The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-01-08
FORD'S NEW PLAN
 OF PROFIT SHARING
BY HOLLAND

New York. January .-(Special.)-The
 Christmas Day announcement that Henry
 Ford had made distribution of some ten
 millions among the employees of his in- dustry so that in this waythey would re-
 ceive in addition to their stipulated
 wages proportionate part of the earn ipgs of the corporation and furthermore that he also purposed method by which
 the employees could become shareholders
 in the corporation. was no surprise to a
 few men who have been prom,nentlv identified with efforts to bring about sat- isfactory cooperation between employers
 and employees. These men knew that Mir
 Ford planned method of this kind Some of them havf consulted with him All
 of those who did know that he has been
 working upon plan for months were
 aware that his fundamental idea was
 to bring about satisfactory and manent cooperation between his corporation and
 those to whom the corporation pays
 wages.
 It has been apparent for some time to those who have been giving thought and effort to the end that cooperation be- tween employers and employees could be tStabAASAicU III tHt nope that Tn this way labor would receive it's just dues and the employers also be free from apprehen- sion of labor difficulties. that the public has become greatly interested in this sub ject.
 That this is so is made evident by the communications which have been received by some Of those who have been attempt ing to work out a satisfactory plan whereby cooperation and coordination could be secured, These letters have come from all parts of the country They
 make it clear that public interest is fawakened. As many as 10 years, per- haps more, have been needed in order to bring this method of securing perfect harmony between those who work for wages and those who pay the wages In fact as long ago as the anthracite coal strike Abram s. Hewitt, one of the foremost citizens of his time asserted that the perfect way to bring labor diff culties to an end would be found when employers made it possible for those
 whom they employed to become owners of some of the shares in the corpora ton or seni-partners. A year or two later George w. Perkins, after exhaustive study of the many complicated problems which were in the proposition at last perfected a plan whereby the United States Steel corporation undertook to pro-
 vide the means by which their employees
 would be able to secure stock holdings
 in the Steel corporation. The corpora
 tion did not make gifts to the empioyes.
 Mir. Perkins carefully provided that the
 money with which employees bought stock
 should represent part of their earn
 ngs; in other words. stock was not to
 be distributed to them as charity, but
 instead it would represent what they
 have fairly earned. Now more than 50o0o
 employees are stockholders in the corpor-
 ation.
 Other corporations followed the Steel |corporations example. The International
 Harvestor company did. Now, MT. Ford has furnished an object lesson wnicn In
 all probability will be well iearrcv py
 the American industrial corporations;
 possibly by and by when the railroad
 companies are again upon their feet by
 the managers of the transportation cor
 porations.