If you fail to give a full honest day's work, if you know that you have done only three-quarters of a day's work, or four-fifths, it may seem to you at the time that it has paid, but in the long run you lose by it.
He reflects on the long-term losses associated with not giving full effort in work.
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More from Booker T. Washington
Ever since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man did.
I was supremely happy in the opportunity of being able to assist somebody else.
In this connection I have never been able to understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves so accurately and completely…
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.