Chapter Ten Overview
Texas and the Great Depression, 1929–1941
The economic crisis of the 1930s revealed serious weaknesses in the U.S. economy. Herbert Hoover was hampered by the concept of limited power in economic matters so it was up to local governments and charities to provide temporary relief. Texas was not immune to the rock-bottom market agricultural prices, unequally distributed resources, and struggling railroad, textile, and coal industries impacting the nation.
Texans Confront the Depression, 1929–1935
The Great Depression impacted regions and states in distinct ways. All Texas cities instituted austerity programs, fired married women, cut teachers’ salaries, reduced appropriations for public education, eliminated some urban services, and froze employee salaries. Some cities took even stronger measures. To conserve resources for deserving whites, Houston refused to provide relief to blacks and Mexicans. By 1932, most Texas civic leaders warned that they could not continue relief efforts.
Once jobs grew scarce, white men came first. The inadequacies of local resources were revealed in dwindling tax revenues, falling property values, decreases in the prices of cotton or oil, and the large increase in the number of unemployed. Ross Sterling, a business progressive with substantial personal wealth, easily defeated Miriam “Ma” Ferguson in a run-off election. Despite four special sessions called by Sterling, the 1931 legislature failed to act.
State Politics, 1929–1933
In the midst of the economic downturn, Texas found itself in a unique situation. The East Texas oil boom occurred in the early years of the Great Depression, offering some relief to the poorest part of the state through an explosion of jobs and a sudden increase in land prices. The Railroad Commission, authorized to establish maximum amounts of oil that could be pumped, did not act fast enough to prevent major oil companies from controlling the refineries in the state. As a result, the price of oil dropped considerably. Nonetheless, a handful of Texas oilmen amassed enormous fortunes during this time.
Sterling’s two terms as governor were marked by hostility over the “hot oil” issue and heightened economic distress that significantly impacted small and marginal farmers in North and East Texas. Both state and federal governments attempted to control the marketing of cotton in order to keep it off of the market until prices stabilized, but national and state opposition surfaced — shippers, merchants, ginners, and manufacturers would also be impacted negatively. Sterling called a special legislative session in September of 1931. Huey P. Long’s “drop a crop” plan, proposed at an earlier governors’ conference, was rejected as having too significant an impact on Texas’ extensive production. The legislature did, however, limit cotton acreage in 1932 to 30 percent of that cultivated in 1931. Only three other southern states passed similar acts.
Miriam “Ma” Ferguson challenged Sterling for the Democratic nomination in 1932. Although Sterling asserted that fraudulent election returns had ensured Ferguson’s nomination, she easily defeated the Republican nominee in the general election based on strong support in East Texas. Her second administration coincided with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first two years as president. As Ferguson took office, Texas faced a $14 million debt, lacking resources to meet the crisis. Ferguson endorsed early New Deal legislation, including federal control of the price of oil. The governor the Texas Relief Commission to distribute funds from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, assertive national action would soon prevail, complicating any local actions.
Unfortunately, charges of corruption surfaced once again. Critics charged an overall disdain for law and order as seen in Ferguson’s previous policy of generously pardoning convicts and her dismissal of forty-four Rangers to replace them with men of “dubious character.” Establishing a venue for political patronage, she created a new “Special Ranger” commission (distributed to 2,344 men).
The New Deal and Texas
Texans held significant positions in Roosevelt’s administration, as they had in Woodrow Wilson’s. Franklin Roosevelt won the southern vote with a Texan as his running mate ― John Nance Garner, former Speaker of the House of Representatives. Although Garner eventually broke with FDR, he remained a life-long Democrat. Even more influential than Garner was Jesse H. Jones of Houston as head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and other economic posts until 1945. Under Jones’ stewardship, the role of the RFC changed—it now loaned money to banks and bought up their preferred stock to establish more stable banks. The Federal Reserve System controlled interest rates, and government regulation separated investment and commercial banking. Public confidence was restored and financial stability ensued.
