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 LABOUR

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LABOUR

field of liistory Labbe and Petavius liavo liccn oon- sidered as the most remarkable of all French Jesuits. After his death it was found that his notes and anno- tations on all kinds of authors were so numerous and extensive as to exceed in bulk what an ordinary sa- vant reads during his lifetime. A great deal of time was taken up answering the doubts or ([uestions of others; he was constantly consulted on points of his- tory, on questions of literature, on difficulties in moral and scholastic theology. However, he found time to express his devotion to Christ and His Blessed Mother in elegant Latin verse. His biographers em- phasize his tender devotion to the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin.

Sommervogel enumerates more than eighty works left by Labbe, but we have to be satisfied with the titles of only the more important ones. (1) Among the works on philological subjects, we may mention: "Tirocinium Linguae GrEecse, etc.", Paris, 1648. The work went through some thirteen or fourteen editions. Lablje had the annoying habit of modifying the titles of his works in their various editions, so that a list of their complete titles is quite impossible here. (2) "La Geographic royale " appeared first in Paris, 1646. (3) "De ByzantiniB historiee scriptoribus, etc." (Paris, 1648), was valued as a most useful work at the time of its publication. (4) "Concordia sacraj et profan» chronologiae annorum 5691 ab orbe condito ad hunc Christi annum 16.38" (Paris, 1638); the author pub- lished several other harmonies of historical dates, which contained a number of dissertations on special questions. (5) " Bibliotheea antijanseniana" (Paris, 1654), is a catalogue of all writings directed against the Jansenists, and gives a brief history of the origin of Jansenism. (6) "Bibliotheea bibliothccarum" (Paris, 1664), a bibliography for the handy use of li- brarians. The second edition of this work contains an additional part entitled " Bibliotheea nummaria", and describes old medals, coins, weights, measures, and other antiquarian objects. (7) "Sacrosancti (Ecu- menici Tridentini ConciUi . . . canones et decreta" (Paris, 1667), is a work containing a great number of documents referring to secular princes and their rep- sentatives in the council, and giving also some of the conciliar transactions. (8) But the chief work is the collection of councils entitled " Sacrosancta concilia ad regiam editionem exacta", published by the joint labour of Labte and Cossart, and printed in Paris at the expense of the Typographical Society for Eccle- siastical Books. When Labbe died, the vols. I-VIII and XII-XV had been printed; vols. IX and X were in press; Cossart finished these two volumes and also vol. XL In the sixteenth volume (or the seventeenth, for XI is a double volume) the "apparatus" of the collection has been added by Cossart. A second "ap- paratus" has been added in vol. XVIII, which con- tains the treatise "De conciliis" by Jacobatius; but this volume is extremely rare and expensive, the price being as high as that of the rest of the collection.

HuRTER. NomencJxitor: Sommervogel. Bibl. de la C de J,, IV (Paris, 1893) ; Cossaht. Sacrosancta Concilia, XVIII, Prafat. (Paris, 1863); Hahdocin. Prasf. in Condi. Collect, regia max- ima, p. vi sq.

A. J. Maas.

Labour and Labour Legislation. — Labour is work done by mind or body either partly or wholly for the purpose of producing utilities. This definition is broad enough to include the work of the actor, the phj'sician, the law^'cr, the clergyman, and the domes- tic servant, as well as that of the business man, the mechanic, the factory operative, and the farmer. When used without qualification to-day, the word labour, commonly designates hired labour, and fre- quently hired manual laljour. This is particularly true when the term is used to describe the persons who labour rather than the work or effort. The explana- tion of this narrower usage is that in most occupations

hired labourers are more numerous than self-employing workers, and that among wage-earners manual labour- ers exceed in numl)ers those whose activity is predomi- nantly mental. In this article labour always means the labouring classes. When used of the ages preced- ing the industrial revolution, it includes not merely hired workers, but all who got their living mainly through their own labour, and only in a slight degree by employing others. Hence it takes in the master artisans of the Middle .\ges, and the agricultural ten- ants who worked partly on their own account and partly for the feudal lortl; for the former did work that is now performed by hired labour, and the latter pos- sessed even less economic independence than do the wage-workers of to-day. Moreover, usage justifies this extension of the terms, labour und labouring ffas«.

Passing over the nomadic and pastoral stages of economic life, because there was then no distinct labouring class, we shall touch briefly upon the condi- tion of labour among some of the great nations of an- tiquity that were engaged in agriculture, commerce, or industry. A few years ago the majority of scholars held that the earliest form of land-tenure everywhere was joint ownership and joint cultivation of land by all the members of the community. According to the weight of present opinion, if such a condition existed, it has not been proved by positive and convincing evi- dence. Perhaps the nearest approach to this arrange- ment in historical times is the clan system, by which the clan, or tribe, or sept, owned the land in common, but allotted definite portions of it for individual culti- vation by each member. So far as we know, this sys- tem has not played a great part in agrarian historj-. In ancient Egypt the Pharaoh owned the greater part of the land, and the tenant cultivators, though not in the strict sense slaves, were compelled to live and la- bour in conditions that differed but little from the most oppressive slavery. Their labour it was that built the Pyramids, the pubUc works at Lake Mceris, and the Labyrinth; there, too, they were exploited to the limit of ph>-sical endurance, just as were the Hebrews by the Egyptian taskmasters of a later period. There were some large private estates which were cultivated by a servile population. Indeed, the history of labour down to a little more than one thousand years ago, is for the most part the history of slavery. Judea had few manufactures, and very little commerce; but its working class consisted to a great extent of slaves and compulsory labourers. On the whole, these seem to have been better treated than workers of the same condition in Gentile countries. However, the division of Solomon's empire into two kingdoms was caused in large part by the contributions of labour and produce which that monarch exacted from his own people. In later times a large proportion of the independent Hebrew cultivators were deprived of their lands by rich capitalists, and compelled to become slaves or forced labourers. Some of the strongest denunciations of the Prophets were uttered against this form of exploita- tion. The great trading and manufacturing nation of antiquity was the Phoenicians, and most of their activ- ities and achievements in this field seem to have been based upon the labour of slaves.

The industrial and commercial supremacy of the world passed, in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ to the Greeks, but slave labour continued to be its main support. Although a considerable propor- tion of the tillers of the soil seem to have been free- holders at the beginning of Greek history, the majority were sla\'es in classical and post-classical times. Dur- ing the latter period the slaves considerably outnum- bered the free population as a whole; consequently, they must have formed a large majority of the labour- ing class. Their condition, however, especially at Athens, was not nearly so WTetched as that of the Ro- man slaves during the classical period of that country. They had some protection from the law against inju-