'It is quite usual', say the Commissioners, 'for shoemakers and other small tradesmen in the neighbourhood of Abersychan to be paid by the workmen in goods.... Tobacco in several districts of South Wales has become nothing less than a circulating medium. It is bought by the men and resold by them for drink, and finds its way back again to some of the Company's shops. Packets of tobacco pass unopened from hand to hand. An Ebbw Vale grocer who took the Company's tobacco at a discount declared: "For years, when they were selling it for 1s. 4d. a lb. I used to give 1s.; but I was so much over-flooded with it that I was obliged to reduce the price to 11d. That would not do still, and I had to reduce it to 10d. I told the men to take it to some other shop if they could get 11d. or 1s. for it. I was obliged to do that many a time, in order to get rid of the large stocks I held in hand. Tobacco will not keep for many months without getting worse."'
Weekly pays, therefore, were the constant demand of the miners' unions. In Northumberland and Durham, whence truck had disappeared long ago, pays were fortnightly, and the only objection advanced by the owners against weekly pays was the practical inconvenience of the pressure on the pay staff. In the North of England Iron Trade, weekly pays, the Commissioners found, had just been introduced. In West Scotland some of the coal-owners were trying to recoup themselves for the loss of their truck-shop by charging poundage on the men's wages. But this dodge, like the bigger grievance of truck, was stoutly resisted by the local union. Indeed, in one coalfield after another the disappearance of truck and kindred evils coincides with the appearance of strong County Unions.
6. We are given to understand that the miners of South Wales insist on economics written by sound labour men. We therefore offer them a few suggestions for a history of the currency in the nineteenth century from the worker's point of view.
i. In 1800 London relied for small coin on private enterprise. Every week the Jews' boys collected from the shopkeepers their bad shillings, buying them at a heavy discount, with serviceable copper coin forged in Birmingham (vide Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, 1800, Chapter VII). The resumption of cash payments in 1819 was injurious; for owing to the shortage of small coin, the wage-earners were paid in bulk with large notes, which they had to split at the nearest public-house. The Truck Act of 1831 prohibited wage-payments in notes on Banks more than 15 miles distant, but said nothing about cheques—an oversight which the capitalists repeated in their Bank Act of 1844.
ii. The general dissatisfaction with the state of the currency led to attempts to dispense with coin. About 1830 Labour Exchanges were opened in London for the exchange of goods against time notes, representing one or more hours of labour. The originator was Robert Owen, and the failure of the Exchanges was probably due to the fact that Owen was at heart a capitalist. The National Equitable Labour Exchange at one time was doing a business of over 20,000 hours per week, but very shortly after this, the President (Owen) had to report a serious deficiency of hours, many thousands having been mislaid or stolen. The Exchange in consequence had to close its doors.
iii. In the 'forties the centre of interest is the Midlands, and the period may be termed the Staffordshire or beer period. The currency was very popular and highly liquid, but it was issued to excess and difficult to store. More solid surrogates were therefore tried. A Bilston pawnbroker[64] said that he had in pawn numerous batches of flour, which the men's wives had brought from the Truck Shops and turned into money, in order to pay their house-rents. Flour, however, was not so hard as a Prescot watch.
iv. We come next to the Welsh or Tobacco period, when the currency was easily transferable, but liable to deterioration.
v. Finally, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the world of labour attained to a cash basis, and there was no Cobbett to denounce the resumption.
We shall not be guilty of serious exaggeration if we preface our history with the motto:
'In the nineteenth century the Trade Unions and the Trade Unions alone made the nominal earnings of the working man a cash reality.'