"Laborer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... competition, when everything would seem to be matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The effect of attention to quality, upon every man in the service, from the president of the concern down to the humblest laborer, cannot be overestimated. And bearing on the same question, clean, fine workshops and tools, well-kept yards and surroundings are of much greater importance than ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... control. This has the effect of producing on the part of overworked factory hands dissipation and overstimulation in free time, with a consequent permanent impairment of efficiency.[1] Both for the laborer himself and for the efficiency of the industrial system, it has been increasingly recognized that limitation of working hours is imperatively demanded. Rest is as fundamental a need as food, and its deprivation almost as serious in ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... receives a shilling, and touches his cap as he receives it, and the human being whose income is paid in yearly or half-yearly sums, and to whom a pecuniary tip would appear as an insult; yet, of course, that great gulf is the result of training alone. John Smith the laborer, with twelve shillings a week, and the bishop with eight thousand a year, had, by original constitution, precisely the same kind of feeling towards that much-sought, yet much-abused reality which provides the means of life. Who shall reckon up by what millions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... good-naturedly on; the young hot-bloods joked the dusky citizen, and bestowed extravagant encomiums on the plucky girl who had saved them from so much threatened trouble; and Mollie Ainslie rode home with a hot, flushed face, and was put to bed by her co-laborer, the victim of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... man who has mastered the details of his occupation through reducing them to a series of effective habits will surely succeed. Note the ease and perfection with which the skilled workman performs his labor and compare it with the slow, slovenly work of the unskilled laborer. ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... over the city, and the busy turmoil of the streets had ceased; the laborer had repaired to his family, the wealthy had gone to their suburban villas, and licentious youth had sought the amusements over which darkness draws its veil. Politicians, newsmongers, and travellers made the cafe salons ring with their animated discussions. The ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... No: I heard no explosion: I have something more serious to attend to than explosions. Great Heavens: Lady Richmond's nephew has been treated like any common laborer; and while England is reeling under the shock a private comes in and asks me ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... That the giant labor reform of this age lies in securing to woman, the great unpaid and unrecognized laborer and producer of the whole earth, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... an adored sick sister of four, besides six other younger brothers and sisters, and a worshipped mother, to whom she gave every cent of her wages of three dollars and a half a week. An older brother, a day laborer, paid the rent and provided food for all of them. Every other family expense was met by Catriona's three dollars and a half, so that she was in the habit of spending only five cents for her own lunch, and, on the nights of overtime, five cents ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... erect a fortress, Cortes was the hardest laborer in the trenches; when we were going into battle, he was as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... here say for the benefit of our Northern readers, that the term 'ranch' is used in the Southwest instead of 'farm,' the ordinary laborer is termed a 'cowboy,' the horse used a 'cow horse,' and the herd of ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the life of a slave. She was the victim of brute lust, the object of the vengeful jealousy of the squaws. The starved, half-naked, wretched girl, whose eighteen years had been protected in the shelter of a happy Christian home, was now the captive laborer whose tasks strong men would stagger under. God's providence seemed far away in those days of the winning of ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the beverage—the masterpiece—of every meal, even if it be nothing but boiled rice. Every artisan and laborer, going to work, carries with him his rice-box of lacquered wood, a kettle, a tea-caddy, a tea-pot, a cup, and his chop-sticks. Milk and sugar are generally eschewed. The Japs and the Chinese never indulge in either of these ingredients in tea; the ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... 'mounts to anything," the laborer deprecated. "But they was somethin' else that struck me as a little funny, when I come to ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... better. It seems to me the General is a little old for her: but every one is the best judge of his own affairs: Hem! the best judge of his own affairs. Elise, my dear, whenever you are ready we will follow you. Pardon me, Monsieur le Comte, for receiving you in this rustic attire, but I am a laborer. Agricola—a mere herdsman—'custos gregis', as the poet says. Walk before me, Monsieur le Comte, I beg you. Marie, child, respect ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... drawn, the inhabitants retired into the coolest recesses of their mansions; the full-fed monk snores in his dormitory; the brawny porter lies stretched on the pavement beside his burden; the peasant and the laborer sleep beneath the trees of the Alameda, lulled by the sultry chirping of the locust. The streets are deserted, except by the water-carrier, who refreshes the ear by proclaiming the merits of his sparkling beverage, 'colder than the mountain snow ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... and quicken the spirit and efficiency of labor throughout our whole industrial system by everywhere and in all occupations doing justice to the laborer, not only by paying a living wage but also by making all the conditions that surround labor what they ought to be. And we must do more than justice. We must safeguard life and promote health and safety in every occupation in which they are threatened or imperiled. That is ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... strength and their spirits lightened. Making these discoveries at nightfall, the doctor touched up his horse in some secret dread. He had learned earlier than the rest to feel warmly toward this simple co-laborer. "Perhaps he's gone out to pay Langley a visit," he said: "I'll call and see. He may have stopped ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of private schools, the law compels every one to contribute to education. To many individuals it is a matter of indifference whether they pay tuition or taxes, but the wealthy bachelor sometimes grumbles when forced to help in educating the day-laborer's family. The average result of a certain social policy may be right, but individuals diverge from the average and thus have constantly a motive to attempt to change the limits of governmental action. Happily the subject is not always viewed ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... the girl, her eyes sparkling with eagerness, "but to persist overlong even in well-doing becomes ultimately tedious. If the laborer is worthy of his hire, so, too, is the master. You should take a change, and as I know your fondness for travel, I have ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... nook and corner of the South there comes a cry that the Negro as a laborer is unsatisfactory. It is said that he is inefficient, unreliable, indolent, lazy, in short, that he is unfit to do the work the South wants done. Less than two decades ago it was just the opposite. Then, it was said that the ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... the Subject" is an admirable piece of work. We present our respects to Mr. Ezra Abbot, Jr., and wish that many an earnest literary laborer had such a "friend." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Democratic party. The tissue ballot and shotgun policy made them hesitate to put power in the hands of the South. Besides, the tariff question made thousands and thousands of votes. As long as Europe has slave labor, and wherever kings and priests rule, the laborer will be substantially a slave. We must protect ourselves. If the world were free, trade would be free, and the seas would be the free highways of the world. The great objects of the Republican party are to preserve all the liberty we have, protect American labor, and to make ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Yorick in the section, the "Spider."[31] The return journey in the sentimental moonlight affords the author another opportunity for the exercise of his broad human sympathy: he meets a poor woman, aday-laborer with her child, gives them a few coins and doubts whether king or bishop could be more content with the benediction of the apostolic chair than he with the blessing of this unfortunate,—asentiment derived from Yorick's overcolored veneration ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... friends, for this is not Austria's imperial capital! It is the world which God created, and here upon our mother earth we stand as man to mail. A little shining beetle is creeping on my boot as familiarly as it would on the sabot of a base-born laborer. If my divine right were written upon my brow, would not the insects acknowledge my sovereignty, as in Eden they its golden wings and leave me without a sign—Happy beetle! Would that I too had wings, that I might flee away and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and clear the great warm fires Stare from the blue; so shows the cottage light To the field laborer whose heart desires The old folk by the nook, the welcome bright From the housewife long parted from at dawn— So the star villages in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Colbert. The Flemish peasant is somewhat a man of nature, and his companion for life is not alone a wife, but a female laborer also; for while he is smoking his pipe, the woman works: it is she who draws the water from the well; she who loads the mule or the ass, and even bears herself a portion of the burden. Taking but little care of herself, she gets knocked about first ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... quit the service?" resumed the First Consul, who appeared to take great interest in the conversation.—"My faith, General, each one in his turn, and there are saber strokes enough for every one. One fell on me there " (the worthy laborer bent his head and divided the locks of his hair); "and after some weeks in the field hospital, they gave me a discharge to return to ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... South Carolina and Mississippi in this horrible legislation. In that State all agricultural laborers were compelled to make labor contracts during the first ten days of January for the next year. The contract was made, the laborer was not to be allowed to leave his place of employment during the year except upon conditions not likely to happen and easily prevented. The master was allowed to make deductions from the servants' wages for injuries ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... [321] An old thick-set peasant, in rags, is driving his plough in the midst of a field. All around spreads a wild landscape, dotted with a few poor huts. The sun is setting behind a hill; the day of toil is nearly over. It has been a hard one; the ground is rugged and stony, the laborer's horses are but skin and bone, weak and exhausted. There is but one alert figure, the skeleton Death, who with a whip skips nimbly along at the horses' side and urges the team. Under the picture is a quotation in old French, to the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... The use of intoxicating liquors is the source of nine-tenths of all the dark and terrible crimes that disgrace humanity. It whets the assassin's dagger, and pours poison into the cup of the suicide. It beggars the laborer, breaks the heart of the anguished wife, and starves the helpless children. It fills jails and penitentiaries with victims, and hospitals and asylums with the injured and hopelessly wrecked. It ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... arm; he looked like a laborer. He grabbed him and seemed to be struggling with him. The laborer got hold of Schrank first; I think the captain was up as soon as ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... whatsoever house ye shall enter, first say, Peace be to this house. 6 And if a son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon him: but if not, it shall turn to you again. 