Serfs

They became villeins, in short -- serfs bound to the soil by a living wage. ❋ Jack London (1896)

As the ‘upper’ class began to lose financial dominance the corporates took over meanwhile the public remain as always subservient to their ‘betters’ in other words serfs by another name. ❋ Unknown (2008)

Alexander realized that emancipating the serfs was a precondition for wider reforms, but feared (rightly, as it turned out) that such a move would alienate the nobility, taking away both their property and their source of cheap labor. ❋ William Anthony Hay (2007)

For the Jews and the serfs were the two most oppressed classes under the feudal system still surviving. ❋ Various (N/A)

They were serfs, that is to say, practically slaves, who had to give up to their masters the greater part of the crops that they raised. ❋ Louis Paul B��n��zet (1919)

’ Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; ‘the emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. ❋ Unknown (1917)

A considerable proportion of them were gradually transformed into serfs, that is, instead of being obliged to expend all their labour for the benefit of the master, they were enabled to work a part of the time on their own account on land which they rented from him. ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)

That in many such medieval codes citizens were still called serfs is no more final than the fact that in many modern capitalist newspapers serfs are still called citizens. ❋ Unknown (1905)

They were members of the lords 'courts, and there the serfs were their peers; but they were also members of the old national courts of hundred and shire, and there they were the peers of knights and barons. ❋ George Burton Adams (1888)

All three categories have melted together into a common class, called serfs, who are regarded as the property of the landed proprietors or of the State. ❋ Donald Mackenzie Wallace (1880)

Their serfs were their property, they said, and could not be taken from them by king or parliament without their consent. ❋ Charles Morris (1877)

If there were such a proletariat it would be hopelessly in the hands of a body of plutocratic capitalists, and a society so organized would, no doubt, be far worse than a society composed only of nobles and serfs, which is the worst society the world has seen in modern times. ❋ William Graham Sumner (1875)

Only when he had understood the peasants 'tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform toward them the duties demanded of him. ❋ Leo Tolstoy (1869)

I have called their serfs to arms, and they want them to till their acres. ❋ Georg Ebers (1867)

They work for us, not we for them who think the serfs are their property. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Don't give up ever - there are more "serfs" than there are rich and powerful ... the french and the british learned this lessonseveral times in history. ❋ Unknown (2009)

And franky, dear comfort-seeking and threat-avoiding American couchers, there ain't any way you will ever get rid of the overlords with civililty because that is only viewed as servility by those, who like the Rockefellers, regard us as "serfs" and "slaves". by ❋ Unknown (2007)

Of course, Sparta, like Athens, was a two-tiered system, with an oligarchic element that debated and decided issues and a mass — helots ( "serfs") in ❋ Unknown (1997)