while my desire to explain myself in private ears has been quelled, the habit of getting interested in the experience of others has been continually gathering strength, and I am really at the point of finding that this world would be worth living in without any lot of one's own. Is it not possible for me to enjoy the scenery of the earth without saying to myself, I have a cabbage garden in it? But this sounds like the lunacy of fancying oneself everybody else and being unable to play one's own part decently; another form of the disloyal attempt to be independent of the common lot and live without a sharing of pain.

One passage in the Looking Backward reminds us of the pride Adam Bede felt in answering strangers, 'I'm Thias Bede's lad:' 'It seemed to me that advanced age was appropriate to a father, as indeed in all things I considered him a parent so much to my honour that the mention of my relationship to him was likely to secure me regard among those to whom I was otherwise a stranger.' At the present day it is likely that visitors to Loamshire might find their inquiries answered by thriving countrymen, Old Mr. Evans of Griff? I knew Mr. Evans, as if such knowledge were itself a guarantee of respectability in the county.

In lingering over these memories one can only feel the powerlessness of words to characterise the sweetness and the power of all she was. Nothing has been said of her fellowship with that side of the artist nature, its large demands and passionate vehemence, of which Fedalma's dance and Armgart's song are images; nothing of such traits as her delight in all fragrance, from that of syringas or sandalwood to that most spiritual of incense which comes from the tone in which one is spoken to ;' nothing of the scrupulous tenderness which made her if for a moment in conversational eagerness she had let some caressing word or gesture pass without response-come back upon it as an omission to be repaired; nothing of her delight in beauty, almost Hellenic in its reverence for a good gift of the gods which should be matched with worthy living; nothing of that refinement of sensibility which made her shrink from direct praise and note, as one of the paradoxes of emotion, that she was less touched by any tribute to herself than by reading of a great tribute to some one else whom she admired-by the account of a similar incident that occurred to Dickens in the streets at York than by the address of an unknown lady, Will you let me kiss your hand?' as she was leaving the concert room at St. James's Hall on Saturday afternoon.

It is to be feared that posterity will never know exactly what was the living aspect of George Eliot's face; only a very great painter could have seized at once the outline and something of the varying expression, and her reluctance to have her portrait taken, her private person made to a certain extent public property in that way, has deprived us of any such memorial. Future generations will have to draw on their imagination to conceive a face cast in the massive mould of Savonarola, but spare and spiritualised into a closer brotherhood with the other Florentine of the Divina Commedia. The

features might be too large and rugged for womanly beauty, but when the pale face was tinged with a faint flush of tenderness or animation, when the wonderful eyes were lighted up with eager passion, and the mouth melted into curves of unutterable sweetness, the soul itself seemed to shine through its worn framework with a radiance of almost unearthly power, so that a stranger, seeing her for the first time, asked why he had never been told she was so beautiful.

No doubt there was something in the sense of security, the consciousness that the utmost wisdom and knowledge were within reach in the background, but the special charm of her intimacy sprang rather from the purely personal influence, the feeling of being face to face with a most beautiful soul, and on the whole there was more thought of love than of instruction in those who sat at her feet. Thus, even if all could be said well and worthily that here is but feebly hinted, it would still be necessary to appeal to the trust men have a right to ask from each other for belief in what only a few can fully know. We can only look to this trust and the loyalty of a long line of spiritual descendants to hand on the tradition, that precious as the writings of George Eliot are and must be always, her life and character were yet more beautiful than they.

VOL. IX. No. 51.

3 H

EDITH SIMCOX.

PROFIT-SHARING.

SOME forty years ago Channing delivered to a Boston audience a course of lectures On the Elevation of the Working Classes.' These lectures possess many conspicuous excellences of thought, feeling, and expression, but pre-eminent even among these are the piercing clearness of vision with which the remote goal for a workman's best efforts is descried, and the energetic precision with which it is pointed out.

There is (writes Channing) but one elevation for a labourer and for all other men. There are not different kinds of dignity for different orders of men, but one and the same for all. The only elevation of a human being consists in the exercise, growth, energy of the higher principles and powers of his soul. A bird may be shot upwards to the skies by a foreign power; but it rises, in the true sense of the word, only when it spreads its own wings and soars by its own living power. So a man may be thrust upward into a conspicuous place by outward accidents; but he rises only in so far as he exerts himself and expands his best faculties and ascends by a free effort to a nobler region of thought and action. Such is the elevation I desire for the labourer, and I desire no other. This elevation is, indeed, to be aided by an improvement in his outward condition, and in turn it greatly improves his outward lot; and, thus connected, outward good is real and great; but supposing it to exist in separation from inward growth and life, it would be nothing worth, nor would I raise a finger to promote it.

