Part 18

“Listen to this. It’s from a colored writer, Du Bois: ‘Twenty centuries after Christ, Black Africa--prostrated, raped and shamed--lies at the foot of the conquering Philistines of Europe. Beyond the awful sea, a black woman is weeping and waiting, with her sons on her breast. What shall the end be? The world-old and fearful things--war and wealth, murder and luxury? Or shall it be a new thing--a new peace and a new democracy of all races--a great humanity of equal men?’”

Robert laid down his cigar.

“I guess, we have been a little rough on them,” he said.

Levin developed the idea of the reaction, the growth of hatreds, the development of the mob spirit.

“You can’t get any two men to think exactly alike on any question,” he said. “But, with a little knowledge of human nature and the gift of oratory or a forceful way of writing, you can get millions to _feel_ alike--especially to hate alike. The crowd just now is stirred up against alcohol. In Rome the crowd used to be stirred up for it and went on Bacchanals.”

“But alcohol does detract from one’s efficiency, doesn’t it?”

“Certainly! But who drinks to become more efficient? You drink to become less efficient, to forget your troubles, to relax, to forget. Granted that alcohol makes a man unable to turn a grindstone as rapidly as water. His ultimate object in turning the grindstone is to be able to buy pleasure, which includes alcohol. Take away his pleasure and you take away his object for working.”

“Well, I hate to see prohibition come. But I guess most of the people want it.”

“Yes, that is the intolerance of your mob. The tyranny of the majority. If fifty-one per cent of the people don’t want to drink, or don’t want to smoke, or don’t want to sing songs on Sunday, they make everybody else conform. The mob uses its liberty to deprive the individual of his freedom.”

For the first time Robert felt ill at ease in Levin’s company. The knowledge that Levin was a Jew and that he himself was a member of the Trick Track Tribe made him feel uneasy, as though he were a traitor, but whether to his old friendship or to the Tribe he was uncertain. They sat talking for a while, exchanging reminiscences of Paris and New York, and Levin finally walked with Robert back to his hotel.

“Be sure to come up Friday,” said Levin.

Robert promised, yet he knew that he would not keep the appointment. It was bad enough going out with him, but he had been unable to avoid that. But to break bread with him in his own house, to accept his hospitality and that of his family, that would be going too far. Not while he remained a member of the Tribe.

XXXII

Robert called up Friday--Mrs. Levin answered the phone--and pleaded a mythical headache. No. No. Her son was not to visit him. It was nothing. Something that would go away of its own accord. Only he would have to eat very little and get a good rest. Mrs. Levin offered some advice--aspirin tablets, or something like that. It was rather confusing, her insistent hospitality, and she rang off only after she had gained his promise to come the next week.

Robert was growing a bit more accustomed to Chicago. Freeman had taken him, over his protest, to Armours, where he had seen the rather gruesome spectacle of hundreds of hogs and cattle converted into pork and beef by swift knives and dexterous hands. He had never dreamed of this world of cattle pens, stretching out in all directions like a vast sea and filled with thousands of bellowing animals. He had never imagined such a tangle of tracks as those over which the loaded cattle cars rumbled. And there were cowboys on ponies.

He was becoming accustomed to the rush of people among the streets and to the noise. But the soot still bothered him. He had visited the Art Institute and found it a haven from the surrounding spirit of commercialism and decided to visit the Field Museum--a glittering white palace of classical design that rose at the far end of a promontory jutting into the lake a mile or so south.

In some places there were almost as many Negroes as in the South. But unlike the South, the Negroes sat beside you in the presence of white ladies--like the white men. For the first time Robert perceived that in going back to Corinth he had unconsciously slipped back to his pre-war attitude. He had taken Jim Crow cars for granted. He had taken it for granted that colored men should step out of his path when he walked down the street. These things had all seemed perfectly natural in Corinth. He had not even noticed them until now.

Levin had dropped in once, to inquire about Robert’s cold, but had not called again. McCall was still out of town, and so Robert spent most of his time with Freeman. The latter had suggested that Robert do most of his work in his own room, because the identity of the bureau with the Tribe had already been discovered by investigators--newspaper men--and it might be more advantageous, at least for a while, to keep the identity of the new Grand Bogey secret.

