"Contractor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more enactments deal with the earnings of the workmen of contractors and sub-contractors, make them a first charge on all contract money, give workers employed on works of construction a lien thereon, and compel a contractor's employer to hold back at least one-fourth of the contract money for a month after the completion of a contract, unless he shall be satisfied that all workmen concerned have been paid in full. A Wages Attachment Act limits without entirely abolishing a creditor's ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... with Yonkers, and returned to my intramural boarding-house in St. John's Park. The sidewalk near the house was in a dilapidated state, through the carelessness of the contractor, who had stipulated to pave it properly, but had not paved it at all, except with good intentions. And therefore, as I came along, I first besmeared my boots with muck then tripped my toes against a pile of brick: and finally fell headlong into the gutter. As I rose up ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... furnishing these unhappy men became matter of speculation, and they were carefully trained to the profession of arms, to increase the reputation and popularity of the contractor who provided them. This person was called lanista by the Romans. At first these sports were performed about the funeral pile of the deceased, or near his sepulchre, in consonance with the idea of sacrifice in which they originated; but as they became more splendid, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... side is a flat blank piece of brickwork. This is greatly aggravated by the disparity in height, and the ponderous cornices. As to construction, the prevailing type is a flimsy pile of brick and timber, 'put up,' apparently, by mutual connivance of the contractor and the coroner, and screened off from the street by a thin veneer of 'architecture.' Now there is a certain merit, sui generis, in a clever deception, but those in vogue here are too utterly transparent to claim even this. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the results of such peculation. Some contractor or official had been paid to provide powder, and he had ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... passengers was an American family consisting of Andrew Stonehouse, the great ironmaster and contractor, with his wife and ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... of him, Vaudrey heard him muttering behind his moustache about soldiers' cap-straps, shakos, gaiter-buttons, shoulder-straps, cloth and overcoats. That was all. It was the vulgar report of a shoemaker or a tailor, or of a contractor detailing ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... off without losing a moment, and reached the quay at Manaos. There they offered the contractor such a price that he put the apparatus at their ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... civilized, if we were doing the nation's work in an orderly manner, every recruit would be so much clear gain. It is the disorganization of our moribund industrial system which leaves no welcome for the immigrants save as the tenement-house agent may bleed them, and the sweating contractor "grind their bones to make his bread." It is this disorganization which turns the source of our finest reinforcement into a means of demoralization ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... only supplies the necessary scaffold, but also the necessary arrangements for hoisting the slabs, as well as for raising the liquid concrete and depositing it behind the slabs. It is really an independent scaffold, and may be used wherever a light tramway of contractor's rails can be laid, which in crowded thoroughfares would of necessity be upon a staging erected over the footway. The under frame is carried upon two bogie frames running upon the contractor's rail, by which means it is enabled to turn sharp curves, a guide plate inside the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... righteous in obedience. "What is man that thou shouldst magnify him? When I look to the heavens, and the sun, the work of thine hands, Lord, what is man?" What is innocent man in his integrity, that thou shouldst magnify him, to give him a place to stand before thee, magnify him to be a party-contractor with thy glorious Majesty? Psalm viii. 4-6. But now, when this covenant is broken, it is become impossible to a son of Adam ever to stand before God in his perfection, for, how should man be righteous that is born of a woman? Job xv. 14. Since we once sinned, how should our righteousness ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... There was pity in the resolve as well as prudence. Had Vincent been able to read the workings of the lady's mind, he would have donned his rebel gray with more buoyant joy that day in Richmond. Another ally of the absent came in the course of the day. Miss Boone, the daughter of the opulent contractor and chief local magnate, called to plan work for the soldiers. Vincent's name being mentioned, Miss Boone said, in the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... of gigantic wealth flung before eyes that could not see, or missed by the merest accident of time and travel; and through the mad shift of things, sometimes on horseback, more often afoot, now rich, now poor, in and out, and back and forth, deck-hand, train-hand, contractor, boarding-house keeper, journalist, engineer, drummer, real-estate agent, politician, dead-beat, rum-seller, mine-owner, speculator, cattle-man, or tramp, moved Harvey Cheyne, alert and quiet, seeking his own ends, and, so he said, the glory and ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... of majestic white-robed forms and commonplace figures in caps and hard felt hats; the mystery of its palm trees, and the crudity of its flaring electric lights, it gave an impression of unreality, of a modern contractor's idea of Fairyland, where anything grotesque might assume an air of normality. The moon shone full in the heavens, and as I crossed the Place I saw the equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans silhouetted against the