[1] Victor Varin, pseudonym of Charles Voirin (1798-1869).
[2] Marc Antoine Amédée Michel (1812-1868), vaudevillist.
[3] Louis François Nicolaise, called Clairville (1811-1879),
part-author of the famous _Fille de Mme Angot_ (1872).
[4] Philippe François Pinel, called Dumanoir (1806-1865).
[5] Alfred Charlemagne Lartigue, called Delacour (1815-1885). For a
list of this author's pieces see O. Lorenz, _Catalogue Général_ (vol.
ii., 1868).
[6] Adolphe Joseph Choler (1822-1889).
LABICI, an ancient city of Latium, the modern Monte Compatri, about 17
m. S.E. from Rome, on the northern slopes of the Alban Hills, 1739 ft.
above sea-level. It occurs among the thirty cities of the Latin League,
and it is said to have joined the Aequi in 419 B.C. and to have been
captured by the Romans in 418. After this it does not appear in history,
and in the time of Cicero and Strabo was almost entirely deserted if not
destroyed. Traces of its ancient walls have been noticed. Its place was
taken by the _respublica Lavicanorum Quintanensium_, the post-station
established in the lower ground on the Via Labicana (see LABICANA, VIA),
a little S.W. of the modern village of Colonna, the site of which is
attested by various inscriptions and by the course of the road itself.
See T. Ashby in _Papers of the British School at Rome_, i. 256 sqq.
(T. As.)
LABID (Abu 'Aqil Labid ibn Rabi'a) (_c._ 560-_c._ 661), Arabian poet,
belonged to the Bani 'Amir, a division of the tribe of the Hawazin. In
his younger years he was an active warrior and his verse is largely
concerned with inter-tribal disputes. Later, he was sent by a sick uncle
to get a remedy from Mahomet at Medina and on this occasion was much
influenced by a part of the Koran. He accepted Islam soon after, but
seems then to have ceased writing. In Omar's caliphate he is said to
have settled in Kufa. Tradition ascribes to him a long life, but dates
given are uncertain and contradictory. One of his poems is contained in
the _Mo'allakat_ (q.v.).
Twenty of his poems were edited by Chalidi (Vienna, 1880); another
thirty-five, with fragments and a German translation of the whole,
were edited (partly from the remains of A. Huber) by C. Brockelmann
(Leiden, 1892); cf. A. von Kremer, _Über die Gedichte des Lebyd_
(Vienna, 1881). Stories of Labid are contained in the
_Kitabul-Aghani_, xiv. 93 ff. and xv. 137 ff. (G. W. T.)
LABIENUS, the name of a Roman family, said (without authority) to belong
to the gens Atia. The most important member was TITUS LABIENUS. In 63
B.C., at Caesar's instigation, he prosecuted Gaius Rabirius (q.v.) for
treason; in the same year, as tribune of the plebs, he carried a
plebiscite which indirectly secured for Caesar the dignity of pontifex
maximus (Dio Cassius xxxvii. 37). He served as a legatus throughout
Caesar's Gallic campaigns and took Caesar's place whenever he went to
Rome. His chief exploits in Gaul were the defeat of the Treviri under
Indutiomarus in 54, his expedition against Lutetia (Paris) in 52, and
his victory over Camulogenus and the Aedui in the same year. On the
outbreak of the civil war, however, he was one of the first to desert
Caesar, probably owing to an overweening sense of his own importance,
not adequately recognized by Caesar. He was rapturously welcomed on the
Pompeian side; but he brought no great strength with him, and his ill
fortune under Pompey was as marked as his success had been under Caesar.
From the defeat at Pharsalus, to which he had contributed by affecting
to despise his late comrades, he fled to Corcyra, and thence to Africa.
There he was able by mere force of numbers to inflict a slight check
upon Caesar at Ruspina in 46. After the defeat at Thapsus he joined the
younger Pompey in Spain, and was killed at Munda (March 17th, 45).
LABLACHE, LUIGI (1794-1858), Franco-Italian singer, was born at Naples
on the 6th of December 1794, the son of a merchant of Marseilles who had
married an Irish lady. In 1806 he entered the Conservatorio della Pieta
de Turchini, where he studied music under Gentili and singing under
Valesi, besides learning to play the violin and violoncello. As a boy he
had a beautiful alto voice, and by the age of twenty he had developed a
magnificent bass with a compass of two octaves from E[flat] below to
E[flat] above the bass stave. After making his first appearance at
Naples he went to Milan in 1817, and subsequently travelled to Turin,
Venice and Vienna. His first appearances in London and Paris in 1830 led
to annual engagements in both the English and French capitals. His
reception at St Petersburg a few years later was no less enthusiastic.
