hirty thousand men who
were sent "to Lebanon ten thousand a month by courses; a month they were
in Lebanon and two months at home." In addition to the above we find
that he employed seventy thousand "that bare burdens" and eighty
thousand "hewers in the mountains, beside the officers which were over
the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people
that wrought in the work." It was the elaborate organisation of these
laborers, and the provision for their spending a certain proportion of
their time at home, which enabled Solomon to carry out his great public
works without seriously deranging the labor market, or hindering the
prosperity of the nation. I have selected this instance because it is
from well authenticated sources, goes fully into details and refers to a
nation and country very much resembling India. Indeed it is almost
identical with the familiar Indian institution known as "begar" or
forced labour.

The weak point of such special efforts is that they tend to leave
things in a worse position than ever when they are concluded. Nobody
sits down to calculate what is to become of the thousands who have been
drawn together, often hundreds of miles from their homes, when the time
comes for them to be paid off. They are thrown bodily upon the labor
market and left to shift for themselves as best they can, without any
means of informing themselves where they ought to go, or into what other
channels they can most profitably direct their labor.

This evil we hope to obviate by means of our Labor Bureaux, which will
be planted in every city and district, and will keep such elaborate
returns as will enable to watch all the fluctuations of the labor
market.

For instance let us be informed of the fact that a railway is to be
opened, a canal dug, or some other public work constructed in a
particular district, we should be able to calculate from our returns the
amount of labor that could conveniently be withdrawn from existing
channels, and the amount that would have to be imported.

We should be able to constitute a Solomon's levy (voluntary of course),
and the laborers would have the assurance that when the work on which
they were engaged was concluded, sufficient provision would be made for
their reemployment elsewhere, or for their restoration to their ordinary
occupation. Our Labor Bureau would thus do for the laborer what is at
present impossible for him to do for himself, and would economis