I finally got around to reading this classic. W.E.B. Du Bois' insights are as sharp as they are still relevant, over a century later. His reflections on the role of the pridon system could have been written days ago. His condemnation of "laziness" and "shiftlessness" is a bit jarring at times. However, being familiar with his later intellectual and political trajectory, traces of which are already visible in this work, I don't think this is how he would have approached the refusal / lack of desire to work later in life.