XXVIII
Robert was on his way to Chicago, with his credentials as Grand Bogey of the Trick Track Tribe secure in his breast pocket. In a large, black leather bag were his propaganda supplies, booklets and cards about the black peril, the yellow peril, the political activities of the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish problem, the menace of foreign immigration. He had scarcely time to look at them. Most of his supplies had, of course, been sent by express directly to the office of the Dearborn Statistical Bureau.
Before leaving Corinth, Griffith and Lister had both given him a new conception of the scope of the Trick Track Tribe. Its sphere had been called the Fourth Dimension, because like the fourth dimension it was to be invisible to outsiders, yet it was to form a part of the entire political, economic and social fabric of the country. It was to support good government against bad, combat radicalism and immorality, uphold the best traditions of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The Bogeys were to go forth like knights of old, except that they were to work unseen, in the Fourth Dimension, fighting for God and their country.
Robert had been provided with a number of cards to distribute among hisprospects—cards resembling those which he had received, with the mottoNon Silba Sed Anthraon them. Griffith had suggested that he begin proselytising on the train, and accordingly Robert studied his fellow passengers.
“Get the young fellows,” Griffith had advised. “As many of the ex-service men as you can and of fellows who weren’t drafted, but who would like to get in with men who were in the army. In the cities, of course, you’ll have to work systematically. First, get a few of the big guns: a big minister, a public official, a prominent business man. Then you can use their names in getting the rest. But on the train I’d try the young fellows.”
In the smoking car Robert tried to manipulate the conversation so as to sound the feelings of the men with whom he conversed. Everyone, of course, approved of such a generalization as Americanism, although each had his own solution of his idea of what that problem constituted.
“What we need is to get down to work and do less shouting,” was one choleric old gentleman’s rather vague recipe.
A drummer fromChicago—big cigar, diamond stickpin, dominant joviality and a talent for smuttystories—denounced theBolsheviki—but his nose was Semitic and his name was something with a “son” on the end of it.
The thin, blond man with horn-rimmedspectacles—an advertising copywriter on his way back to Chicago from avacation—said business was unusually good, it was simply a problem of going after it. None of them, in fact, had felt that the integrity of the American nation was being subverted. They were hopelessly optimistic.
When he referred to the Negro question, two men who were from the South began to take interest. One was an oldgentleman—he seemed at least seventy-five—the other, a young man, perhaps Robert’s junior by three years, on his first tripnorth—to Louisville.
“That’s a real problem,” said the young man, taking part in the conversation for the first time that evening. “Some times I think they should all be shipped over toAfrica—the whole bunch of ’em. Send ’em to Liberia. Africa’s the place for ’em all.”
He related an incident of how a Negro had stolen a hen from an uncle’s roost. A policeman, with a sense of humor, saw the darkey waddling down the street, suspiciously fat.
“Good-evening, Rastus,” said the policeman. “Nice evening.” It was the first time in his life that a policeman had ever said “good evening” to him, or, in fact, any white man.
“Yes, sah, pow’ful fine evenin’,” said the nigger uneasily, trying to conceal the hen, make a getaway and be polite to the guardian of the law at the same time.
“You’re looking fine,” said the policeman, playfully prodding him. “Wife’s cooking must agree with you.”
“Yes, pow’ful fine cooking. I gain thuty pound in one week. But I must be going home. I heah de poke chops frying on de pan and a-calling me. Good-night.”
At this moment the hen began to cackle.
“What’s that?” cried the patrolman.
“Tuck-tuck-a-wack!!”
“I’se just imitatin’ a chicken clackin’. (Tuck-tuck, tuck, tuck awah’)—hear dat? Folks says I’se de bes’ natural bo’n animal imetator in de—(Tuck, tuck, a wack.) Some folks say it’s a gift to imetate an animal so natural. Folks say I imetate better than the animal itself.—(Tuck, tuck a wack.)”
“I think if you unbuttoned your coat you could give a much better imitation.”
“No,sah! I must have it tight around my abdomen to get de true, natural soun’. (Tuck, a, luck.)”
The darky’s coat was agitated by the struggling hen, a button popped off and the bird suddenly thrust its head into view. Rastus slowly scratched his head.
“Now whare do you t’ink dat come from? IthoughtI was givin’ an onusually fine impersonation.”
Everyone laughed.
“They’re awfully funny, those coons,” said the young man. “You-all ought to see them jigging in the moonlight, playing on their banjos and dancing, all impromptu. It beats any minstrel show you-all ever saw. And they have beautiful voices. But they will lie and steal.”
He became serious.
“Of course, every race has its good sides, but the nigger has got to go, or else there won’t be any white America. In the meantime, he’s got to be kept in his place. He’s got to learn to respect the white man. Why, I read just the other day where they’re four million mulattoes in this country.”
“Well,” remarked the advertising man, dryly, “you know where they come from.”
He winked at the other Northerners, with a slight feeling of belonging to a superior group.
“What d’ye mean?”
“Well, the mulattoes come from either black mothers or white mothers. Therefore—”
The young Southerner grew very red.
“Sir, do you mean to insinuate that any white woman of the South—”
“Certainly not. I must say that I found the standards of morality in the South higher even than in Chicago or in the little Northern village where I was born. No, sir, the mulattoes are born in the South of black mothers. They are born among the purest, highest type of Anglo-Saxon manhood, upholding its traditions of race, religion and womanhood. I haven’t the least idea who their fathers are.”
The young man’s eyes blazed. Hamilton felt himself growing angry, but before he could say anything, the young man had half risen and was striking his palm excitedly with his fist.
“Sir,” he was crying, “you’ve made an insinuation against an entire class.”
He sputtered, he became unintelligible. He was going to make the other man eat his words. He denied that any respectable Southerner had ever begotten a mulatto child. Poor whites, perhaps. White trash! A white gentleman would never touch a colored woman.
“Well,” said the advertising man, with the least bit of a twinkle, “I hadn’t the least idea that I was insulting you. But what is your idea of the phenomenon?”
The youth glowered. The choleric old gentleman thrust in his oar.
“Why! Why! I observed that it was quite common for young gentlemen to ‘touch’ black women. In fact, I got the idea that it was one of your Southern traditions. Why, look here, young man, I’ve talked to twenty overseers if I’ve talked to one, and they all told me the same thing. They certainly extended true Southern hospitality to me.”He went into details. “Why, damn it, they admitted doing it themselves, not with any feeling of making a confession, either. One overseer said he always went to another plantation so as not to spoil the morale of his help!
“Now, I don’t give a whoop what you do. Black, brown, red. It’s none of my business. But what I do hate is this damn hypocrisy, all this bunk about your splendid manhood and high morality. Doggone it, I’ll bet you can’t show me a single white man south of the Mason-Dixon line—”
The young man flung his cigarette on the floor and walked out of the smoking car, muttering that if the Northerner weren’t old enough to be his grandfather he’d mop the car up with him.
Hamilton rose. “Here’s one, right here!” he said, looking the choleric gentleman in the eye.
“An exception, all right. But without getting mad about it and without putting on a high and mighty pose, tell me truthfully, aren’t you an exception? Take your own set!”
Hamilton wavered. The standards in Corinth had not been very high. Perhaps the set he knew was not a fair group. In general, it had not been considered particularly immoral. It had been the attitude of Greek or Roman gentlemen to their slaves.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps the white man is to blame. To be frank, I guess we are. Yes, it is a serious situation, and that’s exactly what we must combat.” He wished that the Jewish drummer were out of the car. It was a fine opening to talk Tribe. He could tell what the Tribe was going to do to raise moral standards and prevent the mingling of white blood with black by rigid enforcement of the code. Why were Jews excluded from membership, anyway?
The old Southerner coughed.
“I haven’t taken any part in your little argument, yet,” he said, stroking his long white beard, “for I reckon that’s something for younger and fightinger folks. But they say: Young men for fightin’ and old men for counsel. I sorto’ figgered that you fellows was sort of teasing this youngster that got mad.”
“Sure, that’s all I was doing, dad, having a little fun with him,” said the ad man. “Have a cigar?”
“No, thanks. Had enough. Too much tobacco bad for my heart. I sort-a liked the spunk o’ that young fella at that. Although nobody would a got mad at a thing like that in my day. But he’s right and you, too, young man. The nigger problem is a coming one. It’s been under cover for many years, but it’ll bob up again, sure as you’re born. Now, you might not know it, but I fit with the boys in gray; ’listed in ’65. I was a youngster, but I got in. I got a wound in my right thigh by a Yank musketball, I can show you, in the last engagement of thewar—but I’ve no feelings against the North for that. Not any more. No, the South has forgotten the war. We’re all one country now.”
He went into a circumlocutory account of his experiences in the Civil War, of his home-coming and of the first post bellum days, while the rest listened respectfully and asked questions from time to timeto show that they were still interested.
“You’re wondering where all this is leading to, well, you were talking about the nigger problem. But I saw a real nigger problem, compared to which this one isn’t a hill o’ beans. No, sir, not a hill o’ beans. Although this one may get to be like it. But we had a real problem.”
It was after the war. The Southern States had been compelled reluctantly, not merely to liberate, but to enfranchise the Negroes. Yankee carpetbaggers had descended from the North, both to invest money in enterprises and real estate that could be bought for a song and to obtain political control.
“Well, I lived in Tennessee, little town of Pulaski. When we got back, a few of us young bucks got together one May day in 1866, and formed a secret society, just for the dickens of it. I don’t know if you ever heard of it—”
“You don’t mean them Ku Kluxers?” broke in the Jewish drummer.
“That’s right!” exclaimed the old gentleman joyously. “How did you know? Knights of the Ku Klux Klan we called ourselves. Kuklux was a Latin word, meaning circle, and one of the boys who’d been to college thought it’d be appropriate.”
“Oh, ‘kuklos’! That’s Greek for circle,” said Hamilton.
“Oh, everyone has heard of the Ku Klux Klan,” put in the advertising man. “We even read about it in our histories, dad.”
“Well, that’s the same Klan, and I was one of the first members. Well, our first object was just to have a little fun, a little mystery to keep the other folks guessing. Then, by accident, someone discovered that if you wanted to scare a nigger into doing what you wanted him to do, all you had to do was to dress up in a sheet like a ghost.
“We scared a few bad niggers. You should have seen our rigs. White masks, high cardboard hats, long white robes. And we had a white cover for our horses and padded their feet. The best fun, of course, was the initiations. But that’s all secret.” He chuckled at the memory.
“Soon other Klans were started around Pulaski. By an’ by Tennessee, and then the entire South was covered with them. So by the time the reconstruction acts o’ ’67 were passed, we had a right smart of a military organization. Why, sir, the niggers, the old slaves, were in the state militia and we had to walk between rows of their bayonets to get at the voting polls. They and the Northern carpetbaggers stuffed the ballot boxes and won over the state and city government. And there were a few scalawags from the South that joined ’em. We had organized just for fun. But as soon as the niggers and carpetbaggers began making our laws and robbin’ the public treasury, the Klan spread like wildfire over the entire South. And like organizations were also formed. Knights of the White Camellia was one, Pale Faces, White Leaguers.”
“Trick Track Tribe,” suggested Hamilton.
“Yes, that was one of ’em. But they all had onepurpose—to uphold the supremacy of the white race.”
“Well, you made a good job of it,” said someone. The old gentleman was getting winded.
“Yes, we did. Tar and feathers. Public hangings. A few judicious notes o’ warnin’. We put the fear o’ God and respect for law and order in their souls. It might not of been strictly ethical, but it worked in its day, and if ever the niggers start kickin’ up a rumpus, the same thing can be used against ’em again.”
The Jewish drummer took out another cigar and cut off the end with a little gold cigar-cutter attached to a chain and Robert knew that he would have to bide his time. The old gentleman’s words had given him moral confirmation. Not that he needed it, exactly, but it established the Tribe as of honorable tradition, an institution of which any Southerner could be proud. He wished that the Jewish drummer would go, or at least that he would get a chance to talk to the old Klansman alone. When the latter, therefore, excused himself to return to his seat because the smoke was getting too thick for his lungs, Robert followed him.
“I was interested in what you said about the Trick Track Tribe,” he said, falling into the seat opposite him.
“That’s because you’re a Southerner. Every loyal Southerner is.”
“Perhaps you’ll be glad to know thatwe—that the Tribe is being revived.”
“Revived? Well, well, well. But you know it was run out of business by the law, the whole shooting match of ’em—Klan, Tribe and all, by Congress.”
“No, I didn’t know that. Let’s see! There was something like that in our American history. Let’s see, the Force bill.”
“Sure thing. The damn Yankee general, Grant, done it. So I wouldn’t say much about it. I suppose it’s still illegal.”
“Oh, no, this has been reorganized and incorporated,although it’s got the same name and the same traditions. Here, let me show you some of our cards.”
The old Confederate soldier puzzled over the Latin motto and demanded why all those questions were being asked.
“We didn’t ask all them questions about religion and where a man was born. An’ what’s this card?”
It was a card the size of a playing card, headed “Do You Know?” and containing a list of “that’s”:
That the Pope is a political autocrat.
That a secret treaty made by him started the war.
That he is enthroned and crowned and makes treaties and sends and receives ambassadors.
That 116 princes of his government are enthroned in our cities.
That he has courts here enforcing the canon law.
That he controls the daily and magazine press.
That he denounces popular government as inherently vicious.
That his canon law condemns public schools and forbids children to attend them.
That popery enthroned in great cities controls politics.
That our war industries were placed exclusively in Roman Catholic hands.
That no sectarian body or fraternal order but Knights of Columbus were permitted to do war relief work in the army and navy.
That Roman Catholics compose one-sixth of the population and hold three-fourths of the public offices, being entrenched in national, state and city governments throughout the country.
That they are pouring into our land as immigrants at the rate of two millions a year.
That Knights of Columbus declare they will make popery dominant in the United States.
Let us arouse the people and save our country as the beacon light of constitutional liberty and the hope of the world.
The old soldier scowled.
“D’you take me fer a fool, young feller? And what’s this other card there, some more anti-Catholic stuff, eh? What in the devil has this rigmarole got to do with the old Tribe or the Klan or with any of those other organizations? How d’you knowI’mnot a Catholic?”
“I thought because you belonged to the Ku Klux Klan you couldn’t be. I thought Jews and Catholics were barred.”
“Jews. Catholics barred.” His eyes blazed and he shook his fist. “Now where do you get that? I want you to know that some of the finest soldiers among the boys in gray was Irish Catholics. A lot of the officers, too. And don’t you know that a Jew, Judah P. Benjamin, was secretary of war of the Confederate States? And the Pope of Rome was the only power that recognized our president and government? You’re a fine Southerner! No, we didn’t discriminate because of religion. Didn’t you hear me tell you that we had just come back from the Civil War and that we all united to save the South from ignorant, licentious niggers and from crooked Yank carpetbaggers and our own Southern scalawags? There wasn’t any question of Catholics or Protestants or Jews in the old Tribe. There wasn’t any question of Catholic or Jew in the Ku Klux Klan. I’m not a Catholic, but if you’re a friend of the old Tribe or the old Ku Klux Klan don’t show me any more of that stuff.”
Robert put his cards back in embarrassment. The old gentleman kept mumbling “Catholic, Jews, Klan” under his breath.
“Oh, of course,” began Robert, “our chief purpose is to preserve the white race—”
“Preserve! You mean pickle it! Kill it and pickle it in embalming fluid! So you’re going to preserve it by splitting it up. In ’67 we tried to preserve it from the unruly blacks and the renegade whites. If you’d been there, young man, you’d of known how important it was to have the best of the white elementunited—instead of dividing it along religious lines.”
Robert attempted to point out the need of having a homogeneous organization of native-born, white Protestants to carry on these ideals, but the old man swore that “there had been Protestant, white-born native sons of Belial among the scalawags.”
“There’s no race or creed that’s got a monopoly on all the scoundrels. And I notice you slipped in a new one about native-born. That, sir, is an insult! I’m Scotch born! Came over as a boy ofsix—but that excludes me, too, me a member of the first Klan. Why, Jesus Christ himself couldn’t have gotten into your Tribe, according to the revised rules, because: First, he was a foreigner, and, second, because he was a Jew.”
Robert was becoming angry. If he wasn’t so old a man and so vehement, one could argue with him, but when Robert thought of something to say, he interrupted. He had been more than picturesquely profane. He had been positively sacrilegious. It would have been a feather in Robert’s hat to have obtained the membership of one of the founders of the Ku KluxKlan—but he wasn’t eligible, anyway. He had never known the Scotch to be so vehement. He talked like an excited Irishman. Robert would not tolerate it any more. He got up and walked back to the smoking car.