Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/431

 REVIEWS 417

more valuable result, that of familiarizing the public with such move- ments, and of emphasing their importance, will be attained.

Welfare institutions are divided into two groups : one, in which the dividend to labor is paid in cash ; the other, in which it is paid in less tangible forms, and less under the control of the employe". However, it is only the manner of the expenditure of the dividend that is more within the control of the employe. He may not have as much voice in the conduct of the enterprise and its allied institutions as in the case of the indirect dividend. The author's main contention, so far as he has a thesis, is that the direct dividend is the most equitable, most reasonable, and most satisfactory form of the relation between the employer and the employed, and that it is the ultimate form of the wage system. While this thesis is not demonstrated, a more important tendency is clearly indicated. The greatest service that such presen- tations as the Dividend to Labor can do is to reveal clearly this tend- ency to the public and demonstrate its justice. While a less definite solution of the industrial problem than profit-sharing, and one capable of gradual application only, it is one more equitable, more feasible, and one promising greater permanency. This tendency is the growing recognition of some right of the laborer in the total product of his labor beyond that given in a simple wage ; at least when that labor results in the upbuilding of a great institution in addition to the tan- gible output of a day's exertion. It is a recognition that the manual laborer has a " good will " which should be recognized quite as well as that of his employer. All such forms of welfare institutions as described by Mr. Oilman are recognitions that the employe has a legiti- mate interest in the enterprise his labor has helped to create beyond that which a daily wage satisfies. Nothing short of this recognition will fully satisfy the demands that labor, organized and unorganized, is making. To many it seems that the granting of any such right will constitute socialism. The greatest service that any investigation of welfare institutions could perform would be to demonstrate that the consideration now given as a privilege could be established as a right. Profit-sharing, whether as a general type of social organization or as a specific remedy, stands not on the right of the employe", but on the inter- est of the employer. But theories and experiments which consider the laborer as the ward of his employer, and are not based on his right as a man, are but temporary expedients, and in the United States have not proved to be even that. Only so far as profit-sharing indicates a regard for this more fundamental principle, and also reveals a commendable