the convicts but the general public. (2) The competition of prisonmade articles has resulted in the existence of a low wage scale in many industries and has subjected the manufacturers to a kind of competition which should not exist in any civilized community. (3) The only beneficiaries of the convict labor system are the contractors who are permitted by the State to exploit the inmates of prisons. (4) The individual States are powerless to deal adequately with the situation because of the interstate shipment of convict-made goods. It is suggested that the Commission recommend: (1) The abolition as far as possible of indoor manufacture, and the substitution of such outdoor work as that upon State farms and State roads, providing that where prisoners are employed they should be compensated and that the products which they manufacture should not be sold in competition with the products of free labor. (2) The enactment by Congress of a bill providing that all convict-made goods when transported into any State or Territory of the United States shall be subject to the operation of the laws of such State or Territory to the same extent and in the same manner as though such goods had been produced therein." Many of the states have enacted laws designed to restrain or restrict the competition between prison labor and free labor within the respective jurisdictions of such states. (See CONVICT LABOR SYSTEMS.)

Prison-Made Goods. See PRISON LABOR.

Private Employment Bureaus. See EMPLOYMENT BUreaus.

Private Enterprise. The present system of industrial production for the profit of private individuals; as opposed to the ownership or control of industry by the State, in the interest of society as a whole.

Prize Systems. See REWARD SYSTEMS.

Probation System in Russian Industry. Under the Soviet labor code, before any person is permanently engaged he must undergo a probation period of one week; in nationalized (State-conducted) establishments the probation period is two weeks for unskilled labor and one month for skilled labor. If any employee is rejected after probation he may appeal to his trade union. If his union considers his complaint justified it may enter into negotiations with his employer. Should negotiations fail, the matter may be submitted to the local office of the PEOPLE'S COMMISSARIAT OF LABOR, which may order the appointment of the complainant to a permanent position or may dismiss his complaint.

Probi-Viri. Italian industrial courts established by law to deal with cases (mainly wage disputes between individuals) arising out of existing labor contracts. They correspond to the French CONSEILS DE PRUD'HOMMES and the German GEWERBEGERICHTEN.

Process Work. In England, a common designation for factory work which involves a series of specialized mechanical processes or operations.

Producers' Cooperation. As distinguished from CONSUMERS' COOPERATION, this is the plan whereby factories, farms, dairies, etc., are established or acquired by the workers themselves, for their common profit and benefit, the capitalist and employer in the ordinary sense being eliminated. The essential features underlying the various forms of producers' cooperation have been thus summarized: "(1) Each group of workers is to be associated by their own free choice; (2) these associates shall work under a leader elected and removable by themselves; and (3) the collective remuneration of the labor performed by the group shall be divided among all its members (including this leader) in such a manner as shall be arranged upon principles recognized as equitable, by the associates themselves." It is of course essential, under producers' cooperation, that the share capital of the enterprise shall be owned by the workers. As a general rule, the profits, after payment of interest on capital, are returned to the workers as a dividend on wages and to customers (who are largely the distributive societies) as a dividend on purchases. There are now 30,000 societies throughout the world engaged in this form of cooperation. They are generally known as "productive societies" or "copartnership societies." Producers' cooperation itself is sometimes called "industrial cooperation." The movement is strongest in Great Britain. (See SELF-EMPLOYMENT; COOPERATIVE EMPLOYMENT.)

Product Sharing. A name sometimes given to the method or plan under which workers are recompensed, not in wages, but with a certain share or proportion of the product of their labor. Product sharing is now mainly confined to the field of agricultural labor. (See CROPPER.)

Production Manager. A technical engineer employed in large-scale industrial operations to keep the processes of production up to a point of maximum efficiency. He differs from his less specialized forerunner, the ENTREPRENEUR, in that he is not concerned primarily with the maintenance of prices or profits. Sometimes called "efficiency engineer." (See JOB ANALYSIS.)

Production Standards.

In some industries or industrial establishments certain definite standards, sometimes calculated with the assistance of the trade union, are adopted to determine the normal output of workers on given processes. Such standards are used as a basis for fixing the wage in TIME WORK. One of the recent demands of the New York Clothing Manufacturers' Association upon the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was as follows: "All workers shall individually be responsible for a daily standard of production to be agreed on and calculated upon the base rates prevailing in other competitive markets; and that in the event of the failure of any worker to produce such standard of production, the employer shall have the right to reduce wages pro rata or discharge the worker substantially under-producing." Unless determined by COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, the enforcement of production standards usually results in TASK WORK. (See LABOR NORM; FAIR DAY'S WORK.)

Productive Societies. See PRODUCERS' COOPERATION.

Productivism. The theory that social advance is dependent chiefly upon increased industrial output, rather than upon a more equitable distribution of the existing supply. In continental labor circles this term denotes the belief that labor groups must concentrate upon a mastery of industrial processes, to the end that a labor or socialist regime shall produce a greater amount of wealth than does CAPITALISM at present.

