The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1901-02-26
WHITE HAS HIS SAY.
Brilliant Kansas Editor Talks About
Kansas Freaks


william Allen White. who has been
visiting in Chicago. had a few words to
say about the so called freaks Of Kan
sas to p Chicago Post representative.
Here it is:
There are no freaks in Kansas" said
Mr.. White, when asked to express his
opinion of the freaks
Mrs. Lease is in New York City, he
said soliciting for a life insurance COM
pany, or was the last tins I heard of
her. Jerry Simpson is going to Kansas
City to engage in the live stock business,
and is not in politics. PETER is making
speeches in Ohm for Mckinley and
probably will be given an office under
the administration, which will prove
both his sanity and his orthodoxy. The
Populist party hasn't carried an election
there for four years. The money de-
posted in the banks of Lyon cour ty.
which is no richer nor poorer than other
counties, is 81, 100000 to q, 0c0 inhabitants,
and this doesn't represent one one-hun-
dredth Of the actual wealth Autono-
blleS run on the streets OF EmpOria.
Rubber-tired buggies are the rule rather
than the exception for the farmer boy
to ride in with his best girl on Sunday
afternoon In every farm house may be
found a piano or a cabinet organ, and at
least one of the half-dozen standard
ma gaines.
THE Kansas farmer-and Kansas is
essentially a farming state, for there Is
practically no large city in its boun-
darles-is reading man, and reading
maketh the full man. and therefore the
kansan is always bubbliug over with
ideas; and being a young man-for the
state is barely 40 years Old these ideas
have q pleasant way of appearing in
events, sometimes exciting, but always
interesting and generally to the point.
s'Kansans are not idle dreamers, not
mere theorists. From the time of John
Brown to Carrie Nation the Kansan has
been a simple-minded man who took a
very short and absolutely direct cut
from his ideals to the realization of
them. If civil or criminal statutes or
constitutional provisions happen to stano
OF his ideals. then God help the criminal
statutes and the constitutional linlita
lions.
In the sisterhood Of states Kansas is
an educated state. The percentage OF
nteracy is higher IN Kansas than in any
other state in the Union To be
prophecies one must be a seer; to be a
seer one must be a. scholar The COM
posite mind of Kansas is open to ideas.
Psychic waves, political tendencies,
economic movements that are in the air,
find a natural Judgment in the quick
mind of Kansas and there find their first
crude expressions in her deeds. This
first crude action, the result of impulse
rather than of reason, yet always of
high impulse, has given the world the
impression that Kansas is a state of
cranks John Brown was crank in
that sense, yet he was a voice crying in
which f0retOld the impending conflict
He was dead wrong in theory and prac-
tice A great many men who are right
are wrong.
1.-THE Simpson, Mrs. Lease,
PETER and the rest-voiced the barbaric
yawp which is certainly now finding a
dignifled expression in the same de-
mands for antitrust laws, for fran
chise taxation, for municipal control Of
public utilities. for the restriction Of COR
porations and for a dozen other reputa.-
bic and conservative movements which
are clearly socialistic in their tendencies
For the last ten years there has been
a feeling among business men, employers
of labor and intelligent people generally
that whisky, OF, to use the stock phrase,
that 1ntemperance Is injurious to the
best development of American minds
and hands. Hundreds of en- ployers have
restricted the use of liquor ny their en-
ployes during working hours; dozens Of
railroads have practically prohibited
drinking by the men in their employ.
This restricting business legislation has
indicated or rather limited the presence
of a general feeling all over the country
against liquor and the liquor traffic.
This feeling has been in the ARA sort
of mental microbe. It has been indie
Enable, Elusive, incapable of analysis
And now along comes Carrie Nation
with her Ratchet and chops the outward
and visible sign of this sentiment in big
wood-type letters into the everlasting
marble of history. Carrie Nation repre-
sents a universal feeling of animosity
toward liquor and the liquor traffic. If
she did not represent this feeling she
would not have so many ernulators. She
is probably little touched, but SO have
been all the prophets.
1T is hard to imagine st. Paul or
Daniel or jeremiah sitting down, keep
ing a set OF books, running a great busi-
ness or follow any sedentary pursuit
which requires exact habits and sane,
logical thinking. Only minds capable of
hysteria are affected by ths impulse of
the psychic waves. Savages must have
felt this when their custom made them
the insane They had probably |
seen so many cranks turn out to be
prophets that they wouldn't risk reviling
them and so put all the crazy men in
one pot and treated them as prophets
AS for Carrie Nation she'll probably go