In England he took part in many provincial musical festivals, and was
engaged by Queen Victoria to teach her singing. On the operatic stage he
was equally successful in comic or tragic parts, and with his
wonderfully powerful voice he could express either humour or pathos.
Among his friends were Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Mercadante. He
was one of the thirty-two torch-bearers chosen to surround the coffin at
Beethoven's funeral in 1827. He died at Naples on the 23rd of January
1858 and was buried at Maison Lafitte, Paris. Lablache's Leporello in
_Don Giovanni_ was perhaps his most famous impersonation; among his
principal other rôles were Dandini in _Cenerentola_ (Rossini), Assur in
_Semiramide_ (Rossini), Geronimo in _La Gazza Ladra_ (Rossini), Henry
VIII. in _Anna Bolena_ (Donizetti), the Doge in _Marino Faliero_
(Donizetti), the title-rôle in _Don Pasquale_ (Donizetti), Geronimo in
_Il Matrimonio Segreto_ (Cimarosa), Gritzenko in _L'Étoile du Nord_
(Meyerbeer), Caliban in _The Tempest_ (Halévy).
LABOR DAY, in the United States, a legal holiday in nearly all of the
states and Territories, where the first Monday in September is observed
by parades and meetings of labour organizations. In 1882 the Knights of
Labor paraded in New York City on this day; in 1884 another parade was
held, and it was decided that this day should be set apart for this
purpose. In 1887 Colorado made the first Monday in September a legal
holiday; and in 1909 Labor Day was observed as a holiday throughout the
United States, except in Arizona and North Dakota; in Louisiana it is a
holiday only in New Orleans (Orleans parish), and in Maryland, Wyoming
and New Mexico it is not established as a holiday by statute, but in
each may be proclaimed as such in any year by the governor.
LA BOURBOULE, a watering-place of central France, in the department of
Puy-de-Dôme, 4½ m. W. by N. of Mont-Dore by road. Pop. (1906) 1401. La
Bourboule is situated on the right bank of the Dordogne at a height of
2790 ft. Its waters, of which arsenic is the characteristic constituent,
are used in cases of diseases of the skin and respiratory organs,
rheumatism, neuralgia, &c. Though known to the Romans they were not in
much repute till towards the end of the 19th century. The town has three
thermal establishments and a casino.
LABOUR CHURCH, THE, an organization intended to give expression to the
religion of the labour movement. This religion is not theological--it
leaves theological questions to private individual conviction--but
"seeks the realization of universal well-being by the establishment of
Socialism--a commonwealth founded upon justice and love." It asserts
that "improvement of social conditions and the development of personal
character are both essential to emancipation from social and moral
bondage, and to that end insists upon the duty of studying the economic
and moral forces of society." The first Labour Church was founded at
Manchester (England) in October 1891 by a Unitarian minister, John
Trevor. This has disappeared, but vigorous successors have been
established not only in the neighbourhood, but in Bradford, Birmingham,
Nottingham, London, Wolverhampton and other centres of industry, about
30 in all, with a membership of 3000. Many branches of the Independent
Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation also hold Sunday
gatherings for adults and children, using the Labour Church hymn-book
and a similar form of service, the reading being chosen from Dr Stanton
Coit's _Message of Man_. There are special forms for child-naming,
marriages and burials. The separate churches are federated in a Labour
Church Union, which holds an annual conference and business meeting in
March. At the conference of 1909, held in Ashton-under-Lyne, the name
"Labour Church" was changed to "Socialist Church."
LA BOURDONNAIS, BERTRAND FRANÇOIS, COUNT MAHÉ de (1699-1753), French
naval commander, was born at Saint Malo on the 11th of February 1699. He
went to sea when a boy, and in 1718 entered the service of the French
India Company as a lieutenant. In 1724 he was promoted captain, and
displayed such bravery in the capture of Mahé of the Malabar coast that
the name of the town was added to his own. For two years he was in the
service of the Portuguese viceroy of Goa, but in 1735 he returned to
French service as governor of the Île de France and the Île de Bourbon.
