BLACK NO MORE

                    Being an Account of the Strange
                       and Wonderful Workings of
                      Science in the Land of the
                         Free, A. D. 1933-1940

                         By George S. Schuyler

                      McGrath Publishing Company
                        College Park, Maryland

                Reprint McGrath Publishing Company 1969

           Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-76119

             Manufactured in the United States of America
                     by Arno Press, Inc., New York

                          COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY
                         THE MACAULAY COMPANY




                     THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ALL
                   CAUCASIANS IN THE GREAT REPUBLIC
                     WHO CAN TRACE THEIR ANCESTRY
                         BACK TEN GENERATIONS
                      AND CONFIDENTLY ASSERT THAT
                      THERE ARE NO BLACK LEAVES,
                      TWIGS, LIMBS OR BRANCHES ON
                          THEIR FAMILY TREES.




                                PREFACE


Over twenty years ago a gentleman in Asbury Park, N. J. began
manufacturing and advertising a preparation for the immediate and
unfailing straightening of the most stubborn Negro hair. This
preparation was called Kink-No-More, a name not wholly accurate since
users of it were forced to renew the treatment every fortnight.

During the intervening years many chemists, professional and amateur,
have been seeking the means of making the downtrodden Aframerican
resemble as closely as possible his white fellow citizen. The
temporarily effective preparations placed on the market have so far
proved exceedingly profitable to manufacturers, advertising agencies,
Negro newspapers and beauty culturists, while millions of users have
registered great satisfaction at the opportunity to rid themselves of
kinky hair and grow several shades lighter in color, if only for a
brief time. With America's constant reiteration of the superiority of
whiteness, the avid search on the part of the black masses for some key
to chromatic perfection is easily understood. Now it would seem that
science is on the verge of satisfying them.

Dr. Yusaburo Noguchi, head of the Noguchi Hospital at Beppu, Japan,
told American newspaper reporters in October 1929, that as a result of
fifteen years of painstaking research and experiment he was able to
change a Negro into a white man. While he admitted that this racial
metamorphosis could not be effected overnight, he maintained that
"Given time, I could change the Japanese into a race of tall blue-eyed
blonds." The racial transformation, he asserted, could be brought about
by glandular control and electrical nutrition.

Even more positive is the statement of Mr. Bela Gati, an electrical
engineer residing in New York City, who, in a letter dated August 18,
1930 and addressed to the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People said, in part:

    "Once I myself was very strongly tanned by the sun and a
    European rural population thought that I was a Negro, too. I did
    not suffer much but the situation was disagreeable. Since that
    time I have studied the problem and I am convinced that the surplus
    of the pigment could be removed. In case you are interested and
    believe that with the aid of your physicians we could carry
    out the necessary experiments, I am willing to send you the
    patent specification ... and my general terms relating to this
    invention.... The expenses are so to say negligible."

I wish to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to Mr. V. F.
Calverton for his keen interest and friendly encouragement and to my
wife, Josephine Schuyler, whose coöperation and criticism were of great
help in completing _Black No More_.


                                                     GEORGE S. SCHUYLER

                                                         NEW YORK CITY,
                                                    _September 1, 1930_




                             BLACK NO MORE




                              CHAPTER ONE


Max Disher stood outside the Honky Tonk Club puffing a panatela and
watching the crowds of white and black folk entering the cabaret. Max
was tall, dapper and smooth coffee-brown. His negroid features had
a slightly satanic cast and there was an insolent nonchalance about
his carriage. He wore his hat rakishly and faultless evening clothes
underneath his raccoon coat. He was young, he wasn't broke, but he was
damnably blue. It was New Year's Eve, 1933, but there was no spirit
of gaiety and gladness in his heart. How could he share the hilarity
of the crowd when he had no girl? He and Minnie, his high "yallah"
flapper, had quarreled that day and everything was over between them.

"Women are mighty funny," he mused to himself, "especially yallah
women. You could give them the moon and they wouldn't appreciate it."
That was probably the trouble; he'd given Minnie too much. It didn't
pay to spend too much on them. As soon as he'd bought her a new outfit
and paid the rent on a three-room apartment, she'd grown uppity. Stuck
on her color, that's what was the matter with her! He took the cigar
out of his mouth and spat disgustedly.

A short, plump, cherubic black fellow, resplendent in a narrow-brimmed
brown fedora, camel's hair coat and spats, strolled up and clapped him
on the shoulder: "Hello, Max!" greeted the newcomer, extending a hand
in a fawn-colored glove, "What's on your mind?"

"Everything, Bunny," answered the debonair Max. "That damn yallah gal
o' mine's got all upstage and quit."

"Say not so!" exclaimed the short black fellow. "Why I thought you and
her were all forty."

"Were, is right, kid. And after spending my dough, too! It sure makes
me hot. Here I go and buy two covers at the Honky Tonk for tonight,
thinkin' surely she'd come and she starts a row and quits!"

"Shucks!" exploded Bunny, "I wouldn't let that worry me none. I'd take
another skirt. I wouldn't let no dame queer my New Year's."

"So would I, Wise Guy, but all the dames I know are dated up. So here I
am all dressed up and no place to go."

"You got two reservations, aint you? Well, let's you and me go in,"
Bunny suggested. "We may be able to break in on some party."

Max visibly brightened. "That's a good idea," he said. "You never can
tell, we might run in on something good."

Swinging their canes, the two joined the throng at the entrance of the
Honky Tonk Club and descended to its smoky depths. They wended their
way through the maze of tables in the wake of a dancing waiter and sat
down close to the dance floor. After ordering ginger ale and plenty of
ice, they reared back and looked over the crowd.

Max Disher and Bunny Brown had been pals ever since the war when they
soldiered together in the old 15th regiment in France. Max was one of
the Aframerican Fire Insurance Company's crack agents, Bunny was a
teller in the Douglass Bank and both bore the reputation of gay blades
in black Harlem. The two had in common a weakness rather prevalent
among Aframerican bucks: they preferred yellow women. Both swore there
were three things essential to the happiness of a colored gentleman:
yellow money, yellow women and yellow taxis. They had little difficulty
in getting the first and none at all in getting the third but the
yellow women they found flighty and fickle. It was so hard to hold
them. They were so sought after that one almost required a million
dollars to keep them out of the clutches of one's rivals.

"No more yallah gals for me!" Max announced with finality, sipping his
drink. "I'll grab a black gal first."

"Say not so!" exclaimed Bunny, strengthening his drink from his huge
silver flask. "You aint thinkin' o' dealin' in coal, are you?"

"Well," argued his partner, "it might change my luck. You can trust a
black gal; she'll stick to you."

"How do you know? You ain't never had one. Ever' gal I ever seen you
with looked like an ofay."

"Humph!" grunted Max. "My next one may be an ofay, too! They're less
trouble and don't ask you to give 'em the moon."

"I'm right with you, pardner," Bunny agreed, "but I gotta have one
with class. None o' these Woolworth dames for me! Get you in a peck o'
trouble.... Fact is, Big Boy, ain't none o' these women no good. They
all get old on the job."

They drank in silence and eyed the motley crowd around them. There
were blacks, browns, yellows, and whites chatting, flirting, drinking;
rubbing shoulders in the democracy of night life. A fog of tobacco
smoke wreathed their heads and the din from the industrious jazz band
made all but the loudest shrieks inaudible. In and out among the tables
danced the waiters, trays balanced aloft, while the patrons, arrayed in
colored paper caps, beat time with the orchestra, threw streamers or
grew maudlin on each other's shoulders.

"Looky here! Lawdy Lawd!" exclaimed Bunny, pointing to the doorway. A
party of white people had entered. They were all in evening dress and
in their midst was a tall, slim, titian-haired girl who had seemingly
stepped from heaven or the front cover of a magazine.

"My, my, my!" said Max, sitting up alertly.

The party consisted of two men and four women. They were escorted to
a table next to the one occupied by the two colored dandies. Max and
Bunny eyed them covertly. The tall girl was certainly a dream.

"Now that's my speed," whispered Bunny.

"Be yourself," said Max. "You couldn't touch her with a forty-foot
pole."

"Oh, I don't know, Big Boy," Bunny beamed self-confidently, "You never
can tell! You never can tell!"

"Well, I can tell," remarked Disher, "'cause she's a cracker."

"How you know that?"

"Man, I can tell a cracker a block away. I wasn't born and raised in
Atlanta, Georgia, for nothin', you know. Just listen to her voice."

Bunny listened. "I believe she is," he agreed.

They kept eyeing the party to the exclusion of everything else. Max was
especially fascinated. The girl was the prettiest creature he'd ever
seen and he felt irresistibly drawn to her. Unconsciously he adjusted
his necktie and passed his well-manicured hand over his rigidly
straightened hair.

Suddenly one of the white men rose and came over to their table. They
watched him suspiciously. Was he going to start something? Had he
noticed that they were staring at the girl? They both stiffened at his
approach.

"Say," he greeted them, leaning over the table, "do you boys know where
we can get some decent liquor around here? We've run out of stuff and
the waiter says he can't get any for us."

"You can get some pretty good stuff right down the street," Max
informed him, somewhat relieved.

"They won't sell none to him," said Bunny. "They might think he was a
Prohibition officer."

"Could one of you fellows get me some?" asked the man.

"Sure," said Max, heartily. What luck! Here was the very chance he'd
been waiting for. These people might invite them over to their table.
The man handed him a ten dollar bill and Max went out bareheaded to get
the liquor. In ten minutes he was back. He handed the man the quart and
the change. The man gave back the change and thanked him. There was no
invitation to join the party. Max returned to his table and eyed the
group wistfully.

"Did he invite you in?" asked Bunny.

"I'm back here, aint I?" answered Max, somewhat resentfully.

The floor show came on. A black-faced comedian, a corpulent shouter
of mammy songs with a gin-roughened voice, three chocolate soft-shoe
dancers and an octette of wriggling, practically nude, mulatto chorines.

Then midnight and pandemonium as the New Year swept in. When the din
had subsided, the lights went low and the orchestra moaned the weary
blues. The floor filled with couples. The two men and two of the women
at the next table rose to dance. The beautiful girl and another were
left behind.

"I'm going over and ask her to dance," Max suddenly announced to the
surprised Bunny.

"Say not so!" exclaimed that worthy. "You're fixin' to get in dutch,
Big Boy."

"Well, I'm gonna take a chance, anyhow," Max persisted, rising.

This fair beauty had hypnotized him. He felt that he would give
anything for just one dance with her. Once around the floor with her
slim waist in his arm would be like an eternity in heaven. Yes, one
could afford to risk repulse for that.

"Don't do it, Max!" pleaded Bunny. "Them fellows are liable to start
somethin'."

But Max was not to be restrained. There was no holding him back when he
wanted to do a thing, especially where a comely damsel was concerned.

He sauntered over to the table in his most sheikish manner and stood
looking down at the shimmering strawberry blond. She was indeed
ravishing and her exotic perfume titilated his nostrils despite the
clouds of cigarette smoke.

"Would you care to dance?" he asked, after a moment's hesitation.

She looked up at him haughtily with cool green eyes, somewhat
astonished at his insolence and yet perhaps secretly intrigued, but her
reply lacked nothing in definiteness.

"No," she said icily, "I never dance with niggers!" Then turning to her
friend, she remarked: "Can you beat the nerve of these darkies?" She
made a little disdainful grimace with her mouth, shrugged daintily and
dismissed the unpleasant incident.

Crushed and angry, Max returned to his place without a word. Bunny
laughed aloud in high glee.

"You said she was a cracker," he gurgled, "an' now I guess you know it."

"Aw, go to hell," Max grumbled.

Just then Billy Fletcher, the headwaiter passed by. Max stopped him.
"Ever see that dame in here before?" he asked.

"Been in here most every night since before Christmas," Billy replied.

"Do you know who she is?"

"Well, I heard she was some rich broad from Atlanta up here for the
holidays. Why?"

"Oh, nothin'; I was just wondering."

From Atlanta! His home town. No wonder she had turned him down.
Up here trying to get a thrill in the Black Belt but a thrill from
observation instead of contact. Gee, but white folks were funny. They
didn't want black folks' game and yet they were always frequenting
Negro resorts.

       *       *       *       *       *

At three o'clock Max and Bunny paid their check and ascended to the
street. Bunny wanted to go to the breakfast dance at the Dahomey Casino
but Max was in no mood for it.

"I'm going home," he announced laconically, hailing a taxi. "Good
night!"

As the cab whirled up Seventh Avenue, he settled back and thought of
the girl from Atlanta. He couldn't get her out of his mind and didn't
want to. At his rooming house, he paid the driver, unlocked the door,
ascended to his room and undressed, mechanically. His mind was a
kaleidoscope: Atlanta, sea-green eyes, slender figure, titian hair,
frigid manner. "I never dance with niggers." Then he fell asleep about
five o'clock and promptly dreamed of her. Dreamed of dancing with her,
dining with her, motoring with her, sitting beside her on a golden
throne while millions of manacled white slaves prostrated themselves
before him. Then there was a nightmare of grim, gray men with shotguns,
baying hounds, a heap of gasoline-soaked faggots and a screeching,
fanatical mob.

He awoke covered with perspiration. His telephone was ringing and the
late morning sunshine was streaming into his room. He leaped from bed
and lifted the receiver.

"Say," shouted Bunny, "did you see this morning's _Times_?"

"Hell no," growled Max, "I just woke up. Why, what's in it?"

"Well, do you remember Dr. Junius Crookman, that colored fellow that
went to Germany to study about three years ago? He's just come back and
the _Times_ claims he's announced a sure way to turn darkies white.
Thought you might be interested after the way you fell for that ofay
broad last night. They say Crookman's going to open a sanitarium in
Harlem right away. There's your chance, Big Boy, and it's your only
chance." Bunny chuckled.

"Oh, ring off," growled Max. "That's a lot of hooey."

But he was impressed and a little excited. Suppose there was something
to it? He dressed hurriedly, after a cold shower, and went out to the
newsstand. He bought a _Times_ and scanned its columns. Yes, there it
was:

                 NEGRO ANNOUNCES REMARKABLE DISCOVERY

               Can Change Black to White in Three Days.

Max went into Jimmy Johnson's restaurant and greedily read the account
while awaiting his breakfast. Yes, it must be true. To think of old
Crookman being able to do that! Only a few years ago he'd been just a
hungry medical student around Harlem. Max put down the paper and stared
vacantly out of the window. Gee, Crookman would be a millionaire in no
time. He'd even be a multi-millionaire. It looked as though science
was to succeed where the Civil War had failed. But how could it be
possible? He looked at his hands and felt at the back of his head where
the straightening lotion had failed to conquer some of the knots. He
toyed with his ham and eggs as he envisioned the possibilities of the
discovery.

Then a sudden resolution seized him. He looked at the newspaper account
again. Yes, Crookman was staying at the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel. Why not
go and see what there was to this? Why not be the first Negro to try
it out? Sure, it was taking a chance, but think of getting white in
three days! No more jim crow. No more insults. As a white man he could
go anywhere, be anything he wanted to be, do most anything he wanted
to do, be a free man at last ... and probably be able to meet the girl
from Atlanta. What a vision!

He rose hurriedly, paid for his breakfast, rushed out of the door,
almost ran into an aged white man carrying a sign advertising a Negro
fraternity dance, and strode, almost ran, to the Phyllis Wheatley
Hotel.

He tore up the steps two at a time and into the sitting room. It was
crowded with white reporters from the daily newspapers and black
reporters from the Negro weeklies. In their midst he recognized Dr.
Junius Crookman, tall, wiry, ebony black, with a studious and polished
manner. Flanking him on either side were Henry ("Hank") Johnson, the
"Numbers" banker and Charlie ("Chuck") Foster, the realtor, looking
very grave, important and possessive in the midst of all the hullabaloo.

"Yes," Dr. Crookman was telling the reporters while they eagerly took
down his statements, "during my first year at college I noticed a black
girl on the street one day who had several irregular white patches on
her face and hands. That intrigued me. I began to study up on skin
diseases and found out that the girl was evidently suffering from a
nervous disease known as vitiligo. It is a very rare disease. Both
Negroes and Caucasians occasionally have it, but it is naturally more
conspicuous on blacks than whites. It absolutely removes skin pigment
and sometimes it turns a Negro completely white but only after a period
of thirty or forty years. It occurred to me that if one could discover
some means of artificially inducing and stimulating this nervous
disease at will, one might possibly solve the American race problem.
My sociology teacher had once said that there were but three ways for
the Negro to solve his problem in America," he gestured with his long
slender fingers, "'To either get out, get white or get along.' Since he
wouldn't and couldn't get out and was getting along only indifferently,
it seemed to me that the only thing for him was to get white." For a
moment his teeth gleamed beneath his smartly waxed mustache, then he
sobered and went on:

"I began to give a great deal of study to the problem during my spare
time. Unfortunately there was very little information on the subject in
this country. I decided to go to Germany but I didn't have the money.
Just when I despaired of getting the funds to carry out my experiments
and studies abroad, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Foster," he indicated the two
men with a graceful wave of his hand, "came to my rescue. I naturally
attribute a great deal of my success to them."

"But how is it done?" asked a reporter.

"Well," smiled Crookman, "I naturally cannot divulge the secret any
more than to say that it is accomplished by electrical nutrition and
glandular control. Certain gland secretions are greatly stimulated
while others are considerably diminished. It is a powerful and
dangerous treatment but harmless when properly done."

"How about the hair and features?" asked a Negro reporter.

"They are also changed in the process," answered the biologist. "In
three days the Negro becomes to all appearances a Caucasian."

"But is the transformation transferred to the offspring?" persisted the
Negro newspaperman.

"As yet," replied Crookman, "I have discovered no way to accomplish
anything so revolutionary but I am able to transform a black infant to
a white one in twenty-four hours."

"Have you tried it on any Negroes yet?" queried a sceptical white
journalist.

"Why of course I have," said the Doctor, slightly nettled. "I would not
have made my announcement if I had not done so. Come here, Sandol," he
called, turning to a pale white youth standing on the outskirts of the
crowd, who was the most Nordic looking person in the room. "This man is
a Senegalese, a former aviator in the French Army. He is living proof
that what I claim is true."

Dr. Crookman then displayed a photograph of a very black man, somewhat
resembling Sandol but with bushy Negro hair, flat nose and full lips.
"This," he announced proudly, "is Sandol as he looked before taking my
treatment. What I have done to him I can do to any Negro. He is in good
physical and mental condition as you all can see."

The assemblage was properly awed. After taking a few more notes and a
number of photographs of Dr. Crookman, his associates and of Sandol,
the newspapermen retired. Only the dapper Max Disher remained.

"Hello, Doc!" he said, coming forward and extending his hand. "Don't
you remember me? I'm Max Disher."

"Why certainly I remember you, Max," replied the biologist rising
cordially. "Been a long time since we've seen each other but you're
looking as sharp as ever. How's things?"

The two men shook hands.

"Oh, pretty good. Say, Doc, how's chances to get you to try that thing
on me? You must be looking for volunteers."

"Yes, I am, but not just yet. I've got to get my equipment set up
first. I think now I'll be ready for business in a couple of weeks."

Henry Johnson, the beefy, sleek-jowled, mulatto "Numbers" banker,
chuckled and nudged Dr. Crookman. "Old Max ain't losin' no time, Doc.
When that niggah gits white Ah bet he'll make up fo' los' time with
these ofay girls."

Charlie Foster, small, slender, grave, amber-colored, and laconic,
finally spoke up: "Seems all right, Junius, but there'll be hell to
pay when you whiten up a lot o' these darkies and them mulatto babies
start appearing here and there. Watcha gonna do then?"

"Oh, quit singin' th' blues, Chuck," boomed Johnson. "Don't cross
bridges 'til yuh come tuh 'em. Doc'll fix that okeh. Besides, we'll
have mo' money'n Henry Ford by that time."

"There'll be no difficulties whatever," assured Crookman rather
impatiently.

"Let's hope not."

       *       *       *       *       *

Next day the newspapers carried a long account of the interview with
Dr. Junius Crookman interspersed with photographs of him, his backers
and of the Senegalese who had been turned white. It was the talk of the
town and was soon the talk of the country. Long editorials were written
about the discovery, learned societies besieged the Negro biologist
with offers of lecture engagements, magazines begged him for articles,
but he turned down all offers and refused to explain his treatment.
This attitude was decried as unbecoming a scientist and it was
insinuated and even openly stated that nothing more could be expected
from a Negro.

But Crookman ignored the clamor of the public, and with the financial
help of his associates planned the great and lucrative experiment of
turning Negroes into Caucasians.

The impatient Max Disher saw him as often as possible and kept track
of developments. He yearned to be the first treated and didn't want
to be caught napping. Two objects were uppermost in his mind: To get
white and to Atlanta. The statuesque and haughty blonde was ever in
his thoughts. He was head over heels in love with her and realized
there was no hope for him to ever win her as long as he was brown. Each
day he would walk past the tall building that was to be the Crookman
Sanitarium, watching the workmen and delivery trucks; wondering how
much longer he would have to wait before entering upon the great
adventure.

At last the sanitarium was ready for business. Huge advertisements
appeared in the local Negro weeklies. Black Harlem was on its toes.
Curious throngs of Negroes and whites stood in front of the austere
six-story building gazing up at its windows.

Inside, Crookman, Johnson and Foster stood nervously about while
hustling attendants got everything in readiness. Outside they could
hear the murmur of the crowd.

"That means money, Chuck," boomed Johnson, rubbing his beefsteak hands
together.

"Yeh," replied the realtor, "but there's one more thing I wanna get
straight: How about that darky dialect? You can't change that."

"It isn't necessary, my dear Foster," explained the physician,
patiently. "There is no such thing as Negro dialect, except in
literature and drama. It is a well-known fact among informed persons
that a Negro from a given section speaks the same dialect as his white
neighbors. In the South you can't tell over the telephone whether you
are talking to a white man or a Negro. The same is true in New York
when a Northern Negro speaks into the receiver. I have noticed the same
thing in the hills of West Virginia and Tennessee. The educated Haitian
speaks the purest French and the Jamaican Negro sounds exactly like
an Englishman. There are no racial or color dialects; only sectional
dialects."

"Guess you're right," agreed Foster, grudgingly.

"I know I'm right. Moreover, even if my treatment did not change the
so-called Negro lips, even that would prove to be no obstacle."

"How come, Doc," asked Johnson.

"Well, there are plenty of Caucasians who have lips quite as thick and
noses quite as broad as any of us. As a matter of fact there has been
considerable exaggeration about the contrast between Caucasian and
Negro features. The cartoonists and minstrel men have been responsible
for it very largely. Some Negroes like the Somalis, Filanis, Egyptians,
Hausas and Abyssinians have very thin lips and nostrils. So also
have the Malagasys of Madagascar. Only in certain small sections of
Africa do the Negroes possess extremely pendulous lips and very broad
nostrils. On the other hand, many so-called Caucasians, particularly
the Latins, Jews and South Irish, and frequently the most Nordic of
peoples like the Swedes, show almost Negroid lips and noses. Black up
some white folks and they could deceive a resident of Benin. Then when
you consider that less than twenty per cent of our Negroes are without
Caucasian ancestry and that close to thirty per cent have American
Indian ancestry, it is readily seen that there cannot be the wide
difference in Caucasian and Afro-American facial characteristics that
most people imagine."

"Doc, you sho' knows yo' onions," said Johnson, admiringly. "Doan pay
no 'tenshun to that ole Doubtin' Thomas. He'd holler starvation in a
pie shop."

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a commotion outside and an angry voice was heard above the
hum of low conversation. Then Max Disher burst in the door with a guard
hanging onto his coat tail.

"Let loose o' me, Boy," he quarreled. "I got an engagement here. Doc,
tell this man something, will you."

Crookman nodded to the guard to release the insurance man. "Well, I see
you're right on time, Max."

"I told you I'd be Johnny-on-the-spot, didn't I?" said Disher,
inspecting his clothes to see if they had been wrinkled.

"Well, if you're all ready, go into the receiving room there, sign the
register and get into one of those bathrobes. You're first on the list."

The three partners looked at each other and grinned as Max disappeared
into a small room at the end of the corridor. Dr. Crookman went into
his office to don his white trousers, shoes and smock; Johnson and
Foster entered the business office to supervise the clerical staff,
while white-coated figures darted back and forth through the corridors.
Outside, the murmuring of the vast throng grew more audible.

Johnson showed all of his many gold teeth in a wide grin as he glanced
out the window and saw the queue of Negroes already extending around
the corner. "Man, man, man!" he chuckled to Foster, "at fifty dollars a
th'ow this thing's gonna have th' numbah business beat all hollow."

"Hope so," said Foster, gravely.

       *       *       *       *       *

Max Disher, arrayed only in a hospital bathrobe and a pair of slippers,
was escorted to the elevator by two white-coated attendants. They got
off on the sixth floor and walked to the end of the corridor. Max was
trembling with excitement and anxiety. Suppose something should go
wrong? Suppose Doc should make a mistake? He thought of the Elks'
excursion every summer to Bear Mountain, the high yellow Minnie and
her colorful apartment, the pleasant evenings at the Dahomey Casino
doing the latest dances with the brown belles of Harlem, the prancing
choruses at the Lafayette Theater, the hours he had whiled away at
Boogie's and the Honky Tonk Club, and he hesitated. Then he envisioned
his future as a white man, probably as the husband of the tall blonde
from Atlanta, and with firm resolve, he entered the door of the
mysterious chamber.

He quailed as he saw the formidable apparatus of sparkling nickel. It
resembled a cross between a dentist's chair and an electric chair.
Wires and straps, bars and levers protruded from it and a great nickel
headpiece, like the helmet of a knight, hung over it. The room had only
a skylight and no sound entered it from the outside. Around the walls
were cases of instruments and shelves of bottles filled with strangely
colored fluids. He gasped with fright and would have made for the door
but the two husky attendants held him firmly, stripped off his robe
and bound him in the chair. There was no retreat. It was either the
beginning or the end.




                              CHAPTER TWO


Slowly, haltingly, Max Disher dragged his way down the hall to the
elevator, supported on either side by an attendant. He felt terribly
weak, emptied and nauseated; his skin twitched and was dry and
feverish; his insides felt very hot and sore. As the trio walked slowly
along the corridor, a blue-green light would ever and anon blaze
through one of the doorways as a patient was taken in. There was a low
hum and throb of machinery and an acrid odor filled the air. Uniformed
nurses and attendants hurried back and forth at their tasks. Everything
was quiet, swift, efficient, sinister.

He felt so thankful that he had survived the ordeal of that horrible
machine so akin to the electric chair. A shudder passed over him at
the memory of the hours he had passed in its grip, fed at intervals
with revolting concoctions. But when they reached the elevator and he
saw himself in the mirror, he was startled, overjoyed. White at last!
Gone was the smooth brown complexion. Gone were the slightly full lips
and Ethiopian nose. Gone was the nappy hair that he had straightened
so meticulously ever since the kink-no-more lotions first wrenched
Aframericans from the tyranny and torture of the comb. There would be
no more expenditures for skin whiteners; no more discrimination; no
more obstacles in his path. He was free! The world was his oyster and
he had the open sesame of a pork-colored skin!

The reflection in the mirror gave him new life and strength. He now
stood erect, without support and grinned at the two tall, black
attendants. "Well, Boys," he crowed, "I'm all set now. That machine of
Doc's worked like a charm. Soon's I get a feed under my belt I'll be
okeh."

Six hours later, bathed, fed, clean-shaven, spry, blonde and jubilant,
he emerged from the out-patient ward and tripped gaily down the
corridor to the main entrance. He was through with coons, he resolved,
from now on. He glanced in a superior manner at the long line of
black and brown folk on one side of the corridor, patiently awaiting
treatment. He saw many persons whom he knew but none of them recognized
him. It thrilled him to feel that he was now indistinguishable from
nine-tenths of the people of the United States; one of the great
majority. Ah, it was good not to be a Negro any longer!

As he sought to open the front door, the strong arm of a guard
restrained him. "Wait a minute," the man said, "and we'll help you get
through the mob."

A moment or two later Max found himself the center of a flying wedge
of five or six husky special policemen, cleaving through a milling
crowd of colored folk. From the top step of the Sanitarium he had
noticed the crowd spread over the sidewalk, into the street and around
the corners. Fifty traffic policemen strained and sweated to keep
prospective patients in line and out from under the wheels of taxicabs
and trucks.

Finally he reached the curb, exhausted from the jostling and squeezing,
only to be set upon by a mob of newspaper photographers and reporters.
As the first person to take the treatment, he was naturally the center
of attraction for about fifteen of these journalistic gnats. They asked
a thousand questions seemingly all at once. What was his name? How did
he feel? What was he going to do? Would he marry a white woman? Did he
intend to continue living in Harlem?

Max would say nothing. In the first place, he thought to himself, if
they're so anxious to know all this stuff, they ought to be willing to
pay for it. He needed money if he was going to be able to thoroughly
enjoy being white; why not get some by selling his story? The
reporters, male and female, begged him almost with tears in their eyes
for a statement but he was adamant.

While they were wrangling, an empty taxicab drove up. Pushing the
inquisitive reporters to one side, Max leaped into it and yelled
"Central Park!" It was the only place he could think of at the moment.
He wanted to have time to compose his mind, to plan the future in this
great world of whiteness. As the cab lurched forward, he turned and was
astonished to find another occupant, a pretty girl.

"Don't be scared," she smiled. "I knew you would want to get away
from that mob so I went around the corner and got a cab for you. Come
along with me and I'll get everything fixed up for you. I'm a reporter
from _The Scimitar_. We'll give you a lot of money for your story."
She talked rapidly. Max's first impulse had been to jump out of the
cab, even at the risk of having to face again the mob of reporters and
photographers he had sought to escape, but he changed his mind when he
heard mention of money.

"How much?" he asked, eyeing her. She was very comely and he noted that
her ankles were well turned.

"Oh, probably a thousand dollars," she replied.

"Well, that sounds good." A thousand dollars! What a time he could have
with that! Broadway for him as soon as he got paid off.

As they sped down Seventh Avenue, the newsboys were yelling the latest
editions. "Ex--try! Ex--try! Blacks turning white! Blacks turning
white!... Read all about the gr-r-reat discovery! Paper, Mister!
Paper!... Read all about Dr. Crookman."

He settled back while they drove through the park and glanced
frequently at the girl by his side. She looked mighty good; wonder
could he talk business with her? Might go to dinner and a cabaret. That
would be the best way to start.

"What did you say your name was?" he began.

"I didn't say," she stalled.

"Well, you have a name, haven't you?" he persisted.

"Suppose I have?"

"You're not scared to tell it, are you?"

"Why do you want to know my name?"

"Well, there's nothing wrong about wanting to know a pretty girl's
name, is there?"

"Well, my name's Smith, Sybil Smith. Now are you satisfied?"

"Not yet. I want to know something more. How would you like to go to
dinner with me tonight?"

"I don't know and I won't know until I've had the experience." She
smiled coquettishly. Going out with him, she figured, would make the
basis of a rattling good story for tomorrow's paper. "Negro's first
night as a Caucasian!" Fine!

"Say, you're a regular fellow," he said, beaming upon her. "I'll get a
great kick out of going to dinner with you because you'll be the only
one in the place that'll know I'm a Negro."

Down at the office of _The Scimitar_, it didn't take Max long to come
to an agreement, tell his story to a stenographer and get a sheaf of
crisp, new bills. As he left the building a couple of hours later with
Miss Smith on his arm, the newsboys were already crying the extra
edition carrying the first installment of his strange tale. A huge
photograph of him occupied the entire front page of the tabloid. Lucky
for him that he'd given his name as William Small, he thought.

He was annoyed and a little angered. What did they want to put his
picture all over the front of the paper for? Now everybody would know
who he was. He had undergone the tortures of Doc Crookman's devilish
machine in order to escape the conspicuousness of a dark skin and now
he was being made conspicuous because he had once had a dark skin!
Could one never escape the plagued race problem?

"Don't worry about that," comforted Miss Smith. "Nobody'll recognize
you. There are thousands of white people, yes millions, that look
like you do." She took his arm and snuggled up closer. She wanted to
make him feel at home. It wasn't often a poor, struggling newspaper
woman got a chap with a big bankroll to take her out for the evening.
Moreover, the description she would write of the experience might win
her a promotion.

They walked down Broadway in the blaze of white lights to a
dinner-dance place. To Max it was like being in heaven. He had strolled
through the Times Square district before but never with such a feeling
of absolute freedom and sureness. No one now looked at him curiously
because he was with a white girl, as they had when he came down there
with Minnie, his former octoroon lady friend. Gee, it was great!

