KU KLUX KLAN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3262, 3 February 1931, Page 6

KU KLUX KLAN

KILLED BY A SONG. America's once famous secret society, the Ku Klux Klan, is dead —killed by a song. Five years ago the membership totalled 9,000,000. In the following year there was a drop of 7,000,000, and to-day there are a mere 34,694 Klansmen, whose meetings have taken on the character of social evenings enlivened with cakes, coffee, or perperhaps something out of a hip-flask. The Klan's crash has been as spectacular as the tarring and featering and lynching raids carried out by the white garbed members who galloped through the countryside at night to wreak vengeance on victims of their wrath.

It was a caustically funny song which began:— "Now father's swiped our last clean sheet And joined the Ku Klux Klan," that started the collapse.

Disagreements in the high councils of the Cabinet followed when certain members favoured opposition to "Al" Smith in his candidature for the United States Presidency, and there were many withdrawals when it was decided to spend large sums of money to prevent him reaching the Presidental chair.

The failure of the campaign was the ■last straw, and the' comparatively few members left are no longer feared.

Yet at one time the organisation was more dreaded than the Russian Ogpu of the present day. Anonymity was granted to the Klansmen by a uniform consisting of white robes and a white candle-ex-tinguisher cowl over the head. The raiders trooped off at the dead of night, to thrash, tar and feather or torture persons against whom information had been laid. • " The Klan was formed in the Soutli in the middle of last century. It is said the organisation was at one time worth £20,000,000.