Half-pay

“ He must pay at least as much as a fifth of the price down, but one quarter of it might be left on perpetual ground-rent, and the remainder, slightly more than one-half, might be repaid in half-yearly instalments during any period less than fifty years. ”

“ Great credit thus attaches to the Half-pays, who, belonging more to the people than to any other class, and not being able to digest their last disappointment, trade upon it in every possible manner, and are always believed because they are the richest in their immediate locality. ”

“ How Unequal are our Ways: These Officers must have large Half-Pay, while the common Soldiers are not allowed small Half-Pay—who have been exposed generally to greater Hardships than their Officers. Either let all have Half-Pay or none. ”

“ There is a disposition generally amongst the citizens to live above their income. Persons who live as independent gentlemen, often run into debt with their butchers, &c., to the amount of several hundred dollars, and delay a year and a half before they attempt to pay, suffering themselves to be dunned continually, always promising payment, but never being punctual in performance, and ultimately paying by instalments of five, ten, or fifteen dollars; a mode of payment from which the meanest man in England would shrink. ”

“ What is the mode of payment which you have adopted?—I send the pay clerk into each room in the manufactory immediately after the dinner hour, and he pays each man individually. Each man is scarcely taken from his work half a minute. I may observe, that some masters, to save themselves trouble, so as to avoid the inconvenience of getting small change, will pay several men together. ”

“ Made a mutual pledge to clear the church debt by the October of this year.
Our debt-paying must not be indefinitely de layed. Let every body make up his mind to pay his portion within the specified time. Suppose you give up your European restaurant for ten months; that will help you to pay half your portion. Suppose you go with your old jacket and pants until the next year; that will enable you to fill up your share of the common burden. The net income of each of us was twenty-five dollars a month, and we were to pay a whole month s salary by the October next. ”

“ The consequence of our consistency is that in London persons of any degree of human feeling pay their poor rates twice over without any guarantee that the money disbursed for the second payment is distributed in a proper manner. ”

“ But any estimate of the currency needed, or to be needed for the transaction of business, founded upon the amount of deferred payments, is wholly fallacious.
It is equally wrong to suppose that the bankers are the principal money-lenders. The real lenders are those who have sold their produce, the use of their tools or their time, at a price to be paid next week, next month or next year. Every man who has wages due him is as truly a money-lender, to the extent of the wages due, as any banker who accepts a promise to pay in the future for service or value given in the present. ”

“ As a matter of fact people who have studied such questions tell us that when payments are frequent less stuff is bought on credit and fewer bills are run. Savings banks find that, under certain conditions, men who are paid daily or weekly will put by more money than those who have a monthly pay day. ”

“ Debit and credit are no longer known; interest, rents, profits, and all the calculations based on them no more have any place in human affairs. In your day everybody, besides his account with the state, was involved in a network of accounts with all about him. Even the humblest wage-earner was on the books of half a dozen tradesmen, while a man of substance might be down in scores or hundreds, and this without speaking of men not engaged in commerce. ”

“ Do the ratepayers ever think that the seven millions of annual poor rate would in one single year place every recipient of Poor Law relief, old and young, man, woman and child, on the shores of America?—would pay all expenses, and leave them one or two pounds their pockets to begin the world with? ”

“ And, indeed, these men shall often buy their goods as cheap upon the credit of their ordinary pay, as another man shall that brings his money in his hand; and it is reasonable it should be so, for the ready-money man comes and buys a parcel here and a parcel there, and comes but seldom, but the other comes every day, that is to say, as often as he wants goods, buys considerably, perhaps deals for two or three thousand pounds a-year with you, and the like, and pays currently too. ”

“ It is easy and tempting to give an order, and though it can no doubt be paid for sooner or later, somehow the sum always seems to assume larger proportions as time goes on. We very seldom get in a bill for a less amount than we expect. My own view of the case is, that I grudge to pay for food after it is eaten, or clothes after they are worn; and in my own housekeeping I have found ready-money, or, at the outside, weekly accounts, the best arrangement, to which I adhere without any exceptions. Short accounts, also, give one another advantage, the choice of all markets. ”

“ Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity of given labour to have been ascertained, let us examine the first results of just and unjust payment, when in favour of the purchaser or employer; i.e. when two men are ready to do the work, and only one wants to have it done.
The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each other till he has reduced their demand to its lowest terms. Let us assume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work at half its just price. ”

“ If the steward reside in London, spare cash may, in like manner, be employed at a full rate of interest, by discounting such good bills as are always to be met with at the principal brokers in and about Lombard Street; and these bills will be received by the bankers as they arrive at maturity. By this means 3 or 4 per cent may always be added to the income of a nobleman or gentleman, or sufficient to pay the wages of all the servants. ”

“ If he be sensible and candid, let him decide what salary he can afford to pay this most useful of his employés—and pay it as a debt, and not a gratuity. The probability is that he will find that the sum justifies her in regarding herself as a partner in his craft or profession, with a fair amount of working-capital. ”

“ But, sir, the punctuality of the payment has produced of late great inconveniencies; for there has been frequently a necessity of removing men from one ship to another; and it is the stated rule of the pay-office, to assign every man so removed his full pay. These men, when the government is no longer indebted to them, take the first opportunity of deserting the service, and engaging in business to which they are more inclined. ”

