The Alaska daily empire., 1921-10-03
The Ku Klux-Then and Now.
(New York WOrld.)

The original Ku Klux Klan organized in 1866 in Pulaski Tenn, by six men who were seek ing diversion and amusement in community where life was dull and monotonous" What they intended as burlesque on secret societies was destined to become of the most serious of the problems with which the American people had to deal in the first decade after the Civil War
 The original name the Ku Kloi, from the Greek word "kuklos," meaning circle, a band, a ring. There is record of the precise by which this suggestive Hellenic title was subsequently, perverted into ku Klux Klan, but there the spirit of the primary joke is apparent.
 The six organizers were not the only people in Tennessee ~vho found life dull and monOtonous '' The Pulaski organization attracted much attention and branches of 1t were soon formed in other parts of the State Popuar resentment running strongly against the new Constitution and the acts of Re publican Legislature under the leadership of Gov. Brownlow, in disfranchsing a large percentage of the native population, and the ku klux Klan was seized upon as means of combating "Parson Brown lows government It not long before the Ku Kux was the chief organization in the resistance to the reconstruction of the Federal Gov ernment Gen. Forrest who is believed to have con solidaed all the branches into central order said afterward that the total membership in all the Southern States had reached 550,OOO, and that the order was dsbanded by him when it had fulfilled it's mission. What did more than anything else to de sroy it was the publicity that shed upon it. Working in secret and enforcing its decrees in dark ness, it was formidable organization. When it was dragged into the open and its pretensions exposed it soon disintegrated..
 The mission to which Gen Forrest referred was. of course the establishment of white mans gov ernment in the South for the conservation super for civilization against the assaults of inferior civilization. What Pap Forrest would have said about this curious crew of 'pOor-white' comedians who have under aken to revive the Kan for profit Tor the exploitation of and religious hatreds in wolves little strain on the imagination.
 Nobody familiar with reconstruction legislation will deny that there was justification for the Klan's political activities although it's methods in able cases were brutal criminal ndefensible It's practices of intimidation uniformly cowardy, and it was tolerated by decent Southerners only cause they were living under autocratic govern ment imposed upon them by Federal bayonets and were ready to use any weapon which they could lay their hands ,I
 The record of the original Ku Klux Klan was set forth in detail during Grants Administration by the joint committee of Congress that ed it. Some Of the legislation enacted to suppress it survived the adverse decision of the Supreme Court on the main issue All of it has direct bearing the ac- tivities of the existing Ku Kux Klan which trying to set up super government of its and, judg ing from the list of Outrages charged against it in various communities, is holding all the evil tradi- tons Of it's predecessor, while it is lacking in all the virtues.
 The Ku Klux Klan of reconstruction days even at its worst represented organized resistance to politlcal oppression The present-day Ku Klux Klan represents $lO member. split three ways with profit on the regalia and a general scheme of pros cription against Catholics. Jews, negroes and all citizens or alien birth. The only plausible excuse for It's existence seems to be that money can be made from the exploitation of and religious preiudices while erecting noodumism into social system.
 The political danger of such organization lies not merely in what it has done but in what it Is capable Of dong whenever and wherever public pas- sions are infamed There be room in a Re- public for an invisible empire and to the extent that the ku kluX klan is tolerated. to that extent the American system of government has failed.