On Mother Earth by Booker T. Washington

On Mother Earth is part of the American Roots series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America's most famous writers and thinkers. Collect the whole series and display them in your home. These short works also make wonderful gifts.

In “On Mother Earth,” Booker T. Washington encourages students at his Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute to embark on their lives and invest in their future by owning, living on, and working their own land. He believed in building a great and powerful race on an agricultural foundation. “You had better begin life in a hollow tree and be a man, than begin it in a rented house and be a mere tool, the imitation of a man.”