In some of the curing establishments at Lerwick the pays are as frequent as it is reasonably possible to make them. The people are paid every week; but in nine cases out of ten a large part of their weekly wages is anticipated in supplies at the employer's shop. This of course involves an amount of time and trouble, and a risk of bad debts, which no merchant would incur, except for a large profit, and which indeed led Messrs. Harrison & Sons to refuse altogether to give 'out-takes' to work-people of this class. The wages are, however, paid at Lerwick, and some of the people spend their money at the shops of the firm, which adjoin the pay-office. At Scalloway, where Messrs. Garriock & Co. have no shop, they employ persons at daily wages, which are paid weekly, or within the fortnight. But the habit of running accounts is so inveterate in Shetlanders that 'often what they have to get on the Saturday night is forestalled in the shops.' In contracts for curing, which are sometimes made, Messrs. Garriock & Co. have no dealings with the work-people employed by the contractors, but make such advances as are necessary to them in money. It is not always so where curing is ostensibly done by contract. Thus, in Unst, many of the work-people employed by a contractor at Westing have accounts in the shop-books of Spence & Co. at Uyea Sound; settlements being effected, and sometimes advances made, by the merchants themselves on the authority of lines given by the contractor, stating the amount of the beach fee. The balance due is ascertained in the merchant's books, after deducting the amount due by the contractor for his own supplies at the shop. [W.B.M. Harrison, 15,772; J. Manson, 2941; L.F.U. Garriock, 12,445, 12,443; A. Sandison, 10,108; P. Smith, 10,344.] BEACH FEES These are the cases in which exceptional circumstances are found in dealings between merchants and persons employed at the beaches. Throughout Shetland the most common arrangement is to pay splitters and beach-boys or women by a beach fee, which varies from £8 or £10 for the season to an experienced head curer, to 30s. to a beach-boy in his first year. Sometimes extra hands are paid weekly wages as day-workers. But even in these cases advances are generally made in goods; and sometimes, as at Mossbank and Greenbank, the account runs 'three, four, five, or six weeks or perhaps the whole season.' In a passage already quoted from the evidence of an extensive employer, it is made very clear that these people, in whatever way they are paid, are 'expected' to come to the employer for supplies. [W. Pole, 5917; p. 14, see above.] The operation of truck in this department is shown in the examination of Mr. Robertson, manager for Mr. Leask, who employs 80 persons regularly, and others occasionally, in his curing establishments near Lerwick. Mr. Robertson afterwards produced a 'time-book' for the people employed at Sound Beach, near Lerwick,