Американская протекторная ассоциация: Антикатолическое тайное общество (1887–1911)

Anti Catholic secret society, 1887–1911

The American Protective Association (APA) was an American anti Catholic secret society established in 1887 by Protestants. The organization was the largest anti Catholic movement in the United States during the later part of the 19th century, showing particular regional strength in the Midwest. The group grew rapidly during the early 1890s before collapsing just as abruptly in the aftermath of the election of 1896. Unlike the more powerful Know Nothing movement of the 1850s, the APA did not establish its own independent political party, but rather sought to exert influence by boosting its supporters in campaigns and at political conventions, particularly those of the Republican Party. The organization was particularly concerned about Roman Catholic influence in the public school system as well as unfettered Catholic immigration and what was seen as growing Catholic control of the political establishments of major American cities. Although it claimed a six figure membership at its peak in early 1896, the organization's collapse was rapid, with only a hollow shell remaining by 1898. The rump organization was finally terminated in 1911 with the death of its founder.

On the afternoon of Sunday, March 13, 1887, a meeting was called in the Clinton, Iowa, law office of Henry F. Bowers to discuss the recent electoral defeat of incumbent mayor Arnold Walliker, which Bowers and others blamed on the organized efforts of Roman Catholics in the local organized labor movement. Seven men were in attendance, including the defeated former mayor and his brother. The decision was made by the seven men to establish a new political society to combat Catholic political influence, to be called the American Protective Association, and a constitution and Masonic influenced ritual was drawn up for this new organization. Bowers was elected the group's first "Supreme President." Aside from Bowers himself, there were six other founding members. Bowers would later relate that this "First Council" was composed of three Republicans, two Democrats, one Populist, and one Prohibitionist. The religious make up of the First Council was said by Bowers to include members of the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Lutheran religious denominations, as well as "one of no religion." No internal documents indicating the membership size of the early secret society exist, the organization's records having been destroyed in a fire. The organization was unquestionably tiny in this period, however, with membership topping the 11,000 mark only in the first weeks of 1892 — this after having "increased enormously" over the preceding six months.

The years 1892 and 1893 initiated a period of dramatic growth in the size of the APA, and the secret society began capturing headlines in newspapers around the country. By September 1893 the head of the Buffalo, New York, local council of the APA – formerly a Loyal Orange Institution member from Toronto — boasted of more than 800 members in that city alone, and promised that "we are going to run this city just as the APA runs Kansas City, Detroit, Saginaw, and other cities of the West." Other cities in which the APA grew to exert powerful political influence during the middle years of the 1890s included Omaha, Rockford, Toledo, Duluth, and Louisville, with a slightly lesser impact in Rochester, St. Louis and Denver. The Canadian born W. J. H. Traynor, past Supreme Grand Master of the Loyal Orange Institution of the United States and editor of a weekly anti Catholic newspaper from Detroit, The Patriotic American, succeeded Bowers as Supreme President in 1893. During the middle 1890s, the APA expanded from its Midwestern nexus to become a fully national organization, with Supreme President Traynor traveling extensively to help with establishment of new local councils. The organization seems to have legitimately crossed the 100,000 member threshold sometime in the middle of 1894, according to the sanguine estimate of Humphrey J. Desmond, published in 1912. Rather than citing its substantial and growing paid membership figures, however, the organization frequently made use of rhetorical diversion by trumpeting the number of votes it "controlled," with Traynor on a West coast organizing trip in February 1894 claiming to the press that the group had "control" of 2,000 votes in Tacoma, Washington (a town of 36,000 people) as part of 2 million votes "controlled" nationwide. The APA's systematic membership exaggeration was noted expressly by a disgruntled former APA lecturer and founder of a rival organization, Walter Sims, who declared in 1895 that for the APA there was "not a membership in the United States of 120,000, but they call it a million." The actual high watermark of APA membership actually lay "somewhere between the calculating boastfulness of Traynor and the resentful disparagement of Sims," Humphrey J. Desmond, the first serious scholar of the APA movement, would later declare.

Although supreme power was nominally vested in a membership gathering at annual conventions each spring, in practice the APA was a centrally directed organization staffed by a "Supreme President," and other "Supreme" officers which included a Vice President, two Secretaries (one actively working, one ceremonial), a Treasurer, Chaplain, and six others. These officers constituted a Supreme Executive Board that held day to day decision making authority between conventions. After 1897 the attenuated organization maintained headquarters wherever the Supreme Secretary resided. The primary form of organization was called a "local council," organized on a city by city basis, with the various local councils of a state joined into a statewide organization designated a "Superior Council." Dues were set at $1.00 per year, with an initial initiation fee of $1.00.

In Ohio in 1914 a new group also calling itself the American Protective Association contributed anti Catholicism to the defeats of Democratic candidate Timothy S. Hogan and incumbent Democratic Governor James M. Cox. A Missouri based newspaper, "The Menace," depicted Hogan and Cox as puppets of the pope. An affiliated organization was founded in Mexico City on September 8, 1895, called the Constitutional Reform Club. Its purpose was to "combat the growing power and prestige of the Catholic clergy and defend the public schools. The APA was also active in Canada, where it is said to have worked with the Orangemen and "is said to have controlled elections in the chief cities of the Dominion in 1894 and 1895." In England they also apparently worked with the Orange Lodge.

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