42 
XX.—PRIVATE FIRMS AND COMPANIES. 
notice is required. Persons leaving the employ of the company 
will be repaid their deposits at the end of fourteen days.* 
The bonus paid to the employee-depositors (i.e., the excess over 
the fixed minimum rate of 4 per cent, which they have received in 
respect of their deposits) has, taking an average of the last eight 
years, constituted an addition to their wages at the rate of 2'6 per 
cent. The total amount on deposit with the company at the end 
of December, 1911, under the scheme above described, was 
£241,432, and the number of employees to whom these deposits 
belonged was 2,788. The number of persons employed by the 
company in 1911 varied from 15,812 to 15,953.t 
Shareholding by Employees. 
Passing now from those types of Profit-sharing in which the 
employees make deposits with the business by which they are 
employed to those cases in which the employees of profit-sharing 
films hold shares, we find that in some instances shareholding by 
employees, while not compulsory, is encouraged by the provisions 
of the profit-sharing scheme; while in other cases such investment 
forms an essential part of the profit-sharing arrangements. 
Special Advantages for Shareholding Employees. 
So far as concerns the encouragement of stockholding by 
employees, probably the most famous of all the instances in which 
Profit-sharing of this type has been adopted in this country is the 
well-known experiment made by Messrs. Henry Briggs, Son and 
Co., in relation to their collieries (the Whitwood and Methley 
Collieries), near IN" or man ton. The details in regard to this case 
have long ago been laid before the public with so much fulness* 
that it is unnecessary in this place to offer more than a brief sum 
mary of the leading facts. In 1865 the firm of Henry Briggs, 
Son & Co. turned their business into a limited liability company, 
the bulk of the shares being taken by the partners, but a 
large amount of the capital being offered to the public, with 
a preference given to the officers, workmen, and customers of the 
* The scheme is printed in full in Appendix H., pp. 133 and 134. In the 
cases mentioned in the text the employees’ deposits are unsecured. The form 
of agreement formerly in force with a company which allowed its employees to 
invest in its debentures (£5 per cent.), promising to pay the employee debenture- 
holder, in excess of this fixed interest, the difference between this interest and 
the rate of dividend paid on its ordinary shares, is printed in Appendix I. 
p. 135. For a case in which the employees’ deposits are secured by 
debentures of the employing company, see p. 65. 
t The employees of the Company have made investments in its securities 
(apart from the profit-sharing deposits described in the text) ; these investments 
(the amount of which it is not possible to state) were made on the same terms 
as in the case of the general public. 
+ See, in particular Methods of Social Reform, by W. Stanley Jevons, pp. 122— 
155 ; Industrial Partnerships, by H. C. Briggs ; Thornton, On Labour, 
pp. 348-355 ; Profit-sharing, by Sedley Taylor, pp. 117-154 ; Die Gewinn- 
betheiligung, by H. Frommer, pp. 11-34 ; Profit-sharing between Employer and 
Employee, by N. P. Gilman, pp. 243-272 ; Co-operative Production by Benjamin 
Jones, pp. 494-499.