have given has been extremely valuable in adjustments of labor difficulties.
France was the first European country to follow the example of the United States. A bureau for the collection of statistics and information concerning labor was created in 1891, and has become the general statistical bureau of the country.
In 1892 Germany established a labor commission which possesses to a large extent the permanency of a labor bureau. It has published more than ten volumes of reports giving the results of its investigations relating to the conditions of labor in various industries. In 1893 a 'Labor Department' under the direction of a 'Commissioner for Labor' was instituted in connection with the Board of Trade in England, and its duties are similar to those of other countries. Austria was the last of the Continental countries to organize a bureau. This was done in 1898 and placed under the Ministry of Commerce. Belgium, Italy, Sweden, New Zealand, New South Wales, the Dominion of Canada, and Ontario also have bureaus. Some of these are largely employment bureaus, others concern themselves chiefly with publishing statistics, but all are modeled more or less closely after the American plan.
Consult: Wright, "The Working of the Department of Labor" and "The Value and Influence of Labor Statistics," in Monographs on Social Economics, vols. i. and ii. (Washington. 1901); Annual Reports Association of Officials of Bureaus of Labor Statistics of America (Washington); Bulletins of the United States Department of Labor, the Annual and Special Reports, particularly the Second Special Report, "Labor Laws of the United States" (2d ed., Washington, 1896); Reports of Labor Department of England (London); Office du Travail, France (Paris); Kommission für Arbeiterstatistik, Germany (Berlin); Secretariat Ouvrier, Switzerland (Bern); and similar agencies of various States and countries.
LABOR AND COMMERCE, Department of. One of the nine executive departments of the United States Government, created by act of Congress of February 11, 1903, and presided over by a Secretary, who is a member of the Cabinet and one of the officers in line of succession to the Presidency. His salary and tenure are the same as those of the other members of the Cabinet. The act of Congress creating the new department charges it with the duty of fostering, promoting, and developing the foreign and domestic commerce of the United States, mining, manufacturing, and fishery industries, the interests of labor, improvement of transportation facilities, and the supervision of the business of insurance. The organization of the department consists of a Bureau of Corporations, a Bureau of Manufactures, the Bureau of Labor, the Lighthouse Board, the lighthouse establishment, the steamboat-inspection service, the Bureau of Navigation, the Bureau of Standards, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the immigration service, including the enforcement of the Chinese exclusion acts, the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury Department, the Shipping Commissioner, the Bureau of Foreign Commerce (formerly in the Department of State), the Census Bureau, and the Fish Commission, including control of the fur-seal, salmon, and other fisheries of Alaska. An entirely new feature is the Bureau of Corporations, to which is given partial jurisdiction of the control of trusts and trade combinations. At the head of this bureau is a Commissioner of Corporations, with a salary of $5000. He is charged with making 'diligent investigation' into the organization, conduct, and management of the business of any corporation or joint-stock company engaged in commerce among the several States and with foreign nations, excepting common carriers, who are subject to the Interstate Commerce Act. He is furthermore required to collect information and data relative to foreign and interstate commerce, and to report the same to the President. To him is given the same power with respect to corporations and joint-stock companies as is conferred upon the Interstate Commerce Commission in respect to common carriers, including the right to subpœna and compel the attendance and testimony of witnesses.
LABORATORY. A laboratory is literally a place of labor, a workshop, and the term is still frequently employed in this meaning in connection with the manufacturing of chemicals, drugs, explosives, etc. The word is ordinarily used, however, to designate a room or building equipped with means for conducting experimental investigations in some department of science or art. Research laboratories of chemistry, physics, engineering, biology, etc., are maintained in all the better colleges and universities, in the interest of pure and applied science, and in many hospitals, manufacturing establishments, etc., for the purpose of devising new methods of procedure and conducting tests of various kinds. In addition to these laboratories devoted to research, there are numberless laboratories connected with public and private schools, academies, and colleges, whose function is not the discovery of new truths, but rather the demonstration of facts already well established. Every high school, for example, possesses a chemical laboratory in which experiments are performed by students who are led in this way to a first-hand and therefore better knowledge of the facts and principles of this science.
The history of research laboratories can be best understood in the light of the development of all scientific thinking. There is at first a period of crude observation of the facts under the complicated conditions of practical life. Such observations have given to science many valuable facts, but serious errors have crept in at the same time. This is naturally followed by a period of reaction against observation and in its stead there is an attempt to deduce all knowledge from already given general laws. This is the period of authority and the syllogism. The reaction to this method leads to the third and final stage of science, when the laws and facts of nature are determined by means of observation of phenomena, but now under control and known conditions. The sciences have not advanced with equal speed, so that while some are well along in the third stage of progress and are still growing rapidly through experimental research, other sciences are in the second stage, while a few still remain in the first stage. Laboratories of some sort have existed since the earliest times. The Chinese and Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and Romans, certainly possessed them, but they were in all probability similar to the better known laboratories of the physicians,
