"Labourer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... goes for nothing. I am one of his household. You are an out-of-doors labourer. You are a nobody. You carry a pickaxe. I carry the keys ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... boldly and often declared to be things incredible. We are not promoting the objects which the social union subsists to fulfil, nor applying with energetic spirit to the task of preparing a sounder state for our successors. The relations between master and servant, between capitalist and labourer, between landlord and tenant, between governing race and subject race, between the feelings and intelligence of the legislature and the feelings and intelligence of the nation, between the spiritual power, literary and ecclesiastical, and those who are under it—the anarchy that ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... the young person you would honour with your hand for the slightest inkling of economy or tidiness. Young men are so full of poetry and emotion that it does not occur to them how widely the sordid vices are distributed in the other sex. If you are a hotel proprietor, or a school proprietor, or a day labourer, such weaknesses become a strength, of course, but not otherwise. For a literary person—if perchance you are a literary person—it is altogether too dreadful. You are always getting swept and garnished, straightened up and sent out to be shaved. And home—even ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... idle habits and licentious pursuits. When liberty casts her benignant smiles on this beautiful island, I trust that the employer and the laborer will endeavour to live on terms of friendship and good will with one another.—When the labourer receives a proper remuneration for his services—when the employer contemplates the luxuriance of his well-cultivated fields, may they both return thanks to a merciful God, for permitting the sun of liberty to shine with bright ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... poverty makes Laertes launch into unnecessary equipage, vain expence, and lavish entertainments; fear of poverty makes Irus allow himself only plain necessaries, appear without a servant, sell his own corn, attend his labourers, and be himself a labourer. Shame of poverty makes Laertes go every day a step nearer to it; and fear of poverty stirs up Irus to make every day some further ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... for this tale the peculiarity of its having been the first essay of its author, Alexander Bethune, the self-educated "Fifeshire labourer." This excellent and ingenious man became subsequently well known by his volume of "Tales and Sketches of the Scottish Peasantry," published by Mr. Adam Black, and designated at the time a literary phenomenon. It was truly said of him by the Spectator: "Alexander Bethune, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... resting, filled with an exalted joy, his mind wandered to the longings of the day before, the little adobe home of his co-labourer which he had left, its homeyness and joy; his own loneliness and longing for companionship. Then he looked shyly towards the tree shade where the glint of golden hair and the dark line of his blanket were all he could see of the girl he had found in the wilderness. What if ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... their heads to be ill or to die. A man tolerably well off can at least get his wife some help when she is laid up, and when she is near her end can remain with her to take her last kiss and blessing. Not so the bricklayer's labourer. If his wife is in bed, he must depend upon charity for medicine and attendance. And although he knows he will never see her again, he is forced away to the job on which he is employed; for if he does not go he will lose it, and must apply to the parish ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... almost impossible things. It is these two spirits that are fighting for the possession and control of our machine civilization. I watch the machines and the men beside them and see which side they are on. The labourer who is doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist who is giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the one side (the vast, lazy, mean majority of employers and employees), and there may be seen standing ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the channels of the country, enriching the farmers with prices that frequently rose as high as two dollars and a half the bushel, and sometimes as high as three. Yet no one was so poor in America as to want bread! The dearer the grain, the higher the wages of the labourer, and ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... and your like have left little room in this world except for the dusty roads on which I notice you beginning once more to travel. The rule of them is the same for all, is it not ... from the tramp and the labourer to the plutocrat in his car? This is the age of equality; and it's a fine practical equality ... the equality of the road. But you've fenced the fields of human joy and turned the very hillsides into hoardings, Commercial opportunity is painted on ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... constructions, the abbats voluntarily accepted the rle of labourers. During the building of the Abbey of Bee, in 1033, the founder and first abbat, grand-seigneur though he was, worked as a common mason's labourer, carrying on his back the lime, sand, and stones necessary