TRINITY the year 1515 a society, which had undoubtedly existed for many years previously, was incorporated at Deptford, London, by Henry VIII. for the promotion of commerce and navigation, by licensing and regulating pilots, and ordering and erecting beacons, lighthouses, buoys, &c. This society was afterwards referred to, in letters patent from James II., in the name of the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild or Fraternity of the most glorious and undivided Trinity, and of St. Clements, in the parish of Deptford Strand, in the county of Kent. It is, however, generally referred to, shortly, as Trinity House. There were other like societies in England—at Newcastle, Hull, and the Cinque Ports, but that at Deptford has always maintained a pre-eminence, and is the only one that continues to exercise any practical authority. The " elder brethren " of the society, who are known as Trinity Masters, assist the judges lin Admiralty cases in the capacity of nautical assessors, and Trinity House itself has vested in it a superintendence and control of pilotage and lighthouses. See LIGHTHOUSES ; PILOTS.
TRUCK was formerly very usual, especially in mining and manufacturing districts, for employers to establish or be interested in shops in the locality of their works, wherein could be purchased most of the necessaries of life required by their employees. The practice was for the employers either to require the employees to obtain their goods at these shops, and to submit to their purchases being set-off in account against their wages ; or to pay wages either partially or wholly, in checks or tokens which could be cashed at these shops only • or, perhaps, to pay the wages in cash, but subject to the tacit understanding, which no doubt the em ployers could always find means to enforce, that they should be expended in such shops. The net effect of this practice was to lower the value of wages to an employee, and to increase the profits of an employer. The employee lost his economic freedom and became little inore than the serf of his employer. Had the objects of the employers been the advantage of the employees, and their efforts been directed towards the supply of goods at a price lower than that obtaining in the retail market, and had these objects and efforts been successfully carried out in general, then the opposition to the system would have been founded mainly on sentimental grounds. But
the reason for the existence of the Truck system was undoubtedly the creation of a special advantage to the employers, and, accordingly, in process of time the system was recognised by the legislature as a flagrant evil. In the reign of William IV., in the face of strenuous opposition there was passed " An Act to prohibit the Payment in certain Trades of Wages in Goods or otherwise than in the Current Coin of the Realm." This was followed 'by the Truck Amendment Act, 1887, and the Truck Act, 1896, the three statutes being now cited as the Truck Acts, 1831 to 1896. The provisions contained therein are somewhat detailed and complicated, but the following account will afford an idea of their general nature. The persons in whose favour the Acts were passed are therein referred to as " workmen" and "artificers," both of which terms in this connection having the same meaning as the expression " workman" in the Employers and Workmen Act, 1875 [see EMPLOYERS AND WORKMEN]. A domestic servant, it should be noticed, is expressly exempted from the benefit of the Truck Acts. An " employer" may be any master, bailiff, foreman, manager, clerk, or other person engaged in the hiring, employment or superintendence of the labour of workmen or artificers. " Wages ' are any money or other thing had or contracted to be paid, delivered, or given as a recompense, reward, or remuneration for any labour done, or to be done, whether within a certain time, or to a certain amount, or for a time or amount uncertain. And there is a "contract," from the point of view of the Acts now under consideration, in any case in which there is an agreement, understanding, device, contrivance, collusion, or arrangement whatsoever, on the subject of wages, whether written or oral, direct or indirect, to which an employer and workman are parties or assenting, or by which they are mutually bound, or endeavour to impose an obligation on the other of them.