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The Liberal Bloc
A congressman's career seldom inspires the historian, particularly when the congressional tenure is short. Maury Maverick, a New Dealer from San Antonio, served only four years, but his career was exceptional. A rebel in the House, he challenged its leadership; a rebel against southern and national traditions and policies that he deemed archaic and reactionary, he inspired the "liberal bloc" that was formed upon his arrival in 1935. His was often the voice of this little-noted cluster of liberals (or progressives, the terms being used interchangeably then) who sought to strengthen the New Deal's commitment to reform. His defeat in 1938 was symptomatic of the political problems that afflicted politicians whose ideas were more radical than the President's, and whose defeats that year measure the collapse of the New Deal.
Maverick was thirty-eight in February 1934, when he decided to run for Congress from Texas' newly created twentieth district. In Bexar County and San Antonio, where one fourth of the population was Mexican in origin and one tenth was Negro, he was well known for his deep concern for the under-privileged. In 1932 he had lived in the "hobo, slum, Negro, and poverty areas" of the Southwest, where he had experienced some of the tragedy wrought by the depression. Upon his return, he had organized transient relief stations and founded a cooperative colony. He was also known as a civil libertarian. During the 1920s, he had denounced lynching, the poll tax, and the Ku Klux Klan; and he had joined the American Civil Liberties Union. Most San Antonians knew that for Maverick social justice was an act of faith. A scion of the genteel, Jeffersonian Maurys of Charlottesville, Virginia, and of the freewheeling Mavericks who had fought for Texan independence, he never equivocated. Maverick felt that he entered the world "a well-dressed gentleman," yet he "plainly heard a bugle calling Texans to fight for Justice and Liberty, even though it meant Death."
Maverick's impeccable credentials as a liberal and activist and his frantic efforts to identify himself with the spirit of the New Deal and the popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt were important factors in his primary victory in July 1934. He received support from businessmen who suffered not only from the depression but also from a local economic slump brought on by the intense heat and drought of the 1934 summer which ruined crops in nearby fields. He secured the endorsement of the American Federation of Labor and ran extremely well among impoverished Mexican-Americans. In the Texas primaries in 1934 "support of the New Deal was definitely helpful at the polls. Yet Maverick's success cannot be attributed solely to his fervent commitment to seek national answers to the district's economic and social ills. For five years as a member of the Citizen's League, he campaigned against Bexar County officials who, he alleged, protected vice; he worked to expose corruption in the office of San Antonio's mayor; and he was elected and re-elected tax collector, earning a reputation for integrity and impartiality. Many San Antonian's whose first priority was clean government ignored or disregarded his New Dealism and voted for him in the primary because they could not stomach his opponent, Mayor Charles K. Quin.
Even before his election—he ran unopposed—Maverick went to Washington, proclaimed new projects for his district, and pledged alliance to the President. His visit attests to his mania for publicity and personal recognition by the President and a compulsion to be where the action was.
His activities were scarcely mentioned in Texas newspapers, but the New York Herald-Tribune and the Washington Post glamorized his family lineage and career—a first sign of the recognition and support that he would receive from eastern newspapers throughout his political career. A few weeks later, while he was recovering from surgery at the Mayo Clinic, he received a note from the White House addressed: "My dear Maury." In 1939, when he was mayor of San Antonio, Maverick was insulted when the President addressed him more formally.
In January 1935, Maverick took his seat in the most radical Congress since Reconstruction. Optimistic observers had predicted minimal Democratic losses in the autumn elections, believing that Roosevelt's obvious popularity would overcome both the traditional reaction against the party in power and the discontent that surged through the country in 1934, but even the most knowledgeble underestimated the President's popularity and misgauged the direction and intensity of public frustration.
Democratic strength in the Senate increased by ten seats and, in the House, from 313 to 322. But Democratic gains did not measure the extent of the leftward shift. Liberals replaced conservative Democrats, and Republican losses were greater than the Democratic increases indicated. In Pennsylvania the power of a surging labor movement combined with urban machines nourished by federal relief funds reversed the complexion of the state's delegation. In Wisconsin seven Progressives were elected. They had been Progressive Republicans until Philip LaFollette and Thomas Amlie dragged them into a new alignment. LaFollette and Amlie had been seeking the support of Socialists and of independents and farm and labor groups that were pro-Roosevelt but would not work with state Democrats that they thought hopelessly conservative. LaFollette wanted to regain the governorship he had lost in 1932, and Amlie sought to regain his congressional seat. Their success assured most of the Progressives a more radical base, and it increased their number. Minnesota also contributed to the leftward shift by electing three Farmer-Labor candidates. The lower Midwest and Washington elected many independent, often radical Republicans and Democrats who were determined to support the New Deal and to infuse it with new vigor. Maverick joined this factious group that thought the New Deal, thus far, had been much too conservative.
Democratic leaders in Congress soon noted the danger on the left. Early in the session Nevada Senator Key Pittman wrote the President:
We are faced with an unscrupulous regular Republican representation: a progressive Republican membership determined upon going farther to the left than you will go; a Democrative representation who have more sympathy for the Republican progressive policies than they have for yours. And in the midst of this disloyalty you have a regular Democratic representation that conscientiously believe they are saving you by destroying you.
House leaders had reached the same conclusion. They changed the rules, increasing the number of signatures required for discharge petitions from 145 to 218, in an obvious attempt to strengthen their control over the rank-and-file.
But the House leadership was soon challenged. On March 9, about thirty congressmen met in the office of Illinois Democrat Kent Keller to define a program that they believed truly embraced the spirit of the New Deal. Paul Kvale, a Minnesota Farmer-Laborite, called the meeting and presided. Amlie provided the group with intellectual leadership, and Maverick inspired it with fighting spirit. Amlie wanted to stress ideology in their meetings and on the House floor, but Maverick helped direct the "liberal bloc's" attention to specific programs it could influence. In this sense, he assumed Fiorello LaGuardia's place. Maverick was not the accomplished parliamentarian the experienced LaGuardia had been, and in later years some members of the "liberal bloc" would denigrate his capacity for leadership, but for four years he was clearly their leader. He was always prepared to speak to the issues, and he could handle any audience. In speaking to the House, his constituents, or the nation, he melded an economic interpretation of the issues with a "patriotic" presentation that was both passionate and sincere and that placed the New Deal squarely in line with treasured American symbols. He also wrote for the New Republic and other journals, displaying a lucid and sophisticated style. Some articles condemned southern mores and policies that he deemed archaic and contrary to the section's true interests, developing a constructive vision of a better future. He asked that southerners put aside their racial hostilities and work together to build an industrial base that would benefit whites and blacks alike. Other articles, treating national problems, displayed a keen understanding, if selective use, of the contributions that political philosophy offered. Few men were better qualified to articulate the policies of the "liberal bloc."
Maverick had other qualifications for leadership. His family background, southern origins, and distinction as the only member of the group who had never worked with his hands made him a romantic figure attractive to columnists seeking a good story. This insured wide publicity for the policies of the "liberal bloc," which the press tagged the "Mavericks." Also, as a Democrat, Maverick could gain the President's ear more readily than Progressives or Farmer-Laborites; as a southerner, he might encourage others from the region to break their conservative moorings; and, as a scion of an aristocratic family, he would provide a much-needed aura of respectability to the group's endeavors. He provided the type of leadership a band of individualists with radical ideas most needed, not direction but articulation.
After their first meeting the "Mavericks" issued a manifesto listing a sixteen point program. Basically an updated restatement of the agenda of reform enunciated by the Populists four decades before, some of the points were incorporated into that session's legislation. The most striking feature of the manifesto was its demand for a policy of planned abundance. "Production for use," was Amlie's theme as he told the House that his constituents were "demanding not that goods be destroyed but that goods be produced." They were "demanding an opportunity to contribute their efforts toward the production of goods." They believed, he went on , "that the solution for our present difficulties is not to be found in the . . . creation of artificial scarcity, but only in the operation of our production plant at full capacity." Amlie spoke for many if not all the members of the "liberal bloc." Tutored by John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Charles Beard, and Paul Douglas, he found the New Deal philosophically hopeless. Business was recovering and the middle class was regaining its poise, but unorganized consumers found prices rising more rapidly than wages and salaries, millions were underemployed, and millions more were unemployed. These groups, powerless and desperate, engaged the sympathies of the "liberal bloc" who called their organization "The Progressive Open Forum Discussion Group."
While critical of the New Deal, the "Mavericks" did not indict the President. When Representative Claude Fuller, an Arkansas Democrat, ridiculed the Democrats among them as dupes of the Progressives who wanted to embarrass the President and form a third party, Maverick replied: "Franklin Roosevelt is a liberal and a progressive―and the fact that the progressives of the Northwest adopted the name 'progressive' as the label of their party does not make a progressive Democrat a member of the Progressive Party." He and the Progressives had supported the President, but he had never heard "the gentleman [from Arkansas] say anything progressive." In the cloakroom later, a New York Times correspondent saw the two men exchange blows.
The "liberal bloc" thought the President was sympathetic to a more thorough policy of reform and recovery. Maverick was convinced that most of the committee chairmen were "reactionaries," who had "attached themselves to the Roosevelt kite," while "trying to pull the kite down." If the problem were Congress, the group might serve the President as shock troops, spelling out progressive goals and enabling him to shape a consensus for programs slightly less radical that would be acceptable because it was moderate by comparison. It could also alert him as well as the public to conservative efforts to gut his "must" legislation. Hoping that the President was their ally, the "Mavericks" believed that their responsibility to the people was primary; and they intended to act on that premise even if it forced them to oppose him.
The legislative impact of the "Mavericks" is not easily measured. They did not consider the "work-relief" program adequate, but it received more funds than conservatives desired. They wanted a tougher "death sentence" in the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, but none would have been possible without them. And their intense commitment was a major factor in wresting the Fair Labor Standards Act from the Rules Committee. They received sharp set backs of course, notably when they backed the President's plan to enlarge the Supreme Court and when they could not secure legislation to develop planned industrial expansion that would guarantee full employment. There were unhappy compromises on taxation, also. But the "liberal bloc's" impact seems inescapable, especially in light of the conservative record of the House after its numbers were decimated by the 1938 election.
Although Maverick could not match the legislative prowess of senior members of the "liberal bloc," he had no peer when an issue demanded a tenacious, no-holds-barred readiness to take on any opponent―and that included the President. In the 1935 session he identified himself with the "neutrality" bloc in Congress. While Senators Gerald P. Nye and Bennett Champ Clark were placing "neutrality" legislation before the Senate, he was introducing similar bills in the House. Almost alone among southern members, he called for an embargo on raw materials as well as arms and munitions. In Houston he said that he "would just as soon close every port in the United States, including Houston and Galveston, if it would save the life of one human being," whatever the oil and cotton business lost. He demanded in a note to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that administration opposition to Senate and House hearings cease "Now!" The hearings began soon after. In August, when war between Italy and Ethiopia seemed imminent and the President was obstructing House consideration of an embargo, Maverick and New York Democrat Frank Sisson circulated a petition that indicated House support for the measure and led a small group to the White House to present it. There was a heated exchange. The President insisted that he must have discretionary powers respecting an embargo's application (to apply it against aggressors only if he thought it necessary, not against all participants as "neutrality" advocates demanded). Maverick retorted: "Well, you are not going to get them. The Senate has gone on record . . . and a majority of the House is opposed. We will never grant them to you." The President made no concession then, but that night he advised House leaders that he would accept an impartial embargo limited to six months. Signing the Neutrality Act, the President explained that a most distasteful policy had been forced upon him.
Maverick's distaste for war and his advocacy of "neutrality" were not unique among Progressives. The "liberal bloc" as a whole strongly opposed American involvement in conflicts abroad. But Maverick was neither a confirmed pacifist nor an isolationist, despite his conviction that American intervention in 1917 had been a grievous error. Even in the middle thirties, he differed with others of the "liberal bloc" and supported enlarged army appropriations, although he disapproved greater expenditures for the navy. The New York Times reported that "Mr. Maverick . . . believes in many of the doctrines expounded by the late General Mitchell." This is probably a sound interpretation of his behavior, especially since Maverick believed economic considerations had inspired the Great War. The picture is complete, however, only when it is noted that in 1940 he was the main speaker at the largest rally sponsored to that date by the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. By then he was convinced that wars were not always inspired by economic considerations and that they might involve ideals that demanded a defense of freedom.
Freedom to Maverick demanded a readiness to fight for the civil liberties of all Americans, whatever the cost. With exceptional courage, considering that he represented a southern city, he supported anti-lynching legislation; and he did so not only in the relative privacy of the House but also in magazine articles. Also, he exposed in Congress, through his friends in the press, and by his own pen, legislation designed to curb freedom of speech and press, including the Military Disaffection bill introduced by Boston's Democratic representative, John McCormack, and a sedition bill introduced by a California congressman, Charles Kramer. Then, too, he fought the "Dies Committee"―the House Un-American Activities Comittee―from its inception. He was not the only member of the "liberal bloc" or of Congress to oppose legislation that did not discriminate between "advocacy" and an "overt act," but no one else did so as consistently, forthrightly, and powerfully.
Maverick's critics insisted that his interests were prolific. They also insisted that he lacked depth. But if he did, it is not revealed in articles like "The South is Rising," "TVA Faces the Future," and "Let's Join the United States," which manifest a clear perception of the South's problems and are buttressed with facts that had to pass inspection by a sophisticated audience. He coupled his analyses with proposals that suggest an undue optimism, but never the simplistic demagoguery of Huey Long or the other panacea peddlers of the period. He attributed the South's problems mainly to homegrown reactionaries who scapegoated, preaching a martyred South persecuted by northern capitalists, to divert attention from their own entrenched interests. Maverick did not reject northern colonialism as a contributing factor. But southerners, he declared, must "leave the magnolia blossoms on the trees, and use [their] brains for . . . thinking," substituting "straight thinking" for "romance" and hard answers for a readiness to "fight for the dear old Southland." "Southerners working together, without regard for class or race, saying: 'Here! There is enough for us all to live with a fair standard, let's try doing it,' could supply the answer to the President's designation of the section as the 'Nation's Economic Problem No. 1.'"
Maverick thought southerners were moving in the right direction, but "a couple of damned Yankees" had showed them the way. Senator George Norris and President Roosevelt, "by setting up the TVA, have given the South the first real hope of revival it has known since the Civil War," he asserted; and he hoped the South would take full advantage of the "break." Recognizing that the TVA was vital to the South, visiting it often, and studying its organization and possible uses assiduously, he quickly mobilized the "liberal bloc" when pressure group politics threatened its existence or further development. In August 1935, when Pennsylvania Democrats were tempted to support restriction of its authority, he warned Senator Joe Guffey: "No TVA Bill, no Guffey Coal Bill." Both passed, as Pennsylvania Democrats organized support for the TVA, and the "liberal bloc" voted solidly for the Guffey-Snyder Coal Stabilization bill. With good reason, the Nashville Tennessean called him "an invaluable ally of TVA, of the South, and of the President."
From the end of the 1935 session to the primary the following summer, Maverick politicked at home; watched the progress of a bill to extend the Neutrality Act, complaining to the President of its inadequacy; proposed in the 1936 session a low-cost housing plan on a grand scale (twenty billion dollars); defended the President before the Texas senate calling him the best chief executive since Andrew Jackson; and traveled between the Mississippi and the Rockies making speeches. His favorite topics were "neutrality," the President, and civil liberties, which he endorsed, and the Liberty League, the Supreme Court, and the Townsend Plan, which he condemned. Wherever he spoke and whatever he said, his pithy rhetoric, replete with profanity, was worth the price of admission. Liberals loved him, and even a conservative newspaper like the New York Herald-Tribune applauded him when he said the Townsend Plan would "destroy the financial system of the country." New York Post reporters enjoyed his ability to say "printable things in an unprintable way," and the Harrisburg News said he "makes Capital life more endurable."
In 1935 Maverick denied any connection between the President's coattails and his election; but as the July 1936 primary approached, he drew closer to the White House. Loudly he proclaimed: "I'm for President Roosevelt and the New Deal. . . . I think that President Roosevelt is the greatest President we have ever had." And to make sure his constituents understood that the affection was reciprocal, he wrote the President that he was "officially and personally anxious" for him to come to San Antonio. Roosevelt not only came, embracing the congressman before the Alamo and cameramen, but also wrote a letter plainly designed as an endorsement. And when the administration received his complaint that a local FHA director was aiding one of his opponents, the problem was promptly corrected. Grateful, Maverick told a friend: "The Administration through the President are going down the line 8000% if not more." Even before his victory―he wrote Robert S. Allen that he lost only "three silk stocking and two red light" precints―he sent the President a figurine as a token of his gratitude, "St. Jude of the Impossible, not to use on Landon (unnecessary) but on a few things like the Constitution, child labor, and lots of others. . . ."
"St. Jude" was an appropriate gift. On February 5, 1937, the President announced his plan to enlarge the Supreme Court. Senate leaders, some reluctantly, promised support, but House Judiciary Committee chairman Hatton Sumners, a Texas Democrat, refused. Maverick, however, grabbed a copy of the bill and dropped it into the hopper as H.R. 4417; then he telegraphed Roosevelt: "Best presidential message ever made." A reply came back: "I am awfully glad you liked the Message."
For Maverick the message was overdue. Four days after the decision in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (May 27, 1935), he had declared: "We can't continue to be thwarted by this Court. We must have a judicial system with a rule of reason." And in the months following he had repeatedly attacked the Court's decisions as anachronistic. The issue split the Democratic party in Congress, in Texas, and in the nation. Maverick received many critical letters, especially from lawyers who previously had supported him (one reminding him of the many cases appealed by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Court). Condemnation of the plan by the San Antonio Bar and the Texas House of Representatives (which voted 95 to 28 against endorsement) should have warned him, but he slashed at critics and assembled a group from within the "liberal bloc" to spearhead the fight.
With a modicum of discretion Maverick might have survived the Supreme Court battle, but he committed himself simultaneously to the Committee for Industrial Organization's struggle for recognition of labor's collective bargaining rights. He criticized Tom Girdler of Republic Steel; opposed a House investigation of the sit-down strikes; traded punches with a congressman who condemned CIO; and spoke in Detroit, attacking Henry Ford and defending the United Auto Workers. The San Antonio press publicized these episodes, the Evening News stating that his "full status as a leading 'left-winger' . . . was not generally recognized until this session."
Maverick's activities constituted a serious political blunder. His appearance in Detroit particularly identified him with a militancy that provoked a sharp reaction among property owners. After his 1938 primary defeat, he informed the Philadelphia that his opponents had distributed 100,000 pamphlets with cartoons depicting John L. Lewis of CIO and himself as puppets dangled by Joseph Stalin, who contained in his other hand a dagger dripping with blood. Maverick had also incurred the wrath of the American Federation of Labor. According to the Philadelphia Record, AFL president, William Green, told Maverick personally: "We will support no one who gives aid and comfort to the CIO . . . even if he has a perfect voting record." AFL opposed Maverick in the primary, and the only CIO local, the pecan shellers, was too small and impecunious to mobilize its own workers or others as a compensatory force. Maverick's identification with CIO was a rash, perhaps gratuitous gesture that cost him renomination.
Maverick was not attuned to the politics of his constituency. His support of the Fair Labor Standards Act reinforced the determination of the Texas State Manufacturers Association to prevent his renomination. His advocacy of aid to the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War must have cost him dearly in Catholic San Antonio, and his articles or favorable references in radical journals were no help. Presumably he recognized the danger after Elizabeth Dilling's charge that he was a "Pet of Moscow" was headlined in the San Antonio Evening News, for he pleaded with liberal Catholic leaders in the East to rebut the smear. But the allegations continued. His rival in the primary charged that he was a "friend and ally of Communism," which was not to say that he was a Communist, but San Antonians would remember that he had fought for the right of a Communist, Benjamin Gitlow, to speak in the city ten years before.
The margin of Maverick's defeat was extremely narrow, 493 votes out of more than 49,000 cast. The major factors, he thought, were the "CIO bogey," "anti-Roosevelt money," and the "anti-Roosevelt vote." He was essentially correct, although other factors were present. His opponent, First Assistant District Attorney Paul Kilday, who had the backing of the Quin machine, castigated him as a "rubber stamp." At the same time, however, Jim Kilday, a Houston attorney, described his brother as a New Dealer, who thought Maverick had been "embarrassing the administration with his radical tendencies. The administration," Jim Kilday told the Houston Post, "may pass the word along to give the latter the vote and the former the boot." In any event, he said, Sam Rayburn wanted Maverick out.
There is no evidence that the administration wanted to dump Maverick. A letter from Secretary of War Harry Woodring informed San Antonians that he had been "instrumental in the development of United States army posts in the . . . area." The President endorsed him and a number of other liberal congressmen at Pueblo, Colorado (the names of Senator Tom Connally and Representative Sumners, opponents of his Court plan, were omitted.) San Antonio papers reported that the President, when he arrived in Fort Worth, asked Maverick about his train, calling: "Hello Maury, Glad to see you. How's the boy?" He had the President's blessing.
Maverick had known the primary would be "very hot and dirty," and he had sought desperately to wrap the mantle of the President about him. It is questionable, however, whether it was a useful strategy that year. The Court fight and the "purge" had cost him greatly, not only among opponents of the New Deal but also in the eyes of many liberals. At a time when Americans were awakening to the ends and means of dictators abroad, some feared the President might have similar ambitions. As a corollary, many Americans recognized the value of a Congress able to check and balance executive power. Indicative of this sentiment was strong public reaction to the Government Reorganization bill the President had requested that spring. The President had felt compelled to refute charges of dictatorial ambitions, and Congress had rejected the bill. The President was not the prestigious, persuasive leader nor the nation as responsive as in earlier years.
There were other factors disrupting the New Deal coalition and Maverick's support. The President had damned both labor and management in the sit-down strikes. Many of the middle class had been attracted to the New Deal only by the urgency of their plight; having regained their poise and inherent conservatism, they deplored the President's refusal to combat this attack on property rights. Some liberals had also been critical of the strikers' means and of the President for not condemning them. Then, too, there was the rebuke administered the President by Lewis for his "plague on both your houses" remark. Maverick could not be accused of neutrality, and that was precisely the problem. His opponent had found a vulnerable spot when he warned: "Maverick has cast his lot with the CIO. . . .[He] fosters and promotes the cause of radicals and radical organizations."
There is yet another reason why the President's endorsement was less meaningful in 1938 than in previous campaigns. The New Deal could take credit for a modicum of recovery; and it enjoyed the favor of millions for whom it had provided employment or relief. But early in 1937 Roosevelt had heeded the advice of the budget-balancers; simultaneously the social security tax became operative; and the economy, drained of much-needed purchasing power, had slowed. The President's prestige as the architect of recovery had declined with it. Soon Americans were talking about the "Roosevelt Recession"; and, as the Pierre [South Dakota] Journal pointed out, it "impaled Bob LaFollette, John L. Lewis, Representative Maury Maverick, and all the other liberal leaders who had flourished under the New Deal." This need not have been the case, and the liberals knew it. They pressed the President for leadership, demanding appropriations that would provide employment and relief as well as stimulate the economy. Roosevelt did not seem to be listening that winter, however, and by April, Maverick was writing to Adolph Berle accusing the President of not leading or inspiring Congress, not showing the way, not stiffening backbones. The Washington Evening Star quoted an unnamed member of the "liberal bloc" as saying "He's deserted us." (It was a fear Maverick seems to have shared.) Liberals, the Star was told, had read their mail from home and found "bitter resentment against months of inaction in bad times."
