 The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Frank Reddick and Parker Fennelly in from Emporia, Kansas. People have different ways of saying something is American. They say it's American as apple pie or as chewing gum or as the comic strip or as the corner drug store. All these things are characteristically American, there's no doubt. But we are here concerned with something more truly and more proudly American than any of these. A man. A man who is first citizen and average citizen of his hometown. An average, small, Midwestern American town. A man who is also a citizen of all his country, known, loved and respected by most of his fellow citizens. Although William Allen White of Emporia, Kansas is dead, his memory is evergreen and his name is already a symbol of what is good and decent and forward-sinking in America. We present an original radio play by Peter Lyon entitled From Emporia, Kansas starring Frank Reddick as William Allen White and Parker Fennelly as his neighbor on the Cavalcade of America. A new editor hopes to live here until he is the old editor until some of the visions which rise before him shall have come true. He hopes always to sign from Emporia after his name when he's abroad and he trusts that he may so endear himself to the people that they will be as proud of the first words of the signature as he is of the last words. The new editor of the Gazette is in the newspaper business to make an honest living and to leave an honest name behind. I submit that's quite a thought. That was what Will White wrote in his first editorial in the Gazette in 1895. I wonder if there's anybody who can look back 50 years to when he was a young man and say, yes, I wrote that and I've lived up to every word of it too. Matter of fact, I was around the day Will White started himself off on the road to getting famous. Those were bad days for farmers. Wheat selling at 30 cents, corn at 16, butter 10, eggs six, hogs two and a half. In Kansas we were all pretty sore and most of us were sore at Will White because of the editorials he wrote in his Gazette calling us all failures. There we were on commercial street and there he came down from the post office arms full of mail and newspapers. Silly Willie, we called him. Hey, Silly Willie. Here comes the big success, knows how to tell us all what to do. Hey, hey, Willie, I hear you think we're all failures. Got any new advice for farmers, Willie? Now, fellas, I don't... I don't, well, listen up, Willie. Tell us all about it right here. Yeah, tell us what the matter was. Well, if you wouldn't all shout at once, I'd tell you soon enough. The trouble with Kansas is... Oh, right, Willie, right. Yeah. All right, I will. If you've got the brains to read, you'll see it all in the Gazette tomorrow. Temperature was 107 degrees. Maybe that's why we couldn't help teasing young Will White some. Anyway, he was in a hurry. Going to catch a train that day was for a vacation in Colorado. He wrote his piece for the paper in a big hurry. Come on, copy for the editorial page, Mr. White. You got some ready? I'm just finishing. There. Saying something more to the farmers? That's right. Trouble is, I can never think to say these things when I get into arguments. Got a title for it yet? Yeah, call it... What's the matter with Kansas? This is the last paragraph. How's it sound to you? Oh, yes, Kansas is a great state. Here are people fleeing from it by the score every day. Capital going out of the state by the hundreds of dollars. And every industry but farming paralyzed. What's the matter with Kansas? Nothing under the shining sun. She's losing wealth, population and standing. Kansas is all right. She has started into raise hell instead of corn. And she seems to have an overproduction. But that doesn't matter. Kansas never did believe in diversified crops. Kansas is all right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Kansas. Every prospect pleases. And only man is vile. That's it, huh? Yeah, not very good, is it? Well, it'll have to do. I'm gonna have to run or miss my train. And Will White went off to Colorado for his vacation. And in Chicago, some big newspaper publisher happened to see Will's editorial, What's the Matter with Kansas, He printed it. And then a big publisher in New York, he printed it. And then about 200 Republican papers all over the country. They printed it. And then Mark Hanna, who was the boss of the Republican Party in those days, he saw it. And he ordered one million reprints of it and sent it out all over. And that editorial, well, he did a lot to elect in McKinley as president. When Will White come back from his vacation, there he was, famous, and got a letter of introduction to President McKinley from Mark Hanna. What did he say, Will? Read it. Honorable William McKinley, my dear sir, this will introduce Mr. W. A. White who wrote What's the Matter with Kansas. I have a great admiration for this young man and bespeak for him your kind consideration. He wants no office. It's certainly yours, Mark Hanna. Well, it doesn't sound rude. I wonder why McKinley was rude to you, Will. Oh. Thought I wanted a job, probably. But Mr. Hanna said right there, he wants no office. I know, Sally, I know. I guess a president just can't believe a sentence like that about anybody. You know what I'm going to do? What? I'm going to frame that letter and put it up over my desk, down at the Gazette. I want to keep that sentence in mind. He wants no office. I want to make sure I'll remember it. Will White remembered that rule all his life? It must have been hard sometimes, too, knowing