Robert amplified on his original idea. The captain of the ship of state, the metaphor warped slightly, was the best element—the white, native-born Protestant. Parkins blew on his glasses and said the thought was wonderful, if not sublime. He added that we must steer away from the shoals of foreign immigration.
“Chicago will need all its ‘I will’ spirit to solve the problem that is now confronting it.” Robert wished that Parkins would leave out a verb now and then, and not speak in a succession of quotation marks and exclamation points. “During the war, I am sorry to say, thousands of Negroes came to Chicago to take their place beside the white man in the factory, mill and shop.”
Parkins viewed the coming of the Negroes to Chicago, East St. Louis and the other northern manufacturing cities as a phenomenon akin to, say, the descent of locusts. The fact that northern manufacturers made frantic efforts to bring colored men by sending their agents into the South and offering higher wages than they had ever received before; the fact that this labor had been sorely needed in the essential industries—to convert metal into guns and shells, textiles into uniforms, leather into army shoes, food animals into meat—he seemed to disregard. The Negroes had come, as though they were a tribe of invaders or a visitation from an angry god.
“We will dominate!” he said suddenly, pounding one plump palm with a plump fist. “We native-born, white Protestants, we will guide the ship of state. We will be captains of our national soul. Hamilton, we must say it! Listen to this: (He sang in a thumping, tuneless voice, under his breath so that the others should not hear him, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:)
‘We will to be Americans
In our land of Liberty.
We will to be-a loyal sons
Of the Bra-ave and the Free.’
That’s just the beginning of the song we sing every Tuesday after our noon luncheon. Don’t you think it brings out your idea strongly? After it we sing ‘K-K-K-Katy,’ to take away the psychological effect of singing such a serious song and to leave them in a better mood. There is a great deal of psychology about getting up a song-fest or an inspiration meeting that the layman probably never realizes.”
He endorsed the Tribal idea in toto and became enthusiastic over the phrase about doing away with unnecessary strikes. (Robert glossed over the state’s rights idea as unimportant anyway.)