The President's lack of leadership gave liberals profound cause for anxiety and resentment. Their compassion and philosophy of political economy dictated a resumption of federal expenditures, but so too did political expediency. They could not ignore the needs of those who comprised the base of their support and expect reelection or, in Maverick's case, renomination. Their anxiety was coupled with resentment as they remembered that they had gone down the line with the President even when it involved great political risk. Particularly in San Antonio, with its heavy concentration of Negroes and Mexican-Americans, the "Roosevelt Recession" and the President's reluctance to pry from Congress new expenditures for employment and relief, must have hurt greatly. Maverick had counted on these groups before, but, having alienated members of the San Antonio Bar by his advocacy of the Court plan, hurt by middle-class reaction to the "purge," the recession, and his identification with CIO, he needed them more than ever. Both minority groups were desperate for help from some quarter, but federal aid was not forthcoming. Just prior to the primary, Maverick complained to friends in Washington of "widespread corruption and intimidation," of various efforts to "steal" the election. He wanted an investigation by federal authorities. He knew San Antonio's staple joke: "An honest Mexican is one who stays bought," but he had neither federal money nor his own for that purpose.
A single congressman may fail of renomination or reelection for many reasons. Maverick ran his campaigns on a shoestring; he spoke and wrote too often on too many controversial issues; and he was, as even his friends admitted, "an egotist and exhibitionist of the first order . . . impossible to work with. . . ." But his loss was not an isolated case; more than eighty congressmen of a liberal persuasion were defeated in 1938. It seems fair to conclude, then, that his defeat represented more than a personal rejection of a "maverick," a rebel in the House and against southern traditions; it represented, also, the end of a liberalism that had looked to a day when one third of a nation would not be "ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." It marked the end of the New Deal.
Stuart L. Weiss
The Journal of American History
March, 1971
A congressman's career seldom inspires the historian, particularly when the congressional tenure is short. Maury Maverick, a New Dealer from San Antonio, served only four years, but his career was exceptional. A rebel in the House, he challenged its leadership; a rebel against southern and national traditions and policies that he deemed archaic and reactionary, he inspired the "liberal bloc" that was formed upon his arrival in 1935. His was often the voice of this little-noted cluster of liberals (or progressives, the terms being used interchangeably then) who sought to strengthen the New Deal's commitment to reform. His defeat in 1938 was symptomatic of the political problems that afflicted politicians whose ideas were more radical than the President's, and whose defeats that year measure the collapse of the New Deal.
Maverick was thirty-eight in February 1934, when he decided to run for Congress from Texas' newly created twentieth district. In Bexar County and San Antonio, where one fourth of the population was Mexican in origin and one tenth was Negro, he was well known for his deep concern for the under-privileged. In 1932 he had lived in the "hobo, slum, Negro, and poverty areas" of the Southwest, where he had experienced some of the tragedy wrought by the depression. Upon his return, he had organized transient relief stations and founded a cooperative colony. He was also known as a civil libertarian. During the 1920s, he had denounced lynching, the poll tax, and the Ku Klux Klan; and he had joined the American Civil Liberties Union. Most San Antonians knew that for Maverick social justice was an act of faith. A scion of the genteel, Jeffersonian Maurys of Charlottesville, Virginia, and of the freewheeling Mavericks who had fought for Texan independence, he never equivocated. Maverick felt that he entered the world "a well-dressed gentleman," yet he "plainly heard a bugle calling Texans to fight for Justice and Liberty, even though it meant Death."
Maverick's impeccable credentials as a liberal and activist and his frantic efforts to identify himself with the spirit of the New Deal and the popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt were important factors in his primary victory in July 1934. He received support from businessmen who suffered not only from the depression but also from a local economic slump brought on by the intense heat and drought of the 1934 summer which ruined crops in nearby fields. He secured the endorsement of the American Federation of Labor and ran extremely well among impoverished Mexican-Americans. In the Texas primaries in 1934 "support of the New Deal was definitely helpful at the polls. Yet Maverick's success cannot be attributed solely to his fervent commitment to seek national answers to the district's economic and social ills. For five years as a member of the Citizen's League, he campaigned against Bexar County officials who, he alleged, protected vice; he worked to expose corruption in the office of San Antonio's mayor; and he was elected and re-elected tax collector, earning a reputation for integrity and impartiality. Many San Antonian's whose first priority was clean government ignored or disregarded his New Dealism and voted for him in the primary because they could not stomach his opponent, Mayor Charles K. Quin.
Even before his election—he ran unopposed—Maverick went to Washington, proclaimed new projects for his district, and pledged alliance to the President. His visit attests to his mania for publicity and personal recognition by the President and a compulsion to be where the action was.
His activities were scarcely mentioned in Texas newspapers, but the New York Herald-Tribune and the Washington Post glamorized his family lineage and career—a first sign of the recognition and support that he would receive from eastern newspapers throughout his political career. A few weeks later, while he was recovering from surgery at the Mayo Clinic, he received a note from the White House addressed: "My dear Maury." In 1939, when he was mayor of San Antonio, Maverick was insulted when the President addressed him more formally.
In January 1935, Maverick took his seat in the most radical Congress since Reconstruction. Optimistic observers had predicted minimal Democratic losses in the autumn elections, believing that Roosevelt's obvious popularity would overcome both the traditional reaction against the party in power and the discontent that surged through the country in 1934, but even the most knowledgeble underestimated the President's popularity and misgauged the direction and intensity of public frustration.
Democratic strength in the Senate increased by ten seats and, in the House, from 313 to 322. But Democratic gains did not measure the extent of the leftward shift. Liberals replaced conservative Democrats, and Republican losses were greater than the Democratic increases indicated. In Pennsylvania the power of a surging labor movement combined with urban machines nourished by federal relief funds reversed the complexion of the state's delegation. In Wisconsin seven Progressives were elected. They had been Progressive Republicans until Philip LaFollette and Thomas Amlie dragged them into a new alignment. LaFollette and Amlie had been seeking the support of Socialists and of independents and farm and labor groups that were pro-Roosevelt but would not work with state Democrats that they thought hopelessly conservative. LaFollette wanted to regain the governorship he had lost in 1932, and Amlie sought to regain his congressional seat. Their success assured most of the Progressives a more radical base, and it increased their number. Minnesota also contributed to the leftward shift by electing three Farmer-Labor candidates. The lower Midwest and Washington elected many independent, often radical Republicans and Democrats who were determined to support the New Deal and to infuse it with new vigor. Maverick joined this factious group that thought the New Deal, thus far, had been much too conservative.
Democratic leaders in Congress soon noted the danger on the left. Early in the session Nevada Senator Key Pittman wrote the President:
We are faced with an unscrupulous regular Republican representation: a progressive Republican membership determined upon going farther to the left than you will go; a Democrative representation who have more sympathy for the Republican progressive policies than they have for yours. And in the midst of this disloyalty you have a regular Democratic representation that conscientiously believe they are saving you by destroying you.
House leaders had reached the same conclusion. They changed the rules, increasing the number of signatures required for discharge petitions from 145 to 218, in an obvious attempt to strengthen their control over the rank-and-file.
But the House leadership was soon challenged. On March 9, about thirty congressmen met in the office of Illinois Democrat Kent Keller to define a program that they believed truly embraced the spirit of the New Deal. Paul Kvale, a Minnesota Farmer-Laborite, called the meeting and presided. Amlie provided the group with intellectual leadership, and Maverick inspired it with fighting spirit. Amlie wanted to stress ideology in their meetings and on the House floor, but Maverick helped direct the "liberal bloc's" attention to specific programs it could influence. In this sense, he assumed Fiorello LaGuardia's place. Maverick was not the accomplished parliamentarian the experienced LaGuardia had been, and in later years some members of the "liberal bloc" would denigrate his capacity for leadership, but for four years he was clearly their leader. He was always prepared to speak to the issues, and he could handle any audience. In speaking to the House, his constituents, or the nation, he melded an economic interpretation of the issues with a "patriotic" presentation that was both passionate and sincere and that placed the New Deal squarely in line with treasured American symbols. He also wrote for the New Republic and other journals, displaying a lucid and sophisticated style. Some articles condemned southern mores and policies that he deemed archaic and contrary to the section's true interests, developing a constructive vision of a better future. He asked that southerners put aside their racial hostilities and work together to build an industrial base that would benefit whites and blacks alike. Other articles, treating national problems, displayed a keen understanding, if selective use, of the contributions that political philosophy offered. Few men were better qualified to articulate the policies of the "liberal bloc."
Maverick had other qualifications for leadership. His family background, southern origins, and distinction as the only member of the group who had never worked with his hands made him a romantic figure attractive to columnists seeking a good story. This insured wide publicity for the policies of the "liberal bloc," which the press tagged the "Mavericks." Also, as a Democrat, Maverick could gain the President's ear more readily than Progressives or Farmer-Laborites; as a southerner, he might encourage others from the region to break their conservative moorings; and, as a scion of an aristocratic family, he would provide a much-needed aura of respectability to the group's endeavors. He provided the type of leadership a band of individualists with radical ideas most needed, not direction but articulation.
After their first meeting the "Mavericks" issued a manifesto listing a sixteen point program. Basically an updated restatement of the agenda of reform enunciated by the Populists four decades before, some of the points were incorporated into that session's legislation. The most striking feature of the manifesto was its demand for a policy of planned abundance. "Production for use," was Amlie's theme as he told the House that his constituents were "demanding not that goods be destroyed but that goods be produced." They were "demanding an opportunity to contribute their efforts toward the production of goods." They believed, he went on , "that the solution for our present difficulties is not to be found in the . . . creation of artificial scarcity, but only in the operation of our production plant at full capacity." Amlie spoke for many if not all the members of the "liberal bloc." Tutored by John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Charles Beard, and Paul Douglas, he found the New Deal philosophically hopeless. Business was recovering and the middle class was regaining its poise, but unorganized consumers found prices rising more rapidly than wages and salaries, millions were underemployed, and millions more were unemployed. These groups, powerless and desperate, engaged the sympathies of the "liberal bloc" who called their organization "The Progressive Open Forum Discussion Group."
While critical of the New Deal, the "Mavericks" did not indict the President. When Representative Claude Fuller, an Arkansas Democrat, ridiculed the Democrats among them as dupes of the Progressives who wanted to embarrass the President and form a third party, Maverick replied: "Franklin Roosevelt is a liberal and a progressive―and the fact that the progressives of the Northwest adopted the name 'progressive' as the label of their party does not make a progressive Democrat a member of the Progressive Party." He and the Progressives had supported the President, but he had never heard "the gentleman [from Arkansas] say anything progressive." In the cloakroom later, a New York Times correspondent saw the two men exchange blows.
The "liberal bloc" thought the President was sympathetic to a more thorough policy of reform and recovery. Maverick was convinced that most of the committee chairmen were "reactionaries," who had "attached themselves to the Roosevelt kite," while "trying to pull the kite down." If the problem were Congress, the group might serve the President as shock troops, spelling out progressive goals and enabling him to shape a consensus for programs slightly less radical that would be acceptable because it was moderate by comparison. It could also alert him as well as the public to conservative efforts to gut his "must" legislation. Hoping that the President was their ally, the "Mavericks" believed that their responsibility to the people was primary; and they intended to act on that premise even if it forced them to oppose him.
The legislative impact of the "Mavericks" is not easily measured. They did not consider the "work-relief" program adequate, but it received more funds than conservatives desired. They wanted a tougher "death sentence" in the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, but none would have been possible without them. And their intense commitment was a major factor in wresting the Fair Labor Standards Act from the Rules Committee. They received sharp set backs of course, notably when they backed the President's plan to enlarge the Supreme Court and when they could not secure legislation to develop planned industrial expansion that would guarantee full employment. There were unhappy compromises on taxation, also. But the "liberal bloc's" impact seems inescapable, especially in light of the conservative record of the House after its numbers were decimated by the 1938 election.
Although Maverick could not match the legislative prowess of senior members of the "liberal bloc," he had no peer when an issue demanded a tenacious, no-holds-barred readiness to take on any opponent―and that included the President. In the 1935 session he identified himself with the "neutrality" bloc in Congress. While Senators Gerald P. Nye and Bennett Champ Clark were placing "neutrality" legislation before the Senate, he was introducing similar bills in the House. Almost alone among southern members, he called for an embargo on raw materials as well as arms and munitions. In Houston he said that he "would just as soon close every port in the United States, including Houston and Galveston, if it would save the life of one human being," whatever the oil and cotton business lost. He demanded in a note to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that administration opposition to Senate and House hearings cease "Now!" The hearings began soon after. In August, when war between Italy and Ethiopia seemed imminent and the President was obstructing House consideration of an embargo, Maverick and New York Democrat Frank Sisson circulated a petition that indicated House support for the measure and led a small group to the White House to present it. There was a heated exchange. The President insisted that he must have discretionary powers respecting an embargo's application (to apply it against aggressors only if he thought it necessary, not against all participants as "neutrality" advocates demanded). Maverick retorted: "Well, you are not going to get them. The Senate has gone on record . . . and a majority of the House is opposed. We will never grant them to you." The President made no concession then, but that night he advised House leaders that he would accept an impartial embargo limited to six months. Signing the Neutrality Act, the President explained that a most distasteful policy had been forced upon him.
Maverick's distaste for war and his advocacy of "neutrality" were not unique among Progressives. The "liberal bloc" as a whole strongly opposed American involvement in conflicts abroad. But Maverick was neither a confirmed pacifist nor an isolationist, despite his conviction that American intervention in 1917 had been a grievous error. Even in the middle thirties, he differed with others of the "liberal bloc" and supported enlarged army appropriations, although he disapproved greater expenditures for the navy. The New York Times reported that "Mr. Maverick . . . believes in many of the doctrines expounded by the late General Mitchell." This is probably a sound interpretation of his behavior, especially since Maverick believed economic considerations had inspired the Great War. The picture is complete, however, only when it is noted that in 1940 he was the main speaker at the largest rally sponsored to that date by the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. By then he was convinced that wars were not always inspired by economic considerations and that they might involve ideals that demanded a defense of freedom.
Freedom to Maverick demanded a readiness to fight for the civil liberties of all Americans, whatever the cost. With exceptional courage, considering that he represented a southern city, he supported anti-lynching legislation; and he did so not only in the relative privacy of the House but also in magazine articles. Also, he exposed in Congress, through his friends in the press, and by his own pen, legislation designed to curb freedom of speech and press, including the Military Disaffection bill introduced by Boston's Democratic representative, John McCormack, and a sedition bill introduced by a California congressman, Charles Kramer. Then, too, he fought the "Dies Committee"―the House Un-American Activities Comittee―from its inception. He was not the only member of the "liberal bloc" or of Congress to oppose legislation that did not discriminate between "advocacy" and an "overt act," but no one else did so as consistently, forthrightly, and powerfully.
Maverick's critics insisted that his interests were prolific. They also insisted that he lacked depth. But if he did, it is not revealed in articles like "The South is Rising," "TVA Faces the Future," and "Let's Join the United States," which manifest a clear perception of the South's problems and are buttressed with facts that had to pass inspection by a sophisticated audience. He coupled his analyses with proposals that suggest an undue optimism, but never the simplistic demagoguery of Huey Long or the other panacea peddlers of the period. He attributed the South's problems mainly to homegrown reactionaries who scapegoated, preaching a martyred South persecuted by northern capitalists, to divert attention from their own entrenched interests. Maverick did not reject northern colonialism as a contributing factor. But southerners, he declared, must "leave the magnolia blossoms on the trees, and use [their] brains for . . . thinking," substituting "straight thinking" for "romance" and hard answers for a readiness to "fight for the dear old Southland." "Southerners working together, without regard for class or race, saying: 'Here! There is enough for us all to live with a fair standard, let's try doing it,' could supply the answer to the President's designation of the section as the 'Nation's Economic Problem No. 1.'"
Maverick thought southerners were moving in the right direction, but "a couple of damned Yankees" had showed them the way. Senator George Norris and President Roosevelt, "by setting up the TVA, have given the South the first real hope of revival it has known since the Civil War," he asserted; and he hoped the South would take full advantage of the "break." Recognizing that the TVA was vital to the South, visiting it often, and studying its organization and possible uses assiduously, he quickly mobilized the "liberal bloc" when pressure group politics threatened its existence or further development. In August 1935, when Pennsylvania Democrats were tempted to support restriction of its authority, he warned Senator Joe Guffey: "No TVA Bill, no Guffey Coal Bill." Both passed, as Pennsylvania Democrats organized support for the TVA, and the "liberal bloc" voted solidly for the Guffey-Snyder Coal Stabilization bill. With good reason, the Nashville Tennessean called him "an invaluable ally of TVA, of the South, and of the President."
From the end of the 1935 session to the primary the following summer, Maverick politicked at home; watched the progress of a bill to extend the Neutrality Act, complaining to the President of its inadequacy; proposed in the 1936 session a low-cost housing plan on a grand scale (twenty billion dollars); defended the President before the Texas senate calling him the best chief executive since Andrew Jackson; and traveled between the Mississippi and the Rockies making speeches. His favorite topics were "neutrality," the President, and civil liberties, which he endorsed, and the Liberty League, the Supreme Court, and the Townsend Plan, which he condemned. Wherever he spoke and whatever he said, his pithy rhetoric, replete with profanity, was worth the price of admission. Liberals loved him, and even a conservative newspaper like the New York Herald-Tribune applauded him when he said the Townsend Plan would "destroy the financial system of the country." New York Post reporters enjoyed his ability to say "printable things in an unprintable way," and the Harrisburg News said he "makes Capital life more endurable."
In 1935 Maverick denied any connection between the President's coattails and his election; but as the July 1936 primary approached, he drew closer to the White House. Loudly he proclaimed: "I'm for President Roosevelt and the New Deal. . . . I think that President Roosevelt is the greatest President we have ever had." And to make sure his constituents understood that the affection was reciprocal, he wrote the President that he was "officially and personally anxious" for him to come to San Antonio. Roosevelt not only came, embracing the congressman before the Alamo and cameramen, but also wrote a letter plainly designed as an endorsement. And when the administration received his complaint that a local FHA director was aiding one of his opponents, the problem was promptly corrected. Grateful, Maverick told a friend: "The Administration through the President are going down the line 8000% if not more." Even before his victory―he wrote Robert S. Allen that he lost only "three silk stocking and two red light" precints―he sent the President a figurine as a token of his gratitude, "St. Jude of the Impossible, not to use on Landon (unnecessary) but on a few things like the Constitution, child labor, and lots of others. . . ."
"St. Jude" was an appropriate gift. On February 5, 1937, the President announced his plan to enlarge the Supreme Court. Senate leaders, some reluctantly, promised support, but House Judiciary Committee chairman Hatton Sumners, a Texas Democrat, refused. Maverick, however, grabbed a copy of the bill and dropped it into the hopper as H.R. 4417; then he telegraphed Roosevelt: "Best presidential message ever made." A reply came back: "I am awfully glad you liked the Message."
For Maverick the message was overdue. Four days after the decision in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (May 27, 1935), he had declared: "We can't continue to be thwarted by this Court. We must have a judicial system with a rule of reason." And in the months following he had repeatedly attacked the Court's decisions as anachronistic. The issue split the Democratic party in Congress, in Texas, and in the nation. Maverick received many critical letters, especially from lawyers who previously had supported him (one reminding him of the many cases appealed by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Court). Condemnation of the plan by the San Antonio Bar and the Texas House of Representatives (which voted 95 to 28 against endorsement) should have warned him, but he slashed at critics and assembled a group from within the "liberal bloc" to spearhead the fight.
With a modicum of discretion Maverick might have survived the Supreme Court battle, but he committed himself simultaneously to the Committee for Industrial Organization's struggle for recognition of labor's collective bargaining rights. He criticized Tom Girdler of Republic Steel; opposed a House investigation of the sit-down strikes; traded punches with a congressman who condemned CIO; and spoke in Detroit, attacking Henry Ford and defending the United Auto Workers. The San Antonio press publicized these episodes, the Evening News stating that his "full status as a leading 'left-winger' . . . was not generally recognized until this session."
Maverick's activities constituted a serious political blunder. His appearance in Detroit particularly identified him with a militancy that provoked a sharp reaction among property owners. After his 1938 primary defeat, he informed the Philadelphia that his opponents had distributed 100,000 pamphlets with cartoons depicting John L. Lewis of CIO and himself as puppets dangled by Joseph Stalin, who contained in his other hand a dagger dripping with blood. Maverick had also incurred the wrath of the American Federation of Labor. According to the Philadelphia Record, AFL president, William Green, told Maverick personally: "We will support no one who gives aid and comfort to the CIO . . . even if he has a perfect voting record." AFL opposed Maverick in the primary, and the only CIO local, the pecan shellers, was too small and impecunious to mobilize its own workers or others as a compensatory force. Maverick's identification with CIO was a rash, perhaps gratuitous gesture that cost him renomination.
Maverick was not attuned to the politics of his constituency. His support of the Fair Labor Standards Act reinforced the determination of the Texas State Manufacturers Association to prevent his renomination. His advocacy of aid to the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War must have cost him dearly in Catholic San Antonio, and his articles or favorable references in radical journals were no help. Presumably he recognized the danger after Elizabeth Dilling's charge that he was a "Pet of Moscow" was headlined in the San Antonio Evening News, for he pleaded with liberal Catholic leaders in the East to rebut the smear. But the allegations continued. His rival in the primary charged that he was a "friend and ally of Communism," which was not to say that he was a Communist, but San Antonians would remember that he had fought for the right of a Communist, Benjamin Gitlow, to speak in the city ten years before.
The margin of Maverick's defeat was extremely narrow, 493 votes out of more than 49,000 cast. The major factors, he thought, were the "CIO bogey," "anti-Roosevelt money," and the "anti-Roosevelt vote." He was essentially correct, although other factors were present. His opponent, First Assistant District Attorney Paul Kilday, who had the backing of the Quin machine, castigated him as a "rubber stamp." At the same time, however, Jim Kilday, a Houston attorney, described his brother as a New Dealer, who thought Maverick had been "embarrassing the administration with his radical tendencies. The administration," Jim Kilday told the Houston Post, "may pass the word along to give the latter the vote and the former the boot." In any event, he said, Sam Rayburn wanted Maverick out.
There is no evidence that the administration wanted to dump Maverick. A letter from Secretary of War Harry Woodring informed San Antonians that he had been "instrumental in the development of United States army posts in the . . . area." The President endorsed him and a number of other liberal congressmen at Pueblo, Colorado (the names of Senator Tom Connally and Representative Sumners, opponents of his Court plan, were omitted.) San Antonio papers reported that the President, when he arrived in Fort Worth, asked Maverick about his train, calling: "Hello Maury, Glad to see you. How's the boy?" He had the President's blessing.
Maverick had known the primary would be "very hot and dirty," and he had sought desperately to wrap the mantle of the President about him. It is questionable, however, whether it was a useful strategy that year. The Court fight and the "purge" had cost him greatly, not only among opponents of the New Deal but also in the eyes of many liberals. At a time when Americans were awakening to the ends and means of dictators abroad, some feared the President might have similar ambitions. As a corollary, many Americans recognized the value of a Congress able to check and balance executive power. Indicative of this sentiment was strong public reaction to the Government Reorganization bill the President had requested that spring. The President had felt compelled to refute charges of dictatorial ambitions, and Congress had rejected the bill. The President was not the prestigious, persuasive leader nor the nation as responsive as in earlier years.
There were other factors disrupting the New Deal coalition and Maverick's support. The President had damned both labor and management in the sit-down strikes. Many of the middle class had been attracted to the New Deal only by the urgency of their plight; having regained their poise and inherent conservatism, they deplored the President's refusal to combat this attack on property rights. Some liberals had also been critical of the strikers' means and of the President for not condemning them. Then, too, there was the rebuke administered the President by Lewis for his "plague on both your houses" remark. Maverick could not be accused of neutrality, and that was precisely the problem. His opponent had found a vulnerable spot when he warned: "Maverick has cast his lot with the CIO. . . .[He] fosters and promotes the cause of radicals and radical organizations."