Productivity Theory of Wages. The breakdown of the WAGE FUND THEORY has forced economists to fall back upon a conception of general wages which is commonly known as the "productivity theory." At the base of this doctrine is the fact (noted in the entry on WAGES) that high wages do not necessarily mean high labor cost. "A worker who is efficient at his work will get high wages, because the product of his work will be great; anything that increases the efficiency of the worker will, by making him more productive, tend to increase his wages." Thus, competition secures for the worker, in the form of wages, just what he produces. In Professor Hadley's phrase, wages are "the discounted product of industry," ie., the value of the product less interest on the wages from the time they are paid to the time when the employer receives the price of the product. Professor Clark summarizes the productivity theory as follows: "As real as gravitation is the force that draws the actual pay of men toward a standard that is set by the final productivity law. This law is universal and permanent: everywhere it will outlive the local

and changeful influences that modify its operation. We are to get what we produce such is the dominant rule of life; and what we are able to produce by means of labor, is determined by what a final unit of mere labor can add to the product that can be created without its aid. Final productivity governs wages." One of the several elaborations of this general theory is commonly known as "economic worth"-this phrase being, according to Professor Clay, "merely a misleading synonym for 'productivity of market value."" (See EXCHANGE THEORY OF WAGES.)

Professional Alliances. See TRADE UNIONS IN RUSSIA.

Professional Risk. See TRADE RISK PRINCIPLE.

Professorial Socialism. See SOCIALISTS OF THE CHAIR.

Profit Sharing. This term was defined by the International Cooperative Congress, held in Paris in 1889, as "an agreement freely entered into by which the employees receive a share, fixed in advance, of the profits." The same congress defined the term "agreement" as covering "not only agreements binding in law, but as including also cases where the agreement is only a moral obligation, provided it is honorably carried out." The term "profit" is defined as "the actual net balance or gain realized by the operations of the undertaking." A "share" is stated to be "a sum paid to the employee out of the profits." The share given to the employee "shall not be indeterminate"; that is, "it must not be a share which an employer fixes, at the end of some period, at his absolute discretion, as distinguished from a prearranged basis." The production of the total working force of a concern that must share in the profits in order to establish real profit-sharing conditions was stated to be "not less than 75 per cent." The three methods of profit sharing most commonly followed are: (1) Cash payments, at the end of a fixed period; (2) DEFERRED PARTICIPATION by means of a savings bank deposit, benefit funds, or annuity; and (3) payment in shares of stock of the employing corporation. Within these three forms, however, there are almost innumerable differences of detailed application in different establishments. Profit sharing, in the genuine sense, must be clearly distinguished from all schemes under which individual or collective bonuses are paid for increased production or lower production costs, irrespective of the rate of profit realized by the employer and also from all so-called "profit sharing" plans the benefits of which are confined to a selected few of the better-paid executive or supervisory employees. Trade unionists are, in the main, distinctly hostile to

all forms of profit sharing. As Professor W. J. Ashley has said, "profit-sharing and Trade Unionism rest on two mutually exclusive principles and involve two incompatible policies. Profit-sharing assumes a community of interest between employer and employed in each particular business, Trade Unionism between all the workmen in the trade against all the employers in the trade." It is a not uncommon practice among employers to make non-membership in a trade union a condition of employees' participation in profit sharing schemes. (See GAIN SHARING; CAPITAL SHARING; INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP; LABOR COPARTNERSHIP; COOPERATION.)

Profits System. A name often given to the present economic organization of society, which has for its primary end the securing of monetary gain for the private owners of the means of production and distribution. The principal aim of sOCIALISM is to abolish the profits system, and to make public service rather than private profit the chief incentive in the economic arrangements of society. (See CAPITALISM; ABSENTEE CAPITALISM; EXPLOITATION; WAGE SLAVERY; COMPETITIVE SYSTEM.)

Progression within the Trade. See RESTRICTION OF NUMBERS; SENIORITY.

Progressive Wage. See PREMIUM BONUS SYSTEM.

Prohibited Employments. Those which are forbidden by law to women or children or, usually under certain individual distinctions, to men. The purpose of such prohibition is to safeguard life, limb, health, or morals, and it is based on considerations of age, sex, physique, and education. In European countries, as a rule, the list of legally prohibited employments is much more inclusive than in the United States.

Proletarian. See PROLETARIAT.

Proletariat or Proletariate. Derived from the Latin word proles, meaning "offspring" or "progeny," this word in its original Latin form denoted the lowest or poorest class of citizens-according to some authorities, those who served the State not with property but with offspring. In present-day usage, the term is used in designation of the propertyless wage-earning class as a whole-those who are solely dependent upon daily employment, who do not own the tools or materials with which they work, and who have no security against the future. A single member of the proletariat is a "proletarian," which is also the adjective form. (See SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM;