y with the
fluctuations of business any compensation of wage-earners is called the
sliding scale of wages. This is an attempt to make each sharer in
production depend directly upon the price of products in the market for
rate of wages. The wages of different workers are adjusted to each other
by contract upon some ratio established by experience, and then the wages
of each are made to vary from month to month with the average price of the
finished product in the general market. This subjects all parties directly
to the fluctuations of the business in both profit and loss. Its success
is dependent upon the confidence placed by employes in the fairness of the
adjustment. It stimulates to highest productiveness when prices are high,
and checks production slightly when prices are low. But it provides no
direct method for readjusting business under the pressure of great changes
in methods of management, nor does it save from strong antipathy against
the improvement of a business by labor-saving machinery. Its successful
employment depends in general upon the character and efficiency of
employers and the general intelligence and enterprise of employes.

_Cooeperative industry._--Cooeperative industries are sometimes advocated as
a complete solution of labor difficulties. The system implies a union of
independent workmen, all of whom shall be sharers in the capital employed
as well as in the labor involved, including management. The management of
the enterprise is entrusted to chosen members of the cooeperative force,
and wages or salaries are fixed according to abilities employed,
essentially upon the scale of current wages outside the cooeperative
enterprise. All profits are then shared among all members of the
association in proportion to their wages. But an investment of such
profits in the growth of the business is an essential part of the plan.

This method satisfies the ideal of equity in division of wealth produced,
provided the basis of adjustment between classes of wage-earners is
accepted as fair. The principal difficulty in this respect arises in
reference to the salary of managers and overseers. Such salaries are less
clearly defined in the labor market, being usually complicated with
profit-making, and are liable to be considered out of all proportion with
the wages of other workers. If underestimated, the marked abilities
required in management are likely to be withdrawn from the enterprise for
independent manag