Washington then gave a stern message "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. ...
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. "As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours."
Ever so practical, Washington counseled, "Progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. ... The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house."
Washington had a dream of bringing "our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth." He called for "that higher good that, let us pray God, will come in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law."
Washington's speech wowed his audience and was widely reprinted in newspapers all over the country. A faraway Boston newspaper editorialized that "the sensation that it has caused in the press has never been equalled."
President Bush, stop looking for "willing workers" from other countries. Cast down your bucket in America and guide these displaced Americans to jobs now held by those who have no right to be in our country.