LABRECQUE
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LABYRINTH
laudable. Competent authorities maintain that the
exceptional workman is often constituted the pace-
maker for all the others, and that the intensity of ex-
ertion demanded by many forms of high-speeded
machinery has considerably reduced the working-life
of the labourer (see Brooks, " The Social Unrest",
191; and "Final Report of the Industrial Commis-
sion", p. 733). In such cases the union does well to
endeavour to keep the output of the average man
down to an average reasonable limit. When the re-
striction goes beyond this, and is motived by indo-
lence or by the desire of making a job last longer, it
is clearly unjustifiable and dishonest. To the com-
plaint of the employer that in many of the skilled
trades the union will not permit the training of a
sufficient number of appi entices, the unionist replies
with a simple denial. The explanation of the differ-
ence between them is largely in their different stand-
ards of sufficiency. Both recognize that a scarcity
of apprentices tends to make wages high, but they do
not agree as to the point at which wages are suffi-
ciently high. Since the employer is generally able to
pass the extra cost of labour on to the consumer, he
is not seriously injured, at least financially, by tlie
practice. But the consumer suffers unjustly, if the
supply of skilled workers is kept so low that their
wages are unreasonably high. The workers who are
able and wilUng to qualify for the trade are also in-
jured, inasmuch as they are compelled to enter a
lower and less remunerative occupation. At what
precise point in the wage scale a real injustice is done
the consumer, it is practically impossible to say; but,
since such a point can be reached, since the men in
those trades where limitation of apprentices is en-
forced are, as a rule, sufficiently organized to defend
their just interests, and since a considerable injury is
done to those who are excluded from the trade, the
practice would seem to be of doubtful moral correct-
ness. After all, a labour union can become a real
monopoly, capable of practising extortion upon the
community as truly, though not as extensively, as a
monopoly of products.
While the unions are a necessity of our present in- dustrial system, they are nevertheless, both in spirit and in many of their methods, a necessary evil. They are too often established and maintained on the theory or conviction that the competition between employer and employee is a veritable warfare, in which each is at liberty to strive for all that he can possibly secure, and in which the victory is always to the stronger force. If competition were restrained by law or by some other species of social control within the limits of reason and morality, if the taking of exorbitant profits and the reduction of wages below the level of decent living were alike rendered impos- sible, the union would still be desirable, indeed, just as organization is desirable for every class of men whose interests are common; but a far greater pro- portion of its activities could be devoted to mutual help, especially in the form of insurance, and a much smaller proportion to the struggle against the impo- sition of unfair terms, and to economic warfare gen- erally. In that better, though still remote, day, most of the extreme methods of the union, such as the strike, the boycott, and the closed shop, could be dis- carded in favour of milder practices, such as collec- tive bargaining, insurance, and education.
Adams and SbMNER, Labor Problems (New York, 1905); Commons, Trade Unions and Labor Problems (New York, 1905); Webb. History of Trade Unionism (London, 1894); Idem, Industrial Democracy (London, 1902); Bliss, The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, s. v. Trade Unionism (New York, 1908); MacDonalu and others in Irish Theological Quarterly (1906, 1907), articles on Boycotting; Antoine, Cours d^^eonomie sociale (Paris, 1899); Pottier, De Jure et Justitia (Li^ee, 1900); Vermeersch, Qutsstiones de Justitia (Bruges, 1901): Lehm- KUHL, Theologia Moralis, I (Freiburg, 1893); Tanquerey, De Justitia (Paris, 1904); Leumkuhl and others, Die Sociale Frage (Freiburg, 1895).
.John a. Ryan.
Labrecque, Michael Thomas. See Chicoutimi,
Diocese of.
La Bruyere, Jean de, b. at Paris in 1645; d. at Chantilly in 1696. He was the son of a comptroller general of municipal revenue. An advocate in the Parlement of Paris, he soon gave up the bar and pur- chased a post from the Treasurer of Finances at Caen (167o), continuing to reside at Paris. He was leading a studious life there " in the solitude of his study " ac- cording to his own expression, when Bossuet's friend- ship secured his admission into the house of Cond6 to teach history to the Due de Bourbon, grandson of the victor of Rocroi. This boy was then six years old, and for two years received lessons from his new tutor. The latter only half succeeded in liis task, but he se- cured the friendship of the great Cond^, and remained at Chantilly attached to the duke's person, with a pen- sion of 3000 livres, until he died of an attack of apo- plexy in 1696, having been for three years a member of the French Academy. Favourably placed for seeing the world, and led to judge it without indulgence, both because of the rebuffs which he must have experienced in his subordinate position and because of his upright but proud and morose nature, he published anony- mously in 16S8 "Les Caracteres de Theophraste, tra- duits du Grec, avec les caracteres et les mojurs de ce sieele ". The book met with great success. Though his means were modest, the author freely gave his manuscript to the bookseller Michallet as a contribu- tion towards the dowry of his daughter, and it is claimed that it brought in nearly 300,000 francs. The first part of the book was a not very remarkable trans- lation of a faulty text. The second part assumed larger proportions, especially as regards the "por- traits". La Bruyere continued to add to it from the first edition (1689) to the nmth (1696). The first fif- teen chapters, he said with some complacency in his rather loosely-drawn plan, " are preparations for the sixteenth and last, ' Des esprits forts ', in which Athe- ism is attacked and perhaps overthrown ".
La Bruyere must not be regarded as a profound and powerful moralist like Pascal. He is a keen, honest, Christian observer and, above aU, an admirable writer. But the stylist and the artist are too much in evidence; he lacks the large simplicity of the authors of the pre- ceding generation. His art is, however, inimitable. Particularly striking is the variety, the finish of detail, the profusion of wit, the skill in securing an effect, the inexhaustible resources of his diction; his works are an inventory of the powers of the French language. By his ideas as well as his life he belongs to the seven- teenth century, but his brief and sententious phrases foreshadow the eighteenth.
FouRNiER, La com6die de La Bruyere (1867); Allaire, La Bruyere dans la maison de Conde (1886).
Geohges Bertrin. Labuan. See Borneo.
Labjfrmth, a complicated arrangement of pathsand passages; or a place, usually subterraneous, full of windings, corridors, rooms, etc., so intricately ar- ranged as to render the getting out of it a very diffi- cult matter. The labyrinth as an architectural term derives its name from the famous ancient or myth- ical labyrinths of Crete and Egypt. Geometrical figures composed of various pieces of coloured marbles and so disposed as to form labyrinths were frequently found in the pavements of French catheilrals and so-called lahyrinthes de pavf. The finest remaining example is in the centre of the nave of Notre Dame, Chartres, and a person following the various windings and turns of the figure would walk nearly S(l() feet before he arrived at the centre; although the circum- ference docs not exceed thirteen yards. Similar labyrinths formerly existed at Notre Dame, Paris, at the cathedral of Reims, and at Amiens. This latter was only taken up in the latter part of the last
