Oil
Traditional uses of oil: lubricants, medicines
Corsicana Field (1894)
James M. Guffey and John H. Galey
Problems: 1) glutted market, 2) environmental hazards
J. S. Cullinan: first successful commercial refinery, 1897
J. S. Cullinan Company, Magnolia Petroleum Company, Mobil
Oil burning locomotive 1898
Spindletop (1901)
Patillo Higgins
Captain A. F. Lucas
Hammil brothers; rotary drilling process
Houston Oil Company, John H. Kirby
J. M. Guffey Petroleum Company, Mellon, Gulf Oil
J. S. Cullinan, James S. Hogg, Jim Swayne,
J. W. "Bet a Million" Gates
Texas Company, Texaco
Humble Oil Company, Exxon
Sun Oil Company
Oil-related spin-off industries: refineries, pipelines, asphalt, tank cars, ocean-going tankers, harbors,
machine shops, oil and gas lawyers, petroleum engineering, petroleum geology, oil leasing, automobiles,
roads paved, natural gas, petrochemicals
Production: 1896 1,000 barrels; 1902 21 million barrels, 1929 293 million barrels
Boomtowns
Environmental problems: derricks too close together, fire, health hazards, water pollution. Voluntary
standards ignored. After World War I, the Railroad Commission enforced regulation.
Texas industries: petroleum refining, slaughtering, oil drilling, coke mining, cotton-seed pressing, flour
milling, lumbering. In 1930, Texas was not yet an industrial state, but industrial growth had begun.
Urbanization: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth (Cowtown), El Paso
Dallas: railroads, financial and business center; acquired one of the twelve national branches of the Federal
Reserve System in 1913; fine arts
San Antonio: manufacturing, military bases
Houston: oil business, Houston Ship Channel (1914)
El Paso: commercial hub of Trans-Pecos region; smelting, mining
Beaumont-Port Arthur: oil and petrochemicals
Galveston: 1900 third largest city, Gulf hurricane, six thousand killed, commission plan of municipal
government to bring efficiency, Galveston Plan; 1913 Amarillo, council-manager, city manager, Texas Idea
Women: expansion of job opportunities, 12 percent of married women worked outside the home in 1930; the
New Woman; decrease in child labor
Labor Unions never had a strong base in Texas. Texas State Federation of Labor; United Mine Workers
Why union membership declined:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Lack of leadership
Hostility of business
Red Scare
Political leadership opposed labor unions
Open Port Law: prohibited strikes and gave the governor the authority to intervene militarily to end strikes.
Agriculture
Agriculture remained the major occupation and source of revenue for
Texas into the 1920's.
Cotton was king; in 1922 Texas produced one-third of all the cotton picked in 1922; 1894 boll weevil
Demonstrating the passing of the Old West, the number of beef cattle and horses dropped between 1900
and 1929, while the number of dairy cows, mules, sheep, and goats increased.
Between 1913 and 1920, the cost of living doubled, yet farm income did not increase. In 1910, 51.7 of
Texas farmers were tenants. In 1930, 61 percent were tenants (50 percent of whites, 70 percent of blacks).
Tenant farmers, share tenant, "third and fourth" renters, "halfers," "croppers"
Texas farm income per family led the South in 1929 but trailed that of the agricultural areas of the Midwest.
The number of farm laborers declined after 1919, although the number of farms increased. 1) decrease in
yield per acre of cotton, 2) increase in the use of machinery, 3) fewer women worked in the fields, 4) migrant
Hispanic workers. Cotton picking July-December In 1929, a good picker earned $4 per day. Yearly wage of
$485.35. Blacks pressured to work in the fields during the harvest season. Women earned less. Family
contracts
Farm women faced the greatest hardships in caring for their families and doing farm labor. In 1930, a study
of white women: 57% cooked on wood stoves, 80% used oil lamps, and 63% washed clothes on a
washboard. Black women: 99% used oil lamps and wood stoves. 1929 less than 5% of Texas farms had
electricity, less than 8% indoor plumbing, less than 15% running water, 60% cars (most roads were
unpaved), 32% phones.
The average family size declined from 4.6 in 1910 to 3.5 in 1930. Many women knew of contraceptive
methods and abortifacients. Children still an economic asset in farm families. Urban women had fewer
children. Foreign-born women had more children. In 1929, black Texans had a higher infant mortality rate
(25% of black children died within the first year and shorter life expectancy (white males 59.7, white females
63.5, black males 47.3, black women 49.2)
Texas granted more divorces than any other state from 1922-26
Renters' Union of North America: socialist, establish rules for tenants, improve methods of marketing crops.
Farmers" Union, 1902, Emory, Texas, goals similar to earlier Farmers' Alliance. Colored Alliance, "plowup
campaign of 1908," cotton warehouses, marketing cooperatives.
