Word: emporia
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When a newspaper editor writes a best-selling editorial, that's news. Such news was made 41 years ago when a 28-year-old, redheaded, roly-poly country editor named William Allen White of The Emporia Gazette wrote for his 485 subscribers a scorching editorial against Bryan's Populists, called What's the Matter with Kansas?* Famed Republican Boss Mark Hanna plastered the U. S. with it in the McKinley-Bryan campaign, offered its author his pick of a job; big city dailies did the same. Editor White turned down both offers, but did not drop...
...none worth getting really sore about. They need a scolding now & then, but what they need oftenest is a pat on the back, maybe some kidding. In his warm but unmaudlin obituaries, Editor White shows the full measure of their place in his half-Irish heart. Even outside Emporia, where all the worst sinners live, he can always find some good word to say for the dead. Only once in 42 years has a man died in the U. S. about whom he could not be generous. That was Publisher Frank Munsey, whose obituary stated briefly that he had "contributed...
...editors." (Editor White figured that out before the election revelations of 1936.) And an editor with no inconsistencies is either a stuffed-shirt or a liar. In current footnotes he points out some of his own. He thinks he used to be too noisy boosting the wonders of Emporia and Kansas. He is "ashamed" that he called Bryan "a shallow fellow," and Socialist Eugene V. Debs "a charlatan," blushes over his flag-waving editorials during the Spanish-American and World Wars, would take back if he could an editorial upholding the guilt of Sacco & Vanzetti, "whose execution was a crime...
After Mr. Huxman's nomination and during the campaign, Mr. William Allen White had the following to say in his Emporia (Kans.) Gazette: "Since the beginning of the State men like Walter Huxman have been shining lights and dependable leaders in this commonwealth. They have rarely won official distinction. In the sixties and seventies and eighties they were called 'the silk-stocking democrats,' men of education, of talent, of character, of vision." I doubt if you would call that the description of a second-string politician...
...Emporia, hometown of Republican Editor William Allen White, an original Landonite, Nominee Roosevelt beamed down from his rear platform at the crowd, remarked: "I don't see Bill White. I wish he were here. I've known Bill for a great many years, and he is a very good friend of mine. I ought to qualify that and say he's a very good friend of mine for three-and-a-half out of every four years...