"Company store", "tommy shop", and "tienda de raya" redirect here. These are all synonyms (U.S., British, and Latin American, respectively) for an establishment integral to a truck system.
A truck system is an arrangement in which employees are paid in commodities or in lieu of wages for work performed, thereby limiting their ability to choose how to spend their earnings. A common element is for employees to be paid in scrip which can only be used to purchase goods at the "company store", which – with no competition for the employees' business – could set prices artificially high. While this system had long existed in many parts of the world, it became widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as industrialisation left many poor, unskilled workers without other means to support themselves and their families. The practice has been widely criticised as exploitative and similar in effect to slavery, and has been outlawed in many parts of the world. Variations of the truck system have existed world-wide, and are known by various names.
The practice is ostensibly one of a free and legal exchange, whereby an employer would offer something of value (typically goods, food, or housing) in exchange for labour, with the result being the same as if the labourer had been paid money and then spent the money on these necessities. The word truck came into the English language within this context, from the French troquer, meaning 'exchange' or 'barter'. A truck system differs from this kind of open barter or payment in kind system by creating or taking advantage of a closed economic system in which workers have little or no opportunity to choose other work arrangements, and can easily become so indebted to their employers that they are unable to leave the system legally. The popular song Sixteen Tons dramatizes this scenario, with the narrator telling Saint Peter (who would welcome him to Heaven upon his death) "I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store."
Truck systems came under increasing criticism, and laws were passed in many jurisdictions which made it illegal for payment to be made other than in lawful money, and to specify how or where employees spent their pay.
See also
References
- Anderson, Adelaide M. (1899), "Truck Legislation in England and on the Continent", in MacDonnell, John, Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, London, pp. 395-406, http://books.google.com/books?id=CUcBAAAAYAAJ, retrieved on 1 June 2008
- Burton, John Hill (1847), "Truck System", Manual of the Law of Scotland (The Law of Private Rights and Obligations) (2nd ed.), Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, p. 265, http://books.google.com/books?id=pYMDAAAAQAAJ
- Gaskell, P. (1833), "Truck and Cottage Systems", The Manufacturing Population of England, London: Baldwin and Cradock, pp. 342-361, http://books.google.com/books?id=etFGvcK-dYwC, retrieved on 31 May 2008
- Lauchheimer, Malcolm H. (1919), "The Terms of Employment (in the Labor Law of Maryland)", Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, XXXVII, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, pp. 106-112, http://books.google.com/books?id=lNsOAAAAYAAJ
- M'Culloch, J. R. (1852), "Truck System", in Vethake, Henry, A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation., II, Philadelphia: A. Hart, pp. 684-86, http://books.google.com/books?id=tGpCAAAAIAAJ
- Morgan, James Appleton (1881), "Illegality of contracts for the payment of work otherwise than in current coin. — The truck system.", A Treatise on the Law of Contracts by C. G. Addison, I, Jersey City: Frederick D. Linn & Co., pp. 434-36, http://books.google.com/books?id=fjI9AAAAIAAJ
- Ruegg, Alfred Henry (1901), "Changes in the Law of England Affecting Labour (The Truck System)", A Century of Law Reform, London: MacMillan and Co, pp. 254-257, http://books.google.com/books?id=j1czAAAAIAAJ, retrieved on 31 May 2008
- Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Truck System, ed. (1871), Truck; or, Semi-Serfdom in the Shetland (Zetland) Isles (2nd ed.), London: Elliot Stock, http://books.google.com/books?id=obkHAAAAQAAJ
- "Of the Hiring, and the Wages Paid to Persons Employed in Mines", The Condition and Treatment of the Children Employed in the Mines and Collieries of the United Kingdom, London: William Strange, 1842, pp. 84-85, http://books.google.com/books?id=TS1vx7eHjUkC
- "The Truck-System", The British and Foreign Review, XV, London: Richard and John Edward Taylor, 1842 (published 1843), pp. 79-100, http://books.google.com/books?id=G0RRPgJbU-kC
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