Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/435

Rh have been had there been no profit-sharing. Students of political economy are familiar with the Ateliers Socialistes of Paris, Many of the smaller enterprises in the same city have also applied the system of profit-sharing with remarkable success, one of the most conspicuous being the Atelier de Broderies of M. Nayrolles. In this establishment the system is carried out among a personnel composed exclusively of women, and with astonishing results both with the quality of the work and the increased wages of the workers.

A notable scheme, recently tried in England, is that of the South Metropolitan Gas Company of London, as a sequence to the successful campaign of the dock laborers. The company proposes to pay an annual bonus, based upon a sliding scale and regulated by the price paid for gas by the public. At the present price the bonus would amount to five per cent on the wages of the twelve months ending on the 30th of June. In addition, to give the system a start, and in order that the workmen shall derive a substantial benefit at once, the bonuses are to be calculated for three years back. The men who have been in the regular employ of the company for the past three years will thus have sums varying from twenty-five to thirty dollars placed to their credit at once. It is stated that if all the workmen take advantage of this offer it will cost the company fully sixty thousand dollars a year, all of which is a clear gain to the men over and above their regular rate of pay. Another late example comes from a factory of wood pulp in Norway, where nearly sixty men are employed. The gross profit of the first year amounted to about seventy thousand dollars, from which three thousand dollars was taken out for interest on the capital, and fifteen thousand dollars for working expenses. The remainder has been distributed to the men, giving them about one hundred and fifty dollars each. Nearly all of them have used the money in making payments on houses for themselves, thus leading to contentment and industry.

Within the past four years a prominent firm of clothiers in New York city has declared dividends of three and five per cent on the wages of its employees; and a leading merchant of Philadelphia divided $109,439 and $104,345 among his employees in two successive years. After several experiments in other lines, a publishing house in Chicago adopted profit-sharing about fifteen years ago. The house has increased its capital stock more than once; and many of its men, who were ordinary workmen under the old system, now own their homes and are worth from five thousand to fifty thousand dollars each. In another establishment, also in Chicago, those who had been in the employ of the company for one year or more were informed that if the amount of their sales for six months should exceed the total for the same period of time