KANSAS JOURNALISM
Everything I had ever heard of Kansas, every one I had ever met from
Kansas, everything I had ever imagined about Kansas, made me anxious to
invade that State. With the exception of California, there was no State
about which I felt such a consuming curiosity. Kansas is, and always has
been, a State of freaks and wonders, of strange contrasts, of
individualities strong and sometimes weird, of ideas and ideals, and of
apocryphal occurrences.
Just think what Kansas has been, and has had, and is! Think of the
border warfare over slavery which began as early as 1855; of settlers,
traveling out to "bleeding Kansas" overland, from New England, merely to
add their abolition votes; of early struggles with the soil, and of the
final triumph. Kansas is to-day the first wheat State, the fourth State
in the value of its assessed property (New York, Pennsylvania, and
Massachusetts only outranking it), and the only State in the Union which
is absolutely free from debt. It has a more American population, greater
wealth and fewer mortgages per capita, more women running for office,
more religious conservatism, more political radicalism, more students
in higher educational institutions in proportion to its population, more
homogeneity, more individualism, and more nasal voices than any other
State. As Colonel Nelson said to me: "All these new ideas they are
getting everywhere else are old ideas in Kansas." And why shouldn't that
be true, since Kansas is the State of Sockless Jerry Simpson, William
Allen White, Ed Howe, Walt Mason, Stubbs, Funston, Henry Allen, Victor
Murdock, and Harry Kemp; the State of Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation,
and Mary Ellen Lease--the same sweet Mary Ellen who remarked that
"Kansas ought to raise less corn and more hell!"
Kansas used to believe in Populism and free silver. It now believes in
hot summers and a hot hereafter. It is a prohibition State in which
prohibition actually works; a State like nothing so much as some
scriptural kingdom--a land of floods, droughts, cyclones, and enormous
crops; of prophets and of plagues. And in the last two items it has
sometimes seemed to actually outdo the Bible by combining plague and
prophet in a single individual: for instance, Carrie Nation, or again,
Harry Kemp, "the tramp poet of Kansas," who is by way of being a kind of
Carrie Nation of convention. Only last year Kansas performed one of her
biblical feats, when she managed, somehow, to cause the water, in the
deep well supplying the town of Girard, to turn hot. But that is nothing
to what she has done. Do you remember the plague of grasshoppers? Not in
the whole Bible is there to be found a more perfect pestilence than
that one, which occurred in Kansas in 1872. One day a cloud appeared
before the sun. It came nearer and nearer and grew into a strange,
glistening thing. At midday it was dark as night. Then, from the air,
the grasshoppers commenced to come, like a heavy rain. They soon covered
the ground. Railroad trains were stopped by them. They attacked the
crops, which were just ready to be harvested, eating every green thing,
and even getting at the roots. Then, on the second day, they all arose,
making a great cloud, as before, and turning the day black again. Nor
can any man say whence they came or whither they departed.
Among the homely philosophers developed through Kansas journalism
several are widely known, most celebrated among them all being Ed Howe
of the Atchison "Globe," William Allen White of the Emporia "Gazette,"
and Walt Mason of the same paper.
Howe is sixty years of age. He was owner and editor of the "Globe" for
more than thirty years, but four years ago, when his paper gave him a
net income of sixty dollars per day, he turned it over to his son and
retired to his country place, "Potato Hill," whence he issues occasional
manifestos.
Some of Howe's characteristic paragraphs from the "Globe" have been
collected and published in book form, under the title, "Country Town
Sayings." Here are a few examples of his homely humor and philosophy:
So many things go wrong that we are tired of becoming indignant.
Watch the flies on cold mornings; that is the way you will feel and
act when you are old.
There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect
something for nothing, but we all do and call it hope.
When half the men become fond of doing a thing, the other half
prohibit it by law.
Sometimes I think that I have nothing to be thankful for, but when
I remember that I am not a woman I am content. Any one who is
compelled to kiss a man and pretend to like it is entitled to
sympathy.
Somehow every one hates to see an unusually pretty girl get
married. It is like taking a bite out of a very fine-looking peach.
What people say behind your back is your standing in the community
in which you live.
A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
Walt Mason is another Kansas philosopher-humorist. Recently he published
in "Collier's Weekly" an article describing life, particularly with
regard to prohibition and its effects, in his "hum town," Emporia.
Emporia is probably as well known as any town of its size in the land.
It has, as Mason puts it, "ten thousand people, including William Allen
White." Including Walt Mason, then, it must have about eleven thousand.
Mason's article told how Stubbs, on becoming Governor of Kansas,
enforced the prohibition laws, and of the fine effect of actual
prohibition in Emporia. "No town in the world," he declares, "wears a
tighter lid. There is no drunkenness because there is nothing to drink
stiffer than pink lemonade. You will see a unicorn as soon as you will
see a drunken man in the streets of the town. Emporia has reared a
generation of young men who don't know what alcohol tastes like, who
have never seen the inside of a saloon. Many of them never saw the
outside of one. They go forth into the world to seek their fortunes
without the handicap of an acquired thirst. All Emporia's future
generations of young men will be similarly clean, for the town knows
that a tight lid is the greatest possible blessing and nobody will ever
dare attempt to pry it loose."
Having spent a year in the prohibition State of Maine, I was skeptical
as to the feasibility of a practical prohibition. Prohibition in Maine,
when I was there, was simply a joke--and a bad joke at that, for it
involved bad liquor. Every man in the State who wanted drink knew where
to get it, so long as he was satisfied with poor beer, or whisky of
about the quality of spar varnish. Never have I seen more drunkenness
than in that State. The slight added difficulty of getting drink only
made men want it more, and it seemed to me that, when they got it, they
drank more at a sitting than they would have, had liquor been more
generally accessible.
In Kansas it is different. There the law is enforced. Blind pigs hardly
exist, and bootleggers are rare birds who, if they persist in
bootlegging, are rapidly converted into jailbirds. The New York
"Tribune" printed, recently, a letter stating that prohibition is a
signal failure in Kansas, that there is more drinking there than ever
before, and that "under the seats of all the automobiles in Kansas there
is a good-sized canteen." Whether there is more drinking in Kansas than
ever before, I cannot say. I do know, however, both from personal
observation and from reliable testimony, that there is practically no
drinking in the portions of the State I visited. As I am not a
prohibitionist, this statement is nonpartizan. But I may add, after
having seen the results of prohibition in Kansas, I look upon it with
more favor. Indeed, I am a partial convert; that is, I believe in it for
you. And whatever are your views on prohibition, I think you will admit
that it is a pretty temperate State in which a girl can grow to
womanhood and say what one Kansas girl said to me: that she never saw a
drunken man until she moved away from Kansas.
* * * * *
Three religious manifestations occurred while I was in Kansas. A negro
preacher came out with a platform declaring definitely in favor of a
"hot hell," another preacher affirmed that he had the answer to the "six
riddles of the universe," and William Allen White came out with the news
that he had "got religion."
Now, if William Allen White of the Emporia "Gazette" really has done
that, a number of consequences are likely to occur. For one thing, a
good many Americans who follow, with interest, Mr. White's opinions, are
likely also to follow him in this; and if they fail to do so
voluntarily, they are likely to get religion stuffed right down their
throats. If White decides that it is good for them, they'll get it,
never fear! For White's the kind of man who gives us what is good for
us, even if it kills us. Another probable result of White's coming out
in the "Gazette" in favor of religion would be the simultaneous
appearance, in the "Gazette," of anti-religious propaganda by Walt
Mason. That is the way the "Gazette" is run. White is the proprietor and
has his say as editor, but Walt Mason, who is associated with him on the
"Gazette," also has _his_ say, and his say is far from being dictated by
the publisher. White, for instance, favors woman suffrage; Mason does
not. White is a progressive; Mason is a standpatter. White believes in
the commission form of government, which Emporia has; Mason does not.
Mason believes in White for Governor of Kansas, whereas White, himself,
protests passionately that the "Gazette" is against "that man White."
Says a "Gazette" editorial, apropos of a movement to nominate White on
the Progressive ticket:
We are onto that man White. Perhaps he pays his debts. He may be
kind to his family. But he is not the man to run for Governor. And
if he is a candidate for Governor or for any other office, we
propose to tell the truth about him--how he robbed the county with
a padded printing bill, how he offered to trade off his support to
a Congressman for a Government building, how he blackmailed good
citizens and has run a bulldozing, disreputable newspaper in this
town for twenty years, and has grafted off business men and sold
fake mining stock and advocated anarchy and assassinations.
These are but a few preliminary things that occur to us as the
moment passes. We shall speak plainly hereafter. A word to the wise
gathers no moss.
That is the way they run the Emporia "Gazette." It is a kind of forum in
which White and Mason air their different points of view, for, as Mason
said to me: "The only public question on which White and I agree is the
infallibility of the groundhog as a weather prophet."
White and Colonel Nelson of the Kansas City "Star" are great friends and
great admirers of each other. One day they were talking together about
politics.
"I hear," said Colonel Nelson, "that Shannon (Shannon is the Democratic
boss of Kansas City) says he wants to live long enough to go to the
State Legislature and get a law passed making it only a misdemeanor to
kill an editor."
"Colonel," replied White, "I think such a law would be too drastic. I
think editors should be protected during the mating season and while
caring for their young. And, furthermore, I think no man should be
allowed to kill more editors at any time than he and his family can
eat."