St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 91

i fx M. T. tt. i Published Evert Dai- Week-da-ip and JjUndoJu ST.LOUIS POST-DISPATCH PART SEVEN ST. LOUIS, SUNDAYMARCH 30, 1952 PAGES 1 14H Opinion Surveyor Says We Are Ali a Bunch Of Charming Liars By Saul Pett Ignore It One Way To Beat Old Age By Cynthia Lowry j'! cL NEW YORK, March 29 (AP).

WE, the people, are such charming liars. It's a matter of scientific fact, says Alfred Politz, a research expert and public opinion surveyor. We like to deceive ourselves. In our self-portraits, you could run the By 1 CP AND DRAGON THOMAS GRAND DRAGON THOMAS HAMILTON, FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA GROCER, WHOSE EMISSARIES MOVED INTO COLUMBUS COUNTY. N.C Queen Mary through the broad corridor separating illusion and reality.

"Ask most people about their schooling, Politz reports, "and you'll find twice as many college graduates as there are actually college graduates. It's not always downright lying. Often it's wishful thinking, or exaggeration based on a couple of months at a university." By the same process, people claim to read more books than are published, listen to more classical records than are manufactured, drink much less liquor than is sold. This last fact is explained by the kind of guy who drinks himself silly three nights a week but tells an interviewer, "Drink? Oh, I like an occa- i I Aiitiii mmmmmmmmmlUkftitl ai'ii How Two Country Editors Risked Necks and Papers to Lead Fight Against Lawless Group That Had Grown Bold in Last Two Years NEW YORK, March 29 (AP). EDNA WALLACE HOPPER, the toast of Broadway at the turn of the century, is still fighting a winning battle against woman's worst enemy: Age.

An amazing trim, vivacious little woman, she has a fabulous career behind her and is still going strong. An old theatrical record states flatly that Miss Hopper was born on Jan. 17, 1874, which would make her 78 years old. But an equally good source makes her 88. Whatever her age, Miss Hopper Isn't discussing it.

"People have been guessing my age since 1918," she said in a strong, young voice. "I just let them go ahead. All records of my birth were destroyed in the Saa Francisco fire." Tiny and bird-like, Miss Hopper has the figure, unveined hands and legs and agility of a young woman. She lives quietly and handsomely in a mid-town Manhattan apartment. Six days a week she goes to the office of a Wall street broker and puts in a full day taking care of her investments.

"MY SECRET?" she asked. "It's leading a normal, full life. I keep busy. I take exercise. I've never smoked.

I never drink. I eat sensible things lots of proteins and no fats. I go to bed early during the week not later than 9:30, and I get up at 6:30. Weekends I entertain or am entertained. I go to the theater a lot." Behind her almost unlined face, there is a fantastic determination.

Brought up in gentle circumstances in San Francisco, she decided as a child she would go on the stage. A family friend Introduced her to Charles Frohman, the New York producer. He hired her for "The Girl I Left Behind Me," which he and David Belasco planned to produce in 1893 to open the Empire, then being built. To gain some experience, she played a couple of roles in other plays. Frohman's play and ingenue Edna Wallace were hits when it opened.

"That was a tremendous year," she recalled. "I met De Wolfe Hopper and married him a few at ALFRED FOLITZ OFTEN irS WISHFUL THINKING. lonal cocktaiL" jf i-j SHERIFF HUGH NANCE OF WHITEVILLE, N.C. i ACTED VIGOROUSLY ON INFORMATION SUPPLIED HIM BY NEWSPAPER MEN. 1 It seems we can't even tell the truth about which newspaper we read.

The number of people in New York who think they read the New York Times regularly wonld surprise the New York Times. "It would triple Times circulation," Politz says. "That many people like to pretend they are more Intellectual than they are." THIS SELF-PRETENSE carries over even to gasoline. Many people like to claim they indulge their cars with high test gasoline regularly. Here, Politz says, the exaggeration runs from 20 to 30 per cent over the amount of high test actually sold.

"On questions of income," he says, "the lowest income groups tend to lie upward and the highest tend to lie downward." Politz, a native of Germany, is a thin, earnest man of 50, given to quick, nervous movements. His diction and the soft intensity of his voice would remind you of Peter He, personally, isn't frightening but some of his views are. AFTER 10 YEARS of studying markets and consumer tastes, he's convinced most of us are slavish creatures of imitation and habit. By a mysterious process of irrationality known only to human beings, a man will frequently taste something, announce he dislikes it thoroughly, and then quickly make a habit of it. "The greatest portion of our tastes," Politz says, "is learned, not innate; acquired, not instinctive.

And the learned taste frequently sticks longer than the natural tastes. "By nature, most of us don't like the" taste of cigarettes, beer, olives, whisky or coffee the first time we try them. We learn to like them. We're so anxious to copy the next fellow we end up adopting something completely useless. "So many of our popular tastes were accidental to begin with.

Suppose the first fellow in history to smoke cigarettes had taken up, say, licking stones instead of smoking. Today, there might be millions of people licking stones every day." Politz doesn't smoke. Doesn't lick stones, either. Spencer R. McCulloch A Staff Correspondent of ln Poit-Dispateh WHITEVILLE.

N.C., March 29. THE tables have been turned on the Ku Klux Klan in this rural area, close to the South Carolina line. Two months ago terror stalked by night. A rap on the door of a lonely farmhouse presaged a brutal flogging. Men and women were delivered to robed mobs of self-appointed arbiters of "public morals." Private grudges and personal prejudices were settled by the lash.

No man knew whether his jovial companion by day was his masked foe at night. Today the knock on the door is apt to be that of an officer come to ferret out a member of a band grown in boldness during nearly two years. Yesterday no one knew where the Klan would strike. Now no Klansman knows when the law will strike or if he has been betrayed. The hunters have become the hunted.

Two country editors who risked their necks and their papers led the way in an uphill campaign to rout the Klan. They were aided by local law enforcement authorities who put duty above politics. First the Klan was given a taste of psychological cold warfare, at a time when victims feared to talk. Now the warfare is hot. The Klan is on the run.

Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Bureau of Investigation are working as a team. Infiltration of organizers from South Carolina, who planned to use the Klan's program of terrorism as a prelude to seizure of political power in this section of North Carolina, has been checked. The nation first learned of the drive against the Klan last Feb. 16 when headlines heralded the roundup by FBI agents of 10 alleged ringleaders of the nearby Fair Bluff Klavern, charging them with abducting a man and woman, taking them into Horry county, S.C., and flogging them. But to Willard G.

Cole, editor of the semi-weekly News-Reporter here, and W. Horace Carter, editor of the weekly Tabor City Tribune, close to the Horry county line, the raid and subsequent arrests by state and county authorities climaxed months of painstaking investigation and hard-hitting editorials denouncing mob rule. Both, although operating independently, saw the danger in time and acted. They told the writer that it boiled down to a question of "survive or perish," insisting that they should not be credited with courage but should be regarded merely as men possessing a conviction that it was necessary to fight the Klan in order to insure a decent community. Carter, a 31-year-old veteran of World War II, had watched the Klan become a political power in Horry couhty that reached into the grand jury room.

He was alerted when he discovered that emissaries of Grand Dragon Thomas L. Hamilton, a former South Carolina grocer, were moving into Columbus county, N.C. Hamilton is the leader of one of the few remaining splinter groups of the Klan operated by rival promoters, all that is left of an organization which exercised national power in the twenties. As early as July, 1950, Carter began printing anti-Klan editorials. Six months later Cole began his campaign.

They used different tactics in an effective combination. Both fed authorities with information which Jed to the uncovering of unreported el-it Is i 4 MM f' 11 tl av AM II I ILLUSTRATION USED BY "THE NEWS REPORTER" OF WHITEVILLE, N.C, TO EMPHASIZE THE POINT THAT THE DAY OF THE KLAN WAS DONE. Aj i wmmmm Kid JmmmrJ Hollywood Chaffer 'By Harold Heffernan HOLLYWOOD, March 29. COLOR connoisseurs are calling attention to Greer Garson's strange addiction to white. Her dressing room, her own person everything around her must be white.

On her ranch in New Mexico she has white cattle, white 1 1 4 1 cnicK.ens luuia neiis aim p-s- ping off every fool of this thing. So watch your step hereafter. "Sined "A frind." "P.S. No publisitie." Plenty of publicity was afforded the Klan when the Federal agents struck at dawn on Feb. 16.

It was Cole's hour of triumph. He issued an extra, completely sold out in a few hours, bearing a banner. "10 Floggers Nabbed" and containing a depiction of a Klan sticker which bore the legend "yesterday, today and forever." Appropriately, the editor crossed out "today and consigning the Klan to yesterday. Ten days after the FBI raid Sheriff Nance and state officers arrested 12 men for kidnapping and terrorizing a Negro woman. Six more were nabbed for flogging a white mechanic a few nights later.

The for crimes committed months ago but revealed only recently, continue. SO PANIC stricken have the Klansmen become, as raiders seize whips and robes, that after the first raid it was a neighborhood-saying that "all you could smell for days was the odor of burning cloth." In nearby Robeson county a schoolboy's tip and a forgotten statute of Reconstruction days, enacted by a Negro legislature in 1868, smashed the Klan before it couid embark, on a program of violence. The statute forbids membership in a secret political organization. Members may escape penalty if they recant. Caught, all but four of 20-odd, Klansmen, told all and asked for mercy.

Solicitor Malcolm B. Seawell, who resurrected the statute as a preventive measure, disclosed to the Post-Dispatch that a Lumber- ton High School current events student wrote Grand Dragon Hamilton for information about the Klan. Hamilton sent an organizer to the surprised boy's home. The youth's mother said, "My son is too young for the Klan," and received the reply, "No one is too yoUng for the Ku Klux Klan." Persistent, the organizer tried to make a political deal with Sea-well and a police official. He was told to get out of town and warned he would be arrested if he returned.

Another organizer appeared. He made the mistake of trying to enlist a state highway patrolman. Arrested, he gave police the roster of Klansmen in the county. Seawell rounded them up. The courthouse was turned into a "Klan meeting." under official auspices.

Sternly addressing the startled Klansmen, Seawell said: "The Sheriff and the State Bureau of Investigation and I decided to hold a meeting of the embryo Robeson County Klavern here in the courthouse. "You understand physical force but there is another force we wish to impress upon you. We wanted you to know that the same law which has protected you all of your lives is not your individual or your collective possession. "It belongs to the rich and to the poor, to the Negro, to the white, to the Indian, to the native born, to the foreign born, to the Protestant, to the Catholic and to the Jew. It is going to stay that way.

"You were arrested because you were members of the Ku Klux Klan. The law under which you were arrested gives you the opportunity to renounce your society and get out of it. You have the opportunity to renounce your membership right now. This -is your only opportunity. "Your society is neither invisible nor invincible.

You may discover that the easy way or the hard way. Take your choice." The Ku Klux Klan, limited now to sporadic demonstration or isolated incidents of violence, is doomed in North Carolina. And the law is poised to strike in South Carolina. also pay. They, too, must suffer.

They, too, are suffering. "When these hoodlums go to bed at night they are no more free than their victims. They, too, live in terror. A hundred questions surge through their minds: much do members of the sheriff's department know? What does the State Bureau of Investigation know? What does the FBI know? If they come tonight and point the finger at me, what shall I answer? How much dare I tell? 'Have I been recognized? Has somebody in the gang spilled the beans and put the finger on me? What will my children think? What will my neighbors think? What will my church think? 'Will I lose my job? Is there honor among mobsters? Will they keep my name out of it if they are caught? Have they talked already? What happened that Bill Blanks or John Doe didn't complain about being beaten? Did he talk or did he keep quiet? Are officers probing the incidents in which I participated? "'Are agents of the FBI, SBI or Sheriff's office tonight while I'm trying to sleep, ready to pounce when the time is ripe? Am I already known as one of the mobsters and are they just waiting until others in the mob are pinned down with "These and scores of other questions of like nature don't make for restful sleep. It is a horrible penalty these people must pay for being members of the gang and participating in these atrocities.

Whether all are apprehended and brought to a court of justice or not, members of these lawless bands will continue to slumber restlessly. They will not know when the blow will strike. 4And waiting is often as cruel as the punishment. "Those who have belonged to the organization are undergoing harrowing experiences even though they have not participated in the crimes of violence. They stand to lose heavily if their names are exposed.

It is no wonder that they are scared. "But for them there is a way out. Don't they know that the only way to clear their skirts and keep their names out of the public eye is to make contact with the authorities and show co-operation? Don't they know that the agencies investigating the situation will protect them if they supply information which will be beneficial? "Wise members of the group are taking the hint and shaking the dust of this experience from their feet by getting on the side of law and order. "The News Reporter editor offers himself as an intermediary between such persons who wish to place themselves on the right side before it is too late and the agency which will protect their identity. No person need identify himself to this editor.

A telephone call will obtain the required information." EVEN after publication of his challenge, word reached both Cole and Sheriff Nance that they were "high on the Klan whipping list." Cole was given a .32 caliber revolver by the Sheriff and his deputies for Christmas. He also keeps a loaded shotgun in his home here. One of the more direct threats, typical of Klan mentality, was incorporated in a mispelled letter, stating: "Every desent person is in favor of the KKK their pur-pus. If the News Reporter staff will stop acting the fool you wont have anything to worry about. "But when you go and tip off everybody what can be done, then you can expect anjthing under the sun.

So stop your yapping about the KKK. Their only out for the right things in life. We know lots of things can be done and cause the KKK to be blamed, but there area'tany use cf tip WILLARD COLE, EDITOR OF THE WHITEVILLE (N.C.) NEWS REPORTER HAD COURAGE OF HIS CONVICTIONS. roosters), and is understood to be getting rid of a pair of white cats because of a few dark spots that have, turned up. No one in attendance will ever forget the striking picture Greer presented a dozen years ago when she stood up at the Cocoanut Grove in a fetching all-white outfit and gave thanks for 15 minutes for her first academy award.

REMEMBER little Donna I G3r on mi ma GREER GARSON ADDICTED TO WHITE. tenant to remain on his place. Hamilton, vainly trying tocon: vince Carter that the Klan wasn't responsible for increasing cases of lawlessness finally wrote him a long letterr Carter printed it as a page 1 story together with his reply. IN HIS letter, Hamilton referred to the Klansmen in Columbus county as the "cream of the crop" and accused Carter of possessing a warped mind. He challenged him to prove that the Klan had anything to do with floggings in "your section of North Carolina," although adding that "when an individual and his family takes certain steps it does not necessarily involve 'the Klan." In a pointed reply Carter stated: "If there are any KKK members advertising with us who would like to cease doing so, we will be happy to cancel it forthwith.

If there are any subscribers who would like to have their subscription money refunded we will refund in cash the remainder of their paid up subscription time. We ask for, no assistance from the Ku Klux Carter reiterated a belief expressed in his column that fear because of floggings in Columbus county represented an outgrowth of the Klan, regardless of whether its members were direct participants in the beatings. "The coming of your Klan marked the beginning of these floggings," Carter informed Hamilton, "and even if your group isn't doing the job, others are using the organization as a haven. "But believe me, if I prove that the KKK is responsible for just one of them I would be most happy to tell a jury of 12 men all about it." Editor Cole, whose paper is in this Columbus county seat, choose a different psychological approach. At first, he did not mention the Klan by name, depriving Grand Dragon Hamilton of the opportunity to issue a breast-beating denial of Klan participation in floggings.

Instead, Cole inveighed against mob violence and began the delicate task of persuading victims to tell their stories. In offering himself as an intermediary. Cole enticed many Klansmen to reveal their supposedly secret membership. Like Carter, he fed his information to Sheriff H. Hugh Nance, of Columbus county, who, in turn co-operated with other law enforcement agencies in compiling evidence strong enough to stand up in court.

No arrests, the Post-Dispatch has learned, have been made without preliminary revealing confessions from panic-striken Klansmen. Cole's dramatic offer, which re- EDNA WALLACE HOPPER STILL GOING STRONG. months later. He swept, me off my feet. My mother darned near died at the marriage and she was delighted two or three years later when it broke up.

She said it was good to have things like that behind you early in life." Meanwhile, she had done a series of operattas with Hopper. She moved on to the role of Lady Holyrood in the now legendary "Floradora." Then came 1918 and one morning she discovered she was flat broke. She had been speculating in the stock market. Then she found theater managers wouldn't hire her. She went to Hollywood, but had no luck there.

THEN, ONE DAY. she opened a newspaper and saw pictures and a story about "six famous women who had had their faces lifted" her own picture among them. "I was furious," she said, "because I hadn't. But I started to think. I hired a movie cameraman and went to the best plastic surgeon around and actually had my face lifted and the whole operation filmed." She hit the road, with her film and a monologue about plastic surgery.

Eventually Miss Hopper and her one-woman show were playing jammed movie houses. She got a drug house to underwrite a line of cosmetics bearing her name. After that she sailed on working like a beaver on exploitation, personal appearances, radio shows and such into big income brackets. She sold out, at a handsome profit, several years ago. "Then," she said, "I decided to go back to the one thing that had licked me the stock market.

I studied finance, and applied myself hard. It has been interesting and beneficial." Miss Hopper has an extremely feminine reason for her early-to-bed-early-to-rise routine. It has nothing to do with her health rules. "I have to get up early because it takes me some time to get dressed," she explained. "After all, I have to face 25 or 30 men every day at my office, and I wafit to look just right.

Men notice things. If I wear the same hat for two days, I'll hear about it soon enough." Corcoran, lovely nine-year-old who came to prominence in "Angels In The Outfield," a baseball comedy drama of a few months ago? Maybe you remember, but apparently doesn't! At any rate, the studio has buried this most promising youngster since Shiriey Temple in an inconspicuous, vapid role in "Young Man With Ideas." After her sensational debut, it's a shame that such a potential box-office factor could be lost in the shuffle especially in these mighty needy movie times. WAXING ELOQUENT at the recent screen directors awards dinner, Louis B. Mayer, retired boss, gave Director George Sidney, president of the group, an embarrassing left-handed compliment "I've known this wonderful man ever since he was a boy on my knee," purred Mayer. Then, after naming many-fine movies directed by Sidney, Mayer added: "I brought him into the picture business because his father was one of the top-ranking executives of the company." "MEET DANNY WILSON" is an excellent melodrama starring Frank Sinatra and Shelley but it is taking an unexpected, unexplained whipping at the box office in many areas.

-The most plausible theory advanced is that the "general public has soured so completely on Sinatra's romance and marriage to Ava Gardner, after divorcing the mother of his three children, that his film is of no interest to them. His inexcusable rudeness to the press during and after all the shenanigans was a stupid bit of business that is paying off where it hurts in Frankie boy's pocketbook. He has a chunk of his own money riding on "Meet Danny Wilson." It is understood that Universal-International, with another Sinatra picture optioned, has dropped the idea. CARTER, who had covered big Klan demonstrations in Horry county, didn't mince words. He called the Klansmen "unwholesome, ungodly, hooded hoodlums." The Klan retaliated by putting pressure on advertisers and placing Klan stickers on Carter's car and office windows.

Only one advertiser quit. Several new firms" advertised. Sentiment generally throughout North Carolina scorns the Kian. Nor was Carter outwardly disturbed by covert threats. But the Klan grew bolder.

It held a public mass meeting in Columbus county last Aug. 13, featured by a cross burning and a recruiting appeal by Grand Dragon Hamilton. About 100 robed Klansmen put on a program before 5000 spectators. Cars were there from Georgia and South Carolina. The Klan claimed 700 recruits that evening.

Four days after Christmas. 35 automobiles, loaded robed Klansmen. proceeded slowly, bumper to bumper, past Carter's effice and through the streets of Tabor City. This, however, appeared to be a demonstration of desperation. A hopeful omen for those fighting the Klan was indicated two weeks later when a local judge sentenced two farm- ers to imprisonment for two years after testimony they had threatened to beat and "Klux" another farmer if he allowed a Negro HORACE CARTER.

EDITOR OF THE TABOR CITY (N.C) TRIBUNE' RAN RED-HOT ANTI-KLAN EDITORIALS. suited in scores of fruitful tips, may have turned the tide against the Klan. Here it is: "Members of lawless mobs have spread their wave of terror in Columbus County for six months. Men and women and even teenagers have received threats. Some of them have been seized and beaten.

Others have lived through sleepless nights never knowing when there would be a knock on the door and a summons to a frightening experience. this in a land where every home and every individual are supposed to be inviolate, where only the law has a right to administer justice. "But members of the mob must.