Many Liberals are, however, asking whether this is sufficient and
whether it is not possible for the State to intervene to alter the
distribution of the product of industry in favour of the wage-earner. In
particular, they are wondering whether it is possible to secure the
universal application of some system of profit-sharing. The underlying
principle of profit-sharing is indeed one which we must look to if the
whole-hearted assistance of labour is to be enlisted behind the
productive effort of the country. But the profit we have to consider is
the profit over which the worker has some influence. There is no merit
in inviting him to share in purely commercial profits or losses which
may be due to some one else's speculation or business foresight. It is
futile to imagine you can reverse the functions of labour and capital,
and say that capital should have a fixed wage, and that the employee
should bear all the risks of the industry.
Again, in some cases it is suitable that profits should be considered in
regard to a whole industry, but in others only in regard to a particular
firm or section; and finally the rate of profit suitable to various
trades varies between very wide limits. In short, there can be no
universal rule in this matter which can be enforced by Act of
Parliament.
Nevertheless, we must all desire to proceed along the lines of
associating the pecuniary interests of the worker in the success of the
enterprise, and if any one can suggest a way in which direct assistance
to that end can be given by political action, as distinct from
industrial, he will be doing a great service. I may add that there is an
argument in favour of profit-sharing which is of the utmost importance
and which was recently expressed by a prominent industrialist: who
declared to me that at long last and after much opposition he has come
round to believe in profit-sharing, _because it enables him to show his
men the balance sheet_. The solution adopted last year in the mining
industry contains the sort of elements we wish to see adopted in
principle. The men are given, through their officials, the results of
the industry. They see that they cannot get more than the industry can
pay, and though the present economic conditions are putting the men in a
desperate state to-day, the miners, who were often regarded before the
war as the most pugnacious in the country, are not burning their
employers' houses, but are studying how the economic conditions of the
industry can be improved for the benefit of themselves and their
employers.