self to a few thinking persons by building up
an excellent industrial school for his people. He came off that
platform amid scenes of almost hysterical enthusiasm and was
thenceforth proclaimed as the leader of his race, the Moses of his
people, and one of America's great men.

In this epoch-making speech Booker Washington had presented a solution
of an apparently insoluble problem. He had offered a platform upon
which, as Clark Howell said in the Atlanta _Constitution_, "both
races, blacks and whites, could stand with full justice to each." In
the course of the speech he told this story: "A ship lost at sea for
many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the
unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: 'Water, water; we die of
thirst!' The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back: 'Cast
down your bucket where you are.' A second time the signal, 'Water,
water, send us water!' ran up from the distressed vessel, and was
answered: 'Cast down your bucket where you are.' And a third and
fourth signal for water was answered, 'Cast down your bucket where you
are.' The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the
injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh,
sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River." He then appealed
to his own people to "cast down their buckets where they were" by
making friends with their white neighbors in every manly way, by
training themselves where they were in agriculture, in mechanics, in
commerce, instead of trying to better their condition by migration.
And finally to the Southern white people he appealed "to cast down
their buckets where they were" by using and training the Negroes whom
they knew rather than seeking to import foreign laborers whom they did
not know.

When he reached the crux and climax of the speech--the delicate matter
of the relations between the races, socially--he held up his right
hand with his fingers outstretched and said: "In all things that are
purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the
hand in all things essential to mutual progress." At this remark the
audience went wild! Ladies stood on their chairs and waved their
handkerchiefs, while men threw up their hats, danced, and catcalled.
An old ante-bellum Negro, who had been sitting crosslegged in one of
the aisles, wept tears of pride and joy as he swayed from side to
side. By this statement, with what had led up to it, Booker Washington
cap