for the builder. This was Herluin. Another Norman noble, Hugh, Abbat of Selby in Yorkshire, when, in 1096, he rebuilt in stone the whole of that important monastery, ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... sweated woman labourer would, of course, be to have the best intellect brought to bear, not specially upon the problem of indigent woman, but upon the whole ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... care until the next morning. It is perfectly possible to do that if one is so constituted as to be willing through all of his life to accept direction, to be an employee, possibly a responsible employee, but not a director or manager of anything. A manual labourer must have a limit on his hours, otherwise he will wear himself out. If he intends to remain always a manual labourer, then he should forget about his work when the whistle blows, but if he intends to go forward and do anything, the whistle is only a signal ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... footsteps came nearer, stumbling up the dark, narrow staircase; then the door was pushed open and a man entered—a broad-chested, broad-faced rough-looking man with stubbly whiskers, wearing the dress and rusty boots of a labourer. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... labourer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... might have been pointed to with pride; but so obscure was his birth, that it has not been discovered that he was christened at all; while the fact of his new birth by the Holy Ghost is known over the whole world to the vast extent that his writings have been circulated. He entered this world in a labourer's cottage of the humblest class, at the village of Elstow, about a mile from Bedford.[3] His pedigree is thus narrated by himself:—'My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... There the Labourer shall not half-starve on "swankey." and thin pottage, With a prospect of the Workhouse when no longer he can work; But shall have a fragrant pigstye, and a sanitary cottage, And a voice in local business which the big-wigs cannot burke. The rural working-man shall superintend ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... of the Admiral, when they found that they also were obliged to labour with their hands. But Columbus was firm; there were absolutely no exceptions made; hidalgo and priest had to work alongside of sailor and labourer; and the curses of the living mingled with those of the dying on the man whose boastful words had brought them to such a ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... members of the family exerted themselves to the utmost of their strength, and rather beyond it, in the labours of the farm. My brother, at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm; for we had no hired servant, male or female. The anguish of mind we felt at our tender years under these straits and difficulties was very great. To think of our father growing old (for he was now above fifty), broken down with the long-continued fatigues of his life, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... dayly cost] And Forraigne Mart for Implements of warre: Why such impresse of Ship-wrights, whose sore Taske Do's not diuide the Sunday from the weeke, What might be toward, that this sweaty hast[3] Doth make the Night ioynt-Labourer with the day: Who is't that can ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... He never questioned this; he knew right well Who had earned it for him; and he lived grateful and obedient, filling up the duties of his humble station. This was his faith, and his works followed it. He believed that God had placed him in his lot, to be a labourer, and till God's earth, and, when his work is done, to be sent on better service in some happier sphere: the where, or the how, did not puzzle him, any more than divers other enigmatical whys and wherefores of his present state; he only knew this, that it would all come right ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... fields as if he never had or would have a holiday. Unquestionably the peasant and labouring class in France is hard-working at his daily task and at his play, for when he plays he also plays hard. This, the eternal activity of the peasant or labourer, whatever his trade, and the worked-over little farm-holdings, with their varied crops, all planted in little bedquilt patches, are the chief characteristics of the French ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... examination of several labourer and peasant witnesses, I have evidence to the effect that very smallest percentage of this district were pro-Bolshevik, majority of labourers sympathizing with summoning of Constituent Assembly. Witnesses further stated that Bolshevik ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... man," said Taggart, Major of the R.A.M.C., himself a haggard-eyed but tireless labourer in the red fields of pain. "At three o' the smalls ye got to your bed, and at six ye made the rounds, at seven ye were dealing with a select batch o' shell-fire an' rifle-shot casualties—our friends outside being a gey sicht better ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of the inviting public-houses in the main street of Haslemere, but turned up a side way and found a little beer-shop, the Good Hope, wherein to refresh himself. And there he ate and gossipped condescendingly with an aged labourer, assuming the while for his own private enjoyment the attributes of a Lost Heir, and afterwards mounted and rode on towards