Labourer

“ The labourer also, who tills the ground, and anxiously turns the produce to a good account, that he may be able to pay his rent, is protected by the rich, and may reasonably expect to solace himself after his toil, under the shade of the trees his fathers have planted, or those he himself has reared. ”

“ He corrected me: "'Twill be no trouble, master, only labour."
The labourer does not appreciate a sudden order or an unreasonable change in work once commenced; he does not like being taken by surprise in such matters: the necessary tool—for farm labourers find their own hand implements—may not be readily available, may be out of order, require grinding, or a visit to the blacksmith's for repair or readjustment. ”

“ And can you tell me that not a single labourer or unemployed workman in England is likely to secure a week’s steady labour as a result of that enterprise? I can assure you it does them much more good than telling them about three acres and a cow, because nothing has ever come out of that yet. ”

“ And both of them have a duty to perform to the labourer, which must not be disregarded. He, as the lowest in the scale, is often the first to suffer; but woe to our land if the labourer should be trodden under foot! ”

“ A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third. ”

“ Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all labourers are either hired labourers, or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired labourer is fixed in that condition for life. ”

“ The cause of the agricultural labourer is our own; the interests of labour in all its forms are very closely bound up together, and the simple question for each one is, How much can I help, and how soon can I do it? If we stay thinking too long, action may come too late ”

“ The labourer, he that tills the ground and manufactures cloth, is the man who has to provide, out of what he would bring home to his wife and children, for the luxuries and comforts of those, whose claims are represented by an annuity of forty-four millions a year levied upon the English nation. ”

“ The agricultural labourer found that out when he returned from the factory at 15s. per week to farm labour at 12s. I am positive that the morality of the country compares favourably with that of the town. ”

“ We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired labourers amongst us. How little they know whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired labourers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired labourer. The hired labourer of yesterday labours on his own account to-day, and will hire others to labour for him to-morrow.
Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. ”

“ The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer. ”

“ The employment of these different sorts of labour power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary by the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of the labour-power of the adult male. ”

“ The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit, than the labourer without wages. ”

“ The work is done more expeditiously, at the proper time with less supervision on the part of the employer; 2. It is less expensive than day-work, and payment is made for only the work done; 3. The labourer, finding his wage is regulated by the quantity and quality of the work performed is more industrious, and exercises more skill is what he does; and 4. By placing higher wages within reach, the temptation to leave farm-work for occupations is lessened. ”

“ The first of these is naturally that the labourers do work of some sort. The second condition, and the one that concerns us here, is that, besides doing work of some sort, each labourer shall do the work which the distributer of the goods prescribes to him. ”

“ My endeavour then will simply be to show what can be p. 7done by the employers of labour in their individual and private capacity.
What an important relation is that of Master and Man! How it pervades the world; ascending from the lowest gradation of planter and slave through the states of master and servant, landlord and labourer, manufacturer and artisan, till it comes to the higher degrees of rule which one cultivated man has to exercise over another in the performance of the greatest functions. ”

“ But the great majority, the mass, of the agricultural labourers have been labourers time out of mind. Their fathers were labourers, their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers have all worked upon the farms, and very often almost continuously during that long period of time upon the farms in one parish. All their relations have been, and still are, labourers, varied by one here who has become a tinker, or one there who keeps a small roadside beerhouse. ”

“ I have frequently asked employers of labour in England whether they were satisfied with the work done for them by their day labourers, and while they readily allowed for exceptions, yet they spoke strongly of such men as “doing as little as possible for their pay.” Every branch of work that it is possible to give out as piece-work is nowadays so arranged. ”

“ Nor does it hence follow that the descendants of labourers are always to be labourers. The path upwards is steep and long, to be sure. Industry, care, skill, excellence, in the present parent, lay the foundation of a rise, under more favourable circumstances, for his children. ”

“ But the labourers can still work, and the capital which previously employed them will, either in the same hands, or by being lent to others, employ either those labourers or an equivalent number in some other occupation. ”

“ Now the reader can take it as a gospel truth that of the various classes of men who earn their bread with the sweat of their brow, those who follow the profession of the practical miner are amongst the noblest specimens of humanity. Mind you, we do not mean the labourers, who, by hundreds, earn their 6s. ”

“ We work well, we live well, we have a good conscience, and an equally good bed to rest upon after the labours of the day. Our lives roll on in peace and contentment. There are seven labourers constantly employed on the [Pg 122] farm, who are paid almost double wages to what others get; but then I can venture to assert, that if we are paid double, we do as much work among us as fourteen ordinary labourers would do. ”

“ Labourers on the lands that were once owned by their forefathers, and children of long generations of labourers, yet still exhibiting the marks of their aristocratic descent, the fine features and expression and the fine moral qualities with which they are correlated. ”

“ In reality, the labourer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. ”

“ By many of the labourers this is still felt as it ought to be felt, and they take a pride and a pleasure in working year after year for the same master, and try to obtain his approbation by industry and good conduct. ”

