Part 16

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.

XXX

McCall was there, looking comfortably negligent in a light Norfolk suit and gray cap, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth. It was warm--springlike for a person coming from Corinth--but close and sticky. It was hard to breathe, because of the soot, and bits of it kept getting in his eye.

McCall recognized Robert and whooped for joy. He swore picturesque oaths and called Hamilton vile names, and Robert retorted in kind.

“_Sacré bleu! Nom de cochin!_” McCall rattled off. How was the tin rib? How was his state of health? How long was he staying? Where was he staying? He asked questions without waiting for answers and Robert answered them by asking others.

“Oh, the eye is all right,” said McCall. “Perfect! Only Doc says I must cut down on the number of eye openers. Levin couldn’t make the train because he’s away on a case, but he wants you to come over to his house Friday evening. You’re not married yet?”

“Nope,” said Robert. “Do I look--”

“Sure you look crazy. Let me take another look at you.” He held him away at arm’s length. “But not crazy enough.”

McCall offered to share his room, but Robert had already reserved one at a hotel by wire. They reached the hotel by taxi, after a short ride between tall, soot-stained buildings, on streets thick and noisy with traffic. At almost every corner the taxi was stopped by the cross flow of hurrying men and women and vehicles. Then the shrill blast of the traffic patrolman’s whistle and they poured forward again with the current. There were glimpses of a huge steel skeleton reaching to the sky and sounds of the riveters. At the end of what appeared to be an alley loomed a massive gray building--the post office. Elevated trains thundered overhead. Surface cars rattled and clanged on the streets. The sidewalks swarmed with hurrying people. It was a race--a contest to get somewhere first. You had to shout to be heard and then after shouting a few times you forgot what you had started to say. The taxi kept stopping suddenly and as suddenly shooting ahead.

“Well, what do you think of Chicago?” asked McCall, when they were in their room and the bell boy had been dismissed with a tip.

“Rotten!” said Hamilton. “I’ve got a cinder in my eye.”

“It’s a sign of progress,” said McCall. “Cinders. Smoke. Tall chimneys. Railroads. Skyscrapers. Noise. Confusion. A few murders for variety and lots of vice. I’ll show you the stockyards. Then you will think Clark street is like a bed of violets. What’s this thing? ‘Do You Know That?’--or I’ll take you to our black and tan belt some night.”

Robert realized that, in throwing his coat on the bed, one of the Trick Track Tribe cards had fallen out.

“Oh, never mind. It’s not important.”

But McCall had already picked it up and was reading it.

“Oh, here’s a lulu!” he exclaimed. “Here’s richness. Here’s charity. That’s one of the Trick Track Tribe’s little cardlets, if I mistake not. Where’d you get it? Let me have it, I’m working on an expose of the Tribe. It’s a nice mess. Say, you ought to be able to help me. The headquarters is in Corinth.”

Robert turned red and pretended to search for something in his coat pocket.

“Why--er--a--you know--” Robert coughed. “Well, you know the Tribe is a sort of secret organization.”

McCall cocked his head on one side and scowled impressively.

“Aha,” he said. “Sherlock Holmes comes all the way from Corinth to tell me that it’s a secret organization.”

“Well, a--”

McCall laughed.

“Don’t look so damn embarrassed. I suppose you don’t know any more about it than I do about the current city hall scandal. Just as you have the Tribe, we have our weekly public scandal. Political factions calling each other crooks, and all of ’em right. If a person kids me about our mayor, I laugh with him. And if I were from Corinth and somebody talked about the Trick Track Tribe I’d do the same thing. I suppose it’s only the lower element, the lawless whites responsible for your lynchings, that belongs.”

Robert made a vague noise in his throat, something halfway between a cough and a gurgle, which McCall interpreted as an affirmative reply.

“The Tribe has an office here, I’ve got the address. They’re just planning their campaign now. When it breaks, we’ll be ready to break, too. If you don’t mind, I’ll take this card to Father Callahan. I want him to answer these questions. Of course, you know and I know that they’re stupid lies, but I want the proof. I want to be able to nail the lies. I’d like to confront one of the head Tribesmen with the answers.”

“Do you belong to the Knights of Columbus?” asked Robert.

“No, but I know these charges are crazy. It’s simply a fraternal organization for Catholics.”

“Well, you can’t tell. Some of these statements are pretty positive. Maybe it is in politics. Gee, I’m black.”

Robert stripped off his collar and shirt and began washing. McCall’s protests against the accusations, various questions about Robert’s health and bits of information came gurgling through the soap and water. He talked about Levin. The operation had made him one of the most talked of physicians in Chicago and his profession. And he hadn’t charged a cent. Before he started he insisted that it be done gratis, but that in case he failed he should not be liable in any way. Levin was very busy. He was on the staff of one of the big hospitals and had hardly an evening to himself. He would run up if he had chance, but insisted that Robert come to his home for dinner Friday evening. Friday night was a sort of holiday among the Jews, something like Sunday among Christians, and it was considered especially praiseworthy to feed a guest on this night. Levin’s father still kept up the old custom.

