capital is needed, these difficulties are overcome, and the following scheme has been in existence for twenty-five years, and has led to very satisfactory results. This method is only suitable for a company in which the ordinary shares normally stand at a premium, and the dividends do not fluctuate violently. A special class of employees' ordinary shares should be created, which can be offered for subscription only to the employees at par. If the shares stand at a good premium, the employees will realise that a very favourable offer has been made to them, and those who have saved money, or are willing to do so, will be glad to purchase some shares. The employees' shares could carry the same rights for dividends and voting as the ordinary shares, but as they are issued below their market value, there should be a restricted right of sale. When a holder of employees' shares wishes to sell he may do so, and when he leaves the employment of the company he must sell, by notifying the directors, who will find another employee willing to purchase them at par-the price the holder paid for them. If the dividends have decreased, the directors may not be able to find an employee willing to purchase the shares at par, and the holder will then be allowed to sell them to any one at any price. The purchaser, and every subsequent holder, must always offer the shares, when he wishes to sell, to the directors, and if they can find an employee willing to buy them at par, the holder must sell them, and the employees' shares thus return to the workers, the persons for whom the shares were originally created. It is necessary to restrict the right of sale in this way, as an employee might be tempted to sell the shares he bought at par, at a premium, to some one not connected with the business, and the object of the employees' shares would be frustrated. The restrictions on the right of transfer can be endorsed on the certificate, and thus prevent any misconception.

Working men and women do not understand the usual methods of buying shares and dealing with stockbrokers, but they are accustomed to regular weekly deductions from their wages. The shares when originally issued could be purchased for cash, or subscribed for by weekly deductions from the wages, of threepence or sixpence per share. Employees paying cash would have

their shares allotted at once, but those paying by instalments would only receive their allotment, and begin to receive dividends, when the payments were completed. As a set-off against the interest on the accumulating instalments, it could be arranged that should a subscriber die before his instalments are completed, the company would make a gift to his heirs of the uncompleted balance of his payments, and the shares would be issued to his heir, if an employee, or sold for his heir's benefit, if he were not employed by the company. Experience has proved that this financial risk is very small, and the offer is an added inducement to the employees to subscribe.

The amount of new capital that is issued by a scheme of this kind is under the control of the directors, and they can allocate the shares to any employees they select. It is probable that no large amount would be taken up at one time, but when the scheme is established, and the employees have been receiving dividends, they would be anxious to take up more shares. It is unlikely that all the employees would be willing or able to purchase shares, as their wages and home responsibilities would vary. Some men spend all they receive, while others-aided by a good housewife-can and do save money. The possession of an imposing share certificate, and the right to attend the annual meetings of the company, add to the employee's position and sense of responsibility. An employees' share scheme of this kind encourages the invaluable qualities of thrift and selfreliance, assists a worker to make provision for the future, and brings to him a sum of ready money if he should lose his job, and at a time when he is most in need of it.

It is not suggested that these are the only methods by which the workers may be permitted to share in the profits they have helped to create. In any business some variations or modifications may be desirable, but the schemes explained have been successfully carried on for a number of years, and time has proved that they meet the exigencies of the commercial life of to-day.

The most important thing in founding any schemes such as have been suggested, is the spirit and the ideals which actuate the employers. If they be actuated by

the generous ideal to find some reasonable method of sharing their prosperity with their employees, to give to them some income over and above their standard wages when the profits will permit them to do so, they will find their reward. The employees will appreciate the offer made to them, and will value their position with the firm still more. When they find that their income depends partly upon the success of the business, they will naturally strive to increase its efficiency, to prevent loss and waste of all kinds, and to reduce the costs of production.

Profit-sharing is not a panacea for all the difficulties and problems that face modern industry. It is, however, a means of bridging in some degree the gap that so often separates capital and labour, employer and employee. It can introduce co-operation where antagonism may exist-co-operation to attain greater efficiency, and give better service to the customer and the community who require the goods produced or the services that may be rendered. The world is crying out for lower costs, which can be attained by higher efficiency. Therefore, when profit-sharing is successfully established, the three parties interested in all industries, the employer, the employee, and the consumer, will each benefit in various ways.

