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.