mosque. The port, to the east, was quiet at this hour, and the shipping lay dreamily ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... regulars, two of six months' levies, a number of Kentucky militia, a few cavalry, and a couple of small batteries of light guns. After wearisome delays, due mainly to the utter inefficiency of the quartermaster and contractor, the start for the Indian towns was made on October ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... oddly enough relieved by a still more incongruous veranda extending around its four sides, upheld by wooden Doric columns, which were already picturesquely covered with flowering vines and sun-loving roses. Mr. Spindler had trusted the furnishing of its interior to the same contractor who had upholstered the gilded bar-room of the Eureka Saloon, and who had apparently bestowed the same design and material, impartially, on each. There were gilded mirrors all over the house and chilly marble-topped tables, gilt ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... consequence of Words; sometimes the consequence of Silence; sometimes the consequence of Actions; sometimes the consequence of Forbearing an Action: and generally a signe by Inference, of any Contract, is whatsoever sufficiently argues the will of the Contractor. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... themselves and said their prayers to a major-general in the United States Army! It is the only instance, I believe, on record, where a major-general has been raised to the dignity of a saint without even being dead. St. George of England, we are told, was originally a corrupt army contractor of Cappadocia, but he was not canonised until long after his death, when the memory of his contracts was no more. For Major-General Dix was reserved the peculiar privilege of being at the same time United States Minister in Paris and a saint ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... had bore the marks of unprecedented accidents, for which no one was to blame. Rival lines, I know not how many, were cutting each other's throats for its legitimate business. At this juncture dear George invested all his earnings as a contractor, in the despised original stock,—he actually bought it for 3 1/4 per cent,—good shares that had cost a round hundred to every wretch who had subscribed. Six thousand eight hundred dollars—every cent he had—did George thus invest. Then he went himself to the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Saturday the girls saw Neale drive by early in the morning with a handsome pair of young horses, drawing loam to a part of the Parade ground which was to be re-seeded. The contractor had only recently bought these young horses from the West, but he trusted Neale with them, for he knew the boy was careful and seemed able to handle almost any kind ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... make the acquaintance of Lord and Lady Gules—in other words, to continue the political discussion he then commenced with you. Singular to state, he is an admirer of Congreve and all that school, so I am sure you will have plenty of topics in common. Mr Plumper has made an enormous fortune as a contractor, and now chiefly occupies himself with works of charity and benevolence. One of his special hobbies is the introduction of the aesthetic principle into Kindergartens. I have given him a hint not to introduce his vulgar friend Flamm—pardon me the ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... the contractors who had bid for the job on the basis of a year's time said afterwards to the successful contractor, "I wish, if you wouldn't mind doing so, you would tell me how you ever got that work done in so short a time with those undisciplined Soudanese natives for workmen. I have had them on other contracts and ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... ready to weigh anchor, his Lordship was informed that the two chief leaders of the people who had fled to the mountains had come down in the last bands. These two were infidels; one was the contractor for the slaughterhouses, named Barba, and the other a shopkeeper named [blank space in MS.]; and by the help of some of their followers they had been hidden, so that they could go away in the first champans. We had certain information that these ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... a dustman ringing a bell, And he gave him a mortal thrust; For himself, by law, since Adam's flaw, Is contractor ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... principles has been insisted upon in the treatment of these subjects, and that whatever controversy has arisen was caused by the exaction on the part of the Department of contract obligations as they were legally construed. In the case of the Dolphin, with entire justice to the contractor, an agreement has been entered into providing for the ascertainment by a judicial inquiry of the complete or partial compliance with the contract in her construction, and further providing for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... emphatic; and when Mr. Fopling was emphatic he squeaked. Mr. Fopling's father had been a beef contractor. Likewise he had seen trouble with investigating committees, being convicted of bad beef. This may or may not have had to do with the younger Fopling's aversion ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... cases the Police were quickly called by wire or otherwise. Superintendent Shurtcliffe tells of a rather odd case in which an Indian chief with the appropriate name of "Front Man" stopped a railway contractor from getting out ties and caused the whole outfit to leave the bush in a good deal of panic. Shurtcliffe, a capable officer, immediately sent for "Front Man" and told him how dangerous a thing it was to interfere with the progress of work authorized by Canada. "Front Man" realized that ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... infection of actual sin belongs only to the powers which are moved by the will of the sinner. But the infection of original sin is not derived from the will of the contractor, but through his natural origin, which is effected by the generative power. Hence it is this power that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... 