Second Shetland Truck System Report Part 311

13,170. I understand, from what I saw in the books last night, and from what you mentioned to me, that you don't fix the price of the meal when it is given out?-No. I don't know yet the current price of bear meal for this year.

13,171. At first you only enter the quant.i.ty that is given out?- Yes.

13,172. And the price of the meal is fixed at settlement?-Yes, or some time before it, in order that I may get the account extended and added up.

13,173. In what way is the price of the meal fixed for the year?-It is generally taken on an average. In 1870, for instance, which is the last year for which there has been a settlement, meal was pretty low in [Page 326] the spring, varying from 18s. to 19s. per boll, and it rose during the season until it was somewhere about 1, if not above it. These changes frequently take place in the markets; and in fixing the price for a particular year, we generally make an average of the prices from first to last. If we were not to do that, then it might chance that the poorest people might get the whole of their meal at the dearest price, or when the price of meal was highest; but the way in which we take it makes it more equal over all.

13,174. Do you take the average according to the whole quant.i.ty of meal which you have sold?-Yes. We add up the total amount of meal sold, and the prices per boll which the meal has cost. I don't do that, but I believe that is the way in which it is done. It is generally done by Mr. Bruce himself, but I have a general understanding about it. For instance, if 20 bolls cost a certain figure, and 30 bolls cost another figure, if we add the amounts together, and take the average of the whole, we know what to sell it for. That is the way in which I would do it, and I believe it is the way in which it is done.

13,175. You first strike the average of the wholesale price, and then you allow a certain amount of profit upon that?-Yes. We include the expense of bringing it here, and then we make an average price accordingly.

13,176. Do some of the fishermen who deal at your shop have pa.s.s-books?-Very few; but I think a great many of them keep accounts themselves. I never saw many men settling who did not know what quant.i.ty of meal they had had.

13,177. Have you sometimes objected to the trouble of keeping pa.s.s-books for the men?-I don't recollect doing that, but I might have said that it was vexatious. I think there were two or three cases in which I was anxious that the people should have pa.s.s-books, and I began them with them. They came with them for a certain time, but then they would come without the book, and that confused me altogether. However, I never was very much asked to keep pa.s.s-books for them, and the fact is that it would have been almost out of my power to have attended to them. I am frequently out of the shop, and there are days when the men are coming ash.o.r.e in large numbers, on which we could scarcely have time to mark down the meal.

13,178. Have you a fixed day in the week for giving out meal?- We have had a fixed day for some years back. Formerly we had no particular day, but we could not get them to understand the quant.i.ty of meal that was to be disposed of; and as there are some people to whom we only allow a certain quant.i.ty of meal per week, we have found it better to fix a particular day on which they are to come for it. People who have credit, or who have money in Mr. Bruce's hands, can come any day and get what they please, so that there are scarcely any days in the week when some is not given out; but the bulk is given out on a particular day, generally on a Friday.

13,179. You said just now that certain people had to be restricted to a given quant.i.ty of meal: are these people who are in debt?- Yes, and people who have been in debt. If it had not been for that restriction, there are some people on the estate who were in debt not long ago, and who would still have been in debt.

13,180. I thought it was because they were in debt that you restricted them?-No; we restricted some because they might have got into debt. We just gave them an allowance sufficient to support them through the week; but if we had given them more, or given them what they wanted, they would have taken double the quant.i.ty. These, however, are only a few individuals; in general the people are much more careful.

13,181. When you put parties on an allowance in that way, are they generally people who have had a balance against them at settlement the year before?-Generally they are. Some of them may have been in debt 8 or 10, and some as high as 20, and it is these people we put on an allowance in order to try to keep them going.

13,182. Do people who have no balance against them, and who can get an unlimited supply of meal, come to you on Fridays along with the rest?-Sometimes, and sometimes not; they just come as they choose.

13,183. Do they frequently not come to you at all for meal?- There are few of them who don't come for meal; but the greater part of the men at Dunrossness are generally in good circ.u.mstances, and have the command of money, and they generally buy their meal in Lerwick, or where they can get it cheapest.

13,184. In looking at your books last night, of course I did not find the prices for meal entered for the year 1871?-No.

13,185. But I saw that a lispund of bear meal in 1870 was charged at 4s. 6d.?-I think the lispunds were 4s. 4d., and the quarter bolls 4s. 6d.

13,186. I noticed also that you sometimes charged what you call a lispund at a different price?-Yes; when we break a boll and sell it in quarters, we generally call it a lispund. Sometimes two or three men may get a boll and divide it among themselves, and it is generally charged to them as lispunds. That accounts for the lispund sometimes being charged at one price and sometimes at another.