Northchapel, a place which a number of finger-posts conspired to boom, but which some insidious turning prevented ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... other poems, "Awd Isaac" is strongly didactic and religious; its homely piety and directness of speach have won for it a warm welcome among the North Yorkshire peasantry, and many a farmer and farm-labourer still living knows much of the poem by heart. As "Awd Isaac " is too long for an anthology, I have chosen "The Lucky Dream" as an illustration of Castillo's workmanship. Apart from its narrative interest, this poem calls for attention as a Yorkshire variant ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... sir! Why, it's a difficult matter to muster hands enough even to unload or load a ship, with labourer's wages up to a pound a day; and the men who are willing to work even at that figure are either the few long-headed ones who prefer a moderate certainty to the chance of ill luck at the gold-fields, or such poor delicate chaps as can't stand the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... that the previous heavy rains had loosened the rock, and the warm sunshine having swelled the mass of the earth beneath, had overbalanced it, and thus nearly brought about a catastrophe. But what of the dog's warning? It was strange, that is all the solution I can give. As a Norfolk labourer once said to me when I was pumping him upon the subject ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... the Shakespearean, rich and rare as that was, for it included the results of more than two centuries' patient work, from the days of Sir William Dugdale down to the beginning of the present century. The manuscript collections of Sir Simon Archer, fellow-labourer of Dugdale, the records of the Berkeley, Digby, and Ferrers families, the valued and patient gatherings of Thomas Sharpe, the Coventry antiquarian, of William Hamper, the Birmingham collector, and of William Staunton himself, were all here, forming the most wonderful county collection ever yet ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and women, there is nothing that we require more than to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his, years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul; and yet, here are we, many of us, like the paupers who sometimes turn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the Birkets, I'm talking about the Clintons. Poor dear Mr. Clinton is a yokel, for all his ancestry. If he had been changed at birth and brought up a farm labourer, he wouldn't have had an idea in his head above the average of them; he would only have had a little more pluck. Any Birket's brains are worth six of any Clinton's in the open market. Mrs. Clinton is a clever woman, although she doesn't show it, and her dear, stupid ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... time did not mend matters, and as Christmas approached the house was in a state of siege. "All day long, a labourer heats size over the fire in a great crucible. We eat it, drink it, breathe it, and smell it. Seventy paint-pots (which came in a van) adorn the stage; and thereon may be beheld, Stanny, and three Dansons (from the Surrey Zoological Gardens), all painting at once!! Meanwhile, Telbin, in a secluded ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... lingered, "if you cut down the tree it will be necessary to preserve some seed. For my part, I think that the tree ought to be preserved, so that we may graft new life on it. The political revolution, you know, has already taken place; to-day we have got to think of the labourer, the working man. Our movement must be altogether a social one. I defy you to reject the claims of the people. They are weary of waiting, and are determined to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... were reduced to starvation-point, but supplemented out of the poor-rates, under the miserable system of indiscriminate out-door relief graduated according to the size of families. In either case, the entire income of a labourer was far below the modern standard, and the prosperity of trade meant to him an increase in the cost of all necessaries except bread. As for their employers, the golden age of farming, which is often identified with the age of the great war, had really ceased long before. Not ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... proud to deny this trick that you, Sookdee and Hunsa, and that accursed labourer of another caste, the blacksmith, that shoer of Mahratta horses whom Hunsa has bribed, have put upon him in the name ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... as I have seen him in Manchuria, is capable of destroying the present type of worker of the white races. He will drive him off the face of the earth. The Socialists, who preach equality to the labourer, are far from thinking what would be the practical result of carrying out their theories. Is it, then, the destiny of the white races to disappear in the long run? In my humble opinion this destiny depends upon one single factor: Shall we or shall we not have the good sense to close our ears to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... a bag, and came with him to the station in order to drive the car back to the Dower House; for the gardener's boy who had hitherto attended to these small duties had now gone off as an unskilled labourer to some munition works at Chelmsford. Mr. Britling sat in the slow train that carried him across country to the junction for Filmington, and failed