266 days was paid for a manuscript Bible. At this time a book on astronomy cost as much as 800 pounds of butter. One page of a manuscript book cost the equivalent of from a dollar to a dollar and a half to-day. When a member of the Medici family in Florence desired a library, he sent for a book contractor, who secured forty-five copyists. By rigorous work for nearly two years they produced two ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Clare's assertion that the Irish Parliament alone was competent to deal with the business of the island. He admitted the directing power of the British Cabinet over Ireland's concerns; but he averred that under the new system the Lord Lieutenant would be little more than a Great Contractor. As to the satisfaction to be granted to Catholics, the Under-Secretary had done well not to be too explicit, lest he should offend jealous Protestants. But, asked Jebb, would the Catholics have much influence in the United Kingdom, where they would be, not three to one as in Ireland, but ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... not the builder of a public library or a public school. These are built by the people who are united in sentiment for a library or a school; the contractor is only the hired man who does the bidding of the people. The residents of a city themselves bring into existence beautiful streets, magnificent public buildings and ideal health conditions; or else they bring to themselves the saloon and other degrading ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... the organization proposed was found to be workable for the Army, it would not be satisfactory for the Navy, as in our case it was essential that the responsibility for approval of design and for inspection should be independent of the producer, whether the producer was a Government official or a contractor. Apart from questions of general principle in this matter, accidents to ordnance material in the Navy, or the production of inferior ammunition, may involve, and have involved, the most serious results, even the complete loss of battleships with their crews, ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... his father, delighted. "Don't tell me you're goin' to keep your word about dates! That's no way to do contractin'! Never heard of a contractor yet didn't ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... that even the law of gravity will do him no harm. That is why he steps unabashed into our pit on Chestnut Street; and finding himself sprawling in the bottom of it, he bears no ill will to Sir Isaac Newton. He simply knows that the law of gravity took him for some one else—a street-cleaning contractor, perhaps. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... because a new railway line, in 1846, ran through his estate. He flew into a passion, did nothing, and remained on his estates until 1853, when he and his family went into lodgings at Yarmouth. I have not discovered how much he profited by the intrusion of the railway, except when he pilloried the contractor, his neighbour, Mr. Peto, as Flamson, in the Appendix to "The Romany Rye." Then he tried again to be put on the Commission of the Peace, with no success. He probably spent much of his time in being either suspicious, or ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... in Florida during which the girls had succeeded in finding Will Ford, Grace's brother, who had been virtually kidnapped by a villainous labor contractor and had been set to work in a turpentine camp. The fifth volume, entitled "The Outdoor Girls in Florida; or, Wintering in the Sunny South," tells of many other adventures the girls had during their winter among the "orange blossoms," ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... great anger, compelling her to return Gluck's strange assortment of presents. This man, William Sherbourne, was a gross and stolid creature, a heavy-jawed man of the working class who had become a successful building-contractor in a small way. Gluck did not understand. He tried to get an explanation, attempting to speak with the girl when she went home from work in the evening. She complained to Sherbourne, and one night he gave Gluck a beating. It was a very severe beating, ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... Jackson, whose line of march led him directly on Savage's Station, was delayed until after nightfall by the necessity of rebuilding the Grapevine Bridge.* (* Jackson had with him a gang of negroes who, under the superintendence of Captain Mason, a railroad contractor of long experience, performed the duties which in regular armies appertain to the corps of engineers. They had already done useful service in the Valley.) Stuart had gone off to the White House, bent on the destruction of the enemy's supply depot. Longstreet ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... where serious consequences might result from a failure to fulfill a contract, it is customary for the contractor and often for the other party to make a number of knots on a strip of rattan, each knot signifying a day of the time to elapse before payment, or representing one article of the goods to be paid for, or one item of the goods ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... other people who might be taken as fair specimens of the better French bourgeoisie. The most interesting person in the hotel was an old white-headed gentleman whose name I may give, Victor Ouvrard, a nephew of the famous Ouvrard who had been a great contractor for military clothes and accoutrements under Napoleon I. Victor Ouvrard was living on a pension given by a wealthy relation, and doing what he could to push a hopeless claim on Napoleon III. for several millions of francs due by the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... little while the Contest had narrowed down until it was Evident that either the Brewer's Daughter or the Contractor's Daughter was the Most Beautiful and Popular Young Lady in the City. The Brewer and his Friends pushed Ten Dollar Bills into the Ballot Box, while the Contractor, just before the Polls closed, slipped in a ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... been out of work for three months and had five small mites to feed and clothe, and so forth. At the end of this expedition rather less than 15s. remained in his pocket, and once more he sought employment. This time he got taken on by a contractor who asphalted the London streets, a work done entirely by Italians. Here he remained for nearly two months, during which time he organised the men into a union and induced them to strike for better ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... control, he would betray himself from his desire to shine; but as it is, he leaves others to do all the drudgery for him. He signs his name in the title-page or at the bottom of a vignette, and nobody suspects any mistake. This contractor for useful and ornamental literature once offered me two guineas for a Life and Character of Shakespear, with an admission to his converzationi. I went once. There was a collection of learned lumber, of antiquaries, lexicographers, and other 'illustrious obscure,' and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... were in progress between the Sicilian insurgents and their Sovereign. An agent for the former came to England to purchase arms, but was informed by the contractor to whom he applied that the whole of his stock had been pledged to the Ordnance Office. Lord Palmerston, without consulting the Cabinet, allowed this stock to be transferred to the insurgents. The matter became public property, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... him. Will he seize upon it? Will he "cast down his bucket where he is"? Will his friends, North and South, encourage him and prepare him to occupy it? Every city in the South, for example, would give support to a first-class architect or housebuilder or contractor of our race. The architect or contractor would not only receive support, but through his example numbers of young colored men would learn such trades as carpentry, brickmasonry, plastering, painting, etc., ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... expected that New York would be attacked by British ships, all the boatmen, except Cornelius, put in bids to convey provisions to the military posts around New York, naming extremely low rates, as the contractor would be exempted from military duty. "Why don't you send in a bid?" asked his father. "Of what use?" replied young Vanderbilt; "they are offering to do the work at half price. It can't be done at such rates." "Well," said his father, "it can do no harm to try for it." So, to please ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the Seminole tribe. Born in 1858 of a mother who was part of the human chattel belonging to one of the Hearnses of Alachua County in Florida, he served variously during his life as a State and Federal Government contractor, United States Marshal ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Peter Laurie (c. 1779-1861) was worth referring to, for he was prominent as a magistrate and was honored because of his interest in all social reforms. He made a fortune as a contractor, became sheriff of London in 1823, and was knighted in the following year. He became Lord Mayor of London ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... had married the Irish contractor who had died when the girl was small. Six years and more before she told this tale to the interested Nan and Rhoda, Lobarto became a scourge of the country about Honoragas. He attacked haciendas, stealing and burning, even maltreating the helpless women and children after ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... big farms in Jackson county, besides money-making stores and a livery stable at Harrisonville, my father at the outbreak of the war was wealthy beyond the average of the people in northwestern Missouri. As a mail contractor, his stables were filled with good horses, and his property was easily worth $100,000, which was much more in those days, in the public esteem, than ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... greatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. The really honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical he may be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slave to that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations, accumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on the contrary, without making by their own talent industrial discoveries or inventions, accumulate in a few years millions, can be nothing but ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... as you know. But if I were a contractor, and you were trying to get me to commit myself to any such steeplechase, I should say no, and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... "Contractor. Biggest in town." And then when they reached the street and were climbing into the car, "Whadda you say to meeting me at five o'clock to-morrow afternoon? Look at that Marlowe ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Councillor of State (a function which the First Consul raised to the level of a ministry), and a maker of the Code, played a great part in Paris, where he bought one of the finest mansions in the Faubuorg Saint-Germain after marrying the only daughter of a rich contractor named Sibuelle. He never came to Gondreville; leaving all matters concerning the property to the management of Grevin, the Arcis notary. After all, what had he to fear?