptive: it may mean more or less according as the employer chooses to fix his prices at the time; the laborer can not tell what his wages really are; the law can not tell, and therefore can not enforce the laborer's right if litigated.*94 Perhaps we can not say that precision in terms is incompatible with the very nature of the system of machine rents; but there is ample evidence to prove that it has been so in fact, and therefore the law, which is bound to enforce the contract, may justly demand that the contract shall not contain an element unsusceptible of exact determination. This is not interference with freedom of contract, but with looseness and uncertainty of contract, or with the power of one party to a contract to break, evade, or pervert its terms.
But I am not anxious to reconcile the prohibition of truck and machine rents with laissez faire. The authority accorded to that precept is not, in my opinion, to be justified on strictly economical principles.
We have previously (p. 168-9) discussed the principles on which it should be judged whether a law prohibitive or regulative in form really impairs competition, and prevents the resort of labor to its market. It was there seen that such a measure, though unquestionably obstructive as against a supposed pre-existing condition of perfect practical freedom, might, by removing important moral or intellectual obstacles to free action, which actually exist in human society as it is, have the effect to promote, and not retard, industrial movement.
Now, let us apply this principle to a proposed law in regulation or restraint of truck. It is, say Mr. Bright and Prof. Fawcett, an interference with freedom of contract and an obstruction to trade, and therefore mischievous—laissez faire, laissez passer. But is it really or only formally obstructive? There will not be absolute freedom of movement with it. Granted. But is there absolute freedom of movement without it? Assuredly not. Shall not, then, the question be, whether there will be more freedom with or without such a law?
Now, if we ask the question respecting truck and frame-rents in England as they were in the first half of the century, it must, I think, be answered that interference with the formal freedom of contract in these particulars served to enhance, in a most important degree, the substantial freedom of movement among the laboring classes. The laborer's practical ability to seek his best market is made up of a material element—the means of transportation and present subsistence—and of intellectual and moral elements quite as essential, the knowledge of the comparative advantages of the different occupations and locations offering themselves, and the courage to break away from place and custom to seek his fortune elsewhere. Ignorance and fear keep far more men in a miserable lot than does the sheer physical difficulty of getting from place to place, and sustaining life meanwhile.
At the laborer's knowledge of the comparative advantages of different occupations and locations, the truck and machine-rent systems struck a deadly blow. In addition to the inevitable difficulties in determining the real wages of labor, which were detailed in Chapter II., this system introduced a new and most hopeless element of uncertainty. The laborer's wages, paid nominally in money, were to be converted into commodities for his consumption, by an illicit process, at rates governed by the pleasure of the individual employer at the particular time. The truck system was maintained for the purpose chiefly, as was admitted, of enabling the employers to "sweat" their laborers' wages, as counterfeiters "sweat" the coin of the realm. It was claimed that in this way employers might make themselves good, if the nominal wages they were paying were too high, more easily than they could obtain a reduction in the nominal wages themselves. Moreover, the degree to which wages should be thus reduced would depend upon the rapacity or the necessities of individual employers, and also upon the state of manufacture and trade.*95 The great flexibility of these charges was universally admitted; and, indeed, the readiness with which they could be adapted, in form and degree, to the times and exigencies of the master's business was made one of the chief recommendations.