There is yet another reason why the President's endorsement was less meaningful in 1938 than in previous campaigns. The New Deal could take credit for a modicum of recovery; and it enjoyed the favor of millions for whom it had provided employment or relief. But early in 1937 Roosevelt had heeded the advice of the budget-balancers; simultaneously the social security tax became operative; and the economy, drained of much-needed purchasing power, had slowed. The President's prestige as the architect of recovery had declined with it. Soon Americans were talking about the "Roosevelt Recession"; and, as the Pierre [South Dakota] Journal pointed out, it "impaled Bob LaFollette, John L. Lewis, Representative Maury Maverick, and all the other liberal leaders who had flourished under the New Deal." This need not have been the case, and the liberals knew it. They pressed the President for leadership, demanding appropriations that would provide employment and relief as well as stimulate the economy. Roosevelt did not seem to be listening that winter, however, and by April, Maverick was writing to Adolph Berle accusing the President of not leading or inspiring Congress, not showing the way, not stiffening backbones. The Washington Evening Star quoted an unnamed member of the "liberal bloc" as saying "He's deserted us." (It was a fear Maverick seems to have shared.) Liberals, the Star was told, had read their mail from home and found "bitter resentment against months of inaction in bad times."
The President's lack of leadership gave liberals profound cause for anxiety and resentment. Their compassion and philosophy of political economy dictated a resumption of federal expenditures, but so too did political expediency. They could not ignore the needs of those who comprised the base of their support and expect reelection or, in Maverick's case, renomination. Their anxiety was coupled with resentment as they remembered that they had gone down the line with the President even when it involved great political risk. Particularly in San Antonio, with its heavy concentration of Negroes and Mexican-Americans, the "Roosevelt Recession" and the President's reluctance to pry from Congress new expenditures for employment and relief, must have hurt greatly. Maverick had counted on these groups before, but, having alienated members of the San Antonio Bar by his advocacy of the Court plan, hurt by middle-class reaction to the "purge," the recession, and his identification with CIO, he needed them more than ever. Both minority groups were desperate for help from some quarter, but federal aid was not forthcoming. Just prior to the primary, Maverick complained to friends in Washington of "widespread corruption and intimidation," of various efforts to "steal" the election. He wanted an investigation by federal authorities. He knew San Antonio's staple joke: "An honest Mexican is one who stays bought," but he had neither federal money nor his own for that purpose.
A single congressman may fail of renomination or reelection for many reasons. Maverick ran his campaigns on a shoestring; he spoke and wrote too often on too many controversial issues; and he was, as even his friends admitted, "an egotist and exhibitionist of the first order . . . impossible to work with. . . ." But his loss was not an isolated case; more than eighty congressmen of a liberal persuasion were defeated in 1938. It seems fair to conclude, then, that his defeat represented more than a personal rejection of a "maverick," a rebel in the House and against southern traditions; it represented, also, the end of a liberalism that had looked to a day when one third of a nation would not be "ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." It marked the end of the New Deal.
Stuart L. Weiss
The Journal of American History
March, 1971
The American Politician
"Who won the San Francisco earthquake?" This question truculently put by the gentleman from Texas, ended summarily a rather pointless performance on the part of a fellow member of the Military Affairs Committee of the House. True to his warlike instincts the latter had engaged at length and loudly in browbeating a witness before the Committee, Jeanette Rankin, herself a former representative, now one of the most effective advocates of peace in the United States. Climaxing a patriotic flight the gentleman shouted at the lady: "Who won the World War?" And received the above classic answer to his question in the form of another question, itself in a way as devastating as an earthquake. To make the irony of the affair more complete the Honorable Maury Maverick, who thus closed the incident, comes from the bustling city of San Antonio, Texas, which happens to be one of the greatest military centers in the world, if indeed it is not the greatest.
On another occasion when the news of Hitler's burning of the books was still fresh, Charles A. Beard, dean of American historians, was being interrogated before the same Committee, although the word "heckled" would describe the process more accurately. Because of his partial deafness the eminent scholar was at a marked disadvantage. Scenting an easy kill, one of the more militaristic members of the Committee started in full cry, his eyes gleaming, his nostrils quivering. And the object of his relentless pursuit? Ah, my friends, it was COMMUNISTIC LITERATURE, nothing less—and nothing more definite, either. He wanted to know all about it; in fact he clamored—and yammered—at great length for knowledge, meanwhile doing his utmost to browbeat the witness. Most of all he craved to learn in what libraries such dastardly literature was concealed. Whether or not the Professor grasped this particular question, his mild answer was: "In all of them, I should think." To which Maury Maverick added, again ending the séance: "No doubt there's plenty of it in our own library, the Congressional Library. Does the honorable gentleman desire to have it burned down also?"
Unquestionably, given a good cause, the gentleman from Texas dearly loves to upset the apple-cart. And nothing affords him more joy, holy or unholy, than to deflate stuffed shirts, especially when enveloped in military uniforms, as sometimes happens to be the case. In so doing, of course, Maverick runs the risk of gaining the reputation of an enfant terrible, or, worse still, of a recognized congressional wit. The latter is, perhaps, the saddest of all legislative fates, as the career of "Sunset" Cox demonstrated a generation ago. That the gentleman from Texas has escaped such a nemesis is not due to any lack of humor, mordant or otherwise. It is due to the fact that he does not stop with the outburst of ready laughter. Attack with words, whether humorous or with "tough, hard, mean words"—to use his own expression—is always backed up by serried masses of facts, laboriously collected, meticulously ordered. And facts are also "tough, hard, mean" things. To illustrate and at the same time to revert to the two incidents narrated above Maverick kept up the fight until he had killed the Military Disaffection Bill. He is still prouder of that success than of anything else he has accomplished in Washington. And that in spite of many notable achievements which bulk much larger as matters of public business and which have reverberated resoundingly through the press of the country as a whole. For example, his fights for the conservation of natural resources—the matter which is always foremost in his thought, for housing and slum clearance, for the TVA, for mandatory neutrality legislation, and more recently for the reform of the Supreme Court are not likely soon to be forgotten.
Maverick was born at San Antonio, Texas, October 23, 1895, the eleventh and youngest son of Albert and Jane (Maury) Maverick. English, Scotch-Irish, and French Huguenot stocks—a strong and typically American mixture—are all represented in his ancestry. It is impossible to talk to the Congressman for any length of time without discovering that he is enormously interested in the history of his family, a trait which, by the way, is abundantly manifested in his recent book, A Maverick American. At first sight it would seem to indicate that the gentleman from Texas shares the aristocratic outlook supposedly cherished by all members of "fine old Southern families." Twitted on this score, so incongruous with his extreme democratic outlook, Maverick defends himself with a certain show of indignation. He assures you that he is "an ordinary man with ordinary ideas" (which, with all due regard to his sincerity, is simply not the case); further, that so far as he can discover all his ancestors were of the same type. In other words, all the Mavericks were mavericks, i.e., commonplace men and women more or less astray in the midst of the social and economic forces of their time. Regardless of the tie of blood the Congressman assures you that he can see their vices and failures just as clearly as he sees their virtue and successes. Finally—and make no mistake about it—he studies their past struggles not because of any aristocratic feeling but solely for his own guidance amid the dominant forces of the here and now.
An ingenious theory, this, to dispose of the charge of ancestor worship. Nor can it be dismissed out of hand as rationalization, pure and simple. Still it is apparent that Maverick admires his forbears as a whole, particularly those who were on the popular side in the political conflicts of their day. Unquestionably also he takes a certain sinful pride in their fighting qualities, regardless of the side on which they fought. Chalking up this minor demerit—if demerit it be—against the Congressman, it must be admitted in his favor that his extended genealogical researches have given him an unusual knowledge of the history of the country and particularly of the South as seen from the viewpoint of human mavericks. Whether his ancestors were conservatives or radicals—mostly they were the latter—it is true that he studies them always from the point of view of the problems he is trying to solve today. One of the most characteristic features of A Maverick American is the way in which the author after describing briefly the exploits of some colonial or revolutionary ancestor, proceeds to apply at length the lessons thus learned to the matters he has now in hand, for example, to soil conservation, militarism, taxation, poor relief, and the like. Decidedly Maury Maverick is a much more effective and a much more down-to-the-minute political leader because he has forgathered so extensively and so intimately with his forbears.
In his political career the Congressman is under particular obligation—as will appear later—to his grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick. It was because of this gentleman's easy-going management of his ranch that the name "maverick" came to be applied to unbranded, roaming cattle. To his father and mother, however, Maury's indebtedness is beyond all computation. They seem to have been ideally fitted for parenthood; moreover they had had plenty of practical experience in child psychology before the birth of their eleventh and last child. In the charming picture which the son paints of their life together, characteristically using political colors, the mother is portrayed as a shrewd and active prime minister, the father as a quiet and kindly constitutional monarch. Tolerance reigned in their household; frankness and fearlessness were the order of the day. Here the twig was bent; so the tree is inclined.
Educational life on the whole proved much less satisfactory than family life. Young Maury came up through the public grade schools and the High School of San Antonio; for some reason undisclosed he notes: "did not graduate from the latter." Indeed he seems to have made a specialty, then and latter, of dodging graduation. Which, of course, now leaves him wide open to the offer of an honorary degree. (Which, probably, he would decline.) There was a rather ineffectual year at Virginia Military Institute; after that, three "wasted" years at the University of Texas, where he enrolled for journalism. Again the notation: "did not graduate." This time the reason was that Maury found himself overpowered by a desire to practice law, probably with some thought of politics in the offing. As a result he set himself the strenuous task of doing the three years' work of the law school in one year. And a third time he "did not graduate." However, he won admittance to the local bar and threw himself into practice with the ardor characteristic of him when he is really interested in what he is doing.
One of the commonest obsessions of college men who have reached middle life is that during their undergraduate year they were regular hellicats. As a moral equivalent or sublimation for raising Cain after the time for that sort of amusement is over and done, this trick of memory probably has a certain ethical value. Curious, however, that a man so shrewd as Maverick should be subject to it. As foundation for the delusion he adduces nothing more conclusive than the usual catalogue of student sins—cutting, activities, college politics, membership in an organization known as the Campus Buzzards, drinking, brawling and disorders on the campus, run-ins with the deans, and so on, and so on. (No mention of "fussing." Why not? Texas was coeducational.) On the other hand, Maverick admits that during his high school and college years he was an omnivorous reader, particularly of "banned" books. As this was before the days when sex was discovered apparently these latter were for the most part treatises on ethics, philosophy, and sociology of which professors disapproved. Or said they disapproved. Experienced college instructors will recognize the device, which is at least several centuries older than Machiavelli. As they well know, nothing so whets the curiosity of an undergraduate as to tell him that he ought not read a certain book. Whether so intended or not in the present case, young Maury swatted up vigorously all prohibited literature; thus even when in college his education was largely self-administered. Evidently his intellectual curiosity was insatiable. Given a really understanding tutor he would have forged ahead at a tremendous intellectual pace. As things were, he did indeed make direct use of the instruction given him in journalism. On the other hand, he took no courses in economic or political science. Owing to his prejudice against professors Maverick is rather loath to admit being influenced by any of that tribe. Under pressure, however, he does pay handsome tribute to Edwin DuBois Shurter, now retired, whose instruction in public speaking, particularly in the matter of logical and effective presentation, has been of the greatest possible utility to him throughout his political career. And in general Maverick acknowledges the value of university training even if most of the courses in his time were dull and tiresome. One detail of his educational experience is not without distinct political significance. Since the University was located at Austin, students had an excellent opportunity to observe state government in action; also to meet personally the present and prospective leaders in Texas affairs. As a piquant detail he notes that many members of the legislature were attending the law school, adding "so we frequently attended the State Legislature."
It was by no means certain that Maverick was predestined to politics, highly gifted for that pursuit as he has shown himself particularly since entering Congress. Various other alternatives were first explored and eliminated. Thus he might readily have gone on with journalism for which he was trained at the University of Texas and which undoubtedly he would have been brilliantly successful. Already at the age of eighteen he had secured a temporary job as city editor of the Amarillo News which he enjoyed hugely. After completing his work at the University he made rapid progress as a lawyer and was elected, partly as a result of his popularity among younger members of the profession, partly because of some shrewd political maneuvers, president of the San Antonio Bar Association at the age of twenty-four. It is clear, however, that the detail of legal practice is as repellent to him as it was to the young Theodore Roosevelt, whom he resembles in many other respects. Moreover he did not like the idea of prosecuting criminals; he "always felt sorry for the defendant." One other profession to which he devoted himself temporarily, that of the soldier, would have proved impossible in the long run. For an individual so wholly dedicated to the love of liberty as Maverick is, life under military discipline is unthinkable. Nevertheless he enlisted promptly after our entry into the World War, served with distinction as lieutenant of infantry in France until desperately wounded, October 4, 1918, and was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart medals for gallantry in action. Of this experience, to which he devotes thirty of the most poignant and brilliantly written pages of A Maverick American the principal results were the knowledge of war and the hatred of it which are the strongest of his intellectual and emotional drives to the present day.
Following his excursion into legal practice Maverick discovered, somewhat to his own surprise, that he was a business man of sorts. He made money hand over fist in lumber and building; indeed his conscience troubled him not a little at the ease with which he could run up jerry-built houses for $800 or $1000 and then sell them out of hand for twice as much. Quite apart from such scruples, however, it is clear that wealth makes little appeal to him. From his successful building experience, however, Maverick did derive one result of permanent political value, namely a thorough practical knowledge of the housing problem in the United States. And that problem has ranked high among his preoccupations as a public man ever since.
Considering the number of vocational bypaths Maverick explored, one may well ask: "Why, then, the ultimate decision to enter politics?" Partly, as we have seen, because of ancestral tradition. It cannot be maintained, however, that immediate family environment predetermined his choice. True the Mavericks had the advantage of being "old settlers"; moreover it is not without political significance that the Congressman himself has maintained a residence in the San Antonio district throughout his entire forty-two years, and in his present residence for ten years. Of living relatives, however, only one, an uncle by marriage, had been a congressman. There was, of course, the glowing memory of the grandfather, Samuel of cattle fame, as a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence back in 1836. While other more distant relatives had held local offices on up to a governorship or two, still the great majority of them had been soldiers, sea captains, merchants, and plantation owners.
As to the dawn of political consciousness Maverick is quite definite. It occurred at the age of six when President McKinley visited his home, evidently making a tremendous impression on the boy. Subsequently he was to meet Bryan under his father's roof, and elsewhere La Follette, Victor Berger, and Eugene Debs, all of whom he admired apparently in proportion to their radicalism and forthrightness. And, of course, he met many Texas worthies including "Pa" Ferguson, who despite his demagogy "had a heart" and also the guts to fight the fire of the K. K. K. with an even hotter backfire; also George C. Butte, professor at the law school of the University, whom Maverick was to support some years later in his candidacy against Ferguson. Undoubtedly this range of political acquaintance, extremely wide for one so young, was potent in turning his thoughts toward a public career.
If the young Texan was predestined to politics it was, however, neither family, nor education, nor acquaintance which decided the matter. Rather he was driven by his social consciousness, or, to avoid professorial words abhorrent to the Congressman let us say he was overpowered by the true maverick spirit, namely by deep sympathy with the multitude of those who were astray and neglected. The most distinctive thing in his whole earlier life was his assumption of the role of a hobo during the last years of the Hoover regime when there was no relief and when, as a result, thousands of "transients"—human beings, not lost cattle—were drifting aimlessly and in dire misery through the vast reaches of Texas. To study their plight he dressed the part, not a hard job for him; he lived with them in "jungles" and flophouses and on the open road, incidentally becoming lousy in the process. But he did not stop with the mere accumulation of sociological data. Acting on what he had learned at first hand, he established a co-operative colony for transients at the edge of San Antonio which did excellent work until government relief began. In itself this experience may have been of minor importance. But it is vastly significant as to the springs of action which move Maverick. In times of profound distress a man with his deep humane feeling simply must leave all else and go into politics in the effort to set things right.
Second only to this fundamental emotional drive, Maverick had to go into politics because of the urgings of his intellect. Nourished by ceaseless reading of economics and political science, he knows that he can set things right, some things at least, if power be given to him. And he means to do all that is in him to that end regardless of opposition and objurgation. Those mistake the man utterly who point to his alleged demagogy as a basic trait of character. "I may demagogue," he observed, using the word as a verb after a fashion coming into vogue in Washington, "but never on any matter of importance." Really all that it means to him is nothing more than an occasional resort to sensationalism in order to arouse interest and secure support. Back of all such superficial manifestations there is a cool, disciplined, and informed intelligence of the highest order. Also an inflexible determination to tell the truth and shame the devil, regardless of the cost to his own political career.
No doubt it will grieve the Congressman sadly, but it must be said that, much as he affects to deride professors, he possesses many traits of that species. True he does not speak their "jargon"; that would never do since he has to run for office from time to time. But he does read their books continually, translating them into bills, also into speeches for both congressional and popular consumption. [For example, his H. R. 7325, 75th Congress, 1st Session, introduced June 1, 1937, providing for the creation of an Industrial Expansion Board and other Federal agencies, represents a painstaking effort to create the administrative machinery necessary for the carrying out of the principles of Mordecai Ezekiel's profoundly significant book entitled $2500 a Year.] He does work the Congressional Library overtime, particularly the Research Division. He does write book reviews, even publishing them to the Congressional Record. He does contribute frequently to such high-brow journals of opinion as The Nation and The New Republic. He does call continually upon braintrusters for research assistance, sometimes putting two of them at work, unknown to each other, on the same problem in order to compare their findings. He does annotate his short, short speeches with long, long footnotes full of details, a professorial habit if there ever was one. He does make the damaging admission in A Maverick American that "the march of the professor is the greatest advance in the history of our government." Finally, as the Swarthmore address showed, he does love to talk to students. It was, in fact, a typical academic lecture even to the characteristic fault of such discourses, the effort to cover too much ground. Also Maverick sent several thousand public documents to the College beforehand, asking that they be distributed to students in preparation for his speech. In other words, professorial words, "collateral reading" if you please.
Although he had interested himself in civic affairs for several years Maverick's actual entry into politics did not occur until 1929, when he ran for the office of tax collector. To the surprise of the wiseacres he was successful against a city-county machine previously considered impregnable. Two years later he won his re-election against the same opposition. It is rare indeed that the personal popularity of tax collectors increases during their term of office. Nevertheless in 1934 Maverick was elected to Congress after two bitter Democratic primary campaigns in which he defeated the Mayor of San Antonio. Again in the primaries of—final elections being virtually uncontested south of the Mason and Dixon line—Maverick received a vote nearly equal to that of his two opponents combined (Maverick, 21,703; Seeligson, 14,378; Menefree, 7,606), and a plurality twice as large as that by which he had won the nomination two years earlier. These figures are the more remarkable because the San Antonio district, unlike the overwhelming majority of those in the South, has been carried by Republicans at least half the time during recent decades. [In the primary of July 26, 1938, Maverick was defeated for renomination to Congress by an eyelash, his vote being 23,584 to 24,059 for his opponent. Perhaps the most striking feature of his campaign was the large amount of publicity it received throughout the country. It is seldom indeed that a mere congressional primary is thus treated as a matter of national interest. Maverick made a strenuous fight and took his defeat philosophically. To him it was merely the end of a round, not the end of the battle. Given his ability and energy one may confidently expect him, after a brief, well-earned rest, to resume his activities upon the stage of national politics.]
Maverick's campaign for the congressional nomination in 1934 took all the money for expenses that he could lay his hands on up to the legal limit of $2,500. Doubtless also friends spent something in behalf of his candidacy, how much he does not know. In his second campaign expenses were negligible. While contributions were made both in 1934 and 1936 by well-wishers and relatives, none were received from corporations. As noted above there is seldom much of a contest down South in final elections; hence the Federal Corrupt Practices Act is of even less importance there than elsewhere. In general Maverick believes that it is either not strong enough or not sufficiently supported by public opinion to insure absolute enforcement.
One incident of the first campaign for Congress is decidedly worth recording. As a result of the severe injury to the back and spinal cord which he received in France, Maverick had been in and out of hospitals more or less for sixteen years. On various occasions when supposed to be unconscious he had overheard surgeons predict his early death. Often he suffered from acute pains which made him unsteady on his legs. Although he was then on the water wagon it was perhaps only natural under the circumstances that his opponents should denounce him as a drunkard. Maverick did not deny the charge, believing it would do him less harm than a true statement concerning his precarious physical condition.
Whatever else may be alleged against him Maverick is anything but a machine politician. Asked to state in writing the importance he attaches to party committees—state, congressional, county, city and ward—his answers were five straight "None's." Nor is he a member of any such committee. On the contrary, as we have just seen, he was opposed solidly by them, as well as by all the newspapers of the district, every time he ran for office. Also by the majority of big business men, especially the crooked oil operators; by all bankers save one; by "carpetbaggers," who are now of the corporate rather than of the old-time political variety; finally by nearly all those who because of wealth or prominence think themselves "big-shots," with or without foundation in actual personal achievement. On the whole a rather formidable opposition. As against it Maverick has the backing of a powerful Citizens League which he was instrumental in organizing. Further he has the support of a small number of big business men—big, that is, not only in amount of capital invested but even more so in the breadth of their social and economic vision. Of the manufacturers he estimates that some thirty per cent are for him; also a large proportion of the grocerymen, druggists, and small tradesmen and middle classes generally; and a still larger proportion of the poorer voters. Finally it is a matter of common knowledge that the masses of Mexicans of the San Antonio district swear by him. Evidently Maverick is as fond of them as they are devoted to him. Contrary to the practice of many politicians who think it a shrewd vote-getting device to address naturalized constituents in their own tongue, the Congressman, although fluent enough in Spanish, has always made it a point to talk to his friends from below the Rio Grande in English and to treat them in every way as full-fledged American citizens. Reckoning up all the friendly forces listed above, Maverick estimates that from thirty-five to forty per cent of the voters of his district are for him in spite of hell and high water. His task in campaigns, therefore, is to rally the additional ten to fifteen per cent necessary to victory.
Nor is Maverick much more interested in patronage than he is in other aspects of machine politics. After all, getting jobs is the business of lordly senators rather than of mere representatives. If Civil Service examinations stand in the way of applicants Maverick is heartily glad of it. He has asked for very few political appointments, and these chiefly for constituents who were in dire need. And he is much more deeply interested in remedying economic conditions so that there will be jobs for all than he is in spoils of any sort.
Nor, finally, is Maverick a "joiner." Membership in the Masons or Moose, in the Eagles or Owls, does not allure him. Quite apart from the ethics of the case, he regards the mixing of secret societies and politics, i.e., peanut politics, as not worth the trouble involved. While an undergraduate at the University of Texas he did join a fraternity; now, however, he is inclined to believe that, because of their inherent snobbishness, such organizations might well be abolished. Curiously enough considering his strong anti-militarist views, he has retained membership in the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, largely, he explains, "for sentimental reasons." But he has been an active, fighting member, from conviction, of the American Civil Liberties Union ever since his return from France in 1919. Perhaps as a result of the survival of the boy in him he belongs also to the Circus Fans of America and is a director of the San Antonio Zoological Society.
Emphatically Maverick does not belong to that school of statesmen who take the weight of public opinion by piling telegrams, pro and con, in separate stacks and voting according to whichever turns out to be the higher. Contrary to the insinuations of Washington newspaper men, it is doubtful whether any congressmen follow this procedure habitually. A certain justification might, however, be found for stacking telegrams—in the wastebasket—on occasions when public utility corporations have kept the wires to Washington hot with thousands of messages manufactured to order in their own interest. However this may be, Maverick devotes a considerable part of his time to keeping in touch with his constituents. Thus when the Supreme Court fight was at its hottest a pile of clippings fresh from the newspapers of the Twentieth Texas District was constantly before him. One bundle bore the following comment from a local observer: "'Great Mass Meeting' last night. Fathered, mothered, and sistered by A—B—, X—Y—, and a few other 'Jeffersonian Democrats.' Attended by less than two hundred, half of whom were curiosity seekers."
