This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... 11. We demand the passage of such laws as will further the building and keeping In repair of a system of inter-county public roads. 6. Our sympathies are most cordially extended to all laboring people In their efforts to better the conditions of themselves and those dependent upon them. 6. We condemn all revolutionary methods and violence on the part of our citizen, believing that an appeal to the law best protects every citizen In the enjoyment of his right. 7. We condemn all legislation calculated to drive capital out of this State or to turn immigration from us. 9. We demand that the coming Legislature shall provide for the collection from the Federal government of the bounty on sugar produced on the State farms. 13th Charge. For a selfish, if not corrupt, purpose, it (the Democratic administration) has Invaded and begun to destroy the common heritage of the children of Texas--the sacred school fund--bequeathed in trust to them by their forefathers. 4. We arraign the present administration of Texas because it has driven much capital out of Texas and prevented the coming of much more. 4. We arraign the present administration of Texas because It has unsettled land titles and depreciated taxable values. 3. We demand that laws be passed to further the building of public roads in this State, thereby affording facilities for the people to get their produce to market. 6. Our sympathies are most cordially extended to all laboring people in their efforts to setter the condition of themselves and those dependent upon them. 5. We deprecate and oppose all resorts to violence or revolutionary methods on the part of any class of our citizenship, believing that an appeal to the law always furnishes the best protection to the citizens in the...

At the apex of progressive reform in Texas from 1907 to 1911, Thomas M. Campbell served as the state’s chief executive. Closely associated with former Texas Governor James Stephen Hogg, Campbell played a central role in reviving the Hogg reform movement and building a strong record of progressive laws in areas such as social welfare, public education, and tax reform. In the broader context of southern progressivism, Campbell was a leading progressive governor much like Hoke Smith of Georgia, Benjamin Comer of Alabama, Charles B. Aycock of North Carolina, and Andrew Jackson Montague of Virginia. This full biography of Campbell’s life and political career shines a light on his contributions and successes as well as his failures and shortcomings. In Our Fighting Governor, Janet Schmelzer explores Campbell’s life, political career, and legacy. At the same time, she provides new insight into the inner workings of the Texas Democratic Party at the turn of the twentieth century. She uncovers Campbell’s political philosophy and the importance of his leadership that guided the agenda for progressive reform, resulted in the passage of reform legislation, and marked him as a southern progressive governor.

In The Hoggs of Texas: Letters and Memoirs of an Extraordinary Family, 1887–1906, Virginia Bernhard delves into the unpublished letters of one of Texas’s most extraordinarily families and tells their story. In their own words, which are published here for the first time. Rich in details, the more than four hundred letters in this volume begin in 1887 in 1906, following the family through the hurly-burly of Texas politics and the ups-and-downs of their own lives. The letters illuminate the little-known private life of one of Texas’s most famous families. Like all families, the Hoggs were far from perfect. Governor James Stephen Hogg (sometimes called "Stupendous" for his 6'3", 300-plus pound frame), who lived and breathed politics, did his best to balance his career with the needs of his wife and children. His frequent travels were hard on his wife and children. Wife Sallie’s years of illness casted a pall over the household. Son Will and his father were not close. Sons Mike and Tom did poorly in school. Daughter Ima may have had a secret romance. Hogg’s sister, “Aunt Fannie,” was a domestic tyrant. The letters in this volume, often poignant and amusing, are interspersed liberally with portions of Ima Hogg's personal memoir and informative commentary from historian Virginia Bernhard. They show the Hoggs as their world changed, as Texas and the nation left horse-and-buggy days and entered the twentieth century.

Finalist, 2021 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award For John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, there was one simple rule in politics: “You’ve got to bloody your knuckles.” It’s a maxim that applies in so many ways to the state of Texas, where the struggle for power has often unfolded through underhanded politicking, backroom dealings, and, quite literally, bloodshed. The contentious history of Texas politics has been shaped by dangerous and often violent events, and been formed not just in the halls of power but by marginalized voices omitted from the official narratives. A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles traces the state’s conflicted and dramatic evolution over the past 150 years through its pivotal political players, including oft-neglected women and people of color. Beginning in 1870 with the birth of Texas’s modern political framework, Bill Minutaglio chronicles Texas political life against the backdrop of industry, the economy, and race relations, recasting the narrative of influential Texans. With journalistic verve and candor, Minutaglio delivers a contemporary history of the determined men and women who fought for their particular visions of Texas and helped define the state as a potent force in national affairs.

