I just finished a book of Will Rogers newspaper columns and was impressed with the range of Will’s literary lasso.
Not to be confused with “King of the Cowboys” Roy Rogers of Trigger and Dale Evans fame, Rogers became a national hero in the early 1900s. He was an Oklahoma cowhand who performed rope tricks in stage shows, then went on to stardom in Hollywood films and to notoriety as a newspaper columnist.
As a writer, Rogers was wordy, couldn’t spell, capitalized randomly and remained a foreigner to the rules of punctuation. But at the time of his tragic death – in a plane crash near Barrow, Alaska in 1935 – Rogers was into his 13th year as a New York Times columnist.
Rogers assailed politicians with venom he wrapped in candy to ensure his medicine got swallowed, even if only by accident. And he didn’t limit the sting of his whip to politicians. He flayed sacred cows of all breeds, often with a homespun zinger his victims couldn’t see coming and needed a double-take to recognize.
Here is an excerpt of a Rogers column implicating the role of mothers in sanctifying war, as delicate a question as a newspaper writer might address:
“All the wars in the world even if you won em, cant repay one mother for the loss of one son. But even at that when she says to you, “That’s my eldest boys picture there. He was lost in the war,” there is behind that mist in her eyes, a shine of pride, that could never be there if she had to say he was run over by a Ford.”
Brilliant stuff, gently zeroing in on an uncomfortable truth.
Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Rogers was sainted only after his premature death, and after his image was gilded and his more progressive statements were whitewashed or conveniently forgotten by the mainstream. His trademark expression, “I never met a man I didn’t like,” served both as tribute and camouflage for an American writer who championed the working man and succeeded in telling it like it was.
Here are some of Will’s thoughts:
HARD WORK
“I am no believer in this ‘hard work, perseverance, and taking advantage of your opportunities’ that these magazines are so fond of writing some fellow up in. The successful don’t work any harder than the failures. They get what is called in baseball the breaks.”
THANKSGIVING
“This is Thanksgiving. It was started by the Pilgrims, who would give thanks every time they killed an Indian and took more of his land. As years went by and they had all his land, they changed it to a day to give thanks for the bountiful harvest, when the boll-weevil and the protective tariff didn’t remove all cause for thanks.”
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
“We’ve started in to pay some attention to our neighbors on the south. Up to now our calling card to Mexico or Central America has been a gunboat or a bunch of violets shaped like Marines. We could never understand why Mexico wasn’t just crazy about us; for we always had their good-will, and oil and coffee and minerals, at heart.”
‘AMERICA-FIRST’ CLUBS
“After the war, a lot of young men who had never known much about other men from different parts of the Country and different Nationalities, during the days in camps and in France had become to know and like and understand each other, and find out each other’s viewpoint. In other words, it was just the start of what might have been a bad friendship and understanding. But like everything else, when the necessity rises somebody always arises with the remedy, so on investigation it was found that a lot of these same boys were not 100 percent Americans at all. We had been kinder lax in who we had let into our war, everything had come up so hurriedly. Why a lot of them couldent even speak English. A lot of them dident go to churches, or worse than all, a lot of them went to the wrong churches. In fact, there was a million things we found out that we should have found out before we associated with ’em…Of course it was too late now and was all over, and we would just have to charge it off to bad management. But let’s get organized and don’t let it happen again. So get into a (America First) club as soon as you can. I don’t care what it is just so it’s banded together to make somebody else’s life miserable and yours great.”
GANDHI
“They got Gandhi in jail in India. He preached “Liberty without violence.” He swore all his followers to “truth and constant poverty.” He wanted nothing for himself not even the ordinary comforts. He believed in “prayer and renunciation.” Well, naturally a man that bold couldn’t run at large these days. They figured a crazy man like that was liable to get other people to wanting those fanatical things. The whole thing just gives you a pretty fair idea of what would happen to our Savior if he would come on earth today. Why, say, he wouldn’t last near as long as he did then. Civilization has just got past “truth and poverty and renunciation” and all that old junk. Throw those nuts in jail.”
