worst an obnoxious bully, at his
best he was an accommodating landlord.

Direct employment, such as prevailed in the north of England, would have
averted much of this evil. There were no structural difficulties in the
way of change. Direct employment would not have meant a change to
another class of work (this is what direct employment meant for knitters
and hand-loom weavers). The butty system existed and persisted through
slackness and irresponsibility. The owners paid compensation for
accidents, when they might have diminished the number of accidents. They
paid commissions to middlemen with whom they might have dispensed. The
system made temperance impossible for the individual; and the masters,
with the full approval of the Government, did their best to destroy the
'pernicious combinations' by which alone a standard of sober decency
could be promoted.

5. The Report of the Truck Commissioners (1871-2) enables us to complete
the picture. It also enables us to understand why, at this late day,
truck was still rife in certain districts.

Truck and Tommy, truck-shop and Tommy-shop, are convertible terms. Truck
is from the French 'troc' = barter. Cobbett tells us how the word
'Tommy' was used. In his soldiering days the rations of brown bread,
'for what reason God knows', went by the name of Tommy. 'When the
soldiers came to have bread served out to them in the several towns in
England, the name of Tommy went down by tradition, and, doubtless, it
was taken up and adapted to the truck-system in Staffordshire and
elsewhere.'[60] From the textile districts it had all but disappeared in
1871. When the cotton manufactures went to outlying dales for water
power, they were almost compelled to open stores for their workpeople.
Owen's store at New Lanark was, in effect, a well-managed truck-shop;
and the Truck Commissioners of 1871 reported that the New Lanark Company
of that day was breaking the law. But when the cotton industry was
gathered in the towns, the need for company stores ceased. Consequently,
after the passing of the Act of 1831, which prohibited truck altogether,
the masters very generally abolished the stores of their own accord; and
survivals were jealously watched.

A collection of Factory Scraps, preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in
London, contains a copy of the Factory Bill of 1833, with some pencil
notes in Ostler's handwriting which run:

_Cragg Dale Facts_

_Truck System_: Little alter