Muncie Post-Democrat, Muncie, Delaware County, 2 January 1925 — Page 3

THE POST-DEMOCRAT.

FRIDAY. JANUARY 2. 1925.

WHAT IT DID TO NILES. Niles, Ohio, birthplace of William McKinley, is a drab little town of about 10,000, with its population engaged in iron and steel manufacture and other industries. Its population is divided almost equally between natives and foreign born. It is one of the last places one would select for an outbreak of race prejudice. Yet klan and anti-klan sentiment has crystalized to such an extent that the town is divided into two armed camps after a day of open warfare in which a dozen were wounded and with hostilities ready to break out the moment troops are withdrawn. The latest outbreak had its beginning in a klan parade. It seems that the mayor is a klansman and the sheriff is opposed to the klan. The opposition to the klan formed what is known as Knights of the Flaming Circle. The klan got a permit to parade. The Knights of the Flaming Circle protested and the mayor was urged to withdraw the permit. Klansmen insisted that they would parade and the Knights of the Flaming Circle advised women and children to stay indoors on that eventful occasion. The klan proceeded with its parade and the j shooting began. Both sides suffered casualties. Now the town is torn into factions, neighbors are armed and threatening, and when peace is restored, bad feeling will still be there. The element to which the klan is opposed has not been the cause of any disturbance, and so far as the public knows, the city itself was quiet and peaceable until the klan decided to parade the streets to demonstrate its contempt for those opposed to the klan, no less than to flaunt its “Americanism” in the faces of men and women who are total strangers to the composition of a 100 per cent American, if the klansman’s estimate of *himself fills that description. It is inconceivable that a body of men would presume to engage in the enterprise of exhibiting their superiority, if such superiority exists. It is incomprehensible that an organization would go out on the streets with the purpose of inviting hostilities, even if it were not incomprehensible that such an organization should exist. % v The country does not know yet for what purpose the klan exists. It does not know why it should parade its intolerance. In fact, no one knows just what the shooting was about except that it was the culmination of feeling engendered by men who set themselves up to be better than other men, but who, in fact, are contemptible in their effrontery.

COL. WM. SIMMONS (Continued From Page 1.) have been replaced by rapacious greed for power and personal prefer ment, by political machination and chicanery, by blasted hopes and betrayed humanity, by programs of

character assassination and creeds of hatred, by the crucifixion of the great heart and soul of the inspired genius who gave birth to what might have been America’s greatest motivating power for good, constitute a tragedy unequalled in the annals of

history.

j. WHY HE QUIT t ‘‘After months of fighting this condition from within, in the endeavor to affect corrections which would restore the organization to its originally contemplated course, and thus save it from further prostitution and destruction .through intrigue deprived of administrative or executive authority, that brave heart finally acknowledged defeat and announced to the world his retirement from the organization and made his severance complete through resignation from membership therein. “It is therefore manifestly unfair and unjust that he be credited with the responsibility of ‘horribleness of the present state of affairs’ within the organization and its degenerating effect upon American civilization and the peace, happiness and prosperity of our nation, the unity of the people and the sanctity of our institutions.” BOTH WENT WRONG j That the klan of today and the klan ' of the reconstruction period have fol1 lowed parallel lines and that both degenerated from their original purposes and fell into the hands of unscrupulous adventures, is a matter of

history.

! Immediately following the civil war j the klan was organized to prevent j negro political domination of secesi sion states. The solid south was demi ocratiq and the federal administration was republican. The southern states, but lately at war with the j north, were rebellious and furious at j what they conceived to be the federal i policy of encouraging the freedmen, | who constituted a- large majority of | the citizenship of the South, to place J these heretofore solidly entrenched j democratic strongholds in the repub- | lican column. j The southerner, being a democrat j and a rebel, and writhing under defeat, hated the republican party with the hatred bred of a four year war which laid waste the sunny south. The klan was conceived as a protective idea, to prevent the Republican, or Radical, party from ruling conquer-

ed Dixie.

