LABOR, in political economy, may be defined as effort for the satisfying of human needs. It is one of the three leading factors in production, the other two. being land (or natural objects) and cap!tal; and it is more fundamental than capital, which originally is the result of labor.
A ditinction insisted upon by many economists is that into productive and unproductive labor. The former consists of those kinds of exertion which produce utilities embodied in natural objects. Unproductive labor, like that of the musician, while both useful and honor able, does not add to the material wealth of the community. Labor directly em ployed in rendering natural objects serv iceable to man may in the language of political economy be distinctively called productive. Yet the physician or teacher may be indirectly most productive, inas much as they increase the efficiency of the workman by promoting his health and intelligence.
The social and legal forms in which labor has appeared have also varied with the progress of civilization. In the early stages the labor of the chase, fishing, etc., was performed by the men, while the drudgery devolved on the women and slaves. It was not till the agricultural stage was reached that conquering tribes spared the conquered in order to utilize their services as workers. Ancient civil ization was based almost entirely on com pulsory labor. The pyramids and other great works of Egypt and Babylonia were possible only because governments could command forced labor on a colossal scale. The more highly developed socie ties of Greece and Rome rested on the same basis.
It is a disputed question how far free labor existed in the early Teutonic settle ments of England and other countries. The medimval organization of society, where definitely constituted, rested on serfdom—i. e., the mass of the workers were attached to the soil, and rendered fixed services in labor, in kind, and lat thrly in money. While the condition of
serfdom greatly varied, there can be no doubt that its tendency was to depress the free and raise the servile cultivators to something like a common level. The free workers of the towns organized themselves in GUILDS (q. v.). In the course of the 14th century serfdom began to pass away in England. Its disappear ance was followed by enactments for the regulation of labor in the interest of the ruling classes. The first, and one of the greatest examples of this was the "Stat ute of Laborers." The main object of this statute, which was passed in 1349, was to fix the amount of wages; and it was superseded by a statute of Elizabeth which, besides ordaining an apprentice ship of seven years, empowered the justices in quarter sessions to fix the rate of wages both in husbandry and handicrafts. This act of Elizabeth v,,as not repealed till 1814.
Toward the close of the 18th century the effect of the industrial revolution was to organize labor in large factories and similar undertakings; and in the early decades of the 19th the growing ideas of freedom had begun to make other great changes in the condition .of the workers. The right of combination re ceived in 1824 was utilized in the for mation of trades-unions and co-operatIve societies, and the admission of the work ingmen to the franchise has given them a share in the political life of the country. The emancipation of agricultural labor from serfdom, which was effected m France at the Revolution of 1789, was not completed in central Europe till 1848, and in Russia not till 1861. Laws for the regulation of labor are now intended not to fix wages as formerly, but to pro tect the weaker class of workers.