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Crusader for Democracy: The Political Life of William Allen White
“Roosevelt bit me and I went mad,” William Allen White said of his first encounter with Teddy in 1897. He grudgingly praised Franklin D. Roosevelt’s performance at the 1943 Casablanca Conference with, “We who hate your gaudy guts salute you.” Editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette , the Sage of Emporia is known for his quips, quotations, and a sharply crafted view from Main Street expressed in his 1896 essay, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” But for all his carefully cultivated small-town sagacity, William Allen White (1868–1944) was a public figure and political operator on a grand scale. Writing the first biography in a half-century to look at this side of White’s character and career, Charles Delgadillo brings to life a leading light of a once-widespread liberal Republican movement that has largely become extinct.
White built his reputation as the voice of the midwestern middle class through his nationally syndicated articles and editorials. Crusader for Democracy takes us behind the veneer of the small-town newspaperman to show us the sophisticated, well-traveled man of the world who rubbed elbows with local, state, and national politicians, world-renowned journalists and authors, political activists of all kinds, and every president from William McKinley to FDR. Paradoxically, White, the master of insider politics, was also an insurgent who fought a fifty-year crusade for liberal reform, usually through and sometimes against the Republican Party. Delgadillo’s vivid portrait gives readers a behind-the-scenes view of the twentieth-century political and economic order in the making, with William Allen White firmly in the middle, deploying the soft power of friendship and influence to advance the cause of the common man and the promise of equal opportunity as the very foundation of American democracy.
White built his reputation as the voice of the midwestern middle class through his nationally syndicated articles and editorials. Crusader for Democracy takes us behind the veneer of the small-town newspaperman to show us the sophisticated, well-traveled man of the world who rubbed elbows with local, state, and national politicians, world-renowned journalists and authors, political activists of all kinds, and every president from William McKinley to FDR. Paradoxically, White, the master of insider politics, was also an insurgent who fought a fifty-year crusade for liberal reform, usually through and sometimes against the Republican Party. Delgadillo’s vivid portrait gives readers a behind-the-scenes view of the twentieth-century political and economic order in the making, with William Allen White firmly in the middle, deploying the soft power of friendship and influence to advance the cause of the common man and the promise of equal opportunity as the very foundation of American democracy.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published May 25, 2018
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September 9, 2018
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, William Allen White, nominally the editor of a small town Kansas newspaper, The Emporia Gazette, was one of the most influential political commentators in America. His columns were syndicated by hundreds of newspapers across America. (The advent of rural delivery of newspapers was the communications revolution of the time and newspapers were hugely influential.) White had the ear of politicians of both parties at the state and national level.
Author Charles Delgadillo has given us a carefully researched narrative of White’s life and times.
White was a staunch Republican at a time when a sizable wing of the Republican Party was progressive in a way that seems almost incomprehensible today. It was the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” in 1904, urging conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, consumer protection, and a rejection of the Gilded Age’s crass materialism. Kansas and Wisconsin, under Governor Robert La Follette, were at the forefront of the Progressive movement at the state level.
The high water mark for Progressives may have been 1908 when Roosevelt was engaged in trust busting and Federal regulation, and at the state level prison, and school reforms were enacted, railroad rates were regulated, and restrictions on lobbying were adopted.
Taft, as Teddy Roosevelt’s successor, was less committed to a Progressive agenda, and America’s entry into World War I shifted national priorities. Yet, as a mirror image of the current factions of the Republican Party, the Midwest was the Progressive wing of the Republican Party and the East was conservative.
By the 1920s, with the shift of the American population from farms to the cities, a cultural struggle arose between cosmopolitan and rural cultures. White was a Kansas chauvinist. The Midwest, in White’s eyes, was the heart of American civilization and was under attack by outside forces. He saw Kansas as a laboratory for Progressive experiments, including an active government, state-owned enterprises, railroad and utility regulation, laws protecting organized labor, and a public university system that guaranteed admission to all high school graduates.
Offsetting this was White’s suspicion of cities, which he saw as riddled with crime, corruption, and moral failings in part because the population of native-born whites was diluted by southern and eastern European immigrants as well as by African Americans.
Nonetheless, White was a complex man and he battled the rise of the Ku Klux Kan in Kansas, running an independent for Governor in 1924 because he felt the Republican and Democratic candidates were not standing up to the Klan. He performed well enough to undercut the Klan’s influence in the state. Early in his career, White had allied himself with political bosses in Kansas as a way to get things done, but by 1928 he attacked the Tammany Hall connections of presidential candidate Al Smith.
White tried unsuccessfully to push Hoover to take a much more activist government program to fight the Depression, arguing for unemployment relief, national economic planning, a supportive farm policy, and old age pensions. Funding would be through an inheritance tax. Once Franklin Roosevelt took office, White argued for additional New Deal initiatives — more market reform, protection for labor unions, social insurance and pensions, and progressive taxation.
