875, but in the meantime others, either in
imitation of their plan or independently, had introduced the same or
other forms of profit sharing. Another colliery, two iron works, a
textile factory, a millinery firm, a printing shop, and some others
admitted their employees to a share in the profits within the years
1865 and 1866. The same plan was then introduced into certain retail
stores, and into a considerable variety of occupations, including
several large farms where a share of all profits was offered to the
laborers as a "bonus" in addition to their wages. The results were
very various, ranging all the way from the most extraordinary success
to complete and discouraging failure. Up to 1897 about 170
establishments had introduced some form of profit sharing, 75 of which
had subsequently given it up, or had gone out of business. In that
year, however, the plan was still in practice in almost a hundred
concerns, in some being almost twenty years old.

A great many other employers, corporate or individual, provide
laborers' dwellings at favorable rents, furnish meals at cost price,
subsidize insurance funds, offer easy means of becoming shareholders
in their firms, support reading rooms, music halls, and gymnasiums, or
take other means of admitting their employees to advantages other than
the simple receipt of competitive wages. But, after all, the entire
control of capital and management in the case of firms which share
profits with their employees remains in the hands of the employers, so
that there is in these cases an enlightened fulfilment of the
obligations of the employing class rather than a combination of two
classes in one.

With the exception of profit sharing, however, all the economic and
social movements described in this chapter are as truly collective and
as distinctly opposed to individualism, voluntary though they may be,
as are the various forms of control exercised by government, described
in the preceding chapter. In as far as men have combined in trade
unions, in business trusts, in cooeperative organizations, they have
chosen to seek their prosperity and advantage in united, collective
action, rather than in unrestricted individual freedom. And in as far
as such organizations have been legalized, regulated by government,
and encouraged by public opinion, the confidence of the community at
large has been shown to rest rather in associative than in competitive
action. Therefore, whether we look a