AMERICANISM
“The last few days I have read various addresses made on Lincoln’s Birthday. Every politician always talks about him but none of them ever imitate him. They always make that a day of delivering a lecture on “Americanism.” When an Office Holder, or one that has been found out, can’t think of anything to deliver a speech on, he always falls back on the good old subject, Americanism… This American Animal that I thought I had here is nothing but the big Honest Majority, that you might find in any Country. He is not a politician. He is not a 100 percent American. He is not any organization, either uplift or downfall. In fact I find he don’t belong to anything. He is no decided Political faith or religion. I can’t even find out what religious brand is on him. From his earmarks, he has never made a speech, and announced that he was An American. It looks to me like he is just an animal that has been going along, believing in right, doing right, tending his own business, letting the other fellows alone. He don’t seem to be simple-minded enough to thinking that everything is right and he don’t appear to be cuckoo enough to think everything is wrong.”
WAR AND PATRIOTISM
“Course in the Historys, War always starts “for patriotism’s sake,” but you read on then get down to the Peace Conference and you find that the historian has to write pretty fast and veil things over very cleverly or the reader is apt to discover what changed hands at the finish besides a mere satisfying of honor. You look at all wars and you will find that there is more new deeds for land signed at these peace conferences than there is good will. Did you ever look on a map and see the colonies that Germany lost at Versailles? All these nations that are crying debt cancellations, you never hear ’em mention a word about returning colonies to Germany so she would have a chance to kinder use ’em to help dig up this reparations. So, you see, in wars the slogan is honor, but the object is land. They are always fighting for independence, but at the finish they always seem to be able to use quite a snatch of the defeated opponent’s land to be independent on.”
WAR AS INEVITABLE
“Been reading all the Sunday articles by world known writers, and they all talk war. Well if there is any excuse for anybody fighting at this time, its beyond me. The consensus of opinion is that “so and so has to fight so and so sooner or later,” well I believe if I had to fight a man “sooner or later” I would fight him later, the later the better. The only legitimate reason I can see why Germany and France must fight is, they haven’t fought in 16 years, and the only reason I can see why us and Japan has to fight is, because we haven’t fought before.”
EXTREMISM
“We all know a lot of things that would be good for our Country, but we wouldn’t want to go so far as propose that everybody should start shooting each other till we got them. A fellow shouldent have to kill anybody just to prove they are right. If the Bolsheviks say that religion was holding the people back from progress, why, let it hold them back. Progress ain’t selling that high. If it is, it ain’t worth it. Do anything else in this world than monkey with someone else’s religion. What reasoning of conceit makes anyone think theirs is right? It’s better to let people die ignorant and poor, believing what they have always believed in, than to die prosperous and smart, half believing in something new and doubtful.”
CIVILIZATION
“Civilization has taught us to eat with a fork, but even now if nobody is around we eat with our fingers. In those days, people fought for food and self defense. Nowadays we have diplomats work on wars for years before arranging them. Thats so when its over nobody will know what they were fighting for. We lost thousands, and spent billions, and you could hand a sheet of paper to one million different people and tell me to write down what the last war was for, and the only answers that will be alike will be, “D— if I know.”
So that’s what you call civilization. Civilization is nothing acquiring comforts for ourselves, when in those days they were so hard they dident need em. We will strive to put in another bath, when maby our neighbors cant even put in an extra loaf of bread.”
STANDARD OF LIVING
“Bureau of something or other in Washington announced that ‘America has reached the highest standard of living ever reached by any nation.’ Yes, and if they will just cut down on the original payments we have to make from a dollar to 50 cents we will show you some living. It’s an injustice to ask hard-working people to pay a dollar down. It should be 50 cents down and 50 cents when they come to try and find it to take it back. Course, we don’t get meat as often as our forefathers, but we have our peanut butter and radio.”
SATISFACTION
“There ain’t no civilization where there ain’t no satisfaction, and that’s what’s the trouble now, nobody is satisfied.”
WALL STREET RHETORIC
“Since the Wall Street crash, which the Republicans refer to as a “business adjustment,” prominent men had done nothing but tell us of the strength of the country. “Steel was strong,” “T. and T. was strong,” “Radio was strong,” “breath was strong.” We have been “stronged” to death in speeches and statements, but last night Mr. Coolidge said, “The heart of the American people is strong” and here over 500 died of heart failure during the late “Republican readjustment.” What he really meant was “the American public’s head is strong but his heart is weak.”
