Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statuteStimson, Frederic Jesup
History
Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statute
Stimson, Frederic Jesup
Legislation -- United States
Co-operation and profit-sharing, the great hope of the middle years
of the nineteenth century, has made little progress in England or the
United States since. Such successful experiments as now exist consist
principally in offering to the employees the opportunity to buy the
stock of the company at a reasonable rate, as in the case of the
Illinois Central Railroad and the United States Steel Company. Many
mills, however, give a certain increase in wages at the end of regular
periods proportionate to the profits. This technically is what we
call profit-sharing. The word "co-operation" should be reserved
for institutions actually co-operative; that is to say, where the
employees are partners in business with the employers. Of such there
are very few in the United States, although there are quite a
number in England. In 1901 there were only nineteen co-operative
establishments in the United States, most prominent among which are
the Peacedale Woolen Mills in Rhode Island; the Riverside Press in
Cambridge; Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago; the Century Company, of New
York; the Proctor & Gamble Soap Co., of Cincinnati; the Bourne Mills,
of Fall River, and the Pillsbury Flour Mills, of Minneapolis. Yet
these institutions are really profit-sharing rather than co-operative,
for the return is merely an extra cash dividend to employees who have
no voice in the management. Mr. Oilman in his book, "A Dividend to
Labor," tells us that there are thirty-nine other cases at least where
profit-sharing once adopted has been abandoned. On the other hand,
in Great Britain there were in 1899 one hundred and ten important
co-operative productive establishments. There are many more on the
Continent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account