One portion of my address at Chicago seemed to have been misunderstood
by the Southern press, and some of the Southern papers took occasion
to criticise me rather strongly. These criticisms continued for
several weeks, until I finally received a letter from the editor of the
Age-Herald, published in Birmingham, Ala., asking me if I would say just
what I meant by this part of the address. I replied to him in a letter
which seemed to satisfy my critics. In this letter I said that I had
made it a rule never to say before a Northern audience anything that
I would not say before an audience in the South. I said that I did not
think it was necessary for me to go into extended explanations; if
my seventeen years of work in the heart of the South had not been
explanation enough, I did not see how words could explain. I said that
I made the same plea that I had made in my address at Atlanta, for the
blotting out of race prejudice in "commercial and civil relations." I
said that what is termed social recognition was a question which I never
discussed, and then I quoted from my Atlanta address what I had said
there in regard to that subject.

In meeting crowds of people at public gatherings, there is one type of
individual that I dread. I mean the crank. I have become so accustomed
to these people now that I can pick them out at a distance when I see
them elbowing their way up to me. The average crank has a long beard,
poorly cared for, a lean, narrow face, and wears a black coat. The front
of his vest and coat are slick with grease, and his trousers bag at the
knees.

In Chicago, after I had spoken at a meeting, I met one of these fellows.
They usually have some process for curing all of the ills of the world
at once. This Chicago specimen had a patent process by which he said
Indian corn could be kept through a period of three or four years, and
he felt sure that if the Negro race in the South would, as a whole,
adopt his process, it would settle the whole race question. It mattered
nothing that I tried to convince him that our present problem was to
teach the Negroes how to produce enough corn to last them through one
year. Another Chicago crank had a scheme by which he wanted me to join
him in an effort to close up all the National banks in the country. If
that was done, he felt sure it would put the Negro on his feet.

The number of people who stand ready to consume one's time, to no
purpose, is almost countless. At one ti