Roundsman System
The Roundsman System, in the Poor Relief Act 1601, was a form of organised labour exchange for the poorest labourers by which a parish vestry helped to pay local farmers, households and others to employ such applicants for relief at a rate of headline wages negotiated and set by the parish. It depended not on the services, but on the wants of the applicants: the employers being repaid out of the poor rate all they advanced in wages beyond a very low-wage amount. Variants of the Roundsman system operated and co-existed from parish-to-parish and sometimes depending on type of labour.
Details
According to this plan the parish in general agreed with a farmer to sell to him the labour of one or more paupers at a certain price, paying to the pauper out of the parish funds the difference between that price and the subsistence rate. It received the local name of "billet" or "ticket system" from the ticket signed by the overseer which the pauper in general carried to the farmer as a warrant for his being employed, and afterwards took back to the overseer, signed by the farmer, as a proof that he had fulfilled the conditions of relief.In other cases and parishes the parish contracted with a person to have some work performed for him by the paupers at a given price, the parish paying the paupers from that person and general funds.