Further, as part of the process of keeping in touch with constituents Maverick gives the most careful attention to his correspondence. He admits that its volume is ungodly; he receives requests continually for advice on subjects ranging all the way from obstetrics to theology from men and women in every walk of life. Notwithstanding the amount of letter writing involved the Congressman enjoys it, particularly when controversial in character. An early masterpiece of his along the latter line achieved national publicity and caused a country-wide roar of laughter. To a particularly stupid, abusive and long-winded correspondent he replied on official stationery, in full form with address and signature. However, the body of the letter consisted of one word only, viz, "Ph-h-h-h"!
"A soft answer turneth away wrath" but it is not news. On the other hand, while "grievous words stir up anger" they often make the front page. The Congressman realizes this keenly, as the most cursory study of his correspondence reveals. To a "gentleman" in a remote city who had written calling him "an ass," his speeches "hooey," and his legislative activities "mere hocus-pocus," Maverick replied: "Your thoughtfulness, your kind-heartedness, and particularly your courage in writing me from such a distance, overwhelm me."
A persistent epistolary heckler from Amarillo, arguing the matter of soil conservation in what Sir Henry Maine once described as "weak generalities and strong personalities," denounced all congressmen as "opportunist politicos full of fanciful notions," whom "we pay $10,000 a year for being wooden Indians and messenger boys instead of statesmen"; adding sundry other chunks of verbal garbage too noisome and too numerous for quotation. Firing back at this human stinkpot Maverick wrote: "I thought that I had insulted you enough in my last letter. Why waste time on me? I am afraid you will find me hopeless as I know you are. . . . Please go out and jump in a dust cloud around Amarillo and get choked. As for me I shall continue to be for soil conservation, and for the elimination of dust clouds—after you have been choked."
On one hilarious occasion a postal card arrived from San Antonio bearing openly upon its obverse such genial epithets regarding the Congressman's stand on the Supreme Court as the following: "mean and abject," "viper-like trespasser," "traitorous bid for personal patronage from the hand of one usurping the leadership of the Democratic party for a Fascist cause." To which Maverick replied in part: "You use language wholly improper for a gentleman—hysterical, even insane. In sending language which amounts to open libel and slander on a postal card you have committed a Federal felony for which you could be sent to the penitentiary. . . . You will regret mailing the card, not on my account but your own, for I shall do nothing and say no more about the mater. You are at liberty to show this letter to your friends." As the italicized sentence indicates, the Congressman is well aware that a red-hot rejoinder is seldom exhibited to others by the recipient.
It would be quite misleading, however, to rest the epistolary character of the gentleman from Texas upon the above bouquet of thistle blossoms. In the nature of the case answering a fool according to the nature of its content. To those who address him courteously, no matter how strong their opposition, he replies with courtesy, broad tolerance, and complete good humor. Always the replies are forceful, clearly expressed, and entirely unafraid. There are occasional stylistic slips such as occur in all dictated statements but, taken as a whole, they make it clear that Maverick regards letter writing to constituents as a fine art, practicing it not only skillfully but also with that restraint which is the first sign of the master.
"I should have lost," wrote Edmund Burke to his electors in the City of Bristol, "the only thing that can make such abilities as mine of any use in the world now or hereafter: I mean that authority which is derived from an opinion that a member speaks the language of truth and sincerity, and that he is not ready to take up or lay down a great political system for the convenience of the hour, that he is in Parliament to support his opinion of the public good, and does not form his opinion to get into Parliament, or to continue in it." Doubtless Maverick would find these sonorous words somewhat egotistical and stilted, even professorial. Ever since they were written, however, politicians and political scientists as well have been mulling over the question: "Whom should a representative represent?" It is doubtful if the gentleman from Texas has gone into the philosophy of the matter at all deeply, but on the basis of his own experience he has worked out a quite definite and practical answer which is fully in accord with the principles set down by the great English statesman. However, Maverick adds certain corollaries of his own. He holds himself bound to act on mandate as to things definitely pledged during a campaign. On the other hand, he does not consider himself bound in matters of fundamental national interest, nor in cases of sudden emotion or of mob violence which might occur in his district. "A man must have guts enough to fall out even with his friends." If a new political issue comes up Maverick considers himself free to take sides as his convictions dictate. In any event he holds that he was not elected to be a rubber stamp. Finally he is convinced that "the only way to play politics is not to play politics."
In his various campaigns Maverick has made abundant use of handbills but not of placards. It is his stump speeches, however, that are most effective; they are racy, pungent, humorous, argumentative, straight-from-the-shoulder affairs that carry conviction to the hearts of his hearers. Apparently they cost him little effort; not so, however, the speeches which he makes in the House. As part of the Congressman's "record" the latter are prepared with meticulous care. Braintrusters may be called in for research and verification. But Maverick himself writes out and revises every word he is to pronounce on the floor of Congress; afterwards he goes over the printer's proofs painstakingly two or more times. He is particularly effective in his opening words which are designed to outline what is to follow or to strike a keynote or simply to catch the attention of his colleagues. For example, on the Judicial Reform Bill, February 22, 1937, he began crisply as follows: "Mr. Speaker, I rise today to make one statement, two observations, and one conclusion." He kept his words exactly and, having good terminal facilities, finished in exactly four minutes' speaking time. If details are important he adds them under leave to print in the form of notes which often show wide reading and careful collection of data.
Again speaking for the Gavagan anti-lynching bill before the House in Committee of the Whole, April 15, 1937, Maverick began: "Mr. Chairman, I am from the South, and I never knew a Republican was white until I was twenty-one years old." Humorous claptrap perhaps, but it brought a laugh, captured attention, and was followed two seconds later by words the like of which are seldom heard on southern lips and which went direct to the heart of the issue: "I am in favor of an anti-lynching bill. I am not in favor of any Federal bill that takes over local law enforcement. But I am in favor of a bill which guarantees constitutional rights of all American citizens within the United States of America."
Maverick is as careful about the ordering as he is of the selection of his material. Here his newspaper training stands him in good stead. He seeks always to put his case first in the smallest possible number of words so that he who runs may read. Afterwards a more detailed argument is presented for the benefit of those who have the time and are more deeply interested in the subject. He avoids the arrangement of materials in those long, unbroken columns of fine print which make the Congressional Record so arid and repellent. Each text published by the Congressman is carefully subdivided; all the subdivisions are provided with captions, often striking in phraseology, which enable the reader to pick and choose at will. It would be difficult to find a better arrangement of printed material anywhere than in Maverick's brief report on the military disaffection bill. In addition he made a dozen speeches on the subject but it was this smashing report, widely publicized, that killed the bill.
While careful in all matters of form Maverick does not hesitate to resort to innovations. Brevity ranks high among them. People may once have had time to listen to speeches as long as Andy Smith's famous prayer but that day is past. Younger members of the House are lucky if they get ten minutes—and a very good thing that is, too, in Maverick's opinion. Reports should not be allowed to run to two volumes; eighty, ninety, or at the outside one hundred and fifty pages should suffice. Nominating speeches of the old-time variety which went on and on and on, without mentioning the candidate, and then attempted to reach a climax at the end with the naming of the "gr-r-r-r-eat leader" are particularly obnoxious to the Congressman. Nobody is ever surprised or thrilled and everybody is exhausted and exasperated when the wind-up—usually a sad anti-climax—is reached. If the gentleman from Texas has an introduction to make he names the man at once, briefly recites his qualifications—and sits down.
One of the most striking of Maverick's innovations was the publication of numerous book reviews in the sacred but abysmally dull pages of the Congressional Record. He was a trifle truculent in prefacing this device: "If I should call this an oration—and take five or ten pages of the Congressional Record, it would meet with the approval of everyone, because no one would read it. Hence if I choose to call what I put in the Record 'a book review,' that is my constitutional right, and not even a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court can take it away from me." Naturally with so large a chip on his shoulder someone was certain to make a pass at it. In the course of the next few days a certain well known writer on the Chicago Times observed that: "the jolly old Congressional Record has at last stooped to folly in its most verbose form—three columns of masterly literary criticism by the Hon. Maury Maverick of Texas on a government report entitled The Future of the Great Plains." Maverick responded by reprinting the criticism in full in the Record, and having thus used the publicity of the affair for all it was worth, continued calmly with the publication of further book reviews. In the opinion of the writer, who is not without experience along this line, they are, while somewhat given to unconventional turns of phrase, fair in judgment, admirably written, full of verve and humor, and certainly far above the average of the common run of stuff printed in the Congressional Record. Incidentally they have served to give publicity and wide distribution to several important government reports which otherwise would have rotted in the basement of some public building in Washington.
First elected to Congress, November, 1934, Maverick came to Washington the following spring merely as one of the 435 members of the House. Within a year he was nationally known, figuring largely in the news reports of the country as a whole. The New York Times, for example, devoted seventeen articles to his activities between March and September of his first year as a representative. How did he thus manage to emerge from the obscurity which envelops the doings of the average congressman? So many of them remain immersed in trivia, notables perhaps in their own districts but little known to the world outside.
In part the answer has been indicated already, Maverick possesses gifts of brain and heart that would make him a leader in any social group. Fundamental to the understanding of his career as these qualities are, still certain other details are not without significance. One may ask: "What's in a name?" with the usual scornful intonation given to that question, but it must be admitted that Grandfather Samuel Augustus helped considerably on this score. Maverick is a quaint enough cognomen in and for itself, but it is also one which, thanks to the said ancestor, had passed into general use as a common noun. Since the new member of the House who bore it hailed from Texas he must, of course, be "picturesque"; doubtless he wore chaps, spurs, bandanna and a ten-gallon hat; doubtless also he was full of the tall tales so characteristic of the wild and woolly Southwest. Deluded by these stereotypes, which by the way nauseate Maverick and all other good San Antonians, reporters and press photographers descended in a body upon the new congressman immediately after his arrival in Washington. They saw a somewhat stodgy person in conventional and none-too-good attire; but they did not get the tall tales they were after. As for the expected cock-and-bull stories about pioneers, about the fall of the Alamo, about deeds of derring-do in the great open spaces where men are men and all that sort of antiquarian rot, there was absolutely nothing doing. Instead they got the cold, unvarnished truth. One reporter more intelligent than the rest—at least he knew something about the importance of San Antonio as a military center—asked Maverick for his views on war. The answer to that question was NEWS; it was so forceful, so wholly unexpected. Subsequently reporters have always received the same frank treatment at the hands of the Congressman. It is evident that they like him personally; in particular they like his habit of laying all the cards on the table, faces up. Perhaps also they feel him to be one of themselves as a result of his journalistic training and experience.
More important even than his facility in relations with the press were Maverick's affiliations with like-minded younger members of the House. Shortly after he arrived in Washington they came together for the formulation of common principles and policies, adopting a vigorous and comprehensive sixteen-point program dealing with labor, agriculture, taxation, public works, monopolies, war, education, revision of the rules of the House, free speech and free press, and with sickness, old age and unemployment benefits. [For a more detailed statement of these sixteen points see the New York Times, March 17, 1935.] Since that time these independent younger members, reinforced by several veterans of the House, have held together, fighting pertinaciously for the ends they have in view. [Among other members of the group the following may be mentioned: Jerry Voorhis, Charles Colden, Ed V. Izac and Byron N. Scott of California; John A. Martin of Colorado; Kent E. Keller and Frank W. Fries of Illinois; E. C. Eicher of Iowa; John Luecke of Michigan; John T. Bernard of Minnesota; Herbert S. Bigelow of Ohio; Sam Massingale of Oklahoma; Robert G. Allen, Michael J. Bradley and Charles Eckert of Pennsylvania; Fred H. Hildebrandt of South Dakota; W. D. McFarlane and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas; John M. Coffee, Knute Hill and Charles H. Leavy of Washington; and George J. Schneider of Wisconsin.]
Now these independents, judging by the impression they have made in national affairs, "have what it takes." They do not care a tinker's damn what they are called, regarding the use of epithets as very old-fashioned reactionary technique. Just the same if any misguided opponent so far forgets himself as to dub one of them a demagogue, the honorable gentleman concerned is quite likely to demagogue him right back as a "Country Club Communist," adding sufficient detail to keep the said misguided opponent busy explaining to his constituents that he is nothing of the sort for a month or more. Nor do the members of the younger congressional group waste any time finding names ending in "ism" for their movement. "Liberalism"? In their bright lexicon that means too much—or perhaps nothing. "Radicalism"? They have broken with the old timers of that school who were forever shouting denunciation of Wall Street and never doing anything about it. "Socialism"? No; they regard the doctrines of Saviour Marx and Apostle Lenin as little relevant to the American scene. Congressmen of the new type are inclined to laugh at the soap-box rabble-rouser who always signs himself "Yours for the Revolution." They are convinced that the problems now before the country are not going to be solved by physical force; they have a deep underlying faith in scientific research and in democratic processes. On the other hand, they will tell you frankly that they regard the Constitution as having been made to meet human needs, and hence requiring amendment as conditions change. Rigidity they regard as the one most dangerous political condition. They have not the slightest intention to confiscate wealth but they do mean to distribute property rights widely. If this be treason—or Radicalism, or Socialism, or demagogy, or what have you?—very well, then, you can make the most of it.
Maverick's attainment of national prominence within a year after he came to Washington was not due to work on his part toward that specific end. Rather it came about because he just worked, to the full limit of his forces, for the things which he knew needed to be done. There is, however, an essential logic in the nation-wide distinction he has gained. Essentially he is neither the local nor state type, not even the sectional type, of politician. He approaches issues from the point of view of the country as a whole; hence his actions and utterances make an appeal everywhere. Considering that the Congressman comes from below the Mason and Dixon line the absence of sectionalism from his make-up is particularly noteworthy. As a matter of detail in this connection, even his alleged southern intonation is only faintly if at all perceptible. It is not that he lacks interest in the problems of the South. On the contrary he is acutely conscious of them, particularly in such matters as soil reclamation and conservation, wages and wage differentials, housing, and the like. What he aims at, however, is not sectional welfare per se but rather to raise his section together with the country as a whole out of depressed conditions. As a corollary of this realistic national approach to southern problems Maverick loathes the old-time, moonlit, romantic, chivalric, dear-old-black-Mammy, magnolia-and-honeysuckle-blossom, so-red-the-rose-gone-with-the-wind type of fiction. One exception may be noted: the Congressman admits a certain regard for the honeysuckle. Not based either on scent or sentiment, heaven forbid, but solely on the fact that soil conservationists have found it "an effective gully control plant."
No attempt to account for the achievements already to Maverick's credit would be complete without mention of the fact that on May 22, 1920, he married Terrell Louise Dobbs of Groesbeck, Texas. "We are still together," he remarks somewhat whimsically in his autobiography; still, when one recalls what happened to so many marriages contracted in the tangoing twenties, perhaps such a fact does need to be recorded. Very much "together" also, judging by his wife's activity as helpmeet. Both as gracious hostess in their home and as efficient assistant in his office during occasional rush periods, Mrs. Maverick has contributed greatly to her husband's popularity. They have been joined by a son, Maury, Jr., born in 1921, and by a daughter, Terrell Fontaine, born in 1926.
As to physique one does not have to be an astrologer to read in the stars that Maverick was born under the sign of Taurus. Nor a genealogist to perceive that he possesses the bodily traits implied by his family name. There is a tremendous latent strength, slow-moving but persistent, in the man. Height, a trifle under five feet, eight inches; avoirdupois, perhaps the less said the better, however he does fall within the famous dictum sponsored by former Speaker Thomas B. Reed. viz.: "No gentleman ever weighs more than 200 pounds." If there is too much adipose tissue especially around the girth, the result of sedentary life and lack of exercise, there is also plenty of bone and sinew. Maverick's shoulders are well set and powerfully muscled arms long and brawny; hands—democratic hands with short, stubby fingers but capable of a tremendous grip; legs short and massive—one fancies them slightly bowed from interminable hours in the saddle during boyhood. Despite the burden carried the Congressman's gait is jaunty enough.
Cartoonists dealing with Maverick's head seize instinctively upon the heavy tousled thatch of wiry, dull-black hair. It can be made to lie flat at the back and sides but toward the front it shapes itself naturally into rebellious, wave-like rolls which bend first forward, then upward and back, the one immediately over the forehead especially protruding and giving the effect of a small plume. The brow is broad rather than high. Nose a sharply defined equilateral triangle, not the long, thin nose of a philosopher but fleshy and with a pronounced thrust en avant, inquisitive, penetrating, and pugnacious. Eyes slightly protruding and gray with a scarcely perceptible greenish glint; they look out on the world for the most part in a rather cool and speculative manner. Mouth firm and well rounded; full lips often puckered in thought; aggressive, fighting chin. On the whole a good poker face; but Maverick has never played the game, "too busy ever since I was born" and does not know one card from another—thus one more cherished illusion about Texas is shattered! In spite of his ordinarily serious expression the Congressman is quite capable of an engagingly boyish grin over an amusing episode or story.
As to dress, careless comfort and quiet colors seem to be the ends aimed at although it is doubtful whether Maverick ever gives the subject a thought. To say that "he looks as if he slept in his clothes" is putting it too strongly. His manner as a rule is almost Quaker-like; when strongly aroused, however, there is no lack of animation. Standing before a fireplace discoursing on the Supreme Court he sweeps all the Nine Old Men from the high stone mantel to the floor with a single vigorous gesture. His voice is always well controlled; in conversation it is low-pitched, unemotional but persuasive; in public addresses he can use it to meet any mood on the part of his audience and to fill resonantly any hall, no matter how large.
The general physical impression, that of a steady uprush of inexhaustible energy, if verified by Maverick's capacity to put in day after day of grueling labor, eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, for months on end. Obviously this is a pace that cannot be kept up indefinitely. It is true that political work is always fascinating and frequently amusing to the Congressman; in a sense he makes play out of it. On the other hand, the word "recreation" is simply not in his vocabulary, a dangerous oversight; he even seems embarrassed when it is mentioned and seeks to excuse himself by saying that, when not busy in Washington, he enjoys making field-surveys of his dearly beloved reclamation schemes, of housing projects, of the TVA dams and power-plants, and of government works generally. (At this point, feeling that his self-justification is complete, he remarks that it would do the justices of the Supreme Court a world of good if they were to follow his example, thus learning something about American life as it is actually lived, instead of slumbering away four long months each summer in various pleasant country retreats.) When the Congressman's attention is once more drawn tactfully to the fact that field-surveys are also work and that he has not so far put in evidence any real recreation on his own part, he mumbles something rather sheepishly about his small farm with its street car home perched on the hills above San Antonio. There at rare and all too brief intervals he potters around, looks after his fruit trees, escaping the sun in their grateful shade—and lets the world go hang. It is a curious quirk of the man, however, that while he himself scarcely ever stops working he is profoundly convinced that "America must learn how to use its leisure time."
Maverick's office, Room 101 of the Old House Office Building, is a favorite port of call not only for politicians but for all the newshawks of Washington as well. It is essentially a man's workshop; there is nothing sissified about it, no spick-and-span furnishings, no flowers on the desk, no lady secretaries à la mode to do the honors and give a tone of refinement to the place. Chairs, tables, and bookcases are heavy and serviceable. There are, ahem, one or two brass cuspidors on the floor—solely for the use of certain visitors; otherwise, of course, it would not be a real politician's office. On the walls a motley array of maps, plans, photographs, and engravings. Among Presidents, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Johnson look down upon the busy scene; in a place of special honor there is a photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt warmly inscribed to the Honorable Maury Maverick. Interspersed with the foregoing there are cartoons dealing with recent political happenings, drawing which present realistically the life and labor of the very poor, a wall map showing the WPA in action, engineering plans of great national reclamation projects. An incongruous note is supplied by the picture of a squadron of military airplanes in flight among the clouds. However, it is balanced by a reproduction of Constantine's gruesome painting, "Battle's End," which shows a young soldier, wounded and mud-stained, who has dragged himself to die in the midst of a graveyard. Close by one sees a small blackboard on which are noted the days and hours of Maverick's engagements at the House Gymnasium, most of these followed by a zero to indicate that he had cut class. Books, books, books, among them many presentation copies, stacked on tables, desks, and shelves, the great majority being recent publications in economics and political science, precisely the sort of reading on which college professors of these subjects are now engaged. On the floor in various places, convenient or inconvenient, great piles of public documents for consultation or for mailing out to constituents. Decidedly this is an office which reflects the character of its occupant.
On the basis of Professor Charles E. Merriam's analysis of the qualities most frequently exhibited by political leaders, it is evident that Maverick would receive a grade—if one may speak in that professorial jargon which he abominates—of "A" or at least of "A—." [See Charles E. Merriam, American Party System (rev. ed. New York, 1929), p 48.] Unquestionably the gentleman from the Twentieth Texas District possesses unusual sensitiveness to the strength and direction of social and industrial tendencies, always, however, with particular reference to their effect upon the underdog. He is politically inventive and quick in putting his inventions to work. In group combinations and compromise his success at Washington has been noteworthy, although here perhaps he is more inclined to belligerency than to caution. As to political diplomacy in ideas, policies, and spoils, the first two rate an "A+," but the third must be marked "D—," although this is everlastingly to his credit. Maverick possesses marked gifts in making personal contacts, also facility of the highest possible order in dramatizing the sentiments and interests of large classes of voters. As to "courage with a dash of luck" the former is his in superabundant degree; regarding the latter he opines that he is indeed lucky since he just missed getting killed several times in battle and later in a number of the automobile accidents of peace time. To the objection that this is a rather negative conception of what constitutes good fortune his reply is: "Never got anything worth having by luck; always by hard work and plenty of it."
With so much already achieved, what of the future? If he cherishes ambitions Maverick does not worry about them. What he wants is to do a good job now. Granted that, the future can safely be left to care for itself. In any event he wishes no preferment which would inhibit his personal independence. Certainly Maverick is not one of the type of politicians classified by Professor Merriam as "power-hungry." On the contrary there is nothing of the pride of place in his demeanor: to use a homely phrase he is "as easy as an old shoe." One can imagine his raucous laughter over the pretentious, know-it-all "statesmen" still so common in Washington. Of an essentially combative nature, to Maverick the fight's the thing in large part, victory or defeat mere incidents of slight consequence. Yet he rejects Nietzsche's dictum that "a good fight hallows any cause." Rather he holds a draconic conviction of the justice of his cause and hence of its ultimate prevalence. Above all, his profound sympathy with the poor and underprivileged and his even more profound belief in the possibility of social meliorism through democratic processes are the prime motors of his every action. He knows the world is out of joint but thinks it no cursed spite that he has been called, so far as his powers avail, to set it right. On the contrary, this should be the highest duty and privilege of all men who are strong and intelligent not only, but humane as well. To a very large degree Maverick painted his own portrait when he inserted in the Congressional Record the stirring words of Louis Untermeyer's "Prayer":
"Who won the San Francisco earthquake?" This question truculently put by the gentleman from Texas, ended summarily a rather pointless performance on the part of a fellow member of the Military Affairs Committee of the House. True to his warlike instincts the latter had engaged at length and loudly in browbeating a witness before the Committee, Jeanette Rankin, herself a former representative, now one of the most effective advocates of peace in the United States. Climaxing a patriotic flight the gentleman shouted at the lady: "Who won the World War?" And received the above classic answer to his question in the form of another question, itself in a way as devastating as an earthquake. To make the irony of the affair more complete the Honorable Maury Maverick, who thus closed the incident, comes from the bustling city of San Antonio, Texas, which happens to be one of the greatest military centers in the world, if indeed it is not the greatest.
