Part 18

His voice fell and he leaned forward in his chair confidentially. “This is the thing that brought it home to me,” he continued. “You were basing an accusation against the Jews as a people because Stinnes, the Kaiser’s backer, was supposedly a Jew. Now that it turns out that he’s a Lutheran, you don’t propose an attack upon Lutherans for causing the war, do you? Before, you didn’t honestly know that Stinnes had the slightest connection with the cause of the war. But because you thought he was a Jew, you would have tricked me into assuming it, so as to make a point.”

“You’re right,” Freeman agreed finally. “The Tribe can’t afford to use unfair arguments. It stands for justice first of all. It stands for pure Americanism. But, first, in order to have it, we must have pure Americans. You can’t have it with Catholics, Jews, Negroes and aliens. They don’t belong. They have alien beliefs, customs, traditions. We can fight them fairly.

“I cannot help being what I am, racially. I am not a Jew, nor a Catholic, nor a Negro, nor a foreigner. I am an Anglo-Saxon white man, so ordained by God and so constituted and trained that I cannot conscientiously take either my politics or my religion from some secluded ass on the other side of the world.

“Now, if somebody else happens to be a Jew, I can’t help it any more than he can. Or if he happens to be black I can’t help that either. If he were born under a foreign flag, I couldn’t help it--but there is one thing I can do. I can object to his un-American propaganda being preached in my home or practised in the solemn assembly of real Americans!”

His voice was eloquent with emotion.

“I have fought for the American flag and, if God so wishes, I am glad to die for it. But that flag must float over a land untainted by any alienism. You ask me how I know that Roman Catholics cannot be good Americans and I ask you to read the oath of the Knights of Columbus. It requires no further argument. It speaks for itself. You ask me why Jews cannot become good Americans and I answer because they are aliens by race, by religion and by tradition.” His voice dropped.

“As for the colored problem: you know more about it than I do. You’ve grown up with it. But some day I want to show you what Chicago is up against. I want to take you through the colored belt so that you can get some idea of how the blacks are pouring into Chicago.”

He went into details. The blacks were becoming self-assertive. They were walking proudly along the streets. They were demanding social equality in their publications. They were moving outside the black belt into white neighborhoods and spoiling property values. They were sitting next to white men--and even white women!--in the surface and elevated cars. They were developing professional men and business men, riding around in automobiles, smoking cigars. But worst of all, they were competing against white men for jobs.

“You see what’s happening in Washington? The same thing will happen in Chicago!”

XXXIII

There was a stir in the sultry July air of the metropolis of inland America. During the World War thousands of blacks had been imported to fill the depleted ranks of white men in the reeking stockyards, the sweltering foundries, the clamourous shops. With their families they had swarmed into the homes of the abandoned Red Light district to the number of 125,000 and were even crowding, here and there, beyond their boundaries into the sacred precincts of the whites.

White working men, banded into labor unions, had frowned upon their coming, but the industrial and political barons had willed it. These latter had given them work at almost white men’s pay, welded them into a political unit and permitted them to elect black representatives to sit among the city fathers. They had been lulled into the illusion that here, at last, they were free from the howling mob, the stake and torch, the hatred of the South.

They no longer bowed their heads as they walked along the streets. They could almost look a white man in the eye. They sat beside the whites on the street cars and in the “L’s,” talked to them, ate beside them at some restaurants and even, in certain dance halls, danced with their daughters. A few had intermarried.

The whites were growing restless. A spirit was blowing through them and uniting them. White workmen were becoming frightened and then enraged at the black intruders, who competed with them for food. Clerks who sat in the “L’s” turned their nostrils away from the Negroes beside them. Men of a hundred occupations, creeds and politics, who had been individuals since the war, suddenly found themselves once more a unit--a unit because of their common color. The Negroes felt the unity of their blackness.

Freeman smelled the coming storm, like a thousand other men, and prophesied about it freely.

