Labor
Labor names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Labor in political economy
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in political economy, may be defined as effort for the satisfying of human needs. It is 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 unproductive labor. The former consists 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 may be indirectly most productive, inasmuch as they increase the efficiency of the workman by 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 settlements of England and other countries. The mediæval organization of society, 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 disappearcourse of the 14th century serfdom began ance was followed by enactments for the regulation of labor in the interest 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 apprenticewas 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 handicrafts. This act 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
Labor FEDERATION OF 382 LABOR
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FEDERATION OF 382 LABOR, DEPARTMENT OF similar undertakings; and in the early decades of the 19th the growing ideas of freedom had begun to make other great changes in the condition of the workers. The right of combination received in 1824 was utilized in the formation of trades-unions and co-operative societies, and the admission of the workingmen to the franchise has given them a share in the political life of the country. The emancipation of agricultural labor from serfdom, which was effected in France at the Revolution of 1789, was not completed in central Europe till 1848 , and in Russia not till 1861. Laws for the regulation of labor are now intended not to fix wages as formerly, but to protect the weaker class of workers. LABOR, AMERICAN FEDERA- TION OF, an association composed of about 80 national labor organizations, embracing about 7,000 local unions. It was organized at Columbus , O., in 1886. In 1905 the Socialists withdrew and formed other organizations, but they have since made various efforts to control the association, without success. The Federation was successful in getting Congress to pass a law declaring that labor was not a commodity to be handled about but a human entity. The Federation showed patriotic ardor during the Great War and helped the government.
Labor . See Trade Union
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
. See Trade Union ; Child Labor ; Federation Of Labor ; Wages ; Factory System ; Sweat Shop
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote in 1921 that laws regulating labor were no longer meant to fix wages, as the Elizabethan statutes had done, but only to protect the weaker workers; the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 restored statutory wage-fixing in the form of a national minimum wage and the forty-hour week, and most industrial countries now do the same. The economists' division of labor into productive work that embodies utilities in natural objects and unproductive work such as the musician's has been abandoned entirely: services are now counted in national income and employ the large majority of workers in the United States and Europe. The American Federation of Labor described here merged with its rival the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1955 to form the AFL-CIO, and American union membership, after peaking around a third of wage earners in the 1950s, has fallen to roughly a tenth, and to well under that in the private sector. Machinery and computing have also changed what the word covers, so that today the field is usually taught as labor economics, concerned with wages, unemployment and skills rather than with the three factors of production.
Written for this edition, 2026.