The New International Encyclopædia/Labor Exchanges

LABOR EXCHANGES. (1) A class of institutions founded by the followers of Robert Owen (1832-35), which were designed to bring about the exchange of the products of labor without the intervention of money. Stores were founded which were to buy and sell commodities for 'labor notes,' the amount of time spent in producing a commodity being the basis on which it was valued. No difference was made for different kinds of labor. The plan was soon found to be impracticable. (2) The term is frequently used to designate an ideal employment bureau under public management, which should obviate the common evil that at one and the same time a need for labor exists in some occupations or localities, while many men are unemployed. It is generally recognized that labor, owing to the ignorance and inertia of the laboring classes, does not readily respond to the competitive laws which tend to place productive forces where they are most efficient. The better distribution of labor, it is held, ought to be one of the cares of the State, since under present conditions society loses much productive energy, while bearing an unnecessarily large burden of pauperism and crime.

So-called labor exchanges (bourses de travail) exist in numerous European cities, as well as in some of the American States and in Australasia; but they are not equipped with machinery sufficiently efficient to grapple with the larger problems of the distribution of labor. See Employment Bureaus.