America is not another word for Opportunity
to all her sons.
It is easy for us to lose ourselves in details in endeavoring
to grasp and comprehend the real condition of a mass of human
beings. We often forget that each unit in the mass is a
throbbing human soul. Ignorant it may be, and poverty stricken,
black and curious in limb and ways and thought; and yet it
loves and hates, it toils and tires, it laughs and weeps its
bitter tears, and looks in vague and awful longing at the grim
horizon of its life,--all this, even as you and I. These black
thousands are not in reality lazy; they are improvident and
careless; they insist on breaking the monotony of toil with a
glimpse at the great town-world on Saturday; they have their
loafers and their rascals; but the great mass of them work
continuously and faithfully for a return, and under circum-
stances that would call forth equal voluntary effort from few
if any other modern laboring class. Over eighty-eight per cent
of them--men, women, and children--are farmers. Indeed,
this is almost the only industry. Most of the children get their
schooling after the "crops are laid by," and very few there
are that stay in school after the spring work has begun.
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