PROFIT-SHARING.
ITO THE EDITOR OF TRH "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In comparing my address on the above subject at the Co-Operative Congress with Miss Simcox's article on co-operative shirt-making in this month's Nineteenth Century, you write that the former " sets out the theoretical advantages of profit- sharing ;" while the latter " narrates the difficulties that have attended its working in a particular, and in some respects a favourable, instance." I think that a reader who derived his knowledge of my address exclusively from your article would certainly suppose that I pointed out to the delegates assembled at Derby only " theoretical " advantages of profit-sharing. As, however, I also alleged a series of testimonies from participating employers asserting the advantages " practically " realised under that system, I venture to ask space for a few of their opinions, more fully quoted in my address.
M. Billon, a Swiss manufacturer, described in 1877 the effects which followed the introduction of participation in these terms : We soon became aware of the good influence which the prospect of sharing in profits exercised on our workmen. An entirely fresh zeal for work, and a lively interest in the house, showed themselves among them ; a genuine solidarity was not slow in establishing itself,—each man comprehending that all negligence in the performance of his duty was prejudicial alike to his colleagues and to himself. The task of superintendence became easy to us ; and we were able thenceforward, without fear of offending any one, to insist on points of detail to which we had hitherto been obliged to shut our eyes."
In 1880, M. Billon wrote to me as follows :—" You ask me my present opinion of the working of participation in our house. I am happy to tell you that this principle continues to work to our entire satisfaction After ten years of experience we congratulate ourselves more and more on having adopted it. Its application has to such a degree become ingrained into our modes of doing business, that we should not know how .to get on without it ; the management of an undertaking appears to us no longer possible without this element of justice, harmony, and peace."
After referring to piece-work, premiums, &c., as all good in their places and measures, M. Billon added :—" These methods are all inadequate to obtain the complete adhesion of the work- man ; it is only by participation in profits, accorded on a suit- able scale, that his interest in the economic side of an under- taking (care of materials, products, &c.) is thoroughly aroused, and that the sentiment of solidarity is developed, and bears its fruits." I ought to add that in the establishment of which M. Billon is the senior managing partner, one-half the workmens'- allotment of profits is compulsorily invested in the gradual purchase of £4 shares in the concern, carrying with them votes at its general meetings.
M. Marquot, junior managing partner of the liaison Leclaire, stated last summer before a French Government Commission :- " We very often have men engaged on work in the country over whom we cannot exercise any kind of superintendence ; and yet we receive nothing but commendation from the persons at whose 440usee we send them to work. We owe this result to participa-
tion, for the workman knows that he has every interest is satisfying the customers, and so ensuring himself work."
M. de Conroy, managing director of one of the largest Parisian insurance companies, told the Commissioners,—" The results have been magnificent for our employes, and they have also been so excellent for the company itself, that I am convinced it has made a good bargain." M. de Courcy also repeated before the Commission a remark he had heard made by M. Gaste, a lithographer in a small way of business, employing only ten or twelve men, for whom he regularly paid 33 per cent. of his annual profits into a provident fund. " I have," said M. Geste: " the air of being very generous. I am not -so. I more than get back the 33 per cent. of profits which I put into the provi dent fund,—in good workmanship, in assiduous labour, in the certainty that I shall not have strikes, in a good choice of work- men—I can always have the best—and in economy of materials and of time."
M. Laroche-Joubert, head of great co-operative paper mills at Angouleme, employing from 1,200 to 1,500 work-people, gave evidence thus :—" The unity of feeling created by participation 'makes all my workmen superintend each other—a superin- tendence far more real than could be that exercised by employes paid the highest wages to overlook without being interested. It is not to be supposed-that the master has, in consequence of adopting participation, given away a part of his profits—not at all ; he has done a very good stroke of business, and this is the fact of which we must try to convince those who are not in favour of the system."
Miss Simcox has explained that the undertaking described by her in the Nineteenth Century not only had to create its own connection, but was under a management entirely unacquainted at the outset with " the nature of business in general, and shirt- making in particular." While, therefore, I admire Miss Sim- cox'sfrankness, and heartily wish that the results attained had been such as worthily to requite her generous and public-spirited devotion, I cannot admit that such shortcomings as there were afford any presumption against introducing profit-sharing with good hope into an already going concern under a manager of business training and experience.—I am, Sir, &c., Trinity College, Cambridge, June 12th. SEDLEY TAYLOR.
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