Co-partnership is the curative syrup for all capitalist ills just now. Fabians recommend it, Liberal and Tory newspapers have given it their blessing, and business men who have tried it are loud in their praises. It has a double effect in its application—it increases profits and stifles labour “unrest.”
Some sociological and political experts, indeed, regard it as the solution, par excellence, for the labour troubles. The hard-headed, unscientific capitalist, who has “no soul above immediate profits,” is, however, somewhat sceptical, and not without reason. For profit-sharing in at least one case was productive of labour trouble.
The instance in question was recounted at a fashionable gathering of co-partnership apostles, at Lord and Lady Brassey’s, in Park Lane—a meeting arranged for the purpose of devising ways and means of sharing profits with the workers—something eminently desirable from the Park Lane point of view. One speaker said that he offered shares to his employees, one of whom took up a hundred. Next day in the workshop he remonstrated with a fellow workman for wasting the gas. The reply was: “Oh, there are too many blooming policemen about this business!” (just what we say) and the following day the whole of the employees struck work.
[From the Socialist Standard, June 1913.]
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