“Straight Talk from Old Shep” exhorted and called to action in a style reminiscent of a football dressing room between halves. “Men are a lost sex in America,” it would intone, “because men are being lost, lost and mislaid, in the country as a whole. Everything nowadays is designed to sap their confidence and lessen their stature. Who wouldn’t rather be strong than limp, hard than soft? Stand up for yourselves, men of America, stand up high!”

There was a ready audience for this sort of thing, as the constantly rising circulation of the Masculinist News attested. From shower to washstand to wall urinal, the word sped that the problems of manhood were at last being recognized, that virility might become a positive term once more. Lodges of the Masculinist Society were established in every state; most large cities soon boasted fifteen or more chapters.

Rank and file enthusiasm shaped the organization from the beginning. A Cleveland chapter originated the secret grip; Houston gave the movement its set of unprintable passwords. The Montana Lodge’s Declaration of Principles became the preamble to the national Masculinist constitution: “…all men are created equal with women…that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of the opposite sex…from each according to his sperm, to each according to her ova…”

The subgroup known as the Shepherd L. Mibs League first appeared in Albany. Those who took the Albany Pledge swore to marry only women who would announce during the ceremony, “I promise to love, to honor and to obey”—with exactly that emphasis. There were many such Masculinst subgroups: The Cigar and Cuspidor Club, the Ancient Order of Love ’Em and Leave ’Em, The I-Owe-None-Of-It-to-the-Little-Woman Society.

Both leaders shared equally in the revenues from the movement, and both grew rich. Mibs alone made a small fortune out of his book, Man: The First Sex, considered the bible of Masculinism. But Pollyglow, Pollyglow’s wealth was heaped up beyond the wildest dreams of his avarice—and his avarice had been no small-time dreamer.