1. Chapter 8 Texas in the Age of Agrarian Discontent

2. “The Land Grant Law of 1876 authorized the granting of sixteen sections of land to railroad companies for every mile of main-line track they completed.” p. 206.
Coming of the Steam Train in 1873 put Reagan, Texas on the Map! The old Reagan Depot stood next to the Train tracks until the 1960's.

3. Actions taken to support railroad building
1. Land Grant Law of 1876
2. Local subsidies and bonds
3. Private subscriptions

4. Segregation of African-American railroad passengers was a long-standing tradition in the South, despite Emancipation and passage of constitutional amendments related to civil and political rights. In 1871, the wife of Senator Burton was thrown off a moving train when she refused to leave the whites-only coach. Situations like this inspired African-American legislators to join Representative Mayes in attempting to enact laws supporting equal accommodation on trains for African Americans. In the late 1870s, Representative R. J. Evans of Navasota offered an amendment to a railroad rate bill which, if the amendment had passed, would have made it illegal not to sell African-Americans first-class tickets.
The railroad segregation issue was one of the primary concerns of African-American legislators throughout the 1880s. In 1881, Representative R. J. Moore attached a relevant amendment to one bill after another African-American woman was thrown from a train after standing up for her right to sit where she wanted. Governor John Ireland pleaded with the Colored Men’s Convention of 1883 not to press the railroad issue, but they did. Ireland then went to the railroad companies and asked them to provide separate but equal coaches and some complied. However, "separate but equal" was still segregation. In 1889, during the 21st legislative session, Representatives Mayes and Asberry worked tirelessly to end racial segregation in railroad passenger cars. The segregationists had more influence. In 1896, railroad accommodations were the case in point when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized separate-but-equal facilities for whites and African Americans.
This photo shows a "land train," bringing prospective investors to Texas, circa African-American porters stand on the far right. "Separate but equal" segregation was the law in Texas and other Southern states from the 1880s until segregation was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1950s.. Many jobs were also segregated. The job of porter was considered a black man's job. Prints and Photographs Collection, Texas State Library and Archives.

5. Governor Oran M. Roberts and the Fifty Cent Law of 1879. See p. 210.

6. (From the East Texas Research Center Collection)
Problems created by the railroads. Railroads
ended local patterns of trade
discriminated between shippers.
sometimes charged more for shorter hauls
granted free passes to political friends
gave rebates to preferred customers
formed monopolies
provided poor service
blocked any legislation that addressed these abuses

7. Perspective map of Texarkana, lithograph; circa 1888.
Source:
©2008 The Central Arkansas Library System - All rights reserved

8. Economic Development:
Railroads, Public lands, Lumber, Light industries, Mineral industries, Labor unions, Agriculture
(From the East Texas Research Center Collection)

10. From 1875 to 1900, lumber led all other freight in tonnage transported by Texas railroads.

11. The first multi million-dollar firm in Texas was a lumber company owned by John Henry Kirby. John Henry Kirby, the "Prince of the Pines," shown in a 1925 photo. With East Coast investors, Kirby established land companies with vast timber holdings in the Pineywoods. In 1893, he built the Gulf, Beaumont, and Kansas City Railroad and used proceeds from its sale to finance more land purchases. In 1901, he organized the Houston Oil Company of Texas and the Kirby Lumber Company. Although at one point the lumber company controlled more than 300,000 acres of land and operated 13 sawmills, business reversals during the depression forced Kirby into bankruptcy.

13. In the lumber industry, African-Americans workers comprised about one-third of the labor force.

14. The attitude of the timber-company owners toward organized labor could best be described as hostile opposition.

15. The most important labor union in late nineteenth-century Texas was the Knights of Labor

16. The Great Southwest Strike of 1886 was a strike led by the Knights of Labor against Jay Gould’s railroad lines. (See p. 219.)

17. Throughout the late nineteenth century, the state financed its prison system by leasing out convict labor. (See pages )

18. Before the development of the oil industry, the most important mineral resource in Texas was coal.
Industry grew rapidly but Texas still remained far behind other industrial states.

19. Table 8.1 Dollar Value of Texas Crops (See p. 221)
1870
1880
1890
1900
Wheat
$391,886
$2,441,918
$3,589,442
$7,592,852
Corn
10,153,941
11,509,808
34,940,748
39,259,415
Oats
297,439
1,761,609
5,334,496
6,241,192
Cotton
21,212,994
39,458,916
63,263,400
107,510,010

21. Farming on “halves” means paying half of one’s cotton crop in rent.
The Increasing Percentage of Tenant Farming in Texas,
(See page 220)
Farming on “halves” means paying half of one’s cotton crop in rent.

22. Source: Census of Agriculture, various years.
Number of Farms and Acres per Farm The number of farms has decreased since 1935, while the size of farms has increased
Source: Census of Agriculture, various years.

23. Public fund had subsidized the railroads, and now that they had fallen short of the promised economic panacea, proponents of the New South and the railroads themselves became politically suspect. See p. 209.
The fixing of rates explains the shippers’ charges of railroad corruption, which only increased in intensity as southern farmers became less prosperous.

24. Railroads proved a mix blessing as farmers became tied to faraway markets and the vagaries of the wider national and international economy. See page 209.

