Profit Sharing. 



35 



charged against the above account. Against this account also any 

 employee may obtain a loan not exceeding the amount of his credit by 

 giving good security 



Neither of these laws impairs the right of the house to discharge an 

 employee for any cause or reason, or the right of the employee to quit 

 at any time and for any cause or reason. 



It is evident, from the instances given above, that there are three 

 general types of co-operation, or profit-sharing, in manufacturing. 

 The first of these is strictly co-operative, no wages being paid, the 

 gross profits being divided upon some agreed plan between proprietors 

 and employees. The result of this plan has almost invariably been 

 failure. Employees like to share in the profits, but they want a cer- 

 tainty of weekly or monthly wages as a basis. The second plan is to 

 have the employees hold stock, and receive the same wages that are 

 paid in non-co-operative institutions for the same work. This plan 

 has obvious advantages over the first and has been successfully carried 

 out in numerous instances. The stock owned by the employees was 

 in some cases purchased outright; in others paid for gradually out of 

 weekly earnings; and in others acquired by the application of profits 

 voluntarily assigned to them by employers. The third plan is to 

 divide among employees a certain percentage of the profits in propor- 

 tion to the wages earned. This is the simplest plan and the one more 

 generally adopted. It enables employers to retain full and un- 

 questioned control of their business, and when carried out in good 

 faith assures a division of actual profits between the labor and capital 

 employed. Substantially, this plan is in operation in many estab- 

 lishments in this country and Europe, although no two of them, 

 perhaps, are precisely alike. As such an agreement would necessarily 

 be terminated if a strike occurred, strikes are rarely indulged 

 in; and as the employees are vitally interested in making 

 the profits as large as possible, they work with greater care 

 and cheerfulness. Some employers who have adopted this plan 

 claim that their profits are increased instead of diminished by 

 the division of profits, owing to the better quality and amount of 

 work secured. No one plan, however, can be successfully 

 applied to all kinds of manufacturing business. Whoever earnestly 

 desires to carry out, in whole or part, the principle of co-operation, or 

 profit-sharing, can, with the suggestions made, find a way to do it, 

 and, if he is not discouraged by the difficulties almost sure to be 

 encountered, it will probably be a success in the end. If every fac- 

 tory were organized under the profit-sharing method, there would be 



