sentence of two years' imprisonment or a fine of £500 for an ' agent' (this term includes a servant ') corruptly to accept or obtain, or agree to accept or obtain from any person for himself or for any other person, any gift or consideration as an inducement or reward for doing or forbearing to do any act in relation to his principal's (i.e. his master's) affairs or business, or for showing or forbearing to show favour or disfavour to any person in relation to his principal's affairs or business.

(3) A servant must not use his employer's trade knowledge. Thus in one case a canvasser who had been collecting information for a directory proposed to transfer his services to a rival firm, and to give them the benefit of the information which he had acquired. It was held that he could be restrained from doing this. A servant is, of course, entitled to the benefit of his trade experience, and no law could deprive him of this, and the dividing line between experience and knowledge must be sometimes a thin one, but the principle is clear, though its application may sometimes be difficult. This is one of the practical reasons why an employer takes a promise from a confidential servant restricting the servant's right after leaving to compete with him or to take service with a competitor.

Master's Duties-(a) To find Work for the Servant.This duty of finding work for the servant continues until the employment is lawfully put an end to. The question of the notice necessary to put an end to a contract of service has already been discussed, and the kind of behaviour on the part of a workman which justifies his immediate dismissal by the master has been stated. The master's duty to find work for his servant while the service lasts varies according as the servant is working for time-wages or piece-wages.

If the servant is on time-wages and is in attendance at his place of work, then the wages are payable whether the master finds sufficient work to fill up the servant's time or not. For instance, a clerk at 30s. a week has so little work in hand that he is idle for an hour or two every afternoon. If he is ready and willing to do what work is given him, he is entitled to his usual weekly wage.

Where a person is paid by the hour, and there is no definite obligation to find a given number of hours' work in each week, temporary suspensions for an afternoon or a morning or a few hours are quite customary, e.g. in the building trade, and wages are not payable during periods of temporary suspension without an express stipulation or a recognised custom. Where wages are so payable the usual phrase employed is 'payment for waiting time.'

If a master does not care to provide work for a servant who is under notice, he is always free to pay the wages due for the period of notice, and dismiss the servant immediately.

The obligation of a master to provide work for a servant on piece-work is somewhat doubtful. If the view is correct that each piece-work job is a separate contract of service, then obviously there is no obligation on the master to make a fresh contract. More probably the master's obligation is either to find a reasonable amount of continuous work, or to give the servant some sort of notice before the expiration of the job in hand that there will be no more work for him. If this is so, a piece-worker is in much the same position as a time-worker where the conditions of employment favour the recognition of short periods of suspension. The intervals between piece-work jobs will not be definite periods of unemployment, but merely suspensions of the active relationship of master and servant.

What is a reasonable amount of continuous work, or at what point a temporary suspension becomes a breach of the master's obligation, it is not easy to say. Every case must be dealt with on its merits, and the only general observation that can well be made is that in seasonal trades pieceworkers do in fact recognise a right on the master's part to suspend work from time to time.

Where a piece-worker is entitled to piece earnings with a guaranteed time-rate, whether the guarantee arises from contract or through the operation of a minimum wage determination, the exact determination of the hours worked is essential.

Workers generally contend that if they are kept on the master's premises waiting for work and are not allowed to

pass out from the work-place, these waiting times should be paid for. As a matter of practice it is quite easy for a master to book the amount of time a servant spends on his premises, but it is much more difficult to book the time actually spent on particular jobs. It is therefore not unusual for an employer to pay guaranteed time-rates for the whole period of a servant's detention at work, irrespective of whether piecework is or is not provided for the whole of such time.

(b) Master's Duty to indemnify his Servant.-The master must indemnify the servant from the consequences of acting in obedience to his lawful orders. In some cases a servant in the course of his duties incurs a liability to an outsider, which can be enforced against the servant. In these cases the servant is entitled to call on his master, who is really responsible for what the servant has done, to make good any loss to which the servant may be put.