“ These excellent habits of the people are so fixed, that we see a portion of them still clinging to those labourers, perhaps the most of all to be commiserated, who are employed in the factories of the north of England. ”

“ Whenever possible a man is set to the trade or occupation which he has been accustomed to follow. For farm labourers and gardeners, for example, there is always a place. Where inmates have had no particular training, the occupation in which they are likeliest to be most productive is allotted to them. Thus I noticed at work: smiths, wheelwrights, cabinet-makers, straw-plaiters, tailors, shoe makers, sempstresses, chair makers, wicker workers, bakers, paper bag makers, etc. ”

“ And the same remark is applicable to labourers with the head as with the hand; for in these days we must extend the phrase, "working men," far beyond the comparatively narrow region of the industrial arts. ”

“ Many labourers now wander far and wide as navvies, &c., and perhaps when these return home, as most of them do, to agricultural labour, they are the most useful and intelligent of their class, from a readiness they possess to turn their hand to anything. ”

“ Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed; Health to himself, and to his infants bread The labourer bears; ”

“ Daily labourers working from 6 A.M., to 6 P.M. in large fields with machinery cannot do the hundreds of little matters which the family of the small holder attends to every hour of the day, often in the night—and which give work to women and children as well as the men—work of the most healthful character and most free from demoralizing influences. ”

“ The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed. ”

“ But I do not admit the comparison between your slaves and even the lowest class of European free labourers, for the former are allowed the exercise of no faculties but those which they enjoy in common with the brutes that perish. ”

“ Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution. ”

“ Little dreamed those day-laborers, as they broke ground for their rude mill, in that solitary wilderness, that the results of that day’s labor would give employment to thousands and tens of thousands of such implements as they then used; that the one spadeful of red dirt, at which they gazed so intently, at the bottom of which a few yellow bits of shining dust appeared, was soon to exert a mysterious, a profound influence upon the commerce, the welfare, the destinies of the whole human family. ”

“ Labor is here honored and respected, and great examples incite us to action. All around us in the professions, in the marts of commerce, on the exchange, where merchant-princes and capitalists do congregate; in these manufactories and workshops, where the products of every clime are fashioned into a thousand forms of utility and beauty; on these smiling farms, fertilized by the sweat of free labor; in every position of private and of public life, are our associates, who were but yesterday "hireling laborers," "mud-sills," "slaves." ”

“ But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price. ”

“ For a time I felt that having brought about in my own mills a relation between capital and labor which I may go so far as to term ideal, and having published my book, my philosophy of an employer's life, I had contributed my utmost to the cause of industrial civilization. ”

“ The Economics of Labor.—In complex society there are many divisions or groups of laborers—laborers of body and laborers of mind. Every one who is performing a legitimate service, which is sought for and remunerative to the laborer and serviceable to the public, is a laborer. At the base of all industry and social activity are the industrial wage-earners, who by their toil work the mines, the factories, the great steel and iron industries, the railroads, the electric-power plants and other industries. ”

“ When such phrases as 'the laboring class,' 'the labor problem,' 'the labor movement,' 'labor laws,' etc., are used, reference is made to the wage-earning class, whose rise to its present prominence dates from the industrial revolution at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. ”

“ The time has arrived for you to contract for another year's labor. I wish to impress upon you the importance of doing this at once. You know that if a crop of cotton is raised, the work must be begun soon, and the hands employed for the year. If you do not contract with the men who wish to employ you, what do you propose to do? You cannot live without work of some kind. Your houses and lands belong to the white people ”

“ To the employer of unskilled labor this flow of aliens, many of them used to dirt floors, a vegetable diet, and child labor, and ignorant of underclothing, newspapers, and trade unions, is like a rain of manna. ”

“ That labor is best, in which the laborer knows that he will derive the profits of his industry, that his employment depends upon his diligence, and his reward upon this assiduity. He then has every motive to excite him to exertion, and to animate him in perseverance. He knows that if he is treated badly he can exchange his employer, for one who will better estimate his service ”

“ It is the high born, the cultivated, the intelligent, the brave, the generous, who are now constrained to work with their own hands. Labor is thus associated in our minds with all that is honorable in birth, refined in manners, bright in intellect, manly in character and magnanimous in soul.... Now that labor has been dignified and cherished we want it to be recognized in our schools and colleges.... ”

“ The term labor is used, thirdly, in a more restricted, very popular and current, but very ill-defined way, to designate a limited sub-group among those who live by contributing productive efforts to the work of society. ”

“ The three kinds of labor are combined in some proportion in every life, but the best and most productive life his most room for hard thinking and self-control.
Operative, executive, speculative labor.—In the advancing complexity of society a still more important classification of labor is apparent. If a man's effort of any kind is simply to follow directions in an established routine, it is called operative labor, and the laborer becomes an operative. He works usually by the day, hour or piece, under a foreman or overseer. ”