labourers

They were gnarled, rustic-looking men, shepherds or labourers from the olive groves, perhaps, with faces deeply stained by the ferocious suns of farther south.

Homage to Catalonia 1938

Both in Demarara and Antigua the question of introducing black and coloured labourers from the United States is seriously under consideration.

Both in Demarara and in Antigua 1862

On this account several thousands of labourers from the other parts of Persia proceed thither annually, but who, on the approach of the deadly heats of summer, retire from the province.

Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia 1856

New England may call lustily for the abolition of negro slavery and the elevation of the negro race to the political status of white men; but the Northern, the Middle, and the great Western States repudiate the political partnership, would fight to the death against the social equality, and would rather expel the negroes from American soil than consent to a manumission of slaves which would bring black labourers from the Southern rice and cotton fields to the farms and cities of the colder North, to reduce the wages of white labour.

The Situation in America 1862

On the whole, the farms appeared to him to be of various sizes: many so large that a bell was used to call the labourers to or from their work; while some were so small as to have only a few sheaves of corn, or a rig or two of potatoes, scattered among the trunks of the trees.

The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 Various

The lack of farm labourers, which is the common subject of complaint by farmers in all parts of the United States, cannot fail to be aggravated by the change in the conditions of tenancy just noted.

The Rural Life Problem of the United States Notes of an Irish Observer Horace Curzon Plunkett 1893

A flourishing crop of grass and flowers grows on the stable-roof, and there is a little belfry with a big bell to call the labourers home from the fields.

Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things Henry Van Dyke 1892

Our chief employment of these so-called labourers was in transporting heavy castings and parts of machinery from one place to another.

James Nasmyth: Engineer, An Autobiography. Nasmyth, James 1885

The land here does not yield much, and if one is not to farm at a loss one must employ serf labour or hired labourers, which is almost the same thing, or put it on a peasant footing -- that is, work the fields oneself and with one's family.

The Wife, and other stories Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1882

The reason given is that corn land supports so many more agricultural labourers, which is so far true; but if corn farming cannot be carried on profitably without great reduction of the labour expenses the argument is not worth much, while the narrowness of the view is at once evident.

Hodge and His Masters Richard Jefferies 1867