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LEFT LABEO 381 LABOB connection and isolate the Belgian army. Round La Bassee the Second British Army Corps and British Cavalry Corps met the Germans. In June, 1915, the French and British co-operated in taking the offensive north of La Bassee. With the help of Indians and Canadians they won ground along a front of about four miles, penetrating to an average depth, however, of only 600 yards. The fight- ing oscillated to and fro in this region till the arrival of American forces, and the battle of Chateau-Thierry caused a general retirement of the Germans. LABEO, a genus of fishes,^ family Cyprinidas. distingished by their thick and fleshy lips. LABIALS, letters or characters repre- senting a sound or articulation formed or uttered chiefly by the lips, as b, f. m, p, V. LABIATiE (-a'te), in botany, labi- ates, a large order of perigynous exogens, alliance Echiales. It consists of herbace- ous plants or undershrubs, with four- cornered stems, opposite leaves without stipules, covered with receptacles of aromatic oil. Akin to Verbenacese and the Boraginacex. Distribution wide. They abound especially between lat. 40° and 50° N. They constitute y^ the flora of France, and Y2& that of Germany. No poisonous plant belongs to the order, though there are 120 genera and about 2,500 known species. LABIUM (Latin, "a lip"), in zoology, a term applied to the lower lip of the insects and other Arthropoda, the upper part being called the labrum. The term is also applied to the inner lip of the shell of univalve mollusks; the outer lip being the labrum. LA BOISELLE, a village of France, near Contalmaison, which saw much fighting during the battle of the Somme in July, 1916. The battle was begun by the Tenth and Third British Corps, and though there was local success it ended in general failure and much loss. The village was taken by the British on July 5, but continued a greatly contested point to the end of the war. LABOR, 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 Vol. V- of those kinds of exertion which produce utilities embodied in natural objects. Unproductive labor, like that of the musician, while both useful and honor- able, does not add to the material wealth of the community. Labor directly em- ployed in rendering natural objects serv- iceable to man may in the language of political economy be distinctively called productive. Yet the physician or teacher may be indirectly most productive, inas- much as they increase the efficiency of the workman by promoting his health and intelligence. The social and legal forms in which labor has appeared have also varied with the progress of civilization. In the early stages the labor of the chase, fishing, etc., was performed by the men, while the drudgery devolved on the women and slaves. It was not till the agricultural stage was reached that conquering tribes spared the conquered in order to utilize their services as workers. Ancient civil- ization was based almost entirely on com- pulsory labor. The pyramids and other great works of Egj-^pt and Babylonia were possible only because governments could command forced labor on a colossal scale. The more highly developed socie- ties of Greece and Rome rested on the same basis. It is a disputed question how far free labor existed in the early Teutonic settle- ments of England and other countries. The mediaeval organization of society, where definitely constituted, rested on serfdom — i. e., the mass of the workers were attached to the soil, and rendered fixed services in labor, in kind, and lat- 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 to something like a common level. The free workers of the towns organized themselves in Guilds {q. v.). In the course of the 14th century serfdom began to pass away in England. Its disappear- 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 "Stat- ute of Laborers." The main object of this statute, which was passed in 1349, was to fix the amount of wages; and it was superseded by a statute of Elizabeth which, besides ordaining an apprentice- 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. Toward the close of the 18th century the effect of the industrial revolution was to organize labor in large factories and -Cj-c— Y