On another occasion when the news of Hitler's burning of the books was still fresh, Charles A. Beard, dean of American historians, was being interrogated before the same Committee, although the word "heckled" would describe the process more accurately. Because of his partial deafness the eminent scholar was at a marked disadvantage. Scenting an easy kill, one of the more militaristic members of the Committee started in full cry, his eyes gleaming, his nostrils quivering. And the object of his relentless pursuit? Ah, my friends, it was COMMUNISTIC LITERATURE, nothing less—and nothing more definite, either. He wanted to know all about it; in fact he clamored—and yammered—at great length for knowledge, meanwhile doing his utmost to browbeat the witness. Most of all he craved to learn in what libraries such dastardly literature was concealed. Whether or not the Professor grasped this particular question, his mild answer was: "In all of them, I should think." To which Maury Maverick added, again ending the séance: "No doubt there's plenty of it in our own library, the Congressional Library. Does the honorable gentleman desire to have it burned down also?"
Unquestionably, given a good cause, the gentleman from Texas dearly loves to upset the apple-cart. And nothing affords him more joy, holy or unholy, than to deflate stuffed shirts, especially when enveloped in military uniforms, as sometimes happens to be the case. In so doing, of course, Maverick runs the risk of gaining the reputation of an enfant terrible, or, worse still, of a recognized congressional wit. The latter is, perhaps, the saddest of all legislative fates, as the career of "Sunset" Cox demonstrated a generation ago. That the gentleman from Texas has escaped such a nemesis is not due to any lack of humor, mordant or otherwise. It is due to the fact that he does not stop with the outburst of ready laughter. Attack with words, whether humorous or with "tough, hard, mean words"—to use his own expression—is always backed up by serried masses of facts, laboriously collected, meticulously ordered. And facts are also "tough, hard, mean" things. To illustrate and at the same time to revert to the two incidents narrated above Maverick kept up the fight until he had killed the Military Disaffection Bill. He is still prouder of that success than of anything else he has accomplished in Washington. And that in spite of many notable achievements which bulk much larger as matters of public business and which have reverberated resoundingly through the press of the country as a whole. For example, his fights for the conservation of natural resources—the matter which is always foremost in his thought, for housing and slum clearance, for the TVA, for mandatory neutrality legislation, and more recently for the reform of the Supreme Court are not likely soon to be forgotten.
Maverick was born at San Antonio, Texas, October 23, 1895, the eleventh and youngest son of Albert and Jane (Maury) Maverick. English, Scotch-Irish, and French Huguenot stocks—a strong and typically American mixture—are all represented in his ancestry. It is impossible to talk to the Congressman for any length of time without discovering that he is enormously interested in the history of his family, a trait which, by the way, is abundantly manifested in his recent book, A Maverick American. At first sight it would seem to indicate that the gentleman from Texas shares the aristocratic outlook supposedly cherished by all members of "fine old Southern families." Twitted on this score, so incongruous with his extreme democratic outlook, Maverick defends himself with a certain show of indignation. He assures you that he is "an ordinary man with ordinary ideas" (which, with all due regard to his sincerity, is simply not the case); further, that so far as he can discover all his ancestors were of the same type. In other words, all the Mavericks were mavericks, i.e., commonplace men and women more or less astray in the midst of the social and economic forces of their time. Regardless of the tie of blood the Congressman assures you that he can see their vices and failures just as clearly as he sees their virtue and successes. Finally—and make no mistake about it—he studies their past struggles not because of any aristocratic feeling but solely for his own guidance amid the dominant forces of the here and now.
An ingenious theory, this, to dispose of the charge of ancestor worship. Nor can it be dismissed out of hand as rationalization, pure and simple. Still it is apparent that Maverick admires his forbears as a whole, particularly those who were on the popular side in the political conflicts of their day. Unquestionably also he takes a certain sinful pride in their fighting qualities, regardless of the side on which they fought. Chalking up this minor demerit—if demerit it be—against the Congressman, it must be admitted in his favor that his extended genealogical researches have given him an unusual knowledge of the history of the country and particularly of the South as seen from the viewpoint of human mavericks. Whether his ancestors were conservatives or radicals—mostly they were the latter—it is true that he studies them always from the point of view of the problems he is trying to solve today. One of the most characteristic features of A Maverick American is the way in which the author after describing briefly the exploits of some colonial or revolutionary ancestor, proceeds to apply at length the lessons thus learned to the matters he has now in hand, for example, to soil conservation, militarism, taxation, poor relief, and the like. Decidedly Maury Maverick is a much more effective and a much more down-to-the-minute political leader because he has forgathered so extensively and so intimately with his forbears.
In his political career the Congressman is under particular obligation—as will appear later—to his grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick. It was because of this gentleman's easy-going management of his ranch that the name "maverick" came to be applied to unbranded, roaming cattle. To his father and mother, however, Maury's indebtedness is beyond all computation. They seem to have been ideally fitted for parenthood; moreover they had had plenty of practical experience in child psychology before the birth of their eleventh and last child. In the charming picture which the son paints of their life together, characteristically using political colors, the mother is portrayed as a shrewd and active prime minister, the father as a quiet and kindly constitutional monarch. Tolerance reigned in their household; frankness and fearlessness were the order of the day. Here the twig was bent; so the tree is inclined.
Educational life on the whole proved much less satisfactory than family life. Young Maury came up through the public grade schools and the High School of San Antonio; for some reason undisclosed he notes: "did not graduate from the latter." Indeed he seems to have made a specialty, then and latter, of dodging graduation. Which, of course, now leaves him wide open to the offer of an honorary degree. (Which, probably, he would decline.) There was a rather ineffectual year at Virginia Military Institute; after that, three "wasted" years at the University of Texas, where he enrolled for journalism. Again the notation: "did not graduate." This time the reason was that Maury found himself overpowered by a desire to practice law, probably with some thought of politics in the offing. As a result he set himself the strenuous task of doing the three years' work of the law school in one year. And a third time he "did not graduate." However, he won admittance to the local bar and threw himself into practice with the ardor characteristic of him when he is really interested in what he is doing.
One of the commonest obsessions of college men who have reached middle life is that during their undergraduate year they were regular hellicats. As a moral equivalent or sublimation for raising Cain after the time for that sort of amusement is over and done, this trick of memory probably has a certain ethical value. Curious, however, that a man so shrewd as Maverick should be subject to it. As foundation for the delusion he adduces nothing more conclusive than the usual catalogue of student sins—cutting, activities, college politics, membership in an organization known as the Campus Buzzards, drinking, brawling and disorders on the campus, run-ins with the deans, and so on, and so on. (No mention of "fussing." Why not? Texas was coeducational.) On the other hand, Maverick admits that during his high school and college years he was an omnivorous reader, particularly of "banned" books. As this was before the days when sex was discovered apparently these latter were for the most part treatises on ethics, philosophy, and sociology of which professors disapproved. Or said they disapproved. Experienced college instructors will recognize the device, which is at least several centuries older than Machiavelli. As they well know, nothing so whets the curiosity of an undergraduate as to tell him that he ought not read a certain book. Whether so intended or not in the present case, young Maury swatted up vigorously all prohibited literature; thus even when in college his education was largely self-administered. Evidently his intellectual curiosity was insatiable. Given a really understanding tutor he would have forged ahead at a tremendous intellectual pace. As things were, he did indeed make direct use of the instruction given him in journalism. On the other hand, he took no courses in economic or political science. Owing to his prejudice against professors Maverick is rather loath to admit being influenced by any of that tribe. Under pressure, however, he does pay handsome tribute to Edwin DuBois Shurter, now retired, whose instruction in public speaking, particularly in the matter of logical and effective presentation, has been of the greatest possible utility to him throughout his political career. And in general Maverick acknowledges the value of university training even if most of the courses in his time were dull and tiresome. One detail of his educational experience is not without distinct political significance. Since the University was located at Austin, students had an excellent opportunity to observe state government in action; also to meet personally the present and prospective leaders in Texas affairs. As a piquant detail he notes that many members of the legislature were attending the law school, adding "so we frequently attended the State Legislature."
It was by no means certain that Maverick was predestined to politics, highly gifted for that pursuit as he has shown himself particularly since entering Congress. Various other alternatives were first explored and eliminated. Thus he might readily have gone on with journalism for which he was trained at the University of Texas and which undoubtedly he would have been brilliantly successful. Already at the age of eighteen he had secured a temporary job as city editor of the Amarillo News which he enjoyed hugely. After completing his work at the University he made rapid progress as a lawyer and was elected, partly as a result of his popularity among younger members of the profession, partly because of some shrewd political maneuvers, president of the San Antonio Bar Association at the age of twenty-four. It is clear, however, that the detail of legal practice is as repellent to him as it was to the young Theodore Roosevelt, whom he resembles in many other respects. Moreover he did not like the idea of prosecuting criminals; he "always felt sorry for the defendant." One other profession to which he devoted himself temporarily, that of the soldier, would have proved impossible in the long run. For an individual so wholly dedicated to the love of liberty as Maverick is, life under military discipline is unthinkable. Nevertheless he enlisted promptly after our entry into the World War, served with distinction as lieutenant of infantry in France until desperately wounded, October 4, 1918, and was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart medals for gallantry in action. Of this experience, to which he devotes thirty of the most poignant and brilliantly written pages of A Maverick American the principal results were the knowledge of war and the hatred of it which are the strongest of his intellectual and emotional drives to the present day.
Following his excursion into legal practice Maverick discovered, somewhat to his own surprise, that he was a business man of sorts. He made money hand over fist in lumber and building; indeed his conscience troubled him not a little at the ease with which he could run up jerry-built houses for $800 or $1000 and then sell them out of hand for twice as much. Quite apart from such scruples, however, it is clear that wealth makes little appeal to him. From his successful building experience, however, Maverick did derive one result of permanent political value, namely a thorough practical knowledge of the housing problem in the United States. And that problem has ranked high among his preoccupations as a public man ever since.
Considering the number of vocational bypaths Maverick explored, one may well ask: "Why, then, the ultimate decision to enter politics?" Partly, as we have seen, because of ancestral tradition. It cannot be maintained, however, that immediate family environment predetermined his choice. True the Mavericks had the advantage of being "old settlers"; moreover it is not without political significance that the Congressman himself has maintained a residence in the San Antonio district throughout his entire forty-two years, and in his present residence for ten years. Of living relatives, however, only one, an uncle by marriage, had been a congressman. There was, of course, the glowing memory of the grandfather, Samuel of cattle fame, as a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence back in 1836. While other more distant relatives had held local offices on up to a governorship or two, still the great majority of them had been soldiers, sea captains, merchants, and plantation owners.
As to the dawn of political consciousness Maverick is quite definite. It occurred at the age of six when President McKinley visited his home, evidently making a tremendous impression on the boy. Subsequently he was to meet Bryan under his father's roof, and elsewhere La Follette, Victor Berger, and Eugene Debs, all of whom he admired apparently in proportion to their radicalism and forthrightness. And, of course, he met many Texas worthies including "Pa" Ferguson, who despite his demagogy "had a heart" and also the guts to fight the fire of the K. K. K. with an even hotter backfire; also George C. Butte, professor at the law school of the University, whom Maverick was to support some years later in his candidacy against Ferguson. Undoubtedly this range of political acquaintance, extremely wide for one so young, was potent in turning his thoughts toward a public career.
If the young Texan was predestined to politics it was, however, neither family, nor education, nor acquaintance which decided the matter. Rather he was driven by his social consciousness, or, to avoid professorial words abhorrent to the Congressman let us say he was overpowered by the true maverick spirit, namely by deep sympathy with the multitude of those who were astray and neglected. The most distinctive thing in his whole earlier life was his assumption of the role of a hobo during the last years of the Hoover regime when there was no relief and when, as a result, thousands of "transients"—human beings, not lost cattle—were drifting aimlessly and in dire misery through the vast reaches of Texas. To study their plight he dressed the part, not a hard job for him; he lived with them in "jungles" and flophouses and on the open road, incidentally becoming lousy in the process. But he did not stop with the mere accumulation of sociological data. Acting on what he had learned at first hand, he established a co-operative colony for transients at the edge of San Antonio which did excellent work until government relief began. In itself this experience may have been of minor importance. But it is vastly significant as to the springs of action which move Maverick. In times of profound distress a man with his deep humane feeling simply must leave all else and go into politics in the effort to set things right.
Second only to this fundamental emotional drive, Maverick had to go into politics because of the urgings of his intellect. Nourished by ceaseless reading of economics and political science, he knows that he can set things right, some things at least, if power be given to him. And he means to do all that is in him to that end regardless of opposition and objurgation. Those mistake the man utterly who point to his alleged demagogy as a basic trait of character. "I may demagogue," he observed, using the word as a verb after a fashion coming into vogue in Washington, "but never on any matter of importance." Really all that it means to him is nothing more than an occasional resort to sensationalism in order to arouse interest and secure support. Back of all such superficial manifestations there is a cool, disciplined, and informed intelligence of the highest order. Also an inflexible determination to tell the truth and shame the devil, regardless of the cost to his own political career.
No doubt it will grieve the Congressman sadly, but it must be said that, much as he affects to deride professors, he possesses many traits of that species. True he does not speak their "jargon"; that would never do since he has to run for office from time to time. But he does read their books continually, translating them into bills, also into speeches for both congressional and popular consumption. [For example, his H. R. 7325, 75th Congress, 1st Session, introduced June 1, 1937, providing for the creation of an Industrial Expansion Board and other Federal agencies, represents a painstaking effort to create the administrative machinery necessary for the carrying out of the principles of Mordecai Ezekiel's profoundly significant book entitled $2500 a Year.] He does work the Congressional Library overtime, particularly the Research Division. He does write book reviews, even publishing them to the Congressional Record. He does contribute frequently to such high-brow journals of opinion as The Nation and The New Republic. He does call continually upon braintrusters for research assistance, sometimes putting two of them at work, unknown to each other, on the same problem in order to compare their findings. He does annotate his short, short speeches with long, long footnotes full of details, a professorial habit if there ever was one. He does make the damaging admission in A Maverick American that "the march of the professor is the greatest advance in the history of our government." Finally, as the Swarthmore address showed, he does love to talk to students. It was, in fact, a typical academic lecture even to the characteristic fault of such discourses, the effort to cover too much ground. Also Maverick sent several thousand public documents to the College beforehand, asking that they be distributed to students in preparation for his speech. In other words, professorial words, "collateral reading" if you please.
Although he had interested himself in civic affairs for several years Maverick's actual entry into politics did not occur until 1929, when he ran for the office of tax collector. To the surprise of the wiseacres he was successful against a city-county machine previously considered impregnable. Two years later he won his re-election against the same opposition. It is rare indeed that the personal popularity of tax collectors increases during their term of office. Nevertheless in 1934 Maverick was elected to Congress after two bitter Democratic primary campaigns in which he defeated the Mayor of San Antonio. Again in the primaries of—final elections being virtually uncontested south of the Mason and Dixon line—Maverick received a vote nearly equal to that of his two opponents combined (Maverick, 21,703; Seeligson, 14,378; Menefree, 7,606), and a plurality twice as large as that by which he had won the nomination two years earlier. These figures are the more remarkable because the San Antonio district, unlike the overwhelming majority of those in the South, has been carried by Republicans at least half the time during recent decades. [In the primary of July 26, 1938, Maverick was defeated for renomination to Congress by an eyelash, his vote being 23,584 to 24,059 for his opponent. Perhaps the most striking feature of his campaign was the large amount of publicity it received throughout the country. It is seldom indeed that a mere congressional primary is thus treated as a matter of national interest. Maverick made a strenuous fight and took his defeat philosophically. To him it was merely the end of a round, not the end of the battle. Given his ability and energy one may confidently expect him, after a brief, well-earned rest, to resume his activities upon the stage of national politics.]
Maverick's campaign for the congressional nomination in 1934 took all the money for expenses that he could lay his hands on up to the legal limit of $2,500. Doubtless also friends spent something in behalf of his candidacy, how much he does not know. In his second campaign expenses were negligible. While contributions were made both in 1934 and 1936 by well-wishers and relatives, none were received from corporations. As noted above there is seldom much of a contest down South in final elections; hence the Federal Corrupt Practices Act is of even less importance there than elsewhere. In general Maverick believes that it is either not strong enough or not sufficiently supported by public opinion to insure absolute enforcement.
One incident of the first campaign for Congress is decidedly worth recording. As a result of the severe injury to the back and spinal cord which he received in France, Maverick had been in and out of hospitals more or less for sixteen years. On various occasions when supposed to be unconscious he had overheard surgeons predict his early death. Often he suffered from acute pains which made him unsteady on his legs. Although he was then on the water wagon it was perhaps only natural under the circumstances that his opponents should denounce him as a drunkard. Maverick did not deny the charge, believing it would do him less harm than a true statement concerning his precarious physical condition.
Whatever else may be alleged against him Maverick is anything but a machine politician. Asked to state in writing the importance he attaches to party committees—state, congressional, county, city and ward—his answers were five straight "None's." Nor is he a member of any such committee. On the contrary, as we have just seen, he was opposed solidly by them, as well as by all the newspapers of the district, every time he ran for office. Also by the majority of big business men, especially the crooked oil operators; by all bankers save one; by "carpetbaggers," who are now of the corporate rather than of the old-time political variety; finally by nearly all those who because of wealth or prominence think themselves "big-shots," with or without foundation in actual personal achievement. On the whole a rather formidable opposition. As against it Maverick has the backing of a powerful Citizens League which he was instrumental in organizing. Further he has the support of a small number of big business men—big, that is, not only in amount of capital invested but even more so in the breadth of their social and economic vision. Of the manufacturers he estimates that some thirty per cent are for him; also a large proportion of the grocerymen, druggists, and small tradesmen and middle classes generally; and a still larger proportion of the poorer voters. Finally it is a matter of common knowledge that the masses of Mexicans of the San Antonio district swear by him. Evidently Maverick is as fond of them as they are devoted to him. Contrary to the practice of many politicians who think it a shrewd vote-getting device to address naturalized constituents in their own tongue, the Congressman, although fluent enough in Spanish, has always made it a point to talk to his friends from below the Rio Grande in English and to treat them in every way as full-fledged American citizens. Reckoning up all the friendly forces listed above, Maverick estimates that from thirty-five to forty per cent of the voters of his district are for him in spite of hell and high water. His task in campaigns, therefore, is to rally the additional ten to fifteen per cent necessary to victory.
Nor is Maverick much more interested in patronage than he is in other aspects of machine politics. After all, getting jobs is the business of lordly senators rather than of mere representatives. If Civil Service examinations stand in the way of applicants Maverick is heartily glad of it. He has asked for very few political appointments, and these chiefly for constituents who were in dire need. And he is much more deeply interested in remedying economic conditions so that there will be jobs for all than he is in spoils of any sort.
Nor, finally, is Maverick a "joiner." Membership in the Masons or Moose, in the Eagles or Owls, does not allure him. Quite apart from the ethics of the case, he regards the mixing of secret societies and politics, i.e., peanut politics, as not worth the trouble involved. While an undergraduate at the University of Texas he did join a fraternity; now, however, he is inclined to believe that, because of their inherent snobbishness, such organizations might well be abolished. Curiously enough considering his strong anti-militarist views, he has retained membership in the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, largely, he explains, "for sentimental reasons." But he has been an active, fighting member, from conviction, of the American Civil Liberties Union ever since his return from France in 1919. Perhaps as a result of the survival of the boy in him he belongs also to the Circus Fans of America and is a director of the San Antonio Zoological Society.
Emphatically Maverick does not belong to that school of statesmen who take the weight of public opinion by piling telegrams, pro and con, in separate stacks and voting according to whichever turns out to be the higher. Contrary to the insinuations of Washington newspaper men, it is doubtful whether any congressmen follow this procedure habitually. A certain justification might, however, be found for stacking telegrams—in the wastebasket—on occasions when public utility corporations have kept the wires to Washington hot with thousands of messages manufactured to order in their own interest. However this may be, Maverick devotes a considerable part of his time to keeping in touch with his constituents. Thus when the Supreme Court fight was at its hottest a pile of clippings fresh from the newspapers of the Twentieth Texas District was constantly before him. One bundle bore the following comment from a local observer: "'Great Mass Meeting' last night. Fathered, mothered, and sistered by A—B—, X—Y—, and a few other 'Jeffersonian Democrats.' Attended by less than two hundred, half of whom were curiosity seekers."
Further, as part of the process of keeping in touch with constituents Maverick gives the most careful attention to his correspondence. He admits that its volume is ungodly; he receives requests continually for advice on subjects ranging all the way from obstetrics to theology from men and women in every walk of life. Notwithstanding the amount of letter writing involved the Congressman enjoys it, particularly when controversial in character. An early masterpiece of his along the latter line achieved national publicity and caused a country-wide roar of laughter. To a particularly stupid, abusive and long-winded correspondent he replied on official stationery, in full form with address and signature. However, the body of the letter consisted of one word only, viz, "Ph-h-h-h"!
"A soft answer turneth away wrath" but it is not news. On the other hand, while "grievous words stir up anger" they often make the front page. The Congressman realizes this keenly, as the most cursory study of his correspondence reveals. To a "gentleman" in a remote city who had written calling him "an ass," his speeches "hooey," and his legislative activities "mere hocus-pocus," Maverick replied: "Your thoughtfulness, your kind-heartedness, and particularly your courage in writing me from such a distance, overwhelm me."
A persistent epistolary heckler from Amarillo, arguing the matter of soil conservation in what Sir Henry Maine once described as "weak generalities and strong personalities," denounced all congressmen as "opportunist politicos full of fanciful notions," whom "we pay $10,000 a year for being wooden Indians and messenger boys instead of statesmen"; adding sundry other chunks of verbal garbage too noisome and too numerous for quotation. Firing back at this human stinkpot Maverick wrote: "I thought that I had insulted you enough in my last letter. Why waste time on me? I am afraid you will find me hopeless as I know you are. . . . Please go out and jump in a dust cloud around Amarillo and get choked. As for me I shall continue to be for soil conservation, and for the elimination of dust clouds—after you have been choked."
On one hilarious occasion a postal card arrived from San Antonio bearing openly upon its obverse such genial epithets regarding the Congressman's stand on the Supreme Court as the following: "mean and abject," "viper-like trespasser," "traitorous bid for personal patronage from the hand of one usurping the leadership of the Democratic party for a Fascist cause." To which Maverick replied in part: "You use language wholly improper for a gentleman—hysterical, even insane. In sending language which amounts to open libel and slander on a postal card you have committed a Federal felony for which you could be sent to the penitentiary. . . . You will regret mailing the card, not on my account but your own, for I shall do nothing and say no more about the mater. You are at liberty to show this letter to your friends." As the italicized sentence indicates, the Congressman is well aware that a red-hot rejoinder is seldom exhibited to others by the recipient.
It would be quite misleading, however, to rest the epistolary character of the gentleman from Texas upon the above bouquet of thistle blossoms. In the nature of the case answering a fool according to the nature of its content. To those who address him courteously, no matter how strong their opposition, he replies with courtesy, broad tolerance, and complete good humor. Always the replies are forceful, clearly expressed, and entirely unafraid. There are occasional stylistic slips such as occur in all dictated statements but, taken as a whole, they make it clear that Maverick regards letter writing to constituents as a fine art, practicing it not only skillfully but also with that restraint which is the first sign of the master.
"I should have lost," wrote Edmund Burke to his electors in the City of Bristol, "the only thing that can make such abilities as mine of any use in the world now or hereafter: I mean that authority which is derived from an opinion that a member speaks the language of truth and sincerity, and that he is not ready to take up or lay down a great political system for the convenience of the hour, that he is in Parliament to support his opinion of the public good, and does not form his opinion to get into Parliament, or to continue in it." Doubtless Maverick would find these sonorous words somewhat egotistical and stilted, even professorial. Ever since they were written, however, politicians and political scientists as well have been mulling over the question: "Whom should a representative represent?" It is doubtful if the gentleman from Texas has gone into the philosophy of the matter at all deeply, but on the basis of his own experience he has worked out a quite definite and practical answer which is fully in accord with the principles set down by the great English statesman. However, Maverick adds certain corollaries of his own. He holds himself bound to act on mandate as to things definitely pledged during a campaign. On the other hand, he does not consider himself bound in matters of fundamental national interest, nor in cases of sudden emotion or of mob violence which might occur in his district. "A man must have guts enough to fall out even with his friends." If a new political issue comes up Maverick considers himself free to take sides as his convictions dictate. In any event he holds that he was not elected to be a rubber stamp. Finally he is convinced that "the only way to play politics is not to play politics."