And of relevance to the political climate of today, White abhorred demagogues such as Huey Long. White wrote that a quarter or a third of the population were “morons”, susceptible to fascist-leaning dictators or even a reactionary Republican who would build a dictatorship. Yet while he supported most of FDR’s programs, he was a loyal Republican and could never go so far as to support a Democrat for the office of the presidency.
Author Delgadillo has written a carefully researched account of William Allen White’s times, and at its best it illuminates decades of political debate in America that is relevant today. I found the last third of the book to be the most interesting, perhaps because in early chapters there is a great deal of detail about obscure characters in 19th Century Kansas politics. It’s easy to get bogged down even though the account illustrates the challenges White faced in threading between his idealism and practical politics of his era.
I would have liked to see more extensive quotes from White’s writing (we have little understanding of why he was so persuasive). It would have been helpful to be provided with data on demographic change and income distribution to help understand the economic and cultural changes sweeping the country at the time of White’s influence. But this is a very good exploration of a man and his times. Most important, this history has relevance to our current unsettled debate over values, the role of government, and the morality of the individual who occupies the White House.
Author Charles Delgadillo has given us a carefully researched narrative of White’s life and times.
White was a staunch Republican at a time when a sizable wing of the Republican Party was progressive in a way that seems almost incomprehensible today. It was the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” in 1904, urging conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, consumer protection, and a rejection of the Gilded Age’s crass materialism. Kansas and Wisconsin, under Governor Robert La Follette, were at the forefront of the Progressive movement at the state level.
The high water mark for Progressives may have been 1908 when Roosevelt was engaged in trust busting and Federal regulation, and at the state level prison, and school reforms were enacted, railroad rates were regulated, and restrictions on lobbying were adopted.
Taft, as Teddy Roosevelt’s successor, was less committed to a Progressive agenda, and America’s entry into World War I shifted national priorities. Yet, as a mirror image of the current factions of the Republican Party, the Midwest was the Progressive wing of the Republican Party and the East was conservative.
By the 1920s, with the shift of the American population from farms to the cities, a cultural struggle arose between cosmopolitan and rural cultures. White was a Kansas chauvinist. The Midwest, in White’s eyes, was the heart of American civilization and was under attack by outside forces. He saw Kansas as a laboratory for Progressive experiments, including an active government, state-owned enterprises, railroad and utility regulation, laws protecting organized labor, and a public university system that guaranteed admission to all high school graduates.
Offsetting this was White’s suspicion of cities, which he saw as riddled with crime, corruption, and moral failings in part because the population of native-born whites was diluted by southern and eastern European immigrants as well as by African Americans.
Nonetheless, White was a complex man and he battled the rise of the Ku Klux Kan in Kansas, running an independent for Governor in 1924 because he felt the Republican and Democratic candidates were not standing up to the Klan. He performed well enough to undercut the Klan’s influence in the state. Early in his career, White had allied himself with political bosses in Kansas as a way to get things done, but by 1928 he attacked the Tammany Hall connections of presidential candidate Al Smith.
White tried unsuccessfully to push Hoover to take a much more activist government program to fight the Depression, arguing for unemployment relief, national economic planning, a supportive farm policy, and old age pensions. Funding would be through an inheritance tax. Once Franklin Roosevelt took office, White argued for additional New Deal initiatives — more market reform, protection for labor unions, social insurance and pensions, and progressive taxation.
And of relevance to the political climate of today, White abhorred demagogues such as Huey Long. White wrote that a quarter or a third of the population were “morons”, susceptible to fascist-leaning dictators or even a reactionary Republican who would build a dictatorship. Yet while he supported most of FDR’s programs, he was a loyal Republican and could never go so far as to support a Democrat for the office of the presidency.
Author Delgadillo has written a carefully researched account of William Allen White’s times, and at its best it illuminates decades of political debate in America that is relevant today. I found the last third of the book to be the most interesting, perhaps because in early chapters there is a great deal of detail about obscure characters in 19th Century Kansas politics. It’s easy to get bogged down even though the account illustrates the challenges White faced in threading between his idealism and practical politics of his era.
I would have liked to see more extensive quotes from White’s writing (we have little understanding of why he was so persuasive). It would have been helpful to be provided with data on demographic change and income distribution to help understand the economic and cultural changes sweeping the country at the time of White’s influence. But this is a very good exploration of a man and his times. Most important, this history has relevance to our current unsettled debate over values, the role of government, and the morality of the individual who occupies the White House.
November 19, 2018
Author Charles Delgadillo has done extensive research to bring Emporia (Kansas) Gazette editor and early 20th century political influencer William Allen White to life. From tiny Emporia William White was able to first become a significant force in the Republican party (as a Bull Moose progressive) and subsequently nationally, becoming a friend of and sometime advisor to US Presidents from TR to FDR. Bill White was a true "self-made man" and wanted that opportunity for all Americans. Congratulations to Mr Delgadillo on a superb biography.
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