272 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



master cannot be everywhere. The profit-sharing labourer's eye is 

 there, and in practice serves to supplement the master's. Leaving 

 personal interest and its effect out of account, in every business 

 there is, without further precaution, bound to be not a little waste. 

 " If my workmen would only be careful with those slabs," so 

 John Marshall, a great employer, in Leeds, the material for whose 

 working was stone, remarked to Robert Owen, "they might save 

 me four thousand pounds a year." " Then why on earth do you 

 not offer them two thousand out of it ? ' So Owen promptly and 

 very naturally retorted. And his argument seems unanswerable. 



But, apart from guarding against waste, profit-sharing also makes of 

 the labourer a willing and thinking worker, using his intelligence and 

 judgment, and not grudging extra exertion. It supplies to him an 

 incentive to use those gifts to the best of his power. However, it 

 should, as was observed when I was speaking of produce-sharing, be 

 fully understood that the division of profits netted must apply, not 

 to any one section of the productive apparatus only, but to the entire 

 business, the business as it affects the employer, in order that the 

 interest felt should be common and, so to put it, that every wheel 

 of the composite machine should cog into the other wheels, and so 

 produce perfect action. It is out of the profits as the net result of 

 the entire business that the bonus to labour is to be paid. Levying 

 by sections might damage one set of labourers to the advantage of 

 others. It is the real, final, collective profit that must be taxed. 

 The determining of the profits to be divided and the share falling to 

 the workmen presents in agriculture no serious difficulty. When 

 we raised the question in a general manner at our International 

 Co-operative Congress at Manchester in 1902, I found that the 

 German delegates — representing distinctly the socialist section of 

 their country — opposed, on the ground that in their country they 

 could not trust any (industrial) employer. That irreconcilable 

 feeling does not, happily, prevail in our country, certainly not in 

 agriculture. And we have, also, in this country carried accountancy 

 to a higher point. Nobody would among us distrust the report of 

 a recognised qualified accountant. 



With regard to the distribution of the several shares in the profits 

 allowed and their respective amount, arrangements are adaptable, 

 and may — and, indeed, should — be regulated according to the 

 circumstances of the particular case. The right to claim a share in 

 the profits may well be limited by certain conditions, such as length 

 of employment. Mere casual work may be excluded, as well as novice 

 work. Allotment will generally require to be graduated — it may be 



