PROFIT-SHARING

Temuka Leader, Issue 2102, 23 September 1890, Page 4

PROFIT-SHARING

Mr Samuel J. Capper has published in the Nottingham Daily Express a latter on what he deems "the only solution of the labor question." Mr Capper wrote from Mecklenburg, where he was the guest of Barbh Anton von Blucher. The baron belongs to the same family from, which the famous old " Marshal Vblwarts " sprang, and he lives on his estate lite a patriarch whom the accident of birth has imbued with modern ideas. To Baron von Blucher, as he one day was pondering on intricacies of the labor question there, bceuned a plan which he promptly put into practice/Profitsharing is no new thing, and has been tried, both in England and France,; in manufactories, workshops, and great printing houses, but never, so far as we know, in the case of a great landowner and his peasantry. On the baron's estate there is a village of 300 inhabitants, the men of which are employed as laborers. He placed a moderate estimate on the value of his est»te, and upon that 4 per cent, at the end of the year is reckoned as a first charge due to capital. Bat upon any profit beyond that 6 per cent, is allotted to the laborers and shared among them at the end of each ten years, If any man leaves the estate he is paid in a lump sum the amount that may have accrued to him. The scheme, it will be seen, is, so far, one of ingenious co-operation. The market price of labor is paid, of course, in addition to the profit sharing in the annual produce of the estate. In Mecklenburg the wages of a laborer, Mr Capper informs us, are Is 8d per day, but only 6d of thiß is paid in actual cash ; the rest is taken out in corn, firewood, a house, allotment of land for own use, rights of pasturage, and similar valuable concessions.