A Seattle League Wants Workers to Share the Profits—and the Losses

The recent labor troubles have turned attention anew to the adjustment of the relations of labor and capital on a more satisfactory basis, and the result has been the preliminary organization in this city of what is called the Equitable League. About 100 members are said to have already joined this body, which proposes to combine both employer and workman in an effort to secure a more equitable distribution of the price of their joint product.

A committee, of which G. A. Latavette, president of the Western Central Labor Union, is chairman, was appointed at one of the preliminary meetings and prepared the following manifesto:

'An association has been formed under the name of the Equitable League which has for its object the sole purpose of accomplishing the equitable distribution of created wealth among those who create it. No destruction of present social conditions or individual property rights is contemplated; on the contrary, it is believed that these conditions must continue to exist, that is, that the aim and ambition of people should remain with the same source of gratification. What is attacked by the organization is the inequitable distribution of all wealth as it is created, by construing the whole created wealth to belong exclusively to one only of the agencies of its creation.

'The broad ground is taken that the advancement of liberty on the part of the many has been: First, from dictatorial slavery to a physical freedom, or rather freedom in the choice of masters. Secondly, our recognition of the equality of all men; that is, that birthright or family gave no peculiar rights, power or privileges. There now remains but the emancipation from the theory that to the few belongs the joint product of both the few and the many. While the market may in a measure determine the current price of labor, it is contended that that alone should not be the remuneration of labor. It should be allowed to share in what labor is as necessary to create as capital. The theory of the relation between labor and capital is in substance that capital says to labor: You devote your muscle, brain and skill toward the creation or production of a certain article. While you are thus engaged I will provide you the means of subsistence. Each having done its share, a given thing is produced. The profit of that labor, maintained for the time being, should be property, and the profit of both in proportion as the one or the other forms the greater part of the produced article. The subsistence of the employes should be provided for and the profit of that work should come to labor in dividends, just as it goes to capital upon the realization of the profit. After that distribution the individual property rights of each remain, subject only to the equitable distribution of wealth created by it later on. The only change is that labor is recognized as having higher rights than mere market wages. The present theory is the outgrowth of all existing conditions; it is not a part of our statute law. The property rights now asserted and maintained by our courts, which give to and recognize in capital all ownership of the product of labor and capital, are a part of the old common law. Hence concerted action can modify the present condition.

'Incidental to the main principle, and a necessity of its successful operation in many cases, is the determination of what is capital. Over-capitalization, speculative creation of so-called capital, is not real capital or wealth, be it in a railway, a sugar refinery or any other institution. Capital is bona fide wealth, the representative cost of labor sustained in creating the necessary thing.'

The league so far as formed includes in its ranks not only workmen but employers and some professional men who are interested in economics, and will in about a week hold an open meeting to lay its programme fairly before the people.

As will be seen from the manifesto, the object is to promote the adoption of the profit-sharing system with the addition of loss-sharing as well, and to influence legislation in favor of that system. This system, it is claimed, would put the relations of capital and labor on such an equitable basis that all excuse for strikes would be done away with and labor would be given the best possible incentive, self-interest, to faithful service.

The profit-sharing system, as adopted by its pioneer, Le Claire, the Paris decorator, has been put in successful practice with modifications and improvements at a town named Le Claire, in Illinois, which was founded about seven years ago. This town now has a population of 7,000 to 8,000, all of whom work under the profit-sharing system, the principal industry being the manufacture of plumbers' supplies. The employes are paid the current wages for their labor and the employer is allowed the current rate of interest on his capital with a salary as manager, and at the end of the year the profits are distributed between capital and labor on an agreed basis. If the year's operations should show a loss the employes' share would be deducted from their wages, but the advocates of the system say that such a thing has never been known in the whole history of the town, the workmen's annual dividends having been equivalent to an advance in wages. Yet, the books being open to the workmen as stockholders, they would have clear evidence of the loss and, it is claimed, they could not object to bearing their share of it.