Freeman had not yet explained the basis of the Tribe’s antagonism to the Catholics and the Jews, nor, so far as that went, to the Negro--although that was something that one could more easily understand. Freeman always brought up points, which he gleaned from The Beacon or from some similar source and the authenticity of which was often doubtful. Often the statements contradicted each other and then Freeman always grinned good-naturedly and showed that the arguments were really not his, but those of The Beacon or of a misinformed writer, some anti- this or that fanatic.

He always started out by emphasising the “big points” of the Tribe. They were sitting in Robert’s room one evening.

“If I were you I’d go after the big things--enforcement of law, white supremacy, pure Americanism and practical Christianity. Those are the main things,” said Freeman, pounding the table.

“You ask why the Catholic should be excluded? Because, as this card shows, he swears allegiance to a foreign potentate. He’s an alien although he benefits by our laws. If the Catholics could, they would unite the church and the state.”

“I see, but supposing I get a prospect and he asks me how I know that.”

Freeman laughed.

“Ninety-nine out of a hundred don’t ask. Ninety-nine out of a hundred men never ask about anything. They’ll accept a positive statement, if it’s positive enough. But if they do ask, you can hand them some of our cards or literature. Here’s some good stuff in The Beacon. Listen to this, for instance: ‘The National Democratic Committee is by majority a Roman Catholic body. It usually has a Roman Catholic President and Secretary. Catholics influenced the national campaign which elected Wilson. The President’s private secretary is a Roman Catholic.’”

“Wait a minute,” cried Hamilton. “I’m a Southern Democrat. Do you mean to insinuate that Wilson is controlled by a group of Catholics!”

“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m simply reading what The Beacon says. If a Democrat would get sore at it, show him something else. That’s why I say you have to study the man you approach and convince him accordingly.”

“But that’s not the point,” said Hamilton. “You say Catholics influenced the national campaign. That’s an insinuation. You don’t say _how_ they influenced it. Everybody knows that many Irish Catholics are Democrats and that naturally they voted for Wilson, just as the South naturally, for historic reasons, always votes Democratic; but you infer that the influence was dishonorable. And what’s the disgrace about a Roman Catholic being the President’s secretary? He had to be a Protestant or a Catholic.”

“No, there’s no disgrace, only the next fact shows that over 70 per cent of all President Wilson’s appointments were Catholic.”

“I don’t believe it! What’s the authority?”

Freeman puzzled over the word.

“L-U-T-H--Lutherische, I can’t pronounce it. Some German name.”

“Some old war propaganda, I see. On the face of it would you go to a German authority for anything about Wilson’s war administration?”

Freeman laughed.

“Hell, no! In fact, I didn’t know where The Beacon got this stuff when I picked it up or I wouldn’t bother to read it. Nope, there’s nothing pro-Heinie about me.” He threw the paper into a waste basket. “Now, Mr. Hamilton,” he turned in his swivel chair and leaned forward, “I’m just as sincere about this thing as you are. I wouldn’t tell any one a lie knowingly. If I had noticed the source of that article I wouldn’t have read it to you. But the Tribe has a definite object as I told you. It’s against the Catholic, the Jew, the alien and the Negro, because these four classes are incompatible with the Tribe’s ideas of pure Americanism--none of these classes can be truly American in every sense of the word. Now we know that, and, in trying to convert members, we naturally wish to convince them by arguments. The Beacon is a magazine which carries a lot of stuff against these four classes and so we frequently distribute it. But, as far as I am concerned, and I am sure as every good Tribesman is concerned, we do not mean to disseminate falsehoods. If you see an article that strikes you as inaccurate in The Beacon, don’t use it. In fact, write to the editor about it. I’m sure he would be glad to be corrected. You know how it is. Any one is liable to make a mistake.”

“Well, maybe, but just a minute.” Hamilton pulled The Beacon out of the waste-basket and glanced over it.

“Well, here we say that the German-Jewish bankers started the war.”

“Sure, what about it?”

“I don’t know if it’s true or not, but on our Do You Know card we say that a secret treaty made by the Pope started the war. Now one of those statements must be wrong. One must be a lie.”

