The proposed legislation for the protection of labour offers therefore a wide field for careful and scientific investigation. I have prepared the following pages as a contribution to this task. FOOTNOTE: [1] _Protection for the Labourer!_ Cologne, 1890. CHAPTER I. DEFINITION OF LABOUR PROTECTION. The meaning of the term Labour Protection admits of an extension far beyond the narrow and precise limits which prevailing usage has assigned to it, and beyond the sphere of analogous questions actually dealt with by protective legislation. In its most general meaning the term comprises all conceivable protection of every kind of labour: protection of all labour--even for the self-supporting, independent worker; protection in service-relations, and beyond this, protection against all dangers and disadvantages arising from the economic weakness of the position of the wage-labourer; protection of all, not merely of industrial wage-labourers; protection not by the State alone, but also by non-political organs; the ancient common protection exercised through the ordinary course of justice and towards all citizens, and thus towards labourers among the rest. All this so far as the actual word is concerned may be included in the term Labour Protection. But to use it in this sense would be to incur the risk of falling into a hopeless confusion as to the questions which lie within the scope of actual Labour Protection, and of running an endless tilt against fanciful exaggerations of Labour Protection. The term Labour Protection, according to prevailing usage and according to the aim of the practical efforts now being made to realise it, has a much narrower meaning, and this it is which we must strictly define and adhere to if we wish to avoid error and misconception. Our first task shall be to determine this stricter definition; and here we find ourselves confronted by a series of limitations. (1) Labour Protection signifies only protection against the special dangers arising out of service-relations, out of the personal and economic dependence of the wage-labourer on the employer. Labour Protection does not apply therefore to independent workers: to farmers or masters of handicrafts, to independent workers in the fine arts and liberal professions. Labour Protection applies merely to wage-labourers.