were terrorised into buying all their goods there, and there alone. Indeed, where advances were given under the line-system, the poor miner had usually to spend nearly all his money in the master’s stores. Even in the comparatively rare instances where workmen waited until the end of the pay without accepting advances, some of the colliery proprietors used a sort of tyrannical power over the men to force them to buy from the works-store, and that alone. Under the line-system, barter pure and simple obtained full play. And yet since the passing in 1831 of what is popularly known as the Truck Act, this barbarous method of payment was fully provided against, though the criminality of unscrupulous masters was not brought home to them until the Truck Commission sat in 1870. This Commission fully investigated the wholesale evasion of the law of 1831, and brought such a flood of light on the disgraceful proceedings of many masters, as to at once bring to an end the hateful truck or tally system. It forms a curious comment on the manner of administering our laws, that the Truck Act of 1831 only became operative in 1870, after a most exhaustive inquiry. Whilst ‘truck’ was an attempt on the part of some masters to pay wages in kind and not in sterling money, what is known as ‘poundage’ was a different system of making a large profit off the poverty of the workmen—a system, unfortunately, which is not altogether dead yet. Under the system of poundage, the monthly or larger pays were continued—short pays would have been its death—but the privilege was granted to employees of receiving advances in cash during the currency of the pay. But this was done, let it be noted, for a ‘consideration,’ that consideration being the grand and simple system of five per cent.—a shilling a pound. This is how the calculation would work out: In a four-weekly pay, let us presume that there are only three advances made—if there were more it would not alter the principle at work—one made each week for three weeks, and each advance amounting to one pound. The first advance is twenty shillings for three weeks, the second for two weeks, and the third for one week—the whole advances during the currency of the pay amounting to three pounds, and costing the workman three shillings. This looks a very simple charge—five per cent.; but when we look at it in the light of being interest on lent money, we find the first pound has cost 83⅔ per cent. per annum; the second, 130, and the third, 260 per cent. per annum—or an average of nearly 160 per cent. per annum on the whole. It must be remembered too that this was the rate of interest charged, not for an unsecured debt, but rather for wages actually earned by the employee, though settlement was deferred for a month through the system of long pays. The writer has known a firm derive from this one source of income as much as a thousand pounds a year up to the time a more enlightened policy was adopted.