The Knights of Pythias, the Knights of the Maccabees, the Odd Fellows, the Elks, the Eagles, the Loyal Order of the Moose, the Modern Woodmen, the Masons with their elaborate subdivisions of Shriners and Knights Templar--all count their membership throughout the nation. And the women, jealous of their husbands’ loyalty to various and complex forms of hocus-pocus, have organized auxiliary societies which, while not maintaining the secrecy that veils the fraternal orders, nevertheless build up a pretentious mystery intriguing to the male mind. No town is a self-respecting town unless it can boast half a dozen of these societies. They are the fabric of which the basis of the social structure is built. They are the very essence of America. They dot the national landscape. Every city, as if to prove conclusively its provincial nature, displays one or more temples devoted to the rituals of fraternal organization. Recently the South has revived the order of the Ku Klux Klan which flourished after the Civil War as a means of improving upon the orderly course of the law in dealing with the Negro race. Here is the apotheosis of the secret society, with its magnificent concealment of identity in a unique form of dress, its pretensions to 100 per cent. Americanism, its blatant proclamations of perpetuating the great and glorious traditions of the republic. The Negro has already organized to offset this propaganda. He knew that unless he could show secret orders of imposing strength he had no right even to the questionable heritage of habitation here. He would be outside the spirit of the times. He owed it to America, to “dear, crude America,” to organize lodges and secret societies; and he has done so. Undoubtedly the secret society plays a large part in the greatness of America. It has made the American class-conscious. It has made him recognize his own importance, his own right to the national distinction of good-fellowship. It provides him temporary surcease from domestic and business details, though there are countless numbers of men who join these orders to make business details, so far as they affect them, more significant. The amazing prevalence of conventions in America is an outgrowth of the secret societies. Life to many 100 per cent. Americans is just one lodge convention after another. Held in a different city each year, a distinction that is industriously competed for, the convention has become a fixed fact in American cultural life. Here is the one occasion of the year when the serious diddle-daddle is laid aside, and refuge and freedom are sought in such amusements as the convention city can offer. The secret order convention has inspired the assembly of all kinds and descriptions of conventions--trade conventions, religious conventions, educational conventions--until there is no city in the land boasting a first-class hotel that does not at one time or another during the year house delegates with elaborate insignia and badges.