7 And in that same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the laborer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house. 8 And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: 9 and heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. 10 But into ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... industrial centers, where hitherto the employer has not wanted him and the white workman has regarded him as a dangerous intruder. In Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and many other cities large numbers of Negroes are found in factories and workshops where until lately the Negro laborer was never admitted even as a visitor. This is especially true of the iron and steel works and the factories, while many thousands have been absorbed by the railroads and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... French verse, written under one of Holbein's pictures, is profoundly melancholy. The engraving represents a laborer driving his plow through the middle of a field. Beyond him stretches a vast horizon, dotted with wretched huts; the sun is sinking behind the hill. It is the end of a hard day's work. The peasant is old, bent, and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... disparage and condemn. Like sailors who love their ship, and grumble at grub and grog, yet on shore will allow no word of disparagement to be said, so did these Athenians love their city, and still condemn its rulers—they exercised the laborer's right to damn the man who gives ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... couldn't get it. The trick made him mad and he bit the stork's head off. Why should the brain worker invite the manual worker to a confab and then serve the feast in such long-necked language that the laborer can't get it? "Let's spill the beans," the agitator tells him, "then we'll all get some of ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... the second laborer to Barron, when his companion had turned aside to get some steel wedges and a sledge-hammer. "Er's well-knawn in these paarts—a reg'lar cure. Er used tu work up Drift ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... left to die. At length Captain Hedden noticed him, and lifting up the corpse, laid it down on the sidewalk. It was found, to the surprise of all, to be that of a young man of delicate features and white, fair skin. "Although dressed as a laborer, in dirty overalls and filthy shirt, underneath these were fine cassimere pants, handsome, rich vest, and fine linen shirt." [Footnote: D.M. Barnes.] He was evidently a man in position far above the rough villains he led on, but had disguised himself so, as not to be known. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... daughter, Fannie McCollough, fifty-seven years old, and a son, Joe Raines, aged 76 years. They rent a two-room frame house, on lands of Mrs. Sallie Wylie, Chester County, S.C. Joe, the son, is a day laborer on nearby farms. Fannie cooks for Mrs. W.T. Raines. Old Mother Mary has been receiving a county pension of $5.00 per month for ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... age 14-2; mental age 9; I Q approximately 65. Father a laborer. Does unsatisfactory work in fourth grade. Plays with little girls. A menace to the morals of the school because of her sex interests and lack of self-restraint. Rather good-looking if one does not hunt for appearances of intelligence. Mental reactions intolerably slow. Will develop ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... stopped, and then the glad holidays of Christmas approached, and when the happy Yule-tide was just a week away, Foreman McDonald procured for each laborer a return pass to St. Paul. We went and made our Christmas purchases and returned after an absence of three days, each of us staggering under the weight of a heavily-laden sack which we carried slung over our backs, from the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... that a fort be built at the charge of the proprietors of the said township of Number Four; that John Hastings, John Spafford, and John Avery be a committee to direct the building; that each carpenter be allowed nine shillings, old tenor, a day, each laborer seven shillings, and each pair of oxen three shillings and sixpence; that the proprietors of the township be taxed in the sum of three hundred pounds, old tenor, for building the fort; that John Spafford, Phineas Stevens, and John Hastings be assessors to assess the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... the academy suggests the possibility of an answer unfavorable to civilization, but Rousseau's treatment of it was such as to form the beginning of an epoch in the history of thought. It is under the rough coat of the laborer, he says, and not under the tinsel of the courtier, that strength and vigor of body will be found. Before art had shaped our manners, they were rustic but natural, and men's actions freely expressed their feelings. Human nature was ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... emigrants who landed in New-York about the close of the French Revolution, was a rude German, from Baden Baden, whose life in the New World was commenced as a laborer. He afterward became a peddler of fancy goods, and eventually a dealer in peltries. In 1791 there appeared at Number 40 Little Dock street, the unpretending name of John Jacob Astor, and here the foundation of his estate was laid. Astor soon took fair rank ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the laborer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... know as to God," answered Moser quietly, "but the engineers certainly made a mistake in forgetting them when they made the roads. The horse is the laborer's best friend, monsieur—without disrespect to the oxen, which have ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... been in the carcer for dueling, he would have emerged a hero. But debt meant that he had neither money nor friends. When he was given his release, as an economic move, he slipped away between two days and made his way to the Forestry Office, where he applied for a job as laborer. He got it. In a few days he was promoted to chief ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... hold more firmly together when the law cements them, so are stones also, whose forms may already fit together, united far better by these binding forces. It is not seemly to be idle among the working, and here you will not refuse to be our fellow-laborer;" with these words he reached the trowel to Charlotte, who threw mortar with it under the stone—several of the others were then desired to do the same, and then it was at once let fall. Upon which the hammer was placed next in Charlotte's, and then in the others' hands, to strike ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... four-fold: (1) Finding what men are fitted for. (2) Finding what kinds of abilities are demanded by the various trades and occupations. (3) Helping the worker to understand the psychological aspects of his work. (4) Getting the best work out of the laborer. ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... Honor and a handsome pension besides, for every man who wore epaulettes on the other side of the river owed his life to you on the 1st of October 1812. But I am not the Minister of War, my friend," the commandant added as he dismounted, and with a sudden rush of feeling he grasped the laborer's hand. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... falls for twelve or fourteen months. On the whole, Puerto Rico is one of the healthiest islands in the West Indies, nor is it infested to the same extent as other islands by poisonous snakes and other noxious reptiles. The laborer may sleep in peace and security in the midst of the forest, by the side of the river, or in the meadow with his cattle with no other fear than that of an occasional centipede or ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... case. That which may, in one setting, constitute a denial of fundamental fairness, shocking to the universal sense of justice, may, in other circumstances, and in the light of other considerations, fall short of such denial."[825] Accordingly, an indigent farm laborer was deemed not to have been denied due process of law when he was convicted of robbery by a Maryland county court, sitting without a jury, which was not required by statute[826] to honor his request for counsel and whose "practice," ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... bad summary of the palpable injustice and fraud of slavery, giving—as it does—to the lazy and idle, the comforts which God designed should be given solely to the honest laborer. But ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the hall. From somewhere came the faint animal-like wail of a newly born babe. The Spider had gripped the arm of his chair. A well-gowned woman stopped at the information desk and left a great armful of gorgeous roses wrapped in white tissue paper. Presently a man—evidently a laborer—hobbled past on crutches, his foot bandaged; a huge, grotesque white foot that he held stiffly in front of him and which he seemed to be following, rather than guiding. A nurse walked slowly beside him. The Spider drummed ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... sews at fifteen sous a day, for the daughter of a petty shopkeeper, for the young bourgoise, for the child of a rich merchant, for the heiress of a noble family, for a daughter of the house of Este. A king must not stoop to pick up a piece of gold, but a laborer ought to retrace his steps to find ten sous; though both are equally bound to obey the laws of economy. A daughter of Este, who is worth six millions, has the right to wear a broad-brimmed hat and plume, to flourish her whip, press the flanks of her barb, and ride like an ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... fellowmen. And as to inventions: surely no man delights more in the splendid achievements of our age in this direction than I do. But I declare to you that I believe labor-saving machinery to be a mighty curse to mankind, because the laborer is being driven closer and closer to the wall by the innumerable inventions that are driving him out of every field of labor. The great money kings are taking advantage of every such invention, and what the end ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... which our class—the rich and cultivated people of the world—have been struggling to achieve for generations!" Cornelia reminded her. "Do you mean you would like to be a laborer's mother, mater, with all sorts of annoying economies to practice, and all sorts ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... was question of cultivating the desert soil, and seeking for life under the rubbish, Zunz was the first to present himself as a laborer. The only fruit of the Society for Jewish Culture and Science, during the three years of its existence, was the "Journal for the Science of Judaism," and its publication was due exclusively to Zunz's perseverance. Though only three numbers ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... negro to bear these burdens? A defender of the planters gravely asserts "that the negro demands a price for his labor which would be exorbitant in any part of the world." What is that exorbitant price? An able-bodied agricultural laborer in Jamaica receives from eighteen to thirty cents a day; and, if he is both fortunate and industrious, may net for a year's work the fabulous sum of from fifty to eighty dollars. And this in a country which is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... about him, as if expecting to recognize someone; and as they made their way to Dougal's counter, a big fellow dressed in the manner of a dock laborer stepped up to the Chief Inspector and clapped him on ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... such passion for forbidden food? "How dar'st thou, mortal man! in flesh indulge? "O! I conjure you, do it not; my words "Deep in your minds revolve, when to your mouth "The mangled members of the ox you raise, "Know, and reflect, your laborer you devour. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... it most profoundly! That deep knowledge and that deep feeling is the chrism oil that has anointed you a messenger and a laborer in the cause of humanity. 'Called and chosen,' be thou also faithful. There are many inspired, many ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to an Englishman, that I did not see here in London as at home, the artizan, the drayman, the laborer of every kind, with a newspaper in his pocket, which at intervals in his toil he could glance at and be as learned in the condition of his country and the world as the man of fortune, he replied—"No, they have something better to do, they attend to their work." Here lies the rub, ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... scarcity of employment. But statesmen of both parties were agreed in believing that a great deal of the poverty which, especially in the agricultural counties, had become the normal condition of the laborer, might be ascribed to the pernicious working of the Poor-law, which subsisted with scarcely any alteration as it had been originally enacted in the reign of Elizabeth. There was even reason to doubt whether the slight changes which had been made had been improvements. ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... peaceful and somnolent while the boats were out; but the word that the fleet was coming in had roused every laborer, every petty dealer, speculator, and harpy to nervous activity. Everybody goes to the sea-front to witness the beaching of the boats and to watch the unloading. An hour probably elapses between the coming of the leader of the fleet and the arrival of the slowest boat. During ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... calculation of twenty ounces to each plant, the thousand plants must produce twelve hundred and fifty pounds, which, at the ordinary price of 31s. 6d. per cwt., would produce about L17 10s. per annum for each laborer. The expenses of the plantation, including those of utensils, machines, and buildings, are also less considerable for cacao than for any other produce. The delay of the first crop, and the accidents peculiar to cacao, can alone diminish the number of planters attached ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... thrift and profit, Grieve above the desolation, Deep bewail the fruits so bitter. Furrows in the soil may ripen, With a renovated harvest; Furrows in the heart are open, With a ceaseless, arid planting. Wind and rain and shower and sunshine, Soon give back the laborer's treasure; None of nature's sweet restorers, Bring alas! the mourner's idols. From the North were foreign legions, Swarming on to bayonet charges; From the South the fostered nurselings Of the native born ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... heard of winter upon our shores? When was it so cold that the laborer could not go to his field. Where amongst us shall we find the numberless drawbacks which in less favored countries the working classes have to contend with? They have no place in our beautiful group, which rests on the swelling ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... loses his usury, and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation; the proud man surrenders his dignity, the politician his honors, the worldling his pleasures. Here the invalid needs no physician, and the laborer rests from unrequited toil. Here at last is Nature's final decree of equity. The wrongs of time are redressed, and injustice is expiated. The unequal distribution of wealth and honor, capacity, pleasure, and opportunity, which makes ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... family consisted of my parents and an older brother. My mother was Mandy Clark of Union township. My grandfather Clark moved to the Jeter mill and ran it for Mr. Jeter. My father, Tom Clark, was a laborer for the Jeters and old man Tom Sims up on Broad River at what was then known as Simstown. The Tom Sims and Nat Gist families owned everything in Santuc township until their lands hit the ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... across the brown loam the laborer doggedly finished out his task; scattered the few last seeds into a corner, and stood still. Thrushes and blackbirds were just beginning that even-song whose blitheness, as nothing else on earth, seems to promise youth forever to the land. He picked up his coat, slung it on, and, heaving a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... neglected his Church on week-days. The priest and the Church were with him at work and at play, the spirit and the life of every community. Though paid a meager stipend, the cure worked hard and always proved a laborer far more than worthy of his hire. The clergy of New France never became a caste, a privileged order; they did not live on the fruits of other men's labor, but gave to the colony far more than the colony ever gave ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... wife waiting at the door, a boy on either side. Alas, it was only thus he was ever to see them this side heaven. He was bought by a man named Nicholas Spenser, who owned a plantation on the Potomac in Westmoreland County, and there he worked, first as laborer and then as overseer, for nigh upon ten years. His master treated him with great kindness, and at the Restoration, having made tenfold his purchase money by him, gave him ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... imagine that the gratification of appetite is the great source of enjoyment, they will find this in the highest degree with industry and temperance. The epicure, who seeks it in a dinner which costs five dollars, will find less enjoyment of appetite than the laborer who dines on a shilling. If the devotee to appetite desires its high gratification, he must not send for buffalo tongues and champagne, but climb a mountain or swing an axe. Let a young man pursue temperance, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... furrows; the cheeks were deeply lined; and the broad shoulders—they were bent. Formerly he stood before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands—the hands of the day-laborer. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... wages, and were almost as miserable and hungry as the wanderers themselves. No one gave them anything, and they lived for three days with only two penny loaves to eat (for all their money was now gone), and slept at night in the ashes of some poor laborer's hut. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... deviations from the teachings of Luther and from his own former position must be regarded as the last cause of both the Leipzig Interim and the lamentable controversies that followed in its wake. Indeed, a tragic sight to behold: The co-laborer of Luther, the servant of the Reformation second only to Luther, the Praeceptor Germaniae, the ardent and anxious lover of peace, etc.