Texas Farmers' Congress and Farmers' Institutes at Texas A&M: rural education, scientific farming,
cooperative marketing
Farm Bureau, the dominant rural organization, self help ventures, expansion of credit
Blacks in Texas
Populism, Jim Crow segregation, Negrophobia
1910 Texas house of representatives urged repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment. Urban blacks acquired
some voting power as city bosses needed their votes. 1923 the informal exclusion of whites from the
Democratic primary was formally written into law. Lawrence A. Nixon challenged the constitutionality of the
law. In Nixon v. Herndon (1927) the U. S. Supreme Court ruled the all-white primary unconstitutional. In
1928 the state legislature defined political parties as "private organizations" not subject to federal law. Until
1944 most black Texans could not vote.
Segregation: In 1910 and 1911 the state legislation segregated railroad stations and separate facilities for
black porters. Soon water fountains and restrooms segregated. Residential segregation. By 1930, hotels,
restaurants, cultural events, and sporting events were segregated. Texas ranked third nationally in lynching,
murdering more than 100 blacks. In 1916 at Waco, more than 10,000 people watched the torture and
murder of Jesse Washington.
Race riots:
Beaumont 1908 white mobs burned two black amusement parks
Longview 1919 white mob burned the African American section of town
Brownsville 1906. Whites unfairly charged black soldiers with raiding the city to protest racist
treatment. President Theodore Roosevelt unfairly dishonorably discharged 160 soldiers.
Houston 1917 Black soldiers clashed with whites. Sixteen whites died. Nineteen blacks were
executed and 53 were sentenced to life in prison.
NAACP chapter formed chapter in Houston in 1912.
Texas Committee on Interracial Violence, 1928
Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, Jessie Daniel Ames, 1930s
Majority of African Americans were rural tenant farmers
Farmers' Improvement Society, R. L. Smith, 1890s, endorsed Booker T. Washington's policy of
accommodation and self-help.
Colored Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union founded in Dallas in 1905
Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical College
Chief Alfred C. Sam, Atkins Trading Company, immigration to Africa
Marcus Garvey: Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), black pride, immigration to Africa
Black's percentage of urban population: 1900 19%, 1930 32%. The best semi-skilled vocations for blacks
were longshoremen and stevedores. In 1900, sixty percent of black males in nonagricultural jobs were
domestic servants and unskilled laborers. Between 1900 and 1930, the number of males employed in cities
doubled and new vocational opportunities (porters, chauffeurs, building trades, oil refining). In 1930, a larger
number of urban black women (50%) than white women (16%) worked outside the home (seamstresses,
laundresses, domestic servants).
The largest occupational groups of black professionals were ministers and teachers. Black businessmen
confronted a shortage of capital. Hobart Taylor, Sr. of Houston became a millionaire by investing first in
taxicabs and then in insurance company.
Most black Christians were Baptists.
William M. McDonald, Fraternal Bank and Trust Company, Fort Worth, most important black leader of the
1920s.
"By 1930, black Texans had responded to a racist, segregated society by organizing separate institutions
that furnished intellectual and social stimulation apart from white society. These organizations, strong in
those urban areas with and increasing black population, schooled the young African Americans who would
challenge, and ultimately dismantle, the system of Jim Crow"
"The segregated school system also trained black leaders."
1930 illiteracy 13.4%. Unfairness of Jim Crow system: fewer days, poorer facilities, less money, no
graduate education.
Juneteenth, fairs, rodeos, parades, lectures, picnics, sports, parks, saloons, dance halls, pool halls, theaters,
bowling alleys.
Rube Foster, National Negro Baseball League
Jack Johnson, Galveston, heavyweight boxing champion (1908-15)
Texas Blues, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter
Tejanos
Mexicans pulled to Texas by the demand for cheap labor and pushed from Mexico by poverty and violence.
Not until the 1930s did a "Mexican American Generation" emerge.
Racism
Suffrage: 1902 poll tax, white men's primary association, 1918 law prohibiting translating for voters
Segregation
76% of Tejanos worked as agricultural hands; the Big Swing
Self help organizations
Political bosses: Jim Wells, Manuel Guerra
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Social-welfare benefits
Legal help
Assistance with family matters
Help for talented individuals
Protection for racist persecution
First Mexican Congress of Texas (1911): unity, cultural nationalism, exploitation in the workplace,
educational exclusion, legal rights
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 1929, moderate, accommodationist,
Order of the Sons of America (OSA), 1921, Tejano middle class, schools, segregation, juries
LULAC goal: assimilation into the mainstream
Social lives of Tejanos: baseball, boxing, special days, music, conjunto, theater, writers
Germans, Czechs, Polish, Italians, and others
Adventure, travel accounts, amateur historians (Anna Pennybaker)
Professional historians: George Pierce Garrison, Texas State Historical Association, Eugene C. Barker,
Charles W. Ramsdell
J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb
Katherine Anne Porter, Dorothy Scarborough, Ruth Cross
Elisabet Ney