Other ardent New Dealers included Maury Maverick, administrator of one of the wartime mobilization agencies; Wright Patman, progressive reformer; and Lyndon B. Johnson, youngest New Deal state agency head (National Youth Administration). Although a vigorous opponent of the New Deal, Martin Dies of Orange headed the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The National Recovery Administration price codes affected Texas primarily as they applied to “Hot Oil” production. More important to Texans were the minimum wage standards and the guaranteed right to collective bargaining. Even though labor unionization never gained great strength in the state, the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) organized among the Gulf Coast refineries and defense industries in spite of the anti-union bias. The modern Texas infrastructure began with the Public Works Administration (PWA), but thousands more found employment in the Works Progress Administration (WPA). FDR’s favorite New Deal program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), provided full-time jobs in reforestation, flood and erosion control, building of public structures, and sewage and water treatment systems. A youthful Lyndon Baines Johnson headed the National Youth Administration (NYA) which provided part-time jobs to needy high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. The majority of NYA jobs went to white males, but many Hispanic Texans were hired and substantially fewer African Americans.
Eighty-nine percent of Texans voted for FDR in 1932, this even before the New Deal was off the ground. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) paid subsidies to farmers who took land out of production in order to stabilize farm market prices through government control. Before the AAA was declared unconstitutional in 1936, Texans signed considerably more crop-reduction contracts than their counterparts in other states. Texans promptly complied with passage of the new AAA act of 1938 by diverting 4 million acres out of production, three times that of any other state.
Another significant gain was the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) which helped electric cooperatives string power lines to isolated rural areas. The REA was significant in moving Texas farmers into the modern era. Overall, New Deal programs pumped $716,694,849 into the state economy from March 4, 1933 to January 1, 1938. Only New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois received more New Deal aid.
Some New Deal programs, however, negatively impacted minorities. The number of African American tenant farmers in Texas decreased by 50 percent as a result of farm programs that encouraged taking land out of production, reducing credit and mechanizing. However, the number of black agricultural laborers rose by 25,000 and some 20,000 African Americans left the state in search of better job opportunities. Unfortunately, local relief agencies placed blacks only in unskilled jobs and the Federal Housing Authority guaranteed loans only in segregated areas for blacks.
However, a growing political awareness was taking hold. Black leaders, led by the Dallas and Houston chapters of the NAACP, decided to challenge Texas’ all-white primary law. In 1944 the Supreme Court ruled the white primary was unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright.
Although the economic downturn checked the flow of immigration, New Deal programs were withheld from those who could not prove their American citizenship. In fact, the 1930s were years of massive deportation and repatriation drives, sometimes voluntary but often forced. Mexicans and their American-born children were ousted from the rural regions of Texas. An estimated 250,000 Texas Mexicans relocated to Mexico. Some who stayed in Texas joined labor unions to protest subsistence salaries and deplorable working conditions. In San Antonio, Emma Tenayuca, labor organizer for the Workers Alliance of America, led pecan shellers—most of whom were Hispanic women—on a 1938 strike. Although the shellers won some concessions, the factory owners dealt the final blow by mechanizing the industry soon after the strike ended.
Texas Mexicans also gained a political voice with the founding of The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1929. The first legal challenge to the segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren came in 1930 with the LULAC-sponsored Del Rio Independent School District v. Salvatierra. Even though the court ruled that school authorities could not segregate students simply because they were Mexican American, the school districts countered that the language barrier justified separation.
Social, Cultural, and Recreational Activities
Black Texans celebrated Juneteenth as well as other state and national holidays. Blacks held their own county fairs and rodeos, parades, picnics, barbecues, and baseball games. In 1920 Andrew “Rube” Foster organized the National Negro Baseball League. The best-known black sports hero, Jack Johnson, held the heavy-weight boxing crown from 1908 to 1915. Films of his fights, however, were banned by the state legislature, arguing that they might inspire rioting. Blacks also contributed substantially to American music. Some made their names in journalism. Black newspapers flourished for a while in Amarillo, Austin, Beaumont, Calvert, Denison, Fort Worth, Port Arthur, San Antonio, San Angelo, and Waco. Overall, however, substantial progress in African American’s quest for first-class citizenship was slow due to restricted political participation and little, if any, social or economic influence in a segregated society.
