The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1911. WEALTH AND THE WORKER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 106, 25 October 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1911. WEALTH AND THE WORKER.

All the world over, the man who creates wealth by the work of his hands is demanding a larger share of it. He is generally able to obtain what he demands, for there is hardly a way of preventing him if he is determined to cease production until lie obtains the necessary concessions. The size and seriousness of the more recent strikes, the incalculable injury not only to individuals but to commerce generally, are clamant with demands for a solution of the situation! Arbitration boards, courts and other machines devised for the arrangement of disputes between worker and payer fail, and will always fail, because they necessarily name a price for labor which does not take cognisance of the payer's varying profits. To be explicit, the payer may receive an income in 1911 greatly in excess of that received in 1910 without having expended more in wages during the one year than during the other. Labor in this more thoughtful age is not content with this arrangement, and whether justly or not seeks profits for its work in proportion to the sale of the goods it makes. And so the question of partnerships between masters and men is being discussed mightily in Britain and on the Continent, and the examples of such partnerships as already exist in those countries are being examined with minute attention as offering a possible solution of the greatest problem that faces commerce from either the employer's or the employee's point of view. The theory of the industrial partnership of payer and paid seems sound enough, and if brought about in any specific business in which every worker with vat exception is a partner, it must necessarily eliminate a strike or a lock-out. Hut in several cases of such partnerships initiated by the masters the schemes fell through, because the partnerships did not include "all hands." In one Yorkshire business employing several thousands of "hands" the non-partner workers showed pique, because partner workers whose interest it was in order to secure larger profits to increase the output and to make all hands work harder, insisted on better work and greater output. The difficulty would have been obviously solved by the inclusion of the malcontents, but it is impossible to force a worker into partnership against his will.

]t docs not always happen that. the rank and file of the workers I readily supply men of sufficient | acumen and enterprise to supplement the "brains" of an establishment, and it is at least likely that in a great man and master partnership the vital responsibility of direction could not be eonceded to worker partners with advantage to a business. While a man might he a very fine worker and quite worthy of the extra profits he might make under an industrial partnership, it is not at all certain that he with his worker partners could conduct a business without the man who used to be called "master." Indeed, the worker of unusual acumen invariably hits out for himself, and has from time immemorial become a "master." To become a "boss" is th<; ambition of every competent worker. Under general co-part-nership schemes human nature would not change, and where every man of a large group of workers was interested in the profits lie was helping to create the chief trouble would consist in | partnership jealousies. If any copartnership scheme lifted the rigid control necessarily exercised under existing conditions, there would probably be constant friction between good, bad and indifferent worker-partners. There could be no absolute promise of permanent affluence to profit sharers in a business, and although a group of workers might cheerfully agree to partnership—and the necessary supply of capital, other than the work of their hands—a fall in profits, for reasons not generally considered by workers, would necessarily decrease wages and so create trouble. Thus, for instance, one big co-partnership concern might, by the exercise of ability which.had nothing whatever to do with actual labor be able to pay its worker-partners handsomely, .while the concern over the road, badly managed, might be a "starvation job." Wherein would be much fuel for industrial unrest. One worker, is not necessarily always' the friend of the other worker, and although organisation has effected some splendid results in adding to the incomes of large groups of workers, it has not really increased brotherliness between workers, and has certainly largely eliminated it between "master" and man. Co-partnership schemes will be good if due regard is had for the varying degrees of skill in individuals, if the worker partner does not become more harsh than the traditional "boss" if the profits are always sufficient to pay as high wages as workers could enforce by the strike, and if such partnerships extend to every person of a group of workers, eliminj a ting the jealousy that must cer- | tainly exist. Otherwise co-part- | nership is at least one step toj wards the ideal of the socialist, who, however, while he desires to j control the production, distribution and exchange of necessaries, must always have an existing system as the basis of his success. There is as yet no evidence that groups of dissatisfied workers intend to create profit-sharing businesses. It is still necessary to them that the businesses should he ready-made for them. '' I shall rest," says the socialist, "until you build your house. When you have built it, I will share it with you."