Peter Mumme was a labourer on a big collective farm near the border.

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With no formal education, he busied himself as a sharecropper and day-labourer, working on railways and in mines until the Depression hit.

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Olivia Lum, ranked 35 on the list, was born in poverty in Malaysia, and narrowly escaped a future as a child labourer.

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But the labourer is often so desperate for a loan, without other sources of credit, that there is little real choice involved.

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According to a recent survey by the Tokyo city government, 60% of the city's homeless say their last job was as a day labourer.

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Thus one person in five in the six-county area is now a Latino, making a living, likely as not, as a gardener, labourer, office cleaner or waiter.

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The state pension begins at 65, but after a day labourer turns 55, says Takao Yamauchi, who runs a local welfare centre, his chances of picking up work are slim.

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Women would in fact work for less, so less they got: in one 1840s London parish, on average, 45% of a male labourer's pay for single women, 65% for widows with children.

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But no clear contract is offered—the unfortunate bonded labourer often winds up working years to repay such loans, and the bond is even often passed on to children after the original labourer's death.

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At the end of a sandy track leading out of town into the surrounding scrubland, in a house made of rough-hewn branches covered in clay, Lucia Vieira looks after her two children while her husband is out earning a mere 5 reais a day as a farm labourer.

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