“No,” said Freeman. “Don’t you see, that Do You Know card is gotten out by the Tribe? That’s something _we_ say. That article on the German-Jewish bankers starting the war is simply a re-write of a statement made by Howard Brooks. The Beacon simply picked it up. They’re not responsible for Brooks’ views and the Tribe isn’t responsible for everything The Beacon prints.”

Robert was growing exasperated, but he tried to keep his temper. He puffed at his cigar in silence for a moment.

“Well, what do _you_ think of that charge by Brooks yourself?” he finally asked.

Freeman smiled.

“He makes good tires. But, seriously, I’ll tell you. Of course, that sort of stuff is all right for the yokels. I studied money and banking at college. I’m not a financial authority or anything like that, but I know, of course, that the present economic world could not exist without banks and credit. We deposit our dues in a bank, and I suppose that Griffith must be financing the Tribe through some bank, although,” he grinned, “very probably not Kuhn, Loeb and Company.” He threw his head back and blew a smoke ring into the air.

“Brooks simply says something to the effect that the big international bankers saw an opportunity to make money by fomenting a war, and stirred things up. Of course, if Germany could win, any banker who lent the German government a large sum would naturally make a large profit. As a matter of fact, though, I think Germany had some scheme of labor banks, in which the working people themselves deposited.”

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “I think the Germans even used to brag about the people financing their own war.”

“Of course, there’s no proof that any certain banker did stir up the war. If there were, I don’t think that the allies would have been bashful about demanding his surrender. If any German-Jewish or German anything else clique of bankers had been the cause of the war, they would have been handed over to some tribunal, because the Versailles treaty insists on punishment for those guilty of starting the war. So that’s probably hot air. Of course, bankers backing their country after it is in the war, is a different matter. It would be first a matter of loyalty and second of compulsion. The German-Jewish bankers would naturally support the German government; but that’s a different thing from starting a war, just as the French-Jewish bankers supported the French government, the English, the English and the American, the American. And you could say the same thing about Protestant bankers.”

He puffed a few more rings into the air.

“Ah, I’ve got it. Stinnes. Stinnes.”

“What’s that?”

“Stinnes, the great banker, the friend of the Kaiser, president of steamship lines, owner of iron and steel monopolies, mills, factories--the great magnet of Germany. The war made him a colossus, a rival of Rockefeller in wealth. And he’s a Jew!”

“No, he’s not,” said Robert.

“Of course, he is. Haven’t you ever seen his picture--derby hat pulled over his forehead. Sort of long nose and black beard? Why he’s a typical Jew.”

“But he’s a Lutheran,” protested Robert. “I don’t care how he looks. You got that impression that he was Jewish because the first stories about him said he was. But in the latest stories that was corrected. He’s a Lutheran.”

“Are you sure?” Freeman looked crestfallen.

“Absolutely. I can show you the magazine article.”

“No, I believe you. There goes another good point.”

Robert’s eyes suddenly blazed. It was as though something had flared in his brain. And it angered him. It carried him back to his solitary attempt at debating.

“You say you are sincere in carrying out the mission of the Trick Track Tribe,” he cried. “Don’t interrupt me! Yet you sit there like a lawyer trying to frame up a case against an opponent, or a kid debater. Anything to win. If you have anything against the Jews or the Catholics, I want to see it. I don’t care a pig’s ear for any arguments about what the Jews or the Catholics might do or might have done. I can make up that sort of stuff myself. The Jews have a plot to assassinate the President. The Catholics are planning a world-wide revolution.”

Freeman was equally angry.

“Stop! We don’t make such wild assertions.”

“You do,” cried Hamilton. “I’ve simply reversed the charges. Here’s your statement that ‘the man who shot President Garfield was a Roman Catholic. The man who shot President Lincoln was a Roman Catholic.’ And in another article you say, or somebody says, that the Jews are planning to spread Bolshevism throughout the world. When you say that Roman Catholics killed two presidents, you mean to insinuate that there is something about Catholicism itself that makes it hostile to American government, that makes it possible that another Roman Catholic will later kill another president. If the relation were merely accidental you wouldn’t mention it. It wouldn’t be logical. You might as well say that the man who shot McKinley ate onions.”

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.