TRUCK-SYSTEM (French troquer, Scotch trock, to barter or exchange) is applied to the practice of paying workmen in goods instead of current money. There is no question about the bad social of such an arrangement in the ordinary staple and steady systems of productive industry, though there are cases where it is beneficial—as where new works bringing together large bodies of men are started in districts where there is little or no traffic. In such cases an arrangement to supply the workmen from tempo rary stores established by their employers, or by persons in conunuffication with them, will be better than leaving the families so collected at the mercy of miscellaneous spec ulators, probably insufficiently supplied with capital. The truck act of 1831 (1 and 2 Will. IV. c. 37) imposes penalties on the employer who pays in goods in certain pro ducing trades. The feature which was supposed to be the supreme triumph of the act, however, and was to make it self-working, was that all wages so paid were to he a blank. The workman so remunerated had still an action for his wages. and in various shapes it was provided that the goods should be no "set off" against the money value of the labor. The report of a select committee appointed in 1842 to inquire into the extent and operation of the truck-system, found that. notwithstanding the act, it flour ished extensively in several productive trades—as in coal and other mines, iron-works, quarries, and various kinds of manufactories; and they reported that its prevalence had a very pernicious effect on the families of the working-men. In the year 1853 Mr. J. H. Burton was employed by government to investigate the system as it operated in Scot land; and Ids report of the results was presented to parliament. He found that, how ever pernicious it might be. it was a thing beyond legislative control, and that the attempts to suppress it iu many cases only strengthened its hold, by the completeness of the organization for carrying it out. One, and a perfectly simple form, is this. At a large iron-work, say, the stated payment of the men is monthly. From their improvi dent habits, however, they are ever requiring advances. These are at once paid in cash. There is at the same time a neighboring store; it may be owned by the same proprietors. as the iron-work, or it may be let to some other person at a rent estimated, not at the value of the premises in the market, but at that of the trade which is guaranteed to the tenant. At this store all purchases are made in cash, and all corners may purchase as at
any other shop. The books of the two establishments, however, show how much of his advances each workman has expended at this store. A man says he wants a pound in advance of his monthly wages. He gets the money and no questions are asked. By comparison of books, however, it comes out how much of this is spent in the store. When he asks another advance it may be refused, for reasons known to both parties, hut not told. In some instances the registers are so complete that when the workman pockets his advance he knows, though he has never been told, what proportion of it he must spend at the store to keep in the advanced pay-list. It was found not unusual to limit the free expenditure to 5 per cent, or a shilling in the pound. Thus the system has its foundation in the improvidebee of the class it affects. Until that disease is cured and the workman can wait for the periodical pay-day, he must take Its advances on the employer's conditions. As a general economy the truck-system does not pay. If it is supposed to be profitable it is from the fallacy that two profits may be made en one cap ital. The capital which the iron-master devotes to dealing in beef, tea, and beer must be subtracted from the capital embarked in his iron-work. This is the business to which he professes to devote himself, and for which he believes hiniself to have peculiar fac ulties. His truck-shop either diVerts his attention from his main business, or he must hand it over to a hireling. who certainly will not work the capital so embarked as profit ably as that portion employed in the iron-work, and superintended by the owner himself. But in great trade where truck is the established rule the individual employer cannot help himself. The rate of wages is adjusted on the scale of a portion coming back in the shape of the profit on purchases at the shop. The employer must therefore keep a shop, unless he can get his men to be so reasonable as to work for him on less wages than their neighbors nominally get; but he would be a person of miraculous reasoning powers who would persuade working-men to do that.