"The restored KKK's membership wasn't limited to the lower middle class, the traditional breeding ground of xenophobic political movements. The mass initiation ceremony was held on a farm near Lake Zurich owned by Charles Weeghman, whose string of cheap Loop restaurants had made him a millionaire.
Weeghman built the North Side ballpark subsequently known as Wrigley Field and owned the Cubs from 1916-1918.
"Perhaps he was one of the business leaders attracted to the KKK by its hostility to the union movement, which the Klan equated with the Bolsheviks who recently seized power in Russia, a powerful argument during a wave of bitter strikes in America."
I looked up the location of Weeghman's farm and saw that it wasa 250-acre farm at the intersection of today's US-12 and Old Rand Road between Lake Zurich and Barrington. Old Rand Road was the name of US-12 before the byopass was built and still exists.
--Cooter
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