XXIX
Robert went over his propaganda material. There was no time to read all of it carefully, but enough to give him a clearer idea of the Tribe’s purpose and to present, in more clear-cut fashion, arguments for joining it. Its objects had not appeared very plain. At the initiation, in Griffith’s office, in talking with Lister, there seemed to be a simple enoughmission—Americanism, supremacy of the white race, the maintenance of law and order, the avoidance of unnecessary strikes, the protection of womanhood. Yes, undoubtedly all this was a glorious task. But when one came to analyze these general propositions their meaning became vaguer. It was like founding a society to uphold the Constitution. In 1787, before it was certain whether a nationalistic sentiment would crystallize, there might be some meaning in founding such a society. But no one would think of forming such an association now. And then Robert remembered that upholding the Constitution was part of the Tribe’s creed. It was like establishing an organization to uphold the foundation of our government. It was like forming agovernment—only a secretgovernment—within a government.
Once, in his senior year at prep school, Robert had attempted to become a debater. He joined a debating society and was assigned to a team which was defending the merits of a certain plank in the platform of the Bull Moose party against a similar plank of the Democratic party platform. He had entered the preparation of the arguments full of enthusiasm. The Progressive platform was so much broader, so much more constructive. Then, on the night of the debate, his enthusiasm had suddenly vanished. He had forgotten his arguments, or rather they seemed petty. Each party was trying to solve the same problem. There was merely a slight difference in the phrasing. Each party had tried to word it as broadly aspossible without committing itself too definitely. Robert had rattled off the words he had memorized, sat down in confusion for a moment and then walked out without waiting for the verdict, which was, of course, against him. That had ended his career as a debater. He had long forgotten what the plankwas—the handling of the trust problem, relations between labor and capital, or what; but the sense of mortification, mingled with one of his superiority to persons who spent their time in trying to prove things, remained.
The Tribe, he knew, was definitely opposed to the entry of the Knights of Columbus in politics. Fair enough. He was happy to be in that fight. But some of the questions on the “Do You Know That” card seemed to be beside the mark. They aimed at Catholics en masse, just like the debaters at prep school had aimed questions and set traps for their opponents, not to clarify the issue, but to win. Granted that no religious organization ought to enter American politics, why denounce the Catholics because the Pope is enthroned and crowned, sends and receives ambassadors and has 116 “princes” (bishops and higher ecclesiastical officers presumably), in the United States? That was begging the question. That was accusing the Catholics of being Catholics, condemning them because of the organization of their church. There was no proof that the 116 papal princes had the remotest connection with American politics. The suggestion was conveyed, of course, by innuendo. Then there was a statement that the Knights of Columbus had been the only sectarian or fraternal body permitted to do war relief work in the army and navy. That was a plain mis-statement. Any soldier knew better than that. There were the Y. M. C. A. and Salvation Army. And didn’t the Jews and the Lutherans have some sort of organization? Yes, he was sure of it. If the Y. M. C. A. and the Salvation Army were not considered sectarian or fraternal organizations, then that was only getting back to a debating society quibble on words. Well, when he got to Chicago, he would talk it over withthe man in charge of the Dearborn Statistical Bureau. Together they would work out a better, yes, a fairer, set of cards and circulars, some that actually pointed out the menace of the Knights of Columbus in politics.
So far Robert had been fairly successful. At least five of his fellow passengers had expressed a desire to join. He had their names and addresses and would have cards sent to them, one every week or so, so that it would not seem that they were being rushed. One of the converts had handed Robert a copy of a violently anti-Catholic publication with a chuckle.
“Want to read something good?”
It was an account of how a Catholic priest had been accused of intimate relations with a young girl who had come to confess to him. The man winked and gleefully expressed his indignation. His little dark eyes sparkled.
“They ought to all be wiped out root and stem,” he said vehemently. “They’re all alike, with their round faces and their fat stomachs. Every one. A bunch of hypocrites, under the rule of an Eye-talian pot-entate, taxing the people and living on the fat of the land. Why, it’s a well-known fact that every priest has a cellar full of wine and that they get drunk every night.”
He recited other “facts” and then appealed to history. He had just read in a previous issue of the same publication of the Spanish Inquisition.
“If they had the same power now they’d hold an inquisition right here,” he declared. “They’re an intolerant lot and if I had my way I’d make every one swear he wasn’t a Catholic and those who wouldn’t swear, I’d hang.”
The defender of tolerance gleefully read the card Hamilton handed him.
“Every word of that is true,” he repeated after every statement. “Yes, sir, every word. Yes, sir, we demand separation of church and state?”
For a moment the phrase “separation of church and state” struck Hamilton as an oddanachronism—it was as though he had demanded “no taxation without representation”—andthen he remembered that that was one of the purposes of the Tribe as outlined on the card. States’ rights was another one of the planks with a mustyflavor—it went back also to the Constitutional Convention, to gentlemen in knee breeches and wigs ardently debating how much of the power of the sovereign states was to be delegated to the Confederation itself.
But the tolerant gentleman who wished to hang all Catholics waxed enthusiastic over these demands and Hamilton encouraged him.
The other converts were clerks or secretaries, the most important of them the secretary of a commercial club of a suburb ofChicago—Parkins, a short, blond, plump man, with an engaging smile and a penchant for pep talks. He wore rimless eye-glasses suspended by a gold chain, which he frequently removed from his nose to breathe upon and wipe with a silk handkerchief. Parkins had his eye, a very pale one, on a bigger job, managing director of the Chamber of Commerce of one of the more important cities of the Mississippi Valley and systematically spoke before various civic and commercial organizations. He had both spoken and written for trade journals, house organs, etc., considerably more about the human will than Jonathan Edwards and William James combined. His lectures, called “The Will to Success” and “Selling Yourself Through Your Will” were called “classics.” They were universally accepted, emulated and followed.
Parkins went through a regular set of exercises in developing the will every morning as ordinarymen—now and then, when it is not too late, or too cold or toowarm—go through setting-up exercises.
“Iwillget up and shut the window,” he would say the first thing his eyes opened in the morning. Then Spartan-like he would hop out, take three deep breaths and close the window.
“Iwilltake a cold shower,” he would say next. And soon to the breakfast table.
“Iwilleat only one three-minute egg and one slice of unbutteredtoast.... Iwillcatch the 8:16 express, although it is 8:12 now.... Iwillkeep smiling no matter if I must wait for the next train. Not failure, but low aim is crime.... Iwillget through with my dictation by 10, write my speech by 11 and get through the committee meeting by 12.”
“It’s the little things that count,” said Parkins to Robert with a smile. “To succeed in the big undertakings of life, you must succeed in the smallest undertakings. I constantly exercise my will. ‘Shall’ is the weakest word in the English language. Always say ‘I Will,’ which is the strongest word. The second strongest word is ‘Boost.’ Will to Boost! Boost yourself! Boost your community! You know what Emerson said about the mouse trap. If you construct a better mouse trap or cause two blades of grass to wax where only one grew before, the world will beat a highway to your portal. The sublimest poem in the English language, second perhaps to the Psalm of Life and, of course, the poetry of the King James version of the Scriptures, is Invictus. It means Unconquerable and is unquestionably one of the greatest poems ever written by an American! It ends with the immortal lines:
‘Under the buffetings of FateMy head is bloody, but unbound.’
‘Under the buffetings of FateMy head is bloody, but unbound.’
‘Under the buffetings of Fate
My head is bloody, but unbound.’
Sublime! By the power of the will man is the captain of his soul!”
“Yes, it’s wonderful,” agreed Hamilton, seizing an entering wedge. “And don’t you think that just as the individual should be the captain of his soul, the superior element, the element of society that corresponds to the will, should be the captain of the nation’s soul?” He had hit out blindly at a figure of speech and it had come out surprisingly smooth.
“That’s exactly right! I must make a mental note of that thought. I will use it in my next address.”
Robert amplified on his original idea. The captain of theship of state, the metaphor warped slightly, was the bestelement—the white, native-born Protestant. Parkins blew on his glasses and said the thought was wonderful, if not sublime. He added that we must steer away from the shoals of foreign immigration.
“Chicago will need all its ‘I will’ spirit to solve the problem that is now confronting it.” Robert wished that Parkins would leave out a verb now and then, and not speak in a succession of quotation marks and exclamation points. “During the war, I am sorry to say, thousands of Negroes came to Chicago to take their place beside the white man in the factory, mill and shop.”
Parkins viewed the coming of the Negroes to Chicago, East St. Louis and the other northern manufacturing cities as a phenomenon akin to, say, the descent of locusts. The fact that northern manufacturers made frantic efforts to bring colored men by sending their agents into the South and offering higher wages than they had ever received before; the fact that this labor had been sorely needed in the essentialindustries—to convert metal into guns and shells, textiles into uniforms, leather into army shoes, food animals intomeat—he seemed to disregard. The Negroes had come, as though they were a tribe of invaders or a visitation from an angry god.
“Wewilldominate!” he said suddenly, pounding one plump palm with a plump fist. “We native-born, white Protestants, wewillguide the ship of state. Wewillbe captains of our national soul. Hamilton, we must say it! Listen to this: (He sang in a thumping, tuneless voice, under his breath so that the others should not hear him, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:)
‘Wewillto be AmericansIn our land of Liberty.Wewillto be-a loyal sonsOf the Bra-ave and the Free.’
‘Wewillto be AmericansIn our land of Liberty.Wewillto be-a loyal sonsOf the Bra-ave and the Free.’
‘Wewillto be Americans
In our land of Liberty.
Wewillto be-a loyal sons
Of the Bra-ave and the Free.’
That’s just the beginning of the song we sing every Tuesday after our noon luncheon. Don’t you think it brings out youridea strongly? After it we sing ‘K-K-K-Katy,’ to take away the psychological effect of singing such a serious song and to leave them in a better mood. There is a great deal of psychology about getting up a song-fest or an inspiration meeting that the layman probably never realizes.”
He endorsed the Tribal idea in toto and became enthusiastic over the phrase about doing away with unnecessary strikes. (Robert glossed over the state’s rights idea as unimportant anyway.)
“The alien and the Jew must be kept under control, too,” said Parkins. Hamilton knew that Jews were ineligible for membership, but had not read the pamphlet dealing with that phase of propaganda and was uncertain whether they were to be actually objects of attack, like the Negroes. In fact, it was not quite clear to him whether Jews and Catholics were to be lumped together with Negroes as undesirables or simply to be attacked whenever they attempted to control the government.
“In the little suburb where I chance to have found my place,” said Parkins, “the Jews are already invading business. They are bankers, merchants and professional men. They are crowding out the dominant Protestantelement—the element that founded our little city and which still remains the bulwark of its morality. Not satisfied with getting a foothold into business there, as, I have no doubt, they are doing everywhere else in this country, the Jews are bringing their families into the most exclusive residential district and cheapening it. They are like the camel in the little story, which you have no doubt heard. It seems that an Arab in crossing the Sahara had pitched his tent one night near a beautiful and verdant oasis.”
He continued, with relatively few errors, the fable of the camel, who, having been allowed by the Arab to stick its head through the window of the tent, next entered through the front door, and then gradually ousted the sheik from his humble mat of rushes before the hearth.
“It was a mistake for our forefathers ever to open this land of the free to all the nations of Europe to use as adumping ground for their worst elements and as a breeding place for un-Americanism and Radicalism. It is too bad that the American party, I believe that was the name of that splendid party that flourished in the middle of the last century, should ever have been allowed to perish; and, if I mistake not the pulse of the people, the revival of the Trick Track Tribe will, in effect, also resurrect Americanism.”
Robert remembered hazily reading of the American party. It had sometimes been referred to contemptuously by its enemies as the Know Nothing party, and the oddity of the name and the fact that it had been organized in Georgia had emphasized it sufficiently to make it stick among the other oddities of American political history in his brain. As they discussed the old Know Nothing party, little details of it came gradually back, and the resemblance between its platform, drawn up before the Civil War, and the present platform of the Trick Track Tribe struck him. One plank restricted all political offices to native Americans. Another would prevent persons swearing allegiance to any foreign potentate orpower—by George, almost the same phrasing!—from office. A third would make it more difficult for aliens to become naturalized, extending the residence requirement to twenty-one years.
“The program of the Tribeislike the old American party,” said Hamilton. “Why, there’s even something about separation of church and state in it!”
“State’s rights” was another plank of the old Know Nothing party. But here was somethingpeculiar—the old plank, allowing states to preserve institutions, had been drawn (Robert remembered it distinctly now, both from his American history class and from conversations at home), for the purpose of preserving slavery. Had Griffith and Lister simply lifted the old platform of the Know Nothing party? Parkins, of course, would probably not remember the pro-slavery sentiment behind the old states’ right plank. He was always misquoting phrases. He had a prodigious capacity for remembering things inaccurately. But, in general, Robert wondered, would it be wise to speak to other Northernersof the similarity of the Tribe’s program with the old Know Nothing party? In the South, he knew, it would be untactful, to say the least, to introduce a political party or secret organization as one that Abraham Lincoln had favored or that Jefferson Davis had repudiated. It wouldn’t stand a ghost of a show. But the old Know Nothing party, the object of which was practically the same as that of the Trick Track Tribe had been repudiated by Lincoln and, of course, by all abolitionists.
Parkins didnotremember the pro-slavery flavor of the old American party.
“I believe the party actually elected a few representatives to Congress,” said Parkins, pursing his lips and coming as near as he could to scowling in an effort to remember. “Through the Tribe the American party might actually be revived. Yes, it could. If the American party had only triumphed fifty years ago we should not now have to face the problem raised by the hordes of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.”
Robert remembered that the party was active not fifty, but seventy years ago, and that at that time it was not southern and eastern European immigrants who were being opposed, but western Europeans. The aliens whom the Know Nothings referred to as the scum of Europe and would have disenfranchised were English, Germans and Irish.
“Er—a—yes,” agreed Robert. “It would have kept out the undesirables.”
Parkins promised to use “what little influence he had in spreading the doctrines of the Tribe” and they agreed to get together and work out a constructive program for “putting over” the Trick Track Tribe among the business men of greater Chicago.
The colored porter came through the Pullman, announcing the proximity of Chicago and began brushing off the passengers at the farther end of the car. It was almost noon. Robert looked out of the window. For a longtime—hours itseemed—they had been running through rows of ugly factories and houses, rather grimy and bare, with onlyoccasional patches of sooty grass to relieve the monotony. They passed under stiff steel bridges and along bare walls, beneath the level of the street. Then the ground very slowly met the tracks. The stretches ofground—vacant lots, factory sites, parks, were flat and gray. Dirty, yellow and orange street cars jerked along the level streets. Not a hill in sight. Interminable rows of stores, factories, habitations. Increasing soot. A glimpse of great buildings beyond. Then they passed under a huge dark shed. Robert wondered whether McCall would meet him. He had written Bill a week ago. He thought of Dorothy. He felt lonely, oppressed by the massiveness of the dingy station and of the city. Parkins was standing up. So were the other passengers. The train came to a stop and Robert, in line, slowly made his way to the door.