I should also like to refer to Mr. Thompson’s woolen mills of Huddersfield, established in 1886, as another brilliant example of successful co-partnership. It is frequently stated that in an industry where men are paid by piecework or share in the profits there is a tendency for the men to over-exert themselves. Well, in the Thompson Huddersfield mills there is no piecework, no overtime, only the weekly wage; no driving is allowed. The hours of labor are limited to forty-eight per week. The workers are given a whole week’s holiday in August, and in addition they enjoy the benefits of a non-contributory sick and accident fund, and of a 24s. per week pension fund. In these mills cloth is made from wool and wool only, not an ounce of shoddy. Here again the surplus profits, after the fixed reward of capital--viz., interest at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum--has been paid, are divided between labor and custom; and here again the capital sunk in the mills has been written down from £8,655 to £1,680. Unprofitable machinery is scrap-heaped. The mill has only the best, most up-to-date machinery, and all connected with the works, shareholders and workers, live together like a happy family.

As an illustration of a co-partnership industry which divides its surplus profits between wages, interest, and custom, I might point to the gas companies which are being administered on the Livesey principle, which is now so well known. Since co-partnership principles were applied to the South Metropolitan Gas Works in 1899 over £500,000 has been paid, as their share of the profits, to the credit of the workers, who also own over £400,000 of the company’s stock. The fact that over £50,000,000 of capital is invested in gas companies administered on co-partnership principles, which divide surplus profits between consumers, shareholders, and wage-earners, encourages us to hope that we may look forward with confidence to the adoption of co-partnership principles by other industries.

As an illustration of a co-partnership industry which divides its surplus profits between labor and capital alone, let me refer to the Walsall Padlock Society, one of the 114 workmen productive societies which may be regarded as so many different schools of co-partnership under exclusive trade unionist management. In this society the rate of interest on share capital has been fixed at 7-1/2 per cent., and should there be any surplus profit after trade union rate of wages and the fixed reward of capital, 7-1/2 per cent., have been paid, it is divided between labor and capital in proportion to the value of their respective services, and the measure of the value is the price the Walsall Padlock Society pays for the use of capital and labor respectively. £1 of interest counts for as much in the division of the profits as £1 of wage, and vice versa. This principle of division, invented by the Frenchman Godin, of Guise, has always seemed to me to be absolutely fair and to be capable of being easily applied to many industries.

Now in these cases I have quoted, and I could refer to many others, a unity of interest is established between labor and capital, with the result that there is a general atmosphere of peace and of mutual brotherhood and goodwill.

Capital receives the advantage of greater security. Labor is secured the highest rate of wage the industry can afford.