Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/343

Rh stated on that subject with the present argument, the plan seems liable to no serious objections.

(373.) The Truck system is entirely different in its effects. The master-manufacturer keeps a retail shop for articles required by his men, and either pays their wages in goods, or compels them by express agreement, or less directly, by unfair means, to expend the whole or a certain part of their wages at his shop. If the manufacturer kept this shop merely for the purpose of securing good articles, at fair prices, to his workmen, and if he offered no inducement to them to purchase at his shop, except the superior cheapness of his articles, it would certainly be advantageous to the men. But, unfortunately, this is not always the case; and the temptation to the master, in times of depression, to reduce in effect the wages which he pays (by increasing the price of articles at his shop), without altering the nominal rate of payment, is frequently too great to be withstood. If the object be solely to procure for his workmen better articles, it will be more effectually accomplished by the master confining himself to supplying a small capital, at a moderate rate of interest; leaving the details to be conducted by a committee of workmen, in conjunction with his own agent, and the books of the shop to be audited periodically by the men themselves.

(374.) Wherever the workmen are paid in goods, or are compelled to purchase at the master's shop, much injustice is done to them, and great misery results from it. Whatever may have been the inten-