The weakness of the whole system is the lack of provision for fairly sharing burdens in the constantly recurring periods of loss. If the employé’s share of the profits is consumed upon comfort or luxury, he is even less prepared than without such profits to meet the loss of not only profits, but his wages, in times of depression. If these additional earnings shared as profits become an insurance to the wage-earner, a sort of reserve for sustenance and safety in the necessary times of weakness in any industry, they stimulate the best characteristics of saving and character-building, and cultivate a disposition to meet all emergencies in patience. It is quite customary, therefore, in any system of profit-sharing to provide also an investment for the employés in a reserve fund, from which the necessities of the business and the needs of the whole community of workers may be met. Such a method, if wisely managed, makes the interests of the employés coincide with those of the employer. If added to this there is ample opportunity for suggestions as to enlargement and improvement of the business in all minutiæ, the best abilities of the workmen are called out and the heartiest sympathy is possible. There still remains against such a system the objections, that losses are not shared as truly as profits, and that employés are liable to require too intimate an acquaintance with the condition of their employer’s business to foster the success of the enterprise. Its successful application is so far confined to lines of business easily comprehended and direct in their methods. _Sliding scales of wages._—Another device for connecting directly with the fluctuations of business any compensation of wage-earners is called the sliding scale of wages. This is an attempt to make each sharer in production depend directly upon the price of products in the market for rate of wages. The wages of different workers are adjusted to each other by contract upon some ratio established by experience, and then the wages of each are made to vary from month to month with the average price of the finished product in the general market. This subjects all parties directly to the fluctuations of the business in both profit and loss. Its success is dependent upon the confidence placed by employés in the fairness of the adjustment. It stimulates to highest productiveness when prices are high, and checks production slightly when prices are low. But it provides no direct method for readjusting business under the pressure of great changes in methods of management, nor does it save from strong antipathy against the improvement of a business by labor-saving machinery. Its successful employment depends in general upon the character and efficiency of employers and the general intelligence and enterprise of employés.