A short life of the author
William Allen White was the most famous newspaper editor in American history — the proprietor of a small Kansas newspaper who became, through the force of his personality, the clarity of his writing, and the shrewdness of his political judgment, a figure of genuine national influence: the man whom Theodore Roosevelt consulted on Midwest politics, whom Woodrow Wilson respected as a commentator, whom Calvin Coolidge distrusted, and whom Franklin Roosevelt cultivated. For nearly fifty years, from his purchase of the Emporia Gazette in 1895 until his death in 1944, White was the voice of small-town, middle-class, progressive Republican America — a man who believed in decency, fair play, public schools, honest government, and the fundamental goodness of ordinary Americans, and who expressed these beliefs in prose of remarkable directness and warmth.
Emporia
White was born in Emporia, Kansas, in 1868, the son of a doctor. He grew up in El Dorado, attended the College of Emporia and the University of Kansas, and began working as a journalist in Kansas City. In 1895, at the age of twenty-seven, he borrowed $3,000 and bought the Emporia Gazette, a small daily newspaper with a circulation of about 500. He owned and edited the paper for the rest of his life, building it into one of the most respected newspapers in the country — not through circulation (it never exceeded 8,000) but through the quality of White’s editorial writing.
”What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
In August 1896, White published an editorial titled “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” — a savage attack on the Populist movement and William Jennings Bryan’s presidential campaign that accused Kansas of driving away capital, talent, and common sense through its embrace of radical politics. The editorial was reprinted by Republican newspapers across the country, made White nationally famous overnight, and established him as a voice of conservative common sense.
The irony was that White almost immediately began moving leftward. Within a few years he was a committed Progressive, a friend and supporter of Theodore Roosevelt, and a sharp critic of the very corporate interests he had defended in 1896. For the rest of his life, he was a Republican progressive — supporting reform within the party, backing Roosevelt’s Bull Moose campaign in 1912, and opposing the isolationism and reaction that dominated the Republican Party in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Political Commentator
White’s national influence rested on three foundations: his editorials, his political commentary in national magazines (he wrote regularly for The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, The Atlantic, and other major periodicals), and his personal friendships with every American president from McKinley to Franklin Roosevelt. He was the essential middleman between the political establishment and the American public, trusted by both because of his obvious sincerity and his refusal to be either a partisan hack or a high-minded moralist.
His books on American politics — Masks in a Pageant (1928), a collection of profiles of American political leaders, and his biographies of Woodrow Wilson (1924) and Calvin Coolidge (A Puritan in Babylon, 1938) — were written in the same direct, unpretentious style as his editorials and were widely read.
The Autobiography
The Autobiography of William Allen White (1946, Pulitzer Prize) was published posthumously and became one of the finest American autobiographies — a vivid, warm, and remarkably honest account of sixty years of American life as seen from a small Kansas town. The book is simultaneously a personal memoir, a political history, and a portrait of a vanishing America — the America of small towns, country newspapers, and civic virtue that White embodied and that he knew was disappearing.
Collecting White
The Autobiography of William Allen White (Macmillan, 1946) is the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic. A Certain Rich Man (Macmillan, 1909) was his most successful novel. In the Heart of a Fool (Macmillan, 1918) is collected. Early issues of the Emporia Gazette containing his famous editorials are of historical interest. White’s papers are held at the Library of Congress.
Bibliography
| Title | Year | Publisher | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Certain Rich Man White's progressive-era novel — the rise and moral decline of a Kansas businessman who embodies the corrupting influence of unchecked wealth on American democracy; a bestseller that dramatized the progressive movement's critique of plutocracy. | 1909 | Macmillan | English |
| A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge White's biography of Coolidge — presenting the taciturn Vermont president as a man of genuine but limited virtue, a Puritan moralist presiding over the Babylonian excess of the 1920s whose personal decency could not prevent the catastrophe his economic policies enabled. | 1938 | Macmillan | English |
| Boys — Then and Now White's reflections on the changing nature of American boyhood — comparing the freedom and self-reliance of frontier-era youth with the more structured, supervised childhood of the 1920s; a nostalgic but perceptive meditation on what modernity was doing to childhood. | 1926 | Macmillan | English |
| In the Heart of a Fool White's second major novel — a sprawling story of a Kansas town torn between the forces of labor and capital, idealism and corruption; more ambitious than A Certain Rich Man but less controlled, reflecting White's deepening engagement with the era's social conflicts. | 1918 | Macmillan | English |
| Masks in a Pageant White's collection of political portraits — character studies of the presidents and political figures he knew personally from McKinley through Coolidge; journalism elevated to literature by White's gift for capturing personality through anecdote and observation. | 1928 | Macmillan | English |
| Stratagems and Spoils White's collection of political short stories — dramatizing the mechanics of American machine politics, boss rule, and democratic struggle in small-town and state-level settings; fiction as political education, drawing on White's intimate knowledge of how American politics actually works. | 1901 | Scribner's | English |
| The Autobiography of William Allen White White's posthumous autobiography — the life of America's most famous small-town newspaper editor, from his Kansas boyhood through five decades as the voice of Middle American progressivism; a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the great American memoirs. | 1946 | Macmillan | English |
| The Court of Boyville White's collection of stories about childhood in a Kansas town — capturing the society of boys with its hierarchies, rituals, cruelties, and loyalties; an early work that established White's gift for observing small-town American life with humor and affection. | 1899 | Doubleday & McClure | English |
| The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me White's humorous account of his World War I inspection tour of the Western Front with Henry Allen — two portly middle-aged Kansas newspapermen encountering the reality of modern warfare; a book that balances comedy with genuine horror at what they witnessed. | 1918 | Macmillan | English |
| The Old Order Changeth White's progressive manifesto — arguing that America is undergoing a fundamental transformation from rule by business oligarchy to genuine democracy, and that this transformation (the progressive movement) is as significant as the founding itself. | 1910 | Macmillan | English |
| What's the Matter with Kansas? White's famous editorial — originally a newspaper column attacking the Populist movement that became the most reprinted editorial in American history; the piece that made White nationally famous overnight and allied him with McKinley Republicanism against Bryan's agrarian radicalism. | 1896 | Emporia Gazette | English |
| Woodrow Wilson: The Man, His Times, and His Task White's biography of Wilson — written by a Republican progressive who admired Wilson's idealism while disagreeing with his methods; a portrait of the scholar-president whose League of Nations vision broke his health and divided the country. | 1924 | Houghton Mifflin | English |