Although Mexican Americans maintained their traditional culture, some aspects of their social, cultural, and recreational lives reflected biculturation. Holidays included several religious holy days, fiestas patrias (Cinco de Mayo and Diez y Seis de septiembre), while at the same time celebrating George Washington’s birthday and the Fourth of July. Hispanics, too, contributed significantly to the Texas music scene with the sounds of an accordion-based ensemble, the conjunto and the singing of corridos, ballads that celebrate the mythical legends of Catarino Garza and Gregorio Cortez. Names of early Texas Mexican writers, including Sara Estela Ramirez and Jovita Gonzalez, are much more recognizable today than during the 1920s.
Women in the 1930s
Women experienced double hardships from the Great Depression: first because the economic downturn hurt everyone, but also because under the New Deal, women encountered gender-based discrimination. In other words, during the hard times women and minorities were the first to get fired and the last to get re-hired—meaning that minority women seeking employment were especially hard hit. Texas officials disapproved of work projects that hired women in non-traditional roles, and WPA officials in the state objected to the employment of married women, justifying their action on the principle that men—presumably the head of the household—ought to be given priority when it came to filling jobs. The private sector abided by similar guidelines. If a husband worked (in other than New Deal programs) employers refused to hire his wives or daughters, again on the premise that the position should go to an unemployed father. If women as a group encountered sexism in the job market, black women further grappled with racism. Mexican American women dealt with conditions every bit as bad those afflicting white and black women.
State Politics, 1935–1938
The Great Depression dominated state politics, including the 1935 gubernatorial race in Texas. James V. Allred, firmly identified with the Roosevelt administration, established the Texas Planning Board to guide the legislature in coordinating state efforts with New Deal relief funds. His major accomplishment was the reorganization of the Texas Rangers and the Highway Department into the Department of Public Safety. Allred’s second term was hindered by ever-increasing financial burdens. He called several special sessions of the legislature but no agreement was reached on the issue of taxes, aid to the elderly, or prohibition.
On the national level, conservatives railed over the increasing power of the federal government and the undermining of traditional American values of self-help and individual responsibility. Liberals, on the other hand, pointed out how much more the federal government could be doing to provide relief for suffering Americans. In order to appease the latter, the Wagner Act barring unfair labor practices was permanently implemented in a state that did not favor unionization. Although a civil rights direction was mostly outward show and some New Deal programs imposed racial and ethnic inequities, the Democratic Party gained strength throughout the South. Mexican Americans remained affiliated with the party, and blacks executed an almost complete transfer of allegiance from Lincoln’s party to FDR’s.
FDR’s “court-packing” scheme (1936) and an anti-lynching bill (1937) threatened traditional southern race relations even more. The growing power of the Congress of Industrial Organization and more “pump priming” due to the recession of 1937 also added to conservative discontent. Maury Maverick, FDR’s strongest advocate in the state, was defeated at the polls, reflecting changing attitudes as conservatives won control of the state and national government. FDR’s progressive social legislation came to a stalemate in the late 1930s.
The End of the New Deal in Texas
Confusion reigned during the gubernatorial campaign of 1938. Thirteen candidates sought the seat; but W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, known around the state for his radio show featuring O’Daniel and the Light Crust Doughboys, a hillbilly band, won the race. Eventually, O’Daniel’s platform included abolition of the poll tax, opposition to capital punishment, state assistance for all elderly persons, and a promise of no sales taxes. Once in office his accomplishments were minimal; the legislature did not address the long-term problem of sorely needed new sources of state revenue but eventually compromised on the Morris Omnibus Tax Bill, which increased taxes on the gross receipts of some businesses as well as on oil and gas and tobacco.
O’Daniel’s anti-union stance coincided with an upsurge in conservativism. Promising to introduce antistrike legislation once elected to Congress, O’Daniel ran for the congressional seat, opposing in this race the young and dedicated New Dealer, Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson believed that his defeat by a little more than 1,000 votes in this election was the result of illicit returns. O’Daniel served one regular Senate term, during which he managed to have a worse record than that as governor. Nevertheless, he was a popular figure, carefully cultivating an antiestablishment, country-bumpkin image and using his camp-meeting campaigns to reinforce voters’ perceptions of him as a good, honest, and down-to-earth man representing those who had no voice in state politics. He also capitalized on the conservative discontent with organized labor and the New Deal, symbolizing the end of the New Deal in Texas.