LABOR (LAND UNIT). A labor (pronounced lah-bór) was a Spanish land unit measuring 177 acres. Under the Mexican colonization act by which the first settlers entered the Stephen F. Austin colony in Texas, heads of families engaged in farming were to receive a labor of land each. Cattle raisers received a sitio or league. Most of the original settlers combined ranching and farming and received a league and a labor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1925; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1949; New York: AMS Press, 1970).