Cylchgronau Cymru

The Truck System in Wales. By E. J. Jones, M.A. WHEN first practised, the payment or part- payment of wages in goods was socially beneficial for the Company Shop contributed materially to better the con- dition of the people as regards both their morals and comforts. It was not a desire to exploit their workers that induced the proprietors of works to open shops, but rather the knowledge that many of those who sought employment at their works arrived in a state of absolute destitu- tion. The food supplied was at first of good quality and reasonable in price for the capital of the proprietors and their monopoly of the workers' custom enabled them to buy supplies at a relatively low cost and to sell them at relatively low prices. It was the abuse of the Tommy Shop move- ment which led to the agitation for its abolition. Most of the great industrial establishments in Wales had shops to which the workmen were con- strained to take their custom. When therefore the masters, secure in this monopoly, began to arbitrarily fix the price of provisions, the workers, deprived of the benefits of free competition, often found when pay day came round that instead of having money to draw, they were in debt to their masters. So rigidly was the system enforced in some works that wage payments were made not only in goods, but also in ale. So completely did the system engross the wages of some of the workers that their cash earnings were not sufficient to discharge even their small debts, even the shoemaker being sometimes compelled to forego payment or to receive the amount of the debt in shop goods. Traders deprived of legitimate business, and money-paying manufacturers subjected to unfair competition, joined with the workers to protest against the system and in 1800 began the struggle of the workers to rid themselves of what had become an acute grievance. Thus, the majority of the riots which convulsed the mining districts of Wales between 1800 and 1830 were but the batterings of the workers against the Truck System. Convictions under the Act for securing their payment in the lawful money of the realm to labourers employed in collieries, or in the working and getting of coal," were made by the Mon- mouthshire magistrates in 1817. At a petty sessions held at Pontypool in June, 1829, for the special purpose of hearing and deter- mining complaints made by the workmen in the iron and coal trades against their employers, an agent of the British Iron Company candidly ad- mitted that the company had a percentage on all, wages paid in goods. At the same court John. Williams, master of a level under the Varteg Company, was fined1 £ 10 under the Acts 57 and 58, Geo. III. It was not, however, until the years 1829 and 1830 that the agitation lor the complete abolition of the Truck System reached the intensity of a crisis. On Wednesday, February 17th, 1830, a meeting of the inhabitants of Merthyr Tydvil agreed to a petition showing the ruin which would ensue from a general adoption of the Truck System, and praying the Legislature to make more effectual the laws against the payment of wages in truck. Later in the same year, a meet- ing of property owners, tradesmen, workers, and others of the parish of Merthyr Tydvil viewed with dismay the wide-spreading ruin caused in the parish by the noxious Truck System, and ex- pressed grave fear lest in self-defence the money- paying masters would be obliged to adopt the same system. Matters were approaching a crisis for the depression in the iron trade had accelerated the pace at which the movement for the entire aboli- tion of the truck system had progressed. In March, 1830, Mr. Littleton, in the House of Com- mons, moved for leave to bring in a Bill to make more stringent the laws requiring the payment of wages in money. In the same week two petitions from the iron works in the parish of Merthyr Tydvil, one from the masters and the other from the men, were presented to the House by Sir Christopher Cole. The masters' petition, signed by William Crawshay, Cyfarthfa Iron Works, and Anthony Hill, Plymouth Iron Works, showed that they employed between them 7,000 to 8,000 effective workmen. The severity of the depres- sion was said to be such that, although distress- ingly low wages were paid to the workmen, the petitioners were unable to sell their goods at a price sufficiently high to cover even the costs of labour. Having remarked on the unfair advan- tages enjoyed by employers who persistently evaded the laws against the payment of workmen's wages in goods and on the general prevalence of the system at the iron works in their district, the petitioners prayed that your Honourable House will not repeal the Laws now existing against the payment of Workmen's Wages in goods but, on the contrary, that your Honourable House will take such additional means, as in its wisdom shall seem fit, to enforce these Laws, and prevent that exercise of them which is so disadvantageous to your Petitioners and others who obey them." In the same month, March, 1830, all the miners in the Monmouthshire coalfield came out on strike for, the price of coal having fallen from 10s. per ton to 8s. per ton, the coalowners pro- posed to reduce the wages of the colliers by 2d. per ton. But though the reduction in wages was the immediate cause of the stoppage, the real 1 The conviction was quashed at Monmouthshire Quarter Sessions on the appeal of Messrs. Kewick and Company.