The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-08-07
AS WHITE SEES THEM.
Kansas Editors Impressions of Law
son and jerome.

Manitou, Colo, Aug. William
Allen White Of Kansas. in giving his
impressions of Thomas w. Lawson
and William Travers Jerome, says:
If there was ever an apparent case
of carrying Goals to Newcastle it was
when William Travers jerome and
Thomas W. Lawson of the East came
to teach the West about the iniquity
of the money power. Yet it was only
apparent The case was not real for
discomfort. Newcastle is running out
of Goals and today the feeding place
for the culture of social and financial
unrest is the East.
If the present system of industry
and economics should be overthrown
soon. which is of course unlikely, the
mob that would batter down the bas-
tile, esta blished by the wicked aggran-
dizement of capital, would be plug
hated mob in frock coats and white
vests. headed by such eminent Eastern
dignitaries as Hamilton w. Mabie of
The Outlook, Samuel S. Mcclure, Will
liam D. Howells, Lyman Abbott, The
odore Roosevelt Jacob Riis, William
Taft, Charles ]. Bonaparte, Senator
Murray Crane, Norman Hapgood and
Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
When Mr.. Lawson came west he
proposed as remedy for the en-
croachfng power of organized capital
that the people give the Wall street
crowd a dose of it's own medicine. He
asked the people to begin selling their
stocks and securities and let the
System" buy them and force the
market down and then rebuy their
Eecurities and squeeze the water out
Of the manipulators. That was a
stock brokers' remedy. 1t could not
appeal to the West. First 1t was i'm
possible to the West because western
property is not held in stocks and
bonds; and, second, the West recog-
nized the moral wrong of it.
The East and the West.
There is this difference between the
east and the west: The east regards
the proVincialist of the west as repre-
henSible; the west is immensely toler-
ant of the provincialism of the east.
If westerner had gone east with
proposition to cure the ills of the flesh
so impossible to the east as the pro-
posed remedy of Lawson was impossi-
Bile to the west, the east would have
set him down as a villain. The west,
however, smiled at Lawson's remedy
and took the man himself for what he
was worth on the face.
The story of Jerome's visit to the
west is entirely different from the story
of the crusade of, Lawson. Jerome
bore no great message, came on no
pilgrimage, had no countryato save and
no cause to justify. The western peo-
done, for the west knows the east bet
ter than the east knows the west.
Though Governor Folk of Missouri has
done and is doing great things for his
country. 1t is not likely that 5000 per-
sons in New York city know him well
enough to pay IS cents to hear him
speak. But the west knows and ad-
mtres Jerome for what he has done,
and it did not care much what he said.
He made the Kansans and Missouri
fans mad by saying that the liquor
laws could not be enforced, and then
the governors of the two states met on
the platform where Jerome had stood
and drew him over the Goals for his
we'll known statement that there
should be two statute books, one to
contain statutes to be enforced. the
other to contain the moral yearnings
of rural communities. As matter of
fact, the states of Missouri and Kan
sas, being for the most part rural
states. get their moral yearnfngs en-
forced In the statutes, but naturally
Jerome could not Know this and what
was apt enough in New York was not
happily received in Kansas and Mis-
souri,. The Sunday closing law is en-
forced in st. Louis and Kansas City,
the two cities of Missouri. and the anti
bookmaking law is enforced in St
Louis county. And in Kansas there is
no trouble about enforcing the pro-
hibitory law when the local officers
care to enforce it.