The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-07-02
WEBB McNALL.


The many friends of Webb McNall.
the man who made the Insurance cor
porations squirm a few years ago. trust
that he will speedily recover from the
stroke of paralysis which befell him
yesterday at his Gaylord home. Webb
McNall is a unique figure in Kansas.
There is none other like him. He
loves a fight merely for the fun of the
fight, and it was this quality, coupled
with his desire to make his Office of
use to the helpless and oppressed, that
led him into all the trouble he had as
superintendent of insurance during the
Leedy administration.
The big eastern insurance companies
probably never had a greater shock
than when they encountered Webb
McNall. He usually presented an I'M
couth appearance. for even as a state
official and later as the head officer of
one of the biggest fraternal organiza-
tons in the world. his neck was almost
always guiltless of linen collar and his
mannerisms were not such as obtain
in what is usually known as Society"
He was blunt of speech and action.
But he possessed an unusually keen
and ready mind. he knew insurance
and he had unlimited courage. Con-
sequently when complaints came to
him of oppressive actions on the part
of insurance companies, he gave the
companies summary orders to quit it.
No poor widow with a $500 claim that
a grasping corporation was trying to
beat her out of ever appealed to Webb
| McNan in vain. The corporations got
orders forthwith and those orders were
always direct and forcible.
The insurance companies wondered
what sort of an insignificant little feist
that was out in Kansas that presumed
| to give them orders, and they sent
| their attorneys out to read the riot act
| to him. The attorneys were glad to
| escape with their scalps. The $4,000
presidents of some of the companies
came out to squelch McNan. They
wore silk hats and put up an i'm
pressive front, but they were treated
| no better than their hired men. They
| usually took the first train back east.
Then the companies appealed to
| the federal courts to protect them from
| this ogre and keep him from throwing
| them out of the state. McNal1 put his
/ thumb to his nose and wiggled his
| fingers at the federal court-and the
| companies continued to get out of
Kansas whenever he told them to.
| If there was anything McNan loved
| better than to make an insurance COM
pany squirm, it was to make two in
surance companies squirm-and the
widows and the fatherless got what
| was coming to them without costly
| litigation. McNall was continually in
trouble with the insurance companies
and the courts. but he invariably came
| out ahead.
1t is for this sort of thing that Webb
! McNal is admired in Kansas, and for
his record as superintendent of insur-
ance he will be longest remembered.
Years ago he aspired to go to congress
| as a Republican-and got licked by a
tPopulist-and since his retirement
from the insurance department he
| has got rich from his Smith county
| farm. Between crops he has travelled
from one end of the country to the
other as the highest official of the A.
| o. Z. W., but it is his work in max
| ing oppressive corporations comply
with the law that brought him distinc-
ton. And that record won him the
| friends who hope for his recovery
from the physical affiiction that has
| now befallen him.