e employees the opportunity to buy the
stock of the company at a reasonable rate, as in the case of the
Illinois Central Railroad and the United States Steel Company. Many
mills, however, give a certain increase in wages at the end of regular
periods proportionate to the profits. This technically is what we
call profit-sharing. The word "co-operation" should be reserved
for institutions actually co-operative; that is to say, where the
employees are partners in business with the employers. Of such there
are very few in the United States, although there are quite a
number in England. In 1901 there were only nineteen co-operative
establishments in the United States, most prominent among which are
the Peacedale Woolen Mills in Rhode Island; the Riverside Press in
Cambridge; Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago; the Century Company, of New
York; the Proctor & Gamble Soap Co., of Cincinnati; the Bourne Mills,
of Fall River, and the Pillsbury Flour Mills, of Minneapolis. Yet
these institutions are really profit-sharing rather than co-operative,
for the return is merely an extra cash dividend to employees who have
no voice in the management. Mr. Oilman in his book, "A Dividend to
Labor," tells us that there are thirty-nine other cases at least where
profit-sharing once adopted has been abandoned. On the other hand,
in Great Britain there were in 1899 one hundred and ten important
co-operative productive establishments. There are many more on the
Continent.

Arbitration laws are also far more developed and successful in
European and Australasian countries than in Great Britain or the
United States, although the first English act concerning arbitration
was passed as early as 1603. In the first year of Queen Anne, 1701,
was the first act referring specially to arbitration of labor, and the
next, Lord St. Leonard's act, in 1867, which attempted to establish
councils of conciliation, something after the pattern of the French
_conseils de prudhommes_; but in 1896 these acts were repealed and the
Conciliation Act of the 59th Victoria, chapter 30, substituted. It
provides that the boards of arbitration may act of their own motion in
so far as to make inquiry and take such steps as they deem expedient
to bring the parties together, and upon application of either side may
appoint a conciliator, and on the application of both sides, appoint
an arbitrator. Their award is filed of record and made public, but
no provision is made for its compulsory