"Harrigan, surveying thousands of years of history that lead to the banh mi restaurants of Houston and the juke joints of Austin, remembering the forgotten as well as the famous, delivers an exhilarating blend of the base and the ignoble, a very human story indeed. [ Big Wonderful Thing is] as good a state history as has ever been written and a must-read for Texas aficionados.”—Kirkus, Starred Review The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes, it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.

No other governor has become so completely identified with Texas and its citizens as Jim Hogg, the first native Texan to hold the state's highest office. His fame was not, however, easily earned. Orphaned at twelve, he worked as farmhand, typesetter, and country editor to finance his study of law, an endeavor that eventually led him into public life. Even before his admission to the bar in 1875 he served as justice of the peace in Wood County. Later, in two terms as district attorney (1881–1885), he proved himself a fearless prosecutor. His growing reputation, with his magnetic personality, brought him the attorney generalship in 1887, and in that office he fulfilled his campaign promises to enforce all laws. During Hogg's tenure, suits brought by his department resulted in the restoration of more than a million acres of state lands held by the railroads. In 1890 Hogg was elected governor. Early the next year he began urging his reform program, the keystone of which was establishment of the Railroad Commission. He also brought about the passage of laws preventing the watering of railroad securities, the indiscriminate issuance of municipal securities, and the establishment of landholding companies. Land ownership by aliens was likewise restricted. Throughout Hogg's public life, from iustice of the peace to governor, he was motivated by his concern for the welfare of the people. Invariably his criterion for evaluation of an issue was the effect of a decision upon the common welfare. In this democratic progressivism he was the Texas version of Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt. Molded by his varied experiences, Jim Hogg was a man of many professions—printer, lawyer, politician, statesman, oil magnate. In these relationships he was still a warmly human person, a loving son, brother, husband, father, friend. His ambition to provide abundantly for his family was expansive enough to include all Texans; so his love for "the people" was reiterated in his public benefactions, through which Texans are even today still sharing his wealth. Jim Hogg's varied public life and his heart-warming personal life are dramatically presented in this absorbing biography. In it, the far-sweeping panorama of Texas development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is shown in relation to his dreams and achievements.

The Populist Vision is about how Americans responded to wrenching changes in the national and global economy. In the late nineteenth century, the telegraph and steam power made America and the world a much smaller place. The new technologies also made possible large-scale bureaucratic organization and centralization. Corporations grew exponentially and the rich amassed great fortunes. Those on the short end of these changes responded in the Populist revolt, one of the most effective challenges to corporate power in American history. But what did Populism represent? Half a century ago, scholars such as Richard Hofstadter portrayed the Populist movement as an irrational response of backward-looking farmers to the challenges of modernity. Since then, historians have largely restored Populism's good name. But in so doing, they have sustained a romantic notion of Populism as the resistance movement of tradition-based and pre-modern communities to a modern and commerical society, or even a counterforce to the Enlightenment ideals of innovation and progress. Postel's work marks a departure. He argues that the Populists understood themselves as, and were in fact, modern people. Farmer Populists strove to use the new innovations for their own ends. They sought scientific and technical knowledge, formed highly centralized organizations, launched large-scale cooperative businesses, and pressed for state-centered reforms on the model of the nation's most elaborate bureaucracy--the Postal Service. Hundreds of thousands of Populist farm women sought education, employment in schools and offices, and a more modern life. Miners, railroad workers, and other labor Populists joined with farmers to give impetus to the regulatory state. Activists from Chicago, San Francisco, and other urban centers lent the movement an especially modern tone. Modernity was also menacing, as the ethos of racial progress influenced white Populists in their pursuit of racial segregation and Chinese exclusion. The Populist Vision offers a broad reassessment. Working extensively with primary sources, it looks at Populism as a national movement, taking into account both the leaders and the led. It focuses on farmers but also wage-earners and bohemian urbanites. It examines topics from technology, business, and women's rights, to government, race, and religion. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, business and political leaders are claiming that critics of their new structures of corporate control represent anti-modern attitudes towards the new realities of globalization. The Populist experience puts into question such claims about who is modern and who is not. And it suggests that modern society is not a given but is shaped by men and women who pursue alternative visions of what the modern world should be.