VOLUME XVI

L a letter which was the twelfth letter of the Phoenician alphabet. It has in its history passed through many changes of form, ending curiously enough in its usual manuscript form with a shape almost identical with that which it had about 900 B.C. ([symbol] L). As was the case with B and some other letters the Greeks did not everywhere keep the symbol in the position in which they had borrowed it [symbol]. This, which was its oldest form in Attica and in the Chalcidian colonies of Italy, was the form adopted by the Romans, who in time converted it into the rectangle L, which passed from them to the nations of western Europe. In the Ionic alphabet, however, from which the ordinary Greek alphabet is derived it appeared as [symbol]. A still more common form in other parts of Greece was [symbol], with the legs of unequal length. The editors of Herodotus have not always recognized that the name of Labda, the mother of Cypselus, in the story (v. 92) of the founding of the great family of Corinthian despots, was derived from the fact that she was lame and so suggested the form of the Corinthian [symbol]. Another form [symbol] or [symbol] was practically confined to the west of Argolis. The name of the Greek letter is ordinarily given as _Lambda_, but in Herodotus (above) and in Athenaeus x. p. 453 _e_, where the names of the letters are given, the best authenticated form is _Labda_. The Hebrew name, which was probably identical with the Phoenician, is _Lamed_, which, with a final vowel added as usual, would easily become _Lambda_, _b_ being inserted between m and another consonant. The pronunciation of _l_ varies a great deal according to the point at which the tongue makes contact with the roof of the mouth. The contact, generally speaking, is at the same point as for _d_, and this accounts for an interchange between these sounds which occurs in various languages, e.g. in Latin _lacrima_ from the same root as the Greek [Greek: dakru] and the English _tear_. The change in Latin occurs in a very limited number of cases and one explanation of their occurrence is that they are borrowed (Sabine) words. In pronunciation the breath may be allowed to escape at one or both sides of the tongue. In most languages _l_ is a fairly stable sound. Orientals, however, have much difficulty in distinguishing between _l_ and _r_. In Old Persian _l_ is found in only two foreign words, and in Sanskrit different dialects employ _r_ and _l_ differently in the same words. Otherwise, however, the interchanges between _r_ and _l_ were somewhat exaggerated by the older philologists. Before other consonants _l_ becomes silent in not a few languages, notably in French, where it is replaced by _u_, and in English where it has occasionally been restored in recent times, e.g. in _fault_ which earlier was spelt without _l_ (as in French whence it was borrowed), and which Goldsmith could still rhyme with _aught_. In the 15th century the Scottish dialect of English dropped _l_ largely both before consonants and finally after _a_ and _u_, _a'_ = all, _fa'_ = fall, _pu'_ = pull, _'oo'_ = wool, _bulk_ pronounced like _book_, &c., while after _o_ it appears as _w_, _row_ (pronounced _rau_) = roll, _know_ = knoll, &c. It is to be observed that L = 50 does not come from this symbol, but was an adaptation of [symbol], the western Greek form of [chi], which had no corresponding sound in Latin and was therefore not included in the ordinary alphabet. This symbol was first rounded into [symbol] and then changed first to [symbol], and ultimately to L. (P. Gi.)

LAACHER SEE, a lake of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, 5 m. W. of Brohl on the Rhine, and N. of the village of Niedermendig. It occupies what is supposed to be a crater of the Eifel volcanic formation, and the pumice stone and basalt found in great quantities around it lend credence to this theory. It lies 850 ft. above the sea, is 5 m. in circumference and 160 ft. deep, and is surrounded by an amphitheatre of high hills. The water is sky blue in colour, very cold and bitter to the taste. The lake has no natural outlet and consequently is subjected to a considerable rise and fall. On the western side lies the Benedictine abbey of St Maria Laach (_Abballa Lacensis_) founded in 1093 by Henry II., count palatine of the Rhine. The abbey church, dating from the 12th century, was restored in 1838. The history of the monastery down to modern times appears to have been uneventful. In 1802 it was abolished and at the close of the Napoleonic wars it became a Prussian state demesne. In 1863 it passed into the hands of the Jesuits, who, down to their expulsion in 1873, published here a periodical, which still appears, entitled _Stimmen aus Maria Laach_. In 1892 the monastery was again occupied by the Benedictines.

LAAGER, a South African Dutch word (Dutch _leger_, Ger. _lager_, connected with Eng. "lair") for a temporary defensive encampment, formed by a circle of wagons. The English word is "leaguer," an armed camp, especially that of a besieging or "beleaguering" army. The Ger. _lager_, in the sense of "store," is familiar as the name of a light beer (see BREWING).

LAAS, ERNST (1837-1885), German philosopher, was born on the 16th of June 1837 at Fürstenwalde. He studied theology and philosophy under Trendelenburg at Berlin, and eventually became professor of philosophy in the new university of Strassburg. In _Kant's Analogien der Erfahrung_ (1876) he keenly criticized Kant's transcendentalism, and in his chief work _Idealismus und Positivismus_ (3 vols., 1879-1884), he drew a clear contrast between Platonism, from which he derived transcendentalism, and positivism, of which he considered Protagoras the founder. Laas in reality was a disciple of Hume. Throughout his philosophy he endeavours to connect metaphysics with ethics and the theory of education.

His chief educational works were _Der deutsche Aufsatz in den obern Gymnasialklassen_ (1868; 3rd ed., part i., 1898, part ii, 1894), and _Der deutsche Unterricht auf höhern Lehranstalten_ (1872; 2nd ed. 1886). He contributed largely to the _Vierteljahrsschr. f. wiss. Philos._ (1880-1882); the _Litterarischer Nachlass_, a posthumous collection, was published at Vienna (1887). See Hanisch, _Der Positivismus von Ernst Laas_ (1902); Gjurits, _Die Erkenntnistheorie des Ernst Laas_ (1903); Falckenberg, _Hist. of Mod. Philos._ (Eng. trans., 1895).

