Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Volume 11)

Fred H. and Ella Mae Moore Texas History Reprint Series

by Lewis L. Gould

This prize-winning account offers a well-written narrative of the Democratic party in Texas during the years when Prohibition dominated the political scene.

368 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1992

About the author

Lewis Ludlow Gould is Eugene C. Barker Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas in Austin. Gould earned an A.B. from Brown University in 1961, and an M.A. (1962) and Ph.D. (1966) from Yale University.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an old-fashioned history, done well. It's a political study of Texas Democrats in the 1910s, when two issues, President Woodrow Wilson and Prohibition, dominated the scene. President Wilson actually chose three Texas Democrats for his Cabinet, David Houston for Agriculture, Albert Burleson for Postmaster General (the patronage post) and, eventually, the deaf Thomas Watt Gregory for Attorney General. Wilson's closest advisor was the shady, mercurial, seemingly unprincipled Colonel Edward House of Houston. At first these figures tried to steer patronage and posts to the Progressives, who usually overlapped with the "Drys," but they soon had to accomodate Texas's conservative political machines as well.

The two figures at home who dominated the scene back in the state, however, were Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey and Governor James Ferguson. Both were cut from the same mold. They were demagogues, "wet," and conservative, with streaks of populism. Bailey had survived accusations of financial bribes from the oil industry, only to have his skullduggery catch up with him and cause him to resign from the Senate in 1912. But "Baileyism" was still a hot topic in state politics for the next decade, and he came in second in the 1920 Governor primary (to former state house speaker Pat Neff). Ferguson was a small-town banker who became governor in 1914, but was impeached and removed in 1917 for attempting to remake the University of Texas at Austin and suspicious financial dealings (it later turned out he borrowed $150,000 to pay back loans from his own bank with money from some brewing companies.) But Ferguson would stay in politics too, and would govern under his wife in two separate terms.

The author makes a good case that prohibition and progressivism went hand-in-hand in this period, and the alliance was cemented from the connection between liquor interests and conservatives like Bailey and Ferguson. The wets tried to run their own primaries and push out the two opponents, and eventually succeeded in capturing the local party, with increasing help from Wilson's patronage, and grudging moves towards prohibition during the war.

This is exactly the sort of book you'd want to read if you want to learn about the Progressive Era in the South. It was a very different time, brought vividly to life here.