“It’s Sunday,” he said one afternoon as they sat in the lobby of Robert’s hotel. “Well, perhaps I don’t blame you much for not wanting to visit some of the black and tan dance halls. I realize how you Southerners must feel about it. But you haven’t anything to do today anyway, and you must see the district. You can’t imagine what it’s like until you see it for yourself.”

“I’ll go,” Robert consented reluctantly, “but it rather goes against me to see a nigger walking with a white woman, and--”

“Well, after we get public opinion organized you won’t see a white girl walking with a coon!”

It was hot and sultry. It would have been hot even for Corinth and one noticed waves of air rising from the pavement. They rode to Twenty-Second street by elevated.

“There it starts,” said Freeman, pointing through the window as they drew near the station. “See all those dirty, brick tenements? And a few years ago there were only a few thousand in the whole city. What’s going on there? It looks like a mob.”

They reached the street and found it deserted save for dusky heads in the windows.

“Every one must have gone over there,” said Freeman. “Let’s see what’s doing. They look excited.”

“I’m not interested in any nigger meetings,” replied Robert. “There’s the lake. It’s hot as the deuce. Let’s walk down there.”

They had walked perhaps a block and a half east when Freeman suddenly turned. Robert had also heard the sound.

“Gee, they’re coming!”

Robert turned. Perhaps fifty blacks, men and boys, brandishing clubs and rocks, started at a dog trot up the street, whooping and yelling.

“They’ve got us cut off from the station. Hamilton, come on!”

“Why should we? They can’t be after us.”

Through an open window a mulatto, thrust her head.

“Hey, you white men,” she called. “They’s trouble and you betta all beat it while de beating’s good. I know you just come, so you ain’t done nothing.”

“What’s the matter?”

Other heads appeared in windows, all talking and shouting at once. A black child had been drowned by a white man and the blacks were retaliating.

“Follow me!” yelled Freeman. “Around the corner to the car line.” They set off and as they did so, the blacks in their rear set up a cry and broke into a run. A stone whistled through the air and hit the sidewalk two feet ahead.

As they turned the corner a Negro darted out of a door with a yell, a stick in his hand. Hamilton, for the first time in months, felt the old pain in his chest. A few more steps and Freeman was drawing away. Robert suddenly whirled around and struck out with all his force. It was his only chance. The Negro stopped and ducked. The blow shot over his head, but Robert’s shoulder crashed into his chin and both fell. Robert felt the Negro wriggling beneath him, even before he opened his eyes, and attempted to regain his feet. He heard the shouts of the mob. He tried to rise. The black man clutched at his coat. Robert yanked it away and kicked himself loose and went staggering backward. Some one was clutching him by the arm. The cries of the mob grew louder.

“Automobile, c’mon!” It was Freeman pulling him forward and shouting hoarsely. They ran into the road and the speeding car suddenly slid to a halt trembling, its brakes set.

“Don’t stop! They’re after us!” They scrambled over the side into the back seat.

The car jumped ahead and went roaring down the road. A volley of stones shot through the air and shattered the wind-shield. The mob yelled.... Robert looked around. The mob was running toward the lake. They were out of the black belt, and the driver slackened his pace.

“What’s up?”

They told him.

“Every one of ’em ought to be lynched!”

The man at his side swore loudly.

“We ought to go back and burn the entire district.”

Robert was panting.

“Now you Northerners’ll know what we’ve got to put up with!”

“You’re right,” they swore.

In his room, Robert flung his coat across a chair and threw himself upon the bed, exhausted. His chest was heaving, he was wet with perspiration. Race riots in Chicago. God! In Corinth they would burn the colored population! He wondered what _would_ happen here.

The door suddenly flew open.

“H’lo, Ham. What the devil! Are you sick?” It was McCall.

“No,” he panted, “tired. Doing some sprinting.” He untwisted himself and rose shakily. “But where have you been? Gee, it’s great to see you again.”

“You must have got a bump,” remarked McCall, as they shook hands. “Oh, I’ve just got back from a trip. I’ve been getting some stuff on the Trick Track Tribe. Trying to connect some atrocities with the Tribe. But what have you been doing, anyway? Playing football?”

Robert laughed.

“Almost.”

He narrated his experiences in the black belt. McCall whistled.

“When I was over in the office a little while ago, they told me something about it. So you were in it? Do you know how it started?”

“Only what a mulatto woman said, and she probably was lying.”

“No, that was straight. They have a line at the Twenty-Sixth street beach. The blacks bathe on one side and the whites on the other. No law about it, but it’s just a rule that both respect. Got a match?” He pulled out his cigarette case. “Well, a little pickaninny crossed the line and climbed on a raft. A white man threw a stone at him, struck the kid and knocked him in the water. He drowned. He probably didn’t mean to do it. There was a white patrolman in the district and when he took his time about investigating and making an arrest, the blacks started organizing. They had a few run-ins, but I thought that the thing had probably died down.”

“No, about fifty of them were running toward the lake when I saw them.”

“I suppose there’ll be trouble, then. Of course, only one white man is to blame and he ought to be punished. But the blacks feel the mass hatred against them. That rope keeping them to one side of the beach is a symbol of it. The throwing of the stone, another. Last week the race riots in Washington. This week in Chicago. You’d think that such a thing was impossible after the war.”

“Oh, well, you’ll always have a color line.”

“Oh, you’ll always have different _colors_, but I mean that race prejudice, that unreasoning mass hatred. Levin was right about the reaction following the war. Take the Trick Track Tribe. The things I’ve found out about them. The mayor of a little town in Kansas tarred and feathered, for instance, simply because he said he was opposed to the Tribe.”

“But look at all the niggers in Chicago, wouldn’t the Tribe--?”

“No! A thousand times no! You think if you had the mob organized to hate the Negro that everything would be all right.”

“We’re not telling anyone to hate the nigger. I mean the Tribe isn’t. The Tribe wants to put the nigger in his place. And he isn’t in his place in Chicago.”

“Bunk! If you have a Tribe here, you will only crystallize all the class hatred.”

“But it’s here.”

“Sure it’s here. But it’s the duty of intelligent men and women to break it.”

“So you’d have equal social rights for the nigger, as the nigger writers are advocating, would you? You’d have them marry and--”

“Don’t talk like a damn fool,” interrupted McCall. “Social equality is nothing that can be regulated. It is up to the individual. But you can insure social and economic justice, at least in a measure, and you can at least try to keep racial hatred from flaring up. Don’t you see what the Tribe is doing? It is simply magnifying all the narrow prejudices and hatreds. No man of intelligence could be reasoned into joining it because of its demands. He joins because his prejudices are aroused.”

“Why can’t he? Americanism. Pure womanhood--”

“Don’t talk like an ass. These terms don’t mean a blamed thing. Everybody is for Americanism, those niggers who chased you down the street as much as any one. Every one is for pure womanhood, except a few degenerates whom your prisons take care of. White supremacy is simply the Tribe’s way of saying black hatred. That’s what the Tribe stands for--hatred, hate of the black, of the Jew and of the Catholic, hate of the labor union--it wants to abolish _needless_ strikes, with a Tribesman, I suppose, to decide which are needless. And then there are states’ rights and prohibition. If you appealed to a man’s reason, you couldn’t get any members, because those planks automatically cut off every one who is a Catholic, a Jew, a Negro, an alien, a Republican, a radical, a believer in organized labor, a liberal or an intellectual. And their insinuations about Wilson--Democrats. Now, then, who’s left? What’s this junk?”

He stooped to pick up one of the folders of the Trick Track Tribe, which had fallen out of Robert’s pocket. It was headed “Knights of Columbus Oath, Fourth Degree.”

“What is this?”

As he read, McCall’s eyes blazed and the arteries of his neck swelled. Robert bit his lips. The time had come. He could no longer dissemble. It was a question of his friendship with McCall--McCall his buddy of the trenches--or loyalty to the Tribe. McCall’s voice was raised in anger: “What’s this blasphemy!”

