3283 



LABOR 



LI 



L, the twelfth letter of the English alphabet, 

 was derived through the Greek and Roman from 

 the Phoenician lamed. The Phoenician letter 

 resembled a capital L, though the angle formed by 

 the two lines was considerably less than a right 

 angle; the word lamed is supposed to have meant 



oxyoad, and the letter to have been a picture of a whip with a lash. The Greeks 

 changed the form of the letter so that it resembled an inverted V, but the Romans 

 wrote it practically as capital L is made to-day. In sound, too. the letter lias always 

 been what it is at present, a liquid, or semivowel. It is very closely related to r, and 

 the twa are often substituted for each other in allied languages. 



English has examples of words in which the r sound is given to I, as the first / in 

 colonel. Many savages, it is said, cannot distinguish the two sounds, and it was very 

 difficult at first to find out whether the capital of the Hawaiian Islands was Honolulu, 

 or Honoruru, as the natives used the two indiscriminately, seeming to perceive no 

 difference in sound. L in English is sometimes silent, as in palm; but it serves in such 

 instances to modify the sound of the vowel which precedes it. For the use of / in 

 French and Spanish, see PRONUNCIATION OF FOREIGN NAMES. 



LABIATAE, labla'tc, the name applied by 

 botanists to the numerous members of the mint 

 family. In this plant division there are about 

 150 genera and nearly 3,000 species. Nearly all 

 are native to North America; some are very 

 useful to man, and others are worthless. 

 Among them are herbs valuable in medicine, 

 for the manufacture of perfumes and for cook- 

 ery. Some species are weeds. Among the well- 

 known members of the family are mint, mar- 

 joram, lavender, horehound, thyme, balm, sage 

 and rosemary. Each of the above plants is de- 

 scribed in these volumes. 



LABOR, DEPARTMENT or, the tenth executive 

 department of the United States government. 

 established March 4, 1913, "to develop the 

 v. el fare of wage earners of the United State.-. 

 to improve their working conditions and to 

 advance their opportunities for profitable em- 

 ployment." In the organization of the De- 

 partment a number of bureaus and divisions 

 of what had been the Department of Com- 

 merce and Labor were transferred to it. These 

 were the Bureau of Immigration, the Bureau 

 of Naturalization, the Division of Information. 

 Immigration Service at large and the Bureau 

 of Labor, whose name was then changed to 

 the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There was also 

 added the Children's Bureau, a new division 

 which had been organized in 1912 under the old 

 Department of Commerce and Labor. 



The head of the Department, the Secretary 

 cf Labor, is given power to act as mediator and 



to appoint commissioners of conciliation in 

 labor disputes, wherever in his judgment the 

 interests of industrial peace may require it to 

 be done. 



The Bureau of Labor Statistics is destined to 

 be an important division of the government. 

 It is charged with collecting and reporting af 

 least once a year full and complete statistics 

 of the conditions of labor and of the products 

 and distribution of the products of labor; such 

 parts of the information thus secured as the 

 secretary may deem proper may be given to 

 the public. This is usually accomplished in a 

 series of annual reports. 



The secretary is a member of the President's 

 Cabinet but is not eligible to succession to 

 the Presidency. His salary is $12,000 per year. 

 This Department came into existence on the 

 day that Woodrow Wilson became President 

 of the United States; President Taft signed 

 the bill creating the Department as the last 

 official act of his administration. See CABINET. 



The Department of Labor was the outgrowth 

 of an insistent demand upon the government by 

 the labor masses for adequate representation in 

 the councils of the nation. The compact or- 

 ganization of labor and its growing political 

 strength could not be ignored. Labor organiza- 

 tions were not satisfied with a comparatively 

 weak Bureau within a principal department of 

 the government; they felt that only a leading 

 executive department could represent them with 

 fitting dignity and strength. 



