1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Roundsman System

ROUNDSMAN SYSTEM (sometimes termed the billet, or ticket, or item system), in the English poor law, a plan by which the parish paid the occupiers of property to employ the applicants for relief at a rate of wages fixed by the parish. It depended not on the services, but on the wants of the applicants, the employer being repaid out of the poor rate all that he advanced in wages beyond a certain sum. According to this plan the parish in general made some agreement with a farmer to sell to him the labour of one or more paupers at a certain price, paying to the pauper out of the parish funds the difference between that price and the allowance which the scale, according to the price of bread and the number of his family, awarded to him. It received the local name of billet or ticket system from the ticket signed by the overseer which the pauper in general carried to the farmer as a warrant for his being employed, and afterwards took back to the overseer, signed by the farmer, as a proof that he had fulfilled the conditions of relief. In other cases the parish contracted with a person to have some work performed for him by the paupers at a given price, the parish paying the paupers. In many places the rounds man system was carried out by means of an auction, all the unemployed men being put up to sale periodically, sometimes monthly or weekly, at prices varying according to the time of year, the old and infirm selling for less than the able-bodied. The rounds man system disappeared on the reform of the poor law in 1834.