Economic Effects on the Life of Booker T. Washington
Imagine you wake up in the morning and go straight to work. You do whatever you are told and usually have to pick crops. Your work hours are from whenever you are told to start to whenever you are allowed to go to sleep. You are given little to eat and sometimes little to drink as well. For your labor you get no pay. You must live in a small, cramped log cabin that has many openings which make it cold in the winter. Apart from that, you have practically no rights because you are considered property. This was the life of an average slave living on a plantation in the 1800’s. This way of life was shared by hundreds of thousands of black people in the United States. Among these was Booker T. Washington who was born a slave in Virginia in 1856. Washington’s early years were as a slave until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. However, Washington, as most other blacks, continued to work after he was free although he was a child. He worked in a salt mine and helped support his family. It was during this time that Washington came to believe that education was a very much needed thing. Despite the many struggles caused by the economic system, Washington was able to receive an education. Economics affected Washington’s life in many ways.
When the United States economic system was based on slavery, life was good for many whites, yet poor for most blacks. Blacks lived as described above while whites received money for the labor of blacks. Southern whites benefited much from slavery and in the south there was no need for the jobs which black slaves occupied. Blacks also did work such as cooking and cleaning which left whites very inexperienced in such skills. Most blacks hated being enslaved but those that tried to escape and were caught where severely punished.
After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, confederate blacks were declared free people. However many blacks did...