the people he did. McKinley, the Wars, and Cleveland, and Teddy Roosevelt, all the presidents, Wilson, Hoover, Coolidge, he knew them. And they signed their pictures to him and he framed them and hung them up on his office wall. To some of them, he was more than just a country newspaper editor that they gave their autographed pictures to. I remember one evening in spring, quite a time ago it was, sitting on the porch, reading the Gazette after supper, my wife next to me. Ah. Sounds like a nice lunch. What's that, Herb? A little item here in the Gazette. Yes? He says W.A. White launched with the president's family a day or two ago. He says they had oyster soup, boiled chicken, mashed potatoes, string beans, boiled with salt pork in the old fashioned way, and baked apples. That in the White House? I guess so. I guess if you have lunch with the president's family, you have it in the White House. That meal sounds like it might have been served in Emporium. And so my next door neighbor was a famous man, known all over the country. And there he stayed, right there in Emporium. Not changing much, far as we can see. Getting a little fatter, sure. Losing a little more hair. But Ed Anderson still tailored his clothes for him. He still liked to pick out the first cantaloupe of the season, the grossest. He got about 20 dozen fancy offers at Fancy Sums to take jobs in the East. But I guess it was like what he told us in Emporium in an editorial in the Gazette. What we want, what we shall have, is the royal American privilege of living and dying in a country town. Running a country newspaper, saying what we please, when we please, how we please, and the home we please. And we like that. Especially coming from a man who knew all the presidents and had written a big bestseller novel, sold a quarter of a million copies. But I guess Will White was an Emporian, just like the rest of us, and proud of boosting his hometown. Besides, his family was settled here and growing up here. By 1921, young Bill was in his 20s, and Will's daughter, Mary, was pretty near 17. I remember the afternoon in May when Mary went horseback riding at school. She passed by me, walking a horse slow. Oh, go ahead. Hi, Mary. Flattered me to have her call me, Uncle. She was such a fine, friendly girl. Long, big tails and a red hair ribbon. I watched her wheel a horse into North Merchant Street, kick him into a lope, and take a cowboy hat off as she did. I watched her as she started to wave at a high school friend. Saw a horse veer suddenly and headed in toward the sidewalk at a low-hanging branch of a tree, and she with her head turned the other way, still watching her friend. We carried Mary back to her home. Police stopped all traffic. Charlie O'Brien, the traffic cop, he stood up at the head of the block. Telephone companies stopped all incoming calls so that everything would be quiet, while Doc von Kennen did his best for her. A few days later, Will White sat in his office writing, and I guess it was one of the few times the door was ever closed. She was the happiest thing in the world, and she was happy because she was enlarging her horizon. She came to know all sorts and conditions of men. Charlie O'Brien, the traffic cop, was one of her best friends. W. L. Holtz, the Latin teacher, was another. Tom O'Connor, farmer, politician. And Reverend J. H. J. Rice, preacher and police judge. And Frank Beach, music master, were special friends. And all the girls, black and white, above the track and below the track, in Pepville and Stringtown were among her acquaintances. She loved to roll it. Her humor was a continual bubble of joy. She was mischievous, without malice, as full of force as an old shoe. No angel was Mary White, and an easy girl to live with, but she never nursed a grouch five minutes in her life. Her funeral yesterday at the congregational church was as she would have wished it. No singing, no flowers, except the big bunch of roses from her brother Bill's Harvard classman. Heavens, how proud they would have made her. And the red roses from the Gazette forces invasors at her head and feet, the Lord's prayer by her friends in high school. And that was all. A rift in the clouds in a gray day through a shaft of sunlight on a coffin, as a nervous, energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But the soul of her, a glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn. You are listening to Frank Redick as William Allen White and Parker Fennelly as his neighbor in a radio play entitled From Emporia, Kansas on the Cavalcade of America sponsored by Dupont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Our Cavalcade tonight is a radio appreciation of a man who was at once an editor of a small country newspaper, a political pundit, a confident friend and biographer of presidents, the author of a best-selling novel, a politician, a propagandist, a well-traveled and cultured gentleman of the world, a discerning critic and an intimate of everybody from the corner drugstore to the White House. But always William Allen White's closest friends were his fellow Emporians, his neighbors. Always his editorial judgments were keyed to the closest possible approximations of what his fellow Americans were thinking. For example, a few years back there was a strike with the railroad workers. It was during peacetime. It wasn't like today when there's no excuse for any strike. The strike I'm talking about, oh I guess Will White was about 75% in favor of the strikers. After all, Emporia is a railroad town. Storekeepers had signs in the windows announcing they were 100% for the strikers. About that time Will White was in his office chewing on his red fountain pen when one of the reporters came in. Oh, Gene, Mr. White, something just came over the wire from Associated Press. Thought you might like to have a look at it. Over the wire? Oh, what's it about? Hey. Thought that might make you sit up. This dispatch says Governor Henry Allen has ordered all the storekeepers to take those signs supporting the strikers out of the windows. That's what I thought it said. What the deuce is Henry up to? If a man can't say what he thinks without disobeying the law. Well, I tell the printers you've got your subject for the Mars editorial. Now, you wait a minute, Gene. We're going to try something right here and now. Have the printers make up a sign saying that the Gazette supports the strikers. Let's see. Supports the strikers. Has Henry gone out of his mind? Supports the strikers. 49%. We'll start and then we'll see where they go up a point today, huh? I don't understand it. Now lift the strike glass until tomorrow. We'll put up another saying we support them 50%. Next day, 51%. If 49% sympathy is permissible, in the next 50 days we'll see just where violation of the law begins. Good. I see. I thought Henry was wrong enough opposing the strike. Now he's moving in on free speech and a free press. Well, it looked as though 52% was the danger line. A man in uniform came into the Gazette offices three days later. William Allen White? Yes, I'm W.A. White. I'm here to order you to remove the sign in your window which reads that you support the railroad strikers 52%. No. I'm afraid that I can't fall in with your request. I don't know the law which forbids me to display my opinions on any matter such as this one. Sorry, Mr. White. I'll have to place you under arrest. The governor came to employer and made a speech. But in the next few days he made it pretty clear he wasn't going to put W.A. White up before a judge and try him. He had one excuse for another, but it all boiled down to no trial. Well, he sat at his typewriter and pecked away for a while, came up with this and addressed it right to the governor. You can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people. And alas, they're folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison and the wisdom will survive. That is the history of the race. It is the proof of man's kinship with God. You say that freedom of utterance is not the time of stress. I reply with a sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. This nation will survive. This state will prosper. The orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold by voice, posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in this world. They gave Will White the Pulitzer Prize for that editorial and they dismissed the case against him. But it wasn't the last fight he got into. Not by a long shot. There was the day when he got back to Emporia from the state capital at Fika and his wife met him in the home. You look tired, Will. Yes, I... I am tired, and that's a fact, Ellie. I've been fighting. Fighting? Whatever about? The Republican Party got together on a candidate for governor. So did the Democrats. Is that something to fight about this year? This year it is. Both candidates have been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and neither candidate will impudiate their support. I've got some news, Ellie. What's that? You know I've never run for any office, but I'm going to run now. I'm going to run for Governor of Kansas. Enough people want me to. Only one plank to free this state from the disgrace of the Ku Klux Klan. Will, have you thought about it? Yeah, I've thought about it all right. This Klan is out for terror, Sally. Terror directed at law-abiding citizens. Negroes, Jews, Catholics. That's the dentist, Sally, and the butcher are friends. That's Sam who comes around to take care of our lawn. Little Peggy, such a friend of Mary's. Because of their skin, their race, or their creed, the Klan is subjecting them to boycott, social ostracism, every form of enhancement. Terror. I'm glad your mind is made up, Will. I'm ashamed, Sally, and I'm afraid. That's why I'm putting my name up for governor. Didn't win the race for governor? Well, didn't. But he sure knocked the Klan into a cocked hat, as far as Kansas was concerned. Yes, sir, that's what a good newspaper editor can do for his community. It was an American talking when Will White said, to make a case against a birthplace, a religion, or a race, is wicked, un-American, and cowardly. A man of Emporia. A man of America. A man with the kind of conscience and the kind of wisdom who could be chairman of the committee to defend America by aiding the Allies. Will White began to listen to the news on the radio in those days? Off the beaches of Dunkirk. It would now appear that out of what was apparently slated to be a full-scale disaster for the British, they will be able to extricate at least the bulk of their men. Their arms and armor, however, are lost forever to the Triumphant Nazi. I think we'll be able to persuade both parties to keep any plank against aid to Britain out of their platforms. I'm beginning at the age of 73 to discover what the word desperate means. You know, they tell the story of the White going to the summer cabin at Estes Park, Colorado. Will getting phone calls from President Roosevelt, from Howell, from Stimpson, Wilkie, Knox, every important man in both parties, and of Mrs. White shoeing the maid out of the room before Will started talking so that the conversations might be kept as private as