ents of
which are obviously displeasing to him. What has happened?

The nailer is a Government servant. But the Government only employs him
indirectly. It puts out contracts for rivets and nails to contractors
who sublet their contract, so that the work reaches the nailer at third
or fourth hand. The Government, in the interest of public economy
(Victorian England is famous for retrenchment), gives its contract to
the lowest tenderer; and the policy of the lowest tender is responsible
for the dumb-show we have watched.

To begin with, the nailer gets metal which does not suit him, so he has
to change it, and this he does at the price of 2_d._ per 10_d._ bundle,
at a metal changers, a relative of the fogger. (His friend who has to
wait till Wednesday for his bundle is kept idling about in order that
he may drink what is left of last week's earnings at a 'wobble shop'
which is owned by yet another branch of the family of fogger.)

When the nailer and his family have worked fourteen hours a day
throughout the week, the nailer returns on Saturday with the nails, and
receives 12_s._ for them. These shillings he takes to the fogger's store
and exchanges for tea and other articles. The shillings are 'nimble'; we
commend the rapidity of their circulation to Mr. Irving Fisher. A fogger
who pays out the shillings from his warehouse receives them back again
in a few minutes over the counter of his store. 'He will perhaps reckon
with seven or eight at one time, and when he has reckoned with them, and
perhaps paid them six, seven, or eight pounds, he will wait until they
have gone to the shop and taken the money there as they leave the
warehouse. Then he goes into the shop himself for it, as he cannot go on
paying without it.'[44]

But surely this is truck! Certainly not. There may be 'fearful cheating'
with tea, but the nailer is not bound to go there. He is perfectly free.
The only trouble is this: it is a case of tea or no work the week
following. This is why, despite the Truck Act of 1831 and despite the
known existence of the abuse, these practices are rife among the nailers
as late as 1871, the year in which the Truck Commissioners issued the
Report from which this scene is compiled. The plight of the nailers is
not the plight of factory operatives or miners; it is the plight of the
frame-work knitters, of men who are bound by the intangible fetters of
economic need to the uncontrollable devil of 'semi-capitalism'.

2.