LA BADIE, JEAN DE (1610-1674), French divine, founder of the school known as the Labadists, was born at Bourg, not far from Bordeaux, on the 13th of February 1610, being the son of Jean Charles de la Badie, governor of Guienne. He was sent to the Jesuit school at Bordeaux, and when fifteen entered the Jesuit college there. In 1626 he began to study philosophy and theology. He was led to hold somewhat extreme views about the efficacy of prayer and the direct influence of the Holy Spirit upon believers, and adopted Augustinian views about grace, free will and predestination, which brought him into collision with his order. He therefore separated from the Jesuits, and then became a preacher to the people, carrying on this work in Bordeaux, Paris and Amiens. At Amiens in 1640 he was appointed a canon and teacher of theology. The hostility of Cardinal Mazarin, however, forced him to retire to the Carmelite hermitage at Graville. A study of Calvin's _Institutes_ showed him that he had more in common with the Reformed than with the Roman Catholic Church, and after various adventures he joined the Reformed Church of France and became professor of theology at Montauban in 1650. His reasons for doing so he published in the same year in his _Déclaration de Jean de la Badie_. His accession to the ranks of the Protestants was deemed a great triumph; no such man since Calvin himself, it was said, had left the Roman Catholic Church. He was called to the pastorate of the church at Orange on the Rhone in 1657, and at once became noted for his severity of discipline. He set his face zealously against dancing, card-playing and worldly entertainments. The unsettled state of the country, recently annexed to France, compelled him to leave Orange, and in 1659 he became a pastor in Geneva. He then accepted a call to the French church in London, but after various wanderings settled at Middelburg, where he was pastor to the French-speaking congregation at a Walloon church. His peculiar opinions were by this time (1666) well known, and he and his congregation found themselves in conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities. The result was that la Badie and his followers established a separate church in a neighbouring town. In 1669 he moved to Amsterdam. He had enthusiastic disciples, Pierre Yvon (1646-1707) at Montauban, Pierre Dulignon (d. 1679), François Menuret (d. 1670), Theodor Untereyk (d. 1693), F. Spanheim (1632-1701), and, more important than any, Anna Maria v. Schürman (1607-1678), whose book _Eucleria_ is perhaps the best exposition of the tenets of her master. At the head of his separatist congregation, la Badie developed his views for a reformation of the Reformed Churches: the church is a communion of holy people who have been born again from sin; baptism is the sign and seal of this regeneration, and is to be administered only to believers; the Holy Spirit guides the regenerate into all truth, and the church possesses throughout all time those gifts of prophecy which it had in the ancient days; the community at Jerusalem is the continual type of every Christian congregation, therefore there should be a community of goods, the disciples should live together, eat together, dance together; marriage is a holy ordinance between two believers, and the children of the regenerate are born without original sin, marriage with an unregenerate person is not binding. They did not observe the Sabbath, because--so they said--their life was a continual Sabbath. The life and separatism of the community brought them into frequent collision with their neighbours and with the magistrates, and in 1670 they accepted Society is in Miss Edith Sichel's _Women and Men of the French Renaissance_ (1901). See also J. Favre, _Olivier de Magny_ (1885).

LABEL (a French word, now represented by _lambeau_, possibly a variant; it is of obscure origin and may be connected with a Teutonic word appearing in the English "lap," a flap or fold), a slip, ticket, or card of paper, metal or other material, attached to an object, such as a parcel, bottle, &c., and containing a name, address, description or other information, for the purpose of identification. Originally the word meant a band or ribbon of linen or other material, and was thus applied to the fillets (_infulae_) attached to a bishop's mitre. In heraldry the "label" is a mark of "cadency."

In architecture the term "label" is applied to the outer projecting moulding over doors, windows, arches, &c., sometimes called "Dripstone" or "Weather Moulding," or "Hood Mould." The former terms seem scarcely applicable, as this moulding is often inside a building where no rain could come, and consequently there is no drip. In Norman times the label frequently did not project, and when it did it was very little, and formed part of the series of arch mouldings. In the Early English styles they were not very large, sometimes slightly undercut, sometimes deeply, sometimes a quarter round with chamfer, and very frequently a "roll" or "scroll-moulding," so called because it resembles the part of a scroll where the edge laps over the body of the roll. Labels generally resemble the string-courses of the period, and, in fact, often return horizontally and form strings. They are less common in Continental architecture than in English.

LABEO, MARCUS ANTISTIUS (c. 50 B.C.-A.D. 18), Roman jurist, was the son of Pacuvius Antistius Labeo, a jurist who caused himself to be slain after the defeat of his party at Philippi. A member of the plebeian nobility, and in easy circumstances, the younger Labeo early entered public life, and soon rose to the praetorship; but his undisguised antipathy to the new régime, and the somewhat brusque manner in which in the senate he occasionally gave expression to his republican sympathies--what Tacitus (_Ann._ iii. 75) calls his _incorrupta libertas_--proved an obstacle to his advancement, and his rival, Ateius Capito, who had unreservedly given in his adhesion to the ruling powers, was promoted by Augustus to the consulate, when the appointment should have fallen to Labeo; smarting under the wrong done him, Labeo declined the office when it was offered to him in a subsequent year (Tac. _Ann._ iii. 75; Pompon, in fr. 47, _Dig._ i. 2). From this time he seems to have devoted his whole time to jurisprudence. His training in the science had been derived principally from Trebatius Testa. To his knowledge of the law he added a wide general culture, devoting his attention specially to dialectics, philology (_grammatica_), and antiquities, as valuable aids in the exposition, expansion, and application of legal doctrine (Gell. xiii. 10). Down to the time of Hadrian his was probably the name of greatest authority; and several of his works were abridged and annotated by later hands. While Capito is hardly ever referred to, the dicta of Labeo are of constant recurrence in the writings of the classical jurists, such as Gaius, Ulpian and Paul; and no inconsiderable number of them were thought worthy of preservation in Justinian's _Digest_. Labeo gets the credit of being the founder of the Proculian sect or school, while Capito is spoken of as the founder of the rival Sabinian one (Pomponius in fr. 47, _Dig._ i. 2); but it is probable that the real founders of the two _scholae_ were Proculus and Sabinus, followers respectively of the methods of Labeo and Capito.

Labeo's most important literary work was the _Libri Posteriorum_, so called because published only after his death. It contained a systematic exposition of the common law. His _Libri ad Edictum_ embraced a commentary, not only on the edicts of the urban and peregrine praetors, but also on that of the curule aediles. His _Probabilium_ ([Greek: pithanôn]) _lib. VIII._, a collection of definitions and axiomatic legal propositions, seems to have been one of his most characteristic productions.

See van Eck, "De vita, moribus, et studiis M. Ant. Labeonis" (Franeker, 1692), in Oelrichs's _Thes. nov._, vol. i.; Mascovius, _De sectis Sabinianor. et Proculianor._ (1728); Pernice, _M. Antistius Labeo. Das röm. Privatrecht im ersten Jahrhunderte der Kaizerzeit_ (Halle, 1873-1892).

LABERIUS, DECIMUS (c. 105-43 B.C.), Roman knight and writer of mimes. He seems to have been a man of caustic wit, who wrote for his own pleasure. In 45 Julius Caesar ordered him to appear in one of his own mimes in a public contest with the actor Publilius Syrus. Laberius pronounced a dignified prologue on the degradation thus thrust on his sixty years, and directed several sharp allusions against the dictator. Caesar awarded the victory to Publilius, but restored Laberius to his equestrian rank, which he had forfeited by appearing as a mimus (Macrobius, _Sat._ ii. 7). Laberius was the chief of those who introduced the mimus into Latin literature towards the close of the republican period. He seems to have been a man of learning and culture, but his pieces did not escape the coarseness inherent to the class of literature to which they belonged; and Aulus Gellius (xvi. 7, 1) accuses him of extravagance in the coining of new words. Horace (_Sat._ i. 10) speaks of him in terms of qualified praise.

In addition to the prologue (in Macrobius), the titles of forty-four of his mimi have been preserved; the fragments have been collected by O. Ribbeck in his _Comicorum Latinorum reliquiae_ (1873).

