Second Shetland Truck System Report
Chapter 120 : 4372. Were you sent for about it?-No; I wished to know if my boy should take the wages

4372. Were you sent for about it?-No; I wished to know if my boy should take the wages that he had been offered.

4373. Why did you wish to know that?-Because I did not expect they would give me the same amount of wages if he acted as a beach boy. At the same time, they do not pay the boys ill; they pay them tolerably well.

4374. But why did you go to see them? Had you been told before that your boy ought not to engage except to them?-I had known that.

4375. How did you know it?-It is publicly known that the proprietor will want the boys of the tenantry to work for him.

4376. Had your boy been engaged before then?-He had wrought as a beach boy the previous year.

4377. By whom had he been offered a higher wage in that month of January?-By Messrs. Hay's man at Dunrossness.

4378. What was he to work at?-He was to work among the fish at the livers or oil, as a beach boy to Messrs. Hay.

4379. What wages was he offered for that?-10s. for the season.

4380. When you got that offer, did you go to Mr. Bruce's office to see about it?-Not immediately; it was a while after.

4381. Had you any communication from Mr. Bruce or Mr. Irvine which led you to go to them about it?-No; but I knew that I was not safe to let him go to Messrs. Hay without telling them about it.

The reason why I knew that was, because there had been a boy agreed by a man I was fis.h.i.+ng with to go to the [Page 109] fis.h.i.+ng, but the boy was kept back from the fis.h.i.+ng, and the man had to look out for another boy. We had two boys and two of ourselves to make up our boat's crew; and the boy that my fellow-fisherman told me he had agreed with was kept back, and he had to go and search the parish for another to fill his place.

4382. Are cases of that kind common in the district?-Not very common, but they do happen sometimes.

4383. When you went to Mr. Bruce about that matter, did you tell him your boy had received an offer from Messrs. Hay & Co?- Yes.

4384. What was said to you?-I am scarcely prepared to state in public what was said to me.

4385. You are bound to state the truth.-I don't mind stating the truth; and if I have to go for the truth, let me go. Mr. Bruce said he did not believe that my boy had got that offer, and he was somewhat angry. I dreaded the consequences, because I might have no shelter if I went contradictory to his will, and I did not know where to go if I should be turned off.

4386. But Mr. Bruce only said he did not believe you: that was all he said?-Yes.

4387. How did he show his anger?-I saw it in his face, and I knew it by his voice and tone.

4388. Did he say anything to you about the boy?-He just said in an angry tone what I have stated. He said he did not believe he had got any such offer, and that it was all a fiction to pull money out of him.

4389. Did he say that you should not allow your boy to go?-No, he did not say that.

4390. What else did he say?-I remember nothing more that I could state.

4391. What was the end of it?-I told him I would not allow my boy to work to another man, but that while I was a tenant I had to be obedient, and I was determined to be obedient. There was no use for being troublesome and disobedient if I wished to remain a tenant, and I did not allow my boy to go until I settled. I then asked them calmly if they wanted my boy. Mr. Irvine said 'Have you not agreed your boy to another party?' I said, 'No; I have kept my word that he should not work for any other man if you required him, seeing I am a tenant.' They then agreed my boy, and he worked for Mr. Bruce that year.

4392. What wages did he get?-He has not been settled with yet. I said it was perhaps better for them to state a certain wage for him; and Mr. Bruce said that he would not have less than 3, but he did not say how much more.

4393. When a boy acts as a beach boy in that way, how are his wages paid?-Generally the boy's wages are fixed before he begins to work, but Mr. Bruce does not fix their wages until they have wrought for a season. Then the factor sees how they have wrought, and what he thinks they are worth. That, I know, has been done.

4394. But how are they paid? Is it in goods or in money?-If they don't take goods from the shop, they are paid in money at settlement.

