At a meeting of the Congress on Thursday, Mr. Mundella,
after a speech against the Truck system in the mining districts, where a man who protests against it cannot get work, called the atten- tion of the artizans to a very bad though legal form of Truck, that of paying labourers part of their wages in cider or beer. In Devonshire they are often compelled to take one-sixth of their wages in that way ; the farmers, who have large orchards, seeing no other way to utilize the refuse of their cider. Mr. Mundella nointed out, amid general applause, that if the labourers, now such bad customers, had money to spend they would increase the Atizans' wealth, and the Congress passed a resolution asking Par-. liament to make any contract for wages payable in anything but current coin illegal. That will not quite do, as payment in land would for the labourer be the best form of supplementary wages, but why should not the farmer who will give beer as wages be in- dicted every week for selling beer without a licence? He does sell it.
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