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To the Secretary of the Board of Trade. 
Sir, 
I have the honour to present herewith the accompanying 
Report on Profit-sharing and Labour Co-partnership in the 
United Kingdom, which has been prepared in this Department. 
The work of investigation was at the outset entrusted to Mr. 
David F. Schloss, who was eminently qualified to undertake this 
duty. When, however, his work was nearing completion he was 
unfortunately compelled to relinquish it owing to an illness 
which, to the great regret of all who worked with him, ended in 
his death a few weeks ago. 
The last detailed Report issued by the Department on the sub 
ject of Profit-sharing was also compiled by Mr. Schloss, and was 
published in 1894. The Department has endeavoured, by 
annual enquiries, to keep up to date the information contained 
in that Report, and has published the results of these enquiries 
in the Board of Trade Labour Gazette and in the Abstracts of 
Labour Statistics; but it is clear that the time has now come for 
another general survey of the whole subject. 
In this Report, as in the previous one, Profit-sharing is under 
stood to involve an agreement between an employer and his 
workpeople under which the latter receive, in addition to 
their wages, a share, fixed beforehand, in the profits of the 
undertaking. A grant or bonus, therefore, made at the absolute 
discretion of an employer, and not upon any pre-arranged basis, 
is not a case of profit-sharing for the present purpose. It may 
further be remarked that, without a special inquiry, it would be 
difficult to determine in the less well-organised trades in which 
many of the profit-sharing schemes have been started, whether the 
wages paid are the full current district rates. 
Labour Co-partnership is an extension of Profit-sharing, enabling 
the worker to accumulate his share of profit in the capital of the 
business employing him, thus gaining the rights and responsi 
bilities of a shareholder. A still further stage is found in some 
co-partnership schemes which provide for a direct share in the 
management as well as a share in the profits, one or more seats on 
the board of directors being expressly reserved for representatives 
of the workpeople. 
The present investigation has brought to light a large number 
of profit-sharing schemes in private firms and companies which 
were not mentioned in the 1894 Report, and the number of 
schemes now known to be in operation is 133, the number of 
workpeople employed by the firms having such schemes being 
about 106,000. These 133 schemes are the survivors of nearly 
300 profit-sharing arrangements of which 163 have been 
abandoned. 
(245 8—4.) Wt. 7032—3889. 2500 & 90. 11/12. D & 8, 
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