On the record
Hands that made food made powder, and iron for railways was iron for guns.
Said by
W.E.B. Du Bois
Source
gutenberg.orgHands that made food made powder, and iron for railways was iron for guns.
This statement illustrates the duality of labor, where the same hands that create also contribute to destruction.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.