His five years' administration of the islands was vigorous and
successful. A visit to France in 1740 was interrupted by the outbreak of
hostilities with Great Britain, and La Bourdonnais was put at the head
of a fleet in Indian waters. He saved Mahé, relieved General Dupleix at
Pondicherry, defeated Lord Peyton, and in 1746 participated in the siege
of Madras. He quarrelled with Dupleix over the conduct of affairs in
India, and his anger was increased on his return to the Île de France at
finding a successor to himself installed there by his rival. He set sail
on a Dutch vessel to present his case at court, and was captured by the
British, but allowed to return to France on parole. Instead of securing
a settlement of his quarrel with Dupleix, he was arrested (1748) on a
charge of gubernatorial peculation and maladministration, and secretly
imprisoned for over two years in the Bastille. He was tried in 1751 and
acquitted, but his health was broken by the imprisonment and by chagrin
at the loss of his property. To the last he made unjust accusations
against Dupleix. He died at Paris on the 10th of November 1753. The
French government gave his widow a pension of 2400 livres.
La Bourdonnais wrote _Traité de la mâture des vaisseaux_ (Paris 1723),
and left valuable memoirs which were published by his grandson, a
celebrated chess player, Count L. C. Mahé de la Bourdonnais (1795-1840)
(latest edition, Paris, 1890). His quarrel with Dupleix has given rise
to much debate; for a long while the fault was generally laid to the
arrogance and jealousy of Dupleix, but W. Cartwright and Colonel
Malleson have pointed out that La Bourdonnais was proud, suspicious and
over-ambitious.
See P. de Gennes, _Mémoire pour le sieur de la Bourdonnais, avec les
pièces justificatives_ (Paris, 1750); _The Case of Mde la Bourdonnais,
in a Letter to a Friend_ (London, 1748); Fantin des Odoards,
_Révolutions de l'Inde_ (Paris, 1796); Collin de Bar, _Histoire de
l'Inde ancienne et moderne_ (Paris, 1814); Barchou de Penhoën,
_Histoire de la conquête et de la fondation de l'empire anglais dans
l'Inde_ (Paris, 1840); Margry, "Les Isles de France et de Bourbon sous
le gouvernement de La Bourdonnais," in _La Revue maritime et
coloniale_ (1862); W. Cartwright, "Dupleix et l'Inde française," in
_La Revue britannique_ (1882); G. B. Malleson, _Dupleix_ (Oxford,
1895); Anandaranga Pillai, _Les Français dans l'Inde_, _Dupleix et
Labourdonnais, extraits du journal d'Anandaran-gappoullé 1736-1748_,
trans. in French by Vinsor in _École spéciale des langues orientales
vivantes_, séries 3, vol. xv. (Paris, 1894).
LABOUR EXCHANGE, a term very frequently applied to registries having for
their principal object the better distribution of labour (see
UNEMPLOYMENT). Historically the term is applied to the system of
equitable labour exchanges established in England between 1832 and 1834
by Robert Owen and his followers. The idea is said to have originated
with Josiah Warren, who communicated it to Owen. Warren tried an
experiment in 1828 at Cincinnati, opening an exchange under the title of
a "time store." He joined in starting another at Tuscarawas, Ohio, and a
third at Mount Vernon, Indiana, but none were quite on the same line as
the English exchanges. The fundamental idea of the English exchanges was
to establish a currency based upon labour; Owen in _The Crisis_ for June
1832 laid down that all wealth proceeded from labour and knowledge; that
labour and knowledge were generally remunerated according to the time
employed, and that in the new exchanges it was proposed to make _time_
the standard or measure of wealth. This new currency was represented by
"labour notes," the notes being measured in hours, and the hour reckoned
as being worth sixpence, this figure being taken as the mean between the
wage of the best and the worst paid labour. Goods were then to be
exchanged for the new currency. The exchange was opened in extensive
premises in the Gray's Inn Road, near King's Cross, London, on the 3rd
of September 1832. For some months the establishment met with
considerable success, and a considerable number of tradesmen agreed to
take labour notes in payment for their goods. At first, an enormous
number of deposits was made, amounting in seventeen weeks to 445,501
hours. But difficulties soon arose from the lack of sound practical
valuators, and from the inability of the promoters to distinguish
between the labour of the highly skilled and that of the unskilled.
Tradesmen, too, were quick to see that the exchange might be worked to
their advantage; they brought unsaleable stock from their shops,
exchanged it for labour notes, and then picked out the best of the
saleable articles. Consequently the labour notes began to depreciate;
trouble also arose with the proprietors of the premises, and the
experiment came to an untimely end early in 1834.
See F. Podmore's _Robert Owen_, ii. c. xvii. (1906); B. Jones,
_Co-operative Production_, c. viii. (1894); G. J. Holyoake, _History
of Co-operation_, c. viii. (1906).
