the sum of $1200 among the workmen not on salary. The division of this bonus was upon the basis of merit. The company write: "We have not been able, owing to the hard times, to give the profit sharing scheme any satisfactory test."
The Williamsport (Pa.) Iron and Nail Company, tried profit sharing for the year 1894, but owing to the condition of the trade the plan was abandoned. Ten per cent, of the net profits were to be distributed among the men in the proportion which each man's wages bore to the pay roll. "Our abandonment has only been temporary. Of course a crude effort for but one year would determine nothing, because the employes had to be educated to a standard which will make them fit instruments in working out at least one-half of this question. Even our brief experience made better workmen of our men."
Ginn and Company Publishers, of Boston, Mass.,[1] introduced a plan of profit sharing in 1891, which included all the publishing and office force, together with the agents in the field. The one distribution amounted to more than 6 per cent, on wages. The firm reports:
We intended to make this profit sharing a permanency, but just then the hard times rame on, which have interfered with it even to the present time. The basis on which we made the division was that we would distribute among all of our people as a free gift one quarter of all the profits of the business over and above the preceding year. We hope at no distant day to return to a similar plan. We have found this condition of affairs to interfere somewhat with the scheme, that certain of our help are entitled to a rise in salary more than others, and they
- ↑ The Century Company, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, The Staatz Zeitung and other publishers continue various forms of intermediate bonus.
years and to 3 per cent, for the next two years. Since then no dividends have been declared. "The plan is not now a dead letter, but neither is it clearly in evidence. The plan has resulted in a slight, but we think appreciable feeling of union between the employés and the owners. We have had no so-called 'labor troubles' during these hard times, but, on the other hand, have not cut wages or stopped the mills. In this way our help has actually received a bonus. We would not feel justified in ascribing this result to profit sharing, but that has helped rather than hindered."
The experience of this firm is fully detailed in the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, pp. 177–186, and in Mr. Oilman's Profit Sharing.