—he, a former representative of the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... contractor on one of the new Central India lines, and wrote to him for some sort of work. The contractor said that if Mulvaney could pay the passage he would give him command of a gang of coolies for old sake's sake. The pay was eighty-five rupees a month, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... carry a pail of water," he replied. "I'm my own contractor, my own carpenter, and my own bricklayer, and I shall be sixty-seven come Michaelmas," he added, by no ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... in guns—a custom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social intercourse, if it could be adapted to mankind. By a plank more gracefully pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a transport ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor's yard to be inspected and passed. She is a very gratifying experience, in the simplicity and humanity of her arrangements for troops, in her provision for light and air and cleanliness, and in her care for women and children. It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I would require a handsome sum ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Bianconi as a means of competing with the few existing mail-coaches. For instance, they asked him to compete for carrying the post between Limerick and Tralee, then carried by a mail-coach. Before tendering, Bianconi called on the contractor, to induce him to give in to the requirements of the Post Office, because he knew that the postal authorities only desired to make use of him to fight the coach proprietors. But having been informed that ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... fireman grows old, he is retired on half-pay for the rest of his days. When a horse that has run with the heavy engines to fires by night and by day for perhaps ten or fifteen years is worn out, it is—sold, to a huckster, perhaps, or a contractor, to slave for him until it is fit only for the bone-yard! The city receives a paltry two or three thousand dollars a year for this rank treachery, and pockets the blood-money without a protest. There is room next, in New York, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... sum of one dime Master Middlerib agreed to procure several, to wit: six bees, sex and age not specified; but, as Mr. Middlerib was left in uncertainty as to the race, it was made obligatory upon the contractor to have three of them honey and three humble, or, in the generally accepted vernacular, bumblebees. Mr. M. did not tell his son what he wanted those bees for, and the boy went off on his mission with his head so full of astonishment that ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... not to seek antiquities or to enjoy famous prospects, but to visit one after another a series of doleful suburbs, for which it was the old gentleman's chief claim to renown that he had been the sole contractor, and too often the architect besides. I have rarely seen a more shocking exhibition: the brick seemed to be blushing in the walls, and the slates on the roof to have turned pale with shame; but I was careful not to communicate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was the contractor of Ludlow Street Jail, and here also he died. He was the son of a poor chair-maker, and was born April 3, 1823. From the chair business in 1853 to congress was the first false step. Exhilarated by the delirium of official life, and the false joys of franking his linen home every week, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... these seats are filled with men and boys who shout, clamor, sweat, quarrel, and blaspheme—fortunately, hardly any women get in this far. In the Rueda are the men of importance, the rich, the famous bettors, the contractor, the referee. On the perfectly leveled ground the cocks fight, and from there Destiny apportions to the families smiles or tears, feast ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... formed by the deposit of glaciers and broken by streams of water. Springs burst out, like the jet of a fountain, under the stroke of the pick, flooding and driving away the workmen. For twelve months they seemed to be in the midst of a lake. But nothing could damp the ardor of the contractor, Favre. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... mass was most revolting; the examiners were compelled to use Sir William Burnett's disinfecting fluid abundantly, and even to suspend their labours for two or three days under fear of infection. The canisters formed part of a supply sent in by a contractor in November 1850, under a warrant that the contents would remain good for five years; the filling of the canisters was understood to have been effected at Galatz, in Moldavia, but the contractor was in England. The supply ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... very hard at their new employment, and it can hardly be expected that they should, considering the great difference between it and their usual labour. Leaning on their spades and hammers, they watched me with a natural curiosity, as if wondering whether I was a new ganger, or a contractor come to buy stone. There were men of all ages amongst them, from about eighteen years old to white-headed men past sixty. Most of them looked healthy and a little embrowned by recent exposure to the weather; and here and there was a pinched face which told its own tale. I got into talk ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... This kind of occupation, therefore, though clearly distinguished from ownership (dominium), was yet regarded as a perfectly secure form of tenure. All occupiers of public land paid dues to the state through a state contractor (publicanus.) These dues varied in amount, and in the method of their collection. We learn from Appian that the ordinary dues paid by occupiers of arable land in Italy were 1/10 of seed crops and 1/5 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was slender, tall, and dark. Though arrayed in a plain dress of light fabric, she carried herself with a dignity befitting the daughter of the famous engineering contractor, Julius Savine, and a descendant, through her mother, from Seigneurs of ancient French descent who had ruled in patriarchal fashion in old-world Quebec. Jean Graham, whose father owned the ranch on the slope behind them, was ruddy in face, with a solidity of frame that betokened ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... whose trade was war came at the call of the grand master of their trade. The secret of Wallenstein's ambition is buried in his grave, but the man himself was the prince of adventurers, the ideal chief of mercenary bands, the arch contractor for the hireling's blood. His character was formed in a vast political gambling house, a world given up to pillage and the strong hand, an Eldorado of confiscations. Of the lofty dreamer portrayed in the noble dramatic poem of Schiller, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the Uncle Joe, I was telling you about, Mr. Brady," said Bob, by way of introduction, as the contractor came up to them. ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... the black varnish and painted the jars with little red loves and dancing girls. Clearchus sat on the counter with three friends,—come not to trade but to barter the latest gossip from the barber-shops: Agis the sharp, knavish cockpit and gaming-house keeper, Crito the fat mine-contractor, and finally Polus, gray and pursy, who "devoted his talents to the public weal," in other words was a perpetual ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... now mention the case of cruelty before referred to. In 1820 or 21, while the public works were going forward on Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay, a contractor, engaged on the works, beat one of his slaves so severely that the poor creature had no longer power to writhe under his suffering: he then took out his knife, and began to cut his flesh in strips, from his hips down. At this moment, the gentleman referred to, who was ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... won fair lady;" and so I went on, and on, until I had got a Miss Clopper, a tolerable rich navy-contractor's daughter, into such a way, that I really don't think she could have refused me. Her brother, Captain Clopper, was in a line regiment, and helped me as much as ever he could: he swore I was such a ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter; and that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The Hanoverian (another of the party) was a pale, bloated, young man, whose father had made a large fortune in London as an army contractor. He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature, but a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... "employers and employed are to blame. I think myself it's the result of a world tendency towards hustle ... to get the thing done as quickly as possible without regard to the quality of it. I suppose a modern contractor would break his heart if he were asked to spend his lifetime on one cathedral ... but people were proud to do that in the Middle Ages. We'd build half a dozen cathedrals while a Middle Ages man ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... his thick lips, or that the sweet, unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of acumen" whose father-in-law had made a fortune as a war-contractor in the late conflict with Turkey. All these voices blended in a symphonic source of inspiration for me. It was divine music in more senses ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... you allow me to commit crimes and ruin poor families!' Is that sufficiently explicit? Do you know what he means by speculations? He buys up land in his own name, then he finds men of straw to run up houses upon it. These men make a bargain with a contractor to build the houses, paying them by bills at long dates; then in consideration of a small sum they leave my husband in possession of the houses, and finally slip through the fingers of the deluded contractors ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... subject upon which he was ever seduced into a eulogium. He strictly practised what he professed, and both as a merchant, and afterwards as a commissioner for victualling the navy, his conduct was without stain. He would not accept the slightest favour of any sort from a contractor; and when any present was sent to him whilst at the Victualling Office, he would politely return it, with the intimation that "he had made it a rule not to accept anything from any person engaged with the office." When he found his powers failing, he prepared for ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... laugh and had placed them in the most comfortable chairs of his little bookish den, as cordially as if they were the best friends he had in the world. Now the young priest looked old and the half-minute had done it. He was just an enthusiastic boy when the contractor and architect arrived; but he was a care-filled man now, as he sat and nervously passed a handkerchief over his forehead, to find it wet, though the room was none too warm. He seemed to be surmounting an actual physical barrier when he spoke to the ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... long as Dennis was on hand to take his place he couldn't see why Mr. Perkins was dissatisfied. To tell the truth, John had recently imbibed some more or less capitalistic—or anticapitalistic—doctrines, and he was quite incapable of understanding why, if a street-contractor, for instance, was permitted by the laws of the land to sublet the work for which he had contracted, he, John, should not be permitted to sublet his contract to Dennis, piecemeal, or even as a whole, if he saw ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... Penetanguishene road has introduced English breeds of cattle and sheep of the best kind. He was, and perhaps still is, contractor for the troops, and his stock is well worth seeing; he lives a few miles from Barrie. Thus the garrison is constantly supplied with finer meat than any other station in Canada, although more out of the world and in the wilderness ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... referred to in Article 33 is presumed to exist if the goods are consigned to enemy authorities, or to a contractor established in the enemy country who, as a matter of common knowledge, supplies articles of this kind to the enemy. A similar presumption arises if the goods are consigned to a fortified place belonging to the enemy, or other place serving as a base for the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... all the roads now made continuous, and bringing the enterprise to a successful issue with a skill possible only to first-class commercial genius. The former of these gentlemen is Financial Director and Contractor, the latter, Engineer-in-Chief, Vice-President, and General Manager of the line. At any other period than this their success would have been widely talked of as a great national benefit. Even now let us not forget the