—untrue to his confiding friend, disloyal to the cause of the Reformation, and the chief cause of strife ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... also regulates medical fees, requires gratuitous attendance on the poor for the privilege of practice accorded by the license, though the general fees are of a thoroughly professional character and represent for each visit of the physician about the amount of daily wage that the ordinary laborer of that time earned. Curiously enough, this same ratio of emolument has maintained itself. This law was also a pure drug law, regulating the practice of pharmacy, and the price as well as the purity of drugs, and the relations of physicians, druggists, and the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... to the cropping of ears, there are other folk who may say their say," quoth the third laborer. "We are all freemen, and I trow that a yeoman's cudgel is as good as a forester's knife. By St. Anselm! it would be an evil day if we had to bend to our master's servants as well as to ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... butcher's meat was for years a stranger in the house, and they labored, children and all, from morning to night. Robert, at the age of thirteen, assisted in threshing the crop of corn, and at fifteen he was the principal laborer on the farm, for they could not afford a hired hand. That he was constantly afflicted with a dull headache in the evenings was not to be wondered at; nor that the sight and thought of his gray-haired father, who was turned ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... farming, and late in life he said, "I think with you, that the life of a husbandman of all others is the most delectable. It is honorable, it is amusing, and, with judicious management, it is profitable. To see plants rise from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy to be conceived than expressed." "Agriculture has ever been the most favorite amusement of my life," he wrote after the Revolution, and he informed another correspondent that "the more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... and its limitations accidental. Just in proportion as the spirit of individualism penetrated society, and began to show itself as the Renaissance, architecture declined. The Egyptian pyramids are marvels to us, because we are accustomed to look upon the laborer as a man. But once allow that he is only so much brute force,—cheap, readily available, and to be had in endless supply, but as a moral entity less to be respected than a cat or a heron, and the marvel ceases. Should not the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... now riding in the cove, having been manicured and primped up in the dry-dock at St. John's. Daddy says that it was an economy, for the dock laborer of that fortunate city does not yet regard himself as an independent magnate. Our schooner and its auxiliary engine are, of course, objects of admiration to the natives. They know a boat when they see one. Stefansson ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... gentle hill-slope now green with springing corn, and beautiful in the promise of future abundance, I feel a perfect and grateful trust—far, far too deep for my weak powers of utterance—that He will never forsake the humble laborer in this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as sore as the back of the laborer who carries burdens beyond his strength. But the laborer stooping to his work earns his daily ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... came to the suburbs and there was a small wooden cottage. The owner, a common laborer, was repairing it as well as he could. Robinson asked him very timidly if he could spare a couple of square feet off a board he was sawing. "What for?" Robinson showed his paintpot and brushes, and told him how he was at ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... to the laborer or the hand-loom weaver. They have no money, they have nothing to sell to make money, and they are utterly unwilling to be torn from the places where they were born to be expatriated as beggars, and as beggars set down upon a foreign shore. I am literally giving utterance to the ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... money belonged to Abner. He had missed it several weeks before, and ever since that had been suspecting old Daniel McQuilken, a day laborer, of ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... remain to carry on the war. This was a great grief to him. He was a very poor man, with nothing of his own but a little farm of seven acres, and the person whom he had employed to cultivate it had died in his absence; a hired laborer had undertaken the care of it, but had been unfaithful, and had run away with his tools and his cattle, so that he was afraid that, unless he could return quickly, his wife and children would starve. However, the Senate ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... "see what it was like" (with the Abbe Gaudron's permission, be it understood), Monsieur Baudoyer took her—for the glory of the thing, and to show her the finest that was to be seen—to the Opera, where they were playing "The Chinese Laborer." Elisabeth thought "the comedy" as wearisome as the plague of flies, and never wished to see another. On Sundays, after walking four times to and fro between the place Royale and Saint-Paul's church (for her mother made her practise the precepts and the duties of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... carry not one ounce of superfluous fat on my person. I am perfectly equipped for the hardest kind of physical work and in a busy western town there is sure to be work enough of that kind for a strong and willing man to do. I can at the very least earn enough as a laborer to feed me better than I've been fed for the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... laborer bow his free, independent, and honored brow to the level of the negro just set free from slavery, and, by yielding the entrance to this great citadel of our nation, surrender the mastery of his race over the Representatives of the people, the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... telescope, record a transit, and perform the other technical operations necessary in an astronomical observation. A third grade was that of computers: ingenious youth, quick at figures, ready to work for a compensation which an American laborer would despise, yet well enough schooled to make simple calculations. Under the new system they needed to understand only the four rules of arithmetic; indeed, so far as possible Airy arranged his calculations in such a way ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... have bought so often and with such bloodless depravity. But these faculties have been miserably