The World of Hiram Abif

(See Cover)

Dr. Gordon G. Johnson hung up his dentist's drill, got a bite to eat and headed for Medinah Temple, Chicago headquarters of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Doc made a beeline for the third floor where the Temple's Oriental band was gathering.

Lanky Eddie Gall, traffic cop at Dearborn and Madison, rubbed his big bass drum with glass wax. Ed Roubik, warehouse foreman, licked the mouthpiece of his ebony musette pipe and squealed a few notes. Hefty Morton H. Petrie, salesman for a candy company, strapped on his whip drum and knocked off a couple of tiddybums, tiddybums. Shrieking pipes and throbbing drums in the hands of 60 middle-aged musicians swung informally into The Hootchy-Kootchy, Little Egypt's tune at the 1893 World's Fair.

For 40 Friday nights Doc Johnson had been rehearsing his boys. Tonight's session was for last-minute touching up and instructions. "Bleach those leggings out," Doc directed. "Be sure they are white. I'll check up sure as hell and if they aren't right you won't get in the parade."

Diamond Jubilee. All around Chicago last week, the scimitar-crescent-and-star flag of the Shrine flapped from hotel windows. Hotels as far away as Waukegan got braced for 75,000 fez-wearing nobles from the 160 Shrine temples in the U.S., plus wives and children. This week, in sweltering Chicago, they will celebrate the Shriners' Diamond Jubilee.

The first big event on the schedule was the parade down Michigan Avenue: Doc Johnson's boys and some 1,500 other temple bandsmen; the Medinah nobles in $42,500 worth of new uniforms; the country's leading citizens decked out like Zouaves and harem guards; Imperial Potentate Galloway Calhoun of Tyler, Tex., sitting in a car in a bower of 120,000 Texas roses; 1,000 chanters (glee clubs), drill teams, the mounted Pinto Patrol from Oklahoma City, the Black Horse Patrol from the Kansas City, Mo. Ararat Temple (whose most illustrious noble is Harry S. Truman).

New "Pote." After the parade, wealthy Medinah Temple, which values its building, equipment, robes, rugs, fezzes and investments at more than $2,000,000, becomes the center of formal activities. Noble high jinks on Chicago's street corners and in Chicago bars are left to individual enterprise. For the climax, on stage at Medinah Temple, a new Imperial Potentate (sometimes referred to as the "Pote") would be named. This year he was no less a person than Harold Clayton Lloyd, of Burchard, Neb. and Los Angeles, Calif., better known as the comedian hero of such Jazz Age films as The Freshman, Safety Last and Grandma's Boy.

Chanters from Lloyd's Al Malaikah Temple in Los Angeles had practiced Lloyd's favorite songs (Marcheta, The Donkey Serenade). Choice sequences from Lloyd films had been put together to be shown on a screen, finally dissolving into a shot of Mrs. Lloyd and her three children--Gloria, 23, Peggy, 22, and Harold Jr., 17--in the garden of their 16-acre Beverly Hills estate. Then there would be a bouquet of roses for Mrs. Lloyd, and a new Cadillac sedan for the new Pote, purchased with 10-c- contributions from 42,333 California nobles. Said Lloyd in pleased anticipation: "The whole thing is usually done in a very lovely style."

The Shriners' annual conventions are one noisy manifestation of a quiet and widespread U.S. phenomenon. Fraternal societies, which dwindled during the depression and war, have flourished anew. This year they occupy a good deal of the leisure time of almost a quarter of the country's adult population.

Week after week, in thousands of halls, in darkened rooms over Main Street drugstores, men meet, exchange mystic signs and complicated handgrips. New members are sent upon symbolic journeys through wildernesses of sawhorses and overturned chairs. Old members toll bells and simulate the groans of lost souls, solemnly chant and portentously listen as the initiate promises to keep the secrets of the order or have his throat cut and his tongue pulled out by the roots.

Freemasonry is by far the biggest, oldest and most important of the numerous orders, and the model for most of them. It has been suspiciously peered at and often "exposed." Actually, although Masonry's ritual is private, it contains no dreadful secrets. Its symbolism is commonplace (e.g., the trowel cements men in brotherly love; the white lambskin apron is for innocence). Its ceremonies are based on biblical stories. The legend of the slaying of Hiram Abif, one of the builders of Solomon's Temple, is the background of much of the ritual. The world of Hiram Abif--in which hardware dealers, druggists, lawyers like to make-believe in off-hours--is a world of pious vows and moral refreshment.

With the Gang. Masonry is an exclusively male reservation* and one of unassailable respectability. ("You can get off any time you like for a lodge meeting.") Its grand titles satisfy a yearning for rank and prestige. "I am among other things," said a degree-draped Elgin, Ill. photographer, "a Noble of the Shrine, a member of the Council of Royal and Select Masters of the York Rite, a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, a Knight of the East and West, a Knight of the Brazen Serpent and a Knight of the Sword. Sometimes when I go home late at night crocked and my wife raises hell, I tell her that's what I am too."

Many join because their fathers belonged. Some join because membership is good for their business or good for their political careers (this is known scornfully as "button Masonry"). More join because they meet the town's best citizens on eye level. Some, perhaps, join out of mere curiosity over the mysterious rites. The majority join just to be with the gang--and are more or less surprised to experience a quite considerable spiritual uplift after they get in. Said a Rutland, Vt. advertising salesman: "There's something gets under your skin at a lodge meeting which makes you think about God."

In the Focus. The average Mason comes close to being the average U.S. male--a hearty fellow with an inner loneliness which he cannot quite define. He is anxious to share in good works. U.S. Masonry supports some 4,500 of its aged brethren and their wives in 30 homes, also supports homes for some 1,400 orphaned and needy children.

Other charitable projects include research in rheumatic fever and dementia praecox, an extensive hospital-visitation program. U.S. Masonry in 1948 spent more than $9,000,000 on various philanthropies (the figures are incomplete since the order does not advertise its charities).

For what overall purpose does Masonry exist? In the high words of Roscoe Pound, onetime dean of the Harvard Law School and ex-Deputy Grand Master of the Massachusetts Masonic Grand Lodge, its end is "to preserve, to develop and transmit to posterity the civilization we have inherited . . . Wherever in the world there is a lodge of Masons, there should be a focus of civilization, a center of the idea of universality, radiating reason . . ."

God & Geometry. It began radiating officially some 230 years ago--a development from guilds of masons who built England's cathedrals. In 1717, guildsmen got together for a feast in the Goose & Gridiron tavern in London and the modern Masonic fraternity was born.

England was in spiritual chaos after its revolt from the Church of Rome, and men were attracted to a moral code which was based on such undeviating symbols as the level, the compass and the plumb. The Masons conceived of God as "The Great Architect of the Universe." The "G" in Masonic emblems can stand for God and/or Geometry. Euclid and Pythagoras became the order's patron saints.

It was the Age of Reason, and Masonry's doctrine of fraternity, equality and enlightenment had a wide appeal. Frederick the Great became a member. Russian aristocrats took it up. English traders distributed charters for new lodges overseas. George Washington and Paul Revere were ardent brethren. So was Benjamin Franklin, deist and moralizer, who helped initiate Voltaire into the rites.

Seeds & Secrets. Because its members were dynamic, practical men and forces in the community, Masonry became a quiet but dynamic force in history. It carried 18th Century Protestant civilization into the frontiers of North America. It helped sow the seeds of the French Revolution--and thereby contributed to the destruction of the enlightened French noblemen who had taken it up.

As it grew, it encountered opposition. Plump Maria Theresa of Austria, a doting and jealous wife, had her husband's Masonic lodge raided because she was sure that her philandering Francis was up to no good. More effective opposition came from the Catholic Church. Pope Clement XII, in 1738, issued a papal edict denouncing Masonry as a trespass on the church's spiritual and moral domain. Rome's opposition to Masonry has been unceasing. The church, which excommunicated all Communists last week, has been excommunicating Masons for 200 years.

The order's air of secrecy aroused violent political hostility in the U.S. When a ne'er-do-well ex-Mason named William Morgan wrote an "exposure" of its secrets, then disappeared, Masonry found itself fighting for its life. It was charged that Morgan, who had indeed been kidnaped in 1826, had also been slain. His body never turned up.

By 1832, an Anti-Masonic national political party was strong enough to put up William Wirt as a presidential candidate against Mason Andrew Jackson and capture Vermont's electoral votes. A century later, Franklin Roosevelt, a 32nd degree Mason, won the electoral votes of every state in the Union except Vermont and Maine. Altogether, 13 U.S. Presidents have been Masons; some others: Johnson, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, and Harry Truman.

Today there are some 3,500,000 Masons in the U.S., some 1,500,000 in the rest of the world.

Implicit Threat. Hitler tried to stamp it out. Franco has suppressed it. The Soviet Union, seeing it as a creed of the bourgeoisie (which in fact it is), has done its best to destroy every vestige of it. To authoritarianism, Masonry has always been an implicit threat.

It has no formal international organization. Grand lodges, with regional jurisdiction over "constituent" lodges, are laws unto themselves. In the U.S. the regions are the 48 states and the District of Columbia. But Masonry is a theoretical world brotherhood open to any "good" man, Protestant, Jew, Catholic, Mohammedan, Taoist, Buddhist.

(In the U.S., the theory has the same obvious chink as the theory of democracy. With very rare exceptions, Negroes are kept out. There are, however, some 800,000 Negroes practicing the rites, the vast majority of them in what are known as Prince Hall Grand Lodges. At least two Negro lodges, one in New Jersey, and one in Massachusetts, can lay claim to the legitimacy of their charters; the others, white Masons insist, are "clandestine" lodges, neither bona fide nor legitimate.)

Tree of Learning. The root stock of Masonry is the so-called Blue Lodge (see chart), which includes the first three degrees and is as far as the great majority of brethren ever progress. Degrees, for all their impressive titles, are simply grades in Masonry's school. In the Blue Lodge the brethren learn all they need to know to be good Masons, including the legend of Hiram Abif.

A brother who wants to devote the time and effort to it can continue his education through various higher grades. He can go through the Scottish Rite, (Northern or Southern Jurisdiction, depending on the location of his lodge) and up through the degrees. He will be dubbed along the way Grand Master Architect, Prince of the Tabernacle, Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander, etc. At the 32nd degree he is a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret:** Or he can work up through the York Rite with fewer degrees but just as much prestige, to the top grade of Knight Templar. Or he can learn both rites. He does not necessarily emerge a better man than his Blue Lodge brother; he merely becomes a more erudite Mason.

Floating Cloud. The Order of the Mystic Shrine, sometimes called Masonry's "playground,"/- is a kind of detached and whimsical cloud floating somewhere above Masonry's topmost branches. Its members must all be 32nd degree Masons or Knights Templar. It was started about 1870 by William Florence who was fascinated by some Oriental rites he saw in Marseille. Florence was a well-known American comedian of his day. Harold Lloyd, the new Imperial Potentate, therefore follows in a noble tradition.

Outside of the fact that he is a movie comedian and worth more than $10 million, Lloyd is a typical U.S. citizen. He works hard, rides a succession of hobbies (old cars, microscopy) with grim preoccupation, loves sports, and has been happily married to the same wife for 26 years--Mildred Davis, once his leading lady. He keeps himself trim at 56 by exercising, eschewing tobacco and drink.

He is the typical fraternity man who loves good fellowship. He joined the Masons with his father in 1924 because, he says, "It was a crosscut of a wonderful group of citizenry." As enthusiastic about Masonry as he is about everything he has ever taken up, he went up through Scottish Rite with his father beside him, became a 32nd degree Mason, then went up the other route to Knight Templar. In 1926 he "crossed the hot sands," i.e., took the initiation into the Order of the Mystic Shrine.

Hero in Spectacles. Lloyd's career is the story of the triumph of sobriety. In 1917 he conceived the movie character which was to make him a fortune. Before that he had been an average American boy with a passion for the stage and magic tricks, who grew up to be a struggling young comedian in one-reel movie farces. At first he played a ragged, mustached character called Lonesome Luke, which he now admits was a poor imitation of Charlie Chaplin. Then he bought a pair of glassless horn-rimmed spectacles (his eyesight is fine) and studied the effect.

As he described what he saw: "The glasses would serve as my trademark and at the same time suggest the character--quiet, normal, boyish, clean, sympathetic, not impossible to romance." Pathe made four two-reelers of him in spectacles, and they were an instant success.

Sobriety's rise had one interruption. Lloyd posed for a publicity gag shot lighting a cigarette from the lighted fuse of a small bomb. Someone had made a mistake: the bomb was no fake. It exploded, blowing a hole in the ceiling and taking away part of Lloyd's face and the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Only determination pulled him through the accident and the subsequent surgery. But back into the movie business he went. The intent, slightly bewildered, obviously virtuous face of Harold Lloyd began popping out at movie audiences in thousands of Palaces and Bijous. The nation split its sides.

Now, in the large garage behind his comfortable 32-room Italian Renaissance home, he maintains the offices of the Harold Lloyd Corp. There President Lloyd and 15 employees take care of scattered real-estate holdings and handle an occasional movie. The last thing he acted in was Preston Sturges' The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. Howard Hughes, who bought it, is still cutting it up.

Top of the Divan. This week Lloyd, convalescing from a serious gall-bladder operation, stood at another satisfying apex of his life. He had given himself unstintingly to Shrine activities. He had been Al Malaikah Temple's Potentate. For the past seven years he had worked among the Shrine's crippled children's hospitals, had been a director and trustee of that program, which is a substantial and sober part of Shrine activities. It maintains 16 hospitals, annually raises millions of dollars through its circuses, East-West football game, annual dues and local contributions.

Ten years ago Lloyd's temple nominated him for Imperial Outer Guard, which is the first and only contested place in the Shrine's national hierarchy (candidates spend large sums on favors like fountain pens and tie clasps, and set up many a drink). Once in the hierarchy, called the Imperial Divan, the select and exalted nobles move up automatically one position each year until reaching the Imperial Potentateship. Lloyd was defeated for Outer Guard the first year; the next year his rivals withdrew, and he was unanimously elected.

As Imperial Potentate he now faces a strenuous and expensive year. The Imperial Potentate is expected to spend his year in office visiting temples. Lloyd plans to get around to more than 100 of the 160, including a temple in Honolulu to which he will go in September on a chartered ship, accompanied by 600 of his brethren (if the Honolulu dock strike is over). The Shrine puts up $12,000 for his year's expenses, but tips, entertaining and other odds & ends will probably leave him some $50,000 out of pocket by the end of his year. The job of Imperial Potentate is not only for good men, but for men who are well-heeled.

Pleased and proud at having contributed a man so well-qualified on all counts, the nobles of Al Malaikah Temple blew into Chicago last weekend. With them they brought 20,000 Harold Lloydish hornrimmed spectacles for their brethren to wear. Chicago citizens blinked. In hotels and bars, along the streets, everywhere, middle-aged men in red fezzes all began to present the same face. The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine began to assume a familiar native character--"quiet, normal, boyish, clean, sympathetic, not impossible to romance."

*Female relatives may belong to the Order of the Eastern Star, which goes its own way. There is also the Order of DeMolay for boys; for girls, the Rainbow Girls and Job's Daughters.

**The 33rd degree is purely honorary. Harry Truman is the first President to receive the 33rd degree (Warren G. Harding was named, but died before going through the ceremony). Among the 4,200 honorary 33rd degree Masons: Generals Douglas MacArthur, Mark Clark and Jimmy Doolittle, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Supreme Court Justice Harold Burton, Publisher Roy Howard.

/-Inside the Shrine is still another playground, the Royal Order of Jesters. Membership is by invitation only.

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