COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 8 August 1887)

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL
, in moving to strike out the clause which deals with advances to workmen, and provides that whenever by agreement, custom, or otherwise a workman receives in anticipation of the regular period of the payment of his wages an advance as part or on account thereof, it shall not be lawful for the employer to withhold such advance or take any profit, discount, or interest, I or make any charge or reduction, or impose any condition for or in respect of any payment of a part of wages, said, he thought it was a very inexpedient and very violent one in its interference between employer and workmen. Not only did it specify modes and times of payment of wages, but it provided that there was to be no deduction for advances. Such powers as these had nothing to do with the subject of truck, and he thought it undesirable to provide that whore circumstances had led to a certain arrangement there should be no liberty to change the arrangement though circumstances might change. He was entirely in favour of the principle of the Truck Acts, which he considered most valuable legislation; but this clause was foreign to that principle.

§ LORD BRAMWELL
said, he thought the clause so worded as to be in part nugatory, and to defeat its own object, and he hoped it would be rejected.

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN
said, it was absolutely impossible to understand the clause as it stood, which he thought was absurd.

§ LORD MACNAGHTEN
said, he must confess that the clause had little to do with the main principle of the measure, and that it was extremely difficult to 1516 understand it. It did not seem to arise out of the main principle of the Bill.

§ EARL BROWNLOW
said, he would rather amend the clause. It dealt with the period of payment of wages to workmen; but it dealt only with the workmen in stone quarries in Scotland, and he could not understand why these should be particularly picked out for this treatment.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBURY)
said, he would point out that the framers of the clause seemed to be under the impression that, by a reference in it to the existing law, they brought this mode of payment within the law. Now, he held that they had done nothing of the sort; and, therefore, he would suggest to his noble and learned Friend (Lord Macnaghten) to bring up an amended clause dealing with it.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL
said, it was the case that all over Scotland shepherds and others received a portion of their pay in the form of cottages, and he had never heard it suggested that that practice was illegal.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL
said, the clause practically forbade barter, for it provided that when persons worked at their own homes, the shopkeepers to whom they took their goods to sell should not be allowed to pay for them in groceries or bread, or otherwise, except by money. That, he would point out, converted the shopkeepers into employers, and those who made the articles into employés. He knew many parts in 1517 the Highlands and Islands of Scotland where borne industries were common, and it was almost impossible to avoid barter of this kind. The women made stockings, and in Shetland they made most beautiful shawls, and exchanged these goods for provisions; and it would be most inconvenient to prevent them doing so. He objected altogether to that, and had he noticed it in time before the second reading, he would have moved that it be read a second time this day three months, so that the Bill might be wholly recast.

§ LORD MACNAGHTEN
said, there was a provision at the end of the clause suspending its operation in cases where it was desirable to do so.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL
Then that was to say that the framers of the Bill were so conscious of its impropriety that they said the Queen in Council might suspend it. Nothing more clumsy was ever attempted.

§ LORD HALSBURY
also objected to the clause, which related to people who were wholly independent of each other.

§ LORD HALSBURY
said, he would point out that there was an enormous amount of repeal of parts of existing Acts of Parliament, and it would be an endless puzzle to the Judges to ascertain what the law really was.