W. HOWARD HAZELL.

Art. 4.-CLASSICAL GHOSTS.

1. Lectures on Classical Subjects. By W. R. Hardie. Macmillan, 1903.

2. Pausanias's Description of Greece.

Translated with

a Commentary by Sir J. G. Frazer, LL.D. Macmillan, 1898.

3. The Letters of Pliny. With an English translation by William Melmoth, revised by W. M. L. Hutchinson. Loeb Classical Library. Heinemann, 1915.

4. Darembourg et Saglio. Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines. Tom. II, Art. Divination.' Paris: Hachette, 1892.

It is odd to reflect that at the present day, after so many centuries of advance in scientific thought, it is still a question upon which there is no agreement amongst educated people-not even amongst people of the highest level of scientific knowledge-whether the stories which continually circulate, now as of old, about appearances of the dead, are mere fiction and hallucination, or have behind them real phenomena in which some kind of consciousness in an invisible plane of being manifests itself to the living. It may be of interest to survey what is told us about ghosts in the remains of the ancient Greek and Latin literature. Some of these stories belong professedly to the sphere of poetical mythology-the ghosts in Homer and in the Attic tragedians. But even such stories will conform to the general ideas, held at the time, about appearances of the dead-for instance, the idea, which we also find in modern ghost stories, that the dead man looks just like what he looked like in life. Although one might suppose that in another sphere of being, earthly clothes are of no use to him, the ghost appears dressed just as he was dressed on earth. Homer especially notes that the ghost of Patroclus was 'just like himself, the same stature and the same beautiful eyes, the same voice, and dressed in the same sort of clothes' ('Iliad,' xxIII, 66, 67).

In historical times there are a considerable number of stories of the spirits of dead men-heroes as they were commonly called-acting in the world for help or for harm. But where they simply bring prosperity or bad

luck, without revealing themselves to sight or hearing or touch, I suppose we can hardly call them ghosts. The Thasians, for instance, at one time were told by the Delphic oracle that their bad harvests were due to the wrath of the dead athlete Theagenes, whose statue they had dishonoured. At Anagyrus in Attica, one is told in the Lexicon of Suidas, a man cut down the grove of the local hero, with the result that his wife first died, that then, when he married again, his second wife became possessed by a passion for his son, and falsely accused him to his father, that he then blinded his son, and marooned him on a lonely island, and finally hanged himself; the stepmother committed suicide by throwing herself into a well. No doubt the idea of such activity, beneficent or maleficent, on the part of dead men was common, and must have clung to innumerable burialplaces over the Greek country-side. Especially the spirits of men who had been murdered were felt as a dreadful unseen presence in the neighbourhood of their graves. Plato in the 'Laws' (IX, 865, Jowett's translation) speaks of

'a tale of olden time which is to this effect: He who has suffered a violent end, when newly dead, if he has had the soul of a free man in life, is angry with the author of his death; and being himself full of fear and panic by reason of his violent end, when he sees his murderer walking about in his own accustomed haunts, he is stricken with terror and becomes disordered, and this disorder of his, aided by the guilty recollection of the other, is communicated by him with overwhelming force to the murderer and his deeds.'

There is, however, here no suggestion of an actual appearance of the troubled spirit. But in some of the stories we do hear of the appearance of a hero. Sometimes it is a beneficent hero. At the battle of Marathon, says a legend recorded in Plutarch, 'not a few of the fighters believed that they saw in front of them the apparition (páσμa) of Theseus, clad all in armour, charging upon the barbarians.' And there is the other Marathon legend recorded by Pausanias. It befell that in the battle there was present a man of rustic aspect and dress, who slaughtered many of the barbarians with a plough, and vanished after the fight. When the Athenians inquired of the god, the only answer he vouchsafed was to bid Vol. 246.-No. 487.

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