PROCTOR 



4S32 



PROGRESSIVE PARTY 



her of several learned societies and is a fre- 

 quent contributor to magazines. Her writings 

 include Stories of Starland ; Giant Sun, His 

 Family; and Half Hours with the Summer 

 Stars. See PROCTOR, RICHARD ANTHONY. 



PROCTOR, RICHARD ANTHONY (1837-1888), 

 an English astronomer who did much to in- 

 crease the general knowledge of astronomy by 

 writing in a popular manner on a great variety 

 of astronomical subjects. He was born at Chel- 

 sea, and on the death of his father his mother 

 undertook his education at home, on account 

 of his delicate health. However, he graduated 

 with honors from Saint John's College, Cam- 

 bridge, and turned his attention to astronomy 

 and authorship, which he unfortunately found 

 at first to be anything but a lucrative profes- 

 sion. The general public was difficult to inter- 

 est and his works were hard to sell. The fail- 

 ure of a bank left him dependent on the sale of 

 his works. Although disappointed and inclined 

 to adopt any other kind of labor which would 

 ensure him a livelihood, he found that by 

 changing his style and writing in a more popu- 

 lar vein the sale of his books greatly increased. 

 His Handbook of the Stars was privately 

 printed, and sold fairly well; his Half Hours 

 with the Telescope brought him $125 a small 

 sum for a book that reached its twenty-sixth 

 edition. He became a regular contributor to 

 scientific periodicals, took pupils in mathemat- 

 ics and held the position of mathematical coach 

 for Woolwich and Sandhurst. He was a popu- 

 lar lecturer on astronomy in England, America 

 and Australia, and contributed no fewer than 

 eighty-three papers to the Monthly Notices of 

 the Royal Astronomical Society, of which he 

 was elected a member in 1866 and became hon- 

 orary secretary in 1872. He was the author of 

 the articles on astronomy in the American En- 

 cyclopaedia and also the Encyclopaedia Britan*- 

 nica. 



Proctor settled in America in 1881, where he 

 remained until his death. His memory was 

 honored by the erection of an observatory near 

 San Diego, Cal. (See biography of his daugh- 

 ter, above.) 



PROF 'IT, a gain resulting from employment 

 of capital or from any commercial transaction. 

 Roughly illustrating what profit is, it may be 

 said that if a certain article costs the producer 

 fifty cents and he sells it for seventy-five cents, 

 he has made a profit of twenty-five cents. That, 

 however, while apparently true, is not a relia- 

 ble way of measuring profit, as over and above 

 cost of production nearly always there are other 



charges which must be deducted from the profit, 

 among these being rent, light, taxes, etc. What- 

 ever accrues to a business above raw material, 

 interest on capital invested, depreciation, rent, 

 wages and marketing expense, may be consid- 

 ered as profit. The cost of production must 

 therefore embrace all charges against the busi- 

 ness until such articles as it manufactures are 

 actually sold. The rate or percentage of profit 

 is the proportion of the amount gained to the 

 amount of capital invested. 



PROFIT SHARING, a system by which em- 

 ployees are given a share in the profits of a 

 firm, in addition to their regular wage. It may 

 take the form of a cash payment made at the 

 end of the year, of shares of stock in the busi- 

 ness, or of a savings or an insurance fund from 

 which the workingman is given a pension in his 

 old age or his family a payment in case of his 

 death. 



The first notable experiment in profit sharing 

 was made in 1842, in Paris, by a house painter 

 named Le Claire, who found that the policy 

 had the effect of increasing the remuneration 

 of both employee and employer through the 

 better quality and greater amount of work ac- 

 complished. The method has since been widely 

 adopted in England, France and America, and 

 in most cases it has proven very successful. 

 Among the American firms which have this 

 plan in operation are Proctor & Gamble, of 

 Cincinnati, the United States Steel Corpora- 

 tion and the Ford Motor Works of Detroit. 



The advocates of profit sharing claim that it 

 insures justice for both capital and labor, each 

 receiving more under the efficiency which the 

 system encourages, and that it lessens indus- 

 trial unrest by harmonizing the interests of 

 both classes. Labor leaders profess to see in it, 

 however, only a substitute for real reform, and 

 contend that it hinders the good that should 

 be accomplished through trade unions, stimu- 

 lating the laborers to greater production and 

 then giving them only a portion of the results. 

 They object to its likeness to philanthropy, 

 and greatly prefer that a higher wage be regu- 

 larly paid and the wage earner be left to make 

 his own disposal of the increase. 



Consult Fay's Copartnership in Industry; Wil- 

 liams' Copartnership and Profit Sharing. 



PROGRESSIVE, progres'iv, PARTY, a po- 

 litical party in the United States, organized 

 in 1912. It represented the culmination of a 

 liberalizing movement in the Republican party 

 which had been gathering force for two dec- 

 ades. During the Presidential administration 