public-spirited men ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... communicate advantages, to advance material welfare, and to raise the tone of morals. Such, and not less, is the mission of the merchant and the trader. For myself, I am proud to know that I am the son of a contractor for public works, whose good reputation was the best part of the heritage which descended to ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... because Sir John grew close and refused to spend money in doing them up. But there was the trouble with Edward Gunning, the footman, a clever, good-looking young fellow, who had been apprenticed to a bricklayer and contractor, but took to service instead, he did no good in that; for, in spite of all I could say, he would take more than was good for him, and then Sir John ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... from the traditions of the schoolmasters. The mind is not in all respects like a lumber-yard. It is, to be sure, a place for storing up knowledge, just as the yard is a deposit for lumber. But there the analogy ceases and the mind begins to resemble more the contractor and builder. There is planing, sawing, and hammering; the materials collected are prepared, fitted, and mortised together, and a building fit for use begins to rise. Knowledge also is for use, and ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... the spring of 1870 the Indians, who had approached the post during the night, stole twenty-one head of horses from a government contractor. They also ran off some of the government animals, and among the number my pony, Powder Face. Company I of the Fifth Cavalry was immediately ordered out after the savages, and I was directed to accompany them as trailer. We discovered ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Correspondent that he had bought No. 39 for one thousand guineas, gives it up to somebody unknown for a couple of hundred pounds; the Marquis of Lansdowne pretends to have no knowledge whatever of the commissions to which the London Correspondent of the Bleater swore him, but allows a Railway Contractor to cut him out for half the money. Similar examples might be multiplied. Shame, shame, on these ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... then, with his plans and schemes, he saw the builder and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or seven hundred—but James had better see the plumber and fitter who was going to instal the new hot water and sanitary system. James was a little dashed. He had calculated much less. Having ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... pay a contractor two dollars per month for food, they not being permitted to eat anything at the hotel. A coolie's board costs about five cents per day. For this he gets an abundance of coarse rice and cabbage spiced ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... a half-mile of twelve-inch steel pipe up to that limestone deposit," he remarked to Parker, who had reined his horse beside Don Mike's. "Only way to run your crushed rock down to the concrete mixer at the dam-site. You'll save a heap of money on delivering the rock, at any rate. Who's your contractor, Mr. Parker?" ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... evening heard an explosion at the door of his cottage. He ran out, and found a fuse burning, lying where it had been cast, while a volley of large stones whizzed past his head. There had been some litigation between a man named Callaghan and a road contractor, and Geary had allowed the road contractor's men to take their food in wet weather under ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... all constructed in the contractor's yard at Bridgeport, and were towed across the Sound on a scow. They were set up and braced temporarily by the derrick boat, and then the floor and deck were ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Reinforced Concrete Pier Construction • Eugene Klapp
... been dispelled by unremunerative Government contracts," said a contractor at the Liverpool Bankruptcy Court. It is good to read for once of the Government getting the best of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... job of bricklaying, carpentering, or other work, it was customary for the shrewd contractor to hire one or more "rushers." Nominally the "rusher" was paid regular union wages. But secretly the contractor paid him double wages, or more than double wages. The "rusher" worked at high pressure hour after hour, day after day. The others could not possibly ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... malinger in German eyes: so they got "Kiboko" and their rations reduced, because, forsooth, a man who could not work could also not eat. To "Kiboko" a prisoner of war and an Indian soldier is a flagrant offence against the laws of war. But to the contractor there were no laws but of his making, and he laid on thirty lashes with the rhinoceros hide Kiboko to teach these stiff-necked "coolies" not to sham again. And as these soldiers lay half dead with fever on the road, their German jailers gave orders that their mouths ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... A prominent contractor, builder and brick-maker in Thomasville, Ga., employs from one hundred to three hundred Negroes constantly in all branches of his business. He says: "They are a patient, reliable class of workers. If a man will be fair with them and do as he agrees, he will ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... officers, I must say she was a most indisputable tub; and if there is an individual who deserves to be turned slowly before the fire in her engine-room, so as to be kept in a state of perpetual blister, it is the Parsee contractor who furnished the provisions, for so meagre was the supply that we could barely satisfy the cravings ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... and equipments under the bed, and laid the other things back in the chests, closed the lids and went out to take a look at the post. Towards evening, a soldier came for orders for beef, and I learned how to manage that. I was told that we bought our meats direct from the contractor; I had to state how much