Truck wages

In the "Midland Tour" of his Rural Rides, the agriculturist and political reformer William Cobbett reports the use of "the truck or tommy system" in Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury.

Now, the master finding the profits of his trade fall off very much, and being at the same time in want of money to pay the hundred pounds weekly, and perceiving that these hundred pounds are carried away at once, and given to shopkeepers of various descriptions; to butchers, bakers, drapers, hatters, shoemakers, and the rest; and knowing that, on an average, these shopkeepers must all have a profit of thirty per cent., or more, he determines to keep this thirty per cent.

However, in rural regions he notes the virtual monopoly of the shopkeeper: I have often had to observe on the cruel effects of the suppression of markets and fairs, and on the consequent power of extortion possessed by the country shop-keepers.

And what a thing it is to reflect on, that these shopkeepers have the whole of the labouring men of England constantly in their debt; have on an average a mortgage on their wages to the amount of five or six weeks, and make them pay any price that they choose to extort.

One reason for the truck system in the early history of the United States is that there was no national form of paper currency and an insufficient supply of coinage.

Truck systems often persisted in long-settled, densely populated areas which hosted many employers and many merchants nominally in competition with one another.

In such areas, their existence depended on the ability of employers to pay employees in scrip exchangeable at a company store.

Indeed, one justification often given by employers for paying in scrip was that it supposedly prevented their workers from spending their earnings on "immoral" goods and services such as alcohol and prostitution.