Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/705

Rh to be a deficit. The employés of all departments voluntarily agreed to a cut of 25 per cent, on wages, they to be recouped when business permitted. This was done at the end of the year, the condition of the business allowing even a small interest on capital. The following year the men agreed, again voluntarily, to work ten hours a day instead of nine. "The company believes that the hourly return for nine hours is greater than the hourly return for ten, but in the aggregate more work will be done in ten hours than in nine." These two years were a severe test, but resulted in a proof of the feasibility, of the plan.

Mr. Nelson is a believer in cooperation as a status to be reached through profit sharing. In this his hopes have not been realized. Though of the five hundred of his employés, all who have been with him for ten months, who participate in the division of the bonus, about four hundred are also holders of stock. A recent attempt at an innovation resulted in so much misunderstanding in the newspaper accounts that the company's statement is essential to a correct estimate of the experiment: