National Affairs: In Kansas

They led it around on a string and they laughed. The goat walked with an air of injured dignity. On his back, he wore a placard: “William Allen White.” The Imperial Klonvocation of the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan was in uproad. This was in Kansas City, Mo.

Across the Missouri, opposite, in Kansas City, Kan., William Allen White hopped off a train wearing his light gray felt hat, his natty gray suit and his bow tie—awry, as usual.

“Too bad,” he smiled, “that I can’t see the grand assemblage of the menagerie. However, I should not complain about not seeing the main show, for I am having the time of my life viewing the passing panorama of Grand Goblins, Titans, Grand Giants, whang-doodles and so on.

“The people of Kansas seem to get the same pleasure out of the show that I do. They turn out in great numbers in the hopes of catching a fleeting glimpse of the blood-sweating behemoths.”

Thus Candidate White. The title doesn’t come easily—he has been Editor White so very long. As an editor of a local newspaper, he has made himself a national reputation just by being straightforward, unaffected and hard-hitting. Because of it, the Red Cross sent him to Europe as an observer during the War. Because of it, he was chosen to sit on the jury which awarded Edward W. Bok’s peace prize. Because of it, a score of other things have fallen his way. He was in the Roosevelt Progressive Movement from 1912 to 1916, but nominally he is still Republican—not a regular, just a Republican. He turns the shafts of his humor on friend and foe alike; he speaks what he thinks; and so he is William Allen White of Emporia, Editor of the Emporia Gazette.

In the year of our Lord, 1924, he was stung to something more than action. The Republican State Convention in Kansas refused to repudiate the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. White says that the Republican candidate for Governor, Ben S. Paulen, and the Democratic candidate, Governor Jonathan M. Davis, both received the support of the Klan in the primaries. So he threw his pen on the floor and jumped onto a soap box—Independent candidate for Governor. He cried:

“I want to be the Governor to free Kansas from the disgrace of the Ku Klux Klan; and I want to offer to Kansans, afraid of the Klan and ashamed of that disgrace, a candidate who shares their fear and shame. . . .

“The thought that Kansas should have a government beholden to this hooded gang of masked fanatics, ignorant and tyrannical in their ruthless oppression, is what calls me out of the pleasant ways of my life, into this distasteful, but necessary, task. . . .

“It is a nation-wide menace, this Klan. It knows no party. It knows no country. It knows bigotry, malice and terror. Our national Government is founded on reason and the Golden Rule. This Klan is preaching and practicing terror and force. Its only prototype is the Soviet of Russia. So I feel that I am walking the path of duty in going into this race.”

The effect of White’s candidacy may be to split the Republican vote to reelect Governor Davis, although the State is expected to go Republican this year. That is something which concerns Kansas. But the whole country is considering the possibility of losing such a two-fisted editor—two-fisted with a sense of humor—to politics.

The temper of his editorial fervor is well expressed by an editorial* written over ten years ago, in January, 1914, which, incidentally, makes especially good reading today:

“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 foe 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.

“He can’t make a speech. He has a lot of radical convictions, which he sometimes comes into the Gazette office and exploits and which are dangerous. He has been jawing politicians for 20 years, until he is a common scold, and he has set up his so-called ideals so high that the Angel Gabriel himself couldn’t give the performance that this man White would have to advertise on the bills.

“So, in the words of the poet, nix on Willyum Allen …. He is a fourflusher, a ring-tailed, rip-snorting hellraiser, and a grandstander. He makes a big noise. He yips and kyoodles around a good deal, but he is everlastingly and preeminently N. G. as gubernatorial timber—full of knots, warts, woodpecker holes and rotten spots. . . . Men and women would be trampled to death at seven o’clock election mornings, 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! . . . this man White is a shoulder-galled, sore-backed, hamstrung, 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, pink eye and epizootic. Moreover, he is locoed and has other defects. …

“A word to the wise should gather no moss!”

*Reprinted in THE EDITOR AND HIS PEOPLE (Editorials by William Allen White from the Emporia Gazette)— edited by Helen Ogden Mahin—Macmillan ($2.75).