13,187. When you do actually weigh out a quarter boll, you charge it at 4s. 6d.?-We seldom weigh that out. They take the boll and divide it among themselves; we seldom weigh it.

13,188. When the prices are not entered until the end of the season, how do you know whether to charge for a quarter boll or for a lispund, when you have put it in your book in the first instance as a lispund in both cases?-I had slips of paper or a little pa.s.s-book, and when we gave the meal out we had a line for the boll weight and a line for the lispund.

13,189. What is done with the lines?-We have some of them yet.

13,190. Do you file them?-No. We rule the small pa.s.s-book, and have a place in which we enter the lines, so many for lispunds, so many for bolls, and so many for quarter bolls, or whatever it may be.

13,191. Do you call that book the weighing-book?-Yes. It is generally only part of the meal that is entered there.

13,192. When you are putting in the prices at the end of the season do you go over all the entries in that book, and all the entries in the ledger account as well?-There is a great deal of the meal that we never keep any slips for, but just enter it direct into the ledger and we know which of these people are getting lispunds, and which are getting quarter bolls.

13,193. How do you know that?-At the beginning of the season we know quite well the people we are giving the meal to regularly, and those who just get it as they come.

13,194. Are there certain people who always get it in lispunds, and others who always get it in quarter bolls?-Yes.

13,195. And you know which is which?-Yes, because the people who get it regularly generally get it in lispunds; and sometimes if we give them a boll or half a boll, we mark it in the ledger at once.

13,196. Then you say that bear meal in 1870 was charged at 4s. 4d.

per lispund, and 4s. 6d. per quarter boll?-I think so.

13,197. And a lispund of oatmeal in 1870 was 5s. 6d.?-I think it was 22s. per boll, or 11s. 6d. per half boll, but I cannot say exactly.

I think the price per lispund was 5s. 4d.

13,198. Then the entry which I noted of half a lispund of oatmeal in 1870-2s. 9d., would be for one half of a quarter boll?-I would suppose so; but I could not be sure about that unless I saw the entry.

13,199. But although you saw the entry, that would not help you?-It would not, but I could not say anything positive about that.

13,200. I received this piece of half-bleached cotton from you [showing], which you sell at 41/2d. a yard?-Yes.

13,201. Also this piece [showing], which you sell at 8d.?-Yes.

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13,202. And this piece of shirting [showing], which you sell at 1s.?-Yes.

13,203. These were all got from J. & W. Campbell, Glasgow?- Yes.

13,204. You sell your tobacco at 4d. per oz.?-Yes. We have two kinds, both sold at 4d. or 15d. per quarter lb.

13,205. Is that the price, whether it is entered in the account or sold for cash?-We very seldom sell for cash, but the price is the same in both cases.

13,206. Do you not take cash in the shop at all?-Yes, we take it if we get it; but we never have the chance of getting much of it. We get a few shillings occasionally. I don't think we get so much cash in the course of the year as will pay for postages.

13,207. That shows that your business is entirely for the supply of your own fishermen?-Entirely; and Mr. Bruce was never inclined to increase the trade as a shop trade. It is only to accommodate the fishermen that the things are kept.

13,208. That is to say, it is to accommodate those who do not have money with which to go elsewhere?-Yes. The men, on coming ash.o.r.e, do not have time to go for lines and supplies to some other place; but it would be better for Mr. Bruce and the whole concern if there was no store there at all.

13,209. Do you mean to say that there is no profit on goods?- There is a profit on the goods, but the shop cannot pay the people that have to attend to it.

13,210. Are you paid by salary for your attention to the shop, or have you an interest in the sale of the goods?-I have no interest in the sale of the goods at all.

13,211. You sell your 2-lb. lines for 2s. 2d.?-Yes.

13,212. You sell your best sugar for 6d.?-Yes. During the summer, until the end of the season, it was 61/2d.: but now they get sugar of the same kind for 6d.

13,213. You purchase it from Greenock-two cwt. at a time?-I cannot exactly say where the last sugar came from. We had an agent in Glasgow to buy it from Greenock, and I understand he did so.

13,214. I observed an entry in December 1871-1 lb. sugar, 6d.: was that the best?-Yes. That was part of the last sugar we broke up.

13,215. That sugar was invoiced to you on 14th September 1871?-I think so; but the sugar had been higher in the course of the year.

13,216. What was the price at which sugar sold in your shop in 1870?-I think it was 61/2d., because the price of sugar was higher then. We had the finest sugar in 1870 as high as 7d., but never above that.

13,217. Do you keep only one kind of sugar?-No, we have more than one kind. It is not always alike. We have two different kinds of sugar.