“But won’t it be sort of--funny there?” asked Robert, wiping his face. McCall had taken a position on the bed. “Ah, the old bunk fatigue, I see.”

“Yes, the habit sticks. I usually lie down on the Press Club lounges at noon. It’s such a change from lying in your own bed.”

“Won’t the Levins have queer prayers and ceremonies?”

“Why, no. The old man is orthodox. That is, he isn’t really orthodox, but he still keeps Friday night. You may find him wearing a little skull cap and they may have a candelabra burning on the table--I go there once in a while.”

“Well,” Robert hesitated, “Levin’s all right, but what sort of people will I meet there? You know the Jew you usually meet--little fellows with long beards and hats pulled over their eyes, smelling of garlic and talking with their hands.”

He gave a ludicrous imitation.

“Jews you meet?” repeated McCall. “Where do you meet ’em like that? Maybe they did that fifty years ago. You probably saw Jews like that on the vaudeville stage.”

Robert considered and grinned.

“Well, maybe. It’s probably a little exaggerated, but they do wear beards and--”

“Some do and some don’t. My dad used to wear chin whiskers, but he didn’t look like the monkey-faced Irishmen on the stage with inverted clay pipes between their teeth. Doesn’t your father wear a beard? Oh, you’ll find a peddler or two still clinging to the whiskers.”

“Well, but most of ’em are rather loud. I know even in New York, at the cafés they seemed conspicuous.”

“By gravy, I’m going to suspect you of being a member of the Trick Track Tribe,” laughed McCall. He seized a pillow and amused himself by throwing it up and down. “Well, the first time I went to Levin’s, I also had a feeling that I’d meet only peddlers, pawnbrokers and clothing salesmen. But that idea is like the idea that a man visiting an Irishman’s house will find pigs in the parlor and meet only hod-carriers, politicians and policemen. You wouldn’t associate with a poor white, would you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then why should Levin associate with a peddler? I haven’t anything against a peddler especially, only I mean that Jews have social classes just as anybody else has. Jacob Schiff or Louis Brandeis wouldn’t associate with--”

“Oh, shut up!” laughed Robert, throwing a towel at him. “For Levin’s sake I’ll eat a pound of garlic. And, by the way, I’d like to have you show me the answers that Father Callahan gives to those questions; I’d just like to know.”

Robert had decided to write Griffith regarding certain phases of the Tribe’s campaign which were not clear to him, and if the Knights of Columbus were really not in politics, he would inquire about that phase of the campaign also.

“Have you started your big novel yet?” asked Robert.

McCall paused in the midst of a series of abdominal exercises, which consisted of alternately raising and lowering his legs.

“No,” he said. “What gave you that idea?”

“Why you said that--”

“That’s no reason at all. I simply want to write it. I probably never will. Every newspaper man is going to write a novel or a play. Once in a while somebody does. But he’s usually a rotten newspaper man. Sometimes a cub is lucky enough to get fired. That saves his literary career. If he weren’t fired he would degenerate into a good newspaper man or even an editor. Young Fitzgerald couldn’t hold a job, so he had plenty of time to write books. And didn’t Upton Sinclair try to get a job on a newspaper once? No, of course, you didn’t know. That was a rhetorical question. If you had been able to answer, I’d say it was just a plain, garden variety question.”

“Well, if you haven’t time enough to write, why don’t you resign?” inquired Robert. “Here, get your feet off my coat.”

“All right, it hasn’t spoiled the polish much. But the reason why I don’t resign is because if I did that, I would _have_ to write a novel. I don’t like to be forced to an alternative voluntarily. This way I can simply say I haven’t the time.”

“Well, your words may mean something to you, but they mean very, very little to me.”

“As it should be,” said McCall. “Where are we going to eat? I’ll show you a good place--when I speak it is rather to express myself than to convey thought. Speech arose originally from the need to express certain unique conceptions, ideas or fancies. In fact, it was a disadvantage that anybody else understood one, because that destroyed the uniqueness of one’s idea. Just a minute. I wish to work out the thought. You don’t have to listen if you don’t wish to. If you have ever heard two persons arguing you have undoubtedly noted that neither ever convinces the other, that in fact they never listen to each other’s arguments. That supports my contention. Each person simply talks to express his own ideas, to get rid of them, to work them out of his system. The _catharsis_, or something, of Plato.”

“Now I notice how much I’ve missed you,” said Robert. “I’ve absolutely forgotten how to talk nonsense.”

“An art acquired only by arduous practice and by the few,” said McCall. “Any damn fool can talk sense.”