In his various campaigns Maverick has made abundant use of handbills but not of placards. It is his stump speeches, however, that are most effective; they are racy, pungent, humorous, argumentative, straight-from-the-shoulder affairs that carry conviction to the hearts of his hearers. Apparently they cost him little effort; not so, however, the speeches which he makes in the House. As part of the Congressman's "record" the latter are prepared with meticulous care. Braintrusters may be called in for research and verification. But Maverick himself writes out and revises every word he is to pronounce on the floor of Congress; afterwards he goes over the printer's proofs painstakingly two or more times. He is particularly effective in his opening words which are designed to outline what is to follow or to strike a keynote or simply to catch the attention of his colleagues. For example, on the Judicial Reform Bill, February 22, 1937, he began crisply as follows: "Mr. Speaker, I rise today to make one statement, two observations, and one conclusion." He kept his words exactly and, having good terminal facilities, finished in exactly four minutes' speaking time. If details are important he adds them under leave to print in the form of notes which often show wide reading and careful collection of data.
Again speaking for the Gavagan anti-lynching bill before the House in Committee of the Whole, April 15, 1937, Maverick began: "Mr. Chairman, I am from the South, and I never knew a Republican was white until I was twenty-one years old." Humorous claptrap perhaps, but it brought a laugh, captured attention, and was followed two seconds later by words the like of which are seldom heard on southern lips and which went direct to the heart of the issue: "I am in favor of an anti-lynching bill. I am not in favor of any Federal bill that takes over local law enforcement. But I am in favor of a bill which guarantees constitutional rights of all American citizens within the United States of America."
Maverick is as careful about the ordering as he is of the selection of his material. Here his newspaper training stands him in good stead. He seeks always to put his case first in the smallest possible number of words so that he who runs may read. Afterwards a more detailed argument is presented for the benefit of those who have the time and are more deeply interested in the subject. He avoids the arrangement of materials in those long, unbroken columns of fine print which make the Congressional Record so arid and repellent. Each text published by the Congressman is carefully subdivided; all the subdivisions are provided with captions, often striking in phraseology, which enable the reader to pick and choose at will. It would be difficult to find a better arrangement of printed material anywhere than in Maverick's brief report on the military disaffection bill. In addition he made a dozen speeches on the subject but it was this smashing report, widely publicized, that killed the bill.
While careful in all matters of form Maverick does not hesitate to resort to innovations. Brevity ranks high among them. People may once have had time to listen to speeches as long as Andy Smith's famous prayer but that day is past. Younger members of the House are lucky if they get ten minutes—and a very good thing that is, too, in Maverick's opinion. Reports should not be allowed to run to two volumes; eighty, ninety, or at the outside one hundred and fifty pages should suffice. Nominating speeches of the old-time variety which went on and on and on, without mentioning the candidate, and then attempted to reach a climax at the end with the naming of the "gr-r-r-r-eat leader" are particularly obnoxious to the Congressman. Nobody is ever surprised or thrilled and everybody is exhausted and exasperated when the wind-up—usually a sad anti-climax—is reached. If the gentleman from Texas has an introduction to make he names the man at once, briefly recites his qualifications—and sits down.
One of the most striking of Maverick's innovations was the publication of numerous book reviews in the sacred but abysmally dull pages of the Congressional Record. He was a trifle truculent in prefacing this device: "If I should call this an oration—and take five or ten pages of the Congressional Record, it would meet with the approval of everyone, because no one would read it. Hence if I choose to call what I put in the Record 'a book review,' that is my constitutional right, and not even a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court can take it away from me." Naturally with so large a chip on his shoulder someone was certain to make a pass at it. In the course of the next few days a certain well known writer on the Chicago Times observed that: "the jolly old Congressional Record has at last stooped to folly in its most verbose form—three columns of masterly literary criticism by the Hon. Maury Maverick of Texas on a government report entitled The Future of the Great Plains." Maverick responded by reprinting the criticism in full in the Record, and having thus used the publicity of the affair for all it was worth, continued calmly with the publication of further book reviews. In the opinion of the writer, who is not without experience along this line, they are, while somewhat given to unconventional turns of phrase, fair in judgment, admirably written, full of verve and humor, and certainly far above the average of the common run of stuff printed in the Congressional Record. Incidentally they have served to give publicity and wide distribution to several important government reports which otherwise would have rotted in the basement of some public building in Washington.
First elected to Congress, November, 1934, Maverick came to Washington the following spring merely as one of the 435 members of the House. Within a year he was nationally known, figuring largely in the news reports of the country as a whole. The New York Times, for example, devoted seventeen articles to his activities between March and September of his first year as a representative. How did he thus manage to emerge from the obscurity which envelops the doings of the average congressman? So many of them remain immersed in trivia, notables perhaps in their own districts but little known to the world outside.
In part the answer has been indicated already, Maverick possesses gifts of brain and heart that would make him a leader in any social group. Fundamental to the understanding of his career as these qualities are, still certain other details are not without significance. One may ask: "What's in a name?" with the usual scornful intonation given to that question, but it must be admitted that Grandfather Samuel Augustus helped considerably on this score. Maverick is a quaint enough cognomen in and for itself, but it is also one which, thanks to the said ancestor, had passed into general use as a common noun. Since the new member of the House who bore it hailed from Texas he must, of course, be "picturesque"; doubtless he wore chaps, spurs, bandanna and a ten-gallon hat; doubtless also he was full of the tall tales so characteristic of the wild and woolly Southwest. Deluded by these stereotypes, which by the way nauseate Maverick and all other good San Antonians, reporters and press photographers descended in a body upon the new congressman immediately after his arrival in Washington. They saw a somewhat stodgy person in conventional and none-too-good attire; but they did not get the tall tales they were after. As for the expected cock-and-bull stories about pioneers, about the fall of the Alamo, about deeds of derring-do in the great open spaces where men are men and all that sort of antiquarian rot, there was absolutely nothing doing. Instead they got the cold, unvarnished truth. One reporter more intelligent than the rest—at least he knew something about the importance of San Antonio as a military center—asked Maverick for his views on war. The answer to that question was NEWS; it was so forceful, so wholly unexpected. Subsequently reporters have always received the same frank treatment at the hands of the Congressman. It is evident that they like him personally; in particular they like his habit of laying all the cards on the table, faces up. Perhaps also they feel him to be one of themselves as a result of his journalistic training and experience.
More important even than his facility in relations with the press were Maverick's affiliations with like-minded younger members of the House. Shortly after he arrived in Washington they came together for the formulation of common principles and policies, adopting a vigorous and comprehensive sixteen-point program dealing with labor, agriculture, taxation, public works, monopolies, war, education, revision of the rules of the House, free speech and free press, and with sickness, old age and unemployment benefits. [For a more detailed statement of these sixteen points see the New York Times, March 17, 1935.] Since that time these independent younger members, reinforced by several veterans of the House, have held together, fighting pertinaciously for the ends they have in view. [Among other members of the group the following may be mentioned: Jerry Voorhis, Charles Colden, Ed V. Izac and Byron N. Scott of California; John A. Martin of Colorado; Kent E. Keller and Frank W. Fries of Illinois; E. C. Eicher of Iowa; John Luecke of Michigan; John T. Bernard of Minnesota; Herbert S. Bigelow of Ohio; Sam Massingale of Oklahoma; Robert G. Allen, Michael J. Bradley and Charles Eckert of Pennsylvania; Fred H. Hildebrandt of South Dakota; W. D. McFarlane and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas; John M. Coffee, Knute Hill and Charles H. Leavy of Washington; and George J. Schneider of Wisconsin.]
Now these independents, judging by the impression they have made in national affairs, "have what it takes." They do not care a tinker's damn what they are called, regarding the use of epithets as very old-fashioned reactionary technique. Just the same if any misguided opponent so far forgets himself as to dub one of them a demagogue, the honorable gentleman concerned is quite likely to demagogue him right back as a "Country Club Communist," adding sufficient detail to keep the said misguided opponent busy explaining to his constituents that he is nothing of the sort for a month or more. Nor do the members of the younger congressional group waste any time finding names ending in "ism" for their movement. "Liberalism"? In their bright lexicon that means too much—or perhaps nothing. "Radicalism"? They have broken with the old timers of that school who were forever shouting denunciation of Wall Street and never doing anything about it. "Socialism"? No; they regard the doctrines of Saviour Marx and Apostle Lenin as little relevant to the American scene. Congressmen of the new type are inclined to laugh at the soap-box rabble-rouser who always signs himself "Yours for the Revolution." They are convinced that the problems now before the country are not going to be solved by physical force; they have a deep underlying faith in scientific research and in democratic processes. On the other hand, they will tell you frankly that they regard the Constitution as having been made to meet human needs, and hence requiring amendment as conditions change. Rigidity they regard as the one most dangerous political condition. They have not the slightest intention to confiscate wealth but they do mean to distribute property rights widely. If this be treason—or Radicalism, or Socialism, or demagogy, or what have you?—very well, then, you can make the most of it.
Maverick's attainment of national prominence within a year after he came to Washington was not due to work on his part toward that specific end. Rather it came about because he just worked, to the full limit of his forces, for the things which he knew needed to be done. There is, however, an essential logic in the nation-wide distinction he has gained. Essentially he is neither the local nor state type, not even the sectional type, of politician. He approaches issues from the point of view of the country as a whole; hence his actions and utterances make an appeal everywhere. Considering that the Congressman comes from below the Mason and Dixon line the absence of sectionalism from his make-up is particularly noteworthy. As a matter of detail in this connection, even his alleged southern intonation is only faintly if at all perceptible. It is not that he lacks interest in the problems of the South. On the contrary he is acutely conscious of them, particularly in such matters as soil reclamation and conservation, wages and wage differentials, housing, and the like. What he aims at, however, is not sectional welfare per se but rather to raise his section together with the country as a whole out of depressed conditions. As a corollary of this realistic national approach to southern problems Maverick loathes the old-time, moonlit, romantic, chivalric, dear-old-black-Mammy, magnolia-and-honeysuckle-blossom, so-red-the-rose-gone-with-the-wind type of fiction. One exception may be noted: the Congressman admits a certain regard for the honeysuckle. Not based either on scent or sentiment, heaven forbid, but solely on the fact that soil conservationists have found it "an effective gully control plant."
No attempt to account for the achievements already to Maverick's credit would be complete without mention of the fact that on May 22, 1920, he married Terrell Louise Dobbs of Groesbeck, Texas. "We are still together," he remarks somewhat whimsically in his autobiography; still, when one recalls what happened to so many marriages contracted in the tangoing twenties, perhaps such a fact does need to be recorded. Very much "together" also, judging by his wife's activity as helpmeet. Both as gracious hostess in their home and as efficient assistant in his office during occasional rush periods, Mrs. Maverick has contributed greatly to her husband's popularity. They have been joined by a son, Maury, Jr., born in 1921, and by a daughter, Terrell Fontaine, born in 1926.
As to physique one does not have to be an astrologer to read in the stars that Maverick was born under the sign of Taurus. Nor a genealogist to perceive that he possesses the bodily traits implied by his family name. There is a tremendous latent strength, slow-moving but persistent, in the man. Height, a trifle under five feet, eight inches; avoirdupois, perhaps the less said the better, however he does fall within the famous dictum sponsored by former Speaker Thomas B. Reed. viz.: "No gentleman ever weighs more than 200 pounds." If there is too much adipose tissue especially around the girth, the result of sedentary life and lack of exercise, there is also plenty of bone and sinew. Maverick's shoulders are well set and powerfully muscled arms long and brawny; hands—democratic hands with short, stubby fingers but capable of a tremendous grip; legs short and massive—one fancies them slightly bowed from interminable hours in the saddle during boyhood. Despite the burden carried the Congressman's gait is jaunty enough.
Cartoonists dealing with Maverick's head seize instinctively upon the heavy tousled thatch of wiry, dull-black hair. It can be made to lie flat at the back and sides but toward the front it shapes itself naturally into rebellious, wave-like rolls which bend first forward, then upward and back, the one immediately over the forehead especially protruding and giving the effect of a small plume. The brow is broad rather than high. Nose a sharply defined equilateral triangle, not the long, thin nose of a philosopher but fleshy and with a pronounced thrust en avant, inquisitive, penetrating, and pugnacious. Eyes slightly protruding and gray with a scarcely perceptible greenish glint; they look out on the world for the most part in a rather cool and speculative manner. Mouth firm and well rounded; full lips often puckered in thought; aggressive, fighting chin. On the whole a good poker face; but Maverick has never played the game, "too busy ever since I was born" and does not know one card from another—thus one more cherished illusion about Texas is shattered! In spite of his ordinarily serious expression the Congressman is quite capable of an engagingly boyish grin over an amusing episode or story.
As to dress, careless comfort and quiet colors seem to be the ends aimed at although it is doubtful whether Maverick ever gives the subject a thought. To say that "he looks as if he slept in his clothes" is putting it too strongly. His manner as a rule is almost Quaker-like; when strongly aroused, however, there is no lack of animation. Standing before a fireplace discoursing on the Supreme Court he sweeps all the Nine Old Men from the high stone mantel to the floor with a single vigorous gesture. His voice is always well controlled; in conversation it is low-pitched, unemotional but persuasive; in public addresses he can use it to meet any mood on the part of his audience and to fill resonantly any hall, no matter how large.
The general physical impression, that of a steady uprush of inexhaustible energy, if verified by Maverick's capacity to put in day after day of grueling labor, eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, for months on end. Obviously this is a pace that cannot be kept up indefinitely. It is true that political work is always fascinating and frequently amusing to the Congressman; in a sense he makes play out of it. On the other hand, the word "recreation" is simply not in his vocabulary, a dangerous oversight; he even seems embarrassed when it is mentioned and seeks to excuse himself by saying that, when not busy in Washington, he enjoys making field-surveys of his dearly beloved reclamation schemes, of housing projects, of the TVA dams and power-plants, and of government works generally. (At this point, feeling that his self-justification is complete, he remarks that it would do the justices of the Supreme Court a world of good if they were to follow his example, thus learning something about American life as it is actually lived, instead of slumbering away four long months each summer in various pleasant country retreats.) When the Congressman's attention is once more drawn tactfully to the fact that field-surveys are also work and that he has not so far put in evidence any real recreation on his own part, he mumbles something rather sheepishly about his small farm with its street car home perched on the hills above San Antonio. There at rare and all too brief intervals he potters around, looks after his fruit trees, escaping the sun in their grateful shade—and lets the world go hang. It is a curious quirk of the man, however, that while he himself scarcely ever stops working he is profoundly convinced that "America must learn how to use its leisure time."
Maverick's office, Room 101 of the Old House Office Building, is a favorite port of call not only for politicians but for all the newshawks of Washington as well. It is essentially a man's workshop; there is nothing sissified about it, no spick-and-span furnishings, no flowers on the desk, no lady secretaries à la mode to do the honors and give a tone of refinement to the place. Chairs, tables, and bookcases are heavy and serviceable. There are, ahem, one or two brass cuspidors on the floor—solely for the use of certain visitors; otherwise, of course, it would not be a real politician's office. On the walls a motley array of maps, plans, photographs, and engravings. Among Presidents, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Johnson look down upon the busy scene; in a place of special honor there is a photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt warmly inscribed to the Honorable Maury Maverick. Interspersed with the foregoing there are cartoons dealing with recent political happenings, drawing which present realistically the life and labor of the very poor, a wall map showing the WPA in action, engineering plans of great national reclamation projects. An incongruous note is supplied by the picture of a squadron of military airplanes in flight among the clouds. However, it is balanced by a reproduction of Constantine's gruesome painting, "Battle's End," which shows a young soldier, wounded and mud-stained, who has dragged himself to die in the midst of a graveyard. Close by one sees a small blackboard on which are noted the days and hours of Maverick's engagements at the House Gymnasium, most of these followed by a zero to indicate that he had cut class. Books, books, books, among them many presentation copies, stacked on tables, desks, and shelves, the great majority being recent publications in economics and political science, precisely the sort of reading on which college professors of these subjects are now engaged. On the floor in various places, convenient or inconvenient, great piles of public documents for consultation or for mailing out to constituents. Decidedly this is an office which reflects the character of its occupant.
On the basis of Professor Charles E. Merriam's analysis of the qualities most frequently exhibited by political leaders, it is evident that Maverick would receive a grade—if one may speak in that professorial jargon which he abominates—of "A" or at least of "A—." [See Charles E. Merriam, American Party System (rev. ed. New York, 1929), p 48.] Unquestionably the gentleman from the Twentieth Texas District possesses unusual sensitiveness to the strength and direction of social and industrial tendencies, always, however, with particular reference to their effect upon the underdog. He is politically inventive and quick in putting his inventions to work. In group combinations and compromise his success at Washington has been noteworthy, although here perhaps he is more inclined to belligerency than to caution. As to political diplomacy in ideas, policies, and spoils, the first two rate an "A+," but the third must be marked "D—," although this is everlastingly to his credit. Maverick possesses marked gifts in making personal contacts, also facility of the highest possible order in dramatizing the sentiments and interests of large classes of voters. As to "courage with a dash of luck" the former is his in superabundant degree; regarding the latter he opines that he is indeed lucky since he just missed getting killed several times in battle and later in a number of the automobile accidents of peace time. To the objection that this is a rather negative conception of what constitutes good fortune his reply is: "Never got anything worth having by luck; always by hard work and plenty of it."
With so much already achieved, what of the future? If he cherishes ambitions Maverick does not worry about them. What he wants is to do a good job now. Granted that, the future can safely be left to care for itself. In any event he wishes no preferment which would inhibit his personal independence. Certainly Maverick is not one of the type of politicians classified by Professor Merriam as "power-hungry." On the contrary there is nothing of the pride of place in his demeanor: to use a homely phrase he is "as easy as an old shoe." One can imagine his raucous laughter over the pretentious, know-it-all "statesmen" still so common in Washington. Of an essentially combative nature, to Maverick the fight's the thing in large part, victory or defeat mere incidents of slight consequence. Yet he rejects Nietzsche's dictum that "a good fight hallows any cause." Rather he holds a draconic conviction of the justice of his cause and hence of its ultimate prevalence. Above all, his profound sympathy with the poor and underprivileged and his even more profound belief in the possibility of social meliorism through democratic processes are the prime motors of his every action. He knows the world is out of joint but thinks it no cursed spite that he has been called, so far as his powers avail, to set it right. On the contrary, this should be the highest duty and privilege of all men who are strong and intelligent not only, but humane as well. To a very large degree Maverick painted his own portrait when he inserted in the Congressional Record the stirring words of Louis Untermeyer's "Prayer":
Make me more daring than devout;
From sleek contentment keep me free,
And fill me with a buoyant doubt.
From compromise and things half done,
Keep me with stern and stubborn pride;
And when at last the fight is won,
God, keep me still unsatisfied.
Robert C. Brooks
The Diga Relief Colony, 1932-1933
The economic crisis of the thirties was so serious that new or unusual attempts to ease the suffering of the unfortunate was common. The creation of communes, cooperatives, and self-help communities, supported by private groups or local public agencies, occurred in many places. One of the most interesting and successful ventures was in San Antonio, Texas. The immediate stimulus for the San Antonio experiment was President Hoover's decision to evict the Bonus Expeditionary Force from Washington in the summer of 1932. With most hope for the early payment of the bonus shattered, the dispersed veterans faced a bleak future. Concluding that starvation at home among friends and in familiar surroundings was the better alternative, many began the long journey home. One group of the marchers managed to return to San Antonio to find the city already over-burdened with destitute people. At first little improvement seemed possible for them.
San Antonio was a poor choice to take refuge from the economic crisis. A study made in the 1950's revealed that San Antonio had the worst record among Texas cities in providing public relief. Therefore, at first glance, the returning veterans had little hope for improvement. Despite the disadvantages, they did find a champion in the Tax Collector of Bexar County, Maury Maverick.
Maverick, himself a veteran of the First World War, had long been active in veteran affairs. Although he did not go to Washington with the Bonus Army, he supported the bonus demands, and he followed events in Washington very closely. Concerned about the method of eviction, he telegraphed a protest to President Hoover, comparing the episode to the Boston Massacre. He warned the President that conditions were very similar to the period just before the American Revolution. He further exhibited his concern when he sent fifty dollars, contributed by his mother, to the mayor of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where a group of marchers were staying temporarily. He told the mayor, "I commend your manly attitude for right and justice. The country applauds you."
Maverick's personal attitudes and his professional activities made him very much aware of the need for relief. As Tax Collector of Bexar County since 1930, he had ample opportunity to witness at first-hand the effects of the depression. After his election as Commander of the Sam Houston Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in October 1932, he was particularly concerned about the plight of all veterans and their families.
By the summer and fall of 1932 the condition of the San Antonio veteran was reaching the desperate stage. Matters of housing and unemployment, coupled with the increasing number of veterans returning from Washington made the situation very serious. In one week of September, the San Antonio Express reported sixteen eviction cases involving veterans. With few alternatives, some thirty veterans and their families simply moved into one of the city parks. City officials were concerned but little was done immediately.
It was at this time, apparently, that Maverick became involved. During a visit to the park, he was appalled to see people living without shelter, with improper clothing, and with almost no food. He was particularly distressed by the sight of the children, many of whom were ill. Mrs. Maverick said he felt something of a personal obligation. He was living comfortably despite the depression, but after seeing the children, he had trouble sleeping.
As local citizens became more concerned, action was finally taken in October. On October 5th, an executive committee of all veterans organizations in the city was created to care for the indigent veterans. For a short time, the committee spent much of its time and energy in dealing with the political implications of the veterans camp. Maverick, who had become an early leader in the work, received major support for his position when Governor Ross Sterling commissioned him on October 9th to represent the state in dealing with the veterans in San Antonio. The issue was finally settled locally on October 18th when Mayor C. M. Chambers appointed Maverick as Director of the War Veterans Relief Camp. The decision was not unanimously supported, however. Two members of the committee, fearful that Maverick would use his position for personal political gain, resigned to protest his appointment. One of the two, Dr. Ivey Stansell, declared that Maverick was no friend of the veteran and further stated, "I cannot under any circumstances be a party to allowing anyone to use the veterans for cheap newspaper publicity or for political purposes. . . ." Despite the objections, Maverick remained in control.
Ignoring as much as possible the political tempest, Maverick had already acted to alleviate the suffering of the veterans. One of the first actions was to move the camp from the totally inadequate location in Covington Park to the city fairgrounds at Exposition Park, where conditions were only slightly better, according to Maverick. The shelter available consisted only of barns and stables previously occupied by horses or cows.
Maverick spent most of his time at first in seeking public support. R. R. Rogers, the Camp Commander throughout the life of the experiment, proved to be a very able man on whom Maverick relied heavily for the day-to-day operation of the camp while he concentrated on obtaining the needed equipment and supplies. Maverick proved to be a very good solicitor. He acquired cast-off equipment from Fort Sam Houston and other local military bases; drugs came from local wholesalers; Dr. T. N. Goodson, Bexar County Health officer, took care of the camp's medical needs. Food was donated by businesses, charitable organizations, and private citizens.
At this time the camp was little more than a transient way-station where meals and temporary lodging were provided. Within a short time, however, a more permanent population developed, and the needs of the camp increased. To meet the growing demand for supplies and equipment, Maverick, as he put it, became very good at "chiseling" needed items.
