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conceptions abont wliat Profit-sharing means current in the 

 world — as is, to quote one instance, shown by the late 

 Lord Goschen, who ought to have known better, denouncing 

 it with indignation as " a socialist abomination " (when 

 in truth it is rather anti-socialist in its tendenc}^) — that a 

 word or two respecting its meaning may be in place. Profit- 

 sharing means' that a well-defined share, fixed beforehand, 

 of the net profit resulting in an enterprise as a whole shall 

 be handed over to the workmen employed, over and above 

 their ordinary wages. The wages should be fixed to start 

 with and should be of the ordinary level. For Profit-sharing 

 is not designed as a substitute for part of them — as you 

 place a traveller on fixed pay and on commission — but as 

 an inducement for work of head, hand and eye beyond that 

 which is paid for in the regular wage. The labourer should 

 receive his honest pay first. Profit-sharing pays well. " You 

 see me a wealthy man," so observed to me, more than twenty 

 years ago, M. Gofftnon, a notable industrial profit-sharer 

 in Paris. " Well, it is profit-sharing which has made me 

 so." And his workers — in the well-known establishment 

 of MM. Tassart, Balas et Barbas — were satisfied also. They 

 had profited as well as he. " If my workmen would only 

 be thoroughly careful in the handhng of slabs," so remarked 

 a large employer using stone slabs to the late G. J. Holy- 

 oake, " they might save me £4,000 a year which now goes 

 in breakages." " Then why do you not oft'er them £2,000 

 out of it ? " was Mr. Holyoake's reply. ^ There is a great 

 deal — in Agriculture, perhaps more than in any other 

 calling — that extra exertion of intelligence, of vigilance 

 and carefulness will effect. That is worth buying. The 

 main object of profit-sharing of course is to be found in a 

 loftier sphere. Profit-sharing is to raise the workman to a 

 higher level, by making of him to some extent a fully 

 interested self-employer. In the last talk which I had 

 with our great profit-sharer, the late Sir George Livesey, 

 shortly before his death, that gentleman remarked to me 

 that he would not now approve of any scheme of profit- 



^ The late Earl Grey, who was a thorough profit- sharer, was greatly 

 struck with this argument. 



