ABSTRACT
The gradual process of translating "rights" into "crimes" was, then, one of restructuring the range of applicability of customary practices. The immediate effect of the Acts of Enclosure through the annexation of de facto cottagers was the automatic relabeling of "rights" as the "privilege" of de jure tenants. Within the structures of rural enclosure and urban capitalization, "perks," "pilferage," and "theft" may be viewed profitably as the lingering vestiges of the annexation of customary rights by the ruling class, rather than an index of the growing amorality of the urban working class. Under a wage-perk system, an employee is openly and legally paid part of his wages in kind. Quite often, wage-perk structures are the mature outcome of a long history of legitimizing a wage-pilferage system, especially when pilferage is particularly difficult otherwise to control. Wage-pilferage and wage-fiddle systems can actually benefit those who lose the goods in question more than they benefit those who stand to gain them.
