“That his canon law condemns public schools and forbids children to attend them.
“That popery enthroned in great cities controls politics.
“That our war industries were placed exclusively in Roman Catholic hands.
“That no sectarian body or fraternal order but Knights of Columbus was permitted to do war-relief work in the army and navy.
“That Roman Catholics compose one-sixth of our population and hold three-fourths of the public offices, being entrenched in national, state, and city governments throughout the country.
“That they are pouring into our land as immigrants at the rate of two millions a year.
“That Knights of Columbus declare they will make popery dominant in the United States.
“Let us arouse the people and save our country as the beacon light of constitutional liberty and the hope of the world.”
Among the methods used by propagandists of the Ku Klux Klan in enlisting recruits by means of attacks on the Catholic Church is a certain bogus oath purporting to be the obligation assumed by members of the Fourth Degree of the Knights of Columbus. This oath first made its appearance in this country in 1912, and was widely circulated by anti-Catholics. In 1913, in a contested election case involving a seat in Congress from Pennsylvania, Eugene C. Bonniwell, himself a Catholic, filed charges with a Congressional Committee that this alleged oath had been circulated by his opponent Thomas S. Butler, who denied that he had been responsible for such circulation and had urged his followers that they refrain from circulating the oath. Purely as a matter of a legal exhibit, a copy of this “oath” was ordered printed in the Congressional Record, February 15, 1913. The document as given in the Congressional Record reads as follows:
“KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS OATH. FOURTH DEGREE