THE TRUCK SYSTEM

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 102, 3 May 1933, Page 6

THE TRUCK SYSTEM

There was a time, not so very long ago, when it was found necessary to deal by legislation with what was known as the truck sj-stem in New Zealand, tho payment of wages in goods instead of in cash. Contractors for public works such as railways construction, and timber-milling concerns, had their stores at tho camps, and employees were required to deal tliero for their necessaries, and there were Complaints that workers had little chance of handling any cash, they wore so often in debt to tho store. Practically they took out their wages in goods. No doubt the store on the spot was a necessary convenience to the workers, and some contractors supplied goods at cost, but the complaints of undue profits on one side and chronic indebtedness 011 the other compelled reform. The truck system in fact was one of the reasons why the Government of that era established the co-opera-tive method of carrying out public works. The ingenious business ways embodied in the truck practice are of respectable antiquity in New Zealand.' Perhaps the earliest recorded example is one mentioned in a just-published book of New.Zealand history, "Pages From the Past," by C. A. Mac Donald, of Blenheim. Among tho old-time memoirs unearthed for this book is the MS. narrative of Captain James Hebevley', who was one of the earliest whiter-settlers in the Cook Strait region and afterwards Wellington's first pilot. Iteberley, whose youthful life was very wild and adventurous, described the system under which the longshore whalers and others worked at Port Underwood, in Cloudy Bay, a century apo. The author does not continent on it or call it the truck system, but it was clearly a well-developed specimen of that form of exploitation of the workers and producers. lleberley said that an agent of a large Sydney firm settled at the bay and began trading in whalebone, spars, flax and other export items, "ITe would not pay money for the goods we traded to him. Instead, we had to take sugar, soap, (tobacco, spirits, clothing and so on. Sometimes we would trade as much as £220 per year and he would give us orders on the firm in Sydney, but they were of no use to us, as the captains of tho ships which visited us had orders not to give anyone a passage to Sydney, except at an exorbitant price. The charge for a passage was £00, the idea bein<r to keep us Where we were so that the firm could charge us big prices for everything we needed.. We had to pay 5/ per bar for soap, a shilling per pound for sugar and £1 for a pair of moleskin trousers. This shows how we were robbed." At last (the date was 1830) Heberley and his friend Diclry Barrett shipped as sailors in a schooner from Sydney whose crew deserted at Port Underwood'; the captain asked them to help him work the vessel back to Sydney. They were successful in getting their dues from the merchants. "When we cleaned up there we had about £400 between us." No doubt that visit was an unwelcome surprise to tfie firm; it never expected to have to pay out all that good cash to a pair of simple whalers. Consider also a page in American history, from that great narrative poem of the Civil War, "John Brown's Body," by Stephen Benet, published four years ago. The liberated negroes cherish great expectations; "Massa Linkum" is looked to to provide each free nigger with forty acres and a mule and other good things. Spade, looking for a new job under freedom, falls into 'the hands of a road Works boss, who charges him five dollars for his shovel to begin with; it comes out of his first week's pay—'You're a free , nigger now." Spade is enlightened by another free nigger, working under the armed guard. "Sho' we 'uns gets paid/' says Ginger, "but we got to buy our goods at de company sto'." "I only been here a month, but I owes twelve dollar 1 !, Dey ain't no way to pny it except by Wubk, And do more you wuhk do more you owe at de sto.' " That was truck in its crudest form, no doubt. —JiC.