PROFIT-SHARING AND COOPERATION.

Evening Star, Issue 9831, 21 October 1895, Page 3

PROFIT-SHARING AND COOPERATION.

The second session of the International Co-operative Congress opened in London on August 20, when the Hon. T. A. Brassey read a paper on ‘ Co-operative Production and Profit-sharing.’ He said that a certain school of co-operators seemed to think that co-operative principles had found their fullest development in the store, and that they could not bo applied to a solution of the new problems with which they were face to face to-day. None of the ways in which co-operators could use the large accumulations of capital at their command were better than those of assisting in the application of co-operative principles to production. Co-operative production implied labor co-partnership, and labor co-partner-ship could only be said to exist in those workshops or industrial undertakings where (1) a definite and fixed share of profits was allotted to labor over and above the established or current rale of wages; (2) arrangements wore made for the worker to capitalise all or part of this profit or other savings in his industry ; (3) through this capital the worker was admitted to membership, and had a vote at the business meetings of the shareholders. In the United Kingdom the earlier experiments in co-operative production, or labor co-partnership, were in many cases discouraging ; aud it was many years before the Rochdale I’ioneers showed how co-opera-tive principles might be successfully applied to distribution. There were in 1894 120 societies, with a share capital of £799,460, doing a turn-over of £1,371,424, showing a profit of £68,987, and giving as a share of profit to their workers £8,7ul over and above their wages. The returns for the first half of the current year showed a most encouraging improvement. And the principle was extending to all trades. There was a third aspect of co-operative production which it would certainly be well for the members of this Congress to consider. In England, as in all the civilised countries of the world, what was generally known as the labor problem had occupied of late a large and e.ver-increasing share of public attention. The workers had become better organised. All had demanded an increasing share of the product of their labors, some had claimed to control the means of production. These demands had been often met by a determined resistance on the part of tiie employers, who had learnt from their workers the need of organisation. The result had been that in the past few years there had been a large number of industrial disputes, far more wasteful and far wider in their effects than such disputes were in the days when neither party was so well organised. Many remedies had been tried, many remedies had been suggested, the chief of which were sliding scales, arbitration, conciliation boards, Slate-appointed boards of arbitration, direct employment of labor by municipal authorities or by the State. Much trouble had undoubtedly been averted by sliding scales, by arbitration, aud by boards of conciliation, on which employers and employed met face to face. But the sliding scale does not work well when prices arc falling. Might they not turn with greater hope for the solution of this great problem to the movement in the direction of co-partnership and profit-sharing’; There was a tendency on the part of the English Wholesale Society to refuse this principle ; but when it followed tho example of tbo Wholesale Society of Scotland a revolution on peaceful lines would be in a fair way of being affected in thoir industrial system. Mr Charles Robert moved—-** That this Congress, being strongly convinced that no satisfactory and permanent settlement of the relative positions of Capital and Labor is practicable without the admission of the workmen to share in the profits over and beyond the ordinary wages, and that such admission is possible alike to employers and employed, urge the adoption of the practice indicated, and desire to put on record that fidelity to the co-operative principle requires all co-operative associations employing labor to assign to their workmen a fair share in the profits.” Mr Nelson (St. Louis) thought that something better than buying men’s time and employment like a piece of dry goods should be adopted. He wanted to see tho time when labor should obtain the whole of its product. Mr Livesey (gasworks manager) said he began to introduce this system twenty years ago, when the consumers and shareholders were brought into connection by means of the sliding seale, which lowered the dividend when the price of gas rose. But there was another partner, tho employes who ought to come into the partnership, and ho held that this was the ultimate aim of co-opera-tors.

Mr Bryce, M.P., said that co-operation was the common ground on which social and economic questions met. In a great many cases co-operative production had not succeeded. They ought to try to eliminate these failures, and to study the cases which had been successful. The resolution was carried unanimously, after which a resolution declaring the desirability of workmen in co-operative concerns allowing part of ’ their profits to accumulate as capital was carried.