It would seem difficult to introduce the scheme into a business like that of tea-blending, but a London firm that has practised it thirteen years states that the effect is “to make the clerks willing to exert themselves in an especial manner, when the occasion arises, because they know that if they show themselves unable to cope with the mass of work to be done, then the staff must be increased; and they do not care to see their bonus diminished by an augmentation of the numbers entitled to participation.”[320] The question naturally arises as to how far these gains reimburse the employer for the financial cost of profit sharing. The chairman of the South Metropolitan Gas Company of London writes, “I state unhesitatingly that the Company is recouped the whole of the amounts—some £40,000—paid as a bonus since the system was started.”[321] The managing director of the New Welsh Slate Quarry Company gives it as his personal belief “that we are recouping every penny of bonus and more;” and similar testimony comes from others. Yet this is putting the matter on the lowest plane. The system “converts the industrial association of employer and employees into a moral organism, in which all the various talents, services, and desires of the component individuals are fused into a community of purpose and endeavor.”[322] A natural result, moreover, is a general elevation in the standards of morals. Most of all, in an individual way it is of help to the employee; “to assist a person in improving his condition by his own efforts is to make a man of him.”[323] What can be learned from these successful experiences in profit sharing that will be of value in domestic service? The usual difficulties that beset the employer of domestic labor are lack of interest, desire for change, negligence, waste of time, extravagance in the use of materials, in a word, the absence of the industrial virtues. If these very difficulties—all of which exist elsewhere—are partially or entirely obviated by the employer of other forms of labor through the system of profit sharing, may it not reasonably be expected that they could be met in domestic service by the employment of similar means?