> The old Truck enactments were very numerous and date from about the year 1464. The particular evil intended to be remedied was the truck system, or payment by masters of their men's wages wholly or in part with goods – a system open to various abuse – when workmen were forced to take goods at their master's valuation. The statutes were applied first to one branch of manufacture, and then in succession to others, as experience and the progress of manufactures dictated, until they embraced the whole or nearly the whole of the manufactures of England. They established the obligation, and produced, or at least fortified the custom, of uniformly paying the whole wages of artificers in the current coin of the realm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_Acts