The Iola register., 1901-10-18
WittY Will White
From the Chicago Record Herald.

in confidence and loyal support were
linked together time after time in the
words of the speakers at the Mar
quette clubs banquet at the Audi.
torium last evening.
1t was the thirtieth anniversary of
the Chicago fire that was being cele-
brated, the Phoenix day, that not
only commentaries the destruction of
1871, but bears testimony to the re-
creation of the city, ever vigorous,
ever lifting itself to higher points.
Chicago furnished the text but the
thoughts of the speakers and ban
queters we're fixed rather on their
country than on their city. They
brought back to mind ever and ever
again the striking down to death of
the one President, and the lifting up
of his policy with renewed strength by
the President who has succeeded him.
President Bush began by calling
for tributes of loving memory to Nc
Kinley, and of encouragement to
Roosevelt, which were given with hand
and voice by every member of the club
Then OF Roosevelt the Rev. Fred
erick f. Hopkins, the first speaker,
said: Long may he live and prosper
and give us chance to vote for him
next time" which were received with
hurrah upon hurrah.
Loyal and true" said Congress-
man Lands, after his most beautiful
tribute to Mckinley, "the entire Re
publican party stands tonight and
will continue to stand back of Theo-
dore Roosevelt to the end that the
sentiments of William McKinley's
last address are given the vital force
and effect of the law"
Again the cheers.
William Allen White, the witty
Kansas editor and writer, then spoke
of the "Wild and Woolly West"
First he was greeted by the well known
CALI Whats the matter with Kan
sas?"
First he told how "violent death.
which was once the life of the Western
community" had been edged into the
shade by the Woman's club and the
soda fountain. AlkaliIke, Deadwood
Dick,9Billy the Kid, and Sure Shot
Seth have assigned their West
ern territory to appendicitis, and the
uncertainty Of life is epitomized not
by the pistol and the whisky bottle,
but rather by the words of the Chicago
publisher, who left his wife cheerfully
in the front door one morning and
wired her from the hospital in the
afternoon; Have just lost my APP
pendix, but thank heaven still retain
my errata and table of contents"
OF the West he then said:
The West is no longer a place, a
social condition. II is
an attitude of mind, a manifestation
of psychic temperament. 1t holds all
that is brave, all that is persistent, all
that is sanely aspiring, all that is
effective in the American ideal"
AS If to emphasize his optimism, he
picked out couple of sporadic in
stances of decay, which he ascribed to
the East and not to the West.
Mugwumpery, and Populism, he
said, were distinctively un-American,
distinctively Eastern, both were
fostered in robust, bumptious in
efficiency: each had its roots in the
envy OF men who can't and won't do
things for the man who does. Mug
wumpery believed the government was
corrupt; Populism was sure of it,
Each doctrine spread over the land
like an epidemic. The Massachusetts
man who went to bed with the political
muligrubs awoke a mugwump moan
ing for tariff reform; the Kansas man
who lay down with an octopus. a gold
bug and money devil cavorting
through his economic intestines got
up screaming for free silver and silk
currency.
Each of these crazy men looked up
On clNlllHdtlOn as u conspiracy, eacn
had temporary softening of the back
bone and the inevitable compromises
incidental to progress irritated his
highly intlamed conscience. Both
mugwumps and the Popuplists moved
in that political demimonde wherein
virtue in others is regarded only as
the signal for a sneer. The mug
wumps gave us the placid, restful,
soporitic delights of a Democratic
administration and the Populsts be-
queathed us anarchy 1t may be
demonstrated with the nice exactness
of an algebraic equation that the man
or group of men or party which
ignores it's own vices and devotes
itself to inoculating virtue in others
will in the end bring only calamity
and disaster in its path.
He closed by saying that the West
ern idea, which had moved the star of
amnipa from I nn6on IN Tnynn tIha1