Still secretly loyal to the Confederacy the men of the south welcomed the Ku Klux Klan as a weapon of further defense against their conquerors, and they flocked to it in great numbers and through its agency the political tide was turned. The leading citizens of every community of the South were active in the klan in its earlier days, but it was not long until an irresponsible membership made the organization so odious because of the flogging and murder of negroes all over the south, that no respectable citizen cared to be publicly known as a member and only the lowest and most ignorant

Bloodthirsty Women

/

(By the Editor) Judge Ben Lindsey, speaking of the women of the klan who created disturbances at anti-klan meetings which he addressed at Denver during the last campaign said: “The conduct of the women at one of two of these meetings cannot be likened to anything outside of that of the women before the tribunal at the French Revolution, demanding the blood of their victims.” This recalls to my mind a scene in the Delaware circuit court room which wilkbe graven on my memory forever. On the mornof March 14, 1923, I was arraigned before Judge Clarence W. Dearth to show cause why I should not be help in contempt. Mrs. Gill and other women of the Ku Klux Klan had been busy the day before telephoning to their sister Amazons of Hate to be on hands bright and early in the court room. Figuratively speaking a victim was about to be crucified and the gentle creatures crashed the court room door in hordes in order to dabble in the blood of the captive, who had dared raise his voice in defense of his community. Gazing over the court room, which was crowded to the doprs, I was filled with sorrow, rather than indignation, as I looked into the hostile eyes of the women who cheered and clapped when a Ku Klux judge imposed the heaviest sentence of fine and imprisonment contemplated by the law. One young woman, a tall,coarse featured, bob haired brunette who stood in the crowd at the south side of the court room inquired audibly, “Why don’t they take him out and hang him?” Police officers and deputy sheriffs were conveniently stationed in various parts of the court room. One federal officer stood inside the rail, close to the defendant. Every officer was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Although I had told my friends to stay away, after the klan had feloniously started a report that an antiklan demonstration was to be staged, the bloodthirsty mob pretended that the officers were needed for protection! If these bloodthirsty women had had their way I would have been torn limb from limb. It is strange that the mob did not start when the bob haired Amazon demanded my death. Never in an American court room was there witnessed a scene more utterly outrageous and un-American. I was bustled to jail, through the jeering crowd of morons, and it was the end of a perfect day !

elements of society kept the machinery of the thing going in its declining

days.

When the government was finally forced to step in and suppress the Ku Klux Klan, because of its atrocious crimes, hundreds were prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison. CONSPIRACY TRIALS In the federal trials at Columbia, South Carolina, where over fifty members of the York county klan were placed on trial for conspiracy, the presiding judge was a northerner, a republican and a bitter foe to the Southern Confederacy. The republican party controlled the machinery of the court and the defendants were forced to go to trial before a jury of twelve republicans, nine of whom

were negroes.

The klan of today, which professes to be the old one, on earth for the second time, remembering the man- ’ handling received by those southern ’ klansmen fifty-five years ago before , a prejudiced judge and a packed jury, consider it perfectly ethical today, to place klansmen on the bench, and exclude all from jury service ’ who do not belong to the order. Right here in civilized Delaware county, in the state of Indiana, there ^ has never been a Catholic or a Jew j called for jury service in the two years that the present klan jury com- j missioners have had control of the

i

jury box.

ing the names of Catholics from jury service. In the name of the Redeemer, the flag of our country and one hundred percent Americanism no man or woman is deemed fit to sit in judgment on their fellows who has not taken the oath of allegiance to an invisible empire. Catholics, Jews, Negroes, foreign born and anti-klan Protestants are all lumped together as undesirables, unfit for jury ser vice, v. Next week I w T ill submit some of the evidence of forty-six members of the klan of York county, South Carolina, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy, confessed their participation in outrages on colored victims, and. threw themselves on the mercy of the court. The statements of these individuals as to how they were induced to join the klan shows the striking similarity between the modus operand! of the kluxer of 1867 and the Evans plan of 1924.

Santa Cruz Catholic Church Dynamited Edifice Was Badly Wrecked By An Explosion.

HOW IT IS DONE

1

The editor of the Post-Democrat, | who was forced to go to trial on a ridiculously insufficient charge before a klan judge and jury, after hav- j ing been indicted by a klan grand jury, without a chance in the world i of acquittal, regardless of testimony | which would have caused an unpre-1 judiced jury to return a verdict of 1 acquittal without leaving the jury box, can somewhat appreciate the feeling of Dr. Edward T. Avery, exconfederate soldier and Iqader of the York County, South Carolina, klan, J when he was forced to go to trial be-! fore Judge Bond and a jury made up • almost wholly of colored men, who belonged to the race against whom i the crimes ascribed to the klan had been committed. !

1 Tucson, Ariz.—The facade of Santa ■ I Cruz Catholic Church here was badly j i damaged and the front doors wrecked ^ by an explosion of dynamite placed ! I ! j there by unknown persons. The Car- ' melite priests in charge of the church ■ had just completed their vesper ser- i vices and had retired to the convent j in the rear of the church when the j

blast occurred.