He read:

“‘When opportunity presents, I shall make and wage relentless war, open and secretly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex nor condition and that I will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle and burn alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crash their infants’ heads against the walls in order to annihilate their execrable race.

“‘That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisonous cup, the strangulation cord, the steel of the poniard, or the leaden bullet ... as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Father of the Society of Jesus.’”

There was more of it--about denouncing allegiance to Protestant countries and about voting for and employing only Catholics.

McCall’s angry eyes took in the pile of booklets and cards on the dresser. With one stride he crossed the room and began tearing them into bits. Then his contorted, red face grew pale, his lips quivered.

“Hamilton, you--you--” his voice choked. Robert held his breath. “You contemptible spy. From Corinth! I might have known! And--and--” He stood there for a moment, speechless, his hands clenched, his body trembling. He stepped forward and then suddenly turned to the door.

“Mac! Bill!” Robert found his voice. “Let me explain!”

“Explain? Hell!”

McCall reached the door and, without turning to look around, opened it.

“Bill!”

The door slammed. McCall was gone. The torn leaflets on the floor and the window curtains blew upward and fell again. Robert took a step toward the door and stopped. Bill was gone. In the mirror of his dresser Robert saw how white he was.

XXXIV

Robert slept late the next morning, ate a combination breakfast and luncheon and returned to his room. McCall! Friendship! The torn leaflets had been removed by the maid.

Robert removed his coat, collar and shirt and began, very deliberately, to shave. He had never distributed the Knights of Columbus oath. Freeman had assured him that whatever might be the veracity of the articles in The Beacon, the Knights of Columbus oath, at any rate, was accurate. It had been obtained by the Tribe itself.

Robert dried his face. Why must a person always defend what he has done? One may act simply on an impulse--because some one else wants him to do something, because the community in which he lives, his social set or public opinion desires it. But once a person has acted, he builds up reasons to justify himself. Take the Knights of Columbus oath. He had not troubled to investigate it. He had accepted it because it was part of the Tribe’s propaganda and because his father, his mother, Margaret, his social set, believed in the Tribe. The rational thing would be to weigh its value, to investigate its authenticity--and then to accept or reject it. It was the same way with other propaganda. If it was false, Freeman was always inventing excuses. Why had he not investigated their truth before circulating them! And yet, Freeman had insisted that the oath was true.

The telephone bell rang.

“Hello!” It was McCall. He was coming up. Robert took a long breath. McCall! Robert had not expected him to come back again. He wondered why--and was glad, immensely glad. The door opened.

“God, I’m glad--” Robert held out his hand.

“Shut up!” McCall looked very pale and serious, his lips tight. “I want you to listen to me! I think you’re either a scoundrel or a damn fool. I’ve thought it over all night and I’ve decided to be charitable and call you a damn fool.”

Robert started to say something. McCall put up his hand.

“If you interrupt me, I’m going. And if I go, you’ll never see me again. I said I decided that you were a damn fool. I decided that you joined the Tribe because you couldn’t get out of it or because you didn’t know its real object. Most members don’t. They think they’re joining some sort of a crusade. I think Lister is a sincere man, a sincere fool, a fanatic who would have fitted in somewhere beautifully in the Middle Ages and who didn’t know any more about the meaning of Christianity than the fanatics who burned heretics and witches three hundred years ago. That includes Catholics as well as Protestants. I’m not handing myself anything.

“Griffith I think is a crook--I say I _think_ he is--because he personally gets a rake-off on every member, because he sells robes and masks at a profit that the Tribe would boycott a Jew for making, and because he sells the muddy river water used in your Tribal initiations for ten dollars a quart. I can’t conceive of any man with the broad mission he says he has, starting out by overcharging the brothers who are to carry out that mission with him. If you are an official, you know that these are facts and you also know that you get a rake-off for each new member. It is to your interest and to the interest of every Tribal officer to get as many memberships as you can--no matter how much class and racial hatred you spread in getting them--because it brings you actual money. If you can make people believe that the Pope is trying to control the American government, or that Jews, who form about three per cent of the population, are trying to overthrow all government, or that Negroes, who have been persecuted and tortured all their lives and are afraid to move, are plotting with the Bolsheviki or the Hindus to overthrow civilization, it means three dollars for Mr. Griffith, four dollars for the salesman who calls himself a Bogey and one dollar for the state salesman or Grand Bogey--per convert.

“But I won’t inquire into your motives for joining the Tribe. I shall assume that they were worthy and that you were simply gullible. The Tribe’s antagonism to the Catholic is evidently based on its conception of the relation between the Papacy and the United States. The Tribe evidently believes, or pretends to believe, that the Papacy means to control the government of the United States, and that spiritual allegiance to the Pope in some way interferes with secular allegiance to the government of the United States. I say that these are the reasons for the Tribe’s opposition to the Catholic, because the Tribe professes to believe in the freedom of worship. In other words, admittedly the religion of the Catholic, and similarly of the Jew, have nothing to do with the Tribe’s opposition.

“Now, Hamilton, if I can prove to you that the Catholic church is not attempting to control our government and the Catholic church in no way interferes with one’s loyalty to his country, will you promise to resign from the Tribe? If the Tribe is wrong, you will want to resign. If I am wrong, if the Catholic church does mean interference with my Americanism, I will not want to be a Catholic--and I will quit the church. Is that fair?”

“Yes--you give up the church or I give up the Tribe.”

They shook hands. It seemed fair enough. Robert had joined the Tribe because he believed it stood for certain principles. That it attacked certain institutions, not because of blind prejudice, but for definite reasons. If these reasons proved false, there was no reason for the Tribe’s existence--no reason for Robert belonging to it. To continue to be a Tribesman under those circumstances would be dishonest. It would be lending his force, his personality, to a lie.

“Now for the proof,” said McCall. “Hell, what do you or I know about it anyway? Father Callahan does. And if he doesn’t convince you, I’ll quit the church.”

Father Callahan, of St. Gesu Church, proved to be a pleasant, ruddy-faced man of charming manners and ready knowledge. He received them in his library.

“It was quite right of you to come to me,” he smiled, “because many of the attacks of the Trick Track Tribe have been made against the Jesuits and, inasmuch as I, myself, am a member of the Society of Jesus--by the way, Mr. Hamilton, I observe that the Knights of the Trick Track Tribe boast of the most sublime lineage in all history, but I believe that the organization to which I belong may lay claim to a still more sublime lineage.” He smiled. “The lineage of the Catholic church can be traced back some 1850 years before the origin of the Tribe, granting even that the present Tribe is the legitimate descendant of the original Tribe formed in 1867. Inasmuch, however, as the old Tribe was abolished, both by its founders and by the federal government, one may well question how the present Tribe may justly claim to inherit its lineage, which was not too sublime to make the fathers of the order heartily regret that they had ever founded it.”

Father Callahan had a rather delightful way of imparting the mildest of sarcasms. He leaned forward and touched Robert on the knee.

“And I believe the Tribe has also called itself the most dauntless organization known to man. Whether it is really more dauntless than the secret societies of the heathen savages who also fight behind grotesque masks--some splendid examples of which you may be able to find at the Field Museum or, at any rate, in any good book on anthropology--still the fact remains that members of the society of which I am a member have also accomplished certain dauntless deeds. There is no natural monopoly of that quality. You may remember that Father Marquette, for instance, preceded me, in the name of the church, some three hundred years ago, as did also Father Hennepin. You may remember that Joliet and La Salle also showed themselves not lacking in bravery in their explorations which opened up Canada and the entire Northwest. The first trappers and traders with the Indians, who became the first merchants of Chicago and the founders of its first industry, also belonged to the Catholic Church.