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 enough mission--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 a
government--only a secret government--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 as possible 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 plank was--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 with the 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 odd anachronism--it was as though he had demanded “no
taxation without representation”--and then 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 musty flavor--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 of
Chicago--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 ordinary men--now and then, when it is not too late,
or too cold or too warm--go through setting-up exercises.
“I _will_ get 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.
“I _will_ take a cold shower,” he would say next. And soon to the
breakfast table.
“I _will_ eat only one three-minute egg and one slice of unbuttered
toast.... I _will_ catch the 8:16 express, although it is 8:12 now....
I _will_ keep smiling no matter if I must wait for the next train.
Not failure, but low aim is crime.... I _will_ get 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 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 the ship of
state, the metaphor warped slightly, was the best element--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 essential
industries--to convert metal into guns and shells, textiles into
uniforms, leather into army shoes, food animals into meat--he seemed
to disregard. The Negroes had come, as though they were a tribe of
invaders or a visitation from an angry god.
“We _will_ dominate!” he said suddenly, pounding one plump palm with a
plump fist. “We native-born, white Protestants, we _will_ guide the ship
of state. We _will_ be 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:)
‘We _will_ to be Americans
In our land of Liberty.
We _will_ to 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 your idea 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
Protestant element--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 a dumping 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 or power--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 Tribe _is_ like 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 something peculiar--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
Northerners of 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 did _not_ remember 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 long time--hours it seemed--they had been running through rows of
ugly factories and houses, rather grimy and bare, with only occasional
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 of
ground--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.