Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/436

404 in the previous year, they would be allowed a commission on the excess. The commission averaged two and a half per cent. The employees at once increased their efforts to sell; and when the first distribution was made, last July, it was found that several of the girls had drawn nearly one hundred dollars as their share of the profits for six months.

The Bodwell Granite Quarry, in Maine, adopted the profit-sharing system in the year 1885. As a result, the output of the works has increased, and the employees are sober, contented, and industrious. The arrangement is this: Ten per cent of the profits is laid aside every year. The remaining profits are divided equally between the employer, the men, and a contingent fund. When the latter reaches more than one per cent of the loss in any one year, the surplus of the fund is divided equally between the employers and the men. It is not probable that there could be losses larger than the contingent fund, unless the business were very poorly managed, or unless a financial crisis came over the whole country.

The largest manufacturer of felt shoes in the United States, after experiment with several forms of profit-sharing, has recently formulated rules and regulations for the just distribution of the net earnings among his employees. There are to be three classes for this distribution: first, pension; second, life insurance; third, endowment. The share of the net earnings to be set aside every year shall be calculated upon the positive results of the records of the actual work done by the employees. Against this distribution account the amounts paid for life insurance, under the provisions of the insurance law, and the amount necessary to maintain the pension fund are to be considered fixed charges. As soon as the workman is made a partner in the business, so that a loss to his employer is a loss to him, it will make him more careful of his time. He will see that his fellow-workman performs his duty, and that there is no waste by any one. Such an arrangement is profitable to the employer in the end, because every man in his employ will have some incentive to work. The employer thus guarantees extra pay to the employed.

But can any one guarantee to the employer that every year will be a profitable one? And if there are losses, who shall make them up? Shall the employers make them up by themselves, or shall the men, having once been taken into a partnership upon the profits, still continue that partnership by making up their share of the losses? There are many employed men who are the owners, or the partial owners, of their homes. They would gladly enter into an arrangement for the division of the profits, but they would hesitate to mortgage their homes as security for their proportion of the losses in a bad year. Other employees could offer