misused. He may have loved some woman, and married her, and begotten children by her; domestic affection may have warmed his being, just as it does that of many a day-laborer. But in the arid air of Wall Street all his intellectual and ethical possibilities will have wilted and died. Lust for greater riches and a mordant, ever-smouldering disappointment at not having attained ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... five o'clock this morning, on East Thirty-ninth Street, a laborer named Pete Lascalle, while on his way to work, was stabbed to the heart by an unknown assailant, who escaped by running. The police have been unable to discover any ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... being a new man, he did not know her, and must conclude that she was not very high in the world. The vehicle—a dirty old barouche—was within sight, and was being slowly prepared by an elderly laborer. Contemptible details these, to make part of a history; yet the turn of most lives is hardly to be accounted for without them. They are continually entering with cumulative force into a mood until it gets the mass and momentum of a theory or a motive. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... or where situated, so that when I became acquainted with their system of government I was not surprised at the spirited character and noble bearing of the people, in striking contrast to the cringing servility of the ignorant laborer in England and the negroes of the United States of America, for in Eurasia there were no kings, dukes or lords, but every man was addressed as "Mister" and every female as "Madame" or "Miss," and there ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... eat, smoke, chew, nor wear that grew or was made in those hills that did not pour toward her. Land was given her, even money was contributed for rebuilding, and when money was not possible, this man and that gave his axe, his horse, his wagon, and his services as a laborer for thirty and sixty days. So that those axes gleaming in the sun on the hillside, those straining muscles, and those sweating brows meant a labor of love going on for her. No wonder the peace ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... [gh]iff y the teche, wiltow any thyng{e} ler{e}? [Fol. 171b.] wiltow be a s{er}uaunde, plow[gh]ma, or a laborer{e}, Courtyour or a clark / Marchaund / or masou{n}, or an artificer{e}, Chamburlayn, or buttiller{e} / ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... men who possess only three of the above qualities can be hired at any time for laborer's wages. Add four of these qualities together, and you get a higher priced man. The man combining five of these qualities begins to be hard to find, and those with 6, 7 and 8 are almost impossible ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... two interestingly contrasted cases of copperhead bite. The first patient was a powerful, full-blooded, temperate, Irish day-laborer who, while road-mending, was bitten on the back of the hand between two fingers. His fellows hustled him off to a room over a neighboring saloon, where they proceeded to administer the classic treatment. Before the doctor arrived they had introduced a quart and a half ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers, or what we call Slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... his harvesting. And also he knew that the extra force of harvest-hands would not appear. He was regarded with curiosity by the women members of the Neuman household, and rather enjoyed it. There were several comely girls in evidence. Jake did not look a typical Northwest foreman and laborer. Booted and spurred, with his gun swinging visibly, and his big sombrero and gaudy scarf, he looked exactly what he was, a ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... which must of necessity mean the chief meal—a Roman word which represents a fancy meal, a meal of caprice, a meal which few people took. At this moment, what is the single point of agreement between the noon meal of the English laborer and the evening meal of the English gentleman? What is the single circumstance common to both, which causes us to denominate them by the common name of dinner? It is that in both we recognize the principal meal of the day, the meal upon which is thrown ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... being pressed, reluctantly acknowledged that his patient showed all the signs of the dread disease. This hastened the general preparations for departure, and when the incoming steamer hove in sight every laborer was at the dock with his kit-bag. It excited some idle comment among them to note that Dr. Gray had gone down the bay a short distance to meet the ship, and his efforts to speak it were watched with interest ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... will be noon, and we can get out of this into the shade for an hour," said Joe Swan, a huge muscular laborer, as he pushed the nose of the steel scraper into ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... so? The servant that works in your household; the man that sat beside you in the train; the laborer that wrought for you, and, above all, the members of your household and family, your fellow-laborer in the shop or factory, have you done your best ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... handkerchief and muttered: 'THAT witness will never come up to trouble me.' There was something in the man's voice that sounded familiar, and the strange whiteness of his hands aroused my suspicions, for in dress and appearance the man was a laborer of the lower class. Curiosity, if nothing stronger, prompted me to take possession of the severed wart that had rolled at my feet. Soon after that I read the notice in a newspaper, to the effect that the assassin of the express train had left the imprint of a wart ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... Yorkshire, and nowhere had he more sincere or devoted followers, many of whom were among the first emigrants to Nova Scotia. To the England of the eighteenth century America must have presented great attraction, especially to the tenant-farmer and the day-laborer. The farmer in that country could never hope to own his farm, and the wages of the agricultural laborer were so small that it was only by the strictest economy and the best of health that he could hope to escape the workhouse in his old age. In America land could be had for the asking. The continent ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... hundred acres on each share of stock and a similar amount to each colonist of the time, to be followed in either case by the grant of a second hundred acres upon proof that the first had been improved; and fifty acres additional in reward for the future importation of every laborer. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... dainty—all that money could make of her human person. Adelle was not given to prolonged reflection of any sort, but probably she could not help comparing her own dainty, cool, exquisitely clean person with this sweaty, sun-burned, coarse laborer in his black cotton shirt, frayed khaki trousers, and shoes that the lime had burned all color from. She must have felt a complacent sense of physical superiority to the man who was working for her, and perhaps congratulated herself that her ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... parish of a north riding in the county of York, October 27, 1728, James Cook was the son of a day-laborer in an age when manual toil was paid at the rate of a few pennies a day. There were nine of a family. The home was a thatch-roofed mud cottage. Two years after Cook's birth, the father was appointed bailiff, which slightly improved family finances; but James was thirteen years of age ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Grenoble, who was attended by Dr. Benassis. His passion was singing, for which he had a very pure voice. Lived with his mother who was poverty-stricken. Died in the latter part of 1829 at the age of fifteen, shortly after the death of his benefactor, the physician. A nephew of Moreau, the old laborer. [The Country Doctor.] ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... of the "hands" at the "threshings," during the half hour of rest after eating, for the studied smartness of the salon or even the conversation of the learned? But think not to get this by going out to them and saying, "Talk up now." The farm-hand, the railroad laborer, the working man of every kind, does not wear his heart ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Oxford man and an omnivorous reader. He began by working in the diamond-mines at Kimberley as a common laborer; he ended by becoming manager of the Chartered Company, and amassing a vast ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... answered. They all agreed to answer "Guilty." The only one that dissented was an old laborer, whose answer to all questions ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... months, and not even his business associates knew where he was. On one such occasion a traveler discovered him in a monastic retreat in the Swiss Mountains, wearing a horsehair robe and a rope girdle; others saw him disguised as a mendicant; and still another tells of finding him working as a day-laborer with obscure and ignorant peasants. Then there are tales told of how he was taken captive by a titled lady of great wealth and beauty, who carried him away to her bower, where he eschewed the violin and tinkled only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... hour when he went up to bed, none of the inmates of the house ever saw Griffith Gaunt alive; but one Thomas Hayes, a laborer, saw him walking in a certain direction at one o'clock that morning; and behind him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... you; but those fellers from Alford who come over here don't have to work, and as for Guy Lawson, the boss's son, he's a fool! He couldn't earn his bread and butter to save his life, except on the road digging like a common laborer. Playing golf! Playing! H'm!" Then was the ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... prove recreant to the best feelings of my heart, turn ingrate to the pleasantest associations of memory, and forget the most efficient causes which have favored my journey thus far to mellow years, were I unmindful of the gratifications I enjoyed while a fellow laborer in your noble pursuits. The press is the representative of the intellectual man on earth; it is the expositor of his cogitative powers; the promulgator of his most recondite labors; the strong arm of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... peddler I seemed to have belonged to the world of business, to the same class as the rich, the refined, while now, behold! I was a workman, a laborer, one of the masses. I pitied myself for a degraded wretch. And when some of my shopmates indulged in coarse pleasantry in the hearing of the finisher girls it would hurt me personally, as a confirmation of my disgrace. "And this is the kind of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... for dismissal? Are they going to threaten to devastate rural England while feeding themselves and dressing themselves? Are they going to reduce their gamekeepers? That would be sad. The agricultural laborer and the farmer might then have some part of the game which they fatten with their labor. But what would happen to you in the season? No weekend shooting with the Duke of Norfolk for any of us. But that is not the kind of labor they are going to cut down. They are going ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... a comfortable English or American farmer would represent wicked waste and shameful indulgence to a much richer French peasant. I, myself, know a laborer on wages of less than twenty shillings a week, who by thrift has bought ten acres of the magnificent garden land between Fontainebleau and the Seine, worth many thousand pounds, on which grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables, and the famous dessert grapes; yet who, with ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various
... and humble, but it's home, and I set by it," answered Job, who was busily engaged in tapping a shoe belonging to Eliphalet Nourza, a farm-laborer. ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... significant fact that the Puritans with their austere views about observance of the Sabbath not only decreased the number of holidays for workingmen, but interfered with innocent recreation on the remaining day of rest. One aspect of the resulting monotonous life of the laborer was, according to Cunningham, the remarkable increase of drunkenness at this period.] So hard was the lot of the extreme Protestants in England that thousands fled the country and established themselves in America. [Footnote: In the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes |
