KANSAS WITHOUT "OL'BILL" WHITE

...Kansas Without "Ol' Bill" White By W. C. CLUGSTON Topeka KANSAS now has only wheat, cyclones, floods, droughts, dust storms, and Prohibition fanaticism to boast of—and public figures of the stature and caliber of Alf M. Landon and Harry Woodring...

...No matter what the crops may be this year and next, no matter what political or meterological phenomena may spring up out of nowhere, and spread like prairie fires over the windswept plains, Kansas faces a drab and barren future...

...In his younger days he was one of Theodore Roosevelt's most spectacular hell-raising Bull Moosers...

...Especially as a political actor...

...I shall continue to remember "01' Bill" White as that kind of a top-ranking Kansan...

...Howe And White As to how the void is to be filled, and the drabness and barrenness reckoned with—as to what Kansas is to bj without William Allen White—only the passing of time can tell...

...No one ever went into his home without finding it hospitable, no one ever met him abroad without feeling that here was a good fellow—and a man who knew how to combine the graces of a grand duke with the democratic demeanor of a Ben Franklin...

...His famous, or infamous, editorial, "What's the Matter with Kansas," was one of the outstanding libels of the centuries circulated to discredit the struggles of the masses of the people to attain the ideals of popular government...

...He often pointed out that most individuals are radical in youth and become conservative as they grow older, but insisted that he had done the very opposite—that he had started out as a conservative and become more radical, or liberal, as the years piled up...

...In summing up a chapter devoted to him in my book, Rascals in Democracy, published in 1940, I said of the noted Emporian: "His democratic demeanor, his good fellowship on Main Street, and his kindly, generous tolerance in his personal contacts—all these characteristics helped to make him beloved even by many who despised his political practices...

...His greatest delusion was in his appraisal of the changes which took place in his own social-outlook complexion...

...The most shining mark of merit on his record of actions came from the vigorous, courageous fight that he made to help stamp out Ku Kluxism with all its bigotry and intolerances...

...but the "Sage of Emporia" was blessed with a sparkling, vivacious natural bent which enabled him to get endless joy out of the production of pleasing, entertaining piffle in an endless stream while his compatriot in Atchison was laboring in frustration and disappointment through all the latter years of his life—laboring in vain to try to produce something that would merit and receive the acclaim that had been given to his Story of a Country Tmun...

...White always stood on the side of respectability— always stood ready to help dominant respectability pull its chestnuts out of the fire...

...In his home town of Emporia he was always known as Lyon County's most neighborly and most public spirited citizen...

...In some respects Howe and White were much alike, but in general make-up, in temperaments, tastes, and talents, they were as unlike as vinegar and honey...

...In the Woodrow Wilson era he did considerable marching under the banners of liberalism...

...But the truth about the matter might be that he looked upon politics as a game that was always played upon a plane of such low principles that anyone was just a fool who tried to participate in it and insisted upon the observance of rules with which selfish, conscienceless leaders would have no truck...

...That the Commonwealth of the Kaw will aopear to be a different state, and must undergo a revised appraisal in the eyes of the world, seems inevitable...

...The fields of journalism can onlv seem barren without the ever-flowing stream of semi-literary scintillations which poured out of the sanctum of the Emporia Gazette for nearly half a century...

...But White, as an impish optimist who didn't give a damn who saw him trying to stick his tongue in both cheeks at once, also didn't give a damn who caught him with both arms in dirty politics up to his elbows, and there are instances of record which indicate he didn't care how dirty the side he was on might become so long as it enabled him to stay in the spotlight and strut his stuff before a wide and chuckling, or applauding, audience...

...And in the words of Frank Harris, whom he even had the courage to recognize in Kansas, "Pardon's the word for all," or should be, when a man such as William Allen White leaves us to our struggles bereft of his sparkling, genial, kindly personality...

...An appraisal of White as a newspaper editor and publisher is all to his credit except in the instances in which he used his paper to lend force to his questionable political actions...

...This seems inevitable because the personality and the genius, the broad, kindly tolerance and the small, narrow provincialism, which made White what he was had come to be looked upon throughout th...

...But in the process of paying the price and getting what he wanted, White was always a cheerful, buoyant, kind-mannered optimist while Howe was as gruff and dour a cynic as ever lived in comfort in the invigorating atmosphere under sunny skies in the Middle West...

...And they were alike in that both were able to compromise with society to the extent of obtaining from it all that they craved of the luxuries of the flesh-pots...

...There was never anything high hat about him, or haughty, no matter whether he was encountered on Emporia's Main Street, or on New York's Broadway or Park Avenue...

...The Commonwealth of the Sunflower lost its most interesting, colorful asset in the passing of William Allen White—when the "Sage of Emporia" laid down his pen and turned away from his typewriter to join Ed Howe, Carry A. Nation, Eugene Ware, Mary Ellen Lease, Sockless .Jerry Simpson, John Brown of Osawatomie, and all the picturesque galaxy of notables who made Kansas world-famous for things other than the raising of wheat and the setting of weather records...

...The blackest mark in his record of actions came from the stand he took against the people, and in defense of vested interests, when he vigorously opposed, denounced, and fought the Populists...

...Top Ranking Kansan On numerous occasions, he went on record to admit and deplore evil trends developing in the ethics and standards of American journalism...

...Of all Kansas' notable characters, the names of Ed Howe and William Allen White will probably rank highest and be recalled and referred to oftenest when f'rture generations make their appraisals of the past...

...whole country as typifying the state and its people...

...Whenever the "overlords of the existing order" needed propaganda work done in Topeka or Washington to bolster their tottering political power, White could always be depended upon to show up and put the talents of his pen at their disposal with a happy, sparkling, hilarious sang-froid which made him seem invulnerable whenever attacks came from the wrong side of the railroad tracks...

...That he openly accepted profits from some of these evils after deploring and denouncing them may not seem to his credit in the eyes of a stern judge...

...Howe, as a disgusted cynic, scorned to dirty his hands in dirty politics in any manner whatsoever...

...what appeared to be a restrained appraisal, said that he was an "honest, penetrating but kindly thinker...

...But the record of his action does not bear this out...

...This will be so because Howe and White have been the most outsanding literary figures that the state has produced—because they wrote things that have live'l and will live—things that have helped shape the destiny of their country for better or worse...

...Political campaigns can only be drab without "01' Bill" White's irresistible impulses to liven them up with shocking, unpredictable stands and pronouncements...

...All of that was true...

...A Political Actor When White died, Alf M. Landon, in...

...But, at least, he is on record as having deplored and denounced them...

...But, as an actor, something else would have to be said...

...In all other matters his actions showed him to be both honest and kindly, but in politics he was either dishonest, or the most superficial liberal thinker of his generation...

...But thereafter he was always on the reactionary, conservative side of the fence, giving his support to Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Landon, and Willkie—was always on their side supporting the philosophy they represented whenever the political battles came to crucial stages...

...Both saw with clear vision many of the evils and imperfections of the social system under which they had to live...

...He made the Gazette a clean, tolerant, entertaining newspaper, and he kept its columns more open to the criticisms of those who opposed him than were the columns of any other prominent newspaper of the Middle West...

...The "Sage of Potato Hill" was, undoubtedly, a more profound and more serious-minded man...