possible. Only they found out weeks later that their phone was on a party line that all Colorado knew what the president had said to Will White and what Will White had answered. And now it's evening. Set on the lawn here beside me. From here we can just see Will White, his fat little body sprawled in the hammock on his porch, his wife and the rocker beside him. Kansas sun's going down west in the Flint Hills. Will White has eaten his favorite dinner, fried chicken and cantaloupe. He's treating himself to a paw-paw first of the early fall. Tired, Will? A little. Why? I'm a little worried about you. Those Franks and Cannon, too, if you want to know. Frank's a good doctor. He's not divine. There are some things he can't do. Will, he shouldn't talk like that. You sound very earnest, Sally. I am. Uh-uh. Why do you say that? Well, whenever people get too earnest near me, I get a near-oppressable compulsion to giggle. Will. Don't be concerned about the way I think about death, Sally. As I lie here and think, I wouldn't mind another 50 years of life. As it is, I fear life much more keenly than death. But I'm ready to take greedily whichever comes. Will, White is dead now. I don't know about folks in other parts of the country. But in Emporia, we still remember him. And I guess we will for quite a spell. Because after all, Will White was Emporia. Maybe he was America, too. Thank you, Frank Reddick and Parker Fanley. Now, here is Ted Pearson speaking for DuPont. Last year, more than 18,000 industrial workers were killed on the job. And nearly 2 million men and women were injured at work. It's a tragic total. It's gratifying to report that a new world's record for safety has been set by a DuPont plant manufacturing nylon. Nylon so vitally needed for scores of wartime uses that every pound of it DuPont make goes to the armed forces. The cavalcade has three special guests tonight. Colonel John Stillwell, president of the National Safety Council, Mr. W. L. Stabler, manager of the DuPont Nylon plant at Seaford, Delaware, and Mr. Harold L. Miner, manager of the DuPont Safety and Fire Protection Division. And here's Colonel Stillwell. Thank you, Mr. Pearson. I'm especially happy to be here again today honored to the DuPont Company, one of the most safety-minded organizations in the world. For years, DuPont has operated on the principle that all personal injuries can be and should be prevented. DuPont plant management and all employees seem equally eager to prevent every possible accident. The most recent example of this fine enthusiasm for accident prevention is the world's new safety record, established by the DuPont Nylon plant at Seaford, Delaware. This DuPont plant has established a record of over 16 million man hours with no lost time injuries. Thus breaking a record of four years standing, which had been set in a much less hazardous industry. Such a magnificent safety record achieved in time of war is a real contribution in the campaign the National Safety Council is conducting to save manpower for war power. It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to present it this time to Mr. W. L. Stabler, manager of the Seaford Nylon plant at the DuPont Company, the National Safety Council, highest wartime honor, the award for distinguished service to safety. And Mr. Stabler, with this award for an all-time safety record, goes what we call the S. pennant of the Safety Council as tangible evidence of the fact that your plant is truly a safe place in which to work. Thank you, Colonel Stillwell, and thanks to the National Safety Council. I accept this award on behalf of all the employees of the Seaford Nylon plant. It will be a source of inspiration to all of us, and I'm sure it will serve to remind workers everywhere that personal injuries can be prevented even in wartime. And now I have a second pleasant mission to perform. The National Safety Council has voted the DuPont Company itself, another award for its continued successful accident prevention program throughout all its plants. It is with special pleasure, therefore, that I present this pennant to Mr. Harold L. Miner, manager of the Safety and Fire Protection Division of the DuPont Company. This pennant is in addition to the Distinguished Service to Safety Award du-pondering for its 1942 accomplishment. The star on the pennant denotes that DuPont has maintained its excellent safety record for at least a year since receiving the Distinguished Service to Safety Award. Congratulations to the thousands of DuPont workers whose cooperation made possible such a splendid safety achievement. Thank you, Colonel Stillwell, and our gratitude to the National Safety Council. I am happy to accept this award on behalf of the men and women of DuPont. Safety is an important part of the business of our company. I know I speak for all our employees when I say that there will be no let-up in our persistent effort to prevent all personal injuries. Duplicates of this safety pennant will be sent to all DuPont plants and operations to be displayed as an honor and inspiration to the men and women of DuPont. Next Monday evening, Cavalcade presents Boomerang, a fantastic story of a Japanese destroyer that was captured by Americans and in their eager hands became for Japan a terror of destruction, a phantom ship that struck swiftly and without warning against the sons of Nepal. Tonight's Cavalcade Orchestra was directed by Donald Borey. This is Roland Winters sending best wishes from Cavalcade sponsor the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. The Cavalcade of America came to you from New York.