1 The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
2 That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right.
3 The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.
4 He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common.
5 God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him.
6 improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour.
7 God commanded, and his wants forced him to labour.
8 So that God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate: and the condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.
9 Right and conveniency went together; for as a man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of.
10 And my children also, being born of me, had a right to be maintained out of my labour or substance.
11 The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority.
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography By Booker T. WashingtonContext Highlight In Chapter I. 12 Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape.
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography By Booker T. WashingtonContext Highlight In Chapter I. 13 They unconsciously had imbibed the feeling that manual labour was not the proper thing for them.
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography By Booker T. WashingtonContext Highlight In Chapter I. 14 On the other hand, the slaves, in many cases, had mastered some handicraft, and none were ashamed, and few unwilling, to labour.
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography By Booker T. WashingtonContext Highlight In Chapter I. 15 Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography By Booker T. WashingtonContext Highlight In Chapter IV.