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until determined by a reasonable notice on either side, to be construed by the general usage in relation to the particular employment. If a time is expressed or implied, the silent continuing in the service after its expiration draws with it in general a renewal of the same terms as were originally stipulated for. In agriculture the general engagement, express or implied, is for a year. In manufac ture it h seldom so long, and in journeyman handicrafts it is sometimes by the hour, but the usage to calculate earn ings and the time of payment by the hour or day is often of course quite distinct from the duration of the contract. Payment by measure or quantity (piece work) ia very general, and so far as the calculation of earnings is con cerned supersedes reference to time. Nevertheless the obligation to serve may be conditional on the employer rinding a reasonable quantity of work, or may expressly or implicitly endure until a reasonable notice is given on either side. In the pottery manufacture in North Staffordshire most of the workmen in the different branches of the trade are paid by the quantity according to a price list, the engagement being by usage, from Martinmas to Martinmas; and in this and in most other manufactures where the artisan works on the material and in the manufactory or the workshop of the employer he is subject to the usual hours of work, although only paid by the quantity.
Most workmen of all classes and descriptions of labour are paid weekly, in whatever way their earnings accrue or are calculated. The contracts of infants (see INFANT) for their personal services as necessary for their maintenance are enforceable, for unless they could make such contracts they might starve. As long as these contracts were enforceable by imprisonment the courts looked closely into them, refusing to enforce them unless they were mutual, that is, capable of being enforced against the employer as well as against the servant. If there were an agreement to serve under circumstances which involved no obligation to employ, the courts would not enforce the contract, and young servants were not unfrequently discharged from custody on the ground that no obligation to serve existed by reason of the onesideclness. Contracts of APPRENTICE SHIP (q.v.) are beyond the limits of this article.
The will of the parties is not interfered with as regards the description of labour or the adequacy of the remunera tion agreed upon. In the absence of any verbal or written stipulation, the performance of labour upon an express or implied request in general involves an implied agreement to pay the value of it in the current coin of the realm; and wherever a mutuality of agreement can be implied, tint is to say, where it is not onesided, it can be enforced. As the employer and employed are free, they would primarily have a right to stipulate that the remuneration for service should be for something else than money, as for articles of value, or for an exchange of labour; but the primary right of employer and employed to make their own arrangements as to the mode of remuneration is interfered with in England by legislation, especially by the so-called Truck Act, 1 and 2 Will. IV. c. 37, applying to all persons employed in the manufacture of iron from rais ing the stone to the completion of the making of the pro ducts of iron and steel, and the manufacture of all other hardware and cutlery, and the getting of coal, stone and slate, salt and clay, and the manufacture of pottery, and the weaving, preparation, and dyeing of woollen, worsted, cotton cloth, and silk. The object of the statute is to compel payment of wages in money. For this purpose it prohibits agreements for paying wages otherwise, and pro hibits paying them in goods or money's worth. To insure obedience, it enables the artificer to repudiate a contract and payment contrary to its provisions, and, however fairly he may have been dealt with, to enforce payment in such
case over again. It is obvious that such a provision is open to two most important objections: – (1) it interferes with that freedom of contract and conduct which is universally recognized as of the greatest benefit; (2) it enables an artificer who may have requested and received payment otherwise than in money, and who may have benefited thereby and been most justly and kindly treated, to commit a great dishonesty by enforcing payment again. But, grave as these objections are, the legislature has deemed it necessary to face them, in order to guard against the mischiefs of a system under which the workman may receive directly from his employer, or indirectly, as through "tommyshops" in which the employer has an interest, articles not a real equivalent of the wages; so that but for the statute an employer might engage a man to work for him with a promise of payment in goods, and cheat him by giving him goods of inferior quality or over charged, or engaging him with a promise of money and then cheating him by a pressure to take goods, or by supplying the man with goods beyond his wages, get him into his debt, and then exercise an injurious control over him. It is in vain to say that the master would cheat in cases where money wages were agreed for, by withholding money agreed to be paid, and that the law would redress the one wrong as readily as the other. The answer is that such a cheat is too barefaced, and would certainly be successfully resisted; while more or less of inferiority in the quality or value of goods might be endured, or, if contested, would give rise to more doubtful inquiries. Whether these mischiefs are worth the remedy, or whether the remedy is the best, is not the question to be discussed or determined in this article.
As servants in husbandry are often remunerated in part in other ways than by money, as by land or its produce, or by house room, and in a variety of ways, the Truck Act especially exempts them. Domestic servants are also specially exempted. Moreover, by express provision, the Act does not prevent any employer of any artificer or agent of such employer from supplying or contracting to supply medicine or medical attendance, or any fuel, or any materials, tools, or implements employed by the artificer in his trade or occupation if employed in mining, or any hay, corn, or other provender for horses or other beasts of burden employed by such artificer in his trade or occupa tion, nor from letting any tenement at a rental to any artificer, workman, or labourer within the Act, nor from supplying or contracting to supply to any artificer any victuals dressed or prepared under the roof of the employer and there to be consumed by such artificer, nor from making deductions or stoppages, or advancing money for any of these purposes, provided that only the real value is charged, and that the agreement for any such stoppage or deduction is in writing. Employers are not prevented from advancing money to an artificer for his contributions to a friendly society or to a savings bank, or for his relief in sickness, or for the education of his children, or from making deduc tions for such education, if the agreement for such deduction is in writing. The interpretation of the Truck Act has exercised the most subtle intellects. It has been deter- mined by the majority of judges that the obligation to render services personally is necessary to make the Act applicable. The circumstances under which stoppages and deductions may be made, and other exceptions from the operation of the prohibitory clauses of the Act, have also been the subject of divergent opinions. A custom having prevailed among the employers of artificers in the hosiery manufactures of letting out frames and machinery to the artificers employed by them, in 1874 contracts to stop wages for frames were declared illegal, and the stoppage of wages made unlawful. By a provision of the Employers
