A PROFIT-SHARING SCHEME
[To the Edit(); of the SPECTATOR.] SIII,—I am sending you the enclosed Report of the payment of bonus for the thirty-fifth successive year under a scheme of profit-sharing inaugurated in 1890. It is not an important matter, but at some angle it may interest you.
Induitrial strife is obnoxious and harmful in every way, but especially because large masses of people suffer who have nothing to do with the matter at issue. Profit-sharing has for many years been my ideal, for at any rate helping to secure industrial peace, and when an opportunity came for introducing it I seized it. Anybody may condemn ours or any other profit-sharing_ scheme and point out endless defects—chiefly, I venture to say, because the critic himself is ignorant of the facts and circumstances of the particular case. All businesses differ. There is no really precise and common ideal to be followed in every jot and tittle. Our scheme suits our business. It has worked, and, after all, that is the main thing. Nothing about it was lawyer-made, but it has hitherto been found lawyer-proof. " The law that's best administered is best," and that is probably the strongest point about our scheme. I enclose copy of our scheme incorporated with the present rules of the Superannuation Fund.—I am, Sir, &c., Messrs. Clarke, Nicholls & Combs, Ltd., Victoria Park, E. 9.
G. MATHIESON.
[We cannot accept Mr. Mathieson's modest statement that the matter is not important. He and his colleagues have done a fine work in so Managing their-business that under the schemes which they devised they have paid since 1890 over 000,000, in bonuses to their workers, an addition, of about 20 per cent. to wages, besides provident benefits on a generous scale. The articles of the scheme boldly proclaim the hope of the directors that " the employees may in process of time become owners of the Company's undertaking."—En. Spectator.]
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