The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1889-03-30
CONCERNING BOOKS.
BY E. cAvAzzA.

4
Proft-sharing between the Employer and
the Employee. By Nicholas Paine Gilman.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifiiin
a. Co. Price, $175. Portland: Loring.
Short & HARMONY aa
This is volume that no business man can
afford to leave unread. Such work as this
is hopeful sign of the dawn of the time
when. long promised justice shall
return to dwell among men, In its
presentation of the ethics of economics,
its thorough report of the present
state of progress made in the line of indus
trial partnerships, and in its impartial view
Of the claims of the employer and employee
Mr.. Gilman's book has no companion in the
English language. He has studied his sub
AIect patiently and practically, and has been
able to elicit statements Of the experience of
many business firms in this and in other
countries who have adopted some form of
Proft-Sharing in relation to their work
people. A firm believer in the important
part which Proft-Sharing will take as
solvent of certain labor problems, Mr.. Gill
man allows facts and figures to speak, for or
against it, as they were reported to him by
managers of various industries; and these,
the simple data afforded by experience, are
enough to advocate strongly, without aid of
argument, the merits of Profit-Sharing.
The author clears up the nomenclature of
his subject by discarding the phrase Capital
and Labor in favor of the more exact su5sti-
tute, Employer and Employee. He defines
Proft-Sharing as "the division of realized
profits between the capitalist, the employer
and the employee. in addition to regular in
terest, salary and wages, !" and claims that
its history proves it to be 1.-THE most equitable
and generally satisfactory method of remu-
nelating the three industrial agents" He
offers evidence to show that it Advances the
prosperity of an establishment by increasing
the quantity of the product, by improving its
quality, by promoting care of implements
and economy of material, and by diminish
ing labor difficulties and the cost of super
intendence." 1t is interesting and profitable
to read Mr.. Gilman's considerations of the
causes OF failure to fulfil the best possible
working conditions in the system of wages,
cooperation, time wages, piece work, prizes
for economies. Sales etc.; and the ingenious
sliding scale of wages, which has been one Of
the experiments OF business.
Product-Sharing is the oldest and most
primitive form of payment, which in most
business relations has been substituted by
its shorthand expression money. 1t exists
still in agriculture in the metayer system
of France. Southern Germany, Switzerland
and Spain. liz Italy, where the system is
named mezzadrid, it may be observed per-
haps more in detail than elsewhere. In Cal
abria, less advanced in civilization than are
these sections of the italian kingdom. the
classic order OF the mezzGdria remains al
most unchanged On the mountain ridges,
the dgese, with their houses. huts, stalls
dairies. and pasture and arabic land. seem
like little principalities; there perhaps the
mezzadria is most characteristic. On the
slopes, also, where growth of pine, oak, olive,
yine,fg. lemon and palm mark the successive
steps down to the sea, are the dwellings of
the nassdri, adssarotti, mezzadria, raccari,
nldndridni, caprari-all grades of the aris-
tocracy Of agriculture from the peasant,
whose toll and saving have made him owner
of fields and beasts, to the poor fellow. wear
ing goatskin breaches and playing his shep-
herds pipe, who pastures few sheep or
goats between the rocks.
3 In America--to return from this little Ca
labrian excursion which has been the diver
sion Of a moment-we find, according to Mr..
Gilman's study, various modes Of product
sharing; he most important example being
the great wheat farm of Mr.. Dalrymple, of
Dakota. He also treats of the divisions of
the profits of the New England fisheries,
also upon the basis of Notwithstanding.
He finds in the codfshery a
group OF five or six men who share
the profits equally with the captain-a fea-
ture OF the business which he sees repeated
in the n0yGn. the nucleus of employees in the
remarkable experiment Of the Maison Le-
claire, Of Paris.
Right here it may be said that every sem
tence which Mr.. Gilman has written in his
book, is of a nature to conciliate the employ
er with the employee, and promote mutual
understanding aud sympathy. In adyocat-
ing the system of Proft-Sharing, he praises
that of wages, and bids workmen remember
that under the latter they have been free
from all risks by depreciation of property,
fan in current prices. etc. Neither would he
advocate violent changes, believing that the
present system must receive needed modif-
cations, not by revolution, but by evolution.
The history Of the Maison Leclaire, whose
founder was the father of Proft-Sharing
reads like a romance of Christianity and
business capacity. M. Leclaire was nine
teenth century Partisan Benjamin Franklin
and his record-too long to be more than
mentioned in this REVIEWS a wonder
full portraiture of unpreten.ious honesty
shrewdness, equtyiand good will In his
case the experiment of Proft-Sharing
was completely successful; and so salts
factory that the later arrangements Of the
Maison Leclaire have not only retained, but
amplifed his theories. Other establishments
in various countries have adopted profit
sharing with codes more or less elaborate,
and with varied results. La the American
examples cited among the 1875 firms who are
represented in Mr.. Gilnan's tabulation are
the Peace Dale wooden mills, the Century
Publishing Company, the Minneapolis Flour
Mills. the Riverside Press, John Wanamak-
er, the Springfield Foundry, and many other
important enterprises, showing that the ap-
plicability of Proft-Sharing is not limited,
but modified, by difference in work and num-
Der of makers.
Mr.. Gilman finds it to be the most flexible
OF all invented plans of business, adaptable
to most cases; least desirable when, as for
example, in the production of articles of lux
ury, like velvets, the skill of the managers
is the main source Of success. 1t does not
appear to be affected by the degree of intelli-
gence among employees-but to work as well
In the case Of c0al-mine as in an establish
ment like. the Century Co. of New York,
where poets and other literary people are
employed. In conclusion Mr.. Gilman notes
in his clear. compact and significant style'
the ethical value of the new gospel of labor.
He has purposely confined the most Of his
book to business-like statements; but the
eloquent phrases at its close are in no wise
at variance with the whole tone of the treat
Use. 1t is remarkable and inestimable con-
trioution to the literature of the problems of
lahor