LABOUR 273 



according to length of employment ; it certainly ought to be according 

 to the relative value of service given, the more valuable employee, 

 with greater responsibility and larger power of influence on the result, 

 being allowed a more substantial share than the ordinary labourer. 

 However, whatever the arrangement is, it wants to be fixed definitely 

 beforehand as a standing, binding agreement, entitling the worker 

 to his share as a matter of right, not of favour. 



Apprehension has been expressed that workers, once admitted to 

 a share in the profits, will necessarily experience disappointment 

 when the year's business closes without any profits to share, and 

 will, in consequence, grow sulky and refractory. Cases of the kind 

 have, indeed, occurred. But they have been only rare. And when 

 they have occurred, the employer has suffered no loss — except the 

 foregoing of future profit-sharing. Such cases may have been due 

 to faults in the management, or else to undue riskiness of the 

 business. On this point the evidence of Sir Hereward Wake, 

 reported to the latest Royal Commission on Agriculture, may be 

 quoted, though not going nearly as far as that of industrial employers 

 in whose establishments profit-sharing has been much longer prac- 

 tised. " Most satisfactory," is Sir Hereward's judgment generally. 

 " On the two occasions any profit has been made all the hands were 

 much pleased and appeared stimulated in their work. The more 

 intelligent men are not discouraged by a bad year, such as that of 

 1910 — 1911. My relations with my employees have always been 

 most harmonious, our mutual object being to make all the land I 

 work (1,130 acres) as productive as possible." 



A very risky business, on the face of it, does not lend itself over 

 well to profit-sharing. In general, however, workers have shown 

 themselves distinctly reasonable, once proper methods were adopted 

 actually to establish the result of the year's trading. Such calcu- 

 lation now presents no serious difficulty. Accountancy has been 

 carried to a high point, and confidence in it is well established. In 

 well-managed businesses profits, when occurring, have been gladly 

 accepted, and no complaints have been made about their absence 

 when times were less favourable, the workers understanding that 

 the employer was in precisely the same case as themselves. The 

 account rendered by a trusted expert has banished all suspicion of 

 profiteering at their expense. 



Worked on these lines, profit-sharing has been found exceedingly 

 useful in industrial occupations, in which, of course, its combination 

 with co-partnership resulting is not only desirable, but also easily 

 practicable. Co-partnership heightens the interest evoked still 



R.B. t 