If workmen are to seek their own interests, they must know them. Every thing that tends to simplify wages makes it easier for the laborer to dispose of his service to the highest advantage. Every thing that tends to complicate wages puts the laborer at disadvantage. A system of gross wages, with deductions "regulated by no fixed rule or principle whatever" (Muggeridge), varying with times and places, and, as Sir A. Alison admits, varying with the state of trade and the disposition of employers, makes it impossible for the most enlightened workman to act intelligently respecting his interests, while the uneducated workman loses his reckoning completely: his senses are deceived, and he is put wholly at the mercy of the extortioner.*96
But it is said the workman may not, indeed, be able to compute with exactness his net wages and those of his fellows, through all this system of allowances and deductions and payments in kind; but he surely can appreciate the result so far as his own comfort and well-being are concerned; he surely knows whether he is well off or not; and if he feels himself wronged, he will seek a better employer. But how, I ask, is he to judge in advance, under such a system of combined truck and machine rents as oppressed the framework-knitters of England fifty years ago, whether his condition would be more tolerable under another master or in another place? Suppose him to have the rare intelligence and enterprise to ascertain the gross wages paid by other employers, perhaps in distant localities, and to find some more favorable than his own, how can he have the slightest assurance that greater severity in the administration of the system of stoppages and deductions, and greater greed in pursuing the profits of truck, might not make the difference, and perchance more than the difference, in nominal rates? He can not tell until he has tried, and how often would a workman, on such a narrow margin of living, and it may be with a family, be able to change employers and shift his place in order to better his lot? How surely would he, after one or two bitter disappointments, relinquish the effort, and sink without a struggle into his miserable place, getting what wages he could, and taking for them what he might, at "the master's store." The fact is, the system of truck and machine rents, as administered in England in the early part of the century, completely blindfolded the workman, and left him to grope about in search of his true interest, in peril of pitfalls and quagmires, or, as was most likely, to submit in sullen despair to every indignity and injury of the position in which he found himself.
Surely, then, we are entitled to say that laws in restraint of these practices differ from those other laws affecting labor which have been described in this chapter, in the one all-important particular, that the latter were intended to diminish that mobility by which laborers could seek their best market, while the former have the effect to make competition more easy and certain.
Is truck, then, always subject to economical censure? I answer, No. Truck is a form of barter; and he would be a bold man who should say that barter is always and everywhere prejudicial. When truck arises naturally, is compatible with the general usages of exchange, and is maintained in good faith by common consent, it may not only be unobjectionable but highly advantageous to all classes.*97 When, however, truck is forced upon a body of impoverished and ignorant workmen against the general usages of exchange, and maintained by intimidation as the means of "sweating" their wages, and keeping them down to the barest subsistence and under an incapacity to migrate, then truck becomes a horrid wrong and outrage. This varying aspect of truck, according to the circumstances and character of the community among which it is introduced, exemplifies the futility of setting up as economical principles what are in truth mere rules of expediency.
Thus, if barter be the general condition of exchanges in a new community, as it ordinarily is in the scarcity of currency, we may fairly say that it constitutes no special hardship to the laboring classes that they have to receive their wages in kind. Doubtless, in the further development of society and industry, the introduction of money payments in such a community will prove a real and great industrial advantage to all classes. Doubtless, also, the wages class, as presumably the poorest class, and that, also, the members of which have least time and opportunity for rendering the commodities they may chance to receive in payment, into the commodities they desire to consume, would be most helped by such an advance. Yet, prior to that consummation, the wages class, or the economist speaking for them, could scarcely make complaint that they were obliged to share in the general inconvenience, even though, from their industrial position, they might feel it more severely than others; or demand that exemption from truck be secured them by law. Indeed, in such a general condition of exchange, it is quite conceivable that a class which should be enabled to enforce money payments to itself might thus secure an undue advantage which would be resented by others as obtained at their expense. An amusing illustration of this is furnished by Gov. Winthrop in his History of New-England, as follows:
"One Richard ——, servant to one —— Williams, of Dorchester, being come out of service, fell to work at his own hand, and took great wages above others, and would not work but for ready money. By this means, in a year or a little more, he had scraped together about twenty-five pounds, and then returned, with his prey, into England, speaking evil of the country by the way," etc., etc. (Vol. ii. 98, 99.) The good governor notes with apparent gusto the fact that he was met by the cavaliers and eased of his money—his prey—on his arrival.
