PROFIT 354 PROGRESSIVE PARTY astronomy; born in London, England, March 23, 1837. He was a graduate of St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1860. About 1885 he settled in St. Louis, and later moved to Florida. His principal popular books are the following: "Sat- urn and Its System," "Half-hours With the Telescope," "Half-hours With Stars," "Other Worlds Than Ours," "Light Science for Leisure Hours," "Elemen- tary Astronomy," "Chance and Luck," "First Steps in Geometry," "Easy Les- sons in Differential Calculus," and "Old and New Astronomy." He edited "Knowledge." He died in New York City, Sept. 12, 1888. PROFIT, any advantage, benefit, or accession of good resulting from labor or exertion ; valuable results, useful con- sequence, benefit, gain; comprehending the acquisition of anything valuable or advantageous, corporeal, or intellectual, temporal or spiritual. Net profit, the difference in favor of the seller of any commodity between the price at which it is sold, and the original cost of produc- tion, after deduction of all charges. PROFIT SHARING, a feature of the general efforts being made to reconcile the interests of capital and labor, where- by the employees of a factory, or any commercial establishment, are given a share of the net profits produced by the business. Profit sharing was first advo- cated by a small group of English social reformers, in the middle of last century, most conspicuous of which were Thomas Hughes, author of "Tom Brown's School Days," and the famous novelist, Charles Kingsley. They believed that the work- ers in factories and other productive manufacturing plants should not only re- ceive a share of the net profits of the business, but should also have a voice in conducting it. This latter feature has very seldom been attempted by pri- vate business establishments, but it is commonly practiced in the so-called "self-governing workshops," co-operative groups of workingmen who also furnish the capital with which the business is run. Profit sharing was extensively tried out by corporations in England, a gener- ation ago, but is less commonly prac- ticed now than then. In this country the practice ^ has been more widely adopted, and is now being advocated as a solution of the conflicting interests between employers and employees. Many corporations see in it, if not such a solution, at least a preventative against strikes and general social unrest. Most conspicuous have been the examples of the United States Steel Corporation and the Ford Motor Works, in Detroit, Mich. In the steel plants a finance committee, com.posed of officials of the corporation and its employees, allocate a certain per- centage of the net profits of the year's business to a fund which is divided among a certain class of the employees as a bonus on wages. The employees are encouraged to allow this money to serve as payments toward the purchase of stock in the corporation, the object be- ing to make them part owners in the business, therefore to arouse in them a sense of common interest. Profit sharing in the Ford Motor Works was first instituted in 1914, when $20,000,000 was equally divided between the dividends to invested capi- tal and the employees, the latter, num- bering 15,000, sharing in the $10,000,000 in proportion to the amount of their wages. Organized labor, as a whole, has taken a very strong stand against profit shar- ing as an institution. The contention of the representatives of the labor or- ganizations is that, while profit sharing gives the workers no control in the man- agement of the business, it creates in them a sense of dependence on their em- ployers which militates against the in- terests of labor organization. The cor- poration which can afford to share prof- its, labor men contend, can afford to pay better wages. The tendency is, they say, to decrease wages where profit sharing is in practice and then, when once established, the workers may be cheated of their bonws by dishonest book- keeping. PROGNATHIC, or PROGNATHOUS, in ethnology, a term applied to the skull of certain races of men in whom the jaw slants forward by reason of the oblique insertion of the teeth. PROGRESSION, the act of progress- ing, advancing, or moving forward ; prog- ress, advance. In mathematics, regu- lar or proportional advance by increase or decrease of numbers. A series in which the terms increase or decrease ac- cording to a uniform law. There are two kinds of progressions, arithmetical and geometrical. In music, there are two kinds of progression, melodic and harmonic. The former is a succession of sounds forming a tune or melody, but the term is also applied to an imitative succession of melodic phrases, that is, to a melodic sequence. Harmonic progres- sion is the movement of one chord to another, and is diatonic or chromatic. The term is also sometimes used as syn- onymous with sequence. PROGRESSIVE PARTY, an Amer- ican political party that figured very
