Mitten's Scheme

Like Thomas Alva Edison and many another man of destiny, one Thomas Eugene Mitten began his career in the U. S. as a telegraph operator. He had come from that peaceful county of Sussex, England, and he is now the operator of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. and various motorbus, taxicab, and air lines valued at an odd half billion dollars.

Strangely enough, this onetime Britisher with the flippant mustache and the magnate's look is such a good friend of labor that in 1922 when the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. tried to oust him from management, the employes bought sufficient stock with their savings to keep him in poWer. Said a motorman: "Mr. Mitten is just an ordinary man with extraordinary common sense."

Last week, when informed by the Congress of American Industry at Philadelphia that the U. S. was facing "a crucial condition" in its "social, political and industrial life," Mr. Mitten produced a solution, explained it to the Congress:

"The plan for industrial peace here to be described has already proven workable. ... P. R. T. (Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co.) in 1911 was not financially able to pay its trainmen more than the wage rate theretofore secured through arbitration, and against which the men were in open rebellion. The payment of this rate in 1910 had consumed about 22% of the gross passenger earnings. The new agreement, which we then made, provided that out of every dollar taken in, these men should receive 22 cents, so that as the owners secured advantage by the increased business obtained through joint effort of men and management, the men would themselves secure an increased wage commensurate with their increased effort.

"P. R. T. men and management thereafter went through several years of trial and experimentation, during which they never lost confidence in one another, the best evidence being that P. R. T. is now the only large system which, by disuse of fare boxes, trusts its employes, and that P. R. T. was, with one exception, the only large street railway system that gave continuous strike-proof service during the war. . . .

"P. R. T. employes have during the past five years bought the practical control of P. R. T. They own more than 220,000 shares out of a total of 600,000 shares. . . .

"Following the line of P. R. T. experiment, if the railroads and all of their men would earnestly and collectively devote themselves to economic accomplishment, the savings would more than equal one-half present labor cost. If, as a condition of this co-operative effort, proportionate shares of the resultant added profits were reflected in lower rates to the public, in added profits to the owners, and a fair participation to the employes, the men, by investing this added wage en bloc through their trustees, could within ten years acquire by purchase in the open market a controlling interest in the railroads by which they are employed.

"Such a democracy in the anthracite industry would be intensely practical. . . .

"A similar condition could be brought about in the bituminous coal industry in 15 years and it is safe to say that if the employe-ownership principle were applied to all industry, America would within one generation become a strike-proof nation. . , ."