The New Zealand Herald. AUCKLAND, TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1867.

New Zealand Herald, Volume IV, Issue 1163, 6 August 1867, Page 3

The New Zealand Herald.

AUCKLAND, TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1867.

SPECTEMUK AGENDO. " Give every man thine ear, bnt few thy voice : Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgmoat. Thf s aSove all,—To thine own self be true And it must follow, as the Right the day, Then canjt not thea fc« false to any man."

Tile . letter signed " Saturday night," published by us yesterday, calls attention to a very important social question, that of the mode of paying wages to what are usually called working men. His statement that some employers of labour make every possible sort of excuse for not paying those who have done work for them, and cause them a great deal of trouble, and then sometimes give orders on shopkeepers for goods, instead of cash, refers to a state of things that is entirely wrong. If property and capital have their rights, they have also their duties ; if the employer has a right to expect that the employed will do his work faithfully and properly, the latter has surely a right to be paid by the former in the current coin of the realm when the work is done, and that without any unnecessary delay and trouble. In a new country like this, it is our duty to unite in the bonds of amity and good will—the employer and the employed. A very great deal of the bitterness existing between these two classes in England iH caused by the remembrance of past hardships and petty tyrannies practised by the former, and probably few things have had a greater effect in this direction than the system which used very largely to prevail, and, in some cases, does even yet prevail, in the manner of paying wages to working men. Thus, petty tradesmen were at one time in the habit of constantly paying their men in a public house, in which they had a direct or indirect interest. The sole purpose of this was that the man might spend a large portion of his wages in drink, instead of taking them home for his wife and family. Drunkenness and improvidence, ignorance and crime, were thus nourished and cherished. The wife or children had constantly to go to the public house where the wages were paid to fetch the husband home, *or to get from him a portion of his earnings; and can it be wondered at, if the wife too frequently remained with the husband and went not home till both were tipsy. The family of children which had such an example in their parents could not be expected to grow up much better than those parents, and consequently they too often formed the " dangerous classes," the uneducated arabs of the streets, the juvenile criminals.

But there was also the evil to which our corrrespondent refers —that of not paying at all in money, but in goods. This was called the "truck system," and was at one time very general. In plain English, this was a plan to cheat the working man. Instead of getting, say £1 in cash for his week's wages, he had orders on what was generally called the '• tommy shop." And he was cheated in this way. He got, in the first place, a very inferior article ; and secondly, he was charged the price of a very superior article. He was defrauded out of a good part of his wages, besides being made to feel that his liberty was only a name, and that "in reality he was a bondsman to his employer. But not only was he compelled to take goods for his wages, but he was also, in ■teome places, compelled to take a certain quantity of particular articles at a certain price, whether he wanted them or not. And curiously enough, the manufacturers, who always like to call themselves liberals and the working

man's friend, par excellence, pursued such a course. The evidence published on this " truck system" reveals a most wretched state of things. It was no uncommon thing, for instance, for a man with a small family to be forced to take from his employer much more milk and butter than he could reasonably consume, and was compelled to sell, of course at a loss, a certain quantity of these things to enable him to purchase other necessaries of life. At length a Btop was put to this state of things by Act of Parliament, and the subject is of so much importance to working men, and to the wellbeing of»society generally, that we shall be glad to see legislative action taken upon it in New Zealand, rather than allow the truck system to become general here. The workman gives, his labour as an equivalent for a certain sum: ho is in justice entitled to that sum, and, unless special arrangements are made, he ought to be paid in the neighbourhood where the work is done. It is not paying him his wages to give him an order on a store. He may not desire to deal at that particular store; the artices he gets there may be 10 or 20 per cent, dearer than he can buy them elsewhere, and 10 or 20 per cent, inferior in quality of course. Where this " truck system" has been in vogue, the shop very often belonged really to the employer of labour, and in other cases he had a certain per centage allowed him by the shopkeeper, which per centage was got out of the workman who had to put up with this mod.© of payment. A remnant of this vicious system still is to bo met -with among some of the agricultural counties in the Southern and South-western parts of England where the lowest rate of wages rules. The miserable pittance of seven to nine shillings a-week is paid in money, and besides sometimes a certain quantity of flour, there is also a quantity of cyder given. This last is consumed by the xnan. Sold as it might be, it would fetch a certain price, arid it would be manifestly better for the poor labourer to get the value of the cyder in money rather than be forced to have drink. "We allude thus in the general interest of the community at large to the glaring evils to which any system is liable which pretends to pay the laborer in any other way than in good hard cash on each recurring week's end, or when the stipulated work is completed. .Again it ought not to cost a man a great deal of trouble and time to obtain his wages when he has earned them. Time to such a man is essentially money, and if he must lose a day or two in getting paid, he is virtually working so much longer for the sum due to him than he stipulated for. We trust, therefore, that a fair and equitable system will be adopted by the few employers of labor who, either through Bheer carelessness or other motives, pursue the course referred to by " Saturday night."