Local opinion Inclines to the belief ! that the persons responsible for the outrage are the same as those who burned crosses on the hillsides overlooking the town on the occasion of the installation of Bishop Gercke a

few weeks ago.

TESTIMONIALS. Suffering humanity owes a debt of gratitude to Clarence Dearth and Lance Coons, judges respectively of the Delaware circuit court and the city court. Winter Pep, a patent medicine warranted to be good for what ails you, has performed wonders for these two gentlemen and out of the goodness of their hearts they are proclaiming the fact to the ailing world. This great restorative agency, writes Judge Dearth, has performed wonders for him, and the glad news is broadcasted in circulars testifying to the fact. It is pleasing to note that the judge has apparently caused an analysis to be made of the liquid revitalizer, since he declares in his testimonial that its meneficial properties are largely attributable to a total lack, in its composition, of alcohol, or opiates. White River and the old rain barrel are full of that sort of medicine, yet we know of people right here in Muncie who would die before they would drink a drop of it and even hesitate about washing their feet in it. Winter Pep is really all right, though, and we hope our old friend Bill Miller will sell a car load of it. We have never taken any of it, having been scared away when we discovered the kick had been left out, but we guarantee it on the sayso of Judge Dearth, who has tried it and knows. We are waiting patiently for some friendly soul to offer for sale a nostrum that is guaranteed to contain eighty-three er cent alcohol. When that happens we will take a dozen bottles and testify with all the enthusiasm displayed by the patient who absorbed a case of Peruna, in its alcoholic days, for the purpose of curing a case of worms. “Dear Mr. Peruna,” he wrote, “I had worms and took twenty-four bottles of Peruna. I’ve got snakes now. Send me another case.”

A process has been discovered that makes it possible to obtain brass in colors ranging from bright yellow to orange and from red to

blue.

Every state in the Union has a

At the conclusion of his trial, in J colle S e of Pharmacy, which, by the way, there was no evi- J ^

dence connecting him with the out- ( rages, Dr. Avery skipped out to Can- J ada while the lawyers were arguing

STEVES AFTER

‘‘Where do you see it?’’ retorted South Ender. ‘‘There’ll be forty inthe other. ‘That two-street subway junctions against it.’’

won’t do at all- It would shut me off | The North End Klanarchist laugh-

from the main part of the city alto- ed.

gether.”

“Guess you’ll have to stand for it,’’ returned the North End many, who

is a good Klanarchists. wants it and that settles it.

“Say,” he said. ‘‘You ain’t foolish enough to think you can get an injunction against t|ie Klan in this

“Stevens |county, are you?’’

And the South

End man was si-

‘Not by a damsite!” yelled the lent-

the case. He didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance tcTescape conviction. That the kluxers of the past recognized no evil in Catholics, or the Catholic church, was evidenced by the argument made by T. W. McMaster, attorney for the defense in the Avery case. IT WAS DIFFERENT THEN Mr. McMaster, a distinguished South Carolina lawyer arose and openly charged that his client was forced to go to trial before a packed

jury.

“You may remember the case of Daniel 0‘Connell, one of the greatest patriots and one of the greatest men that Ireland ever produced,” said he. “The authorities in Dublin convicted him, as they had convicted hundreds before. Mr. O’Connell was a Catholic. The question was between the Catholic and the Episcopal church of England. In Dublin, the juries were so arranged that every man who sat upon them was an Episcopalian. . . . In our country, which professes to have more freedom even than Great Britain, it is unfortunate that there has not been a provision made by congress to provide against similar outrages to those which have been perpetrated in Ireland. ... I see here nine colored men selected by the prisoner from the panel, as the best, when the very outrages with which my client stands charged were perpetrated on colored men. “Can you be other than naturally indignant at these outrages? Will not your hostility be naturally greater than a white man would feel? Therefore it is that I say the world has never seen a greater outrage than in the jury that is now trying this question. If Mr. Macaulay said, with regard to those Irish trials, that in every case of indictment for state offenses there was a reasonably certainty of a verdict being against the prisoner, in this case the chances or such a verdict are increased a hundred fold.” NOT AGAINST CATHOLICS Remember, this was a Ku Klux lawyer, defending a Ku Klux prisoner, assailing Protestant England for packing juries with Protestants to convict “great Irish Catholic patriots ! ’ Thus, you see, when the klan was "remcarnated” its present day follower reparted radically from the spirit which animated the original

body.