But if we come, now, to consider a state of industrial society in which exchanges are generally effected through the use of money, and inquire as to the results to a single class of the community of being reduced, through some force operating upon them when in a position of disadvantage, to accept payment for their services in commodities*98 instead of currency, those, at least, who discard the theory of diffusion can easily see that wrong amounting to robbery might be wrought by this means. To deny to one class the advantage they would naturally derive from the introduction of a universal "standard of value and medium of exchange," while allowing it to the classes with which that single class is to compete for the possession of wealth, would be not unlike prohibiting to one merchant the use of the railway, and sending him back to the stage-coach, while his competitors were permitted to use the telegraph and the steam-car. So long as the coach was common to all, none had equitable cause of complaint of the want of a better means of transportation. The hardship, such as it was, lay in the constitution of things. When the steam-car and telegraph came, they did not benefit all alike; on the contrary, they tended to inequality;*99 to make the great greater, the small, by comparison at least, smaller, yet no one could rightfully charge blame in that he received less than others of the great addition to human well-being. It would be quite another thing, however, were one individual or class to be prohibited from participating, in his measure, in what should be the gain of all. This would be ground for complaint; this would be gross, palpable injustice. And such a wrong was that truck against which the statute of 1st and 2d William IV. was levelled. Truck prevailed, not because it consisted with the general system of exchange in the country at the time, not because it was for the convenience of both parties, not from any scarcity of currency to allow cash payments, but, in the vast majority of instances, it had been forced*100 upon the working classes simply and solely because it enabled the employers to add the profits of trade to the profits of manufacture; because it kept the laborers always poor and in debt, and diminished the ease, or practically destroyed the possibility, of migration.
1630, 23d August.—"It was ordered that carpenters, joiners, brick-layers, sawyers, and thatchers shall not take above 2s. a day; nor any man shall give more, under pain of 10s. to taker and giver."
28th September.—"It is ordered that no master carpenter, mason, joiner, or bricklayer shall take above 16d. a day for their work, if they have meat and drink, and the second sort not above 12d. a day, under pain of 10s. both to giver and receiver."
Two other acts had been passed of a similar nature, when, on the 22d March, 1631, the General Court "ordered (that whereas the wages of carpenters, joiners, and other artificers and workmen were by order of court restrained to particular sums) shall now be left free, and at liberty as men shall reasonably agree." In September, however, the Court suffered a relapse, and for four years longer continued to fix specifically the wages of labor.
"It may safely be affirmed that the virtue of female chastity does not exist among the lower orders of England, except to a certain extent among domestic servants, who know that they hold their situations by that tenure, and are more prudent in consequence."—Report of the Commissioners of 1831.
"In many rural districts it was scarcely possible to meet with a young woman who was respectable, so tempting was the parish allowance for infants in a time of great pressure."—Martineau, Hist. England, iii. 168.
There was excepted the right to supply to artificers medicine and medical attendance; fuel, materials, tools, and implements in mining; also hay, corn, and provender to be consumed by any horse or beast of burden employed by the artificer in the occupation; also, to furnish tenements at a rent to be thereon reserved; also, to advance to artificers money to be contributed to friendly societies and savings-banks or for relief in sickness, or for the education of children.
Other witnesses placed the time for which a woman might thus be compelled to wait at the truck-shop at two, four, or six hours, or even longer. (Report, pp. 42, 128, 156-7, 322, 330, 371.) Meanwhile the children not in arms were locked up at home.
Mr. J. Fellows, Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths at Bilston, but also, it ought to be mentioned, a retail grocer, stated that in sixteen years he had had occasion to record a number of deaths, which he placed, from memory, at eleven, of young children burned in the absence of their mothers while waiting at these shops. (Report, p. 43).
"I think," he said, "generally speaking, the people are furnished with subsistence, and with articles of use for themselves and their families infinitely better than from the stores of private dealers."—Report, p. 229.
"From all that I have seen I think the establishment of stores has been followed by a great improvement in the condition of the workmen."—Ibid.
"I have known instances of workmen going miles to the master's stores in preference to dealing with the private shops."—P. 234. "... the immense advantage of the truck system in compelling the workman to spend a large portion of his earnings in food for himself and his family."—P. 245.
"I think the workmen in the great manufactories and collieries are just like a great ill-disciplined army. It is just as impossible to make them dispose of their money properly as it would be to provide an army with adequate subsistence if you were to abolish the commissariat and pay every man in money, and let him buy his provisions where he pleased."—Pp. 237, 238.
Part II, Chapter XVIII
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