While, however, Channing saw thus clearly wherein consisted the only real elevation of the working classes, and also recognised the powerful influence exerted by their outward condition on their inner life, he was unable to perceive, save vaguely and dimly, the agencies by which a genuine rise in the labourer's condition was to be brought about. He hoped much from increased temperance, economy, hygienic knowledge, education, reading and clearer development of Christian principle, but how these vital influences were to be organised as direct consequences of changed industrial relations was a problem the very statement of which would probably have appeared to him visionary and futile.

By a remarkable coincidence, at the very time when Channing was defining in America the spiritual aim to be set before the working classes, Leclaire in Paris was preparing an industrial revolution, which, though based at first on purely economic considerations, was destined in his master hand to bring in its train precisely that moral renova

tion to which Channing looked forward. I refer of course to the principle of participation by workmen in the profits of enterprise.

In the Nineteenth Century for September 1880, I gave a somewhat detailed account of the remarkable chain of associated institutions grouped by Leclaire around this central principle.

They constitute a permanent industrial Foundation, unique both in the nature of its organisation and in the extent of the benefits, material and moral, which it bestows on its members. This uniqueness, however, while it attracts public attention in an eminent degree to the Maison Leclaire, is calculated to discourage with equal force all imitation of an establishment so elaborately and munificently organised, founded too by an exceptionally situated man of unquestionable genius. The very completeness of the organisation thus tends to obscure the merits of the principle on which it is based. I hope, therefore, to do service by showing that participation in profits, organised on a much less extensive scale and on simpler plans in a large number of industrial and commercial establishments on the Continent, is producing results of the same kind, though not so far-reaching, as those attained by the Maison Leclaire.

In the present article, after indicating the principal sources of information in regard to these establishments, I shall describe selected. instances of the main types on which participation has been organised in them. The results obtained shall be characterised, as far as practicable, in the words of those who have experienced them. A cursory survey of the ground already covered by participatory operations abroad will then lead to a few closing remarks on the applicability of similar methods in this country.

Of published works on participation by far the most important is that of Dr. Victor Böhmert,' director of the Royal Statistical Bureau, and Professor of Political Economy at the Polytechnicum at Dresden. It rests on an international investigation of the most extensive kind, carried out with extraordinary industry and perseverance. In describing the systems adopted by individual houses, extracts from regulations, statements of account, indeed all kinds of first-hand information, are abundantly supplied, and the results flowing from the methods adopted are often stated in direct communications made by the masters, and, in a few important cases, also by the men employed.

For the results in Paris alone, the chief authority is a volume by M. Fougerousse, which includes a number of cases not described by Böhmert.

A further source of trustworthy information is the periodical Bulletin, published by a French society formed in 1879 in order to

1 Die Gewinnbetheiligung. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1878.

2 Patrons et Ouvriers de Paris. Paris, Chaix, 1880.

Bulletin de la Société de la Participation aux Bénéfices. Paris, Chaix,

ascertain and make known the different modes of participation actually employed in industry.'

It will be readily understood that, besides these general works, there exists a great mass of separate publications dealing with the organisation of individual houses. These are far too numerous for specification save in a catalogue raisonné of such literature.

In selecting the types of participation to be described in this article, I have followed the mode of classification introduced by M. Fougerousse, based on the manner in which the workpeople's share in profits is made over to them.

The simplest system is that which distributes this share in ready money at the close of each year's account without making any conditions as to the disposal of the sums so paid over. This mode of proceeding is adopted by but a very limited group of firms, the most important among which is the pianoforte-making establishment of M. Bord, rue des Poissonniers, Paris. Participation was introduced in 1865, in consequence of a strike, on the following basis. After deduction from the net profits of interest at 10 per cent. on M. Bord's capital embarked in the business, the remainder is divided into two parts, one proportional to the amount of interest on capital drawn by M. Bord, the other to the whole sum paid during the year in wages to the workmen. The former of these two parts goes to M. Bord, the latter is divided among all his employés who can show six months' continuous presence in the house up to the day of the annual distribution. The share obtained by each workman is proportional to the sum which he has earned in wages, paid at the full market rate during the year on which the division of profits is made. The number of M. Bord's employés was, at the beginning of 1878, a little over 400, and the sums he has paid in labour-dividends during the last three years are, as he has been kind enough to inform me, 3,784., 2,874. and 3,5481., which represent 15 per cent., 12 per cent., and 16 per cent. respectively on the men's earnings in wages during those years. The total amount thus paid, exclusively out of profits, since the introduction of this system in 1865 is 39,300l.

M. Bord has satisfied himself that a good and thrifty employment is made of these annual labour-dividends, and he considers that the effect of the system in attaching the workmen to the house, and its influence on their relations towards their employer, are excellent.

From the system of immediate possession, I pass to the diametrically opposite procedure introduced thirty years ago, under the auspices of M. Alfred de Courcy, into one of the most important insurance companies of Paris, the Compagnie d' Assurances Générales. Five per cent. on the yearly profits realised by the company is allotted to its staff, which numbers about 250 employés of all grades, whose fixed