A Novel Profit-sharing Experiment.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 957, 4 July 1890, Page 9

A Novel Profit-sharing Experiment.

(>‘ OTriNGHAM Daily Express ) Mr Samuel J Capper has published an interesting letter on what he deems ‘the only solution of the labour question.’ Mr Capper wrote from Mecklinburg, where he was the guest of Baron Anton von Blucher. The baron belongs to the Bame family from which famous old * Marshal Vorwaerts ’ sprang, and he lives on his estate like a patriarch whom the acoident of birth has imbued with modern ideas. To Baron von Blucher, as he one day was pondering on the intricaoies of the labour question, there occurred a plan, which he promptly put into practice. Profit-sharing is no new thing, and has been tried both in England and Francs in manufactories, workshops, and great printing houses, but never so far as we know in the oase of a great landowner and his peasantry. On the baron’s estate there is a village of 309 inhabitants, the men of which are employed as labourers. He placed a moderate estimate on the value of his estate, and upon that four par cent, at the end of the year is reasoned as a first charge due to capital. But on any profit beyond that, six per cent, is allotted to the labourers, and shared among them at the end of each ten years. If any man leave the estate he is paid In a lump sum the amount that may have aocrued to him. The soheme it will be seen is, so far, one of ingenious co-operation. The market price of labour is paid of course In addition to the profit-shariog in the annual produce of the eslat9. In Mecklenburg, the wages of a labourer, Mr Capper informs us, are Is. Bd. a day, but only 6d. of this is paid in actual cash ; the rest is taken oat in corn, firewood, a house, allotment of ground for own use, tighfcsof pasturage, aud similar valuable concessions, VT., .

In Mr Capper’s letter we have a picturesque glimpse of existence under this amiable system of co-operation between the lord of the laud and the peasant tenantry. In all difficulties, when a child is ill or a oowloat, the peasants turn to the baron for help and advioe. The picture is delightfully rose-coloured, but Mr Capper beheld with enthusiasm, working without hitch or hindrance, the system which this kindly German aristocrat organisedfor the well-being of his dependants. That such a plan, if extended in every possible direction, would greatly improve the position of the labouring classes there oan be no doubt. It insures a share in the profits over four per oent.; but what about the loss when the yearly balanoe may show a deficit ? In England, if farming were conducted on this principle, it is true that there might be, under present conditions, little or no profits to be divided amongst the labourers. But if such asystem had been practised generally in those halcyon days when farming was a lucrative occupation we might have been spared much of tfie discontent that finally blossomed into agricultural riots, with burning ricks to give a lurid colour to a period which is now only a painful episode in history. Co-operation in England was only thought of when it was too late. When the history of the great struggle between capital and labour is written, we fear the historian of the future wili show how the workers forced the capitalists to give them the rigatß they have now acquired, or are destined to obtain in the future. They were never granted without a struggle, but of whioh bitter heartburnings have resulted. Had all employers of labour in Germany been animated by the same sense of justice as Baron Blucher, we do not think somany working men there would have embraced extreme Socialism as the new reiiglOu of the poor.