Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/617

 PROFIT-SHARING AND COOPERA TION S^y

does look forward to a truly democratic organization, though order and system must, of course, still be an essential feature.

Professor Fawcett takes a middle ground, advocating profit- sharing as a transition stage to cooperation. Sjjeaking of the Briggs experiment he says : " In this case it will be again per- ceived that the portion of profits allotted to workmen does not diminish, but, on the contrary, greatly increases, the gain of the employer. From this circumstance it may confidently be hoped that these copartnerships will so rapidly extend as to funda- mentally change the economic relations now existing between

employer and employed Ultimately it may be hoped

that there will be so much moral and social advancement as to enable a perfect union between capital and labor to be estab- lished ; this is secured when laborers supply all the capital which is required to sustain the industry in which they are engaged. When this is accomplished there is cooperation in its highest form."'

Professor Marshall's opinion is substantially the same. There is, he says, " dc facto some sort of profit- and loss-sharing between almost every business and its employes ; and perhaps this is in its very highest form when, without being embodied in a definite con- tract, the solidarity of interests between those who work together in the same business is recognized with cordial generosity as a result of true brotherly feeling. But such cases are not very common ; and, as a rule, the relations between employer and employed are raised to a higher plane both economically and morally by the adoption of the system of profit-sharing, espe- cially when it is regarded as but a step toward the still higher, but much more difficult, level of true cooperation." " In another place, speaking of the future of cooperation, the same author writes: "Enough has been said to show that the world is only just beginning to be ready for the higher work of the coopera- tive movement, and that its many different forms may therefore be reasonably expected to attain a larger success in the future than in the past, and to offer excellent opportunities for work-

' Manual of Political Economy, p. 253. 'Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 755.