This page needs to be proofread.
LABRADOR—LADENBURG, A.
723

March 1919 there was a much stronger demand for women workers than before the war. In fact, just before the termination of the war, employers were asking for twice as many women work- ers as in 1917. The figures show, also, that the number of women seeking industrial employment rose in almost exact proportion to the demand for their services. In another study, made for the country as a whole, of 15,00x3 firms employing 2,500,000 workers, it is estimated that in 1914 6-5% of the workers on the labour force of leading war agency and implement industries were women; in 1916 7-7% were women; after the first draft (Feb.- March 1918) 10-6% were women; after the second draft (Oct- Nov. 1918) 13-9% were women. In Aug. 1919 women still remained as 10% of the labour force. In the production of muni- tions, Benedict Crowell, Assistant Secretary of War and Director of Munitions, says that the women played a " highly important part." Fifty per cent of the employees in explosive plants were women; in the manufacture of hand grenades 19 out of 20 work- ers were women; in the Government gas-mask defence plant 8,500 out of 12,000 employees were women. In transportation the highest employment of women was reached in Oct. 1918, when there were 101,785 employed by first-class roads, an in- crease of 66% in the first nine months of 1918 and of 225% from the beginning of the war. In Oct. 1919 the number had fallen to 81,803. This increase in the war industries was secured in part by the absolute increase in numbers of women employed and in part by a shift from the traditional occupations of women in the textile, garment, food and tobacco industries which showed in some instances actual decrease in the numbers employed.

Women were first substituted for men in hundreds of repetitive occupations, and in unskilled and labouring jobs, in industries varying in their main divisions from blast furnaces to lumber camps. More important for the future was the fact that the war emergency in some cases opened the way to the " master ma- chines " and key occupations. In all the industries taken together where women were substituted, 98 to 100 men were released for every 100 women employed, though there were exceptions such as crane operating where three women on 8-hour shifts replaced two men on 1 2-hour shifts. With regard to the success of their work in the new occupations a recent study of representative firms where women were substituted for men shows that 77-4% of the firms investigated reported that women's work, where comparable, was as satisfactory as, or better than, that of men. On the whole the results of their work seemed to depend less on the kind of work or degree of skill required than upon the intelligence with which they were initiated into their new work.

To meet the demand for technically skilled labour, the training and dilution service of the Department of Labor was organized, July 16 1918, under the authority of the War Labor Administra- tion Act, and $150,000 was appropriated for its use. Its particu- lar function was to ascertain the best methods of training workers and to provide information. Plans for factory training were designed, the various types of training were classified, and information was widely disseminated among employers. Es- pecially was training needed for women, who were, with few exceptions, unprepared for the skilled and semi-skilled work. This was usually given in the factory training-room or vestibule school. Though the life of the service was so brief that it had no appreciable effect in augmenting the supply of skilled labour, it accomplished an important result in emphasizing the need for industrial training.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Bulletin No. 12; U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Sta- tistics, Monthly Labor Review; Report of Benedict Crowell, Assistant Secretary of War, Director of Munitions, Washington, 1919; America's Munitions, 1917-8; U.S. Department of Labor, Employ- ment Service, Annual Reports of the Director-General; U.S. Rail- road Administration, Annual Reports of the Director-General; National Industrial Conference Board, Research Report, No. 8; Gordon S. Watkins, Labor Problems and Labor Administration in the United Stales During the World War, University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. viii., No. 3; Lescohier, D.D., The Labor Market, 1919. (J. R. Co.)

LABRADOR (see 16.28). Developments in Labrador during the decade 1910-20 were comparatively few and unimportant.

The Newfoundland fishermen pursued their calling along its seaboard, and wireless stations were established at several points there to render communication easier. The work of the Grenfell mission among the fishermen was maintained and extended, and farther N. the Moravian missionaries continued their Christian- izing work among the Eskimos, originated more than a century ago. The Hudson's Bay Co. and its more recent rival, the Re- villon Co., kept up contact with the trappers on the coast and the Indian tribes of the wilderness behind, and occasional American exploring parties, geologists and others, visited the region during the summer seasons. The epidemic of influenza in 1918 ravaged the northern section despite the efforts of the Moravian missionaries and their medical staff; 20% of the natives perished. The mortality in some settlements was such that the dead had to be buried in pits, through lack of help to dig individual graves.

Labrador contributed a substantial quota of men whites and half-breeds for the Newfoundland Regiment and Naval Reserve, and even the smallest settlements helped in raising funds for Red Cross and other patriotic purposes. During the World War the attitude of some of the Moravian missionaries of German descent resulted in steps being taken for their internment. Other safeguards were applied and patrols were maintained by the Newfoundland Government during two seasons in case German submarines should use the coast to operate against Allied shipping passing through Belle Isle Strait to leave or reach Canadian harbours.

The production of codfish, salmon, trout and peltries, the prin- cipal yield of the region, continued about normal, but a survey of the seaboard and a thorough investigation of the fishery possibilities of the outer waters, which the Newfoundland Government had in contemplation, should result in largely increasing the magnitude of the fishing industry. Conditions on the eastern coast of " New- foundland " Labrador, as it is known, are virtually identical with those on the western coast or " Canadian " Labrador from Belle Isle Strait westward to the St. Lawrence. The Grenfell mission operates here also but to a smaller extent than on the Atlantic seaboard, while the Canadian church organizations, Protestant and Catholic, play a larger part in caring for the natives there than the very limited resources of the kindred organizations in Newfoundland per- mit of their doing on the ocean front.

In Nov. 1920, after several years of negotiation, the Canadian and Newfoundland Governments, through their respective Ministers of Justice, signed an agreement in London for the submission to the Privy Council of the question of the Labrador boundary, on which depends, amongst other things, the right to valuable timber and mineral areas in that region. Broadly speaking, Newfoundland claims that her jurisdiction should extend inland from the Atlantic coast to the watershed or " height of land " in the interior, and that she should possess all the territory draining into the Atlantic; while Canada claims that the whole of this territory should be hers except a narrow strip along the seaboard necessary to enable the New- foundlanders to carry on successfully their fishing enterprise, which is at present the only substantial industry in the region.

LADENBURG, ALBERT (1842-1911), German chemist, was born at Mannheim July 2 1842. He was educated at a Real- gymnasium at Mannheim and after the age of 15 at the technical school of Karlsruhe, proceeding to the university of Heidelberg, where he graduated as doctor of philosophy (1863). From 1863 to 1867 he first studied organic chemistry under A. Kekule at Ghent, then visited England, studied in Paris and with Ch. Friedel and Wurtz, and returned to teach at Heidelberg. In 1873 he went to Kiel as professor of chemistry and director of the laboratory, remaining there until 1889 when he went to the university of Breslau in the same capacity. He was made an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1886 and received the Hanbury medal for original research in chemistry in 1889. Details of his work, especially in connexion with benzene derivatives, are given in 6.53, 55 and 942; 11.215; 20.430; 25.892 and 21.635. He published Entwicklungsgeschichte der Chemie von Lavoisier bis zur Gegenwart (1868) and other works on chemistry, collaborated in a Handworterbuch der Chemie (13 vols., 1882-96), and wrote a volume of reminiscences, Lebenserinnerungen (1912). He died at Breslau Aug. 15 1911.

See Biographisches Jahrbuch und Deutscher Nekrolog., Bd. xvi., 171 (1914), and W. Herz's Albert Ladenburg.