WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

(Written by Mr. White especially for this book.)

I was born in Emporia, Kansas, February 10, 1868, when Emporia was a pioneer village a hundred miles from a railroad. My father came to Emporia in 1859 and my mother in 1855. She was a pioneer school teacher and he a pioneer doctor. She was pure bred Irish, and he of Yankee lineage since 1639. When I was a year old, Emporia became too effete for my parents, and they moved to El Dorado, Kansas. There I grew up. El Dorado was a town of a dozen houses, located on the banks of the Walnut, a sluggish, but a clear and beautiful prairie stream, rock bottom, and spring fed. I grew up in El Dorado, a prairie village boy; went to the large stone school house that "reared its awful form" on the hill above the town before there were any two-story buildings in the place.

In 1884, I was graduated from the town high school, and went to the College of Emporia for a year; worked a year as a printer's devil; learned something of the printer's trade; went to school for another year, working in the afternoons and Saturdays at the printer's case; became a reporter on the Emporia News; later went to the State University for three years. After more or less studying and working on the Lawrence papers, I went back to El Dorado as manager of the El Dorado Republican for State Senator T. B. Murdock.

From the El Dorado Republican, I went to Kansas City to work for the Kansas City Journal, and at 24 became an editorial writer on the Kansas City Star. For three years I worked on the Star, during which time I married Miss Sallie Lindsay, a Kansas City, Kansas, school teacher. In 1895 I bought the Emporia Gazette on credit, without a cent in money, and chiefly with the audacity and impudence of youth. It was then a little paper; I paid three thousand dollars for it, and I have lived in Emporia ever since.

In 1896, I published a book of short stories called The Real Issue; in 1899, another book of short stories called The Court of Boyville. In 1901, I published a third book of short stories called Stratagems and Spoils; in 1906, In Our Town. In 1909, I published my first novel, A Certain Rich Man. In 1910, I published a book of political essays called The Old Order Changeth; in 1916, a volume of short stories entitled God's Puppets. A volume half novel and half travel sketches called The Martial Adventures of Henry & Me filled the gap between my two novels; and the second novel, In the Heart of a Fool was published in 1918.

I am a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters; the Short Ballot Association; the International Peace Society; National Civic Federation; National Academy of Political Science; have honorary degrees from the College of Emporia, Baker University, and Columbia University of the City of New York; was regent of the Kansas State University from 1905 to 1913. Politically I am a Republican and was elected National Republican Committeeman from Kansas in 1912, but resigned to be Progressive National Committeeman from Kansas that year. I am now a member of the Republican National Committee on Platforms and Policies appointed by the National Chairman, Will S. Hays. I am a trustee of the College of Emporia; a member of the Congregational Church, and of the Elks Lodge, and of no other organization.

William Allen White.

To the above biography a few items about Mr. White's literary work may be added. It was through an editorial that he first became famous. This appeared in the Emporia Gazette in 1896, with the title, "What's the matter with Kansas?" It contained so much good sense, and was written in such vigorous English that it was copied in newspapers all over the country. Perhaps no other editorial ever brought such sudden recognition to its author. In the same year he published his first book, The Real Issue, a volume of short stories. Some of them pictured the life of a small town, some centered about politics, and some were stories of small boys. These three subjects were the themes of most of Mr. White's later books.

Stratagems and Spoils, a volume of short stories, dealt chiefly with politics, as seen from the inside. In Our Town, from which "The Passing of Priscilla Winthrop" is taken, belongs to the studies of small-town life. His first novel, A Certain Rich Man, was published in 1909. Its theme is the development of an American multi-millionaire, from his beginning as a small business man with a reputation for close dealing, his success, his reaching out to greater schemes, growing more and more unscrupulous in his methods, until at last he achieves the great wealth he had sought, but in winning it he loses his soul.

This book was written during a vacation in the Colorado mountains. His family were established in a log cabin, and he set up a tent near by for a workshop. This is his account of his method of writing:

My working day was supposed to begin at nine o'clock in the morning, but the truth is I seldom reached the tent before ten. Then it took me some time to get down to work. From then on until late in the afternoon I would sit at my typewriter, chew my tongue, and pound away. Each night I read to my wife what I had written that day, and Mrs. White would criticise it. While my work was redhot I couldn't get any perspective on it—each day's installment seemed to me the finest literature I had ever read. She didn't always agree with me. When she disapproved of anything I threw it away—after a row—and re-wrote it.

In his next book, The Old Order Changeth, Mr. White turned aside from fiction to write a series of papers dealing with various reform movements in our national life. He shows how through these much has been done to regain for the people the control of municipal and state affairs. The material for this book was drawn largely from Mr. White's participation in political affairs.

In 1917 he was sent to France as an observer by the American Red Cross. The lighter side of what he saw there was told in The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me. His latest book is a long novel, In the Heart of a Fool, another study of American life of to-day.

All in all, he stands as one of the chief interpreters in fiction of the spirit of the Middle West,—a section of our country which some observers say is the most truly American part of America.