Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/434

402 of disputes should reflect that the same definition is not given to the words "reasonable" and "equitable" by either the labor unions or the employers. Each side has its own definition, and until that is known everything is uncertain. Neither side would consent to have a course dictated by any form of official authority, because everybody knows his own business best. No rational man can believe that any large business can be conducted upon lines laid down by outsiders. Much less can he believe that workmen can be forced to respect the decision of an official board when they do not cordially accept that decision.

The fatal defect in treating the labor problem thus far has been the stress laid upon the change of method, when the needful thing is a change of spirit in both parties to the controversy. The friction has a moral cause that is common to both, and it will continue as long as mere gain is held to be the measure of success. It can not be stopped by any mechanical contrivance of system or method. But when success and use are made synonymous, the friction will yield, because the moral and sympathetic forces have begun to work upon a higher plane. This idea was well expressed about fifty years ago in Boston, when the Rev. Dr. Channing delivered a course of lectures on The Elevation of the Working Classes. In one of them he said: "There is but one elevation for a laborer and for all other men. There are not different kinds of dignity for different orders of men, but one and the same for all. The only elevation of a human being consists in the exercise, growth, and energy of the higher principles and powers of his soul. A bird may be shot upward to the skies by a foreign power; but it rises, in the true sense of the word, only when it spreads its own wings and soars by its own living power. So a man may be thrust upward into a conspicuous place by outward accidents, but he rises only in so far as he exerts himself and expands his best faculties; and he ascends by a free effort to a nobler region of thought and action. Such is the elevation I desire for the laborer, and I desire no other."

There seems to be but one practicable method of reaching this elevation, and even that method is practicable only within certain limits. Profit-sharing or wage-sharing maybe that method, if the respective shares due to employer and employee can be adjusted equitably. The method has been tried with success in several branches of productive industry.

In 1844 the Paris and Orleans Railway Company adopted the principle. Between 1844 and 1882 about twelve million dollars were distributed as profit dividends among the employees, while the wages paid to them were equal to those paid by roads that gave their employees no share in the profits; and, at the same time, the dividends to the stockholders were as large as they would