They dined and they danced. Then they went to a cabaret, where, amid
smoke, noise and body smells, they drank what was purported to be
whiskey and watched a semi-nude chorus do its stuff. Despite his
happiness Max found it pretty dull. There was something lacking in
these ofay places of amusement or else there was something present
that one didn't find in the black-and-tan resorts in Harlem. The
joy and abandon here was obviously forced. Patrons went to extremes
to show each other they were having a wonderful time. It was all so
strained and quite unlike anything to which he had been accustomed.
The Negroes, it seemed to him, were much gayer, enjoyed themselves
more deeply and yet they were more restrained, actually more refined.
Even their dancing was different. They followed the rhythm accurately,
effortlessly and with easy grace; these lumbering couples, out of
step half the time and working as strenuously as stevedores emptying
the bowels of a freighter, were noisy, awkward, inelegant. At their
best they were gymnastic where the Negroes were sensuous. He felt a
momentary pang of mingled disgust, disillusionment and nostalgia. But
it was only momentary. He looked across at the comely Sybil and then
around at the other white women, many of whom were very pretty and
expensively gowned, and the sight temporarily drove from his mind the
thoughts that had been occupying him.

       *       *       *       *       *

They parted at three o'clock, after she had given him her telephone
number. She pecked him lightly on the cheek in payment, doubtless, for
a pleasant evening's entertainment. Somewhat disappointed because she
had failed to show any interest in his expressed curiosity about the
interior of her apartment, he directed the chauffeur to drive him to
Harlem. After all, he argued to himself in defense of his action, he
had to get his things.

As the cab turned out of Central Park at 110th Street he felt,
curiously enough, a feeling of peace. There were all the old familiar
sights: the all-night speakeasies, the frankfurter stands, the
loiterers, the late pedestrians, the chop suey joints, the careening
taxicabs, the bawdy laughter.

He couldn't resist the temptation to get out at 133rd Street and go
down to Boogie's place, the hangout of his gang. He tapped, an eye
peered through a hole, appraised him critically, then disappeared and
the hole was closed. There was silence.

Max frowned. What was the matter with old Bob? Why didn't he open
that door? The cold January breeze swept down into the little court
where he stood and made him shiver. He knocked a little louder, more
insistently. The eye appeared again.

"Who's 'at?" growled the doorkeeper.

"It's me, Max Disher," replied the ex-Negro.

"Go 'way f'm here, white man. Dis heah place is closed."

"Is Bunny Brown in there?" asked Max in desperation.

"Yeh, he's heah. Does yuh know him? Well, Ah'll call 'im out heah and
see if he knows you."

Max waited in the cold for about two or three minutes and then the door
suddenly opened and Bunny Brown, a little unsteady, came out. He peered
at Max in the light from the electric bulb over the door.

"Hello Bunny," Max greeted him. "Don't know me do you? It's me, Max
Disher. You recognize my voice, don't you?"

Bunny looked again, rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Yes, the voice
was Max Disher's, but this man was white. Still, when he smiled his
eyes revealed the same sardonic twinkle--so characteristic of his
friend.

"Max," he blurted out, "is that you, sure enough? Well, for cryin' out
loud! Damned 'f you ain't been up there to Crookman's and got fixed
up. Well, hush my mouth! Bob, open that door. This is old Max Disher.
Done gone up there to Crookman's and got all white on my hands. He's
just too tight, with his blond hair, 'n everything."

Bob opened the door, the two friends entered, sat down at one of the
small round tables in the narrow, smoke-filled cellar and were soon
surrounded with cronies. They gazed raptly at his colorless skin,
commented on the veins showing blue through the epidermis, stroked his
ash-blond hair and listened with mouths open to his remarkable story.

"Whatcha gonna do now, Max?" asked Boogie, the rangy, black,
bullet-headed proprietor.

"I know just what that joker's gonna do," said Bunny. "He's goin' back
to Atlanta. Am I right, Big Boy?"

"You ain't wrong," Max agreed. "I'm goin' right on down there, brother,
and make up for lost time."

"Whadayah mean?" asked Boogie.

"Boy, it would take me until tomorrow night to tell you and then you
wouldn't understand."

The two friends strolled up the avenue. Both were rather mum. They had
been inseparable pals since the stirring days in France. Now they were
about to be parted. It wasn't as if Max was going across the ocean to
some foreign country; there would be a wider gulf separating them: the
great sea of color. They both thought about it.

"I'll be pretty lonesome without you, Bunny."

"It ain't you, Big Boy."

"Well, why don't you go ahead and get white and then we could stay
together. I'll give you the money."

"Say not so! Where'd you get so much jack all of a sudden?" asked Bunny.

"Sold my story to _The Scimitar_ for a grand."

"Paid in full?"

"Wasn't paid in part!"

"All right, then, I'll take you up, Heavy Sugar." Bunny held out his
plump hand and Max handed him a hundred-dollar bill.

They were near the Crookman Sanitarium. Although it was five o'clock
on a Sunday morning, the building was brightly lighted from cellar to
roof and the hum of electric motors could be heard, low and powerful.
A large electric sign hung from the roof to the second floor. It
represented a huge arrow outlined in green with the words BLACK-NO-MORE
running its full length vertically. A black face was depicted at the
lower end of the arrow while at the top shone a white face to which the
arrow was pointed. First would appear the outline of the arrow; then,
BLACK-NO-MORE would flash on and off. Following that the black face
would appear at the bottom and beginning at the lower end the long
arrow with its lettering would appear progressively until its tip was
reached, when the white face at the top would blazon forth. After that
the sign would flash off and on and the process would be repeated.

In front of the sanitarium milled a half-frozen crowd of close to four
thousand Negroes. A riot squad armed with rifles, machine guns and tear
gas bombs maintained some semblance of order. A steel cable stretched
from lamp post to lamp post the entire length of the block kept the
struggling mass of humanity on the sidewalk and out of the path of the
traffic. It seemed as if all Harlem were there. As the two friends
reached the outskirts of the mob, an ambulance from the Harlem Hospital
drove up and carried away two women who had been trampled upon.

Lined up from the door to the curb was a gang of tough special guards
dredged out of the slums. Grim Irish from Hell's Kitchen, rough Negroes
from around 133rd Street and 5th Avenue (New York's "Beale Street") and
tough Italians from the lower West Side. They managed with difficulty
to keep an aisle cleared for incoming and outgoing patients. Near the
curb were stationed the reporters and photographers.

The noise rose and fell. First there would be a low hum of voices.
Steadily it would rise and rise in increasing volume as the speakers
became more animated and reach its climax in a great animal-like roar
as the big front door would open and a whitened Negro would emerge.
Then the mass would surge forward to peer at and question the ersatz
Nordic. Sometimes the ex-Ethiopian would quail before the mob and jump
back into the building. Then the hardboiled guards would form a flying
squad and hustle him to a waiting taxicab. Other erstwhile Aframericans
issuing from the building would grin broadly, shake hands with friends
and relatives and start to graphically describe their experience while
the Negroes around them enviously admired their clear white skins.

In between these appearances the hot dog and peanut vendors did a
brisk trade, along with the numerous pickpockets of the district. One
slender, anemic, ratty-looking mulatto Negro was almost beaten to death
by a gigantic black laundress whose purse he had snatched. A Negro
selling hot roasted sweet potatoes did a land-office business while the
neighboring saloons, that had increased so rapidly in number since the
enactment of the Volstead Law that many of their Italian proprietors
paid substantial income taxes, sold scores of gallons of incredibly
atrocious hootch.

"Well, bye, bye, Max," said Bunny, extending his hand. "I'm goin' in
an' try my luck."

"So long, Bunny. See you in Atlanta. Write me general delivery."

"Why, ain't you gonna wait for me, Max?"

"Naw! I'm fed up on this town."

"Oh, you ain't kiddin' me, Big Boy. I know you want to look up that
broad you saw in the Honky Tonk New Year's Eve," Bunny beamed.

Max grinned and blushed slightly. They shook hands and parted. Bunny
ran up the aisle from the curb, opened the sanitarium door and without
turning around, disappeared within.

For a minute or so, Max stood irresolutely in the midst of the
gibbering crowd of people. Unaccountably he felt at home here
among these black folk. Their jests, scraps of conversation and
lusty laughter all seemed like heavenly music. Momentarily he felt
a disposition to stay among them, to share again their troubles
which they seemed always to bear with a lightness that was yet not
indifference. But then, he suddenly realized with just a tiny trace of
remorse that the past was forever gone. He must seek other pastures,
other pursuits, other playmates, other loves. He was white now. Even
if he wished to stay among his folk, they would be either jealous
or suspicious of him, as they were of most octoroons and nearly all
whites. There was no other alternative than to seek his future among
the Caucasians with whom he now rightfully belonged.

And after all, he thought, it was a glorious new adventure. His eyes
twinkled and his pulse quickened as he thought of it. Now he could
go anywhere, associate with anybody, be anything he wanted to be. He
suddenly thought of the comely miss he had seen in the Honky Tonk on
New Year's Eve and the greatly enlarged field from which he could
select his loves. Yes, indeed there were advantages in being white. He
brightened and viewed the tightly-packed black folk around him with a
superior air. Then, thinking again of his clothes at Mrs. Blandish's,
the money in his pocket and the prospect for the first time of riding
into Atlanta in a Pullman car and not as a Pullman porter, he turned
and pushed his way through the throng.

He strolled up West 139th Street to his rooming place, stepping lightly
and sniffing the early morning air. How good it was to be free, white
and to possess a bankroll! He fumbled in his pocket for his little
mirror and looked at himself again and again from several angles. He
stroked his pale blond hair and secretly congratulated himself that he
would no longer need to straighten it nor be afraid to wet it. He gazed
raptly at his smooth, white hands with the blue veins showing through.
What a miracle Dr. Crookman had wrought!

As he entered the hallway, the mountainous form of his landlady loomed
up. She jumped back as she saw his face.

"What you doing in here?" she almost shouted. "Where'd you get a key to
this house?"

"It's me, Max Disher," he assured her with a grin at her astonishment.
"Don't know me, do you?"

She gazed incredulously into his face. "Is that you sure enough, Max?
How in the devil did you get so white?"

He explained and showed her a copy of _The Scimitar_ containing his
story. She switched on the hall light and read it. Contrasting emotions
played over her face, for Mrs. Blandish was known in the business world
as Mme. Sisseretta Blandish, the beauty specialist, who owned the
swellest hair-straightening parlor in Harlem. Business, she thought to
herself, was bad enough, what with all of the competition, without this
Dr. Crookman coming along and killing it altogether.

"Well," she sighed, "I suppose you're going down town to live, now. I
always said niggers didn't really have any race pride."

Uneasy, Max made no reply. The fat, brown woman turned with a
disdainful sniff and disappeared into a room at the end of the hall. He
ran lightly upstairs to pack his things.

An hour later, as the taxicab bearing him and his luggage bowled
through Central Park, he was in high spirits. He would go down to the
Pennsylvania Station and get a Pullman straight into Atlanta. He would
stop there at the best hotel. He wouldn't hunt up any of his folks. No,
that would be too dangerous. He would just play around, enjoy life and
laugh at the white folks up his sleeve. God! What an adventure! What
a treat it would be to mingle with white people in places where as a
youth he had never dared to enter. At last he felt like an American
citizen. He flecked the ash of his panatela out of the open window of
the cab and sank back in the seat feeling at peace with the world.




                             CHAPTER THREE


Dr. Junius Crookman, looking tired and worn, poured himself another
cup of coffee from the percolator near by and turning to Hank Johnson,
asked "What about that new electrical apparatus?"

"On th' way, Doc. On th' way," replied the former Numbers baron. "Just
talkin' to th' man this mornin'. He says we'll get it tomorrow, maybe."

"Well, we certainly need it," said Chuck Foster, who sat beside him on
the large leather divan. "We can't handle all of the business as it is."

"How about those new places you're buying?" asked the physician.

"Well, I've bought the big private house on Edgecombe Avenue for
fifteen thousand and the workmen are getting it in shape now. It ought
to be ready in about a week if nothing happens," Foster informed him.

"If nuthin' happens?" echoed Johnson. "Whut's gonna happen? We're
settin' on th' world, ain't we? Our racket's within th' law, ain't it?
We're makin' money faster'n we can take it in, ain't we? Whut could
happen? This here is the best and safest graft I've ever been in."

"Oh, you never can tell," cautioned the quondom realtor. "These white
newspapers, especially in the South, are beginning to write some pretty
strong editorials against us and we've only been running two weeks. You
know how easy it is to stir up the fanatical element. Before we know it
they're liable to get a law passed against us."

"Not if I c'n git to th' legislature first," interrupted Johnson. "Yuh
know, Ah knows how tuh handle these white folks. If yuh 'Say it with
Bucks' you c'n git anything yuh want."

"There is something in what Foster says, though," Dr. Crookman said.
"Just look at this bunch of clippings we got in this morning. Listen
to these: 'The Viper in Our Midst,' from the Richmond _Blade_; 'The
Menace of Science' from the Memphis _Bugle_; 'A Challenge to Every
White Man' from the Dallas _Sun_; 'Police Battle Black Mob Seeking
White Skins,' from the Atlanta _Topic_; 'Negro Doctor Admits Being
Taught by Germans,' from the St. Louis _North American_. Here's a
line or two from an editorial in the Oklahoma City _Hatchet_: 'There
are times when the welfare of our race must take precedence over law.
Opposed as we always have been to mob violence as the worst enemy of
democratic government, we cannot help but feel that the intelligent
white men and women of New York City who are interested in the purity
and preservation of their race should not permit the challenge of
Crookmanism to go unanswered, even though these black scoundrels may be
within the law. There are too many criminals in this country already
hiding behind the skirts of the law.'

"And lastly, one from the Tallahassee _Announcer_ says: 'While it is
the right of every citizen to do what he wants to do with his money,
the white people of the United States cannot remain indifferent to
this discovery and its horrible potentialities. Hundreds of Negroes
with newly-acquired white skins have already entered white society and
thousands will follow them. The black race from one end of the country
to the other has in two short weeks gone completely crazy over the
prospect of getting white. Day by day we see the color line which we
have so laboriously established being rapidly destroyed. There would
not be so much cause for alarm in this, were it not for the fact that
this vitiligo is not hereditary. In other words, THE OFFSPRING OF THESE
WHITENED NEGROES WILL BE NEGROES! This means that your daughter, having
married a supposed white man, may find herself with a black baby! Will
the proud white men of the Southland so far forget their traditions as
to remain idle while this devilish work is going on?'"

"No use singin' th' blues," counseled Johnson. "We ain' gonna be
both'ed heah, even if them crackahs down South do raise a little hell.
Jus' lissen to th' sweet music of that mob out theah! Eve'y scream
means fifty bucks. On'y reason we ain't makin' mo' money is 'cause we
ain't got no mo' room."

"That's right," Dr. Crookman agreed. "We've turned out one hundred a
day for fourteen days." He leaned back and lit a cigarette.

"At fifty bucks a th'ow," interrupted Johnson, "that means we've took
in seventy thousand dollahs. Great Day in th' mornin'! Didn't know tha
was so much jack in Harlem."

"Yes," continued Crookman, "we're taking in thirty-five thousand
dollars a week. As soon as you and Foster get that other place fixed up
we'll be making twice that much."

From the hallway came the voice of the switchboard operator
monotonously droning out her instructions: "No, Dr. Crookman cannot
see anyone.... Dr. Crookman has nothing to say.... Dr. Crookman will
issue a statement shortly.... Fifty Dollars.... No, Dr. Crookman isn't
a mulatto.... I'm very sorry but I cannot answer that question."

The three friends sat in silence amid the hum of activity around them.
Hank Johnson smiled down at the end of his cigar as he thought back
over his rather colorful and hectic career. To think that today he was
one of the leading Negroes of the world, one who was taking an active
and important part in solving the most vexatious problem in American
life, and yet only ten years before he had been working on a Carolina
chain gang. Two years he had toiled on the roads under the hard eye and
ready rifle of a cruel white guard; two years of being beaten, kicked
and cursed, of poor food and vermin-infested habitations; two years for
participating in a little crap game. Then he had drifted to Charleston,
got a job in a pool room, had a stroke of luck with the dice, come
to New York and landed right in the midst of the Numbers racket.
Becoming a collector or "runner," he had managed his affairs well
enough to be able to start out soon as a "banker." Money had poured
in from Negroes eager to chance one cent in the hope of winning six
dollars. Some won but most lost and he had prospered. He had purchased
an apartment house, paid off the police, dabbled in the bail bond
game, given a couple of thousand dollars to advance Negro Art and been
elected Grand Permanent Shogun of the Ancient and Honorable Order of
Crocodiles, Harlem's largest and most prosperous secret society. Then
young Crookman had come to him with his proposition. At first he had
hesitated about helping him but later was persuaded to do so when the
young man bitterly complained that the dicty Negroes would not help to
pay for the studies abroad. What a stroke of luck, getting in on the
ground floor like this! They'd all be richer than Rockefeller inside
of a year. Twelve million Negroes at fifty dollars apiece! Great Day
in the morning! Hank spat regally into the brass cuspidor across the
office and reared back contentedly on the soft cushion of the divan.

Chuck Foster was also seeing his career in retrospect. His life had
not been as colorful as that of Hank Johnson. The son of a Birmingham
barber, he had enjoyed such educational advantages as that community
afforded the darker brethren; had become a schoolteacher, an insurance
agent and a social worker in turn. Then, along with the tide of
migration, he had drifted first to Cincinnati, then to Pittsburgh
and finally to New York. There the real estate field, unusually
lucrative because of the paucity of apartments for the increasing Negro
population, had claimed him. Cautious, careful, thrifty and devoid of
sentimentality, he had prospered, but not without some ugly rumors
being broadcast about his sharp business methods. As he slowly worked
his way up to the top of Harlem society, he had sought to live down
this reputation for double-dealing and shifty practices, all too true
of the bulk of his fellow realtors in the district, by giving large
sums to the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations, by
offering scholarships to young Negroes, by staging elaborate parties
to which the dicty Negroes of the community were invited. He had been
glad of the opportunity to help subsidize young Crookman's studies
abroad when Hank Johnson pointed out the possibilities of the venture.
Now, although the results so far exceeded his wildest dreams, his
natural conservatism and timidity made him somewhat pessimistic about
the future. He supposed a hundred dire results of their activities and
only the day before he had increased the amount of his life insurance.
His mind was filled with doubts. He didn't like so much publicity. He
wanted a sort of genteel popularity but no notoriety.

       *       *       *       *       *

Despite the coffee and cigarettes, Dr. Junius Crookman was sleepy.
The responsibility, the necessity of overseeing the work of his
physicians and nurses, the insistence of the newspapers and the medical
profession that he reveal the secrets of his treatment and a thousand
other vexatious details had kept him from getting proper rest. He had,
indeed, spent most of his time in the sanitarium.

This hectic activity was new to him. Up until a month ago his
thirty-five years had been peaceful and, in the main, studious ones.
The son of an Episcopal clergyman, he had been born and raised in a
city in central New York, his associates carefully selected in order
to protect him as much as possible from the defeatist psychology so
prevalent among American Negroes and given every opportunity and
inducement to learn his profession and become a thoroughly cultivated
and civilized man. His parents, though poor, were proud and boasted
that they belonged to the Negro aristocracy. He had had to work his
way through college because of the failure of his father's health
but he had come very little in contact with the crudity, coarseness
and cruelty of life. He had been monotonously successful but he was
sensible enough to believe that a large part of it was due, like most
success, to chance. He saw in his great discovery the solution to
the most annoying problem in American life. Obviously, he reasoned,
if there were no Negroes, there could be no Negro problem. Without a
Negro problem, Americans could concentrate their attention on something
constructive. Through his efforts and the activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated, it would be possible to do what agitation, education
and legislation had failed to do. He was naïvely surprised that there
should be opposition to his work. Like most men with a vision, a plan,
a program or a remedy, he fondly imagined people to be intelligent
enough to accept a good thing when it was offered to them, which was
conclusive evidence that he knew little about the human race.

Dr. Crookman prided himself above all on being a great lover of
his race. He had studied its history, read of its struggles and
kept up with its achievements. He subscribed to six or seven Negro
weekly newspapers and two of the magazines. He was so interested in
the continued progress of the American Negroes that he wanted to
remove all obstacles in their path by depriving them of their racial
characteristics. His home and office were filled with African masks
and paintings of Negroes by Negroes. He was what was known in Negro
society as a Race Man. He was wedded to everything black except the
black woman--his wife was a white girl with remote Negro ancestry,
of the type that Negroes were wont to describe as being "able to
pass for white." While abroad he had spent his spare time ransacking
the libraries for facts about the achievements of Negroes and having
liaisons with comely and available fraus and frauleins.

"Well, Doc," said Hank Johnson, suddenly, "you'd bettah go on home 'n
git some sleep. Ain' no use killin' you'sef. Eve'thing's gonna be all
right heah. You ain' gotta thing tuh worry 'bout."

"How's he gonna get out of here with that mob in front?" Chuck
inquired. "A man almost needs a tank to get through that crowd of
darkies."

"Oh, Ah've got all that fixed, Calamity Jane," Johnson remarked
casually. "All he's gotta do is tuh go on down staihs tuh the basem'nt,
go out th' back way an' step into th' alley. My car'll be theah waitin'
fo' 'im."

"That's awfully nice of you, Johnson," said the physician. "I am dead
tired. I think I'll be a new man if I can get a few hours of sleep."

A black man in white uniform opened the door and announced:
"Mrs. Crookman!" He held the door open for the Doctor's petite,
stylishly-dressed wife to enter. The three men sprang to their feet.
Johnson and Foster eyed the beautiful little octoroon appreciatively as
they bowed, thinking how easily she could "pass for white," which would
have been something akin to a piece of anthracite coal passing for
black.

"Darling!" she exclaimed, turning to her husband. "Why don't you come
home and get some rest? You'll be ill if you keep on in this way."

"Jus' whut Ah bin tellin' him, Mrs. Crookman," Johnson hastened to say.
"We got eve'ything fixed tuh send 'im off."

"Well, then, Junius, we'd better be going," she said decisively.

Putting on a long overcoat over his white uniform, Dr. Crookman,
wearily and meekly followed his spouse out of the door.

"Mighty nice looking girl, Mrs. Crookman," Foster observed.

"Nice lookin'!" echoed Johnson, with mock amazement. "Why, nigguh, that
ooman would make uh rabbit hug uh houn'. Doc sez she's cullud, an' she
sez so, but she looks mighty white tuh me."

"Everything that looks white ain't white in this man's country," Foster
replied.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meantime there was feverish activity in Harlem's financial
institutions. At the Douglass Bank the tellers were busier than
bootleggers on Christmas Eve. Moreover, they were short-handed because
of the mysterious absence of Bunny Brown. A long queue of Negroes
extended down one side of the bank, out of the front door and around
the corner, while bank attendants struggled to keep them in line.
Everybody was drawing out money; no one was depositing. In vain the
bank officials pleaded with them not to withdraw their funds. The
Negroes were adamant: they wanted their money and wanted it quick. Day
after day this had gone on ever since Black-No-More, Incorporated, had
started turning Negroes white. At first, efforts were made to bulldoze
and intimidate the depositors but that didn't succeed. These people
were in no mood to be trifled with. A lifetime of being Negroes in the
United States had convinced them that there was great advantage in
being white.

"Mon, whutcha tahlk ab't?" scoffed a big, black British West Indian
woman with whom an official was remonstrating not to draw out her
money. "Dis heah's mah mahney, ain't it? Yuh use mah mahney alla time,
aintcha? Whutcha mean, Ah shouldn't draw't out?... You gimme mah
mahney or Ah broke up dis place!"

"Are you closing your account, Mr. Robinson?" a soft-voiced mulatto
teller inquired of a big, rusty stevedore.

"Ah ain't openin' it," was the rejoinder. "Ah wants th' whole thing,
an' Ah don't mean maybe."

Similar scenes were being enacted at the Wheatley Trust Company and at
the local Post Office station.

An observer passing up and down the streets would have noted a general
exodus from the locality. Moving vans were backed up to apartment
houses on nearly every block.

The "For Rent" signs were appearing in larger number in Harlem than
at any time in twenty-five years. Landlords looked on helplessly as
apartment after apartment emptied and was not filled. Even the refusal
to return deposits did not prevent the tenants from moving out. What,
indeed, was fifty, sixty or seventy dollars when one was leaving
behind insult, ostracism, segregation and discrimination? Moreover,
the whitened Negroes were saving a great deal of money by being able
to change localities. The mechanics of race prejudice had forced them
into the congested Harlem area where, at the mercy of white and black
real estate sharks, they had been compelled to pay exorbitant rentals
because the demand for housing far exceeded the supply. As a general
rule the Negroes were paying one hundred per cent more than white
tenants in other parts of the city for a smaller number of rooms and
worse service.

The installment furniture and clothing houses in the area were also
beginning to feel the results of the activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated. Collectors were reporting their inability to locate
certain families or the articles they had purchased on time. Many of
the colored folk, it was said, had sold their furniture to second-hand
stores and vanished with the proceeds into the great mass of white
citizenry.

At the same time there seemed to be more white people on the streets of
Harlem than at any time in the past twenty years. Many of them appeared
to be on the most intimate terms with the Negroes, laughing, talking,
dining and dancing in a most un-Caucasian way. This sort of association
had always gone on at night but seldom in the daylight.

Strange Negroes from the West and South who had heard the good news
were to be seen on the streets and in public places, patiently awaiting
their turn at the Crookman Institute.

       *       *       *       *       *

Madame Sisseretta Blandish sat disconsolately in an armchair near the
front door of her ornate hair-straightening shop, looking blankly at
the pedestrians and traffic passing to and fro. These two weeks had
been hard ones for her. Everything was going out and nothing coming
in. She had been doing very well at her vocation for years and was
acclaimed in the community as one of its business leaders. Because of
her prominence as the proprietor of a successful enterprise engaged
in making Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible, she
had recently been elected for the fourth time a Vice-President of the
American Race Pride League. She was also head of the Woman's Committee
of the New York Branch of the Social Equality League and held an
important place in local Republican politics. But all of these honors
brought little or no money with them. They didn't help to pay her rent
or purchase the voluminous dresses she required to drape her Amazonian
form. Only that day her landlord had brought her the sad news that he
either wanted his money or the premises.

Where, she wondered, would she get the money. Like most New Yorkers
she put up a big front with very little cash behind it, always looking
hopefully forward to the morrow for a lucky break. She had two-thirds
of the rent money already, by dint of much borrowing, and if she
could "do" a few nappy heads she would be in the clear; but hardly a
customer had crossed her threshold in a fortnight, except two or three
Jewish girls from downtown who came up regularly to have their hair
straightened because it wouldn't stand inspection in the Nordic world.
The Negro women had seemingly deserted her. Day after day she saw her
old customers pass by hurriedly without even looking in her direction.
Verily a revolution was taking place in Negro society.

"Oh, Miss Simpson!" cried the hair-straightener after a passing young
lady. "Ain't you going to say hello?"

The young woman halted reluctantly and approached the doorway. Her
brown face looked strained. Two weeks before she would have been a rare
sight in the Black Belt because her kinky hair was not straightened; it
was merely combed, brushed and neatly pinned up. Miss Simpson had vowed
that she wasn't going to spend any dollar a week having her hair "done"
when she only lacked fifteen dollars of having money enough to quit the
Negro race forever.

"Sorry, Mrs. Blandish," she apologized, "but I swear I didn't see
you. I've been just that busy that I haven't had eyes for anything or
anybody except my job and back home again. You know I'm all alone now.
Yes, Charlie went over two weeks ago and I haven't heard a word from
him. Just think of that! After all I've done for that nigger. Oh well!
I'll soon be over there myself. Another week's work will fix me all
right."

"Humph!" snorted Mme. Blandish. "That's all you niggers are thinking
about nowadays. Why don't you come down here and give me some
business? If I don't hurry up and make some more money I'll have to
close up this place and go to work myself."

"Well, I'm sorry, Mrs. Blandish," the girl mumbled indifferently,
moving off toward the corner to catch the approaching street car, "but
I guess I can hold out with this here bad hair until Saturday night.
You know I've taken too much punishment being dark these twenty-two
years to miss this opportunity.... Well," she flung over her shoulder,
"Goodbye! See you later."

Madame Blandish settled her 250 pounds back into her armchair and
sighed heavily. Like all American Negroes she had desired to be white
when she was young and before she entered business for herself and
became a person of consequence in the community. Now she had lived
long enough to have no illusions about the magic of a white skin. She
liked her business and she liked her social position in Harlem. As a
white woman she would have to start all over again, and she wasn't so
sure of herself. Here at least she was somebody. In the great Caucasian
world she would be just another white woman, and they were becoming a
drug on the market, what with the simultaneous decline of chivalry,
the marriage rate and professional prostitution. She had seen too many
elderly, white-haired Caucasian females scrubbing floors and toiling
in sculleries not to know what being just another white woman meant.
Yet she admitted to herself that it would be nice to get over being the
butt for jokes and petty prejudice.

The Madame was in a quandary and so also were hundreds of others in the
upper stratum of Harlem life. With the Negro masses moving out from
under them, what other alternative did they have except to follow.
True, only a few hundred Negroes had so far vanished from their wonted
haunts, but it was known that thousands, tens of thousands, yes,
millions would follow them.




                             CHAPTER FOUR


Matthew Fisher, alias Max Disher, joined the Easter Sunday crowds,
twirling his malacca stick and ogling the pretty flappers who passed
giggling in their Spring finery. For nearly three months he had idled
around the Georgia capital hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful
girl who on New Year's Eve had told him "I never dance with niggers."
He had searched diligently in almost every stratum of Atlanta society,
but he had failed to find her. There were hundreds of tall, beautiful,
blonde maidens in the city; to seek a particular one whose name one did
not know was somewhat akin to hunting for a Russian Jew in the Bronx or
a particular Italian gunman in Chicago.

For three months he had dreamed of this girl, carefully perused the
society columns of the local newspapers on the chance that her picture
might appear in them. He was like most men who have been repulsed by a
pretty girl, his desire for her grew stronger and stronger.

He was not finding life as a white man the rosy existence he had
anticipated. He was forced to conclude that it was pretty dull and that
he was bored. As a boy he had been taught to look up to white folks as
just a little less than gods; now he found them little different from
the Negroes, except that they were uniformly less courteous and less
interesting.

Often when the desire for the happy-go-lucky, jovial good-fellowship of
the Negroes came upon him strongly, he would go down to Auburn Avenue
and stroll around the vicinity, looking at the dark folk and listening
to their conversation and banter. But no one down there wanted him
around. He was a white man and thus suspect. Only the black women who
ran the "Call Houses" on the hill wanted his company. There was nothing
left for him except the hard, materialistic, grasping, ill-bred society
of the whites. Sometimes a slight feeling of regret that he had left
his people forever would cross his mind, but it fled before the painful
memories of past experiences in this, his home town.

The unreasoning and illogical color prejudice of most of the people
with whom he was forced to associate, infuriated him. He often laughed
cynically when some coarse, ignorant white man voiced his opinion
concerning the inferior mentality and morality of the Negroes. He was
moving in white society now and he could compare it with the society
he had known as a Negro in Atlanta and Harlem. What a let-down it was
from the good breeding, sophistication, refinement and gentle cynicism
to which he had become accustomed as a popular young man about town in
New York's Black Belt. He was not able to articulate this feeling but
he was conscious of the reaction nevertheless.

For a week, now, he had been thinking seriously of going to work. His
thousand dollars had dwindled to less than a hundred. He would have to
find some source of income and yet the young white men with whom he
talked about work all complained that it was very scarce. Being white,
he finally concluded, was no Open Sesame to employment for he sought
work in banks and insurance offices without success.

During his period of idleness and soft living, he had followed the news
and opinion in the local daily press and confessed himself surprised
at the antagonistic attitude of the newspapers toward Black-No-More,
Incorporated. From the vantage point of having formerly been a Negro,
he was able to see how the newspapers were fanning the color prejudice
of the white people. Business men, he found, were also bitterly opposed
to Dr. Crookman and his efforts to bring about chromatic democracy in
the nation.

The attitude of these people puzzled him. Was not Black-No-More
getting rid of the Negroes upon whom all of the blame was placed for
the backwardness of the South? Then he recalled what a Negro street
speaker had said one night on the corner of 138th Street and Seventh
Avenue in New York: that unorganized labor meant cheap labor; that
the guarantee of cheap labor was an effective means of luring new
industries into the South; that so long as the ignorant white masses
could be kept thinking of the menace of the Negro to Caucasian race
purity and political control, they would give little thought to
labor organization. It suddenly dawned upon Matthew Fisher that this
Black-No-More treatment was more of a menace to white business than to
white labor. And not long afterward he became aware of the money-making
possibilities involved in the present situation.

How could he work it? He was not known and he belonged to no
organization. Here was a veritable gold mine but how could he reach
the ore? He scratched his head over the problem but could think of no
solution. Who would be interested in it that he could trust?

He was pondering this question the Monday after Easter while
breakfasting in an armchair restaurant when he noticed an advertisement
in a newspaper lying in the next chair. He read it and then re-read it:

                        THE KNIGHTS OF NORDICA

              Want 10,000 Atlanta White Men and Women to
              Join in the Fight for White Race Integrity.

                      Imperial Klonklave Tonight

          The racial integrity of the Caucasian Race is being
             threatened by the activities of a scientific
                      black Beelzebub in New York

                     Let us Unite Now Before It Is

                               TOO LATE!

