William Allen White

William Allen White (1868-1944), American journalist, was a spokesman for small-town America. His folksy wisdom and political commentaries were read and loved by millions.

On Feb. 10, 1868, William Allen White was born in Emporia, Kan. While attending Emporia College and the University of Kansas, he became involved in newspaper work and left, before receiving a degree, to work on various newspapers. After valuable years of experience writing for Kansas City newspapers, in 1895 he purchased the Emporia Gazette, the small-town weekly which he edited for the next 49 years.

The heat of a political campaign soon thrust White, a Republican, into national prominence. He was a virulent foe of the Populists and William Jennings Bryan, and during the presidential campaign of 1896 he published a vitriolic editorial attacking populism entitled "What's the Matter with Kansas?" The Populists, said White, were "gibbering idiots" intent on despoiling the rich and driving business and capital from the state. The editorial was reprinted by various Republican newspapers and magazines, and soon thousands of copies were being circulated in pamphlet form by the Republican campaign committee.

White did not long remain the darling of the conservatives. He soon moved toward progressivism and became a friend and supporter of President Theodore Roosevelt. When Roosevelt bolted the Republican party in 1912 to run on the Bull Moose ticket, White backed him. During World War I White became an ardent supporter of Woodrow Wilson's form of internationalism and fought for American entry into the League of Nations. In the 1920s White battled both the nativist Ku Klux Klan and the urban sophisticates who disparaged rural America. He came to stand for all that was decent and tolerant in small-town America, all the virtues that were rapidly being lost in an industrializing and urbanizing country. During the 1930s he supported most of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal legislation but voted against Roosevelt in elections.

In 1940 White lent the great weight of his name to an organization lobbying for American support for the opponents of Nazism in Europe. "The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies" became popularly known as the "White Committee." He died on Jan. 31, 1944, in Emporia.

Further Reading

White was a prolific writer and published many books, of which the best is his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Autobiography of William Allen White (1946). The finest biography is Walter Johnson, William Allen White's America (1947), written with loving care and considerable insight, whose bibliography lists 22 books written by White. As a supplement, Johnson edited the Selected Letters of William Allen White: 1899-1943 (1947). Also of interest are Everett Rich, William Allen White: The Man from Emporia (1941), and David Hinshaw, A Man from Kansas: The Story of William Allen White (1945), the recollections of a friend supplemented by selected editorials from the Emporia Gazette.

Additional Sources

Griffith, Sally Foreman, Home town news: William Allen White and the Emporia gazette, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Johnson, Walter, William Allen White's America, New York: Garland Pub., 1979, 1947.

White, William Allen, The autobiography of William Allen White, Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1990. □

WHITE, WILLIAM ALLEN 1868-1944

Editor and proprietor, emporia gazette

What's the Matter with Kansas?

As a young reporter, William Allen White saw both sides of the radical populism that swept his home state of Kansas. He understood the plight of the poor farmer and workingman but disdained the abilities and the motivations of the movement's leaders. In 1895 at the age of twenty-five, after working as a reporter in larger cities, he bought his hometown paper, the Emporia Gazette. He used it to promote the town's fortunes, attract business, and herald the reform wing of the Republican Party. In 1896 he published a scathing editorial against the populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan titled "What's the Matter with Kansas?" This editorial brought him national attention and invitations to write for the Saturday Evening Post and McClure's. It also was credited with helping to secure victory for William McKinley over Bryan.

Common Sense and Respectability

The circulation of the Gazette never exceeded eight thousand, but White's talent brought him international recognition. He was a lifelong Republican who exemplified respectable, middle-class, progressive liberalism. He attacked the populists as much because they took such a disapproving tone about American life as for their ideology. He much preferred constructive criticism and became a close companion and backer of Republican reformer Theodore Roosevelt. White was more sympathetic to the aggressive muckrakers than Roosevelt. He welcomed Ida Tarbell to Emporia in 1905. But like the president, White held that business plutocracy was at the root of political corruption.

"Mr. Republican."

As his nickname attests, White was linked throughout the early twentieth century with the struggle to control the Republican Party. He helped Roosevelt to found the Progressive Party in 1911 and championed independent newspapers against the growth of chains and conglomerates. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for a prolabor editorial called "To an Anxious Friend" and again in 1946. Perhaps his most famous editorial, "Mary White," came in 1921, when his daughter was killed at the age of seventeen in a horseback riding accident. Later in the century he became a charismatic leader of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, arguing that commercialism had dangerously degraded the quality of journalism. Press critic Gilbert Seldes judged him "the most outstanding figure in American journalism."

Sources:

Sally Foreman Griffith, Hometown News: William Allen White and the Emporia Gazette (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989);

Gilbert Seldes, Lords of the Press (New York: Messner, 1938).

White, William Allen (1868–1944), born in Kansas, purchased the Emporia Gazette (1895) and became a famous independent editor following publication of his editorial What's the Matter with Kansas? (Aug. 15, 1896), a conservative attack on the Populists, indirectly aiding McKinley's election. White was prominent in the Bull Moose party and became a leader of the Republican party. His Gazette editorials are collected in The Editor and His People (1924) and Forty Years on Main Street (1937). His many books expressing his social and political views include The Real Issue and Other Stories (1896); The Court of Boyville (1899); Stratagems and Spoils (1901); In Our Town (1906); A Certain Rich Man (1909), a novel about a corrupt small‐town Kansas banker in the post‐Civil War era whose conscience finally leads him to decency in finance and politics; The Old Order Changeth (1910); God's Puppets (1916); In the Heart of a Fool (1918); Masks in a Pageant (1928); A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (1938); and The Changing West (1939). His Autobiography (1946, Pulitzer Prize) and Selected Letters (1947) were published posthumously.

William Allen White 1868–1944, American author, b. Emporia, Kans., studied (1886–90) at Kansas State Univ. As owner and editor of the Emporia Gazette from 1895 until his death, he represented grass roots political opinion throughout the nation. In 1896 his famous editorial, "What's the Matter with Kansas?," attacked the Populists and helped elect McKinley, the Republican candidate. A spokesman for small town life and a liberal Republican, White feared the results of excessive industrialization. His fiction reflects his social and political views. In 1923. he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials. His writings include short stories, the novel A Certain Rich Man (1909), a biography of Woodrow Wilson (1924), two biographies of Calvin Coolidge (1925, 1938), and two collections of his newspaper writings, The Editor and His People (1924) and Forty Years on Main Street (1937).

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1946; Pulitzer Prize) and selected letters (ed. by W. Johnson, 1947).