BUSINESS TRIPS
“The American delegation arrived this afternoon and went into conference at once at the American bar and sunk a fleet of schooners without warning. They brought eighteen young typewriters with em. That’s four and a half blondes to the delegate, and I can write in long-hand, left-handed, everything that will be done here in the next month.”
U.S. WEALTH
“We might be the wealthiest nation that ever existed, we might dominate the world in lots of things, but as nations are individuals, why we are just an individual, and because we are richer than all our neighbors or than anybody else, that don’t mean we are necessarily happier or really better off. We don’t all envy our town or state’s most wealthy man. We see lots of reasons why we wouldn’t trade places with him. We not only look at his wealth but we look at all the other sides to him. We may know how he is all wet in lots of ways. So we may say, ‘Yes, he has money, but what else?’
“We are known as the wealthiest Nation of all time. Well in the first place we are not. The difference between our rich and poor grows greater every year. Our distribution of wealth is getting more uneven all the time. We are always reading, ‘How many men paid over a million dollar income tax.’ But we never read about how many there is that are not eating regular. A man can make a million over night and he is on every front page in the morning. But it never tells who give up the million that he got. You can’t get money without taking it from somebody. They don’t just issue out new money. What you got tonight that you didn’t have last night must have come from somebody.”
We have dozens of Magazines that print success articles, but you go broke and see what you can do to get your life story published. Yet the going broke might have made a real man out of you. You may be just starting to live. We do love to talk in big figures. We love to read in big figures. That old boy that didn’t get the breaks and couldn’t make the grade we don’t care much for.”
“So that’s the way we have come to look at nations. We are judging them all by the size of the navy, or their territory, but we don’t give a hoot about their character or maybe a hundred fine things about them. If they don’t amount to something in a big way, they are a joke to us. What do we care what a tariff bill does to them? Are we in business for them or for ourselves?”
TRUTH
“Nothing makes a man or body of men as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it they laugh it off.”
MEXICO
“I am heading down into the wilds of Old Mexico and will be out of touch with what we humorously call civilization. They don’t even have a daily lecture on pyorrhea or know what cigarette will raise or lower your Adam’s apple; so primitive they have never tasted wood alcohol or known the joys of buying on credit. They are evidently just a bunch of heathens that are happy.”
SWITZERLAND
“Switzerland is a kind of Speakeasy for any and all sides. There is little private rooms all over and anybody can come and meet anybody else and Switzerland just winks knowingly and says nothing.”
ALASKA
“Here is a queer streak in me, I am not a hunting man (or fishing either). I wish I was for there must be a lot of pleasure in it, but I just dont want to be shooting at any animal, and even a fish I havent got the heart to pull the hook out of him. But I do want to make that Alaska. Everybody that went up and come back after that 98 rally, were such liars, I would like to go up and meet the old boys that had the nerve to stick, as they tell me all the yellow ones come back.”
NEWSPAPERS
“I am glad to get back home and read some papers! A breakfast without a newspaper is a horse without a saddle. You are just riding bareback if you got no news for breakfast. Don’t underestimate your paper. I don’t care how small it is, and how little news you think it might have in it at that particular issue. Lord kiss it, for the news that it does bring you. Why I have seen times when I would have given $100 for the “Claremore Progress” or the “Claremore Messenger,” and that’s just two of the smaller papers of Claremore. Take my ham away, take away my eggs, even my chili, but leave me my newspaper.”
TAKING FLAK
“In one of my little poems I said the bankers were the first to go on the ‘dole.’ The wrath of the mighty ascended on me. Even the Wall Street Journal (Wall street’s house organ) editorially said “I should confine my jokes to some semblance of truth. Now I want to be fair, even with the bankers, for they are pretty touchy now. I have had critics come out and say, ‘As an actor, Bill is not so hot.’ Well, I just wanted to come out and call him a liar, but in my heart and conscience I knew he was right. So I know how you boys feel. Now if you will take this money and loan it out to a lot of the little fellows that need it you bankers got a chance to redeem yourselves. People are not pointing with pride to your record on this crisis up to now. Will be glad to print any alibis.”
POWER OF LOVE
“Young John D. Rockefeller says: ‘Love is the greatest thing in the World.’ You take a few words of affection and try and trade them in to him for a few Gallons of Oil, and you will discover just how great Love is.”