Tick and Tallymen - Credit and Callers in South Wales

Further to my earlier post on Christmas clubs and other forms of credit I've found the info on tally men.
This is the post:
Hitchins,brilliant breakfasts and...

Tallymen and credit in the Valleys feature  in the Bernice Rubens novel "Brothers". She lived in Cardiff and has a real feel for life in South Wales shown in "Brothers" and other novels.
Brothers by bernice Rubens

This is what she wrote:

Pavel was a credit draper. This was a trade most favoured by those immigrants who did not have a particular skill. Its great advantage was that it required little initial capital and even that could be credited. The trade itself was concerned with the sale of clothing to lower income groups at the minimum payment of a shilling a week, and the main hunting-ground for such clientele was the Welsh mining valleys. The tallyman would buy his goods on credit from the wholesale merchants, and make the rounds of his customers.The profit margin was narrow, the working hours long and arduous, but it already provided Pavel with a living, as it did many of his 'Landsleit'.*  Some of them, after a year or two, had bought their own houses, and some, like Max, had used the profits to set up a shop of their own...


...The job required little skill except that of book-keeping. Its major demand was on physical strength and endurance. Pavel set out on his journey encumbered with large parcels. He would travel by train to the central town of the valley, and from there would walk or wagon along the roads to the outlying villages and hamlets. It was back-breaking work, and especially hard in winters. But there was always a welcome in the valleys and the great bonus of the trade was the friendship and warmth of the mining communities. 

* a Landsleit was an  immigrant Jew sponsored and supported by a fellow countryman and enabled  to make a fresh start in a foreign country after leaving Russia

 In the sixties and seventies Blooms and other such credit salesmen travelled by van and would have an array of stuff with which to tempt and would take orders for specific items as well. This along with Provident cheques, catalogues, Christmas clubs and such were how people in Aberkenfig and other villages managed their budgets and accessed the limited credit available to them. Of course Provident and the Christmas clubs were saving schemes rather than the credit of the catalogues and tally men, but all seemed to make buying everyday goods and luxuries more painless for those on tight budgets.