and what cuts I wished. Another soldier came to bring us milk, and I asked Jack who was the milkman, and he said, blessed if he knew; I learned, afterwards, that the soldiers roped some of the wild Texas cows that were kept in one of the Government corrals, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... friend of mine—a railway contractor, Mr. Louis Schnoor—must be at that time in Araguary, looking after the construction of the new railway line which will eventually join Araguary to the capital of Goyaz. I went in search of him, stumbling along the terrible roads with deep holes and pools of water and mud. As luck would have ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... very near its attainment, by a scandalous transaction, in which, although he was nearly eighty years of age, he played the principal part. He colluded with a notary, named Bachetti, to falsify the will of one Vitelli, a wealthy contractor, inserting in the place of the testator's two orphan nieces that of his own natural son. The affair having been dragged to light, Gregory XVI. deprived him of his office, and he ended his days in disgrace and retirement. His fondness for worldly pelf clung to him in his very ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the customs-house, a dummy engine noisily plies up and down among the long-horned carabaos and piles of merchandise. Types of all nations are encountered here. The immigration office swarms with Chinamen herded together, rounded up by some contractor. Every Chinaman must have his photograph, his number, and description in the immigration officer's possession. Indian merchants, agents of the German, Spanish, and English business firms are looking after new ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... will not soon forget him. I am told that his grandfather, John Brown, was an officer in the Revolution; that he himself was born in Connecticut about the beginning of this century, but early went with his father to Ohio. I heard him say that his father was a contractor who furnished beef to the army there, in the war of 1812; that he accompanied him to the camp, and assisted him in that employment, seeing a good deal of military life,—more, perhaps, than if he had been a soldier; for he was often present at the ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... including in all about 23,600 ft. of single-track tunnels. The contract had novel features, and seemed to be peculiarly suitable for the unknown risks and the unusual magnitude of the work. A fixed amount was named as contractor's profit. If the actual cost of the work when completed, including this sum named as contractor's profit, should be less than a certain estimated amount named in the contract, the contractor should have one-half of the saving. If, on the other hand, the actual cost ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Alfred Noble
... of relating the structure to the site concerned him not at all, nor did it enter his head that a house could face anywhere except towards the road. As for the contractor, it was not for him to reason why, but to build. So they went to work and a house entirely made up of good things done in the wrong way was the result. An outcropping of rock meant expensive blasting, so the magazine-pictured ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... joined to abuse— Is not the fault of poor Russians or Jews; 'Tisn't the middleman more than the factor, 'Tisn't, no 'tisn't, the sub-contractor; 'Tisn't machinery. No! In fact, What Sweating is, in a manner exact, After much thinking we cannot define. Who is to blame for it? Well, we incline To think that the Sweated (improvident elves!) Are, at the bottom, to blame themselves! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... one of the new Central India lines, and wrote to him for some sort of work. The contractor said that if Mulvaney could pay the passage he would give him command of a gang of coolies for old sake's sake. The pay was eighty-five rupees a month, and Dinah Shadd said that if Terence did not accept she would make his life a "basted purgathory." Therefore the Mulvaneys came out as "civilians," ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... had no exercise court to their prison, and the inmates were not permitted to speak to one another, but ate their meals in dead silence, and walked back to their cells with folded arms, and had their only occupation working for a sweat-shop contractor; this on the outskirts of the pious city of Wilmington, with no less than ninety-one churches! The writer was informed that he would return to this institution regularly every week unless he abandoned his godless habit of playing tennis on a private club court on ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... a secret. But at the mention of "gold" Miguel Delazes, the head ox driver, locked up quickly, and sauntered over to where Tom and the others were seated on the grass. This Delazes was a Mexican labor contractor, and it was through him that Tom had hired the other men ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... times when any addition is a subtraction. Some years ago, White House at Washington—the residence of the American Presidents—was in the hands of the painters and decorators. Two large entrance doors had been painted to represent black walnut. The contractor ordered his men to scrape and clean them in readiness for repainting, and they set to work. But when their knives penetrated to the solid timber, they discovered to their astonishment that it was heavy mahogany of a most exquisite natural ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... furnishes striking evidence to this effect. Early in the morning the men were brought to a standstill in their work until Colonel Gordon arrived to decide some doubtful or disputed matter. It was noticed that his bedroom window was wide open, and the contractor's manager was induced to go up and knock at his door for instructions. Gordon opened his door a little way, and exclaimed in a testy and irritable tone, "Presently, presently." He made his regular appearance at eight o'clock, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger |
