s. The well-known Tommy-shop scene
in Disraeli's novel _Sybil_, which was published in 1845, is taken
direct from the Commissioners' Report. Diggs, the butty of the novel, is
Banks, the coal proprietor of the Report. In the novel the people say of
Master Joseph Diggs, the son: 'He do swear at the women, when they rush
in for the first turn, most fearful; they do say he's a shocking little
dog.' In the Report, page 93, the miner's wife says: 'He swears at the
women when the women are trying to crush in. He is a shocking little
dog.' One touch is Disraeli's own. He makes the miners keen to purchase
'the young Queen's picture'. 'If the Queen would do something for us
poor men, it would be a blessed job.' In the Report there is nothing
about this, but there is a section dealing with Chartism.

However, the truck-shop was gradually disappearing. Every year it
became easier to expose evasions, and in good times the workers used
their prosperity to slip away from the Company store. In 1850 a final
campaign was initiated by five local Anti-Truck Associations, backed by
the National Miners' Association under Alexander MacDonald.
Truck-masters were prosecuted and truck was steadily dislodged from the
coalfields and adjacent ironworks. Only in the nail trade did it
survive, for the reason that the complete subjection of the nailers made
it possible to practise the essentials of truck without a formal
violation of the law.

In the remaining colliery districts in 1871 truck was prevalent only in
West Scotland and South Wales.

In West Scotland it was yielding ground before the pressure of the
unions. The companies only maintained it by active coercion. If a miner
held out for money, they had to yield; and if they were malicious, they
marked him as a sloper and dismissed him the first when a depression
came. 'Black lists', said the Truck Commissioners, 'are often kept of
slopers; threats of dismissal were repeatedly proved; and cases of
actual dismissal for not dealing at the store are not rare.'[63]
However, the masters themselves were getting tired of it, since it led
so frequently to strikes.

Truck in South Staffordshire was bound up with the butty system; in
railway construction with the system of contracting and sub-contracting,
and similarly in South Wales, as also in the west of Scotland, it was
bound up with and dependent on the system of long pays. In order to
carry on from one pay day to the next, the men got advances