LABIATAE (i.e. "lipped," Lat. _labium_, lip), in botany, a natural order of seed-plants belonging to the series Tubiflorae of the dicotyledons, and containing about 150 genera with 2800 species. The majority are annual or perennial herbs inhabiting the temperate zone, becoming shrubby in warmer climates. The stem is generally square in section and the simple exstipulate leaves are arranged in decussating pairs (i.e. each pair is in a plane at right angles to that of the pairs immediately above and below it); the blade is entire, or toothed, lobed or more or less deeply cut. The plant is often hairy, and the hairs are frequently glandular, the secretion containing a scent characteristic of the genus or species. The flowers are borne in the axils of the leaves or bracts; they are rarely solitary as in _Scutellaria_ (skull-cap), and generally form an apparent whorl (_verticillaster_) at the node, consisting of a pair of cymose inflorescences each of which is a simple three-flowered dichasium as in _Brunella_, _Salvia_, &c., or more generally a dichasium passing over into a pair of monochasial cymes as in _Lamium_ (fig. 1), _Ballota_, _Nepeta_, &c. A number of whorls may be crowded at the apex of the stem and the subtending leaves reduced to small bracts, the whole forming a raceme- or spike-like inflorescence as in _Mentha_ (fig. 2, 5) _Brunella_, &c.; the bracts are sometimes large and coloured as in _Monarda_, species of _Salvia_, &c., in the latter the apex of the stem is sometimes occupied with a cluster of sterile coloured bracts. The plan of the flower is remarkably uniform (fig. 1, 3); it is bisexual, and zygomorphic in the median plane, with 5 sepals united to form a persistent cup-like calyx, 5 petals united to form a two-lipped gaping corolla, 4 stamens inserted on the corolla-tube, two of which, generally the anterior pair, are longer than the other two (didynamous arrangement)--sometimes as in _Salvia_, the posterior pair is aborted--and two superior median carpels, each very early divided by a constriction in a vertical plane, the pistil consisting of four cells each containing one erect anatropous ovule attached to the base of an axile placenta; the style springs from the centre of the pistil between the four segments (_gynobasic_), and is simple with a bifid apex. The fruit comprises four one-seeded nutlets included in the persistent calyx; the seed has a thin testa and the embryo almost or completely fills it. Although the general form and plan of arrangement of the flower is very uniform, there are wide variations in detail. Thus the calyx may be tubular, bell-shaped, or almost spherical, or straight or bent, and the length and form of the teeth or lobes varies also; it may be equally toothed as in mint (_Mentha_) (fig. 2, 3), and marjoram (_Origanum_), or two-lipped as in thyme (_Thymus_), _Lamium_ (fig. 1) and _Salvia_ (fig. 2, 1); the number of nerves affords useful characters for distinction of genera, there are normally five main nerves between which simple or forked secondary nerves are more or less developed. The shape of the corolla varies widely, the differences being doubtless intimately associated with the pollination of the flowers by insect-agency. The tube is straight or variously bent and often widens towards the mouth. Occasionally the limb is equally five-toothed, or forms, as in _Mentha_ (fig. 2, 3, 4) an almost regular four-toothed corolla by union of the two posterior teeth. Usually it is two-lipped, the upper lip being formed by the two posterior, the lower lip by the three anterior petals (see fig. 1, and fig. 2, 1, 6); the median lobe of the lower lip is generally most developed and forms a resting-place for the bee or other insect when probing the flower for honey, the upper lip shows great variety in form, often, as in _Lamium_ (fig. 1), _Stachys_, &c., it is arched forming a protection from rain for the stamens, or it may be flat as in thyme. In the tribe _Ocimoideae_ the four upper petals form the upper lip, and the single anterior one the lower lip, and in _Teucrium_ the upper lip is absent, all five lobes being pushed forward to form the lower. The posterior stamen is sometimes present as a staminode, but generally suppressed; the upper pair are often reduced to staminodes or more or less completely suppressed as in _Salvia_ (fig. 2, 2, 6); rarely are these developed and the anterior pair reduced. In _Coleus_ the stamens are monadelphous. In _Nepeta_ and allied genera the posterior pair are the longer, but this is rare, the didynamous character being generally the result of the anterior pair being the longer. The anthers are two-celled, each cell splitting lengthwise; the connective may be more or less developed between the cells; an extreme case is seen in _Salvia_ (fig. 2, 2), where the connective is filiform and jointed to the filament, while the anterior anther-cell is reduced to a sterile appendage. Honey is secreted by a hypogynous disk. In the more general type of flower the anthers and stigmas are protected by the arching upper lip as in dead-nettle (fig. 1) and many other British genera; the lower lip affords a resting-place for the insect which in probing the flower for the honey, secreted on the lower side of the disk, collects pollen on its back. Numerous variations in detail are found in the different genera; in _Salvia_ (fig. 2), for instance, there is a lever mechanism, the barren half of each anther forming a knob at the end of a short arm which when touched by the head of an insect causes the anther at the end of the longer arm to descend on the insect's back. In the less common type, where the anterior part of the flower is more developed, as in the _Ocimoideae_, the stamens and style lie on the under lip and honey is secreted on the upper side of the hypogynous disk; the insect in probing the flower gets smeared with pollen on its belly and legs. Both types include brightly-coloured flowers with longer tubes adapted to the visits of butterflies and moths, as species of _Salvia_, _Stachys_, _Monarda_, &c.; some South American species of _Salvia_ are pollinated by humming-birds. In _Mentha_ (fig. 2, 3), thyme, marjoram (_Origanum_), and allied genera, the flowers are nearly regular and the stamens spread beyond the corolla.

The persistent calyx encloses the ripe nutlets, and aids in their distribution in various ways, by means of winged spiny or hairy lobes or teeth; sometimes it forms a swollen bladder. A scanty endosperm is sometimes present in the seed; the embryo is generally parallel to the fruit axis with a short inferior radicle and generally flat cotyledons.

The order occurs in all warm and temperate regions; its chief centre is the Mediterranean region, where some genera such as _Lavandula_, _Thymus_, _Rosmarinus_ and others form an important feature in the vegetation. The tribe _Ocimoideae_ is exclusively tropical and subtropical and occurs in both hemispheres. The order is well represented in Britain by seventeen native genera; _Mentha_ (mint) including also _M. piperita_ (peppermint) and _M. Pulegium_ (pennyroyal); _Origanum vulgare_ (marjoram); _Thymus Serpyllum_ (thyme); _Calamintha_ (calamint), including also _C. Clinopodium_ (wild basil) and _C. Acinos_ (basil thyme); _Salvia_ (sage), including _S. Verbenaca_ (clary); _Nepeta Cataria_ (catmint), _N. Glechoma_ (ground-ivy); _Brunella_ (self-heal); _Scutellaria_ (skull-cap); _Stachys (woundwort); _S. Betonica_ is wood betony; _Galeopsis_ (hemp-nettle); Lamium_ (dead-nettle); _Ballota_ (black horehound); _Teucrium_ (germander); and _Ajuga_ (bugle).

Labiatae are readily distinguished from all other orders of the series excepting Verbenaceae, in which, however, the style is terminal; but several genera, e.g. _Ajuga_, _Teucrium_ and _Rosmarinus_, approach Verbenaceae in this respect, and in some genera of that order the style is more or less sunk between the ovary lobes. The fruit-character indicates an affinity with Boraginaceae from which, however, they differ in habit and by characters of ovule and embryo.

The presence of volatile oil renders many genera of economic use, such are thyme, marjoram (_Origanum_), sage (_Salvia_), lavender (_Lavandula_), rosemary (_Rosmarinus_), patchouli (_Pogostemon_). The tubers of _Stachys Sieboldi_ are eaten in France.

LABICANA, VIA, an ancient highroad of Italy, leading E.S.E. from Rome. It seems possible that the road at first led to Tusculum, that it was then prolonged to Labici, and later still became a road for through traffic; it may even have superseded the Via Latina as a route to the S.E., for, while the distance from Rome to their main junction at Ad Bivium (or to another junction at Compitum Anagninum) is practically identical, the summit level of the former is 725 ft. lower than that of the latter, a little to the west of the pass of Algidus. After their junction it is probable that the road bore the name Via Latina rather than Via Labicana. The course of the road after the first six miles from Rome is not identical with that of any modern road, but can be clearly traced by remains of pavement and buildings along its course.

