BOTH SIDES OF PROFIT-SHARING. 403 



have been had there been no profit-sharing. Students of political 

 economy are familiar with the Ateliers Socialistes of Paris. Many 

 of the smaller enterprises in the same city have also applied the 

 system of profit-sharing with remarkable success, one of the most 

 conspicuous being the Atelier de Broderies of M. Nayrolles. In 

 this establishment the system is carried out among a personnel 

 composed exclusively of women, and with astonishing results 

 both with the quality of the work and the increased wages of the 

 workers. 



A notable scheme, recently tried in England, is that of the South 

 Metropolitan Gas Company of London, as a sequence to the suc- 

 cessful campaign of the dock laborers. The company proposes to 

 pay an annual bonus, based upon a sliding scale and regulated by 

 the price paid for gas by the public. At the present price the 

 bonus would amount to five per cent on the wages of the twelve 

 months ending on the 30th of June. In addition, to give the sys- 

 tem a start, and in order that the workmen shall derive a sub- 

 stantial benefit at once, the bonuses are to be calculated for three 

 years back. The men who have been in the regular employ of the 

 company for the past three years will thus have sums varying 

 from twenty-five to thirty dollars placed to their credit at once. 

 It is stated that if all the workmen take advantage of this offer it 

 will cost the company fully sixty thousand dollars a year, all of 

 which is a clear gain to the men over and above their regular rate 

 of pay. Another late example comes from a factory of wood pulp 

 in Norway, where nearly sixty men are employed. The gross profit 

 of the first year amounted to about seventy thousand dollars, from 

 which three thousand dollars was taken out for interest on the 

 capital, and fifteen thousand dollars for working expenses. The 

 remainder has been distributed to the men, giving them about 

 one hundred and fifty dollars each. Nearly all of them have used 

 the money in making payments on houses for themselves, thus 

 leading to contentment and industry. 



Within the past four years a prominent firm of clothiers in f 

 New York city has declared dividends of three and five per cent 

 on the wages of its employees ; and a leading merchant of Phila- 

 delphia divided $109,439 and $104,345 among his employees in two 

 successive years. After several experiments in other lines, a pub- 

 lishing house in Chicago adopted profit-sharing about fifteen years 

 ago. The house has increased its capital stock more than once ; 

 and many of its men, who were ordinary workmen under the old 

 system, now own their homes and are worth from five thousand 

 to fifty thousand dollars each. In another establishment, also in 

 Chicago, those who had been in the employ of the company for 

 one year or more were informed that if the amount of their sales 

 for six months should exceed the total for the same period of time 



