A race which cannot save its earnings, which spends all it makes and goes in debt when it is sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization, no matter under what laws it may chance to be.
Douglass argues that financial prudence and the ability to save are essential for a people's advancement and societal progress.
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More from Frederick Douglass
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.