altogether to realise what had happened to the old ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... solemn, the mournful with the pathetic, the amiable with the gay, and all with an ease and unaffected force and freedom known only to the genius of Shakspeare. In "The Twa Dogs" he seeks to reconcile the labourer to his lot, and intimates, by examples drawn from the hall as well as the cottage, that happiness resides in the humblest abodes, and is even partial to the clouted shoe. In "Scotch Drink" he excites man to love his country, by precepts both heroic and social; and proves ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... painfully clear; either it is not a proof of infamy to throw a knife about in a lonely wood, or else it is a proof of innocence to know a rich man. Suppose a very poor person, poorer even than a journalist, a navvy or unskilled labourer, tramping in search of work, often changing his lodgings, often, perhaps, failing in his rent. Suppose he had been intoxicated with the green gaiety of the ancient wood. Suppose he had thrown knives at trees and could give no description ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... sisters she sent frequent presents and sums of money. More she could not well do during her husband's lifetime, but when she in turn came to the throne, she brought the whole family—postillion, shoemaker, farm-labourer and serf, their wives and families—to her capital, installed them in sumptuous apartments in her palaces, decked them in the finest Court feathers, and gave them large fortunes ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... substitution of character for beauty is the essential feature of the movement. What is called Impressionism is—let it not be forgotten—a technique which can be applied to any subject. Whether the subject be a virgin, or a labourer, it can be painted with divided tones, and certain living artists, like the symbolist Henri Martin, who has almost the ideas of a Pre-Raphaelite, have proved it by employing this technique for the rendering of religious or ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... bearing on the following event, which was narrated to me by Lord Shaftesbury in 1882. One winter evening in 1867 he was sitting in his library in Grosvenor Square, when the servant told him that there was a poor man waiting to see him. The man was shown in, and proved to be a labourer from Clerkenwell, and one of the innumerable recipients of the old Earl's charity. He said, "My Lord, you have been very good to me, and I have come to tell you what I have heard." It appeared that at the public-house which he frequented he had overheard some Irishmen of desperate character ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... foot, about three inches deep, and lie nearly from north-east to south-west. We counted only seventy-six; but we were not exact in counting. The place where one or both the brothers are supposed to have fallen is still bare of grass. The labourer also showed us where (the tradition is) the wretched woman sat to see the combat." Southey adds his full confidence in the tradition of the indestructibility of the steps, even after ploughing ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... better off in pocket than in Nova Scotia; while the devil a bone in my body that didn't ache with pain, and as for my nose, it took to bleeding, and bled day and night entirely. Upon my soul, Mr. Slick,' said he, 'the poor labourer does not last long in your country; what with new rum, hard labour, and hot weather, you'll see the graves of the Irish each side of the canal, for all the world like two rows of potatoes in a field that have ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the people were kept as much apart as if they were not only separate nations, but separate species. There were thousands, he says, who had never talked to a Roman Catholic in their whole lives, unless they happened to talk to a gardener's workman or some other labourer of the second or third order; while a little time before this they were so averse to have them near their persons, that they would not employ even those who could never find their way beyond the stables. Chesterfield, a thoroughly impartial and just observer, said in ...
— Burke • John Morley
... one mass united mix, So bricks attraction feel for kindred bricks; Some in the cellar view, perchance, on high, Fair chimney chums on beds of mortar lie; Enamour'd of the sympathetic clod, Leaps the red bridegroom to the labourer's hod: And up the ladder bears the workman, taught To think he bears the bricks—mistaken thought! A proof behold! if near the top they find The nymphs or broken-corner'd or unkind, Back to the base, "resulting with a ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... "this it is to be leagued with one who knows not even so much of Scripture, as that the labourer is worthy of his hire. I must, as usual, take all the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the king, by way of forced labour.