A favorite and successful method of obtaining food was the "Grocery Ball," a public dance sponsored by the VFW where the admission price was the donation of some food item. Several of these "balls" were conducted at no cost since the hall and the musical entertainment were also donated. This meant, as Maverick liked to emphasize, that one hundred percent of the proceeds went to the aid of the veterans. On one occasion, the San Antonio News reported that a grocery ball netted two tons of food.
From the beginning Maverick realized that the Exposition Park location was inadequate. If the camp were to have any permanence, more adequate facilities would be needed soon. After searching the city, Maverick found an unused site with rail facilities, several buildings, land for garden and truck farming, and plentiful water. Some five miles from the city on Frio City Road, it seemed ideal. He was able to lease the thirty-five acres from the Humble Oil Company for one dollar per year. By the end of November, the move to the new location was completed and the name of the camp was changed to Diga Colony.
The change in location signalled a change in the nature of the camp. It now took on an air of permanence. While in the city it had concerned itself with immediate relief for impoverished veterans; now it resembled a community that might last indefinitely. More importantly, the structure, organization, and atmosphere of the camp changed. No longer was it to be a charity colony; it now developed into an original self-help community.
The first order of business was to build the community physically. From the Missouri Pacific Railroad Maverick obtained a number of boxcars which were moved to the site and converted into living accommodations. Land was put under cultivation; a medical clinic was established; a kindergarten was created for the younger children. The older children were bussed into San Antonio to attend the public schools.
The physical development of the colony was made possible by the talents of the residents. As Maverick liked to emphasize, the people attracted to Diga were not tramps or hoboes in the traditional sense. They were skilled people whose talents were no longer needed. Therefore, the camp not only provided relief, he believed, but it also helped restore self-respect by allowing the residents to use their own skills to build their own community. By March 1933 the colony reported sixty-five trades and professions among the 150 residents. By this time the colony had branched out into many other activities; it boasted, among other things, an auto repair shop, a blacksmith shop, a shoe repair shop, a commissary, and a carpenter shop.
One of the most publicized activities was the growing of mushrooms. The German-born wife of one of the residents, experienced in the mushroom culture, grew them on a large scale in the basement of one of the buildings. This unusual activity received much attention and attracted visitors from many places unfamiliar with the process. Not only did the mushrooms enrich the diet of the colony; for a time Diga sold them to several local hotels.
This kind of activity was exactly what Maverick hoped to achieve. The sale of produce and the barter of goods and services could make the colony independent. He believed it could succeed permanently only if it were free from outside control. Donations were solicited, but he continued to await the time when the colony would not need outside support.
Physically, the growth and success of the colony was astounding. In January 1933 Maverick reported the total value of the colony to be $39,000. This included forty-two homes valued at $21,000, a dining room valued at $2,000, shops worth $5,000, a water and sanitary system valued at $5,000, and animals worth $5,000. He further stated that all this had been accomplished within three months with no significant cash outlay. The publicity agent of Diga probably overstated the success two months later in an article for the Semi-Weekly Farm News when he wrote, "Thus the time has definitely passed when Diga was forced to assume the role of an orphan child, stretching forth a lean, weak hand for the city's alms.
For the residents of Diga, daily life and routine changed, partly because of the strict controls placed on them. Maverick, the non-resident Director, kept himself closely informed of developments from the daily census and the daily report prepared by Colony Commander R. R. Rogers. Organized along military lines the residents had to answer daily roll call, were assigned daily duties, and had to have a pass to leave the camp. Since the only excuse for a child's absence from school was illness, the parents were responsible to colony authorities for any infractions. Violation of the rules was subject to punishment, including expulsion from the camp. The records indicate occasional disruptions that resulted in expulsion for such violations as the failure to contribute wages or compensation to the colony treasury, and drunkenness, among others.
Despite the restrictions the residents benefitted in many ways. For those fortunate enough to live there a proper, though not elegant, diet was provided for their children, and reasonably comfortable housing was available. To many of the residents the acceptance of a few rules governing conduct seemed a small price to pay for such security in a world of insecurity.
Perhaps the most beneficial effect was that Diga helped to restore pride and to build morale. Residents could point with pride to what they had accomplished with their own hands. They had helped themselves, and no longer did they need to be ashamed of their misfortune.
Culturally, the colony also prospered. Musical groups were organized and often provided the entertainment for dances and other activities. At the peak of its existence Diga had its own mimeographed newspaper, the Diga Colony Gazette, "punlished [sic] ever so often." It was poorly done and was often childish and sometimes in bad taste. Seldom did it contain news or comment of significance. Yet, its very existence indicates a degree of permanence and development not often found in such communities.
Obviously, the Diga Colony that emerged in the new location was very much different from the War Veterans Relief Camp at Exposition Park. Not only did Diga concern itself with improving the living conditions of the individual veteran; it also took on ideological overtones. In its own small way, Diga was a challenge to the existing economic system.
The idea for Diga was Maverick's alone. Influenced by the League for Industrial Democracy, he coined the name Diga which he explained was "an anagram of the letters which stand for 'Agricultural and Industrial Democracy.'" He said it also meant that average citizens were given the "chance to dig ourselves out" of present conditions.
Diga's existence reflected the Texan's adherence to what Richard Hofstadter called the "agrarian myth." The belief in the innate value of rural life regained followers during the depression; the "back to the farm" movement was discussed widely and practiced occasionally. Certainly a part of Diga's existence was based on this idea. Maverick exhibited this sentiment where he said that "the only thing in which we can place any trust is Mother Earth." The motto of Diga also emphasized the agrarian tradition: "Civilization begins and ends with the plow." Diga was, however, more than a part of the "back to the farm" idea.
Under Maverick's leadership the new colony was communal in nature. Property was owned in common and everyone who received government compensation or who earned money in outside jobs was required to deposit a portion in the common treasury. Maverick declared, "The basic foundation of the colony is that he who does not work shall not eat. . . ." The records of Diga show the strictness of the policy; those who did not conform were expelled.
Maverick also attempted to create a society in which money was unnecessary. He was very proud that the colony was built with almost no monetary outlay; he was hopeful that the skill and products of Diga could be bartered in such a way that money would never be needed. In this matter, he failed. He said he tried to convince the residents that money was "just a snare and a delusion," that money "is merely a medium of exchange." He was never able to convince them that money has no value in itself. As he put it, "My barter vaccination didn't take."
Capitalism, as it had traditionally been practiced in this country, was to Maverick one of the basic causes for the economic crisis of the thirties. He hoped, therefore, to find an alternative to, or at least an acceptable modification of, capitalism.
To accomplish his goals, Maverick attempted to instruct the residents in some basic economics and politics. He claimed at one point that no attempt was made to control political ideas. As he put it, "Any person can be a capitalist, communist, democrat, socialist, or even a republican." Despite this disclaimer, he said in his autobiography that he subscribed to "various socialist and liberal papers, including The American Guardian. . . ." He also lectured the residents of the values of cooperation. They listened politely, ignored the periodicals, and grumbled that the Director was too radical.
Maverick was never able to penetrate the traditional American reverence for capitalism. He could repeat over and over that "human rights shall always be superior to property rights," or he could tell his friends that he "would take over any ism on earth if it would relieve conditions and protect the people." Yet, the impact of his views on the residents of Diga was minimal.
Maverick concluded that the people really had no ideological concepts other than an ingrained respect for the "American way." He best described them in the following manner:
To radicalize people of this type was virtually impossible, as Maverick sadly learned. The residents had few ideological objections to the community because they had few convictions of their own. He explained their lack of sophistication about politics and economics in the following statement:
As most Texans at that time, and perhaps as most Americans, they were basically pragmatic. He believed they would espouse virtually any cause if it offered relief; when conditions returned to normal, or even improved slightly, they reverted to their earlier views. Although Maverick made the following remarks about the transient population in general, he felt the same about most of the veterans at Diga: "What sickens me is that some of the men who rode the rods and have gotten jobs are now as reactionary as Du Ponts."
Despite Maverick's inability to bring about a permanent change, Diga, during its short life, did achieve a great deal. It provided relief for a number of people, ranging from about thirty at the beginning to 171 at its peak on January 14, 1933. More than that, however, Diga also provided some assistance, mostly in food, to veterans living in the city. Diga was also successful enough to obtain federal funds. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, after January 1, 1933, contributed to the Diga Colony $150 per month or the equivalent of $3.00 per family. Robert Kelso, field director of the RFC, called Diga "one of the most effective demonstrations of self-help for the unemployed" he had seen in the country. Just how long the RFC aided the colony is not known.
Despite its accomplishments, Diga was doomed to ultimate failure although the exact date of its death is not clear. An undated clipping in the Maverick papers indicates that the colony was still in existence as late as October 1933. At that time a group from Diga asked Governor Miriam Ferguson to remove R. R. Rogers as Colony Commander because of mismanagement and discrimination against some residents. Maverick was no longer associated with Diga at this time.
Several important factors contributed to its failure. Maverick later said, "Two economies cannot exist side by side within a given area, especially a money and non-money one." Such ventures represent only a "patchwork economy" and cannot succeed in proximity to capitalism. "It has to be one or the other." Colonies and utopias can be successful, he believed, only if they are based on a religious faith or if they are isolated enough that they are not directly in contact with the rest of society.
Human nature being what it is, voluntary cooperation is a tenuous undertaking at best. As Maverick said, "Not a man in the crowd understood cooperation for the common good." Without such an understanding or some common bond, such as religion, petty jealousies and bickering are most difficult to overcome.
Diga failed also, he believed, because it was make-shift economics. As a small unit in a large nation, Diga could do little to correct the evils of capitalism. What happens in one part of the country has its impact everywhere else. "When a system is dead, it can't be revived, any more than you can revive the whole body by trying to revive the ears, toes, or hands of a corpse." Therefore, his efforts, he concluded, were doomed from the start.
Other than these reasons, however the failure of Diga can be attributed to other more immediate factors. Maverick was the dominant personality from the beginning; his constant involvement kept things on an even keel. This important presence was removed in April 1933 when he journeyed to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for treatment of an old war wound. Without him the colony undoubtedly suffered. Another factor in undermining Diga was the increasing involvement of the federal government in relief. The RFC provided limited relief, but particularly significant was the massive direct federal aid available after Roosevelt took office. The presence of federal jobs helped undermine many self-help colonies.
Maverick was disappointed with its failure, but he was not sorry that he had undertaken it. He believed that Diga was valuable as a phase in the "story of the development of the American mind," and that it had influenced his own thought. Maverick further concluded that the colony was a great experience "because it involved doing a necessary work—and also was a laboratory that proved to my mind the utter futility of makeshift economics."
Diga was somewhat unique when compared with other communities or when viewed in the context of Texas in the thirties. Despite their Populist heritage, Texans have often been conservative, nationalistic, and suspicious of new ideas. It seems very strange that Diga could exist and receive so much attention without significant public concern about its ideological implications. It seems more unusual that any elected public official, but especially Maverick, could lead an attack upon the economic system without arousing a public outcry. Diga's peaceful life may indicate that the depression was so severe that most people were involved in personal matters almost exclusively.
In the final analysis, Diga was an attempt by a small group of men, one in particular, to face a crisis greater than ever before with little experience to guide them. The result was a truly humanitarian venture at a time when humanity seemed to matter little.
Donald W. Whisenhunt
Texana Vol. IX, No. 3 (1971)
The economic crisis of the thirties was so serious that new or unusual attempts to ease the suffering of the unfortunate was common. The creation of communes, cooperatives, and self-help communities, supported by private groups or local public agencies, occurred in many places. One of the most interesting and successful ventures was in San Antonio, Texas. The immediate stimulus for the San Antonio experiment was President Hoover's decision to evict the Bonus Expeditionary Force from Washington in the summer of 1932. With most hope for the early payment of the bonus shattered, the dispersed veterans faced a bleak future. Concluding that starvation at home among friends and in familiar surroundings was the better alternative, many began the long journey home. One group of the marchers managed to return to San Antonio to find the city already over-burdened with destitute people. At first little improvement seemed possible for them.
San Antonio was a poor choice to take refuge from the economic crisis. A study made in the 1950's revealed that San Antonio had the worst record among Texas cities in providing public relief. Therefore, at first glance, the returning veterans had little hope for improvement. Despite the disadvantages, they did find a champion in the Tax Collector of Bexar County, Maury Maverick.
Maverick, himself a veteran of the First World War, had long been active in veteran affairs. Although he did not go to Washington with the Bonus Army, he supported the bonus demands, and he followed events in Washington very closely. Concerned about the method of eviction, he telegraphed a protest to President Hoover, comparing the episode to the Boston Massacre. He warned the President that conditions were very similar to the period just before the American Revolution. He further exhibited his concern when he sent fifty dollars, contributed by his mother, to the mayor of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where a group of marchers were staying temporarily. He told the mayor, "I commend your manly attitude for right and justice. The country applauds you."
Maverick's personal attitudes and his professional activities made him very much aware of the need for relief. As Tax Collector of Bexar County since 1930, he had ample opportunity to witness at first-hand the effects of the depression. After his election as Commander of the Sam Houston Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in October 1932, he was particularly concerned about the plight of all veterans and their families.
By the summer and fall of 1932 the condition of the San Antonio veteran was reaching the desperate stage. Matters of housing and unemployment, coupled with the increasing number of veterans returning from Washington made the situation very serious. In one week of September, the San Antonio Express reported sixteen eviction cases involving veterans. With few alternatives, some thirty veterans and their families simply moved into one of the city parks. City officials were concerned but little was done immediately.
It was at this time, apparently, that Maverick became involved. During a visit to the park, he was appalled to see people living without shelter, with improper clothing, and with almost no food. He was particularly distressed by the sight of the children, many of whom were ill. Mrs. Maverick said he felt something of a personal obligation. He was living comfortably despite the depression, but after seeing the children, he had trouble sleeping.
As local citizens became more concerned, action was finally taken in October. On October 5th, an executive committee of all veterans organizations in the city was created to care for the indigent veterans. For a short time, the committee spent much of its time and energy in dealing with the political implications of the veterans camp. Maverick, who had become an early leader in the work, received major support for his position when Governor Ross Sterling commissioned him on October 9th to represent the state in dealing with the veterans in San Antonio. The issue was finally settled locally on October 18th when Mayor C. M. Chambers appointed Maverick as Director of the War Veterans Relief Camp. The decision was not unanimously supported, however. Two members of the committee, fearful that Maverick would use his position for personal political gain, resigned to protest his appointment. One of the two, Dr. Ivey Stansell, declared that Maverick was no friend of the veteran and further stated, "I cannot under any circumstances be a party to allowing anyone to use the veterans for cheap newspaper publicity or for political purposes. . . ." Despite the objections, Maverick remained in control.
Ignoring as much as possible the political tempest, Maverick had already acted to alleviate the suffering of the veterans. One of the first actions was to move the camp from the totally inadequate location in Covington Park to the city fairgrounds at Exposition Park, where conditions were only slightly better, according to Maverick. The shelter available consisted only of barns and stables previously occupied by horses or cows.
Maverick spent most of his time at first in seeking public support. R. R. Rogers, the Camp Commander throughout the life of the experiment, proved to be a very able man on whom Maverick relied heavily for the day-to-day operation of the camp while he concentrated on obtaining the needed equipment and supplies. Maverick proved to be a very good solicitor. He acquired cast-off equipment from Fort Sam Houston and other local military bases; drugs came from local wholesalers; Dr. T. N. Goodson, Bexar County Health officer, took care of the camp's medical needs. Food was donated by businesses, charitable organizations, and private citizens.
At this time the camp was little more than a transient way-station where meals and temporary lodging were provided. Within a short time, however, a more permanent population developed, and the needs of the camp increased. To meet the growing demand for supplies and equipment, Maverick, as he put it, became very good at "chiseling" needed items.
A favorite and successful method of obtaining food was the "Grocery Ball," a public dance sponsored by the VFW where the admission price was the donation of some food item. Several of these "balls" were conducted at no cost since the hall and the musical entertainment were also donated. This meant, as Maverick liked to emphasize, that one hundred percent of the proceeds went to the aid of the veterans. On one occasion, the San Antonio News reported that a grocery ball netted two tons of food.
From the beginning Maverick realized that the Exposition Park location was inadequate. If the camp were to have any permanence, more adequate facilities would be needed soon. After searching the city, Maverick found an unused site with rail facilities, several buildings, land for garden and truck farming, and plentiful water. Some five miles from the city on Frio City Road, it seemed ideal. He was able to lease the thirty-five acres from the Humble Oil Company for one dollar per year. By the end of November, the move to the new location was completed and the name of the camp was changed to Diga Colony.
The change in location signalled a change in the nature of the camp. It now took on an air of permanence. While in the city it had concerned itself with immediate relief for impoverished veterans; now it resembled a community that might last indefinitely. More importantly, the structure, organization, and atmosphere of the camp changed. No longer was it to be a charity colony; it now developed into an original self-help community.
The first order of business was to build the community physically. From the Missouri Pacific Railroad Maverick obtained a number of boxcars which were moved to the site and converted into living accommodations. Land was put under cultivation; a medical clinic was established; a kindergarten was created for the younger children. The older children were bussed into San Antonio to attend the public schools.
The physical development of the colony was made possible by the talents of the residents. As Maverick liked to emphasize, the people attracted to Diga were not tramps or hoboes in the traditional sense. They were skilled people whose talents were no longer needed. Therefore, the camp not only provided relief, he believed, but it also helped restore self-respect by allowing the residents to use their own skills to build their own community. By March 1933 the colony reported sixty-five trades and professions among the 150 residents. By this time the colony had branched out into many other activities; it boasted, among other things, an auto repair shop, a blacksmith shop, a shoe repair shop, a commissary, and a carpenter shop.
One of the most publicized activities was the growing of mushrooms. The German-born wife of one of the residents, experienced in the mushroom culture, grew them on a large scale in the basement of one of the buildings. This unusual activity received much attention and attracted visitors from many places unfamiliar with the process. Not only did the mushrooms enrich the diet of the colony; for a time Diga sold them to several local hotels.
This kind of activity was exactly what Maverick hoped to achieve. The sale of produce and the barter of goods and services could make the colony independent. He believed it could succeed permanently only if it were free from outside control. Donations were solicited, but he continued to await the time when the colony would not need outside support.
Physically, the growth and success of the colony was astounding. In January 1933 Maverick reported the total value of the colony to be $39,000. This included forty-two homes valued at $21,000, a dining room valued at $2,000, shops worth $5,000, a water and sanitary system valued at $5,000, and animals worth $5,000. He further stated that all this had been accomplished within three months with no significant cash outlay. The publicity agent of Diga probably overstated the success two months later in an article for the Semi-Weekly Farm News when he wrote, "Thus the time has definitely passed when Diga was forced to assume the role of an orphan child, stretching forth a lean, weak hand for the city's alms.
For the residents of Diga, daily life and routine changed, partly because of the strict controls placed on them. Maverick, the non-resident Director, kept himself closely informed of developments from the daily census and the daily report prepared by Colony Commander R. R. Rogers. Organized along military lines the residents had to answer daily roll call, were assigned daily duties, and had to have a pass to leave the camp. Since the only excuse for a child's absence from school was illness, the parents were responsible to colony authorities for any infractions. Violation of the rules was subject to punishment, including expulsion from the camp. The records indicate occasional disruptions that resulted in expulsion for such violations as the failure to contribute wages or compensation to the colony treasury, and drunkenness, among others.
Despite the restrictions the residents benefitted in many ways. For those fortunate enough to live there a proper, though not elegant, diet was provided for their children, and reasonably comfortable housing was available. To many of the residents the acceptance of a few rules governing conduct seemed a small price to pay for such security in a world of insecurity.
Perhaps the most beneficial effect was that Diga helped to restore pride and to build morale. Residents could point with pride to what they had accomplished with their own hands. They had helped themselves, and no longer did they need to be ashamed of their misfortune.
Culturally, the colony also prospered. Musical groups were organized and often provided the entertainment for dances and other activities. At the peak of its existence Diga had its own mimeographed newspaper, the Diga Colony Gazette, "punlished [sic] ever so often." It was poorly done and was often childish and sometimes in bad taste. Seldom did it contain news or comment of significance. Yet, its very existence indicates a degree of permanence and development not often found in such communities.
Obviously, the Diga Colony that emerged in the new location was very much different from the War Veterans Relief Camp at Exposition Park. Not only did Diga concern itself with improving the living conditions of the individual veteran; it also took on ideological overtones. In its own small way, Diga was a challenge to the existing economic system.
The idea for Diga was Maverick's alone. Influenced by the League for Industrial Democracy, he coined the name Diga which he explained was "an anagram of the letters which stand for 'Agricultural and Industrial Democracy.'" He said it also meant that average citizens were given the "chance to dig ourselves out" of present conditions.
Diga's existence reflected the Texan's adherence to what Richard Hofstadter called the "agrarian myth." The belief in the innate value of rural life regained followers during the depression; the "back to the farm" movement was discussed widely and practiced occasionally. Certainly a part of Diga's existence was based on this idea. Maverick exhibited this sentiment where he said that "the only thing in which we can place any trust is Mother Earth." The motto of Diga also emphasized the agrarian tradition: "Civilization begins and ends with the plow." Diga was, however, more than a part of the "back to the farm" idea.
Under Maverick's leadership the new colony was communal in nature. Property was owned in common and everyone who received government compensation or who earned money in outside jobs was required to deposit a portion in the common treasury. Maverick declared, "The basic foundation of the colony is that he who does not work shall not eat. . . ." The records of Diga show the strictness of the policy; those who did not conform were expelled.
Maverick also attempted to create a society in which money was unnecessary. He was very proud that the colony was built with almost no monetary outlay; he was hopeful that the skill and products of Diga could be bartered in such a way that money would never be needed. In this matter, he failed. He said he tried to convince the residents that money was "just a snare and a delusion," that money "is merely a medium of exchange." He was never able to convince them that money has no value in itself. As he put it, "My barter vaccination didn't take."
Capitalism, as it had traditionally been practiced in this country, was to Maverick one of the basic causes for the economic crisis of the thirties. He hoped, therefore, to find an alternative to, or at least an acceptable modification of, capitalism.
To accomplish his goals, Maverick attempted to instruct the residents in some basic economics and politics. He claimed at one point that no attempt was made to control political ideas. As he put it, "Any person can be a capitalist, communist, democrat, socialist, or even a republican." Despite this disclaimer, he said in his autobiography that he subscribed to "various socialist and liberal papers, including The American Guardian. . . ." He also lectured the residents of the values of cooperation. They listened politely, ignored the periodicals, and grumbled that the Director was too radical.
Maverick was never able to penetrate the traditional American reverence for capitalism. He could repeat over and over that "human rights shall always be superior to property rights," or he could tell his friends that he "would take over any ism on earth if it would relieve conditions and protect the people." Yet, the impact of his views on the residents of Diga was minimal.
Maverick concluded that the people really had no ideological concepts other than an ingrained respect for the "American way." He best described them in the following manner:
They had been suffering, hungry, without work, and were still suffering and without work. That seems to have been all they understood. As for any philosophy of government, they never heard of philosophy, and they thought government was something that sent you to war, made you pay taxes, or if it was a good one, paid bonuses and pensions.
To radicalize people of this type was virtually impossible, as Maverick sadly learned. The residents had few ideological objections to the community because they had few convictions of their own. He explained their lack of sophistication about politics and economics in the following statement:
None had ever heard of socialism—except as some vague thing that was "bad." As for Communism, all they knew was that it was Russian, unpatriotic, and sinful. As for the word "collectivism," it was just a word that had gotten misplaced. In many contacts, I found that their idea of "capitalism" was a state of society in which you can be hungry for a while, but you will finally get a good job, and possibly have others that can either go hungry or work for you.
As most Texans at that time, and perhaps as most Americans, they were basically pragmatic. He believed they would espouse virtually any cause if it offered relief; when conditions returned to normal, or even improved slightly, they reverted to their earlier views. Although Maverick made the following remarks about the transient population in general, he felt the same about most of the veterans at Diga: "What sickens me is that some of the men who rode the rods and have gotten jobs are now as reactionary as Du Ponts."