See T. Ashby in _Papers of the British School at Rome_, i. 215 sqq. (T. As.)

LABICHE, EUGÈNE MARIN (1815-1888), French dramatist, was born on the 5th of May 1815, of _bourgeois_ parentage. He read for the bar, but literature had more powerful attractions, and he was hardly twenty when he gave to the _Chérubin_--an impertinent little magazine, long vanished and forgotten--a short story, entitled, in the cavalier style of the period, _Les plus belles sont les plus fausses_. A few others followed much in the same strain, but failed to catch the attention of the public. He tried his hand at dramatic criticism in the _Revue des théâtres_, and in 1838 made a double venture on the stage. The small Théâtre du Panthéon produced, amid some signs of popular favour, a drama of his, _L'Avocat Loubet_, while a vaudeville, _Monsieur de Coislin ou l'homme infiniment poli_, written in collaboration with Marc Michel, and given at the Palais Royal, introduced for the first time to the Parisians a provincial actor who was to become and to remain a great favourite with them, Grassot, the famous low comedian. In the same year Labiche, still doubtful about his true vocation, published a romance called _La Clé des champs_. M. Léon Halévy, his successor at the Academy and his panegyrist, informs us that the publisher became a bankrupt soon after the novel was out. "A lucky misadventure, for," the biographer concludes, "this timely warning of Destiny sent him back to the stage, where a career of success was awaiting him." There was yet another obstacle in the way. When he married, he solemnly promised his wife's parents that he would renounce a profession then considered incompatible with moral regularity and domestic happiness. But a year afterwards his wife spontaneously released him from his vow, and Labiche recalled the incident when he dedicated the first edition of his complete works: "To my wife." Labiche, in conjunction with Varin,[1] Marc Michel,[2] Clairville,[3] Dumanoir,[4] and others contributed comic plays interspersed with couplets to various Paris theatres. The series culminated in the memorable farce in five acts, _Un Chapeau de paille d'Italie_ (August 1851). It remains an accomplished specimen of the French _imbroglio_, in which some one is in search of something, but does not find it till five minutes before the curtain falls. Prior to that date Labiche had been only a successful _vaudevilliste_ among a crowd of others; but a twelvemonth later he made a new departure in _Le Misanthrope et l'Auvergnat_. All the plays given for the next twenty-five years, although constructed on the old plan, contained a more or less appreciable dose of that comic observation and good sense which gradually raised the French farce almost to the level of the comedy of character and manners. "Of all the subjects," he said, "which offered themselves to me, I have selected the _bourgeois_. Essentially mediocre in his vices and in his virtues, he stands half-way between the hero and the scoundrel, between the saint and the profligate." During the second period of his career Labiche had the collaboration of Delacour,[5] Choler,[6] and others. When it is asked what share in the authorship and success of the plays may be claimed for those men, we shall answer in Émile Augier's words: "The distinctive qualities which secured a lasting vogue for the plays of Labiche are to be found in all the comedies written by him with different collaborators, and are conspicuously absent from those which they wrote without him." A more useful and more important collaborator he found in Jean Marie Michel Geoffroy (1813-1883) whom he had known as a _débutant_ in his younger days, and who remained his faithful interpreter to the last. Geoffroy impersonated the _bourgeois_ not only to the public, but to the author himself; and it may be assumed that Labiche, when writing, could see and hear Geoffroy acting the character and uttering, in his pompous, fussy way, the words that he had just committed to paper. _Célimare le bien-aimé_ (1863), _Le Voyage de M. Perrichon_ (1860), _La Grammaire_, _Un Pied dans le crime_, _La Cagnotte_ (1864), may be quoted as the happiest productions of Labiche.

In 1877 he brought his connexion with the stage to a close, and retired to his rural property in Sologne. There he could be seen, dressed as a farmer, with low-brimmed hat, thick gaiters and an enormous stick, superintending the agricultural work and busily engaged in reclaiming land and marshes. His lifelong friend, Augier, visited him in his principality, and, being left alone in the library, took to reading his host's dramatic productions, scattered here and there in the shape of theatrical _brochures_. He strongly advised Labiche to publish a collected and revised edition of his works. The suggestion, first declined as a joke and long resisted, was finally accepted and carried into effect. Labiche's comic plays, in ten volumes, were issued during 1878 and 1879. The success was even greater than had been expected by the author's most sanguine friends. It had been commonly believed that these plays owed their popularity in great measure to the favourite actors who had appeared in them; but it was now discovered that all, with the exception of Geoffroy, had introduced into them a grotesque and caricatural element, thus hiding from the spectator, in many cases, the true comic vein and delightful delineation of human character. The amazement turned into admiration, and the _engouement_ became so general that very few dared grumble or appear scandalized when, in 1880, Labiche was elected to the French Academy. It was fortunate that, in former years, he had never dreamt of attaining this high distinction; for, as M. Pailleron justly observed, while trying to get rid of the little faults which were in him, he would have been in danger of losing some of his sterling qualities. But when the honour was bestowed upon him, he enjoyed it with his usual good sense and quiet modesty. He died in Paris on the 23rd of January 1888.

Some foolish admirers have placed him on a level with Molière, but it will be enough to say that he was something better than a public _amuseur_. Many of his plays have been transferred to the English stage. They are, on the whole, as sound as they are entertaining. Love is practically absent from his theatre. In none of his plays did he ever venture into the depths of feminine psychology, and womankind is only represented in them by pretentious old maids and silly, insipid, almost dumb, young ladies. He ridiculed marriage according to the invariable custom of French playwrights, but in a friendly and good-natured manner which always left a door open to repentance and timely amendment. He is never coarse, never suggestive. After he died the French farce, which he had raised to something akin to literature, relapsed into its former grossness and unmeaning complexity. (A. Fi.)

His _Théâtre complet_ (10 vols., 1878-1879) contains a preface by Émile Augier.

FOOTNOTES:

[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.

I. HISTORY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

1. _Until the Close of the 15th Century._--Of the main conditions of industrial labour in early Anglo-Saxon England details are scanty. Monastic industrial communities were added in Christian times to village industrial communities. While generally husbandry was the first object of toil, and developed under elaborate regulation in the manorial system, still a considerable variety of industries grew up, the aim being expressly to make each social group self-sufficing, and to protect and regulate village artisans in the interest of village resources. This protective system, resting on a communal or co-operative view of labour and social life, has been compared as analogous to the much later and wider system under which the main purpose was to keep England as a whole self-sufficing.[3] It has also been shown how greatly a fresh spirit of enterprise in industry and trade was stimulated first by the Danish and next by the Norman invasion; the former brought in a vigour shown in growth of villages, increase in number of freemen, and formation of trading towns; the latter especially opened up new communications with the most civilized continental people, and was followed by a considerable immigration of artisans, particularly of Flemings. In Saxon England slavery in the strictest sense existed, as is shown in the earliest English laws, but it seems that the true slave class as distinct from the serf class was comparatively small, and it may well be that the labour of an ordinary serf was not practically more severe, and the remuneration in maintenance and kind not much less than that of agricultural labourers in recent times. In spite of the steady protest of the Church, slavery (as the exception, not the general rule) did not die out for many centuries, and was apt to be revived as a punishment for criminals, e.g. in the fierce provisions of the statute of Edward VI. against beggars, not repealed until 1597. At no time, however, was it general, and as the larger village and city populations grew the ratio of serfs and slaves to the freemen in the whole population rapidly diminished, for the city populations "had not the habit and use of slavery," and while serfs might sometimes find a refuge in the cities from exceptionally severe taskmasters, "there is no doubt that freemen gradually united with them under the lord's protection, that strangers engaged in trade sojourned among them, and that a race of artisans gradually grew up in which original class feelings were greatly modified." From these conditions grew two parallel tendencies in regulation of labour. On the one hand there was, under royal charters, the burgh or municipal organization and control of artisan and craft labour, passing later into the more specialized organization in craft gilds; on the other hand, there was a necessity, sometimes acute, to prevent undue diminution in the numbers available for husbandry or agricultural labour. To the latter cause must be traced a provision appearing in a succession of statutes (see especially an act of Richard II., 1388), that a child under twelve years once employed in agriculture might never be transferred to apprenticeship in a craft. The steady development of England, first as a wool-growing, later as a cloth-producing country, would accentuate this difficulty. During the 13th century, side by side with development of trading companies for the export of wool from England, may be noted many agreements on the part of monasteries to sell their wool to Florentines, and during the same century absorption of alien artisans into the municipal system was practically completed. Charters of Henry I. provided for naturalization of these aliens. From the time of Edward I. to Edward III. a gradual transference of burgh customs, so far as recognized for the common good, to statute law was in progress, together with an assertion of the rights of the crown against ecclesiastical orders. "The statutes of Edward I.," says Dr. Cunningham, "mark the first attempt to deal with Industry and Trade as a public matter which concerns the whole state, not as the particular affair of leading men in each separate locality." The first direct legislation for labour by statute, however, is not earlier than the twenty-third year of the reign of Edward III., and it arose in an attempt to control the decay and ruin, both in rural and urban districts, which followed the Hundred Years' War, and the pestilence known as the Black Death. This first "Statute of Labourers" was designed for the benefit of the community, not for the protection of labour or prevention of oppression, and the policy of enforcing customary wages and compelling the able-bodied labourer, whether free or bond, not living in merchandise or exercising any craft, to work for hire at recognized rates of pay, must be reviewed in the circumstances and ideals of the time. Regulation generally in the middle ages aimed at preventing any individual or section of the community from making what was considered an exceptional profit through the necessity of others.[4] The scarcity of labour by the reduction of the population through pestilence was not admitted as a justification for the demands for increased pay, and while the unemployed labourer was liable to be committed to gaol if he refused service at current rates, the lords of the towns or manors who promised or paid more to their servants were liable to be sued treble the sum in question. Similar restrictions were made applicable to artificers and workmen. By another statute, two years later, labourers or artificers who left their work and went into another county were liable to be arrested by the sheriff and brought back. These and similar provisions with similar aims were confirmed by statutes of 1360, 1368 and 1388, but the act of 1360, while prohibiting "all alliances and covins of masons, carpenters, congregations, chapters, ordinances and oaths betwixt them made," allowed "every lord to bargain or covenant for their works in gross with such labourers and artificers when it pleaseth them, so that they perform such works well and lawfully according to the bargain and covenant with them thereof made." Powers were given by the acts of 1368 and 1388 to justices to determine matters under these statutes and to fix wages. Records show that workmen of various descriptions were pressed by writs addressed to sheriffs to work for their king at wages regardless of their will as to terms and place of work. These proceedings were founded on notions of royal prerogative, of which impressment of seamen survived as an example to a far later date. By an act of 1388 no servant or labourer, man or woman, however, could depart out of the hundred to serve elsewhere unless bearing a letter patent under the king's seal stating the cause of going and time of return. Such provisions would appear to have widely failed in their purpose, for an act of 1414 declares that the servants and labourers fled from county to county, and justices were empowered to send writs to the sheriffs for fugitive labourers as for felons, and to examine labourers, servants and their masters, as well as artificers, and to punish them on confession. An act of 1405, while putting a property qualification on apprenticeship and requiring parents under heavy penalties to put their children to such labour as their estates required, made a reservation giving freedom to any person "to send their children to school to learn literature." Up to the end of the 15th century a monotonous succession of statutes strengthening, modifying, amending the various attempts (since the first Statute of Labourers) to limit free movement of labour, or demands by labourers for increased wages, may be seen in the acts of 1411, 1427, 1444, 1495. It was clearly found extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to carry out the minute control of wages considered desirable, and exceptions in favour of certain occupations were in some of the statutes themselves. In 1512 the penalties for giving wages contrary to law were repealed so far as related to masters, but it also appears that London workmen would not endure the prevalent restrictions as to wages, and that they secured in practice a greater freedom to arrange rates when working within the city. Several of these statutes, and especially one of 1514, fixed the hours of labour when limiting wages. During March to September the limits were 5 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M., with half an hour off for breakfast and an hour and a half off for mid-day dinner. In winter the outside limits were fixed by the length of daylight.

Throughout the 15th century the rapidly increasing manufacture of cloth was subject to a regulation which aimed at maintaining the standard of production and prevention of bad workmanship, and the noteworthy statute 4 Edward IV. c. 1, while giving power to royal officers to supervise size of cloths, modes of sealing, &c., also repressed payment to workers in "pins, girdles and unprofitable wares," and ordained payment in true and lawful money. This statute (the first against "Truck") gives an interesting picture of the way in which clothiers--or, as we should call them, wholesale merchants and manufacturers--delivered wool to spinners, carders, &c., by weight, and paid for the work when brought back finished. It appears that the work was carried on in rural as well as town districts. While this industry was growing and thriving other trades remained backward, and agriculture was in a depressed condition. Craft gilds had primarily the same purpose as the Edwardian statutes, that is, of securing that the public should be well served with good wares, and that the trade and manufacture itself should be on a sound basis as to quality of products and should flourish. Incidentally there was considerable regulation by the gilds of the conditions of labour, but not primarily in the interests of the labourer. Thus night work was prohibited because it tended to secrecy and so to bad execution of work; working on holidays was prohibited to secure fair play between craftsmen and so on. The position of apprentices was made clear through indentures, but the position of journeymen was less certain. Signs are not wanting of a struggle between journeymen and masters, and towards the end of the 15th century masters themselves, in at least the great wool trade, tended to develop from craftsmen into something more like the modern capitalist employer; from an act of 1555 touching weavers it is quite clear that this development had greatly advanced and that cloth-making was carried on largely by employers with large capitals. Before this, however, while a struggle went on between the town authorities and the craft gilds, journeymen began to form companies of their own, and the result of the various conflicts may be seen in an act of Henry VI., providing that in future new ordinances of gilds shall be submitted to justices of the peace--a measure which was strengthened in 1503.

2. _From Tudor Days until the Close of the 18th Century._--A detailed history of labour regulation in the 16th century would include some account of the Tudor laws against vagrancy and methods of dealing with the increase of pauperism, attributable, at least in part, to the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII., and to the confiscation of craft gild funds, which proceeded under Somerset and Edward VI. It is sufficient here to point to the general recognition of the public right to compel labourers to work and thus secure control of unemployed as well as employed. The statutes of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. against vagrancy differed rather in degree of severity than in principle from legislation for similar purposes in previous and subsequent reigns. The Statute of Labourers, passed in the fifth year of Elizabeth's reign (1562), as well as the poor law of the same year, was to a considerable extent both a consolidating and an amending code of law, and was so securely based on public opinion and deeply rooted custom that it was maintained in force for two centuries. It avowedly approves of principles and aims in earlier acts, regulating wages, punishing refusal to work, and preventing free migration of labour. It makes, however, a great advance in its express aim of protecting the poor labourer against insufficient wages, and of devising a machinery, by frequent meeting of justices, which might yield "unto the hired person both in time of scarcity and in time of plenty a convenient proportion of wages." Minute regulations were made governing the contract between master and servant, and their mutual rights and obligations on parallel lines for (a) artificers, (b) labourers in husbandry. Hiring was to be by the year, and any unemployed person qualified in either calling was bound to accept service on pain of imprisonment, if required, unless possessed of property of a specified amount or engaged in art, science or letters, or being a "gentleman." Persons leaving a service were bound to obtain a testimonial, and might not be taken into fresh employment without producing such testimonial, or, if in a new district, until after showing it to the authorities of the place. A master might be fined £5, and a labourer imprisoned, and if contumacious, whipped, for breach of this rule. The carefully devised scheme for technical training of apprentices embodied to a considerable extent the methods and experiences of the craft gilds. Hours of labour were as follows: "All artificers and labourers being hired for wages by the day or week shall, betwixt the midst of the months of March and September, be and continue at their work at or before 5 o'clock in the morning and continue at work and not depart until betwixt 7 and 8 o'clock at night, except it be in the time of breakfast, dinner or drinking, the which time at the most shall not exceed two hours and a half in a day, that is to say, at every drinking half an hour, for his dinner one hour and for his sleep when he is allowed to sleep, the which is from the midst of May to the midst of August, half an hour; and all the said artificers and labourers betwixt the midst of September and the midst of March shall be and continue at their work from the spring of the day in the morning until the night of the same day, except it be in time afore appointed for breakfast and dinner, upon pain to lose and forfeit one penny for every hour's absence, to be deducted and defaulked out of his wages that shall so offend." Although the standpoint of the Factory Act and Truck Act in force at the beginning of the 20th century as regards hours of labour or regulation of fines deducted from wages is completely reversed, yet the difference is not great between the average length of hours of labour permissible under the present law for women and those hours imposed upon the adult labourer in Elizabeth's statute. Apart from the standpoint of compulsory imposition of fines, one advantage in the definiteness of amount deductable from wages would appear to lie on the side of the earlier statute.

Three points remain to be touched on in connexion with the Elizabethan poor law. In addition to (a) consolidation of measures for setting vagrants to work, we find the first compulsory contributions from the well-to-do towards poor relief there provided for, (b) at least a theoretical recognition of a right as well as an obligation on the part of the labourer to be hired, (c) careful provision for the apprenticing of destitute children and orphans to a trade.

One provision of considerable interest arose in Scotland, which was nearly a century later in organizing provisions for fixing conditions of hire and wages of workmen, labourers and servants, similar to those consolidated in the Elizabethan Statute of Labourers. In 1617 it was provided (and reaffirmed in 1661) that power should be given to the sheriffs to compel payment of wages, "that servants may be the more willing to obey the ordinance." The difficulties in regulation of compulsory labour in Scotland must, however, have been great, for in 1672 houses of correction were erected for disobedient servants, and masters of these houses were empowered to force them to work and to correct them according to their demerits. While servants in manufacture were compelled to work at reasonable rates they might not enter on a new hire without their previous master's consent.

Such legislation continued, at least theoretically, in force until the awakening effected by the beginning of the industrial revolution--that is, until the combined effects of steady concentration of capital in the hands of employers and expansion of trade, followed closely by an unexampled development of invention in machinery and application of power to its use. completely altered the face of industrial England. From time to time, in respect of particular trades, provisions against truck and for payment of wages in current coin, similar to the act of Edward IV. in the woollen industry, were found necessary, and this branch of labour legislation developed through the reigns of Anne and the four Georges until consolidation and amendment were effected, after the completion of the industrial revolution, in the Truck Act of 1831. From the close of the 17th century and during the 18th century the legislature is no longer mainly engaged in devising means for compelling labourers and artisans to enter into involuntary service, but rather in regulating the summary powers of justices of the peace in the matter of dispute between masters and servants in relation to contracts and agreements, express or implied, presumed to have been entered into voluntarily on both sides. While the movement to refer labour questions to the jurisdiction of the justices thus gradually developed, the main subject matter for their exercise of jurisdiction in regard to labour also changed, even when theoretically for a time the two sets of powers--such as (a) moderation of craft gild ordinances and punishment of workers refusing hire, or (b) fixing scales of wages and enforcement of labour contracts--might be concurrently exercised. Even in an act of George II. (1746) for settlement of disputes and differences as to wages or other conditions under a contract of labour, power was retained for the justices, on complaint of the masters of misdemeanour or ill-behaviour on the part of the servant, to discharge the latter from service or to send him to a house of correction "there to be corrected," that is, to be held to hard labour for a term not exceeding a month or to be corrected by whipping. In an act with similar aims of George IV. (1823), with a rather wider scope, the power to order corporal punishment, and in 1867 to hard labour, for breach of labour contracts had disappeared, and soon after the middle of the 19th century the right to enforce contracts of labour also disappeared. Then breach of such labour contracts became simply a question of recovery of damages, unless both parties agreed that security for performance of the contract shall be given instead of damages.

While the endeavour to enforce labour apart from a contract died out in the latter end of the 18th century, sentiment for some time had strongly grown in favour of developing early industrial training of children. It appears to have been a special object of charitable and philanthropic endeavour in the 17th century, as well as the 18th, to found houses of industry, in which little children, even under five years of age, might be trained for apprenticeship with employers. Connected as this development was with poor relief, one of its chief aims was to prevent future unemployment and vagrancy by training in habits and knowledge of industry, but not unavowed was another motive: "from children thus trained up to constant labour we may venture to hope the lowering of its price."[5] The evils and excesses which lay enfolded within such a movement gave the first impulse to the new ventures in labour legislation which are specially the work of the 19th century. Evident as it is "that before the Industrial Revolution very young children were largely employed both in their own homes and as apprentices under the Poor Law," and that "long before Peel's time there were misgivings about the apprenticeship system," still it needed the concentration and prominence of suffering and injury to child life in the factory system to lead to parliamentary intervention.

3. _From 1800 to the Codes of 1872 and 1878._--A serious outbreak of fever in 1784 in cotton mills near Manchester appears to have first drawn widespread and influential public opinion to the overwork of children, under terribly dangerous and insanitary conditions, on which the factory system was then largely being carried on. A local inquiry, chiefly by a group of medical men presided over by Dr Percival, was instituted by the justices of the peace for Lancashire, and in the forefront of the resulting report stood a recommendation for limitation and control of the working hours of the children. A resolution by the county justices followed, in which they declared their intention in future to refuse "indentures of parish Apprentices whereby they shall be bound to Owners of Cotton Mills and other works in which children are obliged to work in the night or more than ten hours in the day." In 1795 the Manchester Board of Health was formed, which, with fuller information, more definitely advised legislation for the regulation of the hours and conditions of labour in factories. In 1802 the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act was passed, which in effect formed the first step towards prevention of injury to and protection of labour in factories. It was directly aimed only at evils of the apprentice system, under which large numbers of pauper children were worked in cotton and woollen mills without education, for excessive hours, under wretched conditions. It did not apply to places employing fewer than twenty persons or three apprentices, and it applied the principle of limitation of hours (to twelve a day) and abolition of night work, as well as educational requirements, only to apprentices. Religious teaching and suitable sleeping accommodation and clothing were provided for in the act, also as regards apprentices. Lime-washing and ventilation provisions applied to all cotton and woollen factories employing more than twenty persons. "Visitors" were to be appointed by county justices for repression of contraventions, and were empowered to "direct the adoption of such sanitary regulations as they might on advice think proper." The mills were to be registered by the clerk of the peace, and justices had power to inflict fines of from £2 to £5 for contraventions. Although enforcement of the very limited provisions of the act was in many cases poor or non-existent, in some districts excellent work was done by justices, and in 1803 the West Riding of Yorkshire justices passed a resolution substituting the ten hours' limit for the twelve hours' limit of the act, as a condition of permission for indenturing of apprentices in mills.

Rapid development of the application of steam power to manufacture led to growth of employment of children in populous centres, otherwise than on the apprenticeship system, and before long the evils attendant on this change brought the general question of regulation and protection of child labour in textile factories to the front. The act of 1819, limited as it was, was a noteworthy step forward, in that it dealt with this wider scope of employment of children in cotton factories, and it is satisfactory to record that it was the outcome of the efforts and practical experiments of a great manufacturer, Robert Owen. Its provisions fell on every point lower than the aims he put forward on his own experience as practicable, and notably in its application only to cotton mills instead of all textile factories. Prohibition of child labour under nine years of age and limitation of the working day to twelve in the twenty-four (without specifying the precise hour of beginning and closing) were the main provisions of this act. No provision was made for enforcement of the law beyond such as was attempted in the act of 1802. Slight amendments were attempted in the acts of 1825 and 1831, but the first really important factory act was in 1833 applying to textile factories generally, limiting employment of young persons under eighteen years of age, as well as children, prohibiting night work between 8.30 P.M. and 5.30 A.M., and first providing for "inspectors" to enforce the law. This is the act which was based on the devoted efforts of Michael Sadler, with whose name in this connexion that of Lord Ashley, afterwards earl of Shaftesbury, was from 1832 associated. The importance of this act lay in its provision for skilled inspection and thus for enforcement of the law by an independent body of men unconnected with the locality in which the manufactures lay, whose specialization in their work enabled them to acquire information needed for further development of legislation for protection of labour. Their powers were to a certain extent judicial, being assimilated to those possessed by justices; they could administer oaths and make such "rules, regulations and orders" as were necessary for execution of the act, and could hear complaints and impose penalties under the act. In 1844 a textile factory act modified these extensive inspectoral powers, organizing the service on lines resembling those of our own time, and added provision for certifying surgeons to examine workers under sixteen years of age as to physical fitness for employment and to grant certificates of age and ordinary strength. Hours of labour, by the act of 1833, were limited for children under eleven to 9 a day or 48 in the week, and for young persons under eighteen to 12 a day or 69 in the week. Between 1833 and 1844 the movement in favour of a ten hours' day, which had long been in progress, reached its height in a time of great commercial and industrial distress, but could not be carried into effect until 1847. By the act of 1844 the hours of adult women were first regulated, and were limited (as were already those of "young persons") to 12 a day; children were permitted either to work the same hours on alternate days or "half-time," with compulsory school attendance as a condition of their employment. The aim in thus adjusting the hours of the three classes of workers was to provide for a practical standard working-day. For the first time detailed provisions for health and safety began to make their appearance in the law. Penal compensation for preventible injuries due to unfenced machinery was also provided, and appears to have been the outcome of a discussion by witnesses before the Royal Commission on Labour of Young Persons in Mines and Manufactures in 1841.

From this date, 1841, begin the first attempts at protective legislation for labour in mining. The first Mines Act of 1842 following the terrible revelations of the Royal Commission referred to excluded women and girls from underground working, and limited the employment of boys, excluding from underground working those under ten years, but it was not until 1850 that systematic reporting of fatal accidents and until 1855 that other safeguards for health, life and limb in mines were seriously provided by law. With the exception of regulations against truck there was no protection for the miner before 1842; before 1814 it was not customary to hold inquests on miners killed by accidents in mines. From 1842 onwards considerable interaction in the development of the two sets of acts (mines and factories), as regards special protection against industrial injury to health and limb, took place, both in parliament and in the department (Home Office) administering them. Another strong influence tending towards ultimate development of scientific protection of health and life in industry began in the work and reports of the series of sanitary commissions and Board of Health reports from 1843 onwards. In 1844 the mines inspector made his first report, but two years later women were still employed to some extent underground. Organized inspection began in 1850, and in 1854 the Select Committee on Accidents adopted a suggestion of the inspectors for legislative extension of the practice of several colliery owners in framing special safety rules for working in mines. The act of 1855 provided seven general rules, relating to ventilation, fencing of disused shafts, proper means for signalling, proper gauges and valve for steam-boiler, indicator and brake for machine lowering and raising; also it provided that detailed special rules submitted by mine-owners to the secretary of state, might, on his approval, have the force of law and be enforceable by penalty. The Mines Act of 1860, besides extending the law to ironstone mines, following as it did on a series of disastrous accidents and explosions, strengthened some of the provisions for safety. At several inquests strong evidence was given of incompetent management and neglect of rules, and a demand was made for enforcing employment only of certificated managers of coal mines. This was not met until the act of 1872, but in 1860 certain sections relating to wages and education were introduced. Steady development of the coal industry, increasing association among miners, and increased scientific knowledge of means of ventilation and of other methods for securing safety, all paved the way to the Coal Mines Act of 1872, and in the same year health and safety in metalliferous mines received their first legislative treatment in a code of similar scope and character to that of the Coal Mines Act. This act was amended in 1886, and repealed and recodified in 1887; its principal provisions are still in force, with certain revised special rules and modifications as regards reporting of accidents (1906) and employment of children (1903). It was based on the recommendations of a Royal Commission, which had reported in 1864, and which had shown the grave excess of mortality and sickness among metalliferous miners, attributed to the inhalation of gritty particles, imperfect ventilation, great changes of temperature, excessive physical exertion, exposure to wet, and other causes. The prohibition of employment of women and of boys under ten years underground in this class of mines, as well as in coal mines, had been effected by the act of 1842, and inspection had been provided for in the act of 1860; these were in amended form included in the code of 1872, the age of employment of boys underground being raised to twelve. In the Coal Mines Act of 1872 we see the first important effort to provide a complete code of regulation for the special dangers to health, life and limb in coal mines apart from other mines; it applied to "mines of coal, mines of stratified ironstone, mines of shale and mines of fire-clay." Unlike the companion act--applying to all other mines--it maintained the age limit of entering underground employment for boys at ten years, but for those between ten and twelve it provided for a system of working analogous to the half-time system in factories, including compulsory school attendance. The limits of employment for boys from twelve to sixteen were 10 hours in any one day and 54 in anyone week. The chief characteristics of the act lay in extension of the "general" safety rules, improvement of the method of formulating "special" safety rules, provision for certificated and competent management, and increased inspection. Several important matters were transferred from the special to the general rules, such as compulsory use of safety lamps where needed, regulation of use of explosives, and securing of roofs and sides. Special rules, before being submitted to the secretary of state for approval, must be posted in the mine for two weeks, with a notice that objections might be sent by any person employed to the district inspector. Wilful neglect of safety provisions became punishable in the case of employers as well as miners by imprisonment with hard labour. But the most important new step lay in the sections relating to daily control and supervision of every mine by a manager holding a certificate of competency from the secretary of state, after examination by a board of examiners appointed by the secretary of state, power being retained for him to cause later inquiry into competency of the holder of the certificate, and to cancel or suspend the certificate in case of proved unfitness.