“ And if, by the craft and knavery of jobbers, the people are made to pay £600,000 for them, which is much about the case, pray, why not pay the hundred thousand pounds to the public, either to pay off a hundred thousand pounds of debt, or to make the burden of the current year a hundred thousand pounds lighter?—of which, I am sure, there is need enough. ”

“ We hardly venture to make a contract to be filled at a future time, because we can make no safe calculations. We can increase your wages a little, but not much. For that you will have to wait until things get more settled. Besides, this free silver coinage has thrown all business into dreadful confusion, and there are plenty of people out of employment who would do your work for less than you get now.” And so the wage-earner has to be satisfied with a little increase of pay, and wait for more while the advanced prices of necessaries prey upon him. ”

“ For the first time in my life I had become "slow-pay" to small tradesmen. "Buy nothing you cannot pay for" is all right in theory, but let those who preach it put themselves in my place in those dark days. There were days and weeks when the house would have been bare of food if the grocer and butcher had refused me credit. There were days at the office when letters had to be held over night for lack of money to pay postage.
My wife, unknown to me and in hope of helping me over the hard spot, wrote to Mr. Viedler, asking him for a loan of a few hundred dollars. ”

“ They were snapped up at once at a sum that was fabulous in comparison with their real value. This, with what he had brought home and the bonus he received on landing, exactly covered his indebtedness to the man who was to have been his father-in-law; and, when he turned away from the window where he had been telegraphing the money to his lawyer in a far State with instructions to pay the [30] loan at once, he had just forty-six cents left in his pocket. ”

“ The custom of keeping the spare cash reserved for immediate use or against contingent demands, in the hands of a banker, and making all payments, except small ones, by orders on bankers, is in this country spreading to a continually larger portion of the public. If the person making the payment, and the person receiving it, keep their money with the same banker, the payment takes place without any intervention of money, by the mere transfer of its amount in the banker's books from the credit of the payer to that of the receiver. ”

“ You are deeply in debt—say to the amount of a quarter of a dollar—to the little knicknack shop round the corner, where they sell picture-papers, spruce-gum, needles, and Malaga raisins. A boy owes you a quarter of a dollar, which he promises to pay at a certain time. ”

“ To be properly remunerative to the State, as to a private individual, the price at which a commodity is sold must be sufficient to pay interest on the capital invested in the business, that is to say, to pay for the use of the property which must be used in producing the commodity, as well as to pay the more immediate cost of its production in wages and materials. ”

“ I find it is often inconvenient for people to pay down any considerable sum. When, however, I strike a bargain, my capitalist buys the book, and I make an arrangement with my customer to pay a certain amount each week, and so even a large purchase is not felt, as I make the installments small enough to suit my client.'
'You are employed during the day, I take it?'
'Yes, I am a clerk in the City.'
Again we were in the blissful realms of fiction!
'Suppose I take this book at ten pounds, what installment should I have to pay each week?'
'Oh, what you like, sir. ”

“ The American government provides that the paymaster shall take charge of any funds that the men do not wish to draw, and it pays a high rate of interest on these deposits. Thus, large numbers of our men have saved several thousand dollars out of their pay, and yet have lived well and had money to spend all the time. ”

“ The merchant shook his head.
"Then you live extravagantly for a young man of your age and condition. How much do you pay for boarding?"
"Four dollars a week."
"Too much by from fifty cents to a dollar. But even paying that sum, four more dollars per week ought to meet fully all your other expenses, and leave you what would amount to nearly one hundred dollars per annum to lay by. I saved nearly two hundred dollars a year on a salary no larger than you receive." ”

“ Having amassed enough by retail robbery of us while in our service, to establish some petty tavern, or some low livery-stable, they end by cheating us wholesale, for the loan of our own money, at their rate of interest. Well aware that, however deferred, we must pay eventually, they are satisfied—good, easy souls!—to renew and renew bills, whose current percentage varies from five-and-twenty to forty. ”

“ Over 60% of such companies paid some type of premium or gratuity to their wage earners for work performed on Sundays or holidays, the extra pay ranging from 25% to 100%, in addition to the regular rate of pay. ”

“ Another disastrous consequence of paying wages in goods is the improvident habits that it encourages in the families of labouring men. I think it is Archdeacon Paley of whom the anecdote is told, that he always made "his women pay ready money for all that they bought, because it was such a check to the imagination." ”

“ The merchants, who ran their stores — poor tumble-down ramshackle affairs — on the credit system, could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. ”

“ This premium (as it is called) the buyers are willing to pay, because they must otherwise go to the expense of remitting the precious metals themselves, and it is done cheaper by those who make doing it a part of their especial business. But though only some of those who have a debt to pay would have actually to remit money, all will be obliged, by each other's competition, to pay the premium; and the brokers are for the same reason obliged to pay it to those whose bills they buy. ”

“ With our system, a labourer therefore obtains money at three per cent. per annum, with yours, they must pay three per cent. per month. And you think that we are the backward nation! Allow me, dear sir, to return the compliment. ”

“ He took a five-pound note from his pocket-book. “These are necessary expenses, sir. What I pay you is another matter. I want your services for a few days, and I am willing to pay a sovereign a day. Is it a bargain?” ”