Despite Maverick's inability to bring about a permanent change, Diga, during its short life, did achieve a great deal. It provided relief for a number of people, ranging from about thirty at the beginning to 171 at its peak on January 14, 1933. More than that, however, Diga also provided some assistance, mostly in food, to veterans living in the city. Diga was also successful enough to obtain federal funds. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, after January 1, 1933, contributed to the Diga Colony $150 per month or the equivalent of $3.00 per family. Robert Kelso, field director of the RFC, called Diga "one of the most effective demonstrations of self-help for the unemployed" he had seen in the country. Just how long the RFC aided the colony is not known.
Despite its accomplishments, Diga was doomed to ultimate failure although the exact date of its death is not clear. An undated clipping in the Maverick papers indicates that the colony was still in existence as late as October 1933. At that time a group from Diga asked Governor Miriam Ferguson to remove R. R. Rogers as Colony Commander because of mismanagement and discrimination against some residents. Maverick was no longer associated with Diga at this time.
Several important factors contributed to its failure. Maverick later said, "Two economies cannot exist side by side within a given area, especially a money and non-money one." Such ventures represent only a "patchwork economy" and cannot succeed in proximity to capitalism. "It has to be one or the other." Colonies and utopias can be successful, he believed, only if they are based on a religious faith or if they are isolated enough that they are not directly in contact with the rest of society.
Human nature being what it is, voluntary cooperation is a tenuous undertaking at best. As Maverick said, "Not a man in the crowd understood cooperation for the common good." Without such an understanding or some common bond, such as religion, petty jealousies and bickering are most difficult to overcome.
Diga failed also, he believed, because it was make-shift economics. As a small unit in a large nation, Diga could do little to correct the evils of capitalism. What happens in one part of the country has its impact everywhere else. "When a system is dead, it can't be revived, any more than you can revive the whole body by trying to revive the ears, toes, or hands of a corpse." Therefore, his efforts, he concluded, were doomed from the start.
Other than these reasons, however the failure of Diga can be attributed to other more immediate factors. Maverick was the dominant personality from the beginning; his constant involvement kept things on an even keel. This important presence was removed in April 1933 when he journeyed to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for treatment of an old war wound. Without him the colony undoubtedly suffered. Another factor in undermining Diga was the increasing involvement of the federal government in relief. The RFC provided limited relief, but particularly significant was the massive direct federal aid available after Roosevelt took office. The presence of federal jobs helped undermine many self-help colonies.
Maverick was disappointed with its failure, but he was not sorry that he had undertaken it. He believed that Diga was valuable as a phase in the "story of the development of the American mind," and that it had influenced his own thought. Maverick further concluded that the colony was a great experience "because it involved doing a necessary work—and also was a laboratory that proved to my mind the utter futility of makeshift economics."
Diga was somewhat unique when compared with other communities or when viewed in the context of Texas in the thirties. Despite their Populist heritage, Texans have often been conservative, nationalistic, and suspicious of new ideas. It seems very strange that Diga could exist and receive so much attention without significant public concern about its ideological implications. It seems more unusual that any elected public official, but especially Maverick, could lead an attack upon the economic system without arousing a public outcry. Diga's peaceful life may indicate that the depression was so severe that most people were involved in personal matters almost exclusively.
In the final analysis, Diga was an attempt by a small group of men, one in particular, to face a crisis greater than ever before with little experience to guide them. The result was a truly humanitarian venture at a time when humanity seemed to matter little.
Donald W. Whisenhunt
Texana Vol. IX, No. 3 (1971)
Congressional Record
Seventy-Fifth Congress, First Session
Extension of Remarks of Hon. Maury Maverick of Texas In the House of Representatives
Thursday, June 17, 1937
UNITED AUTO WORKERS HOLD CONVENTION IN DETROIT
Mr. Speaker, about 10 days ago I visited Detroit and addressed the United Auto Workers of America, which was Saturday, June 5, 1937. This was one of the most interesting trips I have ever made, and which I shall describe before I include a copy of my address.
Arriving in Detroit, I found a thousand automobile workers in General Motors plants from all over the country were meeting to consider their agreement with General Motors and to appoint a committee to negotiate for them. It was like any national convention, although it represented only one single union of one automobile corporation. Think of it! This is a whale of a big union. They have 350,000 members at present, and more are joining daily.
There was a great crowd in a hall downtown, and I walked among the men, having to push my way through at one point. I thought that I was bumping my way through a hall crowded with granite pillars, the men were so hard and strong. Before I arrived at the platform, from the number of southerners who spoke to me, it seemed as if half of them were from the South. Since then, upon investigation, I find that probably 30 or 40 percent of them are actually from the South.
I stayed around Detroit for a couple of days and had the pleasure of meeting a great many of the automobile workers. If there ever was an authentic American movement it is this organization. As for any "foreign" ideas of any kind these men have none whatever. Of course, I presume that there may have been a Communist here and there, but not any more Communists than you would find anywhere else. There are all kinds of men in the movement. But, on the whole, they were the finest looking bunch of men that I have ever seen in the United States of America.
MEN OF ORGANIZATION ARE WELL INFORMED AND ENTHUSIASTIC
I have seen other organizations where men have been starved down; others where the people were erratic, some who were crackpots, some that were neurotic. But these were all strapping, fine, clean, decent young American men, most of them between 21 and 35 years of age.
Which brings up a point. When you are about 35, and an industrial worker, it is time to be kicked out in the street. And that is one of the problems these men face, and they know it.
I talked to a great many of them on various subjects. They are well informed and enthusiastic. I do not mean that they have Ph.D. degrees, but I do mean that the ones I met read, study, and think. Another thing that interested me was that the headquarters of the organization was not like some union organizations I have seen. There are no bums hanging around with a bar off at the side in which to drink, shoot the bull, and carouse.
UNION HEADQUARTERS LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS OFFICE
There was a neat office, with a lady at the switchboard in front—just like at Mr. J. P. Morgan's, Mr. Ford's, or anybody else's office. There were various economists, statisticians, and men who had education and who were advising the head of the organization, Homer Martin.
I have read some things about Homer Martin and how tough he is. He is no pansy, but in the vulgar sense is certainly not tough. He was once a preacher, although he has been in organized labor for a long period of time. He is not in any way pretentious, but a simple, religious, sincere man, typically American, and who makes a very good speech. (Note.—He does not talk like a preacher.)
At the big mass meeting I attended, which was near Dearborn and Mr. Ford's plant, but specifically at Baby Creek Park, Detroit, there were assembled some 10,000 men. It had rained hard all day long, and I did not expect to see anyone at the park at all. It was muddy, and the people stood up to their ankles in the mud. The rain slowed down to a drizzle, just as we arrived, but after I had spoken a while it broke into a heavy shower. I looked closely and did not see a single person leave during all the speeches.
My address was as follows:
ORGANIZE TO PROTECT AMERICAN LIBERTY AND STANDARD OF LIVING
Mr. Chairman and fellow Americans, I am very happy to be here. I am speaking in the Baby Creek Park, and before we are through organizing it's going to be a Big River Forest full of organized men. [Applause.]
Oh, my friends, I want you to know in the first place that down my way labor is not very well organized; labor is not very well organized anywhere in the South. But let us get organized North, South, East, and West, and let us do it for the purpose of preserving American liberty and the American standard of living.
You know, my friends, I thought it a little bit significant and that it really meant something, because the very first tune you played was John Brown's Body Lies A'Moldering in the Grave. That is the same tune they played and the same song they sang when the slaves were freed in the South.
Yes, fellow Americans; that's what we are going to do for the people of the Ford plant. [Applause.] Or, better, in modern parlance, we will cooperate with them in organizing so that they may protect their own rights.
FORD BEATS FRANKENSTEIN UP—THE STORY OF FRANKENSTEIN
Then I sort of laughed a little bit, you know, when I thought of the story of Frankenstein. Frankenstein—your Frankenstein—was a fellow who built a monster.
The story goes that he made a mechanical robot. He played around with his robot and made him do everything he told him to. The job was perfect.
But it was such a perfect job that finally the robot ate his creator alive. Mr. Ford has tried to play Frankenstein, but his beating up our Frankenstein will do no good. Ford's gangsters will make a monster of Ford, and the spirit of your Frankenstein will go marching on. [Applause.]
This business of organizing is all plain common sense. Why shouldn't free-born Americans organize? It is sensible and proper, and to say that American citizens should not have the right to organize is to say that democracy is wrong and that we have not sense enough to get along with each other or to govern ourselves.
In speaking of this we must realize that we now have an opportunity which may never come again. Everywhere I go I see the people are alive, that they are trying to understand their probems, and that they want a decent country for themseves and their children in which to live.
LABOR MARCHES ON—A MAJOR MOVEMENT—ORGANIZE!
This is a major sweep—this movement of the United Automobile Workers and the C.I.O.—it is a major move of the citizens of the United States of America. It is in the cards! We hear a lot of propaganda against organization, but whenever you hear it just realize where it comes from.
Sensible Americans will not be moved by this misleading propaganda. People who try to organize are called all kinds of names—radicals, Communists—and are said to be un-American. Let me tell you, it always makes me sick when somebody says that because a man wants to get a decent living for his wife and children, "Oh, he is a Communist."
Well, I want to know, since when came the time that an American couldn't stand up on his hind legs and fight like hell for his rights? [Applause.] Unionism, my friends, is good Americanism and true democracy.
BIG CORPORATIONS REVOLT AGAINST LAW OF THEIR COUNTRY
Let us review some labor and business history of the past year and a half. Who was it that defied the Government of the United States of America? Well, when Congress—the Congress you elected—enacted the Wagner law, and when the President—the President you elected [applause]—signed the law, 57 of these big, big Liberty League lawyers [boos] got together, representing the great corporations. And what did they do? They told the big corporations that the law was unconstitutional and void and to violate it. Yes; they told them to violate the Wagner law, the law of the land, the law of the United States of America—for it was only a labor law!
I ask you, did any lawyers of organized labor order that any law be destroyed and broken? Have they told unions to violate the law? No! There hasn't been anything like that.
Now, let's follow what happened to the Wagner Labor Act. Those 57 lawyers, the biggest ones in America—they claim for themselves—had "declared", in their arrogance, the law to be unconstitutional, and said that it should be violated.
In the meantime, the President of the United States suggested that the judiciary be reformed. What happens? Along comes the Supreme Court of the United States and says that the law is constitutional and that the big corporations must obey it! These 57 big corporation lawyers "held it unconstitutional" in advance, defied the law of the land, and conspired to break these laws.
WORKERS HAVE AS MUCH BRAINS, AND BETTER LEADERSHIP
Listen to this: You people have your rights. You are free-born Americans, and if you have any inferiority complex get rid of it. You have just as much brains, you have just as much sense, and you have better leadership than the industrialists of this country. [Applause.] Sometimes you do not believe this. But the "upper crusters" always try to make the people believe that they're dumb and are being betrayed by their own leaders; and when I say that you have the brains and you have better leadership you know I am telling you the truth.
I want to talk to you just a few minutes about some of the serious problems we have in this country. Labor is not the only problem. So I am going to discuss with you the subject of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. [Boos.]
THE SUPREME COURT SHOULD MIND ITS OWN BUSINESS
Now, fellow Americans, there is a function for the Supreme Court of the United States. I am a lawyer, too, like the judge over there, and I belong to the National Lawyers Guild.
But that's not the point. There is a function for the Supreme Court, which I will explain later.
PEOPLE CAN READ CONSTITUTION AS WELL AS JUDGES
But, first of all, there is one simple thing which you understand as well as anybody. It is that you don't have to be a lawyer at all to understand what the Constitution says. You know how to read as well as any judge does.
I am not going to give you any complicated arguments, because it's raining anyhow. What is happening is that the Supreme Court has entered the field of legislation and is breaking down the laws which you have enacted through the men whom you elect to office. This hurts business as well as labor, because there is no stability and no one knows what is going to happen next.
Believe me, fellow Americans, it is none of the business of judges to decide whether a law is wise or not, discreet or not, or whether they like it or not. The trouble is that the Supreme Court has not been attending to its own business—and when it begins to attend to its own business the controversy will all be over. Just remember that.
FUNCTION OF COURTS TO PRESERVE, NOT TO BREAK DOWN THE LAWS
What are the functions of the courts of the United States? Their functions are to enforce the laws, including labor laws, protect the liberties of the people, settle cases between people, and to decide conflicts of State and National laws, and to declare acts of the Congress and the various States unconstitutional when they violate the liberties of the people, and the actual wording of the Constitution.
It is not their function to use all kinds of magic words to break down the laws, but their function to uphold them.
For instance, the Guffey coal law, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, neither of these laws were violating any liberties. No laborer, no State, no farmer came into court in either case. But the Court said it was protecting "States' rights", laborers, farmers, and then went out of its way to break down a law of the people. It should protect the civil and religious liberties, protect a man against police brutality and persecution and unlawful arrest, guarantee him habeas corpus, and preserve his rights as an American citizen.
RAIN POURS DOWN, BUT NOT ALL WELL
Well, the rain is coming down and we are getting wet. But we are not "all wet" in what we are doing and saying. [Laughter.] It is mighty nice of you people to listen, and it means to me that you are going to get organized. [Applause.]
TRUST IN FORD—AND THROW AWAY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
Well, for the last few days I have been reading in the papers about Mr. Ford and how he wants all the boys to be good boys and to be loyal to him. Trust in Mr. Ford! One of my friends came up here and gave me one of these papers that employees had been signing at the Ford plant. So I read it over.
Now, I haven't talked to the 100,000 Ford workers; but I know Americans all over the United States of America. I know people who work in the Ford plant are as good people as any and certainly as intelligent. And I know that no man of average intelligence is going to readily throw away his constitutional rights and give up the welfare of himself and his family and his future to one single man, as this pledge does.
INTIMIDATION OF FORD EMPLOYEES
It starts off: "We, the following employees of the Ford Motor Co., wish to take this means of voluntarily"—get that [laughter]—"expressing our complete confidence and agreement with the policies of Mr. Henry Ford."
Oh, me. That's not so, and everybody knows it. [Applause.]
Then Mr. Ford's publicity man, aided by the "service man", says this: "It is our hope that these policies shall be continued in the future as they have been in the past." Imagine that!
I am quoting again: "That is without interference or hinderance from any source whatever"—in a pig's eye!—except to get busted on the nose and lose your job if you don't sign on the dotted line. There is intimidation, of course. But remember, the Wagner Labor Act is the law, and the Government of the United States protects you now!
It says down here at the bottom, "Cost of printing is borne by employees." Well, if that don't beat the Dutch. That's the funniest one of all. [Laughter.]
UNION PRINTING BY FORD—WHY NOT UNION AUTO WORKERS?
Down at the bottom of the page they have a little union bug, but there isn't any number of the plant. They are probably hoping that nobody would notice that. Let's discuss that frankly for a minute. I think the union label is phony. Anyhow, Ford uses it to make people think he is friendly to organized labor.
But get this; if he is really in favor of union printing, why doesn't he favor unionization for the automobile workers? [Applause.] He wants to force automobile workers to be scabs, so why doesn't he get a scab printer? Or vice versa, if he has a union printer, why doesn't he have union automobile workers?
The truth is, this is a lot of hypocrisy. They must think the workers of the United States are a set of fools. Well, boys, go on and sign this thing all you want to, but then get organized so you can protect the rights of yourselves and your families. [Applause.] On the way up here I read some more stuff supposed to be very wise indeed. They are what they call "Fordisms." You see, Mr. Ford, not being such a literary man himself, hires men who can read and write to get these "Fordisms" out for him.
Let me read what they have written for him:
"FORDISM" IS NOT AMERICANISM
"Our men ought to consider whether it is necessary for them to pay some outsider every month for the privilege of working at Ford's. Figure it out for yourself. If you go into a union, they have got you. What have you got? We have made a better bargain than you could."
That is Fordism, and you are supposed to take that and read it like a kid reads a catechism, and believe it all. You are supposed to bow your head like a baby. You are supposed to be a bunch of dunces to swallow all that.
Well, after reading that I wrote some myself, and this is the answer you want to give Henry Ford. Here is what it is. We will call it, not Fordism, but we will call it Americanism.
LETTER TO FORD—"AMERICANISMS" BY AUTO WORKERS
Let me read:
"We men ought to consider whether it is sensible or wise to pay small dues every month in order to obtain our God-given right to protect our rights, liberty, our jobs, and our property. We have figured it out for ourselves with our own brains"—I want to suggest you use your own brains—"which we propose to use from now on. We will get our union. We will get protection. We can make a better bargain when we work together and bargain collectively.
"Mr. Ford, we have always been loyal to you, and always will, but we must also be loyal to our wives and children, our fellow Americans, who also have the right of collective bargaining, which is guaranteed by the law of the United States of America. Mr. Ford, we trust that you will not defy the law of the United States of America." [Applause.]
"'What has been the result of strikes?' you ask, Mr. Ford. The result has been the recognition of tens of thousands of free-born Americans who can live without fear of company police, spies, hired thugs, murderers, and private armies. Mr. Ford, you cannot stop the march of progress nor break down the self-respect of your fellow Americans. We call upon you now in peace and good will to consider these things." And that is the message to Mr. Ford. [Applause.]
I am told that Mr. Ford has some of his "service men" in this crowd and a few spies. If any are carrying back messages to him, let them take what I have just said with a few words in addition.
"Mr. Ford, they say you are a great producer and that you can speed up production more than any man in America. We can attest that this is true; that you are a great producer. But outside of that, Mr. Ford, you are not what is called a great man. It is possible that you may think that you are a great man and you may have so many 'yes-men' around you, so many men who fear you, that you cannot learn the truth about yourself or learn your own mind. But so far, Mr. Ford, you have not proved to be anywhere near a great man."
PEOPLE SHOULD NOT STAND HUMBLY, LIKE DUMB OXEN
Now, my fellow Americans, listen to this: Mr. Ford may be a multimillionaire—and it seems to me it has been mentioned that he is a billionaire—but listen to this; this is sensible; this is the truth, when it comes down to books, when it comes down to spirit, when it comes down to the love of your country, your home, and your children, well, Mr. Ford isn't a damn bit better than any person in this audience, nor a bit better than any other decent American in this country. [Applause.]
It is not that we have no confidence in big men. We have confidence in one big man, and he is our President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. [Applause.] He is the President of a great democracy.
Listen. One thing the American people must learn, and that is we can't stand up and have our laws handed down to us when the judges get ready. We can't stand humbly, with our heads hanging, like dumb yoked oxen, and have our bosses telling us what wages they care to hand us when they get ready. We are not slaves. We are free-born Americans!
This old business of being told something is coming from on high to be handed to the people is the same old stuff they've peddled for centuries. It is the same old argument they pulled in the time of the Civil War. My people all over the South—and, say, I know we've got a lot of southerners in this audience—well, the slave owners said: "Why, it's an outrage to take our Negro slaves from us. We know how to take care of these slaves better than anyone else can tell us. The slaves are our property and we will do with them as we please."
And all of the slave owners felt absolutely righteous because the Supreme Court said that they could not only have their slaves and slavery forever but that the Congress of the United States couldn't even prohibit slavery in the new Territories of the United States, where the labor market would have been ruined for every white man and every farmer and every merchant.
The truth of the matter is we are in a similar position economically, socially, and politically, as we were just preceding the Civil War. Mr. Ford is no more enlightened than were the slave owners in 1861, and less cultured and educated. And if he has any spies in the audience, they can go back and tell him that, too.
JOHN L. LEWIS HAS CHARACTER, INTELLIGENCE, AND HONESTY
Fellow Americans, we must realize that we have a job on our hands, that it's a hard job, but that we can succeed. And while I am doing it I want to tell you something about John L. Lewis. I am not a laboring man, but I know and appreciate John L. Lewis. I think he is the greatest labor organizer in America, because he has intelligence and character and because he is honest. [Applause.] Of course I get letters telling me how he is un-American, but take a look at him. I see nothing un-American in having a strong body, a strong mind, and better leadership than the other side. The fact that he stands up for the rights of the ordinary man certainly is not un-American.
Somebody says to me, "What about Bill Green?" [Boos.] Well, my friends, you ought not boo Bill Green, because Bill is a nice man, a nice fellow. We are not fighting Bill Green, and certainly we are not fighting any labor organization. We are trying to build America. The point is the United Automobile Workers is a fine organization; it is the strongest one in the field; and Lewis is the strongest man in the field; and Homer Martin, your leader, is absolutely O. K. [Applause.]
They say comparisons are odious, but let us make them, anyway. The truth is, I have met some of these big industrialists, not many, but enough to know what they are in a representative way; and I can tell you that the reason you are going to win is because John Lewis has more brains than Mr. Knudsen, Mr. Ford, and the rest of those fellows put together. [Applause.]
Well, I see it's raining cats, dogs, alarm clocks, cylinder heads, nuts, bolts, car bodies—anyhow, it is raining, yet you stay to listen, and that shows that you are going to win.
OUR CHILDREN MUST HAVE A DECENT COUNTRY IN WHICH TO LIVE
Just look at those boys up there on that high fence [indicating]. Those young men are Americans who have got to live. They have got to have a country to live in; they've got to have jobs. Say, you kids go back to your parents and say: "Papa, you join that union, by golly. I'm growing up and I want to have a free country to live in."
Look at all these posters around here. Look at all of them. There's one over there that says, "General Motors 100 percent behind Ford workers." That is the American spirit! Over here is the Chrysler promise of cooperation, "Ford motor employees, you are not alone."
Then over here [indicating] is the best one of all, "Make Dearborn a part of the United States of America." [Applause.] When Dearborn has become a part of the United States the first thing we will do is establish a museum. In it we will put Henry Ford, just as in the Museum down in Washington they have the Indians. For, indeed, Ford appears to have about as much knowledge of decent industrial relations as the red Indians we found when our forefathers arrived 300 years ago.
PUBLIC OPINION OF AMERICA WILL DECIDE
What I want to say to you is this—this final thing. And that is that the Automobile Workers of America, Henry Ford, Chrysler, the owners of the General Motors Corporation, the Fisher Body Co.—all of these persons, organizations and corporations—have got to stand up before public opinion of the United States of America. Mr. Ford has announced in effect that he will not recognize a union nor bargain with them collectively. He has thereby announced that he is above the people of the United States, its Government, and all three branches at that—Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. Personally, I do not think that public opinion will stand for Mr. Henry Ford getting away with that.
As far as I am concerned, I am willing to go anywhere in this country and fight for ordinary American rights and the right to organize into a union is merely an ordinary American right. There is nothing extreme about it. Also, I am frank in saying that I have a selfish reason, because I want my own people to be organized; I want my own people to have a decent purchasing power, so they can get one of your Fords and ride around in it. Also I might say, live in decent houses and educate their children.
If Mr. Ford doesn't want to show himself up to be a stupid man, he had better get behind these people here and recognize their union rights.
The immediate objective is the organization of the Ford plant. But there are greater things, my fellow Americans, than Mr. Ford, and what we want to do is to build the United States of America. We want to be a part of this great country in a dignified way. We abhor violence in ourselves and we abhor it in thugs and gangsters and Ford service men and murderers of steelworkers, too. We do not believe in violence and we do not practice it. What we want is a square deal for all Americans, where people can grow and live and proper and be happy and decent.
I believe there are a lot of other Congressmen and Senators and millions of others in this country who will go down the line with you 100 percent.
I thank you for the honor of being here. [Applause.]
Extension of Remarks of Hon. Maury Maverick of Texas In the House of Representatives
Friday, May 28, 1937
J. P. MORGAN ARRIVES FROM ENGLAND—AND BLURTS OUT WHAT HE REALLY THINKS
Mr. Speaker, arriving