The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems

by Frank A. Fetter

4. The failure of profit-sharing to grow is due to objections on the side both of the employer and of the workman. On the side of the workman there is the bookkeeping difficulty. He is suspicious, and he lacks knowledge of the business. If at the end of the year the books show no profits, the workman loses confidence, considers the plan to be mere deception, and rejects it. Moreover, the plan puts a limitation upon the workman's freedom to compete for better wages by changing his place of work. It is almost indispensable to make length of service a condition to the sharing of profits. Workmen coming and going, working only a few months, cannot be allowed to share; the percentage given to the others increases with length of employment. Whenever men are thus practically subject to a fine (equal to the amount of shared profits) if they accept a better position, there is danger of a covert lowering of wages. The plan tends to break up the trade-unions, which is one of the reasons that the employers like it, and is the reason that organized labor opposes it. The employer on his part objects to the interference with his management, the troublesome inspection of the books, and the constant grumbling and complaint of the workmen. It makes known the amount of his profits; if they are large, the advertising of his success invites competition; if they are small, publicity injures his credit and depresses the value of his property. In view of all these difficulties it is not surprising that while the plan often starts promisingly, it usually loses its efficiency after a short trial. Business methods are severely subject to the principle of the survival of the fittest. Through competition and the survival of the firms that adopt improvements, better methods must eventually supplant poorer ones. If a method fails to spread when it has been tried for fifty years and all are free to adopt it, there must be some defects inherent in it. That must be our conclusion as to profit-sharing.

Defective character of profit-sharing

5. It is usually better to make wages depend on the worker's efficiency rather than on the profits of the whole business. The strongest motive to efficiency is present when reward is connected immediately and directly with effort, not with some result only slightly under the worker's control. In profit-sharing the added share is only partially due to increased effort of the worker. Labor is but one of the groups of costs. Profits are the net result of many influences. Chief among these is the wisdom of the enterpriser in planning and conducting the business. The "profits" may be nothing, though the worker may be exerting himself to the utmost. The plan is, therefore, reactionary, not in accord with the general progress of the wage system, which is tending constantly to centralize responsibility, to put the risk into the hands of competent managers, and to secure to the worker a definite amount in advance, as high as conditions make possible. The system of premiums, or bonus payments, for output, gives in most cases better results and is rapidly spreading. It is sounder in conception and works better in practice. This premium depends on the increase by the laborer of the output of his particular machine or process as compared with a standard based on the experience of some definite period.

§ II. PRODUCERS' COÖPERATION

Purpose of producers' coöperation

1. Producers' coöperation is the union of workers in a self-employing group to do away with any other enterpriser than themselves, and to secure for themselves the profits. Its object is not to do away with any return on the capital investment. Capital may be borrowed either from outsiders or from the individual coöperators, and is paid a stipulated interest apart from the profits. The source of the gain is to be found in the saving of what the worker looks upon as the needless drain of profits into the pockets of the employer. The hope is that the enterpriser's function (if it is admitted that he has any useful function) will be performed by the workers collectively or through their representatives. They undertake to furnish brain as well as muscle, management as well as hand-work. The hope is even to increase the profits through increasing the stimulus to the workers and by saving in friction, disputes, and strikes.

Its limited success

2. Practically the plan has been made to work in a comparatively few simple industries. The most notable examples of successful coöperation in America have been the cooper-shops in Minneapolis. There were a simple problem of costs, few and uniform materials, patterns, and qualities of product, few machines and much hand-labor, simple well-known processes, a sure local market. Mr. Lloyd, in a recent book, describes many successful societies in England, but they are all of a simple sort of industry, as agriculture and dairy-farming. Within the whole field of industry, this method of organization makes little if any progress. Most experiments have failed and the successful ones often become ordinary stock companies with the most able men in control. Therefore, whether losing or making money, they nearly all cease to exist as coöperative enterprises. This result has disappointed the prophecies of many wise men of seventy-five years ago. In the time of John Stuart Mill, great expectations were entertained of the future of productive coöperation, which was thought to be a solution of the whole social problem.

Its main difficulty

3. The main difficulty in productive coöperation is to secure managing ability of a high order. There is no touchstone for business talent, no way of selecting it with any certainty in advance of trial. This selection is made hard in coöperative shops by the jealousies and rivalries, and by the politics among the workmen. A man thus selected by his fellows finds it almost impossible to enforce discipline. In coöperation there is occasionally developed good business ability that might have remained dormant under the wage system; some workmen showing unusual capacity cease to be handicraftsmen. But the unwillingness on the part of the workers to pay high salaries results in the loss of able managers. Having demonstrated their ability, the leaders go to competing industries where their function is not in such bad repute, and where higher salaries can be earned; or they go into business independently, being able easily to get control of the necessary capital.