profit sharing cannot be a success nor prevent labor troubles, even though employers conscientiously and liberally endeavor to work under the system. We had conducted our business on this plan for several years, paying dividends regularly, submitting books to inspection of any committee the employes should so select, making dividends every year with one exception, and two or three occasions where honesty to ourselves did not justify it. The Union was established in the shop during the Pullman troubles and the men demanded that we be made a Union shop, that they appoint the foreman, which we regard a necessary power to retain in the hands of the management for obvious reasons. They demanded that Union labels be put upon our goods, to which merchants would seriously object, and this when no existing trouble outside the works was evident. We decided that we could not afford to have the business taken out of our hands, although a minority of the employes only made the demand, but they were backed by the Labor organizations. Our works were picketed by Union men to prevent employment of other than Union men. We thereupon closed down for several weeks and discontinued the profit sharing system."
27. The Globe Tobacco Company, of Detroit Mich., divided 1 per cent, of gross profits during 1886–8, but discontinued the plan as having no satisfactory results. The bonus amounted to about 10 per cent, on wages.
28. Siegel, Cooper & Co., of Chicago, Ill., adopted a plan in 1892, modeled after the Bon Marché, of Paris. The plan was soon abandoned. They write, "Every week we did a good business they were tickled to death, but as soon as business might be dull, there would be more kicks than we could stand; so we gave the thing up. It seems that conditions in America and the old country are so different that the same plans do not work."
29. The Watertown (N. Y.) Steam Engine Company divided profits for the year 1891. Their experience was "that in the case of a fair proportion of our men we secured better service, better regard for the interests of the business, but that a still larger number of the men regarded their dividends as simply so much extra pay and were no more careful or helpful than before. We are quite willing to believe that if the experiment had been continued for a number of years we should have developed among the men, a sentiment which would have compelled the indolent and indifferent ones to give us better service or incur the disapproval and ostracism of their fellow workmen. The