[FN169] When the overseers saw him, they laid hold of him and said to him, "Work thou with these folk at the palace of the king; else we will imprison thee for life." So he fell to working with them as a labourer and every day they gave him a bannock of bread. He wrought with them a month's space, till it chanced that one of the labourers mounted a ladder and falling, brake his leg; whereupon he cried out and shed tears. Quoth Ab Sbir to him, "Have patience and weep not; for in thine ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... imagine this head as bare (see St. Paul much on this) and covered, so to say, only with the sun and stars, of which the crown is a symbol, which is an ornament but not a covering; it has an enormous hat or skullcap, the vault of heaven. The foot is the day- labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the great scale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel, blast, and in other ways disfigure, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... could confide, he now disguised himself, and travelled as one of their retinue. He first disclosed himself to the elector of Brandenburgh in Prussia, and afterwards to king William, with whom he conferred in private at Utrecht. He engaged himself as a common labourer with a ship-carpenter in Holland, whom he served for some months with wonderful patience and assiduity. He afterwards visited England, where he amused himself chiefly with the same kind of occupation. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sit and spin, seldom now interrupted by any; though at first her neighbours used to flock thither to celebrate the praises of her son. She had loved her son, as warmly as other mothers love their children; but she had loved him as a hard-working labourer, earning for herself and for him their daily pittance; not as a mighty General, courted and complimented by the rich and great of the land. She had begged him not to go out into the town on the morning when he had been so instrumental in saving his townsmen from the ignominy of being ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... said the labourer addressed, eyeing her up and down as an unexpected apparition. 'He is still alive, they say, but not sensible. He either fell or was pushed over the waterfall; 'tis thoughted he was pushed. He is the gentleman who ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... and more full of poetry. Yeast deals with the country—which Kingsley knew better and loved more than he did the town. It deals with real, permanent, deep social evils, and it paints no fancy portrait of the labourer, the squire, the poacher, or the village parson. Kingsley there speaks of what he knew, and he describes that which he felt with the soul of a poet. The hunting scenes in Yeast, the river vignettes, the village revel, are exquisite ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... from that strange quarter the mighty ocean, from Chancery Lane so distant! "Might as well," said a burly labourer (or, for all I know, burly receiver of unemployment dole)—"might as well be sardines ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... easy for Mr. Lever to show that since Socialism will give no more wealth, and since what he calls Labour, Capital and the Employer (i.e. Labour, Plant and Management) are necessary to production and must be maintained out of the total product, there will be little more, practically, for the Labourer under Socialist conditions than under the existing regime. Going on further to assume that the Owner is always enterprising and intelligent and public-spirited, and the State stupid (which is a quite unjustifiable ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... nor shoes, and salute no man by the way. And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again. And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... said Mamie. "I know a hero. And when I heard of you working all day like a common labourer, with your hands bleeding and your nails broken—and how you told the captain to 'crack on' (I think he said) in the storm, when he was terrified himself—and the danger of that horrid mutiny"—(Nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse)—"and how it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at two young men who were throwing rings on a stick that stood up from the floor: their failure was greeted with a good deal of hearty chaff from the rest of the company. Room was made for the new arrivals. Philip found himself sitting between an old labourer in corduroys, with string tied under his knees, and a shiny-faced lad of seventeen with a love-lock neatly plastered on his red forehead. Athelny insisted on trying his hand at the throwing of rings. He backed himself for half a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... route brought me back to the south edge of the Common, the point most remote from the farm. There I met a labourer whom I knew by sight, a man named Hawke. He was carrying a stick, and prodding with it foolishly among the furze and gorse bushes. The ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... green, and Oh's wife was green and his children were green—in fact, everything there was green. And Oh had water-nixies for serving-maids, and they were all as green as rue. "Sit down now!" said Oh to his new labourer, "and have a bit of something to eat." The nixies then brought him some food, and that also was green, and he ate of it. "And now," said Oh, "take my labourer into the courtyard that he may chop wood and draw water." So they took him into the courtyard, ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... especially inconvenient just now," said Townshead querulously. "It has also been a sore point with me that a son of mine should hire himself out as a labourer. I am sorry I let him go, the more so because the work upon the ranch is getting ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... formed. And I am bound to say, that the social and moral condition of Japan has