Profit-Sharing in Agriculture. 
793 
that his status is improved, and as a conseqiience his labour is in- 
vested with an attraction it did not formerly possess. 
Neither can it be doubted that the knowledge that he and 
his fellow-workers will share the benefit which the farm may- 
derive from his forethought, his energy, and his skill helps to 
lift from off his work some of the burden which weighed it down 
when he reflected that, however well and efficiently he might 
serve his employer, no benefit would accrue to his fellow-workers 
or himself. 
In short, where the profit-sharing principle is successfully 
applied, it lightens the task, it increases the wage, it gives 
hope, it stimulates the faculties, and it frees the worker from that 
paralysing atrophy which sooner or later asserts its sway over 
men who have no interest in the produce of their industry, and 
to escape from the fatal influence of which so tnany of the best 
of the young hinds are leaving agriculture for the towns. 
And if the profit-sharing system helps, by increasing the 
efficiency of agricultural labour, to increase the gross produce 
and the net profits of the farm ; if, further, it tends to impress the 
agricultural labourer with a greater sense of the duties and re- 
sponsibilities of citizenship by making him realise more vividly 
his position as a ratepayer ; if, too, it helps to reconcile the agri- 
cultural labourer to his life, and thus do something, however little, 
to check the growing desire for employment in the towns, who 
can measure the extent and volume of the benefit which the 
State will derive from an enlarged application of the profit- 
sharing principle to the agriculture cf this country ? 
I am aware that the form in which the profit-sharing prin- 
ciple is applied to the farms which have been the subjects of my 
reference is not the highest nor the final form. We may hope 
that the day will come when the labourers will be not only 
partners in the profits, but partners in the management — when 
bodies of associated agi-icultural labourers will be the owners of 
the land on which they work and of the capital which gives 
them employment. But Natura non facit saltum : we go most 
quickly along the road of progress by being content to make 
sure of one step at a time. The first step forwards from the 
present state of things is to invite labour to a partnership in the 
profits. When the right time comes, labour will be admitted 
to a partnership in the management as well. 
Albert Grey. 
