The existing Truck Act (as well as the Bill now before Parliament)
prohibits the payment of wages in goods in the various trades to
which it applies. Even, therefore, if fishermen formed one of the
classes of workmen falling under the Act, they would not be
protected by it, because they do not receive wages, but are paid a
price for their fish. One result of this is, that Truck, as it exists in
Shetland, is without disguise or concealment. No machinery has
been contrived for evading the law; and almost all the masters, and
even some of the fishermen, regard the system which prevails, as
wholesome, natural, and indeed inevitable.

I have already explained that the price of the fish is ascertained
and settled only for once in the year. But fishermen, as Adam
Smith remarks, have been poor since the days of Theocritus;
and in Shetland the Truck system begins when, his farm produce
failing to support the family, the fisherman farmer finds it
necessary to obtain from the 'merchant' supplies or advances
before the time of settlement, and, it may be, a boat, fishing
materials, and provisions, to enable him to prosecute his calling.
In Shetland the merchant needs to use no influence or compulsion
to bring the fisherman to his shop. He has no black-list, and has to
enforce no penalties for 'sloping.' As the laws against Truck do
not apply to him, even remotely, he scarcely ever seeks to conceal
the fact that the earnings of those whom he employs are paid to a
large extent, in goods, and he is even prepared with arguments in
vindication of the practice. The man whose farm cannot keep
his family until settlement, comes, as a matter of course, to the
fish-curer's store; and even the thriving and prosperous man, who
has money in the bank, 'almost invariably' has an account at the