ar case will insure that the costs will be less than those of
competitors, thus giving a source out of which an increased amount,
really a wage, can be paid to the laborer. For the amount of profits
is affected not only by the amount of output, but also by a number of
other things that are quite outside the control of the workmen.

Sec. 10. #Examples of profit-sharing.# The profit-sharing plan seems
first to have been successfully tried in Paris, in 1842, by Leclaire,
a house-painter. In house-painting there is often a great waste
of materials and time by men working singly or in small groups in
different parts of the city. By this new method Leclaire enlisted the
aid of the workmen, reduced the costs, and increased the profits. It
is a remarkable fact that the plan has been continued successfully by
the same firm to the present time. It has been tried in many hundreds,
possibly thousands, of cases, and is operating in some form or another
in more than a hundred firms in Europe and America. The most notable
examples of profit-sharing in the United States are the Pillsbury
Mills in Minneapolis, Procter and Gamble's soap-factories, in
Ivorydale, Ohio, the Nelson Mfg. Co., in Leclaire, Ill., and the Ford
Automobile Works, in Detroit. In some cases both manufacturer and
workmen value the system highly. It probably has its greatest success
when applied in prosperous establishments where profits are regular
and large, and where a steady working force is especially desired.
The proportion of business done in this way is not large. One hundred
firms is a very small fraction of 1 per cent of the total number of
firms in Germany, France, England, and America. A still more important
fact is that true profit-sharing has spread little since 1890, tho
various practices have developed under that name. The most noteworthy
of these is the selling of stock, usually at a somewhat lower price,
to the employees of a corporation so that, as stockholders, they may
have a motive to work for the success of the company (e.g., the United
States Steel Corporation). This method as applied to a select few
of the employees, who are advanced to official positions in a
corporation, is very widely adopted.

Sec. 11. #Difficulties in profit-sharing.# It seems at first difficult to
explain this comparative failure of a plan that looks so attractive
in spirit and of which so much was hoped. Yet objections come from
the side both of the workman and of the