land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly
relations with the southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I
would say: 'Cast down your bucket where you are, cast it down in making
friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are
surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in
domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is
well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to
bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that
the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing
is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our
greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may
overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of
our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion
as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill
into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we
learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the
ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it
learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a
poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor
should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities."

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