According to this quotation, washington believed that.. hard work had its own kind of dignity. hard work was not more important than education. people could not prosper from common labor. people had to prosper in order to achieve freedom.

According to the quotation from Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech.

In the great leap from slavery to freedom . . . the masses of us are to live by the production of our hands . . . we shall prosper . . . as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor.

Washington believed that hard work had its own kind of dignity.