LABOUR LEGISLATION. Regulation of labour,[1] in some form or another,
whether by custom, royal authority, ecclesiastical rules or by formal
legislation in the interests of a community, is no doubt as old as the
most ancient forms of civilization. And older than all civilization is
the necessity for the greater part of mankind to labour for maintenance,
whether freely or in bonds, whether for themselves and their families or
for the requirements or superfluities of others. Even while it is clear,
however, that manual labour, or the application of the bodily
forces--with or without mechanical aid--to personal maintenance and the
production of goods, remains the common lot of the majority of citizens
of the most developed modern communities, still there is much risk of
confusion if modern technical terms such as "labour," "employer,"
"labour legislation" are freely applied to conditions in bygone
civilizations with wholly different industrial organization and social
relationships. In recent times in England there has been a notable
disappearance from current use of correlative terms implying a social
relationship which is greatly changed, for example, in the rapid passage
from the Master and Servant Act 1867 to the Employer and Workman Act
1875. In the 18th century the term "manufacturer" passed from its
application to a working craftsman to its modern connotation of at least
some command of capital, the employer being no longer a small working
master. An even more significant later change is seen in the steady
development of a labour legislation, which arose in a clamant social
need for the care of specially helpless "protected" persons in factories
and mines, into a wider legislation for the promotion of general
industrial health, safety and freedom for the worker from fraud in
making or carrying out wage contracts.
If, then, we can discern these signs of important changes within so
short a period, great caution is needed in rapidly reviewing long
periods of time prior to that industrial revolution which is traced
mainly to the application of mechanical power to machinery in aid of
manual labour, practically begun and completed within the second half of
the 18th century. "In 1740 save for the fly-shuttle the loom was as it
had been since weaving had begun ... and the law of the land was" (under
the Act of Apprentices of 1503) "that wages in each district should be
assessed by Justices of the Peace."[2] Turning back to still earlier
times, legislation--whatever its source or authority--must clearly be
devoted to aims very different from modern aims in regulating labour,
when it arose before the labourer, as a man dependent on an "employer"
for the means of doing work, had appeared, and when migratory labour was
almost unknown through the serfdom of part of the population and the
special status secured in towns to the artisan.
In the great civilizations of antiquity there were great aggregations of
labour which was not solely, though frequently it was predominantly,
slave labour; and some of the features of manufacture and mining on a
great scale arose, producing the same sort of evils and industrial
maladies known and regulated in our own times. Some of the maladies were
described by Pliny and classed as "diseases of slaves." And he gave
descriptions of processes, for example in the metal trades, as belonging
entirely to his own day, which modern archaeological discoveries trace
back through the earliest known Aryan civilizations to a prehistoric
origin in the East, and which have never died out in western Europe, but
can be traced in a concentrated manufacture with almost unchanged
methods, now in France, now in Germany, now in England.
Little would be gained in such a sketch as this by an endeavour to piece
together the scattered and scanty materials for a comparative history of
the varying conditions and methods of labour regulation over so enormous
a range. While our knowledge continually increases of the remains of
ancient craft, skill and massed labour, much has yet to be discovered
that may throw light on methods of organization of the labourers. While
much, and in some civilizations most, of the labour was compulsory or
forced, it is clear that too much has been sometimes assumed, and it is
by no means certain that even the pyramids of Egypt, much less the
beautiful earliest Egyptian products in metal work, weaving and other
skilled craft work, were typical products of slave labour. Even in Rome
it was only at times that the proportion of slaves valued as property
was greater than that of hired workers, or, apart from capture in war or
self-surrender in discharge of a debt, that purchase of slaves by the
trader, manufacturer or agriculturist was generally considered the
cheapest means of securing labour. As in early England the various
stages of village industrial life, medieval town manufacture, and
organization in craft gilds, and the beginnings of the mercantile
system, were parallel with a greater or less prevalence of serfdom and
even with the presence in part of slavery, so in other ages and
civilizations the various methods of organization of labour are found to
some extent together. The Germans in their primitive settlements were
accustomed to the notion of slavery, and in the decline of the Roman
Empire Roman captives from among the most useful craftsmen were carried
away by their northern conquerors.
The history and present details of the labour laws of various countries
are dealt with below in successive sections: (1) history of legislation
in the United Kingdom; (2) the results as shown by the law in force in
1909, with the corresponding facts for (3) Continental Europe and (4)
the United States. Under other headings (TRADE-UNIONS, STRIKES AND
LOCK-OUTS, ARBITRATION AND CONCILIATION, &c., &c.) are many details on
cognate subjects.