The Chattanooga Times regards the document as “treasonable incendiarism,” and many papers denounce it as a demand for “social equality.” The New Orleans Times-Democrat says: “To the average American the most striking feature is this ‘appeal,’ aside from its attack upon Booker Washington, is its confession, virtually in so many words, that the theory of racial social equality is losing ground ‘everywhere in the United States.’ Thoughtful students of the American race problem long ago noted the steady spread of race instinct, or prejudice, into sections other than the South; but it was hardly to be expected that the blatant Negro agitators would confess that their strident demands for race equality have not only completely failed, but have helped to turn the scale against them. Such progress as the Negro has made is recorded not by aid of these aspirants for social equality, but in spite of them.” The Jersey City Journal says Negroes can vote in the North, they are educated in the North, they are only partially restricted in residence, they usually get equal pay for equal work, and the “objection to having colored people in residence sections is natural.” The Chicago Tribune “can understand and sympathize” with the signers of the protest, but points out that the positions occupied by the signers themselves show the progress of the Negro. The New York World says: “Undeniably, the black population of the United States has just grievances. So also has the white population in the United States. Race prejudice is here as it is in Europe, and blacks are not the only sufferers. There is brutal tyranny in industry, but the blacks are not the only victims. There are social limitations that are cruel and inexcusable, but the blacks are not the only ones against whom the gates are shut. “This is a world in which true men give and take. It is a world in which all must make allowances. It is a world in which, after all, men are judged not so much by race or nationality or possessions as by personal merit. Otherwise, how could a Booker Washington, born a Virginia slave, have ‘stood before kings’ and associated for the greater part of his life with the earth’s greatest and best? “We do not condemn the American men of color who have made this protest. We simply remonstrate with them. They are asking more than a white man’s chance, and in the circumstances that is inadmissible.” The Boston Globe, however, thinks that “these and other complaints are backed by educated Negroes, who demand that the old world shall know their wrongs. They deny that Dr. Washington is giving the right impression of the situation in this country. It would seem to the average person that admittedly there is much truth in the catalog of wrongs the association recites.”