PROFITS 



considered 4,646 complaints, of 

 which 3,413 were dismissed, and 

 only 18 cases came before a court 

 of summary jurisdiction, 12 of 

 which succeeded. On the whole, 

 the Acts were mainly useful in- 

 directly by checking excessive 

 prices, which in many instances 

 were due, in part, at least, to the 

 extravagant habits fostered in the 

 public by war conditions. They 

 came to an end on May 19, 1921, 

 but not before important inquiries 

 had been held into the operation 

 of trusts and manufacturing costs, 

 etc. Similar attempts to check 

 profiteering were made in France 

 and Italy. See. Excess Profits ; 

 Forestalling ; Regrating. 



Profits (Lat. profectus, advance 

 or progress). In trade or commerce, 

 the monetary gain derived from 

 the employment of capital in 

 business. The term is also used of 

 the difference between the buying 

 and selling prices of goods, or be- 

 tween the cost of production and 

 the selling price. Gross profits are 

 subject to various deductions be- 

 fore the true or net profits can be 

 ascertained. According to some 

 political economists, e.g. John 

 Stuart Mill, in an advanced state 

 of society profits tend to fall to a 

 minimum, the process being, how- 

 ever, retarded by improved me- 

 thods of production, greater trans- 

 port facilities, the importation of 

 cheap raw material, etc. A pro- 

 longed state of war brings many 

 opportunities of making large pro- 

 fits, and the following depression 

 in trade results in heavy losses 

 to both capital and labour. See 

 Book-keeping ; Capital ; Excess 

 Profits Duty ; Political Economy. 



Profit-sharing. System of 

 industrial management by which 

 the persons engaged in a business 

 or industry receive some propor- 

 tion of its profit according to a pre- 

 arranged scale. In the strict sense, 

 profit-sharing is distinguished from 

 similar schemes of common owner- 

 ship and management by the 

 workers, in that the relative po- 

 sitions of employer and employed 

 are unaffected by the sharing of 

 the surplus ; at the same time 

 profit-sharing is based on a definite 

 agreed scale, part of the under- 

 stood contract between master and 

 worker, and does not include 

 schemes of bonus distribution, 

 beneficent endowments, etc., which 

 are dependent on the goodwill of 

 the employer. 



Mostprofit-sharingschem.es have 

 grown from the idea that the 

 profits of a business will be mate- 

 rially increased if the employees 

 are given a direct interest in avoid- 

 ing waste and in maintaining high 

 standards of efficiency. The first 



6350 



large profit-sharing concern was 

 that of the French house-painter, 

 E. J. Leclaire a801-72), whose 

 business employing 758 men in 

 1870, had 1,277 in 1912, and in 

 that year was distributing a share 

 from total profits of 19 J per cent, 

 on regular wages. In Great Britain 



Crofit-sharing has taken its firmest 

 old in gas-making concerns. In 

 1919 the ministry of labour re- 

 ported on 116 schemes in full 

 operation in the United Kingdom, 

 others projected or lately begun 

 not being reported upon. The 

 total number of persons entitled to 

 share was 80,758, the average per 

 capita bonus amounting to 4 8s. 

 lOd. The total amounts paid in 

 1919 amounted to 400,000. 



Systems of sharing vary widely, 

 and among the difficulties that 

 they have to face are the arrange- 

 ments for meeting a debit balance 

 on the year's trading, change of 

 ownership of businesses, and prob- 

 lems of common management or 

 co-partnership. It has met with 

 comparatively small support from 

 socialist thinkers, because it is re- 

 garded by them as a palliative 

 rather than a cure for deep-rooted 

 evils, leaving the wage system un- 

 touched, and because certain 

 schemes in operation, e.g. that of 

 the Ford motor works, Detroit, 

 have imposed conditions on the 

 private lives of the workers outside 

 the factory. See Co-partnership ; 

 Wages ; consult also Co-partner- 

 ship and Profit-sharing, Aneurin 

 Williams, 1913. 



Profligate, THE. Modern 

 drama by Arthur Pinero. It was 

 produced April 24, 1889, at the 

 Garrick Theatre, London. The 

 first of Sir Arthur Pinero' s plays 

 to deal with sex problems, its most 

 powerful situation is that in 

 which a wife on her honeymoon 

 tour discovers that a girl whom 

 she wishes her husband to befriend 

 has been his mistress. Forbes- 

 Robertson, Kate Rorke, and Olga 

 Nethersole played the leading parts 

 in the piece. 



Prognathism (Gr. pro, bofore ; 

 gnathos, jaw). Term denoting the 

 projection of the upper jaw, es- 

 pecially in man and the anthropoid 

 apes. In one method, a base line 

 being drawn from the forehead to 

 the ''hin-point, the angle formed 

 by the jaw, or maxillary angle, 

 ranges from 160 in Europeans to 

 140 in the Africa* negro. It is 

 110 in orang-utans. The Euro- 

 pean face is called oithogiiathous, 

 the negro prognathous. See An- 

 thropology; Man. 



Prognosis (Gr., foreknowledge). 

 Opinion expressed by a doctor as 

 to the prospect of recovery from a 

 disease. See Medicine. 



PROGRESSION 



Programme (Gr. pro. before; 

 gramma, a writing). Written out- 

 line of items or events in a function 

 or ceremony. The word is generally 

 applied to the list of items in a 

 musical or theatrical entertain- 

 ment. In political usage, it has 

 been extended to mean the details 

 of the policy, which a given party 

 or individual intends to put into 

 practice. 



Programme Music. Name 

 applied to musical compositions 

 which are designed to suggest to 

 the auditor a definite series of 

 events or scenes. This class of 

 composition has reached mature 

 development only in modern 

 times, but early composers fre- 

 quently imitated the songs of 

 birds, battle-cries, etc., to add 

 descriptive force. Beethoven him- 

 self used the notes of the cuckoo 

 in the Pastoral (No. 6) Symphony, 

 and declared that his composition 

 was always based on mental 

 pictures. But the term should be 

 confined to works where the 

 " literary " basis is clearly defined, 

 e.g. the popular Battle of Prague, 

 for piano and strings, by Franz 

 Kotzwara (d. 1791), or on higher 

 planes, Mendelssohn's Midsummer 

 Night Overture, Schumann's Car- 

 nival, many orchestral works of 

 Berlioz, an enthusiast of the pro- 

 gramme in music, Liszt's sym- 

 phonic poems, Saint Saens's Danse 

 Macabre, Richard Strauss's Don 

 Quixote. See Leit Motiv. 



Progress and Poverty. Work 

 on social philosophy by Henry 

 George (q.v. ), further described as 

 An Inquiry into the Cause of 

 Industrial Depressions and of the 

 Increase of Want with the In- 

 crease of Wealth, the Remedy. 

 Published in 1879, it finds the 

 principal cause of poverty and 

 wretchedness in the private owner- 

 ship of land, and advocates a 

 single tax on the use of land as 

 the remedy. See Single Tax. 



Progression. In mathematics, 

 the name given to a particular kind 

 of series. Arithmetical progression 

 is a series in which the difference 

 between one term and the previous 

 one is constant. In a geometrical 

 progression each term is a constant 

 multiple of the previous term. 

 See Series. 



Progression. In music, the 

 movement of one part of a com- 

 position towards the succeeding 

 part. In the most elementary 

 sense it denotes the motion of each 

 note to the next ; in a more ad- 

 vanced sense it means the motion 

 of a set of notes (i.e. a chord) to 

 the following set ; in a still higher 

 sense it is used to describe the 

 movement of music from one point 

 to another, especially in connexion 