4395. They can either take goods in their own names at the shop, or they can be paid in money at the settling time?-Yes.

4396. Is it usually the case that a separate account is opened in name of a beach boy?-Yes.

4397. What is the usual age of a beach boy?-From 12 to 14 or 15, and so on.

4398. Do you know whether, at the time of settlement, a boy has usually any balance to receive in cash?-I should think that in general they have something.4399. But is it not the practice that an account is run, and the greater part of the wages is really settled for in goods?-I could not state that exactly; because my own boy wrought to them, and he had next to nothing from them. He received his wages in money at the settlement without a grumble and without a gloom.

4400. Had he no account at all?-I think he had a pocket knife.

4401. Are the wages of a beach boy generally handed over to his parents?-So far as I know, that depends partly on the boy.

Generally his wages do very little more than purchase clothes for him, and anything else he may require.

4402. Then generally the balance against him will amount to nearly the whole amount of his wages, and there will be little to get out?-I should think so; but I cannot speak positively on that point.

4403. You do not know that from your own experience?-No.

4404. Is it usual for beach boys to have got more goods supplied to them during the season than the amount of their wages at settlement?-I can say nothing about that.

4405. Have you had anything to do with taking whales on the coast?-Yes, with driving whales ash.o.r.e.

4406. Have the fishermen in your quarter anything to complain of about that?-When we get the whales flinched, and the blubber brought up above high water mark, it is sold, and the third part of the money is taken by the proprietor.

4407. Do you think the fishermen are ent.i.tled to get the whole?- We think so.

4408. Who sells the oil?-There is a note sent up to Lerwick to publish the sale. An auctioneer comes down and it is generally sold on the spot, and the third part of the money is deducted.

4409. Who receives the money in the first instance? Is it the auctioneer?-I don't know; but I should say it is the landlord.

4410. He accounts to the fishermen who are interested for their share of the proceeds?-Yes.

4411. Is there any obligation to spend the money you get on these occasions in the landlord's store?-No.

4412. You can do as you like with it?-Yes.

4413. Is there anything else you have got to say?-We all believe, so far as I am aware, that liberty alone will never remedy our case.

Even suppose we had liberty, yet if we have no lease of our land, the landlord can do with the land as he pleases, and render our case worse than before.

4414. Then it is a lease that you want?-Yes, a lease of a proper kind; but if the land rent can be raised to any figure the landlord thinks proper, what can a lease do for us, or what can liberty do for us. It cannot remedy our case.

4415. Then what you want is, that the landlord may be prevented from raising his rent, and from turning you out of your farms?- From raising it above measure, or above its real value. Another thing is, that I can be turned out of my land at forty days warning, after I have prepared it for winter.

4416. If you make a bargain for a lease for a certain number of years, as they do in Scotland, then you could not be turned out until that lease expired?-That is what we need, and the land let at a reasonable figure.

4417. But that must depend upon the terms of your own contract?-That may be; but the landlord sees plainly that he may not have the power of the fis.h.i.+ng; and if he has full power to rent the land as he pleases, and can lay on the land what should come from the fis.h.i.+ng, then that would render our case more desperate still.

4418. Do you mean that you have to pay part of your land rent from the fis.h.i.+ng?-Our rents depend solely on the fis.h.i.+ng. Some men may have a cow or a horse to sell, to help them to pay their rent; while there may be ten who would have nothing of the kind to sell, except their fish. On Mr. Bruce's property, so far as I am aware, the bulk of the tenants have to pay their rents from their fis.h.i.+ng.

4419. Do you mean that your farm does not pay its own rent from the crops which it yields?-Yes; we cannot afford to sell any crop with which to pay our rent. If we were to sell the crop for that purpose, we would be deprived of what we have to live upon. The farms are very small, and we require the whole of the crops for our own use. In some years they have not been sufficient to keep us for half the year.

4420. Then the state of matters is, that you live princ.i.p.ally by your fis.h.i.+ng, and that your farm is an extra source of employment, or an extra means of [Page 110] living for part of the year?-Yes; some years, when there has been a good crop, it may serve us almost or altogether for the whole of the year; then the fis.h.i.+ng pays the rent, and we may have some balance over to help us otherwise. In a poor year I have had experience of it, when our crops could only serve us for six months, and then we had to buy meal for the other six months. In that case the fis.h.i.+ng had to do the best it could to pay both the land rent and the meal.