798 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
they are below the normal trade-union wage, or whether there are other disadvantages offsetting the extra compensation. The following analysis of the latest report will, however, throw some light on this point : 152 productive societies shared profits; of these, 24 made no report concerning profits, and 42 made no report concerning dividends to laborers ; of the 86 reporting a dividend, 4 gave no means of determining the ratio of dividends to wages, half of the remainder gave a dividend of less than i per cent, on the wages paid, 20 gave more than 2 per cent., and but 3 gave as much as 7 per cent. This is decidedly better than the previous year, when only 44 out of 155 reported dividends. Of the 114 dealt with by Mr. Schloss in his report, for the year 1892, 55 made no returns ; of the remaining 59, there were 27 cases in which no dividend was made, there was I which gave a bonus of 16.4 per cent., 15 which gave a bonus of from 4 to 9 per cent., and the remainder gave a bonus of less than 4 per cent. For the entire 59 cases, the average was 2.4 per cent, on wages. A partial explanation of the fragmentary and discouraging reports during the past few years is found in the fact that the increase in the number of the societies consists almost exclusively in Irish creameries, there now being 58 of these out of a total of 152. Very fragmentary reports are received from these ; while all of them are reported as dividing profits with labor, only 16 of them really showed a dividend.
A brief consideration of the structure of these productive societies may be of interest. While the type is the same, the details are of the greatest variety. All have limited liability; most of them have shares of one pound or less ; nearly all of them adhere to the rule of one individual, one vote, and no proxy voting ; all are directed by committees elected at a gen- eral meeting, and these control the business through a secretary and usually a manager. They differ chiefly in defining who is eligible to membership and to the committees, and as to the method of division of the profits. In some every member is eligible ; in some all committeemen are employes, in some only a certain number, and in some they are excluded altogether. The following is a type of the methods of division of profits :
