They entered into a contract with William Joseph Simmons, agreeing to recruit members for the Klan in exchange for a percentage of the $10 initiation fee. Within six months they had recruited 85,000 new members for the Klan. They accomplished this by expanding the Klan's traditional Reconstruction era hatred of blacks. During this period of the Klan's second resurgence, under the guidance of the Southern Publicity Association, the Klan targeted Catholics, Jews, nonwhites, Bolsheviks and immigrants. Paid organizers, called Kleagles would identify sources of conflict for native-born White Protestants on the community level, and target those groups in their recruitment campaigns.
Tyler has said that the Association was first put in touch with Simmons after her son-in-law joined the Klan. She has said:
We found Colonel Simmons was having a hard time [getting] along. He couldn't pay his rent. The receipts were not sufficient to take care of his personal needs. He was a minister and a clean living and thinking man, and he was heart and soul for the success of the Ku Klux Klan. After we had investigated it from every angle, we decided to go into it with Colonel Simmons and give it the impetus that it could best get from publicity.
Their campaign to promote the Klan emphasized anti-Catholiscm and "one hundred percent Americanism". They promoted the Klan's image of guarding socially conservative values by advertising Klan opposition to bootlegging, gambling, drugs, sexual liberty, Sabbath violation, non-traditional gender roles and "virtually anything and everything that might be deemed morally scandalous."