The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

The Role of Profit Sharing
For the day’s work is a great thing—a very great thing! It is at the very foun-
dation of the world; it is the basis of our self-respect. And the employer ought 
constantly to put in a harder day’s work than any of his men. The employer 
who is seriously trying to do his duty in the world must be a hard worker. He 
cannot say, “I have so many thousand men working for me.” The fact of the 
matter is that so many thousand men have him working for them—and the 
better they work the busier they keep him disposing of their products. Wages 
and salaries are in fixed amounts, and this must be so, in order to have a 
basis to figure on. Wages and salaries are a sort of profit-sharing fixed in 
advance, but it often happens that when the business of the year is closed, it 
is discovered that more can be paid. And then more ought to be paid. When 
we are all in the business working together, we all ought to have some share in 
the profits—by way of a good wage, or salary, or added compensation. And 
that is beginning now quite generally to be recognized.
There is now a definite demand that the human side of business be elevated 
to a position of equal importance with the material side. And that is going 

---

Wages  •  107
to come about. It is just a question whether it is going to be brought about 
wisely—in a way that will conserve the material side which now sustains us, 
or unwisely and in such a way as shall take from us all the benefit of the work 
of the past years. Business represents our national livelihood, it reflects our 
economic progress, and gives us our place among other nations. We do not 
want to jeopardize that. What we want is a better recognition of the human 
element in business. And surely it can be achieved without dislocation, with-
out loss to any one, indeed with an increase of benefit to every human being. 
And the secret of it all is in a recognition of human partnership. Until each 
man is absolutely sufficient unto himself, needing the services of no other 
human being in any capacity whatever, we shall never get beyond the need 
of partnership.
Such are the fundamental truths of wages. They are partnership 
distributions.