In 1895, White bought the
Emporia Gazette for $3,000 and became its editor, remaining it for the rest of his life. In 1896 a White editorial titled "
What's the Matter With Kansas?" attracted national attention with a scathing attack on
William Jennings Bryan, the
Democrats, and the
Populists. White sharply ridiculed Populist leaders for letting Kansas slip into
economic stagnation and not keeping up economically with neighboring states because their anti-business policies frightened away economic capital from the state. White wrote: "There are two ideas of government," said our noble Bryan at Chicago. "There are those who believe that if you legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, this prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class and rest upon them." That's the stuff! Give the prosperous man the dickens! Legislate the thriftless man into ease, whack the stuffing out of the creditors and tell the debtors who borrowed the money five years ago when money "per capita" was greater than it is now, that the contraction of currency gives him a right to repudiate. The Republicans sent out hundreds of thousands of copies of the editorial in support of
William McKinley during the intensely fought
presidential election of 1896, providing White with national exposure. With his warm sense of humor, articulate editorial pen, and uncommon sense approach to life, White soon became known throughout the country. His
Gazette editorials were widely reprinted; he wrote stories on politics syndicated by the
George Matthew Adams Service; and he published many books, including biographies of
Woodrow Wilson and
Calvin Coolidge. "What's the Matter With Kansas?" and "Mary White" (a tribute to his 16-year-old daughter on her death in 1921) were his best-known writings. Locally he was known as the greatest booster for Emporia. He won a
1923 Pulitzer Prize for his editorial "
To an Anxious Friend", published July 27, 1922, after being arrested in a dispute over
free speech following objections to the way the state of Kansas handled the men who participated in the
Great Railroad Strike of 1922.
Small-town ideals In his novels and short stories, White developed his idea of the small town as a metaphor for understanding social change and for preaching the necessity of community. While he expressed his views in terms of the small town, he tailored his rhetoric to the needs and values of emerging urban America. The cynicism of the
post-World War I world stilled his imaginary literature, but for the remainder of his life he continued to propagate his vision of small-town community. He opposed
chain stores and
mail order firms as a threat to the business owner on
Main Street. The
Great Depression shook his faith in a cooperative, selfless, middle-class America. Like most old
Progressives his attitude toward the
New Deal was ambivalent: President
Franklin D. Roosevelt cared for the country and was personally attractive, but White considered his solutions haphazard. White saw the country uniting behind old ideals by 1940, in the face of foreign threats.
Fighting corruption White sought to encourage a viable moral order that would provide the nation with a sense of community. He recognized the powerful forces of corruption but called for slow, remedial change having its origin in the middle class. In his novel
In the Heart of a Fool (1918), White fully developed the idea that reform remained the soundest ally of
property rights. He felt that the
Spanish–American War fostered political unity, and believed that a moral victory and an advance in civilization would be compensation for the devastation of
World War I. White concluded that democracy in the New Era inevitably lacked direction, and the New Deal found him a baffled spectator. Nevertheless, he clung to his vision of a cooperative society until his death in 1944. ==Politics==