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Show LECLAIRE OF AMERICA. N. O. Nelson Tells of His Profit-sharing Business, til. K. Armstrong in Ainslee's.1 "Profit-sharing was instituted by the Nelson company five years before the colony at Leclaire was founded, and the scheme includes the office and store forces at St. Louis, as well as the operatives at Leclaire. Until 1S!)5 the dividends ranged from 5 to 10 per cent on salaries and wages, at first payable in cash, and after 1890 in the form of stock bonuses. The majority of the employes at St. Louis and Leclaire are stockholders. Since 189f the bonuses have been suspended, but only in the! sense that the cash value has been applied to improving Leclaire. 'We have used the earnings. says Mr. Nelson, Nel-son, 'in enlarging the plant, in building homes, and in providing and maintaining maintain-ing the public utilities. We. in effect, pay 10 or 15 per cent dividends by working a nine-hour day in trades that are ten hours throughout the country, in paying full union wages, when many other manufacturers in our lines pay 10 or lf per cent less. The profit-sharing plan is in force, and the cash dividends divi-dends will be resumed. At the same time the people, as well as myself, regard re-gard it of more importance at present to provide good living conditions than to get a cash dividend." "Like Leclaire, Mr. Nelson is master in his business, but when yorking hours are over Jie becomes a soeial 'unit. "Then." says he, 'I am one of the people, and the mechanic who lives next door tht is to say, on the next lot is as o-nn o tyi Q n a o T ini " lie. i-loifa Vile employes, they come in to see him; he shares their indoor and outdoor social recreations; all are alike interested in the development of Leclaire, its roads, its gardens, its lawns, and the members of his family mingle with the plain folk without condescension on one side or failure of esteem and respect on the other, Jlr. Nelson's employes have never presumed to interfere with his management of the business. One of their number used to look over the books at the end of the year by invitation, invi-tation, but Mr. Nelson's word was good enough for them, and they declined to delegate anyone for the purpose. This In spite of the fact that Mr. Nelson says of his relations with his men at Leclaire: "We get as far away from the cash Nexus as we can.' "With all his success, Mr. Nelson sometimes talks in a way 4hat would stampede a Gradgrind who was covertly covert-ly meditating a trial of profit-sharing with a single -eye to his own bank account. ac-count. Mr. Nelson happens to be one of those men who would sooner give his employes an interest in his business busi-ness than snueeze them to endour insti tutions. He dares to say that business for profit only is immor.al. He looks on profit-sharing as a step toward cooperation, co-operation, and believes that the cooperative co-operative commonwealth Is something more than a day dream. There Is an economic value in profit-sharing, he holds; but its justification must be justice. jus-tice. This sounds like philanthropy, until we remember that in many businesses, busi-nesses, whose proprietors would scout the idea that they ever had a philanthropic philan-thropic motive in their lives, a contingent contin-gent interest in profits is paid to heads of departments, and stock is sold to employes on easy terms. Strikes are unknown at Leclaire. In 1893. when sales were slow and depression general, wages were reduced 23 per cent by the company, but so were salaries and interest. in-terest. There was no complaint on the part of the employes; everybody worked with thp same zeal; In three months full pay was resumed, and at the end of the year the 25 per cent deducted was made up. Is it surprising surpris-ing that Mr. Nelson's industrial community com-munity is a success and that his workmen work-men are intelligent, industrious, con-tened, con-tened, loyal and self-respecting? This Is the place to insert an opinion, which Mr. Nelson expressed in 1892. 'Had Carnegie,' he' said, 'adopted profit-sharing profit-sharing Instead of the sliding scale, the chances are there would have been no Homestead massacre, and the stoppage stop-page of work throughout the country-incidental country-incidental to the strike would have been avoided.' It is important to append ap-pend to this view that Mr. Nelson is a believer in labor unions, and encourages encour-ages his workmen to join them." |