Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. THURSDAY, MARCH, 11, 1909 PROFIT SHARING.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4384, 11 March 1909, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. THURSDAY, MARCH, 11, 1909 PROFIT SHARING.

To us in the Dominion, whose labour legislation has recently been put to , such a severe test, and been found wanting, no problem can be of much g eater interest than the question as to h ,w the relations of labour and capital are to be adjusted. Legislation is after all, even at best, more an engine of increasingly bitter class warfare lhan the blessed means of reconciliation it was hoped it would prove to be. As we have beheld its operations in New Zealand ithasappeared chiefly as an appliance whereby the employee has, in a delighted, irresponsible rebound from the conditions which made it j imperative for his father to rear a family on ten to fifteen shillings per week, gone on pursuing his very patent advantage without regard to the consequent innutrition of the goose which was laying the golden egg, until the goose has fallen into a rather bad way, and, even to the most superficial observer this is a slate of things which demands readjustment. Whether such readjustment is to be sought, with any prospect of being found, along the lines of further legislation, is a question for the savants to decide. 0 le thing is clear, namely that the advance which has been realized in our fair Dominion, by the workers, advance in the material conditions of life, and in education and general intelligence, the advance we say, which has been realized by him as compared with his forbears is a thing to be maintained, for the greater good of every other class which goes to compose society, equally as well as for his own benefit.

But in the meantima how is that daily accentuated, divergence between labour and capital, which from time to time imposes upon our great productive enterprise a most wasteful arrest, and which usually leaves the worker gleefully rejoicing over another golden egg, and the goose a little more unequal to keeping up the record, how is that divergence to.be altered into a decided and daily in creasing consolidation of interests between employer and employee. Legislation appears to possess but scant power to solve the problem, it concerns itself with the superficial details of the awarding of wages and fixing of hours to be left off at, and the very necessary provisions of decent conditions in workrooms and factories; and stands a confessed failure before the vital and fundamental difficulty as to how master and man are to be united in a common interest, and made to work for a common end, the end of a common, a really palpably common profit. And in the meantime socialists of the rabid order are sowing the minds the workers with extravagant and danger-breeding ideas as to the solution of this class problem, and stirring up a hatred which is the more dangerous because it finds in the abuses of capital a good deal of bitter food. We confess that, one of the most promising, because one of the most radical proposals for the solution is that offered by Mr Carnegie’s new book “ Problems of To-Day ” in which the principle of (i.e., the almost entire displacement of the wage system by the sharing of the profits of the business) profit-sharing is set forth as the final goal at which the worker is to aim, and the path to which is already opened up in those businesses in which “ community of interest between employers and employed is recognized.” Mr Carnegie says “In the future labour is to rise still higher. The jointstock form opens the door to the participation of labour as a shareholder in every branch of business In this the writer believes, lies the final and enduring solution of the labour question. The Carnegie Steel Company made a beginning by making from time to time forty odd ym 1 g partners Only one was related to the original partners, but all were selected upon their proved merits aPer long service. None contributed a penny. Their notes were accepted, payable only out of the profits of the business. Great care was taken to admit workers out of the mechanical department, which had hitherto been neglected by employers. The first time a superintendent was made a partner it attracted attention, but as we kept on admitting men who had risen from the ranks of mechanics we found it more and more advantageous. The superintendents now sat in conference at the board with the managers in the office. From this policy sprang the custom of bonuses awarded yearly to men in subordinate positions who had done exceptional work- This class naturally felt that they were on the upward road to admission as partners ” Mr Carnegie believes that a business wherein “ partnership embraces the principal officials ” and in which the “ system of payment by bonus or reward throughout the work ” has been adopted. “ may be relied upon as a rule to earn handsome dividends in times of depression ” He believes also that in admitting workmen as shareholders and allowing to those who prove their value a percentage of the profits, lies the promise of the final amalgamation of the interests of capital and labour.