(c) Master's Duty to pay the agreed Wages.-Failure to pay agreed wages may take several forms. There may be a dispute as to what is actually due to the workman; or there may be a claim on the part of the master to discharge the wages by the supply of goods, or in some other way to set up a cross-claim; or the master may claim to make deductions for breaches of discipline or spoilt work or materials.

Disputes as to wages due will be dealt with under the general heading of the 'Settlement of Disputes.' The question of payment of wages otherwise than in cash and the allied questions of fines and deductions form the subjectmatter of the Truck Acts and are dealt with under that heading in Chapter VI.

Master's other Duties.-The law as to compensation (in the broadest sense) for accidents, etc., also requires separate treatment, and is dealt with in Chapter VIII.

The Factory Acts, the Mines Acts, and the Insurance Acts are dealt with in Chapters IX. to XVI. and XVIII. and XIX.

CHAPTER VI

THE TRUCK ACTS

THE term truck' in its original sense denotes the payment of wages in goods or otherwise than in current coin, and in a more extended sense it signifies deductions made from wages in satisfaction of some claim by an employer to exact penalties for misconduct or bad work, or to make charges for material, or power, or other things supplied to the worker in the course of his employment.

The evils of truck were discovered in very early times. A statute of 1464 narrated that labourers in the clothmaking trade' have been driven to take a great part of their wages in pins, girdles, and other unprofitable wares.' Truck is, in short, a system by which a master gets an unfair profit out of his servant. In the extended sense of the term, it may cover a very serious interference with the workman's liberty. For a picture of a workman in debt to his master and at his mercy in the matter of fines in the middle of last century, reference should be made to Kingsley's "Cheap Clothes and Nasty" (reprinted in Macmillan's edition of Alton Locke).

The Truck Acts now in force are the Truck Act, 1831 (an Act to prohibit the payment in certain trades of wages in goods, or otherwise than in the current coin of the realm), the Truck Amendment Act, 1887 (an Act to amend and extend the law relating to truck), and the Truck Act, 1896 (an Act to amend the Truck Acts). These three Acts are construed as one Act, and are known as the Truck Acts, 1831-1896.

Certain analogous Acts are also included in this chapter. Persons within the Truck Acts.-By the 2nd Section of the Truck Amendment Act, 1887, the provisions of the Act of 1831 were extended to include any workman as defined in the Employers and Workmen Act, 1875, and the three Acts together apply generally to any person (not being a domestic or menial servant) who is a labourer, servant in husbandry,1 artificer, handicraftsman, miner, or otherwise engaged in manual labour, who has entered into or works under a contract with an employer which is either a contract of service or a contract personally to execute any work or labour. Certain parts of these Acts apply only to certain classes of workmen, and part of the Truck Act, 1896, applies to shop-assistants, who are of course not engaged in manual labour.

Substance of the Act of 1831.-By the 1st Section of the Act of 1831 it is made illegal for the contract of hiring to make wages payable otherwise than in current coin of the realm. In other words, the bargain between master and workman is to be for wages payable in current coin.

By the 2nd Section no provision can legally be made, directly or indirectly, respecting the place where, or the manner in which, or the person or persons with whom, the whole or any part of the workman's wages shall be laid out or expended. In other words, the bargain must leave the workman complete freedom as to the spending of his wages.

But this is not enough, for, in spite of a correct bargain, pressure might be put on the workman to accept in practice payment in goods. The 3rd and 4th Sections go on to enact that the entire amount of the wages earned by or payable to a workman shall be actually paid to him in the current coin of the realm and not otherwise; and payments in goods or otherwise than in current coin are to be illegal, null and void, and a workman is given the right to recover from his employer so much of his wages as shall not have actually been paid to him in the current coin of the realm.

Section 5 prevents an employer from setting off, in any action brought against him by a workman for his wages, the

1 The exceptional position of servants in husbandry is explained below.