Truck system
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The term truck system is the subject of controversy among scholars. In the broadest sense it means a system of payment in goods and/or services, instead of money. However, in the specific sense in which it is used by labour historians, it means an unpopular or even exploitative form of payment, which is widely regarded as a form of unfree labour. Labour historians do not use "truck system" and "truck wages" interchangeably; the latter term carries the broader, more generic attributes often ascribed to the former.
George Hilton, the author of an oft-cited book on truck systems in early modern Britain, defined them as: "a set of closely related arrangements whereby some form of consumption is tied to the employment contract (p1)." Under such systems, wage-earners, people paid for piece work, or self-employed people, are paid either in unexchangeable goods and/or services, or a form of limited direct credit, tokens or private currency (scrip), which may only be used at a company store, owned by their employers. These systems have usually only been imposed within small and geographically or culturally-isolated rural areas, especially farming, fishing, mining, woodcutting and plantation communities.
Although such systems were common in early modern history, and may be found in the least developed countries of the modern world, they are extremely rare, and usually illegal, in developed countries.
Truck systems and company stores are sometimes identified with debt bondage, although the latter works through advances on wages; by contrast, truck systems exploit workers and their families by controlling consumption of essential items, such as food and accommodation. Often, the only alternative to accepting a truck system is destitution for the workers and their families.
It should be noted, however, that in some limited historical circumstances, such as settler colonies, the use of truck wages — a form of payment in kind — may be convenient simply because of a poor or unreliable supply of cash. In such unusual cases, payment may be in large quantities of both tradeable and/or desirable goods.
In the developed world, most truck systems died out in the early 20th century, as workers and trade unions became better organized. In some countries, truck systems have been formally outlawed under a Truck Act.
One kind of truck system was immortalized in the chorus of the song "Sixteen Tons", written by Merle Travis in 1947:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company store.
References
George W. Hilton, The Truck System, including a History of the British Truck Acts, 1465-1960. Cambridge, UK: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1960.
Tom Brass and Marcel Van Der Linden (eds.), Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues (International and Comparative Social History, 5). New York: Peter Lang AG, 1997.
Price V. Fishback, Operations of "Unfettered" Labor Markets. Journal of Economic Literature (June 1998): 722-65.