Source: https://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-william-allen-white/13046
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 17:59:41+00:00

Document:
February 1947 (Vol. 15 No. 1), pages 1 to 21.
WHEN two run-away Emporia boys were apprehended by the police of Kansas City in 1913 and queried as to their reason for leaving Emporia, the older boy stated thoughtfully: "Well, there's nothing there but William Allen White, and we got tired of hearing of him."  Long before this event, Emporia was known to the outside world as the home of Bill White. His political success on the national and state scene and his ability to write editorials that sparkled with excellent prose and pungent phrases had made him the leading citizen of the town within a few years from the day that he had acquired the Gazette on borrowed money.
The Emporia editor remarked in 1926 that the years from 1895 to World War I were "the most fruitful and happy years of my life."  A considerable portion of the money that he received from his countless magazine articles and books was poured into improving the Gazette, constructing an office building, and buying a home for his family. For all of White's belief that small town papers, which devoted themselves to local news and local color would be a success, he had to pour a share of his outside earnings into the Gazette. If he had spent his full time running the paper, he undoubtedly could have earned a moderate yearly income. But to travel as extensively as he did, to take lengthy vacations in Colorado, to own a comfortable home and entertain out-of-town guests with great frequency necessitated a far larger income than the Gazette could have produced. The twentieth century trend toward more and more expensive machinery for the back shop, too, required a larger sum of money than an ordinary Emporia editor might have had at hand. The purchase of such machinery would have forced most editors to borrow from the banks, but White had sufficient outside income to free himself of any bank control of the paper.
By 1904 the Gazette, now the principal paper of Lyon county, had a circulation of 2,000 daily and 2,000 weekly copies. Six years later, when White was in the thick of the progressive fight, the paper reached a 3,000 circulation. After the failure of the Emporia Republican, no other daily was able to threaten White's newspaper supremacy. Not only did White have money coming in from outside writing, but he was a hard working, shrewd newspaper man. "Look at that face, pink and white, fat and sweet, as featureless and innocent as a baby's bottom!", remarked a town enemy in 1899. "But by God don't let that fool you!"
won. But those who tempted him into this venture, by telling him what marvelous success he might achieve fighting the Gazette, deserve censure for their treachery. They abandoned him cruelly. They gave no support to his venture. They saw him spending his own good money and offered no help. They should bear whatever of opprobrium attaches to his failure-not he; for his is no failure. He was talked into a foolish venture by men with axes to grind. They found an honest man, and they left him to find out their perfidy. But what an old story this all is in this profession. No American town, north, south, east or west, is too large-or unfortunately too small-to have this very tragedy enacted. Every newspaper, in the nature of things, makes enemies. To tell the truth it must make enemies. But its enemies, often, are the best thing about a newspaper. They are its assets. They are its chief source of strength in a town. But when they see a newspaper man about to enter a town, they flock to him with stories, and tell him what a snap it will be to do up the other editor. They exaggerate the other man's mistakes. They make the new man believe that the town is just naturally yearning for a bright, newsy, crisp, spicy paper. These adjectives are as old as the business. Always they are the same. They are the sticky flypaper upon which a new editor always lights to his sorrow. And then, when once he is down, the adjectives pull him to his death. If he is bright, his new-found friends criticise him. If he tries to be newsy, they ask him to suppress items. If he makes his paper crisp and different, they say he is too fresh, and if he would make it spicy, they say he is indecent. In the end, he prints his valedictory.
White became convinced from his own experience with these papers backed by his political enemies that a newspaper did not succeed upon "its political beliefs, but upon its ability to get reliable news quickly to the people." White always discouraged his progressive friends from launching a paper "as a political and not as a business venture." When a paper was the only daily in a given town, White firmly believed that its news columns should be opened equally to both sides in a controversy. During an important election over a street car franchise in 1911, for instance, White adopted the policy of giving space one day to one side and the next day to the other side as the only way of being fair to the community.
Although other Kansas editors expressed sorrow over the incident, the rival Republican announced that it was just what White deserved since the Gazette was "too free in its criticisms of persons and things."  Then, Severy was presented with a new cane  in the Republican office! Such physical mishaps as the Severy affair, however, never tempered the vigorous language that White used in his editorials.
if you have any communication to make regarding the policy of the Gazette, or its editorial announcements, kindly make them directly to me, and not to some other party in this town whom you may fancy has some influence with me. . . . It is particularly annoying to me, and it must be very annoying to anyone else, to assume that anyone is responsible for anything in the Gazette except the man who owns it.
White frequently used the device of printing a rumor about himself, and then editorializing on the subject. On April 8, 1905, he remarked that there was a rumor that he kept liquor in his cellar. ,'This is a malicious and unspeakable falsehood," White declared. "The liquor is kept in the pantry, between the dining room and the kitchen. Why not tell the truth? It is also alleged that the editor of the Gazette has the gout, caused by high living. Yesterday for dinner he had home-picked sour-dock, mustard, dandelion, horseradish and beet-top greens, boiled bacon, and potatoes, corn bread and onions. Would you call that high living? Another lie nailed!"
A number of Progressives at Lakin, more kind than considerate, yesterday resoluted in favor of this man White, of Emporia, for governor. They wanted him to run as a Progressive candidate. To which the Gazette says no-a thousand times no. For we are on to that man White, and without wishing to speak disrespectfully of a fellow townsman, who, so far as we know, may be at least outwardly decent in the simpler relations of life-perhaps he pays his debts when it is convenient, and he may be kind to his family, though that's not to his credit, for who wouldn't be-and he may have kept out of jail, one way or another for some time; without, as we say, desiring to speak disrespectfully of this man, we know that he's not the man either to run for governor or, if such a grotesque thing could be imagined, to serve as governor.
hard and cold on the proposition to make him governor. He is a four-flusher, a ring-tailed, rip-snorting hell-raiser and a grandstander. He makes a big noise. He yips and kioodles around a good deal, but he is everlastingly and preeminently N. G. as gubernatorial timber-full of knots, warts, woodpecker holes, and rotten spots. He would have the enmity of more men who have walked the plank politically than any other man in Kansas, and his candidacy would issue an irrevocable charter in Kansas for the Progressive party to be the official minority report world without end. Men and women would be trampled to death at 7 o'clock election morning, trying to get at the polls to cast the first vote against him and at night. perfectly good citizens, kind fathers and indulgent husbands, would risk a jail sentence to get in at least ten votes against him as repeaters. It may be that the Progressive party needs a goat, but the demand doesn't require a Billy-goat! Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. But this man White is a shoulder-galled, sore-backed, ham-strung, wind-broken, string-halted, stump-sucking old stager who, in addition to being no good for draft and general purposes, has the political bots, blind-staggers, heaves, pinkeye and epizootic. Moreover, he is locoed and has other defects.
White was not only a superb editorial writer, but he was a shrewd businessman. Gradually, as his earnings increased, he delegated more and more responsibility to his staff, but at all times he was aware of what was taking place in the various parts of the office. His business acumen was revealed when he constructed a new building for the Gazette on the lot next to where the government planned eventually to build a post office. This gave the Gazette a vantage point for collecting news and made its office building space a desirable location for rental purposes.
Anyone who objected to the policy of the Gazette was encouraged to express his views in a column entitled "The Wailing Place." White, however, would not publish unsigned communications nor those which stirred religious or racial hatreds. He refused a diatribe against the Catholic church one day because, as he informed his correspondent, ". . . The Catholic Church in Emporia I do not regard as a serious menace. . . . I do not believe in stirring up religious feeling in an otherwise quiet community, when the community life does not seem to justify it."
White enjoyed nothing better than deflating Emporia's pompous citizenry. Shortly after he acquired the Gazette, he decided to drop the term professor because every teacher wanted the title. There was one teacher at the Normal school who raised a rumpus with White because the term wasn't used any longer before his name. White, however, was unrelenting. Then, when the Spanish-American War came, this teacher organized a company at the Normal and became a captain. At this point, White began to refer to him as the professor, rather than as the captain, which made the teacher furious.
White demanded simplicity in style from all of his reporters.  The Gazette style book written by Laura M. French, the city editor, listed as positive "dont's" such phrases as "At death's door"; "on the sick list"; "joined in holy wedlock"; "departed this life"; "tokens of respect"; and, "the last sad rites." Another important "don't" for all Gazette employees was "Don't use Mr. White's name-say the Gazette, or cut it out altogether if you can't say Gazette. You might lose your job otherwise."
Day after day the joints sell liquor here-each day getting a little bolder, and the Law and Order League snores on in the sweet unconsciousness of its dreams. . . . There is talk of a public meeting to discuss ways and means for closing these joints. . . . Will the minister whose wealthy church members rent buildings for saloons dare to come to this meeting and denounce this business?
As early as the first decade of the twentieth century, White was being looked upon by many as the spokesman of small town Middlewestern America. Feature articles about the Emporia editor began to appear in urban papers and nation-wide magazines, and his views on a variety of subjects were reprinted with regularity. All of these tendencies were greatly increased in the years between the two World Wars, but they had started long before 1914. An article in the New York Sun on October 20, 1910, hailed White as being "as much a part of Kansas as her cornstalks and sunflowers," and observed that "He thinks Kansas is the real United States, and had rather be the mouthpiece of Kansas' thought . . . than to be the richest man in the State or an United States Senator." By remaining in the small town, when his generation were flocking to the city, he eventually became not only the spokesman for Kansas but for much of the Middlewest. He always maintained that the reason he stayed in Emporia was that people were more sociable and friendly. Emporia was a personal world where neighbors' joys and sorrows were shared with others. Furthermore, class lines were not hard and fast like in the big city. In Emporia the town carpenter had influence with the banker, but White asked, "Does the Bronx plasterer have influence with J. P. Morgan?"
Although White may have enjoyed small town life, there also seems little doubt that he was canny enough to see that by remaining in Emporia he had a pulpit for reaching the American people unlike any he could ever have in the city. To leave Emporia would mean the end of his powerful influence, an influence that grew immeasurably from 1914 to 1944. For all of White's enjoyment of his neighbors in Emporia, the White family spent a great deal of time away from Emporia even in the years prior to 1914. After the Gazette was on its feet financially, the Whites were able to leave town for long intervals and turn the paper over to the capable staff that they had assembled. The Gazette actually served as a training center for many future editors. Among the young Gazette reporters who later went on to their own papers were Roy Bailey, editor of the Salina Journal; Rolla Clymer, editor of the El Dorado Times; Oscar Stauffer, operator of a chain of papers including the Topeka State Journal; and John Redmond, editor of the Burlington Republican. Charles M. Vernon, one of White's favorites, later became manager of the Los Angeles office of the Associated Press and Burge McFall became a leading Associated Press correspondent during World War I.
One of the fine things about the graduates of the "Gazette school of Journalism" is that no matter how much they may disagree with their professor, who taught them what they know, they always remain loyal to him, and never allow a difference of opinion to interfere with their personal affections.
The third principal member of the Gazette staff, Walt Mason, became well known to the outside world. Mason was a newspaper legend before he settled down on the Gazette. White referred to him variously as the "poet laureate of American democracy" and "the Homer of modern America, and particularly of Middle-Western America, the America of the country town."  Walt Mason's folksy prose-poems were widely read by pre-World War I America. Mason's addiction for liquor had cost him job after job up until the time that he started work on the Gazette. He had tramped all over the West writing columns, doing all sorts of work for a handout, never lasting more than a month or two at a job. "For when he got drunk," White observed, "boy he got drunk! And he literally God damned himself out of a job by quarreling with his boss whoever it was."  In 1907, when Mason left a Nebraska town to take the Keeley cure, one citizen observed that "the town let its most distinguished citizen go without regret."
came, but White told Mason to go to Emporia and help out around the paper until he returned.
Let us all proceed tomorrow humbly to the house of prayer. The prediction from Chicago says the weather will be fair. After rain that saved the wheat crop comes the genial smiling sun; let us seek the sanctuary when the long week's work is done. When the weather clerk is certain that the Sabbath will be fair, there is no excuse for staying from the house of praise and prayer.
real stuff in you. . . ."  During 1908, White persuaded George M. Adams to syndicate Mason's rhymes. Before long not only was he composing his syndicated poems, but he was writing a daily short story for the Chicago Daily News, a book review page for the Kansas City Star, and reams of material for the Gazette. Adams also published several books of his poems, and by 1920 Mason had acquired enough money to retire to California, where he continued writing his rhymes until his death in 1939.
Those who have lived during the half century now passed, put something here beside houses and streets and trees and material things. They put practical work in politics, in religion, in education, in business, in the social organization to make this a good town. Emporia did not just grow. To have a clean town meant a fight, every day in the year for someone; it meant sacrifice for scores of men and women-sacrifice of time and money and health and strength. To have all these schools and churches meant that thousands gave freely and in a great faith without material results in sight, that we who now enjoy what we have, might reap where we have not sown.
This town is the child of many prayers. This town is the ideal realized only after those who dreamed the ideal, laid them doom to rest with the dream still a dream. This town is the fruit of great aspiration, and we who live here now, have a debt to posterity that we can pay only by still achieving, still pursuing; we must learn to labor and to wait, even as they learned it who built here on this townsite when it was raw upland prairie. It is well to think on these things.
Eat nothing but biscuits made from Emporia flour. . . . Eat nothing but Emporia bacon and ham, and Lyon county eggs. . . . Put on an Emporia over-coat over an Emporia suit of clothes. If the money spent in Kansas City for cheap tailoring were spent here thirty tailors would find work here who are now living in the big city. . . .
Fifteen years later he urged a dry goods store to buy printing from him because when they bought outside that money was forever lost to Emporia. Until his death the slogan "Buy Emporia Goods" appeared from time to time in the Gazette. Yet, during the last twenty odd years of his life, he knew that world trade was necessary for American and world prosperity, and although he advocated the lowering of protective tariffs by all nations, with delightful inconsistency he urged all Emporians just to buy Emporia-made goods!
The White's two children, Bill and Mary, were as different as the Kansas prairies and the Rocky Mountains. Bill, as a boy, was shy, quiet, and retiring. He grew up in the Gazette office, and very early took a route to deliver papers. In 1910, when White heard that Ed Howe's son Gene was now working on his father's paper, the Emporia editor wrote Gene that ". . . I shall be mighty proud when my boy, Bill, gets that far along. I don't think Bill will be worth very much. He is a good boy and that is the trouble. He is too good a boy and does not make me any trouble and I am afraid he won't make anybody else any trouble. . . ."
Mary, four years younger than Bill, was a vigorous tomboy. As a baby she had been so frail that her parents encouraged her to be an outdoor girl. She soon became a wild, carefree horseback rider. White wrote Franklin P. Adams on December 8, 1914, that Mary has not sold her pony yet. She was out riding on it the other day and some people came along with an automobile and honked and made a loud noise and the pony sidestepped and threw her off. She got up . . . and they came back and making a loud noise and honking and the pony bucked her off again. Her mother asked, "Well, Mary, didn't they stop and see what was the matter?" And Mary said, "No, Mother, but what could you expect? They were riding in a Ford l" Otherwise Mary is real well.
Mary was not a warm, affectionate child like Bill. When she would enter the Gazette office, her father would say, "Give your old father a kiss," but she would refuse. Bill was their grandmother's favorite.
Madame White would place the two children in their rockers and she would sit in hers and read the classics to them by the hour.
But in politics you shine.
In defeat you are sublime, Allen White.
EDITOR's NOTE: This article is a chapter of Dr. Walter Johnson's biography William Allen White and His America to be published by Henry Holt March 15, 1947. Dr. Johnson is assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago. He is editor of The Selected Letters of William Allen White, published by Holt in January, 1947.
1. The Advance, Chicago, v. 66 (November 27, 1913), p. 403.
2. Samuel G. Blythe, "William Allen White," The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, v. 179, June 15, 1907, pp. 20, 22.
3. To Helen Mahin, October 7, 1926.
4. Emporia Gazette, April 8, 1899.
5. Emporia Daily Republican, April 7, 1899.
7. Emporia Gazette, December 6, 1911.
8. White to Frank Buxton, December 22, 1938; to writer, interview, November 27, 1941.
9. Emporia Gazette, December 27, 1902; October 21, 1901.
10. To the Success Company, October 9, 1903.
11. Emporia Gazette, December 19, 1913.
12. S. G. Blythe, loc. cit.
13. Literary Digest, New York, v. 48 (March 21, 1914), p. 642.
14. Harper's Magazine, New York, v. 132 (May, 1916), p. 888.
15. Emporia Gazette, October 12, 1903.
16. Ibid., June 2, 1911.
17. Ibid., January 4, 1909.
18. To F. W. Ives, February 3, 1914.
19. To E. C. Franklin, November 19, 1909.
22. February 5, 1903; two collections of white's editorials have been published: The Editor and His People (New York, 1924), edited by H. O. Mahin, and Forty Years On Main Street (New York and Toronto, 1937), edited by R. H. Fitzgibbon.
23. Fitzgibbon, op. cit., p. 50, footnote.
24. Emporia Gazette, February 11, 1911.
25. Ibid., February 25, 1911.
26. Ibid., May 5, 17, 1897.
27. Ibid., June 23, 1913.
28. William Allen White, "Emporia and New York," American Magazine, New York, 63 (January, 1907), p. 261.
29. Mark Sullivan, The Education of an American (New York, 1938), p. 116.
31. Kansas Historical Society, Kansas Scrap-Book, Biography, W," v. 10, p. 438.
32. Emporia Gazette, February 1, 1944.
34. To B. W. Crone, July 19, 1935; to Charles Scott, May 8, 1926.
35. W. E. Connelley, ed., History of Kansas Newspapers (Topeka, 1916), pp. 114-116; William Allen White, "What Happened to Walt Mason," American Magazine v. 86, September, 1918, p. 19.
36. To Charles Driscoll, April 5, 1932.
37. Walt Mason, "Down and Out at Forty-Five," American Magazine, v. 86, September, 1918, p. 20.
38. James Lawrence of the Lincoln (Neb.) Star to writer, interview December 29, 1944.
39. "Down and Out at Forty-Five," loc. cit., p. 82.
41. Emporia Gazette, March 29, 1897.
42. Ibid., February 1, 1944.
43. F. L. Pinet, "William Allen white-Kansan," Kansas Magazine, Wichita, July, 1909, p. 2.
44. Harry Kemp, Tramping on Life (New York, 1923), pp. 250, 251.
45. Fred Lockley to White, November 8, 1935.
46. A. J. Carruth in the Topeka State Journal, December 10, 1938.
47. Edna Ferber, A Peculiar Treasure, p. 227.
48. Goshen (N. Y.) Democrat, February 10, 1939.
49. January 9, 1912; See interview of James Francis Cooke with William Allen White, "What Music Has Done for Me," Etude, Philadelphia, v. 56 (December, 1938), p. 779 ff.
50. Kansas City (Mo.) Times, March 17, 1915, contributors' column.

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