And how vastly has this new engine of hate and discord multiplied : its list of victims. With the Ku Klux j Klan in charge of the jury box it is not a. simple matter of merely exclud-

(Continued from Page One) the girls he overlooked. Clamorous Fulk—Listening to a phonograph reproducing his own speeches, telling what a wonderful Inancier he is. Kewpie Rine—Wondering why the books won’t balance. Charley Harris—Laughing at Clamorous Red Fhlk. Hi Holmes—Playing with a new Lewis machine gun he expects to use on the dogs as soon as the weather

permits.

Jim Dudley—Hating himself. Keith Lowery—Looking at the red ink entries. Curtis Berry—Smiling at the mirror. Ham Stewart—Thanking the Lord that he has only two feet to fall over. Tom Hays—Practicing with a lasso for dogs that Santa brought. Jim Gorman—Feeling sorry for

himself.

Bob Dqrnes—A little 25-cent limit. Judge Collier—Reading a handy volume on “Legal Ethics.’’ George Hagmeier—Reading his new Christmas book, ‘‘How to Be Success-

ful.

Seth Tower—Etetmating the relative weights of cooked and halfcooked peanutsBill Cocanour—Cussing Clamorous Red Fulk. Meter Reader Crist—Playing with his new A-B-C blocks. KU KLUXERS KLAIM THEY BOUGHT PROPERTY It has been reported that the local Klanarchists have bought the Eli Hull property in West Main street for a club house. The purchase price is given as $12,000. Whether the apostles of hate and graft can dig up that amount in this city is open to discussion. It may be that they figure on patching up a Peace with Shinn and her women and getting hold of a bunch of the money the woman are known to possess. Still and all, Shinn has never been accused of going to “sleep at the switch,” and this particular ‘switch” may mean some ‘‘velvet” to isome one. All bandits are not ’’bobbed hair bandits.” In this connection Administrator McDonald should be warned by the experience of the Klanarchists in Marion, where they tried to finance a real estate deal. Better watch your foot, Mac. Holding the hag is not a pleasant occupation. STRAWS SHOW— A North End man met a South Fourth street citizen in a barber shop the other day‘‘Well,” says the North Ender. ‘‘I see you are going to get yonr subway.”

HUGH TELLS ’EM. Hugh Berry, colored, importer, wholesaler and retailer of hootch, again touched a responsive chord in the heart of Judge Dearth Wednesday and for the second time his stretch in the county jail was postponed. Hugh informed the judge that he was expecting to have a family reunion Christmas so the judge accommodatingly reprieved him until Friday, although his term of imprisonment was to have begun Wednesday. Berry was convicted in the circuit court on a liquor charge sometime ago and was given a fine of one hundred dollars and thirty days in jail. While still out on bond he was shot and on a plea that he was in no physical condition to go to jail the judge deferred committment pending his recovery. Several days ago, during the period of his convalescence, Hugh and several others were caught in an automobile bringing in several gallons of booze and he was indicted by the grand jury. The buljet wound, prevented his going to jail but on the advice of his physicians, probably, he did not consider it of sufficient importance to keep him from the light work with which he whiles away his time. Presumably Hugh is now in jail, doing his thirty days, the guest of Harry Hoffman. Hugh knows so much about Sheriff Hoffman and Prosecutor Ogle that he has been a terrible problem, hard to solve. Hoffman and Ogle held booze parties in Berry’s establishment during political campaigns and it grieves them to the heart to see him suffer, and besides they are “skeered 7 ’ of him. Some months ago, when a bluff was made by the department of justice of investigating the acts of Ogle, Hoffman and others, Berry went before the federal grand jury to spill the beans, but was not permitted to tell his story, it is alleged. He has remarked a number of times that “thev can’t ride me,” and the tenderness with which he is handled indicates that he speaks with authority. The other prisoners at the county jail m^v have to live on soup and stale bread, for the next thirty days but we’re making a bet that if Hugh wants Tbone steaks and tuty fruty three times a day he will get it. What it takes to make ’em say “Uncle” Hugh’s got. It may be that if Hugh insists upon it Hoffman man will sleep in the garage and permit the convalescent to sleep in the sheriff’s downy couch. A local paper reports that after receiving his Christmas “reprieve” Hugh wished the judge a “Merry Christmas” as he left the court room. It is always proper to preserve the amenities and Hugh is not forgetful of small favors, neither does he fail to show his teeth to politicians who drink up his booze while they are trying to break into office and then presume to put the bloodhounds of the law on his tnil after they get it.

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■