astonished me quite as much as its material beauty. Every man, from the Emperor (who never leaves his palace) to the humblest labourer, lives under a rigid rule, prescribed by law and custom combined; and the Government, through its numerous agents, among whom are hosts of spies, or more properly inspectors (for there is no secresy ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... workers, and these in their turn drag others down with them. "Unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour, insanitary condition of workplaces"—what does all that mean? It means an industry essentially rotten and unsound. To say that the labourer is worthy of his hire is not only the expression of a natural instinct of justice, but it embodies an economic truth. One does not need to be a Socialist, not, at least, a Socialist in the sense in which the word is ordinarily ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... God! whence comes this fear, that he should shrink from a lonely girl, feeble and timid, simple and mild? It is as if I should see the dog flee before the hare, and the fish chase the beaver, the lamb the wolf, and the dove the eagle. In the same fashion the labourer would forsake his pick with which he strives to earn a livelihood, and the falcon would flee from the duck, and the gerfalcon from the heron, and the pike from the minnow, and the stag would chase the lion, and everything would be reversed. Now ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... personage, to whom hee would giue the delight of all strange contentment, either in his Parke, or other remote place of pleasure, neere vnto Ponds, Riuer, or other waters of cleerenesse, after hee hath made his arbors and Summer-bowers to feast in, the fashion whereof is so common that euery labourer can make them, hee shall then marke out his garden-plot, bestowing such sleight fence thereon as hee shall thinke fit: then hee shall cast forth his alleys, and deuide them from his quarters, by paring away ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... never knew how little or how much he had. He never would own horses lest he should give people reason to accuse him of being arrogantly rich. We drove a great deal, but he always insisted on hiring his carriages. If he accepted remuneration for his brain and heart labour, Scripture tells us, "The labourer is worthy of his hire." He was foremost in helping in any time of public calamity, not only in our own country but more than once in foreign lands. And when volumes of his sermons were pirated over the country, and he was urged to take legal steps to stop the injustice, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... are looking and waiting for such a man. A fellow with no capital and no profession had better not show his face in Melbourne. It is a thousand to one against him. Compared to his position that of a labourer is an enviable one; yet any respectable and intelligent man tolerably well educated, coming here with four or five hundred pounds in his pocket, may certainly, in a couple of years, and in twenty different ways, treble that capital. The best and most promising is the following:—Buy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... are bad that you say are bad. But they're so good as well! I mean—well, the other day I read one of those dreadful articles—at least, of course they're very useful I suppose—about the condition of the agricultural labourer. Well, then I took a ride in the country, and saw it all in its setting and complete, with everything the article had left out; and it wasn't so bad after all. I don't mean to say it was all good either, but it was just ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... a mission of charity, if you don't mind. I am the Rev Andrew Rowbottom. I am collecting subscriptions for the widow and family of the late William John Elphinston, a worthy member of my congregation, and a most estimable bricklayers labourer, killed, as you may remember, in the execution of his duty on the 14th ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... But for you, I should have gone without dinner many a day; but for you, I should most likely have had to chuck painting altogether, and turn clerk or dock-labourer. But let me stay in your debt a little longer, old man. I can't put off my marriage any longer, and just at first I shall want all the money I can lay my ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... of the hour over their immediate prospect of fabulous riches! But at last the practical necessities of living put a sudden damper on their enthusiasm. Clemens was forced at last to abandon mining, and go to work as a common labourer in a quartz mill, at ten dollars a week and board—after flour had soared to a dollar a pound and the rate on borrowed money had gone to eight per cent. a month. This work was very exhausting, and after a week Clemens asked his employer for an advance ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... servant; "the young gentlemen, my Lord's sons, are hopeful youths; but yet there is one who is thought to exceed them all, though he is the son of a poor labourer." ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... the doctor again. "I maintain, sir, that it is all a matter of education or training, and that you could make a gentleman's son a labourer, or a labourer's ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... be still carried on with vigour. As regards the general work to be done now in the garden, we may mention that in dry weather all walks and pathways should be swept and rolled, which latter operation, like that of digging, ought to be done by a labourer, although dragging a garden-roller has been described as an excellent gymnastic exercise. Grass should be mowed on every favourable opportunity; and where turf has been much worn away, or where it is uneven, the objectionable portions must ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... lasting gratitude for an act of kindness. The bird, which had long been the terror of children in the little Devonshire village near which it lived, managed one day to get wedged in a drain, and there it would eventually have died unseen if a passing labourer had not seen its plight and set it at liberty. Down to the day of its death the bird, though nowise relinquishing its spiteful attitude towards others, followed its rustic benefactor about the ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... comes, no labourer To cut his shaggy truss of hay, Along the road no traveller, Day after day, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... For I would just rise in my place, and say as a thing of course, and admitted on all hands, 'Gentlemen, it would be a very wrong thing of us, to let Mr Mucklewheel, (that is, supposing you were me,) who has so long been a fellow-labourer with us, to quit his place here without some mark of our own esteem for him as a man, and some testimony from the council to his merits as a magistrate. Every body knows that he has been for near to fifty years a distinguished character, and has thrice filled ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... in summer, Winter worked I with the pitchfork, Even as a labourer toiling, Even as a hired servant, And my mother-in-law for ever, Evermore for me selected, Worst of all the flails for threshing, Heaviest mallet from the bathroom, 620 From the beach the heaviest mallet, In the stall the largest pitchfork. Never did they think ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... In this place they were informed that much gold was to be found in all the brooks and rivulets, which they found to be the case. Likewise, by digging in several places, gold was found in such plenty, that a single labourer was able to get to the value of three pieces of eight every day. These new mines are now known by the name of the mines of St Christopher, from a fort of that name which the admiral left orders to build for their protection; but they were afterwards called the old mines. About this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... upon receiving an additional salute, jumped over the railings, and re-saluted poor Pat with a muzzier,{2} which drew his claret in a moment. The Irishman endeavoured to rally, while the crowd cheered the Porter and hooted the Labourer. This was the signal for hostilities. The man who had plugg'd up the broken pipe let go his hold, and the fountain was playing away as briskly as ever—all was confusion, and the neighbourhood in alarm. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... pedlar in all England. Judging the "nigger" merely as a human being, irrespective of sentiment, colour, and so forth, I can only say that in my estimation he and his are far better off in every respect than the average white labourer and his family in England. These folk have plenty to eat, little to do, and are very jolly. They would be perfectly happy if they only had a sufficient number of rifles and a large enough supply of ammunition to enable them to drive every white man clean ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... fairly firmly established. By the tenth century the system was crystallized and had become so natural to men that the originally servile character of the folk working on the land was forgotten. The labourer at the end of the Dark Ages was no longer ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... came upon a group of three women and two children in the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cottage. They had got hold of a little hand truck, and were piling it up with unclean-looking bundles and shabby furniture. They were all too assiduously engaged to talk to ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... themselves in some practical way. We are assured that if the truth be, as we are told, of vital moment—vital to all alike, wise and foolish, educated and uneducated—the road to it cannot lie through any very profound enquiries. We refuse to believe that every labourer or mechanic must balance arduous historical probabilities and come to a just conclusion, under pain of damnation. We are satisfied that these poor people are not placed in so cruel a dilemma. Either these abstruse historical ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... there was a busy and earnest, but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a labourer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper understanding of the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... employment according to a fixed rate of wages. It was a difficult point, he said, to settle the scale of wages; and he could devise no better mode than that of compelling the planter to fix a price on the labourer at the time of his apprenticeship, and by enacting that the wages to be paid by the master should bear such a proportion to the price fixed by him, that for the whole of his spare time he should receive one-twelfth of his price annually. In this manner, he said, the slave and his master