Under present plans there will be no voice or law or custom to protect labor, no trades unions, no eight-hour laws, no factory legislation,--nothing of that great body of legislation built up in modern days to protect mankind from sinking to the level of beasts of burden.
Du Bois warns about the lack of protections for laborers under current plans, highlighting the need for labor rights.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.