"
Washington then turned to the whites in the audience and urged
them to start where they were in building national prosperity
and racial unity. He said:
"To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of
foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of
the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own
race, 'Cast down your bucket where you are.' Cast it down among
the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose
fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved
treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your
bucket among these people who have, without strikes and
labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded
your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the
bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent
representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your
bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are
doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and
heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make
blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories.
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