                     Come to Nordica Hall Tonight
                            Admission Free.

                          Rev. Henry Givens,
                         Imperial Grand Wizard

Here, Matthew figured, was just what he had been looking for. Probably
he could get in with this fellow Givens. He finished his cup of coffee,
lit a cigar and paying his check, strolled out into the sunshine of
Peachtree Street.

He took the trolley out to Nordica Hall. It was a big, unpainted
barn-like edifice, with a suite of offices in front and a huge
auditorium in the rear. A new oil cloth sign reading "THE KNIGHTS OF
NORDICA" was stretched across the front of the building.

Matthew paused for a moment and sized up the edifice. Givens must have
some money, he thought, to keep up such a large place. Might not be a
bad idea to get a little dope on him before going inside.

"This fellow Givens is a pretty big guy around here, ain't he?" he
asked the young man at the soda fountain across the street.

"Yessah, he's one o' th' bigges' men in this heah town. Used to be a
big somethin' or other in th' old Ku Klux Klan 'fore it died. Now he's
stahtin' this heah Knights o' Nordica."

"He must have pretty good jack," suggested Matthew.

"He oughtta have," answered the soda jerker. "My paw tells me he was
close to th' money when he was in th' Klan."

Here, thought Matthew, was just the place for him. He paid for his soda
and walked across the street to the door marked "Office." He felt a
slight tremor of uneasiness as he turned the knob and entered. Despite
his white skin he still possessed the fear of the Klan and kindred
organizations possessed by most Negroes.

A rather pretty young stenographer asked him his business as he walked
into the ante room. Better be bold, he thought. This was probably the
best chance he would have to keep from working, and his funds were
getting lower and lower.

"Please tell Rev. Givens, the Imperial Grand Wizard, that Mr. Matthew
Fisher of the New York Anthropological Society is very anxious to have
about a half-hour's conversation with him relative to his new venture."
Matthew spoke in an impressive, businesslike manner, rocked back on his
heels and looked profound.

"Yassah," almost whispered the awed young lady, "I'll tell him." She
withdrew into an inner office and Matthew chuckled softly to himself.
He wondered if he could impress this old fakir as easily as he had the
girl.

Rev. Henry Givens, Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knights of Nordica, was
a short, wizened, almost-bald, bull-voiced, ignorant ex-evangelist, who
had come originally from the hilly country north of Atlanta. He had
helped in the organization of the Ku Klux Klan following the Great War
and had worked with a zeal only equalled by his thankfulness to God for
escaping from the precarious existence of an itinerant saver of souls.

Not only had the Rev. Givens toiled diligently to increase the
prestige, power and membership of the defunct Ku Klux Klan, but he had
also been a very hard worker in withdrawing as much money from its
treasury as possible. He convinced himself, as did the other officers,
that this stealing was not stealing at all but merely appropriation of
rightful reward for his valuable services. When the morons finally
tired of supporting the show and the stream of ten-dollar memberships
declined to a trickle, Givens had been able to retire gracefully and
live on the interest of his money.

Then, when the newspapers began to recount the activities of
Black-No-More, Incorporated, he saw a vision of work to be done, and
founded the Knights of Nordica. So far there were only a hundred
members but he had high hopes for the future. Tonight, he felt would
tell the story. The prospect of a full treasury to dip into again made
his little gray eyes twinkle and the palms of his skinny hands itch.

The stenographer interrupted him to announce the newcomer.

"Hum-n!" said Givens, half to himself. "New York Anthropological
Society, eh? This feller must know somethin'. Might be able to use him
in this business.... All right, show him in!"

The two men shook hands and swiftly appraised each other. Givens waved
Matthew to a chair.

"How can I serve you, Mr. Fisher?" he began in sepulchral tone dripping
with unction.

"It is rather," countered Matthew in his best salesman's croon, "how
I can serve you and your valuable organization. As an anthropologist,
I have, of course, been long interested in the work with which you
have been identified. It has always seemed to me that there was no
question in American life more important than that of preserving the
integrity of the white race. We all know what has been the fate of
those nations that have permitted their blood to be polluted with that
of inferior breeds." (He had read some argument like that in a Sunday
supplement not long before, which was the extent of his knowledge
of anthropology.) "This latest menace of Black-No-More is the most
formidable the white people of America have had to face since the
founding of the Republic. As a resident of New York City, I am aware,
of course, of the extent of the activities of this Negro Crookman and
his two associates. Already thousands of blacks have passed over into
the white race. Not satisfied with operating in New York City, they
have opened their sanitariums in twenty other cities from Coast to
Coast. They open a new one almost every day. In their literature and
advertisements in the darky newspapers they boast that they are now
turning four thousand Negroes white every day." He knitted his blond
eyebrows. "You see how great the menace is? At this rate there will not
be a Negro in the country in ten years, for you must remember that the
rate is increasing every day as new sanitariums are opened. Don't you
see that something must be done about this immediately? Don't you see
that Congress must be aroused; that these places must be closed?" The
young man glared with belligerent indignation.

Rev. Givens saw. He nodded his head as Matthew, now glorying in his
newly-discovered eloquence made point after point, and concluded that
this pale, dapper young fellow, with his ready tongue, his sincerity,
his scientific training and knowledge of the situation ought to prove a
valuable asset to the Knights of Nordica.

"I tried to interest some agencies in New York," Matthew continued,
"but they are all blind to this menace and to their duty. Then someone
told me of you and your valuable work, and I decided to come down here
and have a talk with you. I had intended to suggest the organization
of some such militant secret order as you have started, but since
you've already seen the necessity for it, I want to hasten to offer my
services as a scientific man and one familiar with the facts and able
to present them to your members."

"I should be very glad," boomed Givens, "very happy, indeed, Brother
Fisher, to have you join us. We need you. I believe you can help us a
great deal. Would you, er--ah, be interested in coming out to the mass
meeting this evening? It would help us tremendously to get members if
you would be willing to get up and tell the audience what you have just
related about the progress of this iniquitous nigger corporation in New
York."

Matthew pretended to think over the matter for a moment or two and then
agreed. If he made a hit at the initial meeting, he would be sure to
get on the staff. Once there he could go after the larger game. Unlike
Givens, he had no belief in the racial integrity nonsense nor any
confidence in the white masses whom he thought were destined to flock
to the Knights of Nordica. On the contrary he despised and hated them.
He had the average Negro's justifiable fear of the poor whites and only
planned to use them as a stepladder to the real money.

When Matthew left, Givens congratulated himself upon the fact that he
had been able to attract such talent to the organization in its very
infancy. His ideas must be sound, he concluded, if scientists from New
York were impressed by them. He reached over, pulled the dictionary
stand toward him and opened the big book at A.

"Lemme see, now," he muttered aloud. "Anthropology. Better git that
word straight 'fore I go talkin' too much about it.... Humn! Humn!...
That boy must know a hull lot." He read over the definition of the
word twice without understanding it, closed the dictionary, pushed it
away from him, and then cutting off a large chew of tobacco from his
plug, he leaned back in his swivel chair to rest after the unaccustomed
mental exertion.

Matthew went gaily back to his hotel. "Man alive!" he chortled to
himself. "What a lucky break! Can't keep old Max down long.... Will I
speak to 'em? Well, I won't stay quiet!" He felt so delighted over the
prospect of getting close to some real money that he treated himself to
an expensive dinner and a twenty-five-cent cigar. Afterward he inquired
further about old man Givens from the house detective, a native
Atlantan.

"Oh, he's well heeled--the old crook!" remarked the detective. "Damnify
could ever understand how such ignorant people get a-hold of th' money;
but there y'are. Owns as pretty a home as you can find around these
parts an' damn 'f he ain't stahtin' a new racket."

"Do you think he'll make anything out of it?" inquired Matthew,
innocently.

"Say, Brother, you mus' be a stranger in these parts. These damn,
ignorant crackers will fall fer anything fer a while. They ain't
had no Klan here fer goin' on three years. Leastwise it ain't been
functionin'." The old fellow chuckled and spat a stream of tobacco
juice into a nearby cuspidor. Matthew sauntered away. Yes, the pickings
ought to be good.

Equally enthusiastic was the Imperial Grand Wizard when he came home
to dinner that night. He entered the house humming one of his favorite
hymns and his wife looked up from the evening paper with surprise
on her face. The Rev. Givens was usually something of a grouch but
tonight he was as happy as a pickpocket at a country fair.

"What's th' mattah with you?" she inquired, sniffing suspiciously.

"Oh, Honey," he gurgled, "I think this here Knights of Nordica is going
over big; going over big! My fame is spreading. Only today I had a
long talk with a famous anthropologist from New York and he's going to
address our mass meeting tonight."

"Whut's an anthropologist?" asked Mrs. Givens, wrinkling her seamy brow.

"Oh-er, well, he's one of these here scientists what knows all about
this here business what's going on up there in New York where them
niggers is turning each other white," explained Rev. Givens hastily but
firmly. "He's a mighty smaht feller and I want you and Helen to come
out and hear him."

"B'lieve Ah will," declared Mrs. Givens, "if this heah rheumatism'll
le' me foh a while. Doan know 'bout Helen, though. Evah since that gal
went away tuh school she ain't bin int'rested in nuthin' upliftin'!"

Mrs. Givens spoke in a grieved tone and heaved her narrow chest in a
deep sigh. She didn't like all this newfangled foolishness of these
young folks. They were getting away from God, that's what they were,
and she didn't like it. Mrs. Givens was a Christian. There was no doubt
about it because she freely admitted it to everybody, with or without
provocation. Of course she often took the name of the Creator in vain
when she got to quarreling with Henry; she had the reputation among her
friends of not always stating the exact truth; she hated Negroes; her
spouse had made bitter and profane comment concerning her virginity
on their wedding night; and as head of the ladies' auxiliary of the
defunct Klan she had copied her husband's financial methods; but that
she was a devout Christian no one doubted. She believed the Bible from
cover to cover, except what it said about people with money, and she
read it every evening aloud, greatly to the annoyance of the Imperial
Grand Wizard and his modern and comely daughter.

Mrs. Givens had probably once been beautiful but the wear and tear of a
long life as the better half of an itinerant evangelist was apparent.
Her once flaming red hair was turning gray and roan-like, her hatchet
face was a criss-cross of wrinkles and lines, she was round-shouldered,
hollow-chested, walked with a stoop and her long, bony, white hands
looked like claws. She alternately dipped snuff and smoked an
evil-smelling clay pipe, except when there was company at the house. At
such times Helen would insist her mother "act like civilized people."

Helen was twenty and quite confident that she herself was civilized.
Whether she was or not, she was certainly beautiful. Indeed, she was
such a beauty that many of the friends of the family insisted that she
must have been adopted. Taller than either of her parents, she was
stately, erect, well proportioned, slender, vivid and knew how to wear
her clothes. In only one way did she resemble her parents and that was
in things intellectual. Any form of mental effort, she complained, made
her head ache, and so her parents had always let her have her way about
studying.

At the age of eleven she had been taken from the third grade in public
school and sent to an exclusive seminary for the double purpose
of gaining social prestige and concealing her mental incapacity.
At sixteen when her instructors had about despaired of her, they
were overjoyed by the decision of her father to send the girl to a
"finishing school" in the North. The "finishing school" about finished
what intelligence Helen possessed; but she came forth, four years
later, more beautiful, with a better knowledge of how to dress and
how to act in exclusive society, enough superficialities to enable
her to get by in the "best" circles and a great deal of that shallow
facetiousness that passes for sophistication in American upper-class
life. A winter in Manhattan had rounded out her education. Now she was
back home, thoroughly ashamed of her grotesque parents, and, like the
other girls of her set, anxious to get a husband who at the same time
was handsome, intelligent, educated, refined and rolling in wealth.
As she was ignorant of the fact that no such man existed, she looked
confidently forward into the future.

"I don't care to go down there among all those gross people," she
informed her father at the dinner table when he broached the subject
of the meeting. "They're so crude and elemental, don't you know," she
explained, arching her narrow eyebrows.

"The common people are the salt of the earth," boomed Rev. Givens. "If
it hadn't been for the common people we wouldn't have been able to get
this home and send you off to school. You make me sick with all your
modern ideas. You'd do a lot better if you'd try to be more like your
Ma."

Both Mrs. Givens and Helen looked quickly at him to see if he was
smiling. He wasn't.

"Why don'tcha go, Helen?" pleaded Mrs. Givens. "Yo fathah sez this
heah man f'm N'Yawk is uh--uh scientist or somethin' an' knows a whole
lot about things. Yuh might l'arn somethin'. Ah'd go mys'f if 'twasn't
fo mah rheumatism." She sighed in self-pity and finished gnawing a
drumstick.

Helen's curiosity was aroused and although she didn't like the idea of
sitting among a lot of mill hands, she was anxious to see and hear this
reputedly brilliant young man from the great metropolis where not long
before she had lost both her provincialism and chastity.

"Oh, all right," she assented with mock reluctance. "I'll go."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Knights of Nordica's flag-draped auditorium slowly filled. It was
a bare, cavernous structure, with sawdust on the floor, a big platform
at one end, row after row of folding wooden chairs and illuminated by
large, white lights hanging from the rafters. On the platform was a row
of five chairs, the center one being high-backed and gilded. On the
lectern downstage was a bulky bible. A huge American flag was stretched
across the rear wall.

The audience was composed of the lower stratum of white working people:
hard-faced, lantern-jawed, dull-eyed adult children, seeking like all
humanity for something permanent in the eternal flux of life. The
young girls in their cheap finery with circus makeup on their faces;
the young men, aged before their time by child labor and a violent
environment; the middle-aged folk with their shiny, shabby garb and
beaten countenances; all ready and eager to be organized for any
purpose except improvement of their intellects and standard of living.

Rev. Givens opened the meeting with a prayer "for the success, O God,
of this thy work, to protect the sisters and wives and daughters of
these, thy people, from the filthy pollution of an alien race."

A choir of assorted types of individuals sang "Onward Christian
Soldiers" earnestly, vociferously and badly.

They were about to file off the platform when the song leader, a big,
beefy, jovial mountain of a man, leaped upon the stage and restrained
them.

"Wait a minute, folks, wait a minute," he commanded. Then turning to
the assemblage: "Now people let's put some pep into this. We wanna all
be happy and get in th' right spirit for this heah meetin'. Ah'm gonna
ask the choir to sing th' first and last verses ovah ag'in, and when
they come to th' chorus, Ah wantcha to all join in. Doan be 'fraid.
Jesus wouldn't be 'fraid to sing 'Onward Christian Soldiers,' now would
he? Come on, then. All right, choir, you staht; an' when Ah wave mah
han' you'all join in on that theah chorus."

They obediently followed his directions while he marched up and down
the platform, red-faced and roaring and waving his arms in time. When
the last note had died away, he dismissed the choir and stepping to the
edge of the stage he leaned far out over the audience and barked at
them again.

"Come on, now, folks! Yuh caint slow up on Jesus now. He won't be
satisfied with jus' one ole measly song. Yuh gotta let 'im know that
yuh love 'im; that y're happy an' contented; that yuh ain't got no
troubles an' ain't gonna have any. Come on, now. Le's sing that ole
favorite what yo'all like so well: 'Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old
Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile.'" He bellowed and they followed him.
Again the vast hall shook with sound. He made them rise and grasp each
other by the hand until the song ended.

Matthew, who sat on the platform alongside old man Givens viewed the
spectacle with amusement mingled with amazement. He was amused because
of the similarity of this meeting to the religious orgies of the more
ignorant Negroes and amazed that earlier in the evening he should
have felt any qualms about lecturing to these folks on anthropology,
a subject with which neither he nor his hearers were acquainted. He
quickly saw that these people would believe anything that was shouted
at them loudly and convincingly enough. He knew what would fetch their
applause and bring in their memberships and he intended to repeat it
over and over.

The Imperial Grand Wizard spent a half-hour introducing the speaker of
the evening, dwelt upon his supposed scholastic attainments, but took
pains to inform them that, despite Matthew's vast knowledge, he still
believed in the Word of God, the sanctity of womanhood and the purity
of the white race.

For an hour Matthew told them at the top of his voice what they
believed: i.e., that a white skin was a sure indication of the
possession of superior intellectual and moral qualities; that all
Negroes were inferior to them; that God had intended for the United
States to be a white man's country and that with His help they could
keep it so; that their sons and brothers might inadvertently marry
Negresses or, worse, their sisters and daughters might marry Negroes,
if Black-No-More, Incorporated, was permitted to continue its dangerous
activities.

For an hour he spoke, interrupted at intervals by enthusiastic gales
of applause, and as he spoke his eye wandered over the females in the
audience, noting the comeliest ones. As he wound up with a spirited
appeal for eager soldiers to join the Knights of Nordica at five
dollars per head and the half-dozen "planted" emissaries led the march
of suckers to the platform, he noted for the first time a girl who sat
in the front row and gazed up at him raptly.

She was a titian blonde, well-dressed, beautiful and strangely
familiar. As he retired amid thunderous applause to make way for Rev.
Givens and the money collectors, he wondered where he had seen her
before. He studied her from his seat.

Suddenly he knew. It was she! The girl who had spurned him; the girl
he had sought so long; the girl he wanted more than anything in the
world! Strange that she should be here. He had always thought of her as
a refined, educated and wealthy lady, far above associating with such
people as these. He was in a fever to meet her, some way, before she
got out of his sight again, and yet he felt just a little disappointed
to find her here.

He could hardly wait until Givens seated himself again before
questioning him as to the girl's identity. As the beefy song leader led
the roaring of the popular closing hymn, he leaned toward the Imperial
Grand Wizard and shouted: "Who is that tall golden-haired girl sitting
in the front row? Do you know her?"

Rev. Givens looked out over the audience, craning his skinny neck and
blinking his eyes. Then he saw the girl, sitting within twenty feet of
him.

"You mean that girl sitting right in front, there?" he asked, pointing.

"Yes, that one," said Matthew, impatiently.

"Heh! Heh! Heh!" chuckled the Wizard, rubbing his stubbly chin. "Why
that there's my daughter, Helen. Like to meet her?"

Matthew could hardly believe his ears. Givens's daughter! Incredible!
What a coincidence! What luck! Would he like to meet her? He leaned
over and shouted "Yes."




                             CHAPTER FIVE


A huge silver monoplane glided gracefully to the surface of Mines Field
in Los Angeles and came to a pretty stop after a short run. A liveried
footman stepped out of the forward compartment armed with a stool which
he placed under the rear door. Simultaneously a high-powered foreign
car swept up close to the airplane and waited. The rear door of the
airplane opened, and to the apparent surprise of the nearby mechanics
a tall, black, distinguished-looking Negro stepped out and down to
the ground, assisted by the hand of the footman. Behind him came a
pale young man and woman, evidently secretaries. The three entered the
limousine which rapidly drove off.

"Who's that coon?" asked one of the mechanics, round-eyed and
respectful, like all Americans, in the presence of great wealth.

"Don't you know who that is?" inquired another, pityingly. "Why that's
that Dr. Crookman. You know, the fellow what's turnin' niggers white.
See that B N M on the side of his plane? That stands for Black-No-More.
Gee, but I wish I had just half the jack he's made in the last six
months!"

"Why I thought from readin' th' papers," protested the first speaker,
"that th' law had closed up his places and put 'im outta business."

"Oh, that's a lotta hockey," said the other fellow. "Why just yesterday
th' newspapers said that Black-No-More was openin' a place on Central
Avenue. They already got one in Oakland, so a coon told me yesterday."

"'Sfunny," ventured a third mechanic, as they wheeled the big plane
into a nearby hangar, "how he don't have nuthin' but white folks around
him. He must not like nigger help. His chauffeur's white, his footman's
white an' that young gal and feller what was with him are white."

"How do you know?" challenged the first speaker. "They may be darkies
that he's turned into white folks."

"That's right," the other replied. "It's gittin' so yuh can't tell
who's who. I think that there Knights of Nordica ought to do something
about it. I joined up with 'em two months ago but they ain't done
nuthin' but sell me an ole uniform an' hold a coupla meetin's."

They lapsed into silence. Sandol, the erstwhile Senegalese, stepped
from the cockpit grinning. "Ah, zese Americains," he muttered to
himself as he went over the engine, examining everything minutely.

"Where'd yuh come from, buddy?" asked one of the mechanics.

"Den-vair," Sandol replied.

"Whatcha doin', makin' a trip around th' country?" queried another.

"Yes, we air, what you callem, on ze tour inspectione," the aviator
continued. They could think of no more to say and soon strolled off.

       *       *       *       *       *

Around an oval table on the seventh floor of a building on Central
Avenue, sat Dr. Junius Crookman, Hank Johnson, Chuck Foster, Ranford
the Doctor's secretary and four other men. At the lower end of the
table Miss Bennett, Ranford's stenographer, was taking notes. A
soft-treading waiter whose Negro nature was only revealed by his
mocking obsequiousness, served each with champagne.

"To our continued success!" cried the physician, lifting his glass high.

"To our continued success!" echoed the others.

They drained their glasses, and returned them to the polished surface
of the table.

"Dog bite it, Doc!" blurted Johnson. "Us sho is doin' fine. Ain't had a
bad break since we stahted, an' heah 'tis th' fust o' September."

"Don't holler too soon," cautioned Foster. "The opposition is growing
keener every day. I had to pay seventy-five thousand dollars more for
this building than it's worth."

"Well, yuh got it, didn't yuh?" asked Johnson. "Just like Ah allus
say: when yuh got money yuh kin git anything in this man's country.
Whenever things look tight jes pull out th' ole check book an'
eve'ything's all right."

"Optimist!" grunted Foster.

"I ain't no pess'mist," Johnson accused.

"Now gentlemen," Dr. Crookman interrupted, clearing his throat, "let's
get down to business. We have met here, as you know, not only for the
purpose of celebrating the opening of this, our fiftieth sanitarium,
but also to take stock of our situation. I have before me here a
detailed report of our business affairs for the entire period of seven
months and a half that we've been in operation.

"During that time we have put into service fifty sanitariums from
Coast to Coast, or an average of one every four and one-half days,
the average capacity of each sanitarium being one hundred and five
patients. Each place has a staff of six physicians and twenty-four
nurses, a janitor, four orderlies, two electricians, bookkeeper,
cashier, stenographer and record clerk, not counting four guards.

"For the past four months we have had an equipment factory in
Pittsburgh in full operation and a chemical plant in Philadelphia.
In addition to this we have purchased four airplanes and a radio
broadcasting station. Our expenditures for real estate, salaries
and chemicals have totaled six million, two hundred and fifty-five
thousand, eighty-five dollars and ten cents."

"He! He!" chuckled Johnson. "Dat ten cents mus' be fo' one o' them bad
ceegars that Fostah smokes."

"Our total income," continued Dr. Crookman, frowning slightly at the
interruption, "has been eighteen million, five hundred thousand, three
hundred dollars, or three hundred and seventy thousand and six patients
at fifty dollars apiece. I think that vindicates my contention at the
beginning that the fee should be but fifty dollars--within the reach of
the rank and file of Negroes." He laid aside his report and added:

"In the next four months we'll double our output and by the end of the
year we should cut the fee to twenty-five dollars," he lightly twirled
his waxed mustache between his long sensitive fingers and smiled with
satisfaction.

"Yes," said Foster, "the sooner we get this business over with the
better. We're going to run into a whole lot more opposition from now on
than we have so far encountered."

"Why man!" growled Johnson, "we ain't even stahted on dese darkies yet.
And when we git thu wi' dese heah, we kin work on them in th' West
Indies. Believe me, Ah doan _nevah_ want dis graft tuh end."

"Now," continued Dr. Crookman, "I want to say that Mr. Foster deserves
great praise for the industry and ingenuity he has shown in purchasing
our real estate and Mr. Johnson deserves equally great praise for
the efficient manner in which he has kept down the opposition of the
various city officials. As you know, he has spent nearly a million
dollars in such endeavors and almost as much again in molding
legislative sentiment in Washington and the various state capitals.
That accounts for the fact that every bill introduced in a legislature
or municipal council to put us out of business has died in committee.
Moreover, through his corps of secret operatives, who are mostly young
women, he has placed numbers of officials and legislators in a position
where they cannot openly oppose our efforts."

A smile of appreciation went around the circle.

"We'll have a whole lot to do from now on," commented Foster.

"Yeh, Big Boy," replied the ex-gambler, "an' whut it takes tuh do it Ah
ain't got nuthin' else but!"

"Certainly," said the physician, "our friend Hank has not been
overburdened with scruples."

"Ah doan know whut dat is, Chief," grinned Johnson, "but Ah knows whut
a check book'll do. Even these crackers tone down when Ah talks bucks."

"This afternoon," continued Crookman, "we also have with us our three
regional directors, Doctors Henry Dogan, Charles Hinckle and Fred
Selden, as well as our chief chemist, Wallace Butts. I thought it
would be a good idea to bring you all together for this occasion so we
could get better acquainted. We'll just have a word from each of them.
They're all good Race men, you know, even if they have, like the rest
of our staff, taken the treatment."

For the next three-quarters of an hour the three directors and the
chief chemist reported on the progress of their work. At intervals the
waiter brought in cold drinks, cigars and cigarettes. Overhead whirred
the electric fans. Out of the wide open windows could be seen the
panorama of bungalows, pavements, palm trees, trundling street cars and
scooting automobiles.

"Lawd! Lawd! Lawd!" Johnson exclaimed at the conclusion of the meeting,
going to the window and gazing out over the city. "Jes gimme a coupla
yeahs o' dis graft an' Ah'll make Henry Foahd look like a tramp."

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, Negro society was in turmoil and chaos. The colored folk
in straining every nerve to get the Black-No-More treatment, had
forgotten all loyalties, affiliations and responsibilities. No longer
did they flock to the churches on Sundays or pay dues in their numerous
fraternal organizations. They had stopped giving anything to the
Anti-Lynching campaign. Santop Licorice, head of the once-flourishing
Back-To-Africa Society, was daily raising his stentorian voice in
denunciation of the race for deserting his organization.

Negro business was being no less hard hit. Few people were bothering
about getting their hair straightened or skin whitened temporarily when
for a couple of weeks' pay they could get both jobs done permanently.
The immediate result of this change of mind on the part of the Negro
public was to almost bankrupt the firms that made the whitening and
straightening chemicals. They were largely controlled by canny Hebrews,
but at least a half-dozen were owned by Negroes. The rapid decline
in this business greatly decreased the revenue of the Negro weekly
newspapers who depended upon such advertising for their sustenance. The
actual business of hair straightening that had furnished employment to
thousands of colored women who would otherwise have had to go back to
washing and ironing, declined to such an extent that "To Rent" signs
hung in front of nine-tenths of the shops.

The Negro politicians in the various Black Belts, grown fat and sleek
"protecting" vice with the aid of Negro votes which they were able to
control by virtue of housing segregation, lectured in vain about black
solidarity, race pride and political emancipation; but nothing stopped
the exodus to the white race. Gloomily the politicians sat in their
offices, wondering whether to throw up the sponge and hunt the nearest
Black-No-More sanitarium or hold on a little longer in the hope that
the whites might put a stop to the activities of Dr. Crookman and his
associates. The latter, indeed, was their only hope because the bulk
of Negroes, saving their dimes and dollars for chromatic emancipation,
had stopped gambling, patronizing houses of prostitution or staging
Saturday-night brawls. Thus the usual sources of graft vanished. The
black politicians appealed to their white masters for succor, of
course, but they found to their dismay that most of the latter had been
safely bribed by the astute Hank Johnson.

Gone was the almost European atmosphere of every Negro ghetto: the
music, laughter, gaiety, jesting and abandon. Instead, one noted the
same excited bustle, wild looks and strained faces to be seen in a war
time soldier camp, around a new oil district or before a gold rush.
The happy-go-lucky Negro of song and story was gone forever and in his
stead was a nervous, money-grubbing black, stuffing away coin in socks,
impatiently awaiting a sufficient sum to pay Dr. Crookman's fee.

Up from the South they came in increasing droves, besieging the
Black-No-More sanitariums for treatment. There were none of these
havens in the South because of the hostility of the bulk of white
people but there were many all along the border between the two
sections, at such places as Washington, D. C., Baltimore, Cincinnati,
Louisville, Evansville, Cairo, St. Louis and Denver. The various
Southern communities attempted to stem this, the greatest migration
of Negroes in the history of the country, but without avail. By
train, boat, wagon, bicycle, automobile and foot they trekked to the
promised land; a hopeful procession, filtering through the outposts of
police and Knights of Nordica volunteer bands. Where there was great
opposition to the Negroes' going, there would suddenly appear large
quantities of free bootleg liquor and crisp new currency which would
make the most vigilant white opponent of Black-No-More turn his head
the other way. Hank Johnson seemed to be able to cope with almost every
situation.

       *       *       *       *       *

The national office of the militant Negro organization, the National
Social Equality League, was agog. Telephone bells were ringing, mulatto
clerks were hustling excitedly back and forth, messenger boys rushed in
and out. Located in the Times Square district of Manhattan, it had for
forty years carried on the fight for full social equality for the Negro
citizens and the immediate abolition of lynching as a national sport.
While this organization had to depend to a large extent upon the
charity of white folk for its existence, since the blacks had always
been more or less skeptical about the program for liberty and freedom,
the efforts of the society were not entirely unprofitable. Vistas of
immaculate offices spread in every direction from the elevator and
footfalls were muffled in thick imitation-Persian rugs. While the large
staff of officials was eager to end all oppression and persecution of
the Negro, they were never so happy and excited as when a Negro was
barred from a theater or fried to a crisp. Then they would leap for
telephones, grab telegraph pads and yell for stenographers; smiling
through their simulated indignation at the spectacle of another reason
for their continued existence and appeals for funds.

Ever since the first sanitarium of Black-No-More, Incorporated,
started turning Negroes into Caucasians, the National Social Equality
League's income had been decreasing. No dues had been collected in
months and subscriptions to the national mouthpiece, _The Dilemma_, had
dwindled to almost nothing. Officials, long since ensconced in palatial
apartments, began to grow panic-stricken as pay days got farther apart.
They began to envision the time when they would no longer be able for
the sake of the Negro race to suffer the hardships of lunching on
canvasback duck at the Urban Club surrounded by the white dilettante,
endure the perils of first-class Transatlantic passage to stage
Save-Dear-Africa Conferences or undergo the excruciating torture of
rolling back and forth across the United States in drawing-rooms to
hear each other lecture on the Negro problem. On meager salaries of
five thousand dollars a year they had fought strenuously and tirelessly
to obtain for the Negroes the constitutional rights which only a few
thousand rich white folk possessed. And now they saw the work of a
lifetime being rapidly destroyed.

Single-handed they felt incapable of organizing an effective opposition
to Black-No-More, Incorporated, so they had called a conference of
all of the outstanding Negro leaders of the country to assemble at
the League's headquarters on December 1, 1933. Getting the Negro
leaders together for any purpose except boasting of each other's
accomplishments had previously been impossible. As a usual thing they
fought each other with a vigor only surpassed by that of their pleas
for racial solidarity and unity of action. This situation, however, was
unprecedented, so almost all of the representative gentlemen of color
to whom invitations had been sent agreed with alacrity to come. To a
man they felt that it was time to bury the hatchet before they became
too hungry to do any digging.

In a very private inner office of the N. S. E. L. suite, Dr.
Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard, founder of the League and a graduate of
Harvard, Yale and Copenhagen (whose haughty bearing never failed to
impress both Caucasians and Negroes) sat before a glass-topped desk,
rubbing now his curly gray head, and now his full spade beard. For a
mere six thousand dollars a year, the learned doctor wrote scholarly
and biting editorials in _The Dilemma_ denouncing the Caucasians
whom he secretly admired and lauding the greatness of the Negroes
whom he alternately pitied and despised. In limpid prose he told of
the sufferings and privations of the downtrodden black workers with
whose lives he was totally and thankfully unfamiliar. Like most Negro
leaders, he deified the black woman but abstained from employing aught
save octoroons. He talked at white banquets about "we of the black
race" and admitted in books that he was part-French, part-Russian,
part-Indian and part-Negro. He bitterly denounced the Nordics for
debauching Negro women while taking care to hire comely yellow
stenographers with weak resistance. In a real way, he loved his people.
In time of peace he was a Pink Socialist but when the clouds of war
gathered he bivouacked at the feet of Mars.

Before the champion of the darker races lay a neatly typed resolution
drawn up by him and his staff the day before and addressed to the
Attorney General of the United States. The staff had taken this
precaution because no member of it believed that the other Negro
leaders possessed sufficient education to word the document effectively
and grammatically. Dr. Beard re-read the resolution and then placing it
in the drawer of the desk, pressed one of a row of buttons. "Tell them
to come in," he directed. The mulattress turned and switched out of the
room, followed by the appraising and approving eye of the aged scholar.
He heaved a regretful sigh as the door closed and his thoughts dwelt on
the vigor of his youth.