25. Greenback party: Greenbacks, Specie Resumption Act
In 1875, Congress passed the Specie Resumption Act, which returned the nation to the gold standard by When the country returned to the gold standard, the amount of money in circulation declined precipitously, which caused interest rates to skyrocket. Farmers were particularly hard hit by these developments.
The Greenbacks were an agrarian reform party that emerged in the 1870s and 1880s favoring monetary inflation. They wanted to reverse the Specie Resumption Act. (See pp )
An agrarian reform party of the 1870s and 1880s favoring monetary inflation was the Greenback party.
Greenback Party Platform:
Federal government should issue greenbacks
Income tax
Australian ballot
Direct election of U. S. senators
Railroad regulation
Improved schools
Elimination of convict leasing
Reduced salaries for government employees
Elimination of government employees

26. Greenback - Republican alliance:
Wash Jones, 1882
See pages
Ebeneezer Lafayette Dohoney
Prohibitionists
Local option v. statewide prohibition
United Friends of Temperance, Bands of Hope
Women's Christian Temperance Union
Election of 1886, E. L. Dohoney
Prohibition amendment

27. Granger Movement, agrarian movement in the United States, initiated shortly after the American Civil War with the aim of improving the social, economic, and political status of farmers. The movement constituted the initial stage in the unrest among farmers in many areas of the U.S. that characterized the latter part of the 19th century. Among the causes of the unrest were the declining prices of farm products, the growing indebtedness of farmers to merchants and banks, the discriminatory freight rates imposed on farmers by the railroads, and the acquisition by the railroads of public lands that formerly had served pioneer farmers as a source of new farmland.
In 1867, Oliver H. Kelley, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, founded the Patrons of Husbandry, commonly called the Grange. He conceived of the Patrons as a secret fraternal society that would offer social and educational benefits to its membership. (p. 231)
Grangers exercised significant influence over the constitutional convention of 1876.
Grange
Patrons of Husbandry, Oliver H. Kelley, 1867
Social and educational organization
Economic cooperatives
William Lang
Texas Cooperative Association, 1878

28. A Farmers’ Alliance Convention.
In the 1880s, the Farmers’ Alliance replaced the Grange as the largest agrarian reform organization in Texas.
The Texas Farmers' Alliance Differed from the Grange in the following ways:
Grass-roots organization
The Alliance appealed to less prosperous farmers who had formed voluntary associations: vigilantes, schools, churches, Masonic lodges, former Grangers.
A Farmers’ Alliance Convention.

29. Recognition of labor unions Regulation of railroads
Cleburne Demands
Recognition of labor unions
Regulation of railroads
Revision of the banking system
Inflation of the currency
Interstate Commerce Commission
Prison reform
Ban on speculation in agriculture futures
Democratic response:
Nationally: lower tariffs, Interstate Commerce Commission. Some Texans in the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives endorsed the free coinage of silver. Progressive Democrats in Texas advocated legislation to encourage farmers to settle western land, to address corporate and railroad abuses, and to reform the banking system.

30. James S. Hogg Actions as Attorney General: protected public domaine
regulated insurance companies
wrote anti-trust legislation
"Hogg and a Commission," 1890
Hogg Laws:
Railroad Commission
Railroad stock and bond law
forced corporation to sell land
Alien Land Law
restrictions on bonds
Other actions:
prison reforms
longer school term
supported universities
forced railroads to segregate

31. Populists advocated
1. Government ownership of railroads
2. Abolition of the national banking system
3. Subtreasury system
4. Income tax
5. Eight-hour workday
6. Direct election of U. S. senators
7. Free coinage of silver
8. Australian ballot, referendum, and recall

32. The Populist Party advocated government ownership of railroads, abolition of the national banking system, and establishment of the subtreasury system. The Subtreasury Plan would have allowed farmers to store staple crops in government warehouses and receive loans against the market value of these crops in the form of government notes that could circulate as currency. (pp )
Violence on the local level and “fusion” with the Democrats on the national level destroyed the Populist movement
Historical cartoon of Populist Party as a snake with William Jennings Bryan's head swallowing donkey of the Democratic Party.

33. Texas' First Public Institute for Higher Education (The Agricultural and Mechanical College -- 1876)
A&M's Earliest Campus. In its first year, the campus at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas consisted to just two buildings: Steward's Hall (left) and Old Main. Two wooden barracks were added behind Old Main for the second session (just visible through the front porch of Steward's Hall).

34. In 1902, Texas voters approved of a poll tax that disenfranchised many poor whites and blacks and further limited the possible third-party challenges to Democratic hegemony. The Texas legislature passed many Jim Crow laws, mandating, for example, segregated railroad facilities. Soon Texas, like many southern states, had erected an elaborate legal code that racially segregated public and private facilities. p. 240.

35. After the death of Edmund J
After the death of Edmund J. Davis, the Republican party of Texas was led by the African American Norris Wright Cuney.

36. 1888 Pictures of Dallas, Texas
1888 Pictures of Dallas, Texas. Hand colored engraved images titled, " Texas.-The City if Dallas, Its Progress and Its Prospects-Views of Its Public Buildings, Streets, Etc., City Hall Buildings, in course of Construction, view on Commerce Street, View on Elm Street, Alliance Exchange Building, Private Residences, Corner of Commerce and Elm Streets, Merchant's Exchange, Bird's Eye View of the Texas State Fair Grounds and Dallas Club House," from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Shows scenes of Dallas, Texas and its landmarks and buildings. Source:

38. During Culberson’s four-year tenure as governor, he blended Hogg’s reform tendencies with conservatism.
Charles A. Culberson ( )
Vetoed measures to save money
Enforce the 1889 antitrust act
Sponsored tax relief for victims of the 1895 drought
Increased powers for the Railroad Commission
Laws regulating labor relations and public lands Edward M. House, Joseph Weldon Bailey