cumberers

Only here were those who touched middle age regarded as decrepit, and cumberers of the soil.

Ultima Thule 2003

It was one of the curiosities of this singular epidemic that it claimed not only those youthful and adventurous spirits who were by common consent held to be its legitimate victims, but carried off also old and infirm men, chronic invalids, and, stranger still, such shiftless, incompetent and altogether worthless cumberers of the ground as this Doctor Hanchett; thus proving itself to be, like most other contagions, a not entirely unmixed evil.

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 12, No. 28, July, 1873 Various

Meritorious men, but kept in the background while the place-men, cumberers of the service, refused by Jeff.

Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac William H. Armstrong

The paper shell pecan grows to perfection in this limited area and nowhere else but all varieties do not thrive alike in the different sections and the growers have long since learned this and have eliminated the cumberers of the ground and replanted with those varieties adapted to that territory.

Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting Washington, D. C. October 7 and 8, 1920

Like barren fig-trees we shall be useless cumberers of the ground.

The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young Richard Newton

You're loafers -- cumberers of the earth -- fat slugs, that's what you are, each and every one of you!

Jane Journeys On Ruth Comfort Mitchell 1918

And he thinks we are parasites, cumberers of the earth,

When a Man Marries Mary Roberts Rinehart 1917

He believed that the weak were abortions of nature, and that, instead of being helped, they had best be removed as useless cumberers of the earth, whose places should be taken by the strong.

No Compromise Peace James Hinton 1917

Ruyler looked upon both sorts as cumberers of the earth, and only tolerated them in his own house when his wife gave a party and dancing men must be had at any price.

The Avalanche Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton 1902

As free-range monopolists you are cumberers of the earth, and all you represent must pass, before this State can be anything but the byword it now is.

Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger A Romance of the Mountain West Hamlin Garland 1900