after various stops in the South Seas went to Java, where he was held prisoner by the Dutch (1793-95). He was elected to the Institute in 1800. He became famous for his researches in the natural sciences, and published: Icones Plantarum Syriæ Rariorum Descriptionibus ... Illustratæ (1791); Relation du voyage à la recherche de La Pérouse (1798); and several other works, besides numerous papers on various scientific subjects.
LABITZKY, lȧ-bĭt′skē̇, Joseph (1802-81). An Austrian dance composer, born at Schönfeld. After studying music under Veit at Petschau, he became the first violin of an orchestra at Marienbad (1820), and the next year took a like position at Karlsbad. He continued his musical studies under Winter at Munich, and in 1834 organized an orchestra, with which he made extended concert tours. His own compositions were favorite numbers of his programmes, and his waltzes, quadrilles, and galops thus became widely known. The best of his waltzes are "Sirenen," "Grenzboten," "Aurora," and "Karlsbader."
LABLACHE, lȧ′blȧsh′, Luigi (1794-1858). A celebrated Italian operatic singer, born in Naples in 1794, whither his mother and his father, who was French, had fied from Paris during the Revolution. His voice, a deep bass, was of wonderful range, flexibility, and volume; and his acting, particularly in the characters of Figaro and Leporello, was almost as remarkable as his singing. His first engagement as a singer was at the San Carlino Theatre at Naples, in 1812; he appeared afterwards in La Scala, Milan, and in Vienna, and also at the San Carlo, in Naples, during the intervals of the Vienna season. On his first appearance in London, in 1830, he met with immediate success, and for a number of years he resided alternately in the French and English capitals, singing during both the Paris and London seasons. He died at Naples. Consult Couailhac, Galerie des artistes dramatiques de Paris (Paris, 1841).
LA BOÉTIE, lȧ bō̇′ā̇′sē̇′, Etienne de (1530-63). A French translator from the Greek, and political thinker, known chiefly through the friendship of Montaigne (q.v.) for him. His youthful Contre un is a democratic declamation, the first republican protest to spring from the French Renaissance. La Boétie translated the Economics of Xenophon. The latest edition of his Works is by Bonnefon (Bordeaux, 1888). Consult, also, Bonnefon's chapter on Montaigne in Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, vol. iii. (Paris, 1896-1901).
LABOR (OF. labor, labeur, Fr. labeur, from Lat. labor, toil). Human activity put forth as a means to the production of goods. Two forms, forced or slave labor, induced by the fear of punishment, and contract or free labor, induced by the desire for goods as a means to the satisfaction of wants, are to be sharply distinguished.
The earliest civilizations were based on systems of slave labor, the slaves being either a subject people dominated by a conquering race or prisoners of war. Such systems led inevitably to the degeneration of the governing class, and were overthrown as soon as the peoples establishing them came in contact with more vigorous races which had been forced by circumstances to depend more upon their own exertions. During the Middle Ages, and even down to modern times in some of the countries of Europe, the system of labor was a modified form of slavery known as serfdom. Serfs were bound to the soil, and compelled to obey their feudal lords in all important matters. At the same time they had certain customary rights and privileges which the lords, on their side, were bound to respect. Although adapted to the conditions of a slowly developing agricultural community, serfdom was not at all suited to a manufacturing or commercial people. For this and other reasons it gave place to the system of free labor, at first in England during the fifteenth century; then in France, Germany, and the other countries of Western and Central Europe during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and finally in Russia during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
With the discovery of America and the opening up of new lands suited to a semi-tropical agriculture, a new form of slavery was devised, that of African negroes, brought across the ocean in slave-ships and made to bear the brunt of the heavy labor connected with the production of tobacco, cotton, and other crops. In the United States there ensued a period of development in which the country was 'half slave and half free,' which proved intolerable to both sections, and culminated in the Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery.
The different conceptions of free labor which have played a part in the development of economic thought can best be indicated by reviewing briefly the views of leading economists. It was characteristic of the Mercantilist writers to ignore labor and the other factors in the production of wealth, and to ascribe exaggerated importance to the precious metals. The Physiocrats appreciated more truly the function of the precious metals; but they also gave slight attention to labor, as such, because they ascribed undue importance to the part which land and natural forces play in production. They even went so far as to characterize manufacturing and mercantile labor as unproductive (sterile), and to declare that agricultural labor is alone productive, since it alone creates a surplus of goods over and above those needed to satisfy the laborer's own necessities. Adam Smith, on the other hand, following Petty and Hume, represented labor as the principal factor in the production of wealth. In his treatment, the division of labor is made the chief cause of industrial progress, and the part which nature plays in production is passed over with scant consideration. He distinguished productive from unproductive labor by defining the former as activity which realizes itself in some material form (that is, commodities rather than services). Nevertheless, he followed the Physiocrats in ascribing peculiar productiveness to agricultural labor, for, he says, in agriculture "nature labors along with man." Ricardo gave his attention primarily to the distribution of wealth, and based his theory on the proposition that value is always in proportion to the quantity of labor. He added little to Adam Smith's treatment of labor as a factor in production, except to point out that nature assists man in all his industrial pursuits, and not merely in farming. John Stuart Mill went a step further toward giving scientific precision to economic analysis by pointing out that labor does not
