ceived, served less to redeem the character of "truck" than to render it odious from another point of view. A state of things that admits of the employer being general purveyor to his labourers is fraught with such obvious advantages to the principal, that, rightly or wrongly, he will always be suspected by his servants of making a profit on their wages, and this suspicion, in destroying all proper relations between the two parties, diminishes respect, and is incompatible with gratitude.
Another disastrous consequence of paying wages in goods is the improvident habits that it encourages in the families of labouring men. I think it is Archdeacon Paley of whom the anecdote is told, that he always made "his women pay ready money for all that they bought, because it was such a check to the imagination." Now the sprightly fancy of a working man's wife who, instead of receiving from the husband's pay a weekly sum to lay out and to make the best of, is compelled to have a running account at the master's store, has no such wholesome check, and as she seldom or never has the handling of money she does not learn its value.
What with truck and barter the young people especially could scarcely be expected to know the real worth of any article which was procured from shops or stores. I heard a characteristic proof of this from a lady, who had unfortunately neutralized a lecture to her servant on the care which was necessary to save a wooden bucket from being spoiled by the sun, by specifying the number of years that she had had the same bucket in use. "If it is as old as all that," replied the little colonial damsel, "it is quite time it should be worn out."