In three or four minutes the door opened again and several well-dressed
blacks, mulattoes and white men entered the large office and took
seats around the wall. They greeted each other and the President of
the League with usual cordiality but for the first time in their lives
they were sincere about it. If anyone could save the day it was Beard.
They all admitted that, as did the Doctor himself. They pulled out fat
cigars, long slender cigarettes and London briar pipes, lit them and
awaited the opening of the conference.

The venerable lover of his race tapped with his knuckle for order, laid
aside his six-inch cigarette and rising, said:

"It were quite unseemly for me who lives such a cloistered life and
am spared the bane or benefit of many intimate contacts with those
of our struggling race who by sheer courage, tenacity and merit have
lifted their heads above the mired mass, to deign to take from a more
capable individual the unpleasant task of reviewing the combination of
unfortunate circumstances that has brought us together, man to man,
within the four walls of the office." He shot a foxy glance around the
assembly and then went on suavely. "And so, my friends, I beg your
august permission to confer upon my able and cultured secretary and
confidant, Dr. Napoleon Wellington Jackson, the office of chairman of
this temporary body. I need not introduce Dr. Jackson to you. You know
of his scholarship, his high sense of duty and his deep love of the
suffering black race. You have doubtless had the pleasure of singing
some of the many sorrow songs he has written and popularized in the
past twenty years, and you must know of his fame as a translator of
Latin poets and his authoritative work on the Greek language.

"Before I gratefully yield the floor to Dr. Jackson, however, I want
to tell you that our destiny lies in the stars. Ethiopia's fate is in
the balance. The Goddess of the Nile weeps bitter tears at the feet of
the Great Sphinx. The lowering clouds gather over the Congo and the
lightning flashes o'er Togoland. To your tents, O Israel! The hour is
at hand."

The president of the N. S. E. L. sat down and the erudite Dr. Jackson,
his tall, lanky secretary got up. There was no fear of Dr. Jackson ever
winning a beauty contest. He was a sooty black, very broad shouldered,
with long, ape-like arms, a diminutive egg-shaped head that sat on his
collar like a hen's egg on a demitasse cup and eyes that protruded so
far from his head that they seemed about to fall out. He wore pince-nez
that were continually slipping from his very flat and oily nose. His
chief business in the organization was to write long and indignant
letters to public officials and legislators whenever a Negro was
mistreated, demanding justice, fair play and other legal guarantees
vouchsafed no whites except bloated plutocrats fallen miraculously
afoul of the law, and to speak to audiences of sex-starved matrons
who yearned to help the Negro stand erect. During his leisure time,
which was naturally considerable, he wrote long and learned articles,
bristling with references, for the more intellectual magazines, in
which he sought to prove conclusively that the plantation shouts of
Southern Negro peons were superior to any of Beethoven's symphonies and
that the city of Benin was the original site of the Garden of Eden.

"Hhmm! Hu-umn! Now er--ah, gentlemen," began Dr. Jackson, rocking back
on his heels, taking off his eye glasses and beginning to polish them
with a silk kerchief, "as you know, the Negro race is face to face
with a grave crisis. I--ah--presume it is er--ah unnecessary for me to
go into any details concerning the-ah activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated. Suffice er--ah umph! ummmmh! to say-ah that it has thrown
our society into rather a-ah bally turmoil. Our people are forgetting
shamelessly their-ah duty to the-ah organizations that have fought
valiantly for them these-ah many years and are now busily engaged
chasing a bally-ah will-o-the wisp. Ahem!

"You-ah probably all fully realize that-ah a continuation of
the aforementioned activities will prove disastrous to our-ah
organizations. You-ah, like us, must feel-uh that something drastic
must be done to preserve the integrity of Negro society. Think,
gentlemen, what the future will mean to-uh all those who-uh have
toiled so hard for Negro society. What-ah, may I ask, will we do
when there are no longer any-ah groups to support us? Of course, Dr.
Crookman and-ah his associates have a-uh perfect right to-ah engage
in any legitimate business, but-ah their present activities cannot-ah
be classed under that head, considering the effect on our endeavors.
Before we go any further, however, I-ah would like to introduce our
research expert Mr. Walter Williams, who will-ah describe the situation
in the South."

Mr. Walter Williams, a tall, heavy-set white man with pale blue eyes,
wavy auburn hair and a militant, lantern jaw, rose and bowed to the
assemblage and proceeded to paint a heartrending picture of the loss of
pride and race solidarity among Negroes North and South. There was,
he said, not a single local of the N. S. E. L. functioning, dues had
dwindled to nothing, he had not been able to hold a meeting anywhere,
while many of the stanchest supporters had gone over into the white
race.

"Personally," he concluded, "I am very proud to be a Negro and always
have been (his great-grandfather, it seemed, had been a mulatto), and
I'm willing to sacrifice for the uplift of my race. I cannot understand
what has come over our people that they have so quickly forgotten the
ancient glories of Ethiopia, Songhay and Dahomey, and their marvelous
record of achievement since emancipation." Mr. Williams was known to be
a Negro among his friends and acquaintances, but no one else would have
suspected it.

Another white man of remote Negro ancestry, Rev. Herbert Gronne of
Dunbar University, followed the research expert with a long discourse
in which he expressed fear for the future of his institution whose
student body had been reduced to sixty-five persons and deplored the
catastrophe "that has befallen us black people."

They all listened with respect to Dr. Gronne. He had been in turn a
college professor, a social worker and a minister, had received the
approval of the white folks and was thus doubly acceptable to the
Negroes. Much of his popularity was due to the fact that he very
cleverly knew how to make statements that sounded radical to Negroes
but sufficiently conservative to satisfy the white trustees of his
school. In addition he possessed the asset of looking perpetually
earnest and sincere.

Following him came Colonel Mortimer Roberts, principal of the Dusky
River Agricultural Institute, Supreme General of the Knights and
Daughters of Kingdom Come and president of the Uncle Tom Memorial
Association. Colonel Roberts was the acknowledged leader of the
conservative Negroes (most of whom had nothing to conserve) who felt at
all times that the white folks were in the lead and that Negroes should
be careful to guide themselves accordingly.

He was a great mountain of blackness with a head shaped like an
upturned bucket, pierced by two pig-like eyes and a cavernous mouth
equipped with large tombstone teeth which he almost continually
displayed. His speech was a cross between the woofing of a bloodhound
and the explosion of an inner tube. It conveyed to most white people
an impression of rugged simplicity and sincerity, which was very
fortunate since Colonel Roberts maintained his school through their
contributions. He spoke as usual about the cordial relations existing
between the two races in his native Georgia, the effrontery of Negroes
who dared whiten themselves and thus disturb the minds of white people
and insinuated alliance with certain militant organizations in the
South to stop this whitening business before it went too far. Having
spoken his mind and received scant applause, the Colonel (some white
man had once called him Colonel and the title stuck) puffing and
blowing, sat down.

Mr. Claude Spelling, a scared-looking little brown man with big ears,
who held the exalted office of president of the Society of Negro
Merchants, added his volume of blues to the discussion. The refrain
was that Negro business--always anemic--was about to pass out entirely
through lack of patronage. Mr. Spelling had for many years been the
leading advocate of the strange doctrine that an underpaid Negro worker
should go out of his way to patronize a little dingy Negro store
instead of going to a cheaper and cleaner chain store, all for the
dubious satisfaction of helping Negro merchants grow wealthy.

The next speaker, Dr. Joseph Bonds, a little rat-faced Negro with
protruding teeth stained by countless plugs of chewing tobacco and
wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, who headed the Negro Data League,
almost cried (which would have been terrible to observe) when he told
of the difficulty his workers had encountered in their efforts to
persuade retired white capitalists, whose guilty consciences persuaded
them to indulge in philanthropy, to give their customary donations to
the work. The philanthropists seemed to think, said Dr. Bonds, that
since the Negroes were busily solving their difficulties, there was no
need for social work among them or any collection of data. He almost
sobbed aloud when he described how his collections had fallen from
$50,000 a month to less than $1000.

His feeling in the matter could easily be appreciated. He was engaged
in a most vital and necessary work: i.e., collecting bales of data to
prove satisfactorily to all that more money was needed to collect more
data. Most of the data were highly informative, revealing the amazing
fact that poor people went to jail oftener than rich ones; that most of
the people were not getting enough money for their work; that strangely
enough there was some connection between poverty, disease and crime. By
establishing these facts with mathematical certitude and illustrating
them with elaborate graphs, Dr. Bonds garnered many fat checks. For
his people, he said, he wanted work, not charity; but for himself he
was always glad to get the charity with as little work as possible.
For many years he had succeeded in doing so without any ascertainable
benefit accruing to the Negro group.

Dr. Bonds' show of emotion almost brought the others to tears and many
of them muttered "Yes, Brother" while he was talking. The conferees
were getting stirred up but it took the next speaker to really get them
excited.

When he rose an expectant hush fell over the assemblage. They all
knew and respected the Right Reverend Bishop Ezekiel Whooper of the
Ethiopian True Faith Wash Foot Methodist Church for three reasons:
viz., his church was rich (though the parishioners were poor), he had
a very loud voice and the white people praised him. He was sixty,
corpulent and an expert at the art of making cuckolds.

"Our loyal and devoted clergy," he boomed, "are being forced into
manual labor and the Negro church is rapidly dying." And then he
launched into a violent tirade against Black-No-More and favored any
means to put the corporation out of business. In his excitement he
blew saliva, waved his long arms, stamped his feet, pummeled the desk,
rolled his eyes, knocked down his chair, almost sat on the rug and
generally reverted to the antics of Negro bush preachers.

This exhibition proved contagious. Rev. Herbert Gronne, face flushed
and shouting amens, marched from one end of the room to the other;
Colonel Roberts, looking like an inebriated black-faced comedian,
rocked back and forth clapping his hands; the others began to groan and
moan. Dr. Napoleon Wellington Jackson, sensing his opportunity, began
to sing a spiritual in his rich soprano voice. The others immediately
joined him. The very air seemed charged with emotion.

Bishop Whooper was about to start up again, when Dr. Beard, who had
sat cold and disdainful through this outbreak of revivalism, toying
with his gold-rimmed fountain pen and gazing at the exhibition through
half-closed eyelids, interrupted in sharp metallic tones.

"Let's get down to earth now," he commanded. "We've had enough of this
nonsense. We have a resolution here addressed to the Attorney General
of the United States demanding that Dr. Crookman and his associates
be arrested and their activities stopped at once for the good of both
races. All those in favor of this resolution say aye. Contrary?... Very
well, the ayes have it.... Miss Hilton please send off this telegram at
once!"

They looked at Dr. Beard and each other in amazement. Several started
to meekly protest.

"You gentlemen are all twenty-one, aren't you?" sneered Beard. "Well,
then be men enough to stand by your decision."

"But Doctor Beard," objected Rev. Gronne, "isn't this a rather unusual
procedure?"

"Rev. Gronne," the great man replied, "it's not near as unusual as
Black-No-More. I have probably ruffled your dignity but that's nothing
to what Dr. Crookman will do."

"I guess you're right, Beard," the college president agreed.

"I know it," snapped the other.

The Honorable Walter Brybe, who had won his exalted position as
Attorney General of the United States because of his long and faithful
service helping large corporations to circumvent the federal laws, sat
at his desk in Washington, D. C. Before him lay the wired resolution
from the conference of Negro leaders. He pursed his lips and reached
for his private telephone.

"Gorman?" he inquired softly into the receiver. "Is that you?"

"Nossuh," came the reply, "this heah is Mistah Gay's valet."

"Well, call Mister Gay to the telephone at once."

"Yassuh."

"That you, Gorman," asked the chief legal officer of the nation
addressing the National Chairman of his party.

"Yeh, what's up?"

"You heard 'bout this resolution from them niggers in New York, aint
you? It's been in all of the papers."

"Yes I read it."

"Well, whaddya think we oughtta do about it?"

"Take it easy, Walter. Give 'em the old run around. You know. They
ain't got a thin dime; it's this other crowd that's holding the heavy
jack. And 'course you know we gotta clean up our deficit. Just lemme
work with that Black-No-More crowd. I can talk business with that
Johnson fellow."

"All right, Gorman, I think you're right, but you don't want to forget
that there's a whole lot of white sentiment against them coons."

"Needn't worry 'bout that," scoffed Gorman. "There's no money behind
it much and besides it's in states we can't carry anyhow. Go ahead;
stall them New York niggers off. You're a lawyer, you can always find a
reason."

"Thanks for the compliment, Gorman," said the Attorney General, hanging
up the receiver.

He pressed a button on his desk and a young girl, armed with pencil and
pad, came in.

"Take this letter," he ordered: "To Doctor Shakespeare Agamemnon
Beard (what a hell of a name!), Chairman of the Committee for the
Preservation of Negro Racial Integrity, 1400 Broadway, New York City.

    "My dear Dr. Beard:

    The Attorney General has received the resolution signed by yourself
    and others and given it careful consideration.

    Regardless of personal views in the matter (I don't give a damn
    whether they turn white or not, myself) it is not possible for
    the Department of Justice to interfere with a legitimate business
    enterprise so long as its methods are within the law. The
    corporation in question has violated no federal statute and hence
    there is not the slightest ground for interfering with its
    activities.

                                                      Very truly yours,
                                                          WALTER BRYBE.

"Get that off at once. Give out copies to the press. That's all."

       *       *       *       *       *

Santop Licorice, founder and leader of the Back-to-Africa Society,
read the reply of the Attorney General to the Negro leaders with much
malicious satisfaction. He laid aside his morning paper, pulled a fat
cigar from a box near by, lit it and blew clouds of smoke above his
woolly head. He was always delighted when Dr. Beard met with any sort
of rebuff or embarrassment. He was doubly pleased in this instance
because he had been overlooked in the sending out of invitations to
Negro leaders to join the Committee for the Preservation of Negro
Racial Integrity. It was outrageous, after all the talking he had done
in favor of Negro racial integrity.

Mr. Licorice for some fifteen years had been very profitably advocating
the emigration of all the American Negroes to Africa. He had not, of
course, gone there himself and had not the slightest intention of
going so far from the fleshpots, but he told the other Negroes to
go. Naturally the first step in their going was to join his society
by paying five dollars a year for membership, ten dollars for a gold,
green and purple robe and silver-colored helmet that together cost two
dollars and a half, contributing five dollars to the Santop Licorice
Defense Fund (there was a perpetual defense fund because Licorice was
perpetually in the courts for fraud of some kind), and buying shares at
five dollars each in the Royal Black Steamship Company, for obviously
one could not get to Africa without a ship and Negroes ought to travel
on Negro-owned and operated ships. The ships were Santop's especial
pride. True, they had never been to Africa, had never had but one cargo
and that, being gin, was half consumed by the unpaid and thirsty crew
before the vessel was saved by the Coast Guard, but they had cost more
than anything else the Back-To-Africa Society had purchased even though
they were worthless except as scrap iron. Mr. Licorice, who was known
by his followers as Provisional President of Africa, Admiral of the
African Navy, Field Marshal of the African Army and Knight Commander of
the Nile, had a genius for being stuck with junk by crafty salesmen.
White men only needed to tell him that he was shrewder than white men
and he would immediately reach for a check book.

But there was little reaching for check books in his office nowadays.
He had been as hard hit as the other Negroes. Why should anybody in
the Negro race want to go back to Africa at a cost of five hundred
dollars for passage when they could stay in America and get white for
fifty dollars? Mr. Licorice saw the point but instead of scuttling back
to Demerara from whence he had come to save his race from oppression,
he had hung on in the hope that the activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated, would be stopped. In the meantime, he had continued to
attempt to save the Negroes by vigorously attacking all of the other
Negro organizations and at the same time preaching racial solidarity
and coöperation in his weekly newspaper, "_The African Abroad_," which
was printed by white folks and had until a year ago been full of
skin-whitening and hair-straightening advertisements.

"How is our treasury?" he yelled back through the dingy suite of
offices to his bookkeeper, a pretty mulatto.

"What treasury?" she asked in mock surprise.

"Why, I thought we had seventy-five dollars," he blurted.

"We did, but the Sheriff got most of it yesterday or we wouldn't be in
here today."

"Huumn! Well, that's bad. And tomorrow's pay day, isn't it?"

"Why bring that up?" she sneered. "I'd forgotten all about it."

"Haven't we got enough for me to get to Atlanta?" Licorice inquired,
anxiously.

"There is if you're gonna hitch-hike."

"Well, of course, I couldn't do that," he smiled deprecatingly.

"I should say not," she retorted surveying his 250-pound,
five-feet-six-inches of black blubber.

"Call Western Union," he commanded.

"What with?"

"Over the telephone, of course, Miss Hall," he explained.

"If you can get anything over that telephone you're a better man than I
am, Gunga Din."

"Has the service been discontinued, young lady?"

"Try and get a number," she chirped. He gazed ruefully at the telephone.

"Is there anything we can sell?" asked the bewildered Licorice.

"Yeah, if you can get the Sheriff to take off his attachments."

"That's right, I had forgotten."

"You would."

"Please be more respectful, Miss Hall," he snapped. "Somebody might
overhear you and tell my wife."

"Which one?" she mocked.

"Shut up," he blurted, touched in a tender spot, "and try to figure out
some way for us to get hold of some money."

"You must think I'm Einstein," she said, coming up and perching herself
on the edge of his desk.

"Well, if we don't get some operating expenses I won't be able to
obtain money to pay your salary," he warned.

"The old songs are the best songs," she wisecracked.

"Oh, come now, Violet," he remonstrated, pawing her buttock, "let's be
serious."

"After all these years!" she declared, switching away.

In desperation, he eased his bulk out of the creaking swivel chair,
reached for his hat and overcoat and shuffled out of the office. He
walked to the curb to hail a taxicab but reconsidered when he recalled
that a worn half-dollar was the extent of his funds. Sighing heavily,
he trudged the two blocks to the telegraph office and sent a long
day letter to Henry Givens, Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knights of
Nordica--collect.

"Well, have you figured it out?" asked Violet when he barged into his
office again.

"Yes, I just sent a wire to Givens," he replied.

"But he's a nigger-hater, isn't he?" was her surprised comment.

"You want your salary, don't you?" he inquired archly.

"I have for the past month."

"Well, then, don't ask foolish questions," he snapped.




                              CHAPTER SIX


Two important events took place on Easter Sunday, 1934. The first was
a huge mass meeting in the brand new reinforced concrete auditorium
of the Knights of Nordica for the double purpose of celebrating the
first anniversary of the militant secret society and the winning of the
millionth member. The second event was the wedding of Helen Givens and
Matthew Fisher, Grand Exalted Giraw of the Knights of Nordica.

Rev. Givens, the Imperial Grand Wizard of the order, had never
regretted that he had taken Fisher into the order and made him his
right-hand man. The membership had grown by leaps and bounds, the
treasury was bursting with money in spite of the Wizard's constant
misappropriation of funds, the regalia factory was running night and
day and the influence of the order was becoming so great that Rev.
Givens was beginning to dream of a berth in the White House or near by.

For over six months the order had been publishing _The Warning_, an
eight-page newspaper carrying lurid red headlines and poorly-drawn
quarter-page cartoons, and edited by Matthew. The noble Southern
working people purchased it eagerly, devouring and believing every
word in it. Matthew, in 14-point, one-syllable word editorials painted
terrifying pictures of the menace confronting white supremacy and
the utter necessity of crushing it. Very cleverly he linked up the
Pope, the Yellow Peril, the Alien Invasion and Foreign Entanglements
with Black-No-More as devices of the Devil. He wrote with such blunt
sincerity that sometimes he almost persuaded himself that it was all
true.

As the money flowed in, Matthew's fame as a great organizer spread
throughout the Southland, and he suddenly became the most desirable
catch in the section. Beautiful women literally threw themselves at his
feet, and, as a former Negro and thus well versed in the technique of
amour, he availed himself of all offerings that caught his fancy.

At the same time he was a frequent visitor to the Givens home,
especially when Mrs. Givens, whom he heartily detested, was away. From
the very first Helen had been impressed by Matthew. She had always
longed for the companionship of an educated man, a scientist, a man of
literary ability. Matthew to her mind embodied all of these. She only
hesitated to accept his first offer of marriage two days after they
met because she saw no indication that he had much, if any, money. She
softened toward him as the Knights of Nordica treasury grew; and when
he was able to boast of a million-dollar bank account, she agreed to
marriage and accepted his ardent embraces in the meantime.

And so, before the yelling multitude of night-gowned Knights, they
were united in holy wedlock on the stage of the new auditorium. Both,
being newlyweds, were happy. Helen had secured the kind of husband
she wanted, except that she regretted his association with what she
called low-brows; while Matthew had won the girl of his dreams and was
thoroughly satisfied, except for a slight regret that her grotesque
mother wasn't dead and some disappointment that his spouse was so much
more ignorant than she was beautiful.

As soon as Matthew had helped to get the Knights of Nordica well under
way with enough money flowing in to satisfy the avaricious Rev. Givens,
he had begun to study ways and means of making some money on the side.
He had power, influence and prestige and he intended to make good use
of them. So he had obtained audiences individually with several of the
leading business men of the Georgia capital.

He always prefaced his proposition by pointing out that the working
people were never so contented, profits never so high and the erection
of new factories in the city never so intensive; that the continued
prosperity of Atlanta and of the entire South depended upon keeping
labor free from Bolshevism, Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, trade
unionism and other subversive movements. Such un-American philosophies,
he insisted had ruined European countries and from their outposts
in New York and other Northern cities were sending emissaries to
seek a foothold in the South and plant the germ of discontent. When
this happened, he warned gloomily, then farewell to high profits and
contented labor. He showed copies of books and pamphlets which he had
ordered from radical book stores in New York but which he asserted were
being distributed to the prospect's employees.

He then explained the difference between the defunct Ku Klux Klan
and the Knights of Nordica. While both were interested in public
morals, racial integrity and the threatened invasion of America by
the Pope, his organization glimpsed its larger duty, the perpetuation
of Southern prosperity by the stabilization of industrial relations.
The Knights of Nordica, favored by increasing membership, was in a
position to keep down all radicalism, he said, and then boldly asserted
that Black-No-More was subsidized by the Russian Bolsheviks. Would
the gentlemen help the work of the Nordicists along with a small
contribution? They would and did. Whenever there was a slump in the
flow of cash from this source, Matthew merely had his print shop
run off a bale of Communistic tracts which his secret operatives
distributed around in the mills and factories. Contributions would
immediately increase.

Matthew had started this lucrative side enterprise none too soon.
There was much unemployment in the city, wages were being cut and
work speeded up. There was dissatisfaction and grumbling among the
workers and a small percentage of them was in a mood to give ear to the
half-dozen timid organizers of the conservative unions who were being
paid to unionize the city but had as yet made no headway. A union might
not be so bad after all.

The great mass of white workers, however, was afraid to organize and
fight for more pay because of a deepset fear that the Negroes would
take their jobs. They had heard of black labor taking the work of white
labor under the guns of white militia, and they were afraid to risk it.
They had first read of the activities of Black-No-More, Incorporated,
with a secret feeling akin to relief but after the orators of the
Knights of Nordica and the editorials of _The Warning_ began to portray
the menace confronting them, they forgot about their economic ills and
began to yell for the blood of Dr. Crookman and his associates. Why,
they began to argue, one couldn't tell who was who! Herein lay the
fundamental cause of all their ills. Times were hard, they reasoned,
because there were so many white Negroes in their midst taking their
jobs and undermining their American standard of living. None of them
had ever attained an American standard of living to be sure, but that
fact never occurred to any of them. So they flocked to the meetings of
the Knights of Nordica and night after night sat spellbound while Rev.
Givens, who had finished the eighth grade in a one-room country school,
explained the laws of heredity and spoke eloquently of the growing
danger of black babies.

Despite his increasing wealth (the money came in so fast he could
scarcely keep track of it), Matthew maintained close contact with the
merchants and manufacturers. He sent out private letters periodically
to prominent men in the Southern business world in which he told of
the marked psychological change that had come over the working classes
of the South since the birth of the K. of N. He told how they had been
discontented and on the brink of revolution when his organization
rushed in and saved the South. Unionism and such destructive nostrums
had been forgotten, he averred, when _The Warning_ had revealed the
latest danger to the white race. Of course, he always added, such work
required large sums of money and contributions from conservative,
substantial and public-spirited citizens were ever acceptable. At the
end of each letter there appeared a suggestive paragraph pointing out
the extent to which the prosperity of the New South was due to its
"peculiar institutions" that made the worker race conscious instead
of class conscious, and that with the passing of these "peculiar
institutions" would also pass prosperity. This reasoning proved very
effective, financially speaking.

Matthew's great success as an organizer and his increasing popularity
was not viewed by Rev. Givens with equanimity. The former evangelist
knew that everybody of intelligence in the upper circles of the order
realized that the growth and prosperity of the Knights of Nordica was
largely due to the industry, efficiency and intelligence of Matthew.
He had been told that many people were saying that Fisher ought to be
Imperial Grand Wizard instead of Grand Exalted Giraw.

Givens had the ignorant man's fear and suspicion of anybody who was
supposedly more learned than he. His position, he felt, was threatened,
and he was decidedly uneasy. He neither said nor did anything about
it, but he fretted a great deal to his wife, much to her annoyance. He
was consequently overjoyed when Matthew asked him for Helen's hand,
and gave his consent with alacrity. When the marriage was consummated,
he saw his cup filled to overflowing and no clouds on the horizon. The
Knights of Nordica was safe in the family.

One morning a week or two after his wedding, Matthew was sitting in
his private office, when his secretary announced a caller, one B.
Brown. After the usual delay staged for the purpose of impressing
all visitors, Matthew ordered him in. A short, plump, well-dressed,
soft-spoken man entered and greeted him respectfully. The Grand Exalted
Giraw waved to a chair and the stranger sat down. Suddenly, leaning
over close to Matthew, he whispered, "Don't recognize me, do you Max?"

The Grand Giraw paled and started. "Who are you?" he whispered
hoarsely. How in the devil did this man know him? He peered at him
sharply.

The newcomer grinned. "Why it's me, Bunny Brown, you big sap!"

"Well, cut my throat!" Matthew exclaimed in amazement. "Boy, is it
really you?" Bunny's black face had miraculously bleached. He seemed
now more chubby and cherubic than ever.

"It aint my brother," said Bunny with his familiar beam.

"Bunny, where've you been all this time? Why didn't you come on down
here when I wrote you? You must've been in jail."

"Mind reader! That's just where I've been," declared the former bank
clerk.

"What for? Gambling?"

"No: Rambling."

"What do you mean: Rambling?" asked the puzzled Matthew.

"Just what I said, Big Boy. Got to rambling around with a married
woman. Old story: husband came in unexpectedly and I had to crown him.
The fire escape was slippery and I slipped. Couldn't run after I hit
the ground and the flatfoot nabbed me. Got a lucky break in court or I
wouldn't be here."

"Was it a white woman?" asked the Grand Exalted Giraw.

"She wasn't black," said Bunny.

"It's a good thing you weren't black, too!"

"Our minds always ran in the same channels," Bunny commented.

"Got any jack?" asked Matthew.

"Is it likely?"

"Do you want a job?"

"No, I prefer a position."

"Well, I think I can fix you up here for about five grand to begin
with," said Matthew.

"Santa Claus! What do I have to do: assassinate the President?"

"No, kidder; just be my right-hand man. You know, follow me through
thick and thin."

"All right, Max; but when things get too thick, I'm gonna thin out."

"For Christ's sake don't call me Max," cautioned Matthew.

"That's your name, aint it?"

"No, simp. Them days has gone forever. It's Matthew Fisher now. You go
pulling that Max stuff and I'll have to answer more questions than a
traffic officer."

"Just think," mused Bunny. "I been reading about you right along in the
papers but until I recognized your picture in last Sunday's paper I
didn't know who you were. Just how long have you been in on this graft?"

"Ever since it started."

"Say not so! You must have a wad of cash salted away by this time."

"Well, I'm not appealing for charity," Matthew smiled sardonically.

"How many squaws you got now?"

"Only one, Bunny--regular."

"What's matter, did you get too old?" chided his friend.

"No, I got married."

"Well, that's the same thing. Who's the unfortunate woman?"

"Old man Givens' girl."

"Judas Priest! You got in on the ground floor didn't you?"

"I didn't miss. Bunny, old scout, she's the same girl that turned me
down that night in the Honky Tonk," Matthew told him with satisfaction.

"Well, hush my mouth! This sounds like a novel," Bunny chuckled.

"Believe it or not, papa, it's what God loves," Matthew grinned.

"Well, you lucky hound! Getting white didn't hurt you none."

"Now listen, Bunny," said Matthew, dropping to a more serious tone,
"from now on you're private secretary to the Grand Exalted Giraw;
that's me."

"What's a Giraw?"

"I can't tell you; I don't know myself. Ask Givens sometime. He
invented it but if he can explain it I'll give you a grand."

"When do I start to work? Or rather, when do I start drawing money?"

"Right now, Old Timer. Here's a century to get you fixed up. You eat
dinner with me tonight and report to me in the morning."

"Fathers above!" said Bunny. "Dixie must be heaven."

"It'll be hell for you if these babies find you out; so keep your nose
clean."

"Watch me, Mr. Giraw."

"Now listen, Bunny. You know Santop Licorice, don't you?"

"Who doesn't know that hippo?"

"Well, we've had him on our payroll since December. He's fighting
Beard, Whooper, Spelling and that crowd. He was on the bricks and we
helped him out. Got his paper to appearing regularly, and all that sort
of thing."

"So the old crook sold out the race, did he?" cried the amazed Bunny.

"Hold that race stuff, you're not a shine anymore. Are you surprised
that he sold out? You're actually becoming innocent," said Matthew.

"Well, what about the African admiral?" Bunny asked.

"This: In a couple of days I want you to run up to New York and look
around and see if his retention on the payroll is justified. I got a
hunch that nobody is bothering about his paper or what he says, and
if that's true we might as well can him; I can use the jack to better
advantage."

"Listen here, Boy, this thing is running me nuts. Here you are fighting
this Black-No-More, and so is Beard, Whooper, Gronne, Spelling and the
rest of the Negro leaders, yet you have Licorice on the payroll to
fight the same people that are fighting your enemy. This thing is more
complicated than a flapper's past."

"Simple, Bunny, simple. Reason why you can't understand it is because
you don't know anything about high strategy."

"High what?" asked Bunny.

"Never mind, look it up at your leisure. Now you can savvy the fact
that the sooner these spades are whitened the sooner this graft will
fall through, can't you?"

"Righto," said his friend.

"Well, the longer we can make the process, the longer we continue to
drag down the jack. Is that clear?"

"As a Spring day."

"You're getting brighter by the minute, old man," jeered Matthew.

"Coming from you, that's no compliment."

"As I was saying, the longer it takes, the longer we last. It's my
business to see that it lasts a long time but neither do I want it to
stop because that also would be disastrous."

Bunny nodded: "You're a wise egg!"

"Thanks, that makes it unanimous. Well, I don't want my side to get
such an upper hand that it will put the other side out of business, or
vice versa. What we want is a status quo."

"Gee, you've got educated since you've been down here with these
crackers."

"You flatter them, Bunny; run along now. I'll have my car come by your
hotel to bring you to dinner."

"Thanks for the compliment, old man, but I'm staying at the Y. M. C. A.
It's cheaper," laughed Bunny.

"But is it safer?" kidded Matthew, as his friend withdrew.

Two days later Bunny Brown left for New York on a secret mission. Not
only was he to spy on Santop Licorice and see how effective his work
was, but he was also to approach Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard,
Dr. Napoleon Wellington Jackson, Rev. Herbert Gronne, Col. Mortimer
Roberts, Prof. Charles Spelling, and the other Negro leaders with a
view to getting them to speak to white audiences for the benefit of the
Knights of Nordica. Matthew already knew that they were in a precarious
economic situation since they now had no means of income, both the
black masses and the philanthropic whites having deserted them. Their
white friends, mostly Northern plutocrats, felt that the race problem
was being satisfactorily solved by Black-No-More, Incorporated, and so
did the Negroes. Bunny's job was to convince them that it was better
to lecture for the K. of N. and grow fat than to fail to get chances
to lecture to Negroes who weren't interested in what they said anyhow.
The Grand Exalted Giraw had a personal interest in these Negro leaders.
He realized that they were too old or too incompetent to make a living
except by preaching and writing about the race problem, and since they
had lost their influence with the black masses, they might be a novelty
to introduce to the K. of N. audiences. He felt that their racial
integrity talks would click with the crackers. They knew more about it
too than any of his regular speakers, he realized.

As the train bearing Bunny pulled into the station in Charlotte, he
bought an evening paper. The headline almost knocked him down:

                   WEALTHY WHITE GIRL HAS NEGRO BABY

He whistled softly and muttered to himself, "Business picks up from now
on." He thought of Matthew's marriage and whistled again.

       *       *       *       *       *

From that time on there were frequent reports in the daily press of
white women giving birth to black babies. In some cases, of course, the
white women had recently become white but the blame for the tar-brushed
offspring in the public mind always rested on the shoulders of the
father, or rather, of the husband. The number of cases continued to
increase. All walks of life were represented. For the first time the
prevalence of sexual promiscuity was brought home to the thinking
people of America. Hospital authorities and physicians had known about
it in a general way but it had been unknown to the public.

The entire nation became alarmed. Hundreds of thousands of people,
North and South, flocked into the Knights of Nordica. The real white
people were panic-stricken, especially in Dixie. There was no way,
apparently, of telling a real Caucasian from an imitation one. Every
stranger was viewed with suspicion, which had a very salutory effect on
the standard of sex morality in the United States. For the first time
since 1905, chastity became a virtue. The number of petting parties,
greatly augmented by the development of aviation, fell off amazingly.
One must play safe, the girls argued.

The holidays of traveling salesmen, business men and fraternal
delegates were made less pleasant than of yore. The old orgiastic
days in the big cities seemed past for all time. It also suddenly
began to dawn upon some men that the pretty young thing they had met
at the seashore and wanted to rush to the altar might possibly be a
whitened Negress; and young women were almost as suspicious. Rapid-fire
courtships and gin marriages declined. Matrimony at last began to be
approached with caution. Nothing like this situation had been known
since the administration of Grover Cleveland.

Black-No-More, Incorporated, was not slow to seize upon this
opportunity to drum up more business. With 100 sanitariums going full
blast from Coast to Coast, it now announced in full page advertisements
in the daily press that it was establishing lying-in hospitals in the
principal cities where all prospective mothers could come to have their
babies, and that whenever a baby was born black or mulatto, it would
immediately be given the 24-hour treatment that permanently turned
black infants white. The country breathed easier, particularly the four
million Negroes who had become free because white.

In a fortnight Bunny Brown returned. Over a quart of passable rye, the
two friends discussed his mission.

"What about Licorice?" asked Matthew.

"Useless. You ought to give him the gate. He's taking your jack but he
isn't doing a thing but getting your checks and eating regularly. His
followers are scarcer than Jews in the Vatican."

"Well, were you able to talk business with any of the Negro leaders?"

"Couldn't find any of them. Their offices are all closed and they've
moved away from the places where they used to live. Broke, I suppose."

"Did you inquire for them around Harlem?"

"What was the use? All of the Negroes around Harlem nowadays are folks
that have just come there to get white; the rest of them left the race
a long time ago. Why, Boy, darkies are as hard to find on Lenox Avenue
now as they used to be in Tudor City."

"What about the Negro newspapers? Are any of them running still?"

"Nope, they're a thing of the past. Shines are too busy getting white
to bother reading about lynching, crime and peonage," said Bunny.

"Well," said Matthew, "it looks as if old Santop Licorice is the only
one of the old gang left."

"Yeah, and he won't be black long, now that you're cutting him off the
payroll."

"I think he could make more money staying black."

"How do you figure that out?" asked Bunny.

"Well, the dime museums haven't closed down, you know," said Matthew.




                             CHAPTER SEVEN


One June morning in 1934, Grand Exalted Giraw Fisher received a report
from one of his secret operatives in the town of Paradise, South
Carolina, saying:

    "The working people here are talking about going on strike next
    week unless Blickdoff and Hortzenboff, the owners of the Paradise
    Mill increase pay and shorten hours. The average wage is around
    fifteen dollars a week, the work day eleven hours. In the past
    week the company has speeded up the work so much that the help
    say they cannot stand the pace.

    "The owners are two Germans who came to this country after the war.
    They employ 1000 hands, own all of the houses in Paradise and
    operate all of the stores. Most of the hands belong to the Knights
    of Nordica and they want the organization to help them unionize.
    Am awaiting instructions."

Matthew turned to Bunny and grinned. "Here's more money," he boasted,
shaking the letter in his assistant's face.

"What can you do about it?" that worthy inquired.

"What can I do? Well, Brother, you just watch my smoke. Tell Ruggles to
get the plane ready," he ordered. "We'll fly over there at once."

Two hours later Matthew's plane sat down on the broad, close-clipped
lawn in front of the Blickdoff-Hortzenboff cotton mill. Bunny and the
Grand Giraw entered the building and walked to the office.

"Whom do you wish to see?" asked a clerk.

"Mr. Blickdoff, Mr. Hortzenboff or both; preferably both," Matthew
replied.

"And who's calling?"

"The Grand Exalted Giraw of the Ancient and Honorable Order of the
Knights of Nordica and his secretary," boomed that gentleman. The awed
young lady retired into an inner sanctum.

"That sure is some title," commented Bunny in an undertone.

"Yes, Givens knows his stuff when it comes to that. The longer and
sillier a title, the better the yaps like it."

The young lady returned and announced that the two owners would be glad
to receive the eminent Atlantan. Bunny and Matthew entered the office
marked "Private."

Hands were shaken, greetings exchanged and then Matthew got right down
to business. He had received contributions from these two mill owners
so to a certain extent they understood one another.

"Gentlemen," he queried, "is it true that your employees are planning
to strike next week?"

"So ve haff heardt," puffed the corpulent, under-sized Blickdoff.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"De uszual t'ing, uff coarse," replied Hortzenboff, who resembled a
beer barrel on stilts.

"You can't do the usual thing," warned Matthew. "Most of these people
are members of the Knights of Nordica. They are looking to us for
protection and we mean to give it to them."

"Vy ve t'ought you vas favorable," exclaimed Blickdoff.

"Und villing to be reasonable," added Hortzenboff.

"That's true," Matthew agreed, "but you're squeezing these people too
hard."

"But ve can't pay dem any more," protested the squat partner. "Vot ve
gonna do?"

"Oh, you fellows can't kid me, I know you're coining the jack; but if
you think its worth ten grand to you, I think I can adjust matters,"
the Grand Giraw stated.

"Ten t'ousand dollars?" the two mill men gasped.

"You've got good ears," Matthew assured them. "And if you don't come
across I'll put the whole power of my organization behind your hands.
Then it'll cost you a hundred grand to get back to normal."

The Germans looked at each other incredulously.

"Are you t'reatening us, Meester Fisher?" whined Blickdoff.

"You've got a good head at figuring out things, Blickdoff," Matthew
retorted, sarcastically.

"Suppose ve refuse?" queried the heavier Teuton.

"Yeah, suppose you do. Can't you imagine what'll happen when I pull
these people off the job?"

"Ve'll call oudt de militia," warned Blickdoff.

"Don't make me laugh," Matthew commented. "Half the militiamen are
members of my outfit."

The Germans shrugged their shoulders hopelessly while Matthew and Bunny
enjoyed their confusion.

"How mutch you say you wandt?" asked Hortzenboff.

"Fifteen grand," replied the Grand Giraw, winking at Bunny.

"Budt you joost said ten t'ousand a minute ago," screamed Blickdoff,
gesticulating.

"Well, it's fifteen now," said Matthew, "and it'll be twenty grand if
you babies don't hurry up and make up your mind."

Hortzenboff reached hastily for the big check book and commenced
writing. In a moment he handed Matthew the check.

"Take this back to Atlanta in the plane," ordered Matthew, handing the
check to Bunny, "and deposit it. Safety first." Bunny went out.

"You don't act like you trust us," Blickdoff accused.

"Why should I?" the ex-Negro retorted. "I'll just stick around for a
while and keep you two company. You fellows might change your mind and
stop payment on that check."

"Ve are honest men, Meester Fisher," cried Hortzenboff.

"Now I'll tell one," sneered the Grand Giraw, seating himself and
taking a handful of cigars out of a box on the desk.

The following evening the drab, skinny, hollow-eyed mill folk trudged
to the mass meeting called by Matthew in the only building in Paradise
not owned by the company--the Knights of Nordica Hall. They poured into
the ramshackle building, seated themselves on the wooden benches and
waited for the speaking to begin.

They were a sorry lot, under-nourished, bony, vacant-looking, and
yet they had seen a dim light. Without suggestion or agitation from
the outside world, from which they were almost as completely cut off
as if they had been in Siberia, they had talked among themselves and
concluded that there was no hope for them except in organization. What
they all felt they needed was wise leadership, and they looked to the
Knights of Nordica for it, since they were all members of it and there
was no other agency at hand. They waited now expectantly for the words
of wisdom and encouragement which they expected to hear fall from the
lips of their beloved Matthew Fisher, who now looked down upon them
from the platform with cynical humor mingled with disgust.

They had not long to wait. A tall, gaunt, mountaineer, who acted as
chairman, after beseeching the mill hands to stand together like men
and women, introduced the Grand Exalted Giraw.

Matthew spoke forcefully and to the point. He reminded them that they
were men and women; that they were free, white and twenty-one; that
they were citizens of the United States; that America was their country
as well as Rockefeller's; that they must stand firm in the defense
of their rights as working people; that the worker was worthy of his
hire; that nothing should be dearer to them than the maintenance of
white supremacy. He insinuated that even in their midst there probably
were some Negroes who had been turned white by Black-No-More. Such
individuals, he insisted made poor union material because they always
showed their Negro characteristics and ran away in a crisis. Ending
with a fervent plea for liberty, justice and a square deal, he sat down
amid tumultuous applause. Eager to take advantage of their enthusiasm,
the chairman began to call for members. Happily the people crowded
around the little table in front of the platform to give their names
and pay dues.

Swanson, the chairman and acknowledged leader of the militant element,
was tickled with the results of the meeting. He slapped his thighs
mountaineer fashion, shifted his chew of tobacco from the right cheek
to the left, his pale blue eyes twinkling, and "allowed" to Matthew
that the union would soon bring the Paradise Mill owners to terms. The
Grand Exalted Giraw agreed.

Two days later, back in Atlanta, Matthew held a conference with a
half-dozen of his secret operatives in his office. "Go to Paradise and
do your stuff," he commanded, "and do it right."

The next day the six men stepped from the train in the little South
Carolina town, engaged rooms at the local hotel and got busy. They let
it be known that they were officials of the Knights of Nordica sent
from Atlanta by the Grand Exalted Giraw to see that the mill workers
got a square deal. They busied themselves visiting the three-room
cottages of the workers, all of which looked alike, and talking very
confidentially.

In a day or so it began to be noised about that Swanson, leader of
the radical element, was really a former Negro from Columbia. It
happened that a couple of years previously he had lived in that
city. Consequently he readily admitted that he had lived there when
asked innocently by one of the strangers in the presence of a group
of workers. When Swanson wasn't looking, the questioner glanced
significantly at those in the group.

That was enough. To the simple-minded workers Swanson's admission was
conclusive evidence that the charge of being a Negro was true. When he
called another strike meeting, no one came except a few of Fisher's
men. The big fellow was almost ready to cry because of the unexplained
falling away of his followers. When one of the secret operatives told
him the trouble he was furious.

"Ah haint no damn nigger a-tall," he shouted. "Ah'm a white man an' kin
prove hit!"

Unfortunately he could not prove to the satisfaction of his fellow
workers that he was not a Negro. They were adamant. On the streets
they passed him without speaking and they complained to the foremen
at the mill that they didn't want to work with a nigger. Broken and
disheartened after a week of vain effort, Swanson was glad to accept
carfare out of the vicinity from one of Matthew's men who pretended to
be sympathetic.

With the departure of Swanson, the cause of the mill workers was dealt
a heavy blow, but the three remaining ringleaders sought to carry on.
The secret operatives of the Grand Exalted Giraw got busy again. One
of the agitators was asked if it was true that his grandfather was a
nigger. He strenuously denied the charge but being ignorant of the
identity of his father he could not very well be certain about his
grandfather. He was doomed. Within a week the other two were similarly
discredited. Rumor was wafted abroad that the whole idea of a strike
was a trick of smart niggers in the North who were in the pay of the
Pope.

The erstwhile class conscious workers became terror-stricken by the
specter of black blood. You couldn't, they said, be sure of anybody any
more, and it was better to leave things as they were than to take a
chance of being led by some nigger. If the colored gentry couldn't sit
in the movies and ride in the trains with white folks, it wasn't right
for them to be organizing and leading white folks.

The radicals and laborites in New York City had been closely watching
developments in Paradise ever since the news of the big mass meeting
addressed by Matthew was broadcast by the Knights of Nordica news
service. When it seemed that the mill workers were, for some mysterious
reason, going to abandon the idea of striking, liberal and radical
labor organizers were sent down to the town to see what could be done
toward whipping up the spirit of revolt.

The representative of the liberal labor organization arrived first and
immediately announced a meeting in the Knights of Nordica Hall, the
only obtainable place. Nobody came. The man couldn't understand it. He
walked out into the town square, approached a little knot of men and
asked what was the trouble.

"Y're from that there Harlem in N'Yawk, haint ye?" asked one of the
villagers.

"Why yes, I live in Harlem. What about it?"

"Well, we haint a gonna have no damn nigger leadin' us, an' if ye know
whut's healthy fer yuh yo'll git on away f'um here," stated the speaker.

"Where do you get that nigger stuff?" inquired the amazed and insulted
organizer. "I'm a white man."

"Yo ain't th' first white nigger whut's bin aroun' these parts," was
the reply.

The organizer, puzzled but helpless, stayed around town for a week and
then departed. Somebody had told the simple folk that Harlem was the
Negro district in New York, after ascertaining that the organizer lived
in that district. To them Harlem and Negro became synonymous and the
laborite was doomed.

The radical labor organizer, refused permission to use the Knights of
Nordica Hall because he was a Jew, was prevented from holding a street
meeting when someone started a rumor that he believed in dividing up
property, nationalizing women, and was in addition an atheist. He
freely admitted the first, laughed at the second and proudly proclaimed
the third. That was sufficient to inflame the mill hands, although God
had been strangely deaf to their prayers, they owned no property to
divide and most of their women were so ugly that they need have had no
fears that any outsiders would want to nationalize them. The disciple
of Lenin and Trotsky vanished down the road with a crowd of emaciated
workers at his heels.

Soon all was quiet and orderly again in Paradise, S. C. On the advice
of a conciliator from the United States Labor Department, Blickdoff
and Hortzenboff took immediate steps to make their workers more
satisfied with their pay, their jobs and their little home town. They
built a swimming pool, a tennis court, shower baths and a playground
for their employees but neglected to shorten their work time so these
improvements could be enjoyed. They announced that they would give each
worker a bonus of a whole day's pay at Christmas time, hereafter, and a
week's vacation each year to every employee who had been with them more
than ten years. There were no such employees, of course, but the mill
hands were overjoyed with their victory.

The local Baptist preacher, who was very thoughtfully paid by the
company with the understanding that he would take a practical view of
conditions in the community, told his flock their employers were to be
commended for adopting a real Christian and American way of settling
the difficulties between them and their workers. He suggested it was
quite likely that Jesus, placed in the same position, would have done
likewise.

"Be thankful for the little things," he mooed. "God works in mysterious
ways his wonders to perform. Ye shall know the truth and the truth
shall set ye free. The basis of all things is truth. Let us not be led
astray by the poison from vipers' tongues. This is America and not
Russia. Patrick Henry said 'Give me liberty or give me death' and the
true, red-blooded, 100 per cent American citizen says the same thing
today. But there are right ways and wrong ways to get liberty. Your
employers have gone about it the right way. For what, after all is
liberty except the enjoyment of life; and have they not placed within
your reach those things that bring happiness and recreation?

"Your employers are interested, just as all true Americans are
interested, in the welfare of their fellow citizens, their fellow
townsmen. Their hearts beat for you. They are always thinking of you.
They are always planning ways to make conditions better for you.
They are sincerely doing all in their power. They have very heavy
responsibilities.

"So you must be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day. All things turn
out well in time. Christ knows what he is doing and he will not permit
his children to suffer.

"O, ye of little faith! Let not your hearts store up jealousy, hatred
and animosity. Let not your minds be wooed by misunderstanding. Let us
try to act and think as God would wish us to, and above all, let us,
like those two kindly men yonder, practice Christian tolerance."

Despite this inspiring message, it was apparent to everyone that
Paradise would never be the same again. Rumors continued to fill the
air. People were always asking each other embarrassing questions about
birth and blood. Fights became more frequent. Large numbers of the
workers, being of Southern birth, were unable to disprove charges of
possessing Negro ancestry, and so were forced to leave the vicinity.
The mill hands kept so busy talking about Negro blood that no one
thought of discussing wages and hours of labor.

In August, Messrs. Blickdoff and Hortzenboff, being in Atlanta on
business, stopped by Matthew's office.

"Well, how's the strike?" asked the Grand Giraw.

"Dot strike!" echoed Blickdoff. "Ach Gott! Dot strike neffer come off.
Vat you do, you razscal?"

"That's my secret," replied Matthew, a little proudly. "Every man to
his trade, you know."

It had indeed become Matthew's trade and he was quite adept at it. What
had happened at Paradise had also happened elsewhere. There were no
more rumors of strikes. The working people were far more interested in
what they considered, or were told was, the larger issue of race. It
did not matter that they had to send their children into the mills to
augment the family wage; that they were always sickly and that their
death rate was high. What mattered such little things when the very
foundation of civilization, white supremacy, was threatened?




                             CHAPTER EIGHT


For over two years now had Black-No-More, Incorporated, been carrying
on its self-appointed task of turning Negroes into Caucasians. The
job was almost complete, except for the black folk in prisons, orphan
asylums, insane asylums, homes for the aged, houses of correction
and similar institutions. Those who had always maintained that it
was impossible to get Negroes together for anything but a revival,
a funeral or a frolic, now had to admit that they had coöperated
well in getting white. The poor had been helped by the well-to-do,
brothers had helped sisters, children had assisted parents. There had
been revived some of the same spirit of adventure prevalent in the
days of the Underground Railroad. As a result, even in Mississippi,
Negroes were quite rare. In the North the only Negroes to be seen
were mulatto babies whose mothers, charmed by the beautiful color of
their offspring, had defied convention and not turned them white. As
there had never been more than two million Negroes in the North, the
whitening process had been viewed indifferently by the masses because
those who controlled the channels of opinion felt that the country was
getting rid of a very vexatious problem at absolutely no cost; but not
so in the South.

When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had
consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been
of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only
had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but
they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when
the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation. The presence of
the Negro as an under class had also made of Dixie a unique part of the
United States. There, despite the trend to industrialization, life was
a little different, a little pleasanter, a little softer. There was
contrast and variety, which was rare in a nation where standardization
had progressed to such an extent that a traveler didn't know what
town he was in until someone informed him. The South had always been
identified with the Negro, and vice versa, and its most pleasant
memories treasured in song and story, were built around this pariah
class.

The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the
protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race
pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white
peon, were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved
by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses
derived their only consolation and happiness from the fact that they
were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than
the mudsill blacks.

The economic loss to the South by the ethnic migration was
considerable. Hundreds of wooden railroad coaches, long since condemned
as death traps in all other parts of the country, had to be scrapped
by the railroads when there were no longer any Negroes to jim crow.
Thousands of railroad waiting rooms remained unused because, having
been set aside for the use of Negroes, they were generally too
dingy and unattractive for white folk or were no longer necessary.
Thousands of miles of streets located in the former Black Belts, and
thus without sewers or pavement, were having to be improved at the
insistent behest of the rapidly increased white population, real and
imitation. Real estate owners who had never dreamed of making repairs
on their tumble-down property when it was occupied by the docile
Negroes, were having to tear down, rebuild and alter to suit white
tenants. Shacks and drygoods boxes that had once sufficed as schools
for Negro children, had now to be condemned and abandoned as unsuitable
for occupation by white youth. Whereas thousands of school teachers
had received thirty and forty dollars a month because of their Negro
ancestry, the various cities and counties of the Southland were now
forced to pay the standard salaries prevailing elsewhere.

Naturally taxes increased. Chambers of Commerce were now unable to send
out attractive advertising to Northern business firms offering no or
very low taxation as an inducement to them to move South nor were they
able to offer as many cheap building sites. Only through the efforts
of the Grand Exalted Giraw of the Knights of Nordica were they still
able to point to their large reserves of docile, contented, Anglo-Saxon
labor, and who knew how long that condition would last?

Consequently, the upper classes faced the future with some misgivings.
As if being deprived of the pleasure of black mistresses were not
enough, there was a feeling that there would shortly be widespread
revolt against the existing medieval industrial conditions and
resultant reduction of profits and dividends. The mill barons viewed
with distaste the prospect of having to do away with child labor.
Rearing back in their padded swivel chairs, they leaned fat jowls on
well-manicured hands and mourned the passing of the halcyon days of
yore.

If the South had lost its Negroes, however, it had certainly not lost
its vote, and the political oligarchy that ruled the section was losing
its old assurance and complacency. The Republicans had made inroads
here and there in the 1934 Congressional elections. The situation
politically was changing and if drastic steps were not immediately
taken, the Republicans might carry the erstwhile Solid South, thus
practically destroying the Democratic Party. Another Presidential
election was less than two years off. There would have to be fast work
to ward off disaster. Far-sighted people, North and South, even foresaw
the laboring people soon forsaking both of the old parties and going
Socialist. Politicians and business men shuddered at the thought of
such a tragedy and saw horrible visions of old-age pensions, eight-hour
laws, unemployment insurance, workingmen's compensation, minimum-wage
legislation, abolition of child labor, dissemination of birth-control
information, monthly vacations for female workers, two-month vacations
for prospective mothers, both with pay, and the probable killing of
individual initiative and incentive by taking the ownership of national
capital out of the hands of two million people and putting it into the
hands of one hundred and twenty million.

Which explains why Senator Rufus Kretin of Georgia, one of the old
Democratic war horses, an incomparable Negro-baiter, a faithful
servitor of the dominant economic interests of his state and the lusty
father of several black families since whitened, walked into the office
of Imperial Grand Wizard Givens one day in March, 1935.

"Boys," he began, as closeted with Rev. Givens, Matthew and Bunny in
the new modernistic Knights of Nordica palace, they quaffed cool and
illegal beverages, "we gotta do sumpin and do it quick. These heah damn
Yankees ah makin' inroads on ouah preserves, suh. Th' Republican vote
is a-growin'. No tellin' what's li'ble tuh happen in this heah nex'
'lection."

"What can we do, Senator?" asked the Imperial Grand Wizard. "How can we
serve the cause?"

"That's just it. That's just it, suh; jus' what Ah came heah fo',"
replied the Senator. "Naow sum o' us was thinkin' that maybe yo'all
might be able to he'p us keep these damn hicks in line. Yo'all are
intelligent gent'men; you know what Ah'm gettin' at?"

"Well, that's a pretty big order, Colonel," said Givens.

"Yes," Matthew added. "It'll be a hard proposition. Conditions are no
longer what they used to be."

"An'," said Givens, "we can't do much with that nigger business, like
we used to do when th' old Klan was runnin'."

"What about one o' them theah Red scares," asked the Senator, hopefully.

"Humph!" the clergyman snorted. "Better leave that there Red business
alone. Times ain't like they was, you know. Anyhow, them damn Reds'll
be down here soon enough 'thout us encouragin' 'em none."

"Guess that's right, Gen'ral," mused the statesman. Then brightening:
"Lookaheah, Givens. This fellah Fisher's gotta good head. Why not let
him work out sumpin?"

"Yeah, he sure has," agreed the Wizard, glad to escape any work except
minding the treasury of his order. "If he can't do it, ain't nobody
can. Him and Bunny here is as shrewd as some o' them old time darkies.
He! He! He!" He beamed patronizingly upon his brilliant son-in-law and
his plump secretary.

"Well, theah's money in it. We got plenty o' cash; what we want now
is votes," the Senator explained. "C'ose yuh caint preach that white
supremacy stuff ve'y effectively when they haint no niggahs."

"Leave it to me. I'll work out something," said Matthew. Here was a
chance to get more power, more money. Busy as he was, it would not do
to let the opportunity slip by.

"Yuh caint lose no time," warned the Senator.

"We won't," crowed Givens.

A few minutes later they took a final drink together, shook hands and
the Senator, bobbing his white head to the young ladies in the outer
office, departed.

Matthew and Bunny retired to the private office of the Grand Exalted
Giraw.

"What you thinkin' about pullin'?" asked Bunny.

"Plenty. We'll try the old sure fire Negro problem stuff."

"But that's ancient history, Brother," protested Bunny. "These ducks
won't fall for that any more."

"Bunny, I've learned something on this job, and that is that hatred
and prejudice always go over big. These people have been raised on the
Negro problem, they're used to it, they're trained to react to it. Why
should I rack my brain to hunt up something else when I can use a dodge
that's always delivered the goods?"

"It may go over at that."

"I know it will. Just leave it to me," said Matthew confidently.
"That's not worrying me at all. What's got my goat is my wife being in
the family way." Matthew stopped bantering a moment, a sincere look of
pain erasing his usual ironic expression.

"Congratulations!" burbled Bunny.

"Don't rub it in," Matthew replied. "You know how the kid will look."

"That's right," agreed his pal. "You know, sometimes I forget who we
are."

"Well, I don't. I know I'm a darky and I'm always on the alert."

"What do you intend to do?"

"I don't know, Big Boy, I don't know. I would ordinarily send her to
one of those Lying-in Hospitals but she'd be suspicious. Yet, if the
kid is born it'll sure be black."

"It won't be white," Bunny agreed. "Why not tell her the whole thing
and since she's so crazy about you, I don't think she'd hesitate to go."

"Man, you must be losing your mind, or else you've lost it!" Matthew
exploded. "She's a worse nigger-hater than her father. She'd holler for
a divorce before you could say Jack Robinson."

"You've got too much money for that."

"You're assuming that she has plenty of intelligence."

"Hasn't she?"

"Let's not discuss a painful subject," pleaded Matthew. "Suggest a
remedy."

"She don't have to know that she's going to one of Crookman's places,
does she?"

"No, but I can't get her to leave home to have the baby."

"Why?"

"Oh, a lot of damn sentiment about having her baby in the old home, and
her damned old mother supports her. So what can I do?"

"Then, the dear old homestead is the only thing that's holding up the
play?"

"You're a smart boy, Bunny."

"Don't stress the obvious. Seriously, though, I think everything can be
fixed okeh."

"How?" cried Matthew, eagerly.

"Is it worth five grand?" countered Bunny.

"Money's no object, you know, but explain your proposition."

"I will not. You get me fifty century notes and I'll explain later."

"It's a deal, old friend."

Bunny Brown was a man of action. That evening he entered the popular
Niggerhead Café, rendezvous of the questionable classes, and sat down
at a table. The place was crowded with drinkers downing their "white
mule" and contorting to the strains issuing from a radio loud-speaker.
A current popular dance piece, "The Black Man Blues," was filling
the room. The songwriters had been making a fortune recently writing
sentimental songs about the passing of the Negro. The plaintive voice
of a blues singer rushed out of the loud-speaker:

    "I wonder where my big, black man has gone;
    Oh, I wonder where my big, black man has gone.
    Has he done got faded an' left me all alone?"

When the music ceased and the dancers returned to their tables, Bunny
began to look around. In a far corner he saw a waiter whose face
seemed familiar. He waited until the fellow came close when he hailed
him. As the waiter bent over to get his order, he studied him closely.
He had seen this fellow somewhere before. Who could he be? Suddenly
with a start he remembered. It was Dr. Joseph Bonds, former head of the
Negro Data League in New York. What had brought him here and to this
condition? The last time he had seen Bonds, the fellow was a power in
the Negro world, with a country place in Westchester County and a swell
apartment in town. It saddened Bunny to think that catastrophe had
overtaken such a man. Even getting white, it seemed, hadn't helped him
much. He recalled that Bonds in his heyday had collected from the white
philanthropists with the slogan: "Work, Not Charity," and he smiled as
he thought that Bonds would be mighty glad now to get a little charity
and not so much work.

"Would a century note look good to you right now?" he asked the former
Negro leader when he returned with his drink.

"Just show it to me, Mister," said the waiter, licking his lips. "What
you want me to do?"

"What will you do for a hundred berries?" pursued Bunny.

"I'd hate to tell you," replied Bonds, grinning and revealing his
familiar tobacco-stained teeth.

"Have you got a friend you can trust?"

"Sure, a fellow named Licorice that washes pots in back."

"You don't mean Santop Licorice, do you?"

"Ssh! They don't know who he is here. He's white now, you know."

"Do they know who you are?"

"What do you mean?" gasped the surprised waiter.

"Oh, I won't say anything but I know you're Bonds of New York."

"Who told you?"

"Oh, a little fairy."

"How could that be? I never associate with them."

"It wasn't that kind of a fairy," Bunny reassured him, laughing. "Well,
you get Licorice and come to my hotel when this place closes up."

"Where is that?" asked Bonds. Bunny wrote his name and room number down
on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

Three hours later Bunny was awakened by a knocking at his door. He
admitted Bonds and Licorice, the latter smelling strongly of steam and
food.

"Here," said Bunny, holding up a hundred dollar bill, "is a century
note. If you boys can lay aside your scruples for a few hours you can
have five of them apiece."

"Well," said Bonds, "neither Santop nor I have been overburdened with
them."

"That's what I thought," Bunny murmured. He proceeded to outline the
work he wanted them to do.

"But that would be a criminal offense," objected Licorice.

"You too, Brutus?" sneered Bonds.

"Well, we can't afford to take chances unless we're protected," the
former President of Africa argued rather weakly. He was money-hungry
and was longing for a stake to get back to Demerara where, since there
was a large Negro population, a white man, by virtue of his complexion,
amounted to something. Yet, he had had enough experience behind the
bars to make him wary.

"We run this town and this state, too," Bunny assured him. "We could
get a couple of our men to pull this stunt but it wouldn't be good
policy."

"How about a thousand bucks apiece?" asked Bonds, his eyes glittering
as he viewed the crisp banknotes in Bunny's hand.

"Here," said Bunny. "Take this century note between you, get your
material and pull the job. When you've finished I'll give you nineteen
more like it between you."

The two cronies looked at each other and nodded.

"It's a go," said Bonds.

They departed and Bunny went back to sleep.

The next night about eleven-thirty the bells began to toll and the
mournful sirens of the fire engines awakened the entire neighborhood in
the vicinity of Rev. Givens's home. That stately edifice, built by Ku
Klux Klan dollars was in flames. Firemen played a score of streams onto
the blaze but the house appeared to be doomed.

On a lawn across the street, in the midst of a consoling crowd, stood
Rev. and Mrs. Givens, Helen and Matthew. The old couple were taking
the catastrophe fatalistically, Matthew was puzzled and suspicious,
but Helen was in hysterics. She presented a bedraggled and woebegone
appearance with a blanket around her night dress. She wept afresh every
time she looked across at the blazing building where she had spent her
happy childhood.

"Matthew," she sobbed, "will you build me another one just like it?"

"Why certainly, Honey," he agreed, "but it will take quite a while."

"Oh, I know; I know, but I want it."

"Well, you'll get it, darling," he soothed, "but I think it would be a
good idea for you to go away for a while to rest your nerves. We've got
to think of the little one that's coming, you know."

"I don't wanna go nowhere," she screamed.

"But you've got to go somewhere," he reasoned. "Don't you think so,
Mother?" Old Mrs. Givens agreed it would be a good idea but suggested
that she go along. To this Rev. Givens would not listen at first but
he finally yielded.

"Guess it's a good idea after all," he remarked. "Women folks is always
in th' way when buildin's goin' on."

Matthew was tickled at the turn of affairs. On the way down to the
hotel, he sat beside Helen, alternately comforting her and wondering as
to the origin of the fire.

Next morning, bright and early, Bunny, grinning broadly walked into the
office, threw his hat on a hook and sat down before his desk after the
customary salutation.

"Bunny," called Matthew, looking at him hard. "Get me told!"

"What do you mean?" asked Bunny innocently.

"Just as I thought," chuckled Matthew. "You're a nervy guy."

"Why, I don't get you," said Bunny, continuing the pose.

"Come clean, Big Boy. How much did that fire cost?"

"You gave me five grand, didn't you?"

"Just like a nigger: a person can never get a direct answer from you."

"Are you satisfied?"

"I'm not crying my eyes out."

"Is Helen going North for her confinement?"

"Nothing different."

"Well, then, why do you want to know the why and wherefore of that
blaze?"

"Just curiosity, Nero, old chap," grinned Matthew.

"Remember," warned Bunny, mischievously, "curiosity killed the cat."

The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted their conversation.

"What's that?" yelled Matthew into the mouthpiece. "The hell you say!
All right, I'll be right up." He hung up the receiver, jumped up
excitedly and grabbed his hat.

"What's the matter?" shouted Bunny. "Somebody dead?"

"No," answered the agitated Matthew, "Helen's had a miscarriage," and
he dashed out of the room.

"Somebody dead right on," murmured Bunny, half aloud.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joseph Bonds and Santop Licorice, clean shaven and immaculate, followed
the Irish red cap into their drawing room on the New York Express.

"It sure feels good to get out of the barrel once more," sighed Bonds,
dropping down on the soft cushion and pulling out a huge cigar.

"Ain't it the truth?" agreed the former Admiral of the Royal African
Navy.




                             CHAPTER NINE


"Bunny, I've got it all worked out," announced Matthew, several
mornings later, as he breezed into the office.

"Got what worked out?"

"The political proposition."

"Spill it."

"Well, here it is: First, we get Givens on the radio; national hookup,
you know, once a week for about two months."

"What'll he talk about? Are you going to write it for him?"

"Oh, he knows how to charm the yokels. He'll appeal to the American
people to call upon the Republican administration to close up the
sanitariums of Dr. Crookman and deport everybody connected with
Black-No-More."

"You can't deport citizens, silly," Bunny remonstrated.

"That don't stop you from advocating it. This is politics, Big Boy."

"Well, what else is on the program?"

"Next: We start a campaign of denunciation against the Republicans
in _The Warning_, connecting them with the Pope, Black-No-More and
anything else we can think of."

"But they were practically anti-Catholic in 1928, weren't they?"

"Seven years ago, Bunny, seven years ago. How often must I tell
you that the people never remember anything? Next we pull the old
Write-to-your-Congressman-Write-to-your-Senator stuff. We carry the
form letter in _The Warning_, the readers do the rest."

"You can't win a campaign on that stuff, alone," said Bunny
disdainfully. "Bring me something better than that, Brother."

"Well, the other step is a surprise, old chap. I'm going to keep it
under my hat until later on. But when I spring it, old timer, it'll
knock everybody for a row of toadstools." Matthew smiled mysteriously
and smoothed back his pale blond hair.

"When do we start this radio racket?" yawned Bunny.

"Wait'll I talk it over with the Chief," said Matthew, rising, "and see
how he's dated up."

       *       *       *       *       *

The following Thursday evening at 8:15 p.m. millions of people sat
before their loud speakers, expectantly awaiting the heralded address
to the nation by the Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knights of Nordica.
The program started promptly:

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience. This is
Station W H A T, Atlanta, Ga., Mortimer K. Shanker announcing. This
evening we are offering a program of tremendous interest to every
American citizen. The countrywide hookup over the chain of the Moronia
Broadcasting Company is enabling one hundred million citizens to hear
one of the most significant messages ever delivered to the American
public.

"Before introducing the distinguished speaker of the evening, however,
I have a little treat in store for you. Mr. Jack Albert, the well-known
Broadway singer and comedian, has kindly consented to render his
favorite among the popular songs of the day, 'Vanishing Mammy.' Mr.
Albert will be accompanied by that incomparable aggregation of musical
talent, Sammy Snort's Bogalusa Babies.... Come on, Al, say a word or
two to the ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience before you begin."

"Oh, hello folks. Awfully glad to see so many of you out there tonight.
Well, that is to say, I suppose there are many of you out there. You
know I like to flatter myself, besides I haven't my glasses so I can't
see very well. However, that's not the pint, as the bootleggers say.
I'm terribly pleased to have the opportunity of starting off a program
like this with one of the songs I have come to love best. You know, I
think a whole lot of this song. I like it because it has feeling and
sentiment. It means something. It carries you back to the good old
days that are dead and gone forever. It was written by Johnny Gulp with
music by the eminent Japanese-American composer, Forkrise Sake. And, as
Mr. Shanker told you, I am being accompanied by Sammy Snort's Bogalusa
Babies through the courtesy of the Artillery Café, Chicago, Illinois.
All right, Sammy, smack it!"

In two seconds the blare of the jazz orchestra smote the ears of the
unseen audience with the weird medley and clash of sound that had
passed for music since the days of the Panama-Pacific Exposition.
Then the sound died to a whisper and the plaintive voice of America's
premier black-faced troubadour came over the air:

    Vanishing Mammy, Mammy! Mammy! of Mine,
    You've been away, dear, such an awfully long time.
    You went away, Sweet Mammy! Mammy! one summer night
    I can't help thinkin', Mammy, that you went white.
    Of course I can't blame you, Mammy! Mammy! dear
    Because you had so many troubles, Mammy, to bear.
    But the old homestead hasn't been the same
    Since I last heard you, Mammy, call my name.
    And so I wait, loving Mammy, it seems in vain,
    For you to come waddling back home again
    Vanishing Mammy! Mammy! Mammy!
    I'm waiting for you to come back home again.

"Now, radio audience, this is Mr. Mortimer Shanker speaking again. I
know you all loved Mr. Albert's soulful rendition of 'Vanishing Mammy.'
We're going to try to get him back again in the very near future.

"It now gives me great pleasure to introduce to you a man who hardly
needs any introduction. A man who is known throughout the civilized
world. A man of great scholarship, executive ability and organizing
genius. A man who has, practically unassisted, brought five million
Americans under the banner of one of the greatest societies in this
country. It affords me great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen of the
radio audience, to introduce Rev. Henry Givens, Imperial Grand Wizard
of the Knights of Nordica, who will address you on the very timely
topic of 'The Menace of Negro Blood'."

Rev. Givens, fortified with a slug of corn, advanced nervously to the
microphone, fingering his prepared address. He cleared his throat and
talked for upwards of an hour during which time he successfully avoided
saying anything that was true, the result being that thousands of
telegrams and long distance telephone calls of congratulation came in
to the studio. In his long address he discussed the foundations of
the Republic, anthropology, psychology, miscegenation, coöperation
with Christ, getting right with God, curbing Bolshevism, the bane of
birth control, the menace of the Modernists, science versus religion,
and many other subjects of which he was totally ignorant. The greater
part of his time was taken up in a denunciation of Black-No-More,
Incorporated, and calling upon the Republican administration of
President Harold Goosie to deport the vicious Negroes at the head of it
or imprison them in the federal penitentiary. When he had concluded "In
the name of our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, Amen," he retired
hastily to the washroom to finish his half-pint of corn.

The announcer took Rev. Givens's place at the microphone:

"Now friends, this is Mortimer K. Shanker again, announcing from
Station W H A T, Atlanta, Ga., with a nationwide hookup over the chain
of the Moronia Broadcasting Company. You have just heard a scholarly
and inspiring address by Rev. Henry Givens, Imperial Grand Wizard of
the Knights of Nordica on 'The Menace of Negro Blood.' Rev. Givens will
deliver another address at this station a week from tonight.... Now,
to end our program for the evening, friends, we are going to have a
popular song by the well-known Goyter Sisters, lately of the State
Street Follies, entitled 'Why Did the Old Salt Shaker'...."

       *       *       *       *       *

The agitation of the Knights of Nordica soon brought action from the
administration at Washington. About ten days after Rev. Givens had
ceased his talks over the radio, President Harold Goosie announced
to the assembled newspaper men that he was giving a great deal of
study to the questions raised by the Imperial Grand Wizard concerning
Black-No-More, Incorporated; that several truckloads of letters
condemning the corporation had been received at the White House and
were now being answered by a special corps of clerks; that several
Senators had talked over the matter with him, and that the country
could expect him to take some action within the next fortnight.

At the end of a fortnight, the President announced that he had decided
to appoint a commission of leading citizens to study the whole question
thoroughly and to make recommendations. He asked Congress for an
appropriation of $100,000 to cover the expenses of the commission.

The House of Representatives approved a resolution to that effect a
week later. The Senate, which was then engaged in a spirited debate on
the World Court and the League of Nations, postponed consideration of
the resolution for three weeks. When it came to vote before that august
body, it was passed, after long argument, with amendments and returned
to the House.

Six weeks after President Goosie had made his request of Congress, the
resolution was passed in its final form. He then announced that inside
of a week he would name the members of the commission.

The President kept his word. He named the commission, consisting of
seven members, five Republicans and two Democrats. They were mostly
politicians temporarily out of a job.

In a private car the commission toured the entire country, visiting all
of the Black-No-More sanitariums, the Crookman Lying-in Hospitals and
the former Black Belts. They took hundreds of depositions, examined
hundreds of witnesses and drank large quantities of liquor.

Two months later they issued a preliminary report in which they
pointed out that the Black-No-More sanitariums and Lying-in Hospitals
were being operated within the law; that only one million Negroes
remained in the country; that it was illegal in most of the states for
pure whites and persons of Negro ancestry to intermarry but that it
was difficult to detect fraud because of collusion. As a remedy the
Commission recommended stricter observance of the law, minor changes
in the marriage laws, the organization of special matrimonial courts
with trained genealogists attached to each, better equipped judges,
more competent district attorneys, the strengthening of the Mann Act,
the abolition of the road house, the closer supervision of dance halls,
a stricter censorship on books and moving pictures and government
control of cabarets. The commission promised to publish the complete
report of its activities in about six weeks.

Two months later, when practically everyone had forgotten that there
had ever been such an investigation, the complete report of the
commission, comprising 1789 pages in fine print came off the press.
Copies were sent broadcast to prominent citizens and organizations.
Exactly nine people in the United States read it: the warden of a
county jail, the proofreader at the Government Printing Office, the
janitor of the City Hall in Ashtabula, Ohio, the city editor of the
Helena (Ark.) _Bugle_, a stenographer in the Department of Health of
Spokane, Wash., a dishwasher in a Bowery restaurant, a flunky in the
office of the Research Director of Black-No-More, Incorporated, a life
termer in Clinton Prison at Dannemora, N. Y., and a gag writer on the
staff of a humorous weekly in Chicago.

Matthew received fulsome praise from the members of his organization
and the higher-ups in the Southern Democracy. He had, they said,
forced the government to take action, and they began to talk of him for
public office.

The Grand Exalted Giraw was jubilant. Everything, he told Bunny, had
gone as he had planned. Now he was ready to turn the next trick.

"What's that?" asked his assistant, looking up from the morning comic
section.

"Ever hear of the Anglo-Saxon Association of America?" Matthew queried.

"No, what's their graft?"

"It isn't a graft, you crook. The Anglo-Saxon Association of America is
an organization located in Virginia. The headquarters are in Richmond.
It's a group of rich highbrows who can trace their ancestry back almost
two hundred years. You see they believe in white supremacy the same
as our outfit but they claim that the Anglo-Saxons are the cream of
the white race and should maintain the leadership in American social,
economic and political life."

"You sound like a college professor," sneered Bunny.

"Don't insult me, you tripe. Listen now: This crowd thinks they're too
highbrow to come in with the Knights of Nordica. They say our bunch are
morons."

"That about makes it unanimous," commented Bunny, biting off the end of
a cigar.

"Well, what I'm trying to do now is to bring these two organizations
together. We've got numbers but not enough money to win an election;
they have the jack. If I can get them to see the light we'll win the
next Presidential election hands down."

"What'll I be: Secretary of the Treasury?" laughed Bunny.

"Over my dead body!" Matthew replied, reaching for his flask. "But
seriously, Old Top, if I can succeed in putting this deal over we'll
have the White House in a bag. No fooling!"

"When do we get busy?"

"Next week this Anglo-Saxon Association has its annual meeting in
Richmond. You and I'll go up there and give them a spiel. We may take
Givens along to add weight."

"You don't mean intellectual weight, do you?"

"Will you never stop kidding?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Arthur Snobbcraft, President of the Anglo-Saxon Association, an
F. F. V. and a man suspiciously swarthy for an Anglo-Saxon, had devoted
his entire life to fighting for two things: white racial integrity and
Anglo-Saxon supremacy. It had been very largely a losing fight. The
farther he got from his goal, the more desperate he became. He had been
the genius that thought up the numerous racial integrity laws adopted
in Virginia and many of the other Southern states. He was strong for
sterilization of the unfit: meaning Negroes, aliens, Jews and other
riff raff, and he had an abiding hatred of democracy.

Snobbcraft's pet scheme now was to get a genealogical law passed
disfranchising all people of Negro or unknown ancestry. He argued that
good citizens could not be made out of such material. His organization
had money but it needed popularity--numbers.

His joy then knew no bounds when he received Matthew's communication.
While he had no love for the Knights of Nordica which, he held,
contained just the sort of people he wanted to legislate into
impotency, social, economic and physical, he believed he could use them
to gain his point. He wired Matthew at once, saying the Association
would be delighted to have him address them, as well as the Imperial
Grand Wizard.

The Grand Exalted Giraw had long known of Snobbcraft's obsession, the
genealogical law. He also knew that there was no chance of ever getting
such a law adopted but in order to even try to pass such a law it would
be necessary to win the whole country in a national election. Together,
his organization and Snobbcraft's could turn the trick; singly neither
one could do it.

In an old pre-Civil War mansion on a broad, tree-shaded boulevard, the
directors of the Anglo-Saxon Association gathered in their annual
meeting. They listened first to Rev. Givens and next to Matthew. The
matter was referred to a committee which in an hour or two reported
favorably. Most of these men had dreamed from youth of holding high
political office at the national capital as had so many eminent
Virginians but none of them was Republican, of course, and the
Democrats never won anything nationally. By swallowing their pride for
a season and joining with the riff raff of the Knights of Nordica, they
saw an opportunity, for the first time in years to get into power; and
they took it. They would furnish plenty of money, they said, if the
other group would furnish the numbers.

Givens and Matthew returned to Atlanta in high spirits.

"I tell you, Brother Fisher," croaked Givens, "our star is ascending. I
can see no way for us to fail, with God's help. We'll surely defeat our
enemy. Victory is in the air."

"It sure looks that way," the Grand Giraw agreed. "With their money and
ours, we can certainly get together a larger campaign fund than the
Republicans."

Back in Richmond Mr. Snobbcraft and his friends were in conference with
the statistician of a great New York insurance company. This man, Dr.
Samuel Buggerie, was highly respected among members of his profession
and well known by the reading public. He was the author of several
books and wrote frequently for the heavier periodicals. His well-known
work, _The Fluctuation of the Sizes of Left Feet among the Assyrians
during the Ninth Century before Christ_ had been favorably commented
upon by several reviewers, one of whom had actually read it. An even
more learned work of his was entitled _Putting Wasted Energy to Work_,
in which he called attention, by elaborate charts and graphs, to the
possibilities of harnessing the power generated by the leaves of trees
rubbing together on windy days. In several brilliant monographs he
had proved that rich people have smaller families than the poor; that
imprisonment does not stop crime; that laborers usually migrate in the
wake of high wages. His most recent article in a very intellectual
magazine read largely by those who loafed for a living, he had proved
statistically that unemployment and poverty are principally a state
of mind. This contribution was enthusiastically hailed by scholars
and especially by business men as an outstanding contribution to
contemporary thought.

Dr. Buggerie was a ponderous, nervous, entirely bald, specimen of
humanity, with thick moist hands, a receding double chin and very
prominent eyes that were constantly shifting about and bearing an
expression of seemingly perpetual wonderment behind their big
horn-rimmed spectacles. He seemed about to burst out of his clothes and
his pockets were always bulging with papers and notes.

Dr. Buggerie, like Mr. Snobbcraft, was a professional Anglo-Saxon as
well as a descendant of one of the First Families of Virginia. He held
that the only way to tell the pure whites from the imitation whites,
was to study their family trees. He claimed that such a nationwide
investigation would disclose the various non-Nordic strains in the
population. Laws, said he, should then be passed forbidding these
strains from mixing or marrying with the pure strains that had produced
such fine specimens of mankind as Mr. Snobbcraft and himself.

In high falsetto voice he eagerly related to the directors of the
Anglo-Saxon Association the results of some of his preliminary
researches. These tended to show, he claimed, that there must be as
many as twenty million people in the United States who possessed some
slight non-Nordic strain and were thus unfit for both citizenship
and procreation. If the organization would put up the money for the
research on a national scale, he declared that he could produce
statistics before election that would be so shocking that the
Republicans would lose the country unless they adopted the Democratic
plank on genealogical examinations. After a long and eloquent talk by
Mr. Snobbcraft in support of Dr. Buggerie's proposition, the directors
voted to appropriate the money, on condition that the work be kept as
secret as possible. The statistician agreed although it hurt him to the
heart to forego any publicity. The very next morning he began quietly
to assemble his staff.




                              CHAPTER TEN


Hank Johnson, Chuck Foster, Dr. Crookman and Gorman Gay, National
Chairman of the Republican National Committee, sat in the physician's
hotel suite conversing in low tones.

"We're having a tough time getting ready for the Fall campaign,"
said Gay. "Unfortunately our friends are not contributing with their
accustomed liberality."

"Can't complain about us, can you?" asked Foster.

"No, no," the politician denied quickly. "You have been most liberal in
the past two years, but then we have done many favors for you, too."

"Yuh sho right, Gay," Hank remarked. "Dem crackahs mighta put us outa
business efen it hadn' bin fo' th' admin'strations suppo't."

"I'm quite sure we deeply appreciate the many favors we've received
from the present administration," added Dr. Crookman.

"We won't need it much longer, though," said Chuck Foster.

"How's that?" asked Gay, opening his half-closed eyes.

"Well, we've done about all the business we can do in this country.
Practically all of the Negroes are white except a couple of thousand
diehards and those in institutions," Chuck informed him.

"Dat's right," said Hank. "An' it sho makes dis heah country lonesome.
Ah ain't seen a brown-skin ooman in so long Ah doan know whut Ah'd do
if Ah seen one."

"That's right, Gay," added Dr. Crookman. "We've about cleaned up the
Negro problem in this country. Next week we're closing all except five
of our sanitariums."

"Well, what about your Lying-In hospitals?" asked Gay.

"Of course we'll have to continue operating them," Crookman replied.
"The women would be in an awful fix if we didn't."

"Now look here," proposed Gay, drawing closer to them and lowering his
voice. "This coming campaign is going to be one of the bitterest in the
history of this country. I fear there will be rioting, shooting and
killing. Those hospitals cannot be closed without tremendous mental
suffering to the womanhood of the country. We want to avoid that and
you want to avoid it, too. Yet, these hospitals will constantly be in
danger. It ought to be worth something to you to have them especially
protected by the forces of the government."

"You would do that anyway, wouldn't you Gay?" asked Crookman.

"Well, it's going to cost us millions of votes to do it, and the
members of the National Executive Committee seem to feel that you ought
to make a very liberal donation to the campaign fund to make up for the
votes we'll lose."

"What would you call a liberal donation?" Crookman inquired.

"A successful campaign cannot be fought this year," Gay replied, "under
twenty millions."

"Man," shouted Hank, "yuh ain't talkin' 'bout dollahs, is yuh?"

"You got it right, Hank," answered the National Chairman. "It'll cost
that much and maybe more."

"Where do you expect to get all of that money?" queried Foster.

"That's just what's worrying us," Gay replied, "and that's why I'm
here. You fellows are rolling in wealth and we need your help. In the
past two years you've collected around ninety million dollars from
the Negro public. Why not give us a good break? You won't miss five
million, and it ought to be worth it to you fellows to defeat the
Democrats."

"Five millions! Great Day," Hank exploded. "Man, is you los' yo' min'?"

"Not at all," Gay denied. "Might as well own up that if we don't get
a contribution of about that size from you we're liable to lose this
election.... Come on, fellows, don't be so tight. Of course, you're
setting pretty and all you've got to do is change your residence to
Europe or some other place if things don't run smoothly in America, but
you want to think of those poor women with their black babies. What
will they do if you fellows leave the country or if the Democrats win
and you have to close all of your places?"

"That's right, Chief," Foster observed. "You can't let the women down."

"Yeah," said Johnson. "Give 'im th' jack."

"Well, suppose we do?" concluded Crookman, smiling.

The National Chairman was delighted. "When can we collect?" he asked,
"and how?"

"Tomorrow, if yuh really wants it then," Johnson observed.

"Now remember," warned Gay. "We cannot afford to let it be known that
we are getting such a large sum from any one person or corporation."

"That's your lookout," said the physician, indifferently. "You know
_we_ won't say anything."

Mr. Gay, shortly afterward, departed to carry the happy news to the
National Executive Committee, then in session right there in New York
City.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Republicans certainly needed plenty of money to re-elect President
Goosie. The frequent radio addresses of Rev. Givens, the growing
numbers of the Knights of Nordica, the inexplicable affluence of the
Democratic Party and the vitriolic articles in _The Warning_, had not
failed to rouse much Democratic sentiment. People were not exactly for
the Democrats but they were against the Republicans. As early as May it
did not seem possible for the Republicans to carry a single Southern
state and many of the Northern and Eastern strongholds were in doubt.
The Democrats seemed to have everything their way. Indeed, they were so
confident of success that they were already counting the spoils.

When the Democratic Convention met in Jackson, Mississippi, on July 1,
1936, political wise-acres claimed that for the first time in history
the whole program was cut and dried and would be run off smoothly
and swiftly. Such, however, was not the case. The unusually hot sun,
coupled with the enormous quantities of liquor vended, besides the many
conflicting interests present, soon brought dissension.

Shortly after the keynote speech had been delivered by Senator
Kretin, the Anglo-Saxon crowd let it be known that they wanted some
distinguished Southerner like Arthur Snobbcraft nominated for the
Presidency. The Knights of Nordica were intent on nominating Imperial
Grand Wizard Givens. The Northern faction of the party, now reduced to
a small minority in party councils, was holding out for former Governor
Grogan of Massachusetts who as head of the League of Catholic Voters
had a great following.

Through twenty ballots the voting proceeded, and it remained
deadlocked. No faction would yield. Leaders saw that there had to be a
compromise. They retired to a suite on the top floor of the Judge Lynch
Hotel. There, in their shirt sleeves, with collars open, mint juleps on
the table and electric fans stirring up the hot air, they got down to
business. Twelve hours later they were still there.

Matthew, wilted, worn but determined, fought for his chief. Simeon Dump
of the Anglo-Saxon Association swore he would not withdraw the name
of Arthur Snobbcraft. Rev. John Whiffle, a power in the party, gulped
drink after drink, kept dabbing a damp handkerchief at the shining
surface of his skull, and held out for one Bishop Belch. Moses Lejewski
of New York argued obstinately for the nomination of Governor Grogan.

In the meantime the delegates, having left the oven-like convention
hall, either lay panting and drinking in their rooms, sat in the hotel
lobbies discussing the deadlock or cruised the streets in automobiles
confidently seeking the dens of iniquity which they had been told were
eager to lure them into sin.

When the clock struck three, Matthew rose and suggested that since the
Knights of Nordica and the Anglo-Saxon Association were the two most
powerful organizations in the party, Givens should get the presidential
nomination, Snobbcraft the vice-presidential and the other candidates
be assured of cabinet positions. This suggested compromise appealed to
no one except Matthew.

"You people forget," said Simeon Dump, "that the Anglo-Saxon
Association is putting up half the money to finance this campaign."

"And you forget," declared Moses Lejewski, "that we're supporting your
crazy scheme to disfranchise anybody possessing Negro ancestry when
we get into office. That's going to cost us millions of votes in the
North. You fellows can't expect to hog everything."

"Why not?" challenged Dump. "How could you win without money?"

"And how," added Matthew, "can you get anywhere without the Knights of
Nordica behind you?"

"And how," Rev. Whiffle chimed in, "can you get anywhere without the
Fundamentalists and the Drys?"

At four o'clock they had got no farther than they had been at three.
They tried to pick some one not before mentioned, and went over and
over the list of eligibles. None was satisfactory. One was too radical,
another was too conservative, a third was an atheist, a fourth had once
rifled a city treasury, the fifth was of immigrant extraction once
removed, a sixth had married a Jewess, a seventh was an intellectual,
an eighth had spent too long at Hot Springs trying to cure the
syphilis, a ninth was rumored to be part Mexican and a tenth had at one
time in his early youth been a Socialist.

At five o'clock they were desperate, drunk and disgusted. The stuffy
room was a litter of discarded collars, cigarette and cigar butts,
match stems, heaped ash trays and empty bottles. Matthew drank little
and kept insisting on the selection of Rev. Givens. To the sodden and
nodding men he painted marvelous pictures of the spoils of office and
their excellent chance of getting there, and then suddenly declared
that the Knights of Nordica would withdraw unless Givens was nominated.
The threat aroused them. They cursed and called it a holdup, but
Matthew was adamant. As a last stroke, he rose and pretended to be
ready to bolt the caucus. They remonstrated with him and finally gave
in to him.

Orders went out to the delegates. They assembled in the convention
hall. The shepherds of the various state flocks cracked the whip and
the delegates voted accordingly. Late that afternoon the news went out
to a waiting world that the Democrats had nominated Henry Givens for
President and Arthur Snobbcraft for Vice-President. Mr. Snobbcraft
didn't like that at all, but it was better than nothing.

       *       *       *       *       *

A few days later the Republican convention opened in Chicago. Better
disciplined, as usual, than the Democrats, its business proceeded like
clockwork. President Goosie was nominated for reëlection on the first
ballot and Vice-President Gump was again selected as his running mate.
A platform was adopted whose chief characteristic was vagueness. As
was customary, it stressed the party's record in office, except that
which was criminal; it denounced fanaticism without being specific,
and it emphasized the rights of the individual and the trusts in the
same paragraph. As the Democratic slogan was White Supremacy and its
platform dwelt largely on the necessity of genealogical investigation,
the Republicans adopted the slogan: Personal Liberty and Ancestral
Sanctity.

Dr. Crookman and his associates, listening in on the radio in his suite
in the Robin Hood Hotel in New York City, laughed softly as they heard
the President deliver his speech of acceptance which ended in the
following original manner:

"And finally, my friends, I can only say that we shall continue in
the path of rugged individualism, free from the influence of sinister
interests, upholding the finest ideals of honesty, independence and
integrity, so that, to quote Abraham Lincoln, 'This nation of the
people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from the
earth.'"

"That," said Foster, as the President ceased barking, "sounds almost
like the speech of acceptance of Brother Givens that we heard the other
day."

Dr. Crookman smiled and brushed the ashes off his cigar. "It may even
be the same speech," he suggested.

       *       *       *       *       *

Through the hot days of July and August the campaign slowly got under
way. Innumerable photographs appeared in the newspapers depicting
the rival candidates among the simple folk of some village, helping
youngsters to pick cherries, assisting an old woman up a stairway,
bathing in the old swimming hole, eating at a barbecue and posing on
the rear platforms of special trains.

Long articles appeared in the Sunday newspapers extolling the simple
virtues of the two great men. Both, it seemed, had come from poor
but honest families; both were hailed as tried and true friends of
the great, common people; both were declared to be ready to give
their strength and intellect to America for the next four years. One
writer suggested that Givens resembled Lincoln, while another declared
that President Goosie's character was not unlike that of Roosevelt,
believing he was paying the former a compliment.

Rev. Givens told the reporters: "It is my intention, if elected,
to carry out the traditional tariff policy of the Democratic Party"
(neither he or anyone else knew what that was).

President Goosie averred again and again, "I intend to make my second
term as honest and efficient as my first." Though a dire threat, this
statement was supposed to be a fine promise.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, Dr. Samuel Buggerie and his operatives were making great
headway examining birth and marriage records throughout the United
States. Around the middle of September the Board of Directors held a
conference at which the learned man presented a partial report.

"I am now prepared to prove," gloated the obese statistician, "that
fully one-quarter of the people of one Virginia county possess
non-white ancestry, Indian or Negro; and we can further prove that
all of the Indians on the Atlantic Coast are part Negro. In several
counties in widely separated parts of the country, we have found
that the ancestry of a considerable percentage of the people is in
doubt. There is reason to believe that there are countless numbers of
people who ought not to be classed with whites and should not mix with
Anglo-Saxons."

It was decided that the statistician should get his data in simple form
that anyone could read and understand, and have it ready to release
just a few days before election. When the people saw how great was
the danger from black blood, it was reasoned, they would flock to the
Democratic standard and it would be too late for the Republicans to
halt the stampede.

       *       *       *       *       *

No political campaign in the history of the country had ever been
so bitter. On one side were those who were fanatically positive of
their pure Caucasian ancestry; on the other side were those who knew
themselves to be "impure" white or had reason to suspect it. The
former were principally Democratic, the latter Republican. There was
another group which was Republican because it felt that a victory
for the Democrats might cause another Civil War. The campaign roused
acrimonious dispute even within families. Often behind these family
rifts lurked the knowledge or suspicion of a dark past.

As the campaign grew more bitter, denunciations of Dr. Crookman and
his activities grew more violent. A move was started to close all of
his hospitals. Some wanted them to be closed for all time; others
advised their closing for the duration of the campaign. The majority
of thinking people (which wasn't so many) strenuously objected to the
proposal.

"No good purpose will be served by closing these hospitals," declared
the New York _Morning Earth_. "On the contrary such a step might have
tragic results. The Negroes have disappeared into the body of our
citizenry, large numbers have intermarried with the whites and the
offspring of these marriages are appearing in increasing numbers.
Without these hospitals, think how many couples would be estranged; how
many homes wrecked! Instead of taking precipitate action, we should be
patient and move slowly."

Other Northern newspapers assumed an even more friendly attitude, but
the press generally followed the crowd, or led it, and in slightly
veiled language urged the opponents of Black-No-More to take the law
into their hands.

Finally, emboldened and inflamed by fiery editorials, radio addresses,
pamphlets, posters and platform speeches, a mob seeking to protect
white womanhood in Cincinnati attacked a Crookman hospital, drove
several women into the streets and set fire to the building. A dozen
babies were burned to death and others, hastily removed by their
mothers, were recognized as mulattoes. The newspapers published names
and addresses. Many of the women were very prominent socially either in
their own right or because of their husbands.

The nation was shocked as never before. Republican sentiment began to
dwindle. The Republican Executive Committee met and discussed ways
and means of combating the trend. Gorman Gay was at his wits' end.
Nothing, he thought, could save them except a miracle.

Two flights below in a spacious office sat two of the Republican
campaigners, Walter Williams and Joseph Bonds, busily engaged in
leading the other workers (who knew better) to believe that they
were earning the ten dollars a day they were receiving. The former
had passed for a Negro for years on the strength of a part-Negro
grandparent and then gone back to the white race when the National
Social Equality League was forced to cease operations at the insistence
of both the sheriff and the landlord. Joseph Bonds, former head of the
Negro Data League who had once been a Negro but thanks to Dr. Crookman
was now Caucasian and proud of it, had but recently returned to the
North from Atlanta, accompanied by Santop Licorice. Both Mr. Williams
and Mr. Bonds had been unable to stomach the Democratic crowd and so
had fallen in with the Republicans, who were as different from them as
one billiard ball from another. The two gentlemen were in low tones
discussing the dilemma of the Republicans, while rustling papers to
appear busy.

"Jo, if we could figure out something to turn the tables on these
Democrats, we wouldn't have to work for the rest of our lives,"
Williams observed, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke out of the other
corner of his mouth.

"Yes, that's right, Walt, but there ain't a chance in the world. Old
Gay is almost crazy, you know. Came in here slamming doors and snapping
at everybody this morning," Bonds remarked.

Williams leaned closer to him, lowered his flame-thatched head and then
looking to the right and left whispered, "Listen here, do you know
where Beard is?"

"No," answered Bonds, starting and looking around to see if anyone was
listening. "Where is he?"

"Well, I got a letter from him the other day. He's down there in
Richmond doing research work for the Anglo-Saxon Association under that
Dr. Buggerie."

"Do they know who he is?"

"Of course they don't. He's been white quite a while now, you know, and
of course they'd never connect him with the Dr. Shakespeare A. Beard
who used to be one of their most outspoken enemies."

"Well, what about it?" persisted Bonds, eagerly. "Do you think he might
know something on the Democrats that might help?"

"He might. We could try him out anyway. If he knows anything he'll
spill it because he hates that crowd."

"How will you get in touch with him quickly? Write to him?"

"Certainly not," growled Williams. "I'll get expenses from Gay for the
trip. He'll fall for anything now."

He rose and made for the elevator. Five minutes later he was standing
before his boss, the National Chairman, a worried, gray little man with
an aldermanic paunch and a convict's mouth.

"What is it, Williams?" snapped the Chairman.

"I'd like to get expenses to Richmond," said Williams. "I have a friend
down there in Snobbcraft's office and he might have some dope we can
use to our advantage."

"Scandal?" asked Mr. Gay, brightening.

"Well, I don't know right now, of course, but this fellow is a very
shrewd observer and in six months' time he ought to have grabbed
something that'll help us out of this jam."

"Is he a Republican or a Democrat?"

"Neither. He's a highly trained and competent social student. You
couldn't expect him to be either," Williams observed. "But I happen to
know that he hasn't got any money to speak of, so for a consideration
I'm sure he'll spill everything he knows, if anything."

"Well, its a gamble," said Gay, doubtfully, "but any port in a storm."

Williams left Washington immediately for Richmond. That night he sat in
a cramped little room of the former champion of the darker races.

"What are you doing down there, Beard?" asked Williams, referring to
the headquarters of the Anglo-Saxon Association.

"Oh, I'm getting, or helping to get, that data of Buggerie's into
shape."

"What data? You told me you were doing research work. Now you say
you're arranging data. Have they finished collecting it?"

"Yes, we finished that job some time ago. Now we're trying to get the
material in shape for easy digestion."

"What do you mean: easy digestion?" queried Williams. "What are you
fellows trying to find out and why must it be so easily digested. You
fellows usually try to make your stuff unintelligible to the herd."

"This is different," said Beard, lowering his voice to almost a
whisper. "We're under a pledge of secrecy. We have been investigating
the family trees of the nation and so far, believe me, we certainly
have uncovered astounding facts. When I'm finally discharged, which
will probably be after election, I'm going to peddle some of that
information. Snobbcraft and even Buggerie are not aware of the
inflammatory character of the facts we've assembled." He narrowed his
foxy eyes greedily.

"Is it because they've been planning to release some of it that they
want it in easily digestible form, as you say?" pressed Williams.

"That's it exactly," declared Beard, stroking his now clean-shaven
face. "I overheard Buggerie and Snobbcraft chuckling about it only a
day or two ago."

"Well, there must be a whole lot of it," insinuated Williams, "if
they've had all of you fellows working for six months. Where all did
you work?"

"Oh, all over. North as well as South. We've got a whole basement vault
full of index cards."

"I guess they're keeping close watch over it, aren't they?" asked
Williams.

"Sure. It would take an army to get in that vault."

"Well, I guess they don't want anything to happen to the stuff before
they spring it," observed the man from Republican headquarters.

Soon afterward Williams left Dr. Beard, took a stroll around the
Anglo-Saxon Association's stately headquarters building, noted the
half-dozen tough looking guards about it and then caught the last train
for the capital city. The next morning he had a long talk with Gorman
Gay.

"It's okeh, Jo," he whispered to Bonds, later, as he passed his desk.




                            CHAPTER ELEVEN


"What's the matter with you, Matt?" asked Bunny one morning about a
month before election. "Ain't everything going okeh? You look as if
we'd lost the election and failed to elect that brilliant intellectual,
Henry Givens, President of the United States."

"Well, we might just as well lose it as far as I'm concerned," said
Matthew, "if I don't find a way out of this jam I'm in."

"What jam?"

"Well, Helen got in the family way last winter again. I sent her to
Palm Beach and the other resorts, thinking the travel and exercise
might bring on another miscarriage."

"Did it?"

"Not a chance in the world. Then, to make matters worse, she
miscalculates. At first she thought she would be confined in December;
now she tells me she's only got about three weeks to go."

"Say not so!"

"I'm preaching gospel."

"Well, hush my mouth! Waddya gonna do? You can't send her to one o'
Crookman's hospitals, it would be too dangerous right now."

"That's just it. You see, I figured she wouldn't be ready until about a
month after election when everything had calmed down, and I could send
her then."

"Would she have gone?"

"She couldn't afford not to with her old man the President of the
United States."

"Well, whaddya gonna do, Big Boy? Think fast! Think fast! Them three
weeks will get away from here in no time."

"Don't I know it?"

"What about an abortion?" suggested Bunny, hopefully.

"Nothing doing. First place, she's too frail, and second place she's
got some fool idea about that being a sin."

"About the only thing for you to do, then," said Bunny, "is to get
ready to pull out when that kid is born."

"Oh, Bunny, I'd hate to leave Helen. She's really the only woman I ever
loved, you know. Course she's got her prejudices and queer notions
like everybody else but she's really a little queen. She's been an
inspiration to me, too, Bunny. Every time I talk about pulling out of
this game when things don't go just right, she makes me stick it out.
I guess I'd have been gone after I cleaned up that first million if it
hadn't been for her."

"You'd have been better off if you had," Bunny commented.

"Oh, I don't know. She's hot for me to become Secretary of State or
Ambassador to England or something like that; and the way things are
going it looks like I will be. That is, if I can get out of this fix."

"If you can get out o' this jam, Matt, I'll sure take my hat off to
you. An' I know how you feel about scuttling out and leaving her. I had
a broad like that once in Harlem. 'Twas through her I got that job in
th' bank. She was crazy about me, Boy, until she caught me two-timin'.
Then she tried to shoot me.

"Squaws are funny that way," Bunny continued, philosophically. "Since
I've been white I've found out they're all the same, white or black.
Kipling was right. They'll fight to get you, fight to keep you and
fight you when they catch you playin' around. But th' kinda woman that
won't fight for a man ain't worth havin'."

"So you think I ought to pull out, eh Bunny?" asked the worried
Matthew, returning to the subject.

"Well, what I'd suggest is this:" his plump friend advised, "about time
you think Helen's gonna be confined, get together as much cash as you
can and keep your plane ready. Then, when the baby's born, go to her,
tell her everything an' offer to take her away with you. If she won't
go, you beat it; if she will, why everything's hotsy totsy." Bunny
extended his soft pink hands expressively.

"Well, that sounds pretty good, Bunny."

"It's your best bet, Big Boy," said his friend and secretary.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two days before election the situation was unchanged. There was joy in
the Democratic camp, gloom among the Republicans. For the first time
in American history it seemed that money was not going to decide an
election. The propagandists and publicity men of the Democrats had so
played upon the fears and prejudices of the public that even the bulk
of Jews and Catholics were wavering and many had been won over to the
support of a candidate who had denounced them but a few months before.
In this they were but running true to form, however, as they had
usually been on the side of white supremacy in the old days when there
was a Negro population observable to the eye. The Republicans sought to
dig up some scandal against Givens and Snobbcraft but were dissuaded
by their Committee on Strategy which feared to set so dangerous a
precedent. There were also politicians in their ranks who were guilty
of adulteries, drunkenness and grafting.

The Republicans, Goosie and Gump, and the Democrats, Givens and
Snobbcraft, had ended their swings around the country and were resting
from their labors. There were parades in every city and country town.
Minor orators beat the lectern from the Atlantic to the Pacific
extolling the imaginary virtues of the candidates of the party that
hired them. Dr. Crookman was burned a hundred times in effigy. Several
Lying-In hospitals were attacked. Two hundred citizens who knew nothing
about either candidate were arrested for fighting over which was the
better man.

The air was electric with expectancy. People stood around in knots.
Small boys scattered leaflets on ten million doorsteps. Police were on
the alert to suppress disorder, except what they created.

       *       *       *       *       *

Arthur Snobbcraft, jovial and confident that he would soon assume a
position befitting a member of one of the First Families of Virginia,
was holding a brilliant pre-election party in his palatial residence.
Strolling in and out amongst his guests, the master of the house
accepted their premature congratulations in good humor. It was fine to
hear oneself already addressed as Mr. Vice-President.

The tall English butler hastily edged his way through the throng
surrounding the President of the Anglo-Saxon Association and whispered,
"Dr. Buggerie is in the study upstairs. He says he must see you at
once; that it is very, very important."

Puzzled, Snobbcraft went up to find out what in the world could be the
trouble. As he entered, the massive statistician was striding back and
forth, mopping his brow, his eyes starting from his head, a sheaf of
typewritten sheets trembling in his hand.

"What's wrong, Buggerie?" asked Snobbcraft, perturbed.

"Everything! Everything!" shrilled the statistician.

"Be specific, please."

"Well," shaking the sheaf of papers in Snobbcraft's face, "we can't
release any of this stuff! It's too damaging! It's too inclusive! We'll
have to suppress it, Snobbcraft. You hear me? We musn't let anyone get
hold of it." The big man's flabby jowls worked excitedly.

"What do you mean?" snarled the F. F. V. "Do you mean to tell me that
all of that money and work is wasted?"

"That's exactly what I mean," squeaked Buggerie. "It would be suicidal
to publish it."

"Why? Get down to brass tacks, man, for God's sake. You get my goat."

"Now listen here, Snobbcraft," replied the statistician soberly,
dropping heavily into a chair. "Sit down and listen to me. I started
this investigation on the theory that the data gathered would prove
that around twenty million people, mostly of the lower classes were of
Negro ancestry, recent and remote, while about half that number would
be of uncertain or unknown ancestry."

"Well, what have you found?" insisted Snobbcraft, impatiently.

"I have found," continued Buggerie, "that over half the population has
no record of its ancestry beyond five generations!"

"That's fine!" chortled Snobbcraft. "I've always maintained that there
were only a few people of good blood in this country."

"But those figures include all classes," protested the larger man.
"Your class as well as the lower classes."

"Don't insult me, Buggerie!" shouted the head of the Anglo-Saxons, half
rising from his seat on the sofa.

"Be calm! Be calm!" cried Buggerie excitedly, "You haven't heard
anything yet."

"What else, in the name of God, could be a worse libel on the
aristocracy of this state?" Snobbcraft mopped his dark and haughty
countenance.

"Well, these statistics we've gathered prove that most of our social
leaders, especially of Anglo-Saxon lineage, are descendants of colonial
stock that came here in bondage. They associated with slaves, in many
cases worked and slept with them. They intermixed with the blacks and
the women were sexually exploited by their masters. Then, even more
than today, the illegitimate birth rate was very high in America."

Snobbcraft's face was working with suppressed rage. He started to rise
but reconsidered. "Go on," he commanded.

"There was so much of this mixing between whites and blacks of the
various classes that very early the colonies took steps to put a halt
to it. They managed to prevent intermarriage but they couldn't stop
intermixture. You know the old records don't lie. They're right there
for everybody to see....

"A certain percentage of these Negroes," continued Buggerie, quite at
ease now and seemingly enjoying his dissertation, "in time lightened
sufficiently to be able to pass for white. They then merged with the
general population. Assuming that there were one thousand such cases
fifteen generations ago--and we have proof that there were more--their
descendants now number close to fifty million souls. Now I maintain
that we dare not risk publishing this information. Too many of our very
first families are touched right here in Richmond!"

"Buggerie!" gasped the F. F. V., "Are you mad?"

"Quite sane, sir," squeaked the ponderous man, somewhat proudly, "and I
know what I know." He winked a watery eye.

"Well, go on. Is there any more?"

"Plenty," proceeded the statistician, amiably. "Take your own family,
for instance. (Now don't get mad, Snobbcraft). Take your own family. It
is true that your people descended from King Alfred, but he has scores,
perhaps hundreds of thousands of descendants. Some are, of course,
honored and respected citizens, cultured aristocrats who are a credit
to the country; but most of them, my dear, dear Snobbcraft, are in what
you call the lower orders: that is to say, laboring people, convicts,
prostitutes, and that sort. One of your maternal ancestors in the late
seventeenth century was the offspring of an English serving maid and a
black slave. This woman in turn had a daughter by the plantation owner.
This daughter was married to a former indentured slave. Their children
were all white and you are one of their direct descendants!" Buggerie
beamed.

"Stop!" shouted Snobbcraft, the veins standing out on his narrow
forehead and his voice trembling with rage. "You can't sit there and
insult my family that way, suh."

"Now that outburst just goes to prove my earlier assertion," the large
man continued, blandly. "If you get so excited about the truth, what do
you think will be the reaction of other people? There's no use getting
angry at me. I'm not responsible for your ancestry! Nor, for that
matter, are you. You're no worse off than I am, Snobbcraft. My great,
great grandfather had his ears cropped for non-payment of debts and
was later jailed for thievery. His illegitimate daughter married a free
Negro who fought in the Revolutionary War." Buggerie wagged his head
almost gleefully.

"How can you admit it?" asked the scandalized Snobbcraft.

"Why not?" demanded Buggerie. "I have plenty of company. There's
Givens, who is quite a fanatic on the race question and white
supremacy, and yet he's only four generations removed from a mulatto
ancestor."

"Givens too?"

"Yes, and also the proud Senator Kretin. He boasts, you know, of being
descended from Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, but so are thousands
of Negroes. Incidentally, there hasn't been an Indian unmixed with
Negro on the Atlantic coastal plain for over a century and a half."

"What about Matthew Fisher?"

"We can find no record whatever of Fisher, which is true of about
twenty million others, and so," he lowered his voice dramatically, "I
have reason to suspect that he is one of those Negroes who have been
whitened."

"And to think that I entertained him in my home!" Snobbcraft muttered
to himself. And then aloud: "Well, what are we to do about it?"

"We must destroy the whole shooting match," the big man announced as
emphatically as possible for one with a soprano voice, "and we'd
better do it at once. The sooner we get through with it the better."

"But I can't leave my guests," protested Snobbcraft. Then turning
angrily upon his friend, he growled, "Why in the devil didn't you find
all of this out before?"

"Well," said Buggerie, meekly, "I found out as soon as I could. We had
to arrange and correlate the data, you know."

"How do you imagine we're going to get rid of that mountain of paper at
this hour?" asked Snobbcraft, as they started down stairs.

"We'll get the guards to help us," said Buggerie, hopefully. "And we'll
have the cards burned in the furnace."

"All right, then," snapped the F. F. V., "let's go and get it over
with."

In five minutes they were speeding down the broad avenue to the
headquarters of the Anglo-Saxon Association of America. They parked the
car in front of the gate and walked up the cinder road to the front
door. It was a balmy, moonlight night, almost as bright as day. They
looked around but saw no one.

"I don't see any of the guards around," Snobbcraft remarked, craning
his neck. "I wonder where they are?"

"Probably they're inside," Buggerie suggested, "although I remember
telling them to patrol the outside of the building."

"Well, we'll go in, anyhow," remarked Snobbcraft. "Maybe they're down
stairs."

He unlocked the door, swung it open and they entered. The hall was
pitch dark. Both men felt along the wall for the button for the light.
Suddenly there was a thud and Snobbcraft cursed.

"What's the matter?" wailed the frightened Buggerie, frantically
feeling for a match.

"Turn on that God damned light!" roared Snobbcraft. "I just stumbled
over a man.... Hurry up, will you?"

Dr. Buggerie finally found a match, struck it, located the wall button
and pressed it. The hall was flooded with light. There arranged in a
row on the floor and neatly trussed up and gagged were the six special
guards.

"What the hell does this mean?" yelled Snobbcraft at the mute men prone
before them. Buggerie quickly removed the gags.

They had been suddenly set upon, the head watchman explained, about an
hour before, just after Dr. Buggerie left, by a crowd of gunmen who
had blackjacked them into unconsciousness and carried them into the
building. The watchman displayed the lumps on their heads as evidence
and looked quite aggrieved. Not one of them could remember what
transpired after the sleep-producing buffet.

"The vault!" shrilled Buggerie. "Let's have a look at the vault."

Down the stairs they rushed, Buggerie wheezing in the lead, Snobbcraft
following and the six tousled watchmen bringing up the rear. The lights
in the basement were still burning brightly. The doors of the vault
were open, sagging on their hinges. There was a litter of trash in
front of the vault. They all clustered around the opening and peered
inside. The vault was absolutely empty.

"My God!" exclaimed Snobbcraft and Buggerie in unison, turning two
shades paler.

For a second or two they just gazed at each other. Then suddenly
Buggerie smiled.

"That stuff won't do them any good," he remarked triumphantly.

"Why not?" demanded Snobbcraft, in his tone a mixture of eagerness,
hope and doubt.

"Well, it will take them as long to get anything out of that mass
of cards as it took our staff, and by that time you and Givens
will be elected and no one will dare publish anything like that,"
the statistician explained. "I have in my possession the only
summary--those papers I showed you at your house. As long as I've got
that document and they haven't, we're all right!" he grinned in obese
joy.

"That sounds good," sighed Snobbcraft, contentedly. "By the way, where
is that summary?"

Buggerie jumped as if stuck by a pin and looked first into his empty
hands, then into his coat pockets and finally his trousers pockets.
He turned and dashed out to the car, followed by the grim-looking
Snobbcraft and the six uniformed watchmen with their tousled hair and
sore bumps. They searched the car in vain, Snobbcraft loudly cursing
Buggerie's stupidity.

"I--I must have left it in your study," wept Buggerie, meekly and
hopefully. "In fact I think I remember leaving it right there on the
table."

The enraged Snobbcraft ordered him into the car and they drove off
leaving the six uniformed watchmen gaping at the entrance to the
grounds, the moonbeams playing through their tousled hair.

The two men hit the ground almost as soon as the car crunched to
a stop, dashed up the steps, into the house, through the crowd of
bewildered guests, up the winding colonial stairs, down the hallway and
into the study.

Buggerie switched on the light and looked wildly, hopefully around.
Simultaneously the two men made a grab for a sheaf of white paper lying
on the sofa. The statistician reached it first and gazed hungrily,
gratefully at it. Then his eyes started from his head and his hand
trembled.

"Look!" he shrieked dolefully, thrusting the sheaf of paper under
Snobbcraft's eyes.

All of the sheets were blank except the one on top. On that was
scribbled:

    Thanks very much for leaving that report where I could get hold of
    it. Am leaving this paper so you'll have something on which to
    write another summary.

                                              Happy dreams, Little One.
                                                               G. O. P.

"Great God!" gasped Snobbcraft, sinking into a chair.




                            CHAPTER TWELVE


The afternoon before election Matthew and Bunny sat in the latter's
hotel suite sipping cocktails, smoking and awaiting the inevitable.
They had been waiting ever since the day before. Matthew, tall and
tense; Bunny, rotund and apprehensive, trying ever so often to cheer
up his chief with poor attempts at jocosity. Every time they heard
a bell ring both jumped for the telephone, thinking it might be an
announcement from Helen's bedside that an heir, and a dark one, had
been born. When they could no longer stay around the office, they had
come down to the hotel. In just a few moments they were planning to go
back to the office again.

The hard campaign and the worry over the outcome of Helen's confinement
had left traces on Matthew's face. The satanic lines were accentuated,
the eyes seemed sunken farther back in the head, his well-manicured
hand trembled a little as he reached for his glass again and again.

He wondered how it would all come out. He hated to leave. He had
had such a good time since he'd been white: plenty of money, almost
unlimited power, a beautiful wife, good liquor and the pick of damsels
within reach. Must he leave all that? Must he cut and run just at the
time when he was about to score his greatest victory? Just think: from
an underpaid insurance agent to a millionaire commanding millions of
people--and then oblivion. He shuddered slightly and reached again for
his glass.

"I got everything fixed," Bunny remarked, shifting around in the
overstuffed chair. "The plane's all ready with tanks full and I've got
Ruggles right there in the hangar. The money's in that little steel
box: all in thousand dollar bills."

"You're going with me, aren't you, Bunny?" asked Matthew in almost
pleading tones.

"I'm not stayin' here!" his secretary replied.

"Gee, Bunny, you're a brick!" said Matthew leaning over and placing his
hand on his plump little friend's knee. "You sure have been a good pal."

"Aw, cut th' comedy," exclaimed Bunny, reddening and turning his head
swiftly away.

Suddenly the telephone rang, loud, clear, staccato. Both men sprang for
it, eagerly, open-eyed, apprehensive. Matthew was first.

"Hello!" he shouted. "What's that! Yes, I'll be right up."

"Well, it's happened," he announced resignedly, hanging up the
receiver. And then, brightening a bit, he boasted, "It's a boy!"

In the midst of her pain Helen was jubilant. What a present to give her
Matthew on the eve of his greatest triumph! How good the Lord was to
her; to doubly bless her in this way. The nurse wiped the tears of joy
away from the young mother's eyes.

"You must stay quiet, Ma'am," she warned.

Outside in the hall, squirming uneasily on the window seat, was
Matthew, his fists clenched, his teeth biting into his thin lower lip.
At another window stood Bunny looking vacantly out into the street,
feeling useless and out of place in such a situation, and yet convinced
that it was his duty to stay here by his best friend during this great
crisis.

Matthew felt like a young soldier about to leave his trench to face a
baptism of machine gun fire or a gambler risking his last dollar on a
roll of the dice. It seemed to him that he would go mad if something
didn't happen quickly. He rose and paced the hall, hands in pockets,
his tall shadow following him on the opposite wall. Why didn't the
doctor come out and tell him something? What was the cause of the
delay? What would Helen say? What would the baby look like? Maybe it
might be miraculously light! Stranger things had happened in this
world. But no, nothing like that could happen. Well, he'd had his lucky
break; now the vacation was over.

A nurse, immaculate in white uniform, came out of Helen's bedroom,
passed them hurriedly, smiling, and entered the bathroom. She returned
with a basin of warm water in her hands, smiled again reassuringly
and reëntered the natal chamber. Bunny and Matthew, in unison, sighed
heavily.

"Boy!" exclaimed Bunny, wiping the perspiration from his brow. "If
somethin' don't happen pretty soon, here, I'm gonna do a Brodie out o'
that window."

"The both of us," said Matthew. "I never knew it took these doctors so
damn long to get through."

Helen's door opened and the physician came out looking quite grave and
concerned. Matthew pounced upon him. The man held his finger to his
lips and motioned to the room across the hall. Matthew entered.

"Well," said Matthew, guiltily, "what's the news?"

"I'm very sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Fisher, that something
terrible has happened. Your son is very, very dark. Either you or Mrs.
Fisher must possess some Negro blood. It might be called reversion to
type if any such thing had ever been proved. Now I want to know what
you want done. If you say so I can get rid of this child and it will
save everybody concerned a lot of trouble and disgrace. Nobody except
the nurse knows anything about this and she'll keep her mouth shut for
a consideration. Of course, it's all in the day's work for me, you
know. I've had plenty of cases like this in Atlanta, even before the
disappearance of the Negroes. Come now, what shall I do?" he wailed.

"Yes," thought Matthew to himself, "what should he do?" The doctor
had suggested an excellent way out of the dilemma. They could just
say that the child had died. But what of the future? Must he go on
forever in this way? Helen was young and fecund. Surely one couldn't
go on murdering one's children, especially when one loved and wanted
children. Wouldn't it be better to settle the matter once and for all?
Or should he let the doctor murder the boy and then hope for a better
situation the next time? An angel of frankness beckoned him to be done
with this life of pretense; to take his wife and son and flee far away
from everything, but a devil of ambition whispered seductively about
wealth, power and prestige.

In almost as many seconds the pageant of the past three years passed in
review on the screen of his tortured memory: the New Year's Eve at the
Honky Tonk Club, the first glimpse of the marvelously beautiful Helen,
the ordeal of getting white, the first, sweet days of freedom from the
petty insults and cheap discriminations to which as a black man he had
always been subjected, then the search for Helen around Atlanta, the
organization of the Knights of Nordica, the stream of successes, the
coming of Bunny, the campaign planned and executed by him: and now, the
end. Must it be the end?

"Well?" came the insistent voice of the physician.

Matthew opened his mouth to reply when the butler burst into the room
waving a newspaper.

"Excuse me, sir," he blurted, excitedly, "but Mister Brown said to
bring this right to you."

The lurid headlines seemed to leap from the paper and strike Matthew
between the eyes:

                     DEMOCRATIC LEADERS PROVED OF
                             NEGRO DESCENT

            Givens, Snobbcraft, Buggerie, Kretin and Others
                  of Negro Ancestry, According to Old
                      Records Unearthed by Them.

Matthew and the physician, standing side by side, read the long account
in awed silence. Bunny entered the door.

"Can I speak to you a minute, Matt?" he asked casually. Almost
reluctant to move, Matthew followed him into the hall.

"Keep your shirt on, Big Boy," Bunny advised, almost jovially. "They
ain't got nothin' on you yet. That changing your name threw them off.
You're not even mentioned."

Matthew braced up, threw back his shoulders and drew a long, deep
breath. It seemed as if a mountain had been taken off his shoulders.
He actually grinned as his confidence returned. He reached for Bunny's
hand and they shook, silently jubilant.

"Well, doctor," said Matthew, arching his left eyebrow in his familiar
Mephistophelian manner, "it sort of looks as if there is something to
that reversion to type business. I used to think it was all boloney
myself. Well, it's as I always say: you never can tell."

"Yes, it seems as if this is a very authentic case," agreed the
physician, glancing sharply at the bland and blond countenance of
Matthew. "Well, what now?"

"I'll have to see Givens," said Matthew as they turned to leave the
room.

"Here he comes now," Bunny announced.

Sure enough, the little gray-faced, bald-headed man, came leaping up
the stairs like a goat, his face haggard, his eyes bulging in mingled
rage and terror, his necktie askew. He was waving a newspaper in his
hand and opened his mouth without speaking as he shot past them and
dashed into Helen's room. The old fellow was evidently out of his head.

They followed him into the room in time to see him with his face buried
in the covers of Helen's bed and she, horrified, glancing at the
six-inch-tall headline. Matthew rushed to her side as she slumped back
on the pillow in a dead faint. The physician and nurse dashed to revive
her. The old man on his knees sobbed hoarsely. Mrs. Givens looking
fifteen years older appeared in the doorway. Bunny glanced at Matthew
who slightly lowered his left eyelid and with difficulty suppressed a
smile.

"We've got to get out o' this!" shouted the Imperial Grand Wizard.
"We've got to get out o' this. Oh, it's terrible.... I never knew it
myself, for sure.... Oh, Matthew, get us out of this, I tell you. They
almost mobbed me at the office.... Came in just as I went out the back
way.... Almost ten thousand of them.... We can't lose a minute. Quick,
I tell you! They'll murder us all."

"I'll look out for everything," Matthew soothed condescendingly. "I'll
stick by you." Then turning swiftly to his partner he commanded, "Bunny
order both cars out at once. We'll beat it for the airport.... Doctor
Brocker, will you go with us to look out for Helen and the baby? We've
got to get out right now. I'll pay you your price."

"Sure I'll go, Mr. Fisher," said the physician, quietly. "I wouldn't
leave Mrs. Fisher now."

The nurse had succeeded in bringing Helen to consciousness. She was
weeping bitterly, denouncing fate and her father. With that logicality
that frequently causes people to accept as truth circumstantial
evidence that is not necessarily conclusive, she was assuming that
the suspiciously brown color of her new-born son was due to some
hidden Negro drop of blood in her veins. She looked up at her husband
beseechingly.

"Oh, Matthew, darling," she cried, her long red-gold hair framing
her face, "I'm so sorry about all this. If I'd only known, I'd never
have let you in for it. I would have spared you this disgrace and
humiliation. Oh, Matthew, Honey, please forgive me. I love you, my
husband. Please don't leave me, please don't leave me!" She reached out
and grasped the tail of his coat as if he were going to leave that very
minute.

"Now, now, little girl," said Matthew soothingly, touched by her words,
"You haven't disgraced me; you've honored me by presenting me with a
beautiful son."

He looked down worshipfully at the chubby, ball of brownness in the
nurse's arms.

"You needn't worry about me, Helen. I'll stick by you as long as you'll
have me and without you life wouldn't be worth a dime. You're not
responsible for the color of our baby, my dear. I'm the guilty one."

Dr. Brocker smiled knowingly, Givens rose up indignantly, Bunny opened
his mouth in surprise, Mrs. Givens folded her arms and her mouth
changed to a slit and the nurse said "Oh!"

"You?" cried Helen in astonishment.

"Yes, me," Matthew repeated, a great load lifting from his soul. Then
for a few minutes he poured out his secret to the astonished little
audience.

Helen felt a wave of relief go over her. There was no feeling of
revulsion at the thought that her husband was a Negro. There once
would have been but that was seemingly centuries ago when she had been
unaware of her remoter Negro ancestry. She felt proud of her Matthew.
She loved him more than ever. They had money and a beautiful, brown
baby. What more did they need? To hell with the world! To hell with
society! Compared to what she possessed, thought Helen, all talk
of race and color was damned foolishness. She would probably have
been surprised to learn that countless Americans at that moment were
thinking the same thing.

"Well," said Bunny, grinning, "it sure is good to be able to admit that
you're a jigwalk once more."

"Yes, Bunny," said old man Givens, "I guess we're all niggers now."

"Negroes, Mr. Givens, Negroes," corrected Dr. Brocker, entering
the room. "I'm in the same boat with the rest of you, only my dark
ancestors are not so far back. I sure hope the Republicans win."

"Don't worry, Doc," said Bunny. "They'll win all right. And how! Gee
whiz! I bet Sherlock Holmes, Nick Carter and all the Pinkertons
couldn't find old Senator Kretin and Arthur Snobbcraft now."

"Come on," shouted the apprehensive Givens, "let's get out o' here
before that mob comes."

"Whut mob, Daddy?" asked Mrs. Givens.

"You'll find out damn quick if you don't shake it up," replied her
husband.

       *       *       *       *       *

Through the crisp, autumn night air sped Fisher's big tri-motored
plane, headed southwest to the safety of Mexico. Reclining in a large,
comfortable deck chair was Helen Fisher, calm and at peace with the
world. In a hammock near her was her little brown son, Matthew, Junior.
Beside her, holding her hand, was Matthew. Up front near the pilot,
Bunny and Givens were playing Conquian. Behind them sat the nurse and
Dr. Brocker, silently gazing out of the window at the twinkling lights
of the Gulf Coast. Old lady Givens snored in the rear of the ship.

"Damn!" muttered Givens, as Bunny threw down his last spread and won
the third consecutive game. "I sure wish I'd had time to grab some
jack before we pulled out o' Atlanta. Ain't got but five dollars and
fifty-three cents to my name."

"Don't worry about that, Old Timer," Bunny laughed. "I don't think we
left over a thousand bucks in the treasury. See that steel box over
there? Well, that ain't got nothin' in it but bucks and more bucks.
Not a bill smaller than a grand."

"Well, I'm a son-of-a-gun," blurted the Imperial Grand Wizard. "That
boy thinks o' everything."

But Givens was greatly depressed, much more so than the others. He had
really believed all that he had preached about white supremacy, race
purity and the menace of the alien, the Catholic, the Modernist and the
Jew. He had always been sincere in his prejudices.

When they arrived at the Valbuena Air Field outside Mexico City, a
messenger brought Bunny a telegram.

"You better thank your stars you got away from there, Matt," he
grinned, handing his friend the telegram. "See what my gal says?"

Matthew glanced over the message and handed it to Givens without
comment. It read:

    _Hope you arrive safely Senator Kretin lynched in Union Station
    Stop Snobbcraft and Buggerie reported in flight Stop Goosie and
    Gump almost unanimously reëlected Stop Government has declared
    martial law until disturbances stop Stop When can I come?_

                                                     MADELINE SCRANTON.

"Who's this Scranton broad?" queried Matthew in a whisper, cutting a
precautionary glance at his wife.

"A sweet Georgia brown," exclaimed Bunny enthusiastically.

"No!" gasped Matthew, incredulous.

"She ain't no Caucasian!" Bunny replied.

"She must be the last black gal in the country," Matthew remarked,
glancing enviously at his friend. "How come she didn't get white, too?"

"Well," Bunny replied, a slight hint of pride in his voice. "She's a
race patriot. She's funny that way."

"Well, for cryin' out loud!" exclaimed Matthew, scratching his head and
sort of half grinning in a bewildered way. "_What_ kind o' _sheba_ is
that?"

Old man Givens came over to where they were standing, the telegram in
his hand and an expression of serenity now on his face.

"Boys," he announced, "it looks like it's healthier down here right now
than it is back there in Georgia."

"_Looks_ like it's healthier?" mocked Bunny. "Brother, you know damn
_well_ it's healthier!"




                           CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Toward eleven o'clock on the evening before election day, a long, low
roadster swept up to the door of a stately country home near Richmond,
Va., crunched to a stop, the lights were extinguished and two men, one
tall and angular, the other huge and stout, catapulted from the car.
Without wasting words, they raced around the house and down a small
driveway to a rambling shed in a level field about three hundred yards
to the rear. Breathless, they halted before the door and beat upon it
excitedly.

"Open up there, Frazier!" ordered Snobbcraft, for it was he. "Open that
door." There was no answer. The only reply was the chirping of crickets
and the rustle of branches.

"He must not be here," said Dr. Buggerie, glancing fearfully over his
shoulder and wiping a perspiring brow with a damp handkerchief.

"The damned rascal had better be here," thundered the Democratic
candidate for Vice-President, beating again on the door. "I telephoned
him two hours ago to be ready."

As he spoke someone unlocked the door and rolled it aside an inch or
two.

"Is that you, Mr. Snobbcraft?" asked a sleepy voice from the darkness
within.

"Open that damned door, you fool," barked Snobbcraft. "Didn't I tell
you to have that plane ready when we got here? Why don't you do
as you're told?" He and Dr. Buggerie helped slide the great doors
back. The man Frazier snapped on the lights, revealing within a big,
three-motored plane with an automobile nestling under each of its wings.

"I-I kinda fell asleep waitin' for you, Mr. Snobbcraft," Frazier
apologized, "but everything's ready."

"All right, man," shouted the president of the Anglo-Saxon Association,
"let's get away from here then. This is a matter of life and death. You
ought to have had the plane outside and all warmed up to go."

"Yes sir," the man mumbled meekly, busying himself.

"These damned, stupid, poor white trash!" growled Snobbcraft, glaring
balefully at the departing aviator.

"D-D-Don't antagonize him," muttered Buggerie. "He's our only chance to
get away."

"Shut up, fool! If it hadn't been for you and your damned fool
statistics we wouldn't be in this fix."

"You wanted them, didn't you?" whined the statistician in defense.

"Well, I didn't tell you to leave that damned summary where anybody
could get hold of it." Snobbcraft replied, reproachfully. "That was the
most stupid thing I ever heard of."

Buggerie opened his mouth to reply but said nothing. He just glared at
Snobbcraft who glared back at him. The two men presented a disheveled
appearance. The Vice-Presidential candidate was haggard, hatless,
collarless and still wore his smoking jacket. The eminent statistician
and author of _The Incidence of Psittacosis among the Hiphopa Indians
of the Amazon Valley and Its Relation to Life Insurance Rates in the
United States_, looked far from dignified with no necktie, canvas
breeches, no socks and wearing a shooting jacket he had snatched from
a closet on his way out of the house. He had forgotten his thick
spectacles and his bulging eyes were red and watery. They paced
impatiently back and forth, glancing first at the swiftly working
Frazier and then down the long driveway toward the glowing city.

Ten minutes they waited while Frazier went over the plane to see that
all was well. Then they helped him roll the huge metal bird out of the
hangar and on to the field. Gratefully they climbed inside and fell
exhausted on the soft-cushioned seats.

"Well, that sure is a relief," gasped the ponderous Buggerie, mopping
his brow.

"Wait until we get in the air," growled Snobbcraft. "Anything's liable
to happen after that mob tonight. I was never so humiliated in my life.
The idea of that gang of poor white trash crowding up my steps and
yelling nigger. It was disgraceful."

"Yes, it was terrible," agreed Buggerie. "It's a good thing they didn't
go in the rear where your car was. We wouldn't have been able to get
away."

"I thought there would be a demonstration," said Snobbcraft, some
of his old sureness returning, "that's why I 'phoned Frazier to get
ready.... Oh, it's a damned shame to be run out of your own home in
this way!"

He glared balefully at the statistician who averted his gaze.

"All ready, sir," announced Frazier, "where are we headed?"

"To my ranch in Chihuahua, and hurry up," snapped Snobbcraft.

"But--But we ain't got enough gas to go that far," said Frazier.
"I-I-You didn't say you wanted to go to Mexico, Boss."

Snobbcraft stared incredulously at the man. His rage was so great
that he could not speak for a moment or two. Then he launched into a
stream of curses that would have delighted a pirate captain, while the
unfortunate aviator gaped indecisively.

In the midst of this diatribe, the sound of automobile horns and
klaxons rent the air, punctuated by shouts and pistol shots. The three
men in the plane saw coming down the road from the city a bobbing
stream of headlights. Already the cavalcade was almost to the gate of
the Snobbcraft country estate.

"Come on, get out of here," gasped Snobbcraft. "We'll get some gas
farther down the line. Hurry up!"

Dr. Buggerie, speechless and purple with fear, pushed the aviator out
of the plane. The fellow gave the propeller a whirl, jumped back into
the cabin, took the controls and the great machine rolled out across
the field.

They had started none too soon. The automobile cavalcade was already
coming up the driveway. The drone of the motor drowned out the sound of
the approaching mob but the two fearful men saw several flashes that
betokened pistol shots. Several of the automobiles took out across the
field in the wake of the plane. They seemed to gain on it. Snobbcraft
and Buggerie gazed nervously ahead. They were almost at the end of
the field and the plane had not yet taken to the air. The pursuing
automobiles drew closer. There were several more flashes from firearms.
A bullet tore through the side of the cabin. Simultaneously Snobbcraft
and Buggerie fell to the floor.

At last the ship rose, cleared the trees at the end of the field and
began to attain altitude. The two men took deep breaths of relief, rose
and flung themselves on the richly upholstered seats.

A terrible stench suddenly became noticeable to the two passengers
and the aviator. The latter looked inquiringly over his shoulder;
Snobbcraft and Buggerie, their noses wrinkled and their foreheads
corrugated, glanced suspiciously at each other. Both moved uneasily
in their seats and looks of guilt succeeded those of accusation.
Snobbcraft retreated precipitously to the rear cabin while the
statistician flung open several windows and then followed the
Vice-Presidential candidate.

Fifteen minutes later two bundles were tossed out of the window of the
rear cabin and the two passengers, looking sheepish but much relieved,
resumed their seats. Snobbcraft was wearing a suit of brown dungarees
belonging to Frazier while his scientific friend had wedged himself
into a pair of white trousers usually worn by Snobbcraft's valet.
Frazier turned, saw them, and grinned.

Hour after hour the plane winged its way through the night. Going a
hundred miles an hour it passed town after town. About dawn, as they
were passing over Meridian, Mississippi, the motor began to miss.

"What's the matter there?" Snobbcraft inquired nervously into the
pilot's ear.

"The gas is runnin' low," Frazier replied grimly. "We'll have to land
pretty soon."

"No, no, not in Mississippi!" gasped Buggerie, growing purple with
apprehension. "They'll lynch us if they find out who we are."

"Well, we can't stay up here much longer," the pilot warned.

Snobbcraft bit his lip and thought furiously. It was true they would
be taking a chance by landing anywhere in the South, let alone in
Mississippi, but what could they do? The motor was missing more
frequently and Frazier had cut down their speed to save gasoline. They
were just idling along. The pilot looked back at Snobbcraft inquiringly.

"By God, we're in a fix now," said the president of the Anglo-Saxon
Association. Then he brightened with a sudden idea. "We could hide in
the rear cabin while Frazier gets gasoline," he suggested.

"Suppose somebody looks in the rear cabin?" queried Buggerie,
dolefully, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his white trousers.
"There's bound to be a lot of curious people about when a big plane
like this lands in a farming district."

As he spoke his left hand encountered something hard in the pocket. It
felt like a box of salve. He withdrew it curiously. It was a box of
shoe polish which the valet doubtless used on Snobbcraft's footgear.
He looked at it aimlessly and was about to thrust it back into the
pocket when he had a brilliant idea.

"Look here, Snobbcraft," he cried excitedly, his rheumy eyes popping
out of his head farther than usual. "This is just the thing."

"What do you mean?" asked his friend, eyeing the little tin box.

"Well," explained the scientist, "you know real niggers are scarce
now and nobody would think of bothering a couple of them, even in
Mississippi. They'd probably be a curiosity."

"What are you getting at, man?"

"This: we can put this blacking on our head, face, neck and hands,
and no one will take us for Snobbcraft and Buggerie. Frazier can tell
anybody that inquires that we're two darkies he's taking out of the
country, or something like that. Then, after we get our gas and start
off again, we can wash the stuff off with gasoline. It's our only
chance, Arthur. If we go down like we are, they'll kill us sure."

Snobbcraft pursed his lips and pondered the proposition for a moment.
It was indeed, he saw, their only chance to effectively escape
detection.

"All right," he agreed, "let's hurry up. This ship Won't stay up much
longer."

Industriously they daubed each other's head, neck, face, chest, hands
and arms with the shoe polish. In five minutes they closely resembled
a brace of mammy singers. Snobbcraft hurriedly instructed Frazier.

The plane slowly circled to the ground. The region was slightly rolling
and there was no good landing place. There could be no delay, however,
so Frazier did his best. The big ship bumped over logs and through
weeds, heading straight for a clump of trees. Quickly the pilot steered
it to the left only to send it head first into a ditch. The plane
turned completely over, one wing was entirely smashed and Frazier,
caught in the wreckage under the engine, cried feebly for help for a
few moments and then lay still.

Shaken up and bruised, the two passengers, managed to crawl out of
the cabin window to safety. Dolefully they stood in the Mississippi
sunlight, surveying the wreckage and looking questioningly at each
other.

"Well," whined Dr. Buggerie, rubbing one large sore buttock, "what now?"

"Shut up," growled Snobbcraft. "If it hadn't been for you, we wouldn't
be here."

       *       *       *       *       *

Happy Hill, Mississippi, was all aflutter. For some days it had been
preparing for the great, open-air revival of the True Faith Christ
Lovers' Church. The faithful for miles around were expected to attend
the services scheduled for the afternoon of Election Day and which all
hoped would last well into the night.

This section of the state had been untouched by the troubles through
which the rest of the South had gone as a result of the activities of
Black-No-More, Incorporated. The people for miles around were with
very few exceptions old residents and thence known to be genuine
blue-blooded Caucasians for as far back as any resident could remember
which was at least fifty years. The people were proud of this fact.
They were more proud, however, of the fact that Happy Hill was the
home and birthplace of the True Faith Christ Lovers' Church, which
made the prodigious boast of being the most truly Fundamentalist of
all the Christian sects in the United States. Other things of which
the community might have boasted were its inordinately high illiteracy
rate and its lynching record--but these things were seldom mentioned,
although no one was ashamed of them. Certain things are taken for
granted everywhere.

Long before the United States had rid themselves of their Negroes
through the good but unsolicited offices of Dr. Junius Crookman, Happy
Hill had not only rid itself of what few Negroes had resided in its
vicinity but of all itinerant blackamoors who lucklessly came through
the place. Ever since the Civil War when the proud and courageous
forefathers of the Caucasian inhabitants had vigorously resisted all
efforts to draft them into the Confederate Army, there had been a sign
nailed over the general store and post office reading, "NIGER REDE &
RUN. IF U CAN'T REDE, RUN ENEYHOWE." The literate denizens of Happy
Hill would sometimes stand off and spell out the words with the pride
that usually accompanies erudition.

The method by which Happy Hill discouraged blackamoors who sought the
hospitality of the place, was simple: the offending Ethiopian was
either hung or shot and then broiled. Across from the general store
and post office was a large iron post about five feet high. On it all
blacks were burned. Down one side of it was a long line of nicks made
with hammer and chisel. Each nick stood for a Negro dispatched. This
post was one of the landmarks of the community and was pointed out
to visitors with pardonable civic pride by local boosters. Sage old
fellows frequently remarked between expectorations of tobacco juice
that the only Negro problem in Happy Hill was the difficulty of getting
hold of a sufficient number of the Sons or Daughters of Ham to lighten
the dullness of the place.

Quite naturally the news that all Negroes had disappeared, not only
from their state but from the entire country, had been received with
sincere regret by the inhabitants of Happy Hill. They envisioned the
passing of an old, established custom. Now there was nothing left to
stimulate them but the old time religion and the clandestine sex orgies
that invariably and immediately followed the great revival meetings.

So the simple country folk had turned to religion with renewed ardor.
There were several churches in the county, Methodist, Baptist,
Campbellite and, of course, Holy Roller. The latter, indeed, had the
largest membership. But the people, eager for something new, found all
of the old churches too tame. They wanted a faith with more punch to
it; a faith that would fittingly accompany the fierce corn liquor which
all consumed, albeit they were all confirmed Prohibitionists.

Whenever and wherever there is a social need, some agency arises to
supply it. The needs of Happy Hill were no exception. One day, several
weeks previously, there had come to the community one Rev. Alex McPhule
who claimed to be the founder of a new faith, a true faith, that would
save all from the machinations of the Evil One. The other churches,
he averred, had failed. The other churches had grown soft and were
flirting with atheism and Modernism which, according to Rev. McPhule,
were the same thing. An angel of God had visited him one summer evening
in Meridian, he told them, when he was down sick in bed as the result
of his sinning ways, and had told him to reform and go forth into the
world and preach the true faith of Christ's love. He had promised to
do so, of course, and then the angel had placed the palm of his right
hand on Rev. McPhule's forehead and all of the sickness and misery had
departed.

The residents of Happy Hill and vicinity listened with rapt attention
and respect. The man was sincere, eloquent and obviously a Nordic.
He was tall, thin, slightly knock-kneed, with a shock of unkempt red
hair, wild blue eyes, hollow cheeks, lantern jaw and long ape-like
arms that looked very impressive when he waved them up and down during
a harangue. His story sounded logical to the country people and they
flocked in droves to his first revival held in a picturesque natural
amphitheater about a mile from town.

No one had any difficulty in understanding the new faith. No music
was allowed besides singing and thumping the bottom of a wooden tub.
There were no chairs. Everybody sat on the ground in a circle with Rev.
McPhule in the center. The holy man would begin an extemporaneous song
and would soon have the faithful singing it after him and swinging from
side to side in unison. Then he would break off abruptly and launch
into an old fashion hellfire-and-damnation sermon in which demons,
brimstone, adultery, rum, and other evils prominently figured. At the
height of his remarks, he would roll his eyes heavenward, froth at
the mouth, run around on all fours and embrace in turn each member
of the congregation, especially the buxom ladies. This would be the
signal for others to follow his example. The sisters and brothers
osculated, embraced and rolled, shouting meanwhile: "Christ is Love!...
Love Christ!... Oh, be happy in the arms of Jesus!... Oh, Jesus, my
Sweetheart!... Heavenly Father!" Frequently these revivals took place
on the darkest nights with the place of worship dimly illuminated by
pine torches. As these torches always seemed to conveniently burn out
about the time the embracing and rolling started, the new faith rapidly
became popular.

In a very short time nothing in Happy Hill was too good for Rev. Alex
McPhule. Every latch-string hung out for him. As usual with gentlemen
of the cloth, he was especially popular with the ladies. When the men
were at work in the fields, the Man of God would visit house after
house and comfort the womenfolk with his Christian message. Being a
bachelor, he made these professional calls with great frequency.

The Rev. Alex McPhule also held private audiences with the sick,
sinful and neurotic in his little cabin. There he had erected an altar
covered with the white marble top from an old bureau. Around this altar
were painted some grotesque figures, evidently the handiwork of the
evangelist, while on the wall in back of the altar hung a large square
of white oilcloth upon which was painted a huge eye. The sinner seeking
surcease was commanded to gaze upon the eye while making confessions
and requests. On the altar reposed a crudely-bound manuscript about
three inches thick. This was the "Bible" of the Christ Lovers which the
Rev. McPhule declared he had written at the command of Jesus Christ
Himself. The majority of his visitors were middle-aged wives and
adenoidal and neurotic young girls. None departed unsatisfied.

With all the good fortune that had come to the Rev. McPhule as a result
of engaging in the Lord's work, he was still dissatisfied. He never
passed a Baptist, Methodist or Holy Roller church without jealousy and
ambition surging up within him. He wanted everybody in the county in
his flock. He wanted to do God's work so effectually that the other
churches would be put out of business. He could only do this, he knew,
with the aid of a message straight from Heaven. That alone would
impress them.

He began to talk in his meetings about a sign coming down from Heaven
to convince all doubters and infidels like Methodists and Baptists. His
flock was soon on the nervous edge of expectancy but the Lord failed,
for some reason, to answer the prayer of his right-hand man.

Rev. McPhule began to wonder what he had done to offend the Almighty.
He prayed long and fervently in the quiet of his bedchamber, except
when he didn't have company, but no sign appeared. Possibly, thought
the evangelist, some big demonstration might attract the attention of
Jesus; something bigger than the revivals he had been staging. Then
one day somebody brought him a copy of _The Warning_ and upon reading
it he got an idea. If the Lord would only send him a nigger for his
congregation to lynch! That would, indeed, be marked evidence of the
power of Rev. Alex McPhule.

He prayed with increased fervency but no African put in an appearance.
Two nights later as he sat before his altar, his "Bible" clutched in
his hands, a bat flew in the window. It rapidly circled the room and
flew out again. Rev. McPhule could feel the wind from its wings. He
stood erect with a wild look in his watery blue eyes and screamed, "A
sign! A sign! Oh, Glory be! The Lord has answered my prayer! Oh, thank
you, God! A sign! A sign!" Then he grew dizzy, his eyes dimmed and he
fell twitching across the altar, unconscious.

Next day he went around Happy Hill telling of his experience of the
night before. An angel of the Lord, he told the gaping villagers, had
flown through the window, alighted on his "Bible" and, kissing him on
his forehead, had declared that the Lord would answer his prayer and
send a sign. As proof of his tale, Rev. McPhule exhibited a red spot
on his forehead which he had received when his head struck the marble
altar top but which he claimed marked the place where the messenger of
the Lord had kissed him.

The simple folk of Happy Hill were, with few exceptions, convinced that
the Rev. McPhule stood in well with the celestial authorities. Nervous
and expectant they talked of nothing but The Sign. They were on edge
for the great revival scheduled for Election Day at which time they
fervently hoped the Lord would make good.

At last the great day had arrived. From far and near came the good
people of the countryside on horseback, in farm wagons and battered
mud-caked flivvers. Many paused to cast their ballots for Givens
and Snobbcraft, not having heard of the developments of the past
twenty-four hours, but the bulk of the folk repaired immediately to the
sacred grove where the preaching would take place.

Rev. Alex McPhule gloated inwardly at the many concentric circles of
upturned faces. They were eager, he saw, to drink in his words of
wisdom and be elevated. He noted with satisfaction that there were
many strange people in the congregation. It showed that his power was
growing. He glanced up apprehensively at the blue heavens. Would The
Sign come? Would the Lord answer his prayers? He muttered another
prayer and then proceeded to business.

He was an impressive figure today. He had draped himself in a long,
white robe with a great red cross on the left breast and he looked not
unlike one of the Prophets of old. He walked back and forth in the
little circle surrounded by close-packed humanity, bending backward and
forward, swinging his arms, shaking his head and rolling his eyes while
he retold for the fiftieth time the story of the angel's visit. The man
was a natural actor and his voice had that sepulchral tone universally
associated with Men of God, court criers and Independence Day orators.
In the first row squatted the Happy Hill True Faith Choir of eight
young women with grizzled old man Yawbrew, the tub-thumper, among them.
They groaned, amened and Yes-Lorded at irregular intervals.

Then, having concluded his story, the evangelist launched into song in
a harsh, nasal voice:

    _I done come to Happy Hill to save you from Sin,
    Salvation's door is open and you'd better come in,
    Oh, Glory Hallelujah! you'd better come in.
    Jesus Christ has called me to save this white race,
    And with His Help I'll save you from awful disgrace.
    Oh, Glory Hallelujah! We must save this race._

Old man Yawbrew beat on his tub while the sisters swayed and
accompanied their pastor. The congregation joined in.

Suddenly Rev. McPhule stopped, glared at the rows of strained, upturned
faces and extending his long arms to the sun, he shouted:

"It'll come I tell yuh. Yes Lord, the sign will come--ugh. I know
that my Lord liveth and the sign will come--ugh. If--ugh--you just
have faith--ugh. Oh, Jesus--ugh. Brothers and Sisters--ugh. Just
have faith--ugh--and the Lord--ugh--will answer your prayers....
Oh, Christ--ugh. Oh, Little Jesus--ugh.... Oh, God--ugh--answer our
prayers.... Save us--ugh. Send us the Sign...."

The congregation shouted after him "Send us the Sign!" Then he again
launched into a hymn composed on the spot:

    "_He will send the Sign,
    Oh, He will send the Sign
    Loving Little Jesus Christ
    He will send the Sign._"

Over and over he sang the verse. The people joined him until the volume
of sound was tremendous. Then with a piercing scream, Rev. McPhule fell
on all fours and running among the people hugged one after the other,
crying "Christ is Love!... He'll send the Sign!... Oh, Jesus! send us
The Sign!" The cries of the others mingled with his and there was a
general kissing, embracing and rolling there in the green-walled grove
under the midday sun.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the sun approached its zenith, Mr. Arthur Snobbcraft and Dr. Samuel
Buggerie, grotesque in their nondescript clothing and their blackened
skins, trudged along the dusty road in what they hoped was the
direction of a town. For three hours, now, they had been on the way,
skirting isolated farmhouses and cabins, hoping to get to a place where
they could catch a train. They had fiddled aimlessly around the wrecked
plane for two or three hours before getting up courage enough to take
to the highroad. Suddenly they both thrilled with pleasure somewhat
dampened by apprehension as they espied from a rise in the road, a
considerable collection of houses.

"There's a town," exclaimed Snobbcraft. "Now let's get this damned
stuff off our faces. There's probably a telegraph office there."

"Oh, don't be crazy," Buggerie pleaded. "If we take off this blacking
we're lost. The whole country has heard the news about us by this time,
even in Mississippi. Let's go right in as we are, pretending we're
niggers, and I'll bet we'll be treated all right. We won't have to stay
long. With our pictures all over the country, it would be suicidal to
turn up here in one of these hotbeds of bigotry and ignorance."

"Well, maybe you're right," Snobbcraft grudgingly admitted. He was
eager to get the shoe polish off his skin. Both men had perspired
freely during their hike and the sweat had mixed with the blacking much
to their discomfort.

As they started toward the little settlement, they heard shouts and
singing on their left.

"What's that?" cried Dr. Buggerie, stopping to listen.

"Sounds like a camp meeting," Snobbcraft replied. "Hope it is. We can
be sure those folks will treat us right. One thing about these people
down here they are real, sincere Christians."

"I don't think it will be wise to go where there's any crowds," warned
the statistician. "You never can tell what a crowd will do."

"Oh, shut up, and come on!" Snobbcraft snapped. "I've listened to you
long enough. If it hadn't been for you we would never have had all of
this trouble. Statistics! Bah!"

They struck off over the fields toward the sound of the singing. Soon
they reached the edge of the ravine and looked down on the assemblage.
At about the same time, some of the people facing in that direction
saw them and started yelling "The Sign! Look! Niggers! Praise God! The
Sign! Lynch 'em!" Others joined in the cry. Rev. McPhule turned loose
a buxom sister and stood wide-eyed and erect. His prayers had come
true! "Lynch 'em!" he roared.

"We'd better get out of here," said Buggerie, quaking.

"Yes," agreed Snobbcraft, as the assemblage started to move toward them.

Over fences, through bushes, across ditches sped the two men, puffing
and wheezing at the unaccustomed exertion, while in hot pursuit came
Rev. McPhule followed by his enthusiastic flock.

Slowly the mob gained on the two Virginia aristocrats. Dr. Buggerie
stumbled and sprawled on the ground. A dozen men and women fell upon
him while he yelled to the speeding Snobbcraft for help. The angular
Snobbcraft kept on but Rev. McPhule and several others soon overtook
him.

The two men were marched protesting to Happy Hill. The enthused
villagers pinched them, pulled them, playfully punched and kicked them
during their triumphant march. No one paid the slightest attention to
their pleas. Too long had Happy Hill waited for a Negro to lynch. Could
the good people hesitate now that the Lord had answered their prayers?

Buggerie wept and Snobbcraft offered large sums of money for their
freedom. The money was taken and distributed but the two men were not
liberated. They insisted that they were not Negroes but they were only
cudgeled for their pains.

At last the gay procession arrived at the long-unused iron post in
front of the general store and post office in Happy Hill. As soon as
Mr. Snobbcraft saw the post he guessed its significance. Something must
be done quickly.

"We're not niggers," he yelled to the mob. "Take off our clothes and
look at us. See for yourself. My God! don't lynch white men. We're
white the same as you are."

"Yes, gentlemen," bleated Dr. Buggerie, "we're really white men.
We just came from a masquerade ball over at Meridian and our plane
wrecked. You can't do a thing like this. We're white men, I tell you."

The crowd paused. Even Rev. McPhule seemed convinced. Eager hands tore
off the men's garments and revealed their pale white skins underneath.
Immediately apology took the place of hatred. The two men were taken
over to the general store and permitted to wash off the shoe polish
while the crowd, a little disappointed, stood around wondering what to
do. They felt cheated. Somebody must be to blame for depriving them of
their fun. They began to eye Rev. McPhule. He glanced around nervously.

Suddenly, in the midst of this growing tenseness, an ancient Ford drove
up to the outskirts of the crowd and a young man jumped out waving a
newspaper.

"Looky here!" he yelled. "They've found out th' damned Demmycratic
candidates is niggers. See here: Givens and Snobbcraft. Them's their
pictures. They pulled out in airplanes last night or th' mobs wouldda
lynched 'em." Men, women and children crowded around the newcomer while
he read the account of the flight of the Democratic standard bearers.
They gazed at each other bewildered and hurled imprecations upon the
heads of the vanished candidates.

Washed and refreshed, Mr. Arthur Snobbcraft and Dr. Samuel Buggerie,
each puffing a five-cent cigar (the most expensive sold in the store)
appeared again on the porch of the general store. They felt greatly
relieved after their narrow escape.

"I told you they wouldn't know who we were," said Snobbcraft
disdainfully but softly.

"Who are you folks, anyway?" asked Rev. McPhule, suddenly at their
elbow. He was holding the newspaper in his hand. The crowd was watching
breathlessly.

"Why-why-y I'm-a-er-a that is ..." spluttered Snobbcraft.

"Ain't that your pichure?" thundered the evangelist, pointing to the
likeness on the front page of the newspaper.

"Why no," Snobbcraft lied, "but--but it looks like me, doesn't it?"

"You're mighty right it does!" said Rev. McPhule, sternly, "and it _is_
you, too!"

"No, no, no, that's not me," cried the president of the Anglo-Saxon
Association.

"Yes it is," roared McPhule, as the crowd closed in on the two hapless
men. "It's you and you're a nigger, accordin' to this here paper, an' a
newspaper wouldn't lie." Turning to his followers he commanded, "Take
'em. They're niggers just as I thought. The Lord's will be done. Idea
of niggers runnin' on th' Demmycratic ticket!"

The crowd came closer. Buggerie protested that he was really white but
it was of no avail. The crowd had sufficient excuse for doing what they
had wanted to do at first. They shook their fists in the two men's
faces, kicked them, tore off their nondescript garments, searched their
pockets and found cards and papers proving their identity, and but for
the calmness and presence of mind of the Rev. McPhule, the True Faith
Christ Lovers would have torn the unfortunate men limb from limb. The
evangelist restrained the more hot-headed individuals and insisted that
the ceremonies proceed according to time-honored custom.

So the impetuous yielded to wiser counsel. The two men, vociferously
protesting, were stripped naked, held down by husky and willing farm
hands and their ears and genitals cut off with jack knives amid the
fiendish cries of men and women. When this crude surgery was completed,
some wag sewed their ears to their backs and they were released and
told to run. Eagerly, in spite of their pain, both men tried to
avail themselves of the opportunity. Anything was better than this.
Staggering forward through an opening made in the crowd, they attempted
to run down the dusty road, blood streaming down their bodies. They had
only gone a few feet when, at a signal from the militant evangelist,
a half-dozen revolvers cracked and the two Virginians pitched forward
into the dust amid the uproarious laughter of the congregation.

The preliminaries ended, the two victims, not yet dead, were picked up,
dragged to the stake and bound to it, back to back. Little boys and
girls gaily gathered excelsior, scrap paper, twigs and small branches
while their proud parents fetched logs, boxes, kerosene and the staves
from a cider barrel. The fuel was piled up around the groaning men
until only their heads were visible.

When all was in readiness, the people fell back and the Rev. McPhule,
as master of ceremonies, ignited the pyre. As the flames shot upward,
the dazed men, roused by the flames, strained vainly at the chains that
held them. Buggerie found his voice and let out yelp after yelp as the
flames licked at his fat flesh. The crowd whooped with glee and Rev.
McPhule beamed with satisfaction. The flames rose higher and completely
hid the victims from view. The fire crackled merrily and the intense
heat drove the spectators back. The odor of cooking meat permeated
the clear, country air and many a nostril was guiltily distended. The
flames subsided to reveal a red-hot stake supporting two charred hulks.

There were in the assemblage two or three whitened Negroes, who,
remembering what their race had suffered in the past, would fain
have gone to the assistance of the two men but fear for their own
lives restrained them. Even so they were looked at rather sharply by
some of the Christ Lovers because they did not appear to be enjoying
the spectacle as thoroughly as the rest. Noticing these questioning
glances, the whitened Negroes began to yell and prod the burning
bodies with sticks and cast stones at them. This exhibition restored
them to favor and banished any suspicion that they might not be
one-hundred-per-cent Americans.

When the roasting was over and the embers had cooled, the more
adventurous members of Rev. McPhule's flock rushed to the stake and
groped in the two bodies for skeletal souvenirs such as forefingers,
toes and teeth. Proudly their pastor looked on. This was the crowning
of a life's ambition. Tomorrow his name would be in every newspaper
in the United States. God had indeed answered his prayers. He breathed
again his thanks as he thrust his hand into his pocket and felt the
soothing touch of the hundred-dollar bill he had extracted from
Snobbcraft's pocket. He was supremely happy.


                          AND SO ON AND SO ON

In the last days of the Goosie administration, the Surgeon-General of
the United States, Dr. Junius Crookman, published a monograph on the
differences in skin pigmentation of the real whites and those he had
made white by the Black-No-More process. In it he declared, to the
consternation of many Americans, that in practically every instance
the new Caucasians were from two to three shades lighter than the old
Caucasians, and that approximately one-sixth of the population were in
the first group. The old Caucasians had never been really white but
rather were a pale pink shading down to a sand color and a red. Even
when an old Caucasian contracted vitiligo, he pointed out, the skin
became much lighter.

To a society that had been taught to venerate whiteness for over three
hundred years, this announcement was rather staggering. What was the
world coming to, if the blacks were whiter than the whites? Many
people in the upper class began to look askance at their very pale
complexions. If it were true that extreme whiteness was evidence of
the possession of Negro blood, of having once been a member of a pariah
class, then surely it were well not to be so white!

Dr. Crookman's amazing brochure started the entire country to examining
shades of skin color again. Sunday magazine supplements carried long
articles on the subject from the pens of hack writers who knew nothing
whatever of pigmentation. Pale people who did not have blue eyes began
to be whispered about. The comic weeklies devoted special numbers to
the question that was on everyone's lips. Senator Bosh of Mississippi,
about to run again for office, referred several times to it in the
Congressional Record, his remarks interspersed with "Applauses." A
popular song, "Whiter Than White" was being whistled by the entire
nation. Among the working classes, in the next few months, there grew
up a certain prejudice against all fellow workers who were exceedingly
pale.

The new Caucasians began to grow self-conscious and resent the
curious gazes bestowed upon their lily-white countenances in all
public places. They wrote indignant letters to the newspapers about
the insults and discriminations to which they were increasingly
becoming subjected. They protested vehemently against the effort
on the part of employers to pay them less and on the part of the
management of public institutions to segregate them. A delegation
that waited upon President Goosie firmly denounced the social
trend and called upon the government to do something about it. The
Down-With-White-Prejudice-League was founded by one Karl von Beerde,
whom some accused of being the same Doctor Beard who had, as a
Negro, once headed the National Social Equality League. Offices were
established in the Times Square district of New York and the mails
were soon laden with releases attempting to prove that those of
exceedingly pale skin were just as good as anybody else and should
not, therefore, be oppressed. A Dr. Cutten Prodd wrote a book proving
that all enduring gifts to society came from those races whose skin
color was not exceedingly pale, pointing out that the Norwegians and
other Nordic peoples had been in savagery when Egypt and Crete were
at the height of their development. Prof. Handen Moutthe, the eminent
anthropologist (who was well known for his popular work on _The Sex
Life of Left-Handed Morons among the Ainus_) announced that as a result
of his long research among the palest citizens, he was convinced they
were mentally inferior and that their children should be segregated
from the others in school. Professor Moutthe's findings were considered
authoritative because he had spent three entire weeks of hard work
assembling his data. Four state legislatures immediately began to
consider bills calling for separate schools for pale children.

Those of the upper class began to look around for ways to get darker.
It became the fashion for them to spend hours at the seashore basking
naked in the sunshine and then to dash back, heavily bronzed, to their
homes, and, preening themselves in their dusky skins, lord it over
their paler, and thus less fortunate, associates. Beauty shops began
to sell face powders named _Poudre Nègre_, _Poudre le Egyptienne_ and
_L'Afrique_.

Mrs. Sari Blandine (formerly Mme. Sisseretta Blandish of Harlem),
who had been working on a steam table in a Broadway Automat, saw her
opportunity and began to study skin stains. She stayed away from work
one week to read up on the subject at the Public Library and came back
to find a recent arrival from Czecho-Slovakia holding down her job.

Mrs. Blandine, however, was not downhearted. She had the information
and in three or four weeks time she had a skin stain that would impart
a long-wearing light-brown tinge to the pigment. It worked successfully
on her young daughter; so successfully, in fact, that the damsel
received a proposal of marriage from a young millionaire within a month
after applying it.

Free applications were given to all of the young women of the
neighborhood. Mrs. Blandine's stain became most popular and her fame
grew in her locality. She opened a shop in her front room and soon had
it crowded from morning till night. The concoction was patented as
Blandine's Egyptienne Stain.

By the time President-Elect Hornbill was inaugurated, her Egyptienne
Stain Shoppes dotted the country and she had won three suits for
infringement of patent. Everybody that was anybody had a stained skin.
A girl without one was avoided by the young men; a young man without
one was at a decided disadvantage, economically and socially. A white
face became startlingly rare. America was definitely, enthusiastically
mulatto-minded.

Imitations of Mrs. Blandine's invention sprang up like weeds in a
cemetery. In two years there were fifteen companies manufacturing
different kinds of stains and artificial tans. At last, even the Zulu
Tan became the vogue among the smart set and it was a common thing to
see a sweet young miss stop before a show window and dab her face with
charcoal. Enterprising resort keepers in Florida and California, intent
on attracting the _haute monde_, hired naturally black bathing girls
from Africa until the white women protested against the practice on the
ground that it was a menace to family life.

One Sunday morning Surgeon-General Crookman, in looking over the
rotogravure section of his favorite newspaper, saw a photograph of a
happy crowd of Americans arrayed in the latest abbreviated bathing
suits on the sands at Cannes. In the group he recognized Hank Johnson,
Chuck Foster, Bunny Brown and his real Negro wife, former Imperial
Grand Wizard and Mrs. Givens and Matthew and Helen Fisher. All of them,
he noticed, were quite as dusky as little Matthew Crookman Fisher who
played in a sandpile at their feet.

Dr. Crookman smiled wearily and passed the section to his wife.


                                THE END