would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the waistband of the trunkhose, while those nether garments stopped short of his knees; the whole attire belonging to a smaller man than the unfortunate statesman. His delicate white hands, much exposed by the shortness of the sleeves, looked very unlike those of a day-labourer, and altogether the new mason presented a somewhat incongruous and wobegone aspect. Grotius was fearful too lest some of the preachers and professors frequenting the book-shop next door would recognize him through ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the poor than for the amusement of the rich; and I would sooner raise a smile or create an interest in the honest mechanic or agricultural labourer who requires relaxation, than I would contribute to dispel the ennui of those who loll on their couches and wonder in their idleness what they shall do next. Is the rich man only to be amused? are mirth and laughter to be made ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... or three years to build and finish a good house. A wigwam is knocked up in an hour; and as you have to be your own architect, carpenter, mason, and labourer, it's just as well to be handy as not. A critter that can't do that, hante the gumption of a bear who makes a den, a fox who makes a hole, or a bird that makes a nest, let alone a beaver, who is a dab at house building. No man can enjoy the woods that ain't up to these ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... tombstone, wrapped in thought, and apparently quite unconscious of the moonlight which now fell upon his chest and legs. He was of middle stature, rather thick-set, with over-developed arms and a labourer's hands, already hardened by toil; his feet, shod with heavy laced boots, looked large and square-toed. His general appearance, more particularly the heaviness of his limbs, bespoke lowly origin. There was, however, something in him, in the upright bearing of his neck and the thoughtful gleams ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... glad to see the men of Fife thus taking the lead in creating new openings for the agricultural labourer. Of course the weather will have much influence upon the success of the new avocation. To sit out hatching eggs in one of such blizzards as we have had since Christmas would be exceedingly inconvenient, upon whatever "Liberal terms." But, given a fair summer day or a quiet autumn evening, there ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a few goats, and probably a ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the maintenance of the "pass" system necessary, but modifications were introduced into the working of the system sufficient to protect the educated native from unnecessary humiliation and the native labourer from excessive punishment. In addition to this departmental work two commissions had been appointed by Lord Milner to investigate two matters of direct and immediate concern to the gold industry. The first of these, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... son of Robert Douglas, a labourer in the village of Strathmiglo in Fife, where he was born on the 17th June 1771. Early discovering an aptitude for learning, he formed the intention of studying for the ministry,—a laudable aspiration, which was unfortunately checked ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... mathematics and calculations, mysterious as these generally seem to the feminine mind, that she was able to formulate with exactness the result of her brother's researches. She never failed to be his willing fellow-labourer in the workshop; she helped him to grind and polish his mirrors; she stood beside his telescope, in order to record his observations, during the dark and bitter mid-winter nights, when the very ink was frozen in the bottle. ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... its seat and centre. The palace is built of imported wood upon a European plan; the roof of corrugated iron, the yard enclosed with walls, the gate surmounted by a sort of lych-house. It cannot be called spacious; a labourer in the States is sometimes more commodiously lodged; but when we had the chance to see it within, we found it was enriched (beyond all island expectation) with coloured advertisements and cuts from the illustrated papers. Even before the gate some of the treasures of the crown stand public: a ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... directions, in readily receiving the instructions of their masters; and reducing them to practice, is properly the virtue of scholars, as that of masters is to teach well. The one can do nothing without the other; and as it is not sufficient for a labourer to sow the seed, unless the earth, after having opened its bosom to receive it, in a manner hatches, warms, and moistens it; so likewise the whole fruit of instruction depends upon a good correspondence between the masters and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... nothing superfluous, nothing but what appertains to the earliest stages of civilization, and what every well-arranged society ought to be able to give in return for manual labour of the lowest kind. With inferior means the labourer must suffer the obloquy of being remunerated from the parish rates, to which all are forced to contribute as fully as though the employer paid the fair value of the labour in the first instance, and the amount were assessed on the price of his commodity, instead of being assessed ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips |
