The great success of the Klan as a national organization revealed, among other things, the insecurity of middle-class white Protestants. It was not economic insecurity, however. The heyday of the second Klan, after all, came during the booming economy of the 1920s. The Klan had “no economic program” and revered “the pursuit of profit.” Nor was the stereotype of Klan members as rural bumpkins accurate. Some 50 percent of members lived in cities, more than 30 percent in large cities. Klan members did blame “elites” for the nation’s ills, but those elites were not the wealthy but the “big-city
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