Labourers are landless or near-landless workers who sell their physical labour by the day, week or season. Unlike servants, they are usually not bound to a single household; instead, they move between farms, estates, workshops and public works wherever employment can be found. Their work includes ploughing, sowing, harvesting, ditch-digging, road-building, tree-felling and any heavy task that requires many hands. In years of good harvest and active building, labourers may find ample work and manage a modest but stable living. In bad years, they are among the first to feel hunger and unemployment. They stand at the bottom of the (rural) hierarchy. They hold few formal rights within the land system itself, but their numbers give them a kind of silent power: without their work, the fields of KildenKildenThe Region of Kilden is a rural area, stretching across parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the (former) Kingdom of Hanover (annexed in 1866).… cannot be tilled, the dykes cannot be raised, and the wealth of the higher ranks cannot be sustained.
