Overview

Despite the dramatic expansion of consumer culture from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards and the developments in retailing, advertising and credit relationships in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were a significant number of working families in Britain who were not fully free to consume as they chose. These employees were paid in truck, or in goods rather than currency. This book will explore and analyse the changing ways that truck and workplace deductions were experienced by different groups in British society, arguing that it was far more common than has previously been acknowledged. This analysis brings to light issues of class and gender; the discourse of free trade, popular politics and protest; the development of the trade union movement; and the use of the legal system as an instrument for bringing about social and legal change.

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9781032086408

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'Frank is very good on the nuts and bolts of the legislative process, documenting the different arguments and rhetorical strategies adopted by the parties concerned and tracing their influence on the final legislation. He is equally attentive to the ways in which the legal system often failed to prevent the abuse of workers, whether through a partisan refusal on the part of magistrates to convict their social peers (or to impose minimal punishments where convictions were unavoidable), or through narrow interpretations of the relevant statutes on the part of the higher courts.' - Mike Sanders, University of Manchester, Victorian Studies

Author Information

Christopher Frank is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba, Canada.

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