Reblogged from Tallis Steelyard:

I always try to be helpful. After a life time doing this I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s all been worthwhile. Let me give you an example.

I was helping a patron of mine, Madam Halwhistle, run a soiree. At one point I thought the whole event was going to implode because she was in a bad mood with her husband. I tentatively enquired as to what the problem was. It appeared that Master Halwhistle provided labour to the various wharves. Obviously he never did anything so vulgar as to hump bags of grain himself, but he hired foremen and each would put together a gang. Master Halwhistle would then be approached by ship owners who needed a boat unloading and he would have a gang waiting on the wharf as the boat tied up. All in all an efficient system, the ship owners liked it because they knew there would be well trained labour waiting for them, the men liked it because they were kept in work and weren’t having to chase individual ship’s captains for their pay.

Unfortunately each week the men would all turn up at the Halwhistle residence to collect their money, each one armed with a chit from their foreman saying how much they’d earned. Madam wasn’t entirely happy with this, and her neighbours were even less impressed…

Continue reading at Tallis Steelyard