The call of the North. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1923-1924, 1923-09-14
-FOUR RECENT ANT|-KLAN MOBS
POINT TO ORGANIZED HATE AS
|NST|CATOR OF LAWLESSNESS

bootleggers and police court char
acters were in a mob which assaulted
Klansmen as they left their hall after
a quiet and private meeting, over
turned their automobiles in the
streets, kicked them, beat them and
overwhelmed them through sheer
weight of numbers. At Steubenville
also, a man said to be leader of the
Klan there, was ambushed in the
darkness by a dozen cowardly thugs
as he was on his way to his home.
Badly wounded himself, he drew his
pistol and fired. When the smoke
cleared away three foreigners, some
of Ellis Islands choicest crop from
Sunny Italy, were bound for the hos
pital.
1t is circumstantial happenings
such as these which make the think
ing public wonder what is behind the
recent series of assaults upon lawful
and peaceful gatherings of the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Autumn Fruit
While this newspaper does not cast
suspicion on any person or persons,
yet it is well to rememer that sum-
mer seed brings forth autumn fruit.
Two conventions of so-called Am
erican societies, known as being the
closest oath-bound orders on earth,
were held this summer on foreign
soil. They met in Canada where
prohibition laws irk not and the call
to the thirsty is lure to lawlessness
and infamed and radical thinking.
These two big societies, whose men,
bers are all of creed in anti-pothesis
to the Klan's determined attitude of
keeping separate church and state, in
public meetings announced that the
Klan must be crushed.
It was told to the world through
the press that the Knights of Col
umbus and the Ancient Order of
Hibernians, gathered north of the
Canadian line, would fight the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to a
finish.
The messabe of the Knights of Col
umbus was couched in better gram
mar than that of their Fenian COM
patriots, but it meant the same thing.
War to the knife!
If this ultimatum was so boldly
heralded from the convention floor,
what happened in the privacy of COM
mittee rooms where ways and means,
policies and resolutions were worked
out?
Action Is Decreed
Clever men, veterans of many a
political campaign for their religion,
discussed from all angles the rising
menace of United American Protes-
tantism to their cause. They intro
duced resolutions decreeing a fight on
the Klan and these were adopted with
vim and enthusiasm by the rank and
file of dusty throated, green badged
delegates anxious to break away from
convention hall and get their feet once
more on a bar rail.
The resolutions, we may be sure,
were not passed as mere child's play
nor as meaningless gesture of hate
and contempt. They were submitted
and adopted as a part of a carefully
thought out plan of attack.
Possibly the attack is directed
through the press or through the
properly constituted courts of the
land. Such efforts to disrupt and dis
perse the Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan are welcome. The order has
been officially probed and counter
probed and found always consistent
with its high American ideals. It
always will be.
But such lines of attack have
been intensified since the Canadian
meetings. Mob violence, we'll organ
lied, has broke out in many sections
of the country since that time.
Therefore, Klansmen must draw
their own conclusions as to who and
what is back of the martyrdom of
their brother Americans. =,