The So-Called Profit Sharing System in the Ford Plant

It is quite probable that most of you have a pretty full and complete conception of what the Ford Motor Company has been trying to accomplish in a co-perative way with its employes in the last few years. However, so much has appeared in print that is without foundation and so many comments and criticisms have been aired through various avenues, that possibly it would be well to give you, by way of preface to an exact explanation of just what we are trying to do and have accomplished, a little history in connection with the company, which may perhaps indicate the trend of things and the conclusions which led up to the inauguration of the so-called profit sharing plan, upon January 12, 1914. There has always been a prevailing impression, in some quarters, that the so-called profit sharing plan was more or less of a spasmodic thing. It has been said that it was the result of a dare or challenge made in an off-hand fashion by one of the officers of the company and accepted by the executives, and for this reason would ask you to bear with me while I go into a little explanation of things which may not directly concern the work itself that I have been asked to explain. The Ford Motor Company was incorporated on the sixteenth day of June, 1903, under the laws of the state of Michigan, with an authorized capital of $100,000. There was actually paid in of this amount $28,000. Some years later the capital was increased from a substantial surplus to $2,000,000 and has remained at this figure ever since. A little while since the company laid plans to increase the capitalization to $200,000,000 but under the laws of the state of Michigan this amount exceeds the maximum fixed by law, and the plan was defeated, so that this represents the present stock capital of the company. 297

Aside · Business · Economics · Law and economics · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Profit (economics · Cooperative Studies and Economics · Law · Philosophy · Private Equity and Venture Capital · Sharing Economy and Platforms

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