Second Shetland Truck System ReportGuthrie, William
History
Second Shetland Truck System Report
Guthrie, William
Labor law -- Truck system -- History -- England; Shetland (Scotland) -- History
2530. Do you mean that you fix your lowest rate of profit upon the
hosiery goods you buy?-No; our lowest rate of profit on the
goods we sell. A third way of explaining it is, that we treat as cash
the goods which we buy. A shawl worth 20s. is reckoned by us as
a £1 note would be reckoned,-with this difference, that if a man
is laying down a £l note we would give him 5 per cent. discount
when he bought our goods. We consider that the trouble we have
with the shawls, and the time we lie out of our money, is worth 5
per cent.
2531. Then what you say comes to this: that upon your hosiery
goods you make no profit at all?-Not when they are once sold;
that is to say, when they are once bought, the profit lies in the
profit we have upon the goods. That is the only profit we have in
the matter.
2532. But upon the hosiery, looked at by itself, you do not make
any profit at all?-No; I say that I make none, and I swear to that
most emphatically.
2533. In other words, the profit you make upon your purchases of
hosiery is only the profit you make upon your sales of goods,
which are given in return for the hosiery?-Yes; in short, it is two
sales for one profit.
2534. That is to say, you are obliged to take the hosiery at the
market price in the south, in order to get payment for your drapery
and other goods?-With regard to that, I am not obliged to take
them, further than that is the only thing in the country that
reckoned as a kind of payment.
2535. It is the only thing which your purchasers have to give you
for your goods?-That is my meaning exactly.
2536. You were going to offer me some evidence of that?-I can
give evidence of it afterwards. My own employees can prove it,
also women who have been in my employment, and also people
who have been purchasing both for cash and goods.
2537. What can they prove?-They can prove that there is no
difference between the two prices, and that the price which I
charged is the lowest price I can fix.
2538. You are prepared to give evidence of this fact, that the price
you allow to the seller of hosiery in Shetland is the price you get
from the buyer in the south?-Yes, I can prove that. At least I can
prove that it is so on the whole, by comparison, the invoiced prices
of the goods sent south with the general prices of goods bought in
the country. Here is a list of them [producing trade list].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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