[My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass]@TWC D-Link bookMy Bondage and My Freedom CHAPTER XXV 84/171
To{338} eat the fruit of his own toil, to clothe his person with the work of his own hands, is considered stealing.
He toils that another may reap the fruit; he is industrious that another may live in idleness; he eats unbolted meal that another may eat the bread of fine flour; he labors in chains at home, under a burning sun and biting lash, that another may ride in ease and splendor abroad; he lives in ignorance that another may be educated; he is abused that another may be exalted; he rests his toil-worn limbs on the cold, damp ground that another may repose on the softest pillow; he is clad in coarse and tattered raiment that another may be arrayed in purple and fine linen; he is sheltered only by the wretched hovel that a master may dwell in a magnificent mansion; and to this condition he is bound down as by an arm of iron. From this monstrous relation there springs an unceasing stream of most revolting cruelties.
The very accompaniments of the slave system stamp it as the offspring of hell itself.
To ensure good behavior, the slaveholder relies on the whip; to induce proper humility, he relies on the whip; to rebuke what he is pleased to term insolence, he relies on the whip; to supply the place of wages as an incentive to toil, he relies on the whip; to bind down the spirit of the slave, to imbrute and destroy his manhood, he relies on the whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, the pillory, the bowie knife the pistol, and the blood-hound.
These are the necessary and unvarying accompaniments of the system.
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