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Labor (Political economy may be)

in political economy, may be defined as effort for the satisfying of one of the three leading factors in production, the other two being land (or natural objects) and capital; and it is more fundamental than capital, which originally is the result of labor.

A distinction insisted upon by many economists is that into productive and The former consists LABOR of those kinds of exertion which produce utilities embodied in natural objects.

Unproductive labor, like that of the musician, while both useful and honorable, does not add to the material wealth of the community.

Labor directly employed in rendering natural objects serviceable to man may in the language of political economy be distinctively called productive. Yet the physician or teacher most productive, inasmuch as they much as they increase the efficiency of promoting his health and intelligence. labor has appeared have also varied with The social and legal forms in which the progress of civilization. In the early was performed by the men, while the stages the labor of the chase, fishing, etc., drudgery devolved on the women and slaves. It was not till the agricultural spared the conquered in order to utilize stage was reached that conquering tribes ization was based almost entirely on compulsory labor. The pyramids and other great works of Egypt and Babylonia were possible only because governments could command forced labor on a colossal their services as workers. Ancient civilscale. The more highly developed societies of Greece and Rome rested on the same basis.

It is a disputed question how far free labor existed in the early Teutonic settleexisted in the early Teutonic settlements of England and other countries. The mediæval organization of society, were attached to the soil, and rendered serfdom-i. e., the mass of the workers where definitely constituted, rested on fixed services in labor, in kind, and latwere attached to the soil, and rendered terly in money. While the condition of serfdom greatly varied, there can be no doubt that its tendency was to depress the free and raise the servile cultivators free workers of the towns organized to something like a common level. The themselves in GUILDS (q. v.). In the to pass away in England. Its disappear- course of the 14th century serfdom began ance was followed by enactments for the regulation of labor in the interest of the ruling classes. The first, and one of the greatest examples of this was the "Statruling classes. The first, and one of the ute of Laborers." The main object of this statute, which was passed in 1349, was to fix the amount of wages; and it which, besides ordaining an apprentice- was superseded by a statute of Elizabeth ship of seven years , empowered the justices in quarter sessions to fix the rate of wages both in husbandry and of Elizabeth was not repealed till 1814. the effect of the industrial revolution was Toward the close of the 18th century to organize labor in large factories and Vol. V-Cyc-Y