“A ragged, ebony giant, squatted on the floor in one of the aisles, watched the orator with burning eyes and tremulous face until the supreme burst of applause came, and then the tears ran down his face. Most of the negroes in the audience were crying, perhaps without knowing just why. “At the close of the speech Governor Bulloch rushed across the stage and seized the orator’s hand. Another shout greeted this demonstration, and for a few minutes the two men stood facing each other, hand in hand.”[19] It was a wonderful speech. It contained much good advice both to the whites and to the negroes. It was fair to both. As Clark Howell, editor of the _Atlanta Constitution_, said, “It was a platform upon which both races, black and white, could stand with full justice to each other.”[20] In the speech he told the following 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 buckets 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 buckets where you are.’ And a third and a fourth signal for water was answered, ‘Cast down your buckets 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.” Washington 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 immigration. And, finally, to the white Southern 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 laborers whom they did not know.[21] Frederick Douglass had died only a few months before this great speech was made. At once from all parts of the country came the statement, “Here is the man who will take the place of Douglass as leader of the negro race.” And from that time on, Booker Washington was the accepted leader of his people in this country. He was immediately called upon to speak in all parts of the country. He was offered big sums of money to lecture. One speaker’s bureau offered him fifty thousand dollars a year. He refused all these offers of money, saying that he must give his time to Tuskegee and to the interests of his people, rather than try to make money for himself.