Profit-Sharing in Agriculture. 
785 
the manager, and the son and brother of other employes on the 
farm — to keep the books of the farm, and to draw up the annual 
balance-sheets, is accepted by them as perfect and sufficient 
security that their interests are properly safe-guarded. 
I pay them the current wages of the market, and reserve to 
myself the right to withhold from them the bonus in the event 
! of misconduct, and to dismiss them from the farm at the end of 
every year. I have informed them that this is a right which 
I will unsparingly exercise whenever I am convinced that any 
of the hands have, by misconduct, or by careless and slovenly 
work, proved themselves undeserving of the privileges which 
are only intended for those who show by their conduct that 
they are worthy to possess them. 
The working of this experiment has been so satisfactory 
that I have added to East Learmouth the adjoining farm of 
West Learmouth, with an area of 942 acres ; and from May 1 2 
last these combined farms have been worked as one undertaking. 
It should be added that if the gross profits for any on.e year 
should fail to pay rent and interest on capital, the deficit m\ist 
be made good out of the net profits of succeeding years before 
' any bonus can be distributed. 
I It now remains to explain shortly the d jmori reasons why, 
I even if there were no reassuring examples, such as those to 
i which I have referred, it is desirable that landowners and 
! farmers should apply the profit-sharing principle to the cultiva- 
' tion of their farms. Its great virtue consists in this, that it 
utilises a valuable waste human product, which in that part 
of England with which I am best acquainted is at present abso- 
lutely lost. 
It was well said by Mr. Marshall, in his inaugural addiess 
at the Co-operative Congress at Ipswich in 1887, that great as 
were the fortunes which had been realised out of the waste 
products of gas-works and soda-works, in the world's history 
there had been one waste product so much more important than 
all the others, that it had the right to be called the waste pro- 
duct. He was referring to the unused abilities of the working- 
classes — to the latent, undeveloped, choked-up, and wasted 
faculties for better work, which lie dormant and unused for lack 
of opportunity, or of interest to awaken them and bring them 
into life. 
Those who are conversant with the inner life of the North- 
umbrian hind are aware that one most unfortunate result of 
the yearly labour contracts which obtain in Northumberland is 
that the great majority of the agricultural labourers take no inter- 
est in the business of their lives. Their only object when 
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