Returning to the development of factory and workshop law from the year 1844, the main line of effort--after the act of 1847 had restricted hours of women and young persons to 10 a day and fixed the daily limits between 6 A.M. and 6 P.M. (Saturday 6 A.M. to 2 P.M.)--lay in bringing trade after trade in some degree under the scope of this branch of law, which had hitherto only regulated conditions in textile factories. Bleaching and dyeing works were included by the acts of 1860 and 1862; lace factories by that of 1861; calendering and finishing by acts of 1863 and 1864; bakehouses became partially regulated by an act of 1863, with special reference to local authorities for administration of its clauses. The report of the third Children's Employment Commission brought together in accessible form the miserable facts relating to child labour in a number of unregulated industries in the year 1862, and the act of 1864 brought some of (these earthenware-making, lucifer match-making, percussion cap and cartridge making, paper-staining, and fustian cutting) partly under the scope of the various textile factory acts in force. A larger addition of trades was made three years later, but the act of 1864 is particularly interesting in that it first embodied some of the results of inquiries of expert medical and sanitary commissioners, by requiring ventilation to be applied to the removal of injurious gases, dust, and other impurities generated in manufacture, and made a first attempt to engraft part of the special rules system from the mines acts. The provisions for framing such rules disappeared in the Consolidating Act of 1878, to be revived in a better form later. The Sanitary Act of 1866, administered by local authorities, provided for general sanitation in any factories and workshops not under existing factory acts, and the Workshops Regulation Act of 1867, similarly to be administered by local authorities, amended in 1870, practically completed the application of the main principle of the factory acts to all places in which manual labour was exercised for gain in the making or finishing of articles or parts of articles for sale. A few specially dangerous or injurious trades brought under regulation in 1864 and 1867 (e.g. earthenware and lucifer match making, glass-making) ranked as "factories," although not using mechanical power, and for a time employment of less than fifty persons relegated certain workplaces to the category of "workshops," but broadly the presence or absence of such motor power in aid of process was made and has remained the distinction between factories and workshops. The Factory Act of 1874, the last of the series before the great Consolidating Act of 1878, raised the minimum age of employment for children to ten years in textile factories. In most of the great inquiries into conditions of child labour the fact has come clearly to light, in regard to textile and non-textile trades alike, that parents as much as any employers have been responsible for too early employment and excessive hours of employment of children, and from early times until to-day in factory legislation it has been recognized that they must to some extent be held responsible for due observation of the limits imposed. For example, in 1831 it was found necessary to protect occupiers against parental responsibility for false certificates of age, and in 1833 parents of a child or "any Person having any benefit from the wages of such child" were made to share responsibility for employment of children without school attendance or beyond legal hours.

During the discussions on the bill which became law in 1874, it had become apparent that revision and consolidation of the multiplicity of statutes then regulating manufacturing industry had become pressingly necessary; modifications and exceptions for exceptional conditions in separate industries needed reconsideration and systematization on clear principles, and the main requirements of the law could with great advantage be applied more generally to all the industries. In particular, the daily limits as to period of employment, pauses for meals, and holidays, needed to be unified for non-textile factories and workshops, so as to bring about a standard working-day, and thus prevent the tendency in "the larger establishments to farm out work among the smaller, where it is done under less favourable conditions both sanitary and educational."[6] In these main directions, and that of simplifying definitions, summarizing special sanitary provisions that had been gradually introduced for various trades, and centralizing and improving the organization of the inspectorate, the Commission of 1876 on the Factory Acts made its recommendations, and the Factory Act of 1878 took effect. In the fixed working-day, provisions for pauses, holidays, general and special exceptions, distinctions between systems of employment for children, young persons and women, education of children and certificates of fitness for children and young persons, limited regulation of domestic workshops, general principles of administration and definitions, the law of 1878 was made practically the same as that embodied in the later principal act of 1901. More or less completely revised are: (a) the sections in the 1878 act relating to mode of controlling sanitary conditions in workshops (since 1891 primarily enforced by the local sanitary authority); (b) provision for reporting accidents and for enforcing safety (other than fencing of mill gearing and dangerous machinery); (c) detailed regulation of injurious and dangerous process and trades; (d) powers of certifying surgeons; (e) amount of overtime permissible (greatly reduced in amount and now confined to adults); (f) age for permissible employment of a child has been raised from ten years to twelve years. Entirely new since the act of 1878 are the provisions: (a) for control of outwork; (b) for supplying particulars of work and wages to piece-workers, enabling them to compute the total amount of wages payable to them; (e) extension of the act to laundries; (f) a tentative effort to limit the too early employment of mothers after childbirth.

II. LAW OF UNITED KINGDOM, 1910

_Factories and Workshops._--The act of 1878 remained until 1901, although much had been meanwhile superimposed, a monument to the efforts of the great factory reformers of the first half of the 19th century, and the general groundwork of safety for workers in factories and workshops in the main divisions of sanitation, security against accidents, physical fitness of workers, general limitation of hours and times of employment for young workers and women. The act of 1901, which came into force 1st January 1902 (and became the principal act), was an amending as well as a consolidating act. Comparison of the two acts shows, however, that, in spite of the advantages of further consolidation and helpful changes in arrangement of sections and important additions which tend towards a specialized hygiene for factory life, the fundamental features of the law as fought out in the 19th century remain undisturbed. So far as the law has altered in character, it has done so chiefly by gradual development of certain sanitary features, originally subordinate, and by strengthening provision for security against accidents and not by retreat from its earlier aims. At the same time a basis for possible new developments can be seen in the protection of "outworkers" as well as factory workers against fraudulent or defective particulars of piece-work rates of wages.

Later acts directly and indirectly affecting the law are certain acts of 1903, 1906, 1907, to be touched on presently.

Additions to act of 1878.

The act of 1878, in a series of acts from 1883 to 1895, received striking additions, based (1) on the experience gained in other branches of protective legislation, e.g. development of the method of regulation of dangerous trades by "special rules" and administrative inquiry into accidents under Coal Mines Acts; (2) on the findings of royal commissions and parliamentary inquiries, e.g. increased control of "outwork" and domestic workshops, and limitation of "overtime"; (3) on the development of administrative machinery for enforcing the more modern law relating to public health, e.g. transference of administration of sanitary provisions in workshops to the local sanitary authorities; (4) on the trade-union demand for means for securing trustworthy records of wage-contracts between employer and workman, e.g. the section requiring particulars of work and wages for piece-workers. The first additions to the act of 1878 were, however, almost purely attempts to deal more adequately than had been attempted in the code of 1878 with certain striking instances of trades injurious to health. Thus the Factory and Workshop Act of 1883 provided that white-lead factories should not be carried on without a certificate of conformity with certain conditions, and also made provision for special rules, on lines later superseded by those laid down in the act of 1891, applicable to any employment in a factory or workshop certified as dangerous or injurious by the secretary of state. The act of 1883 also dealt with sanitary conditions in bakehouses. Certain definitions and explanations of previous enactments touching overtime and employment of a child in any factory or workshop were also included in the act. A class of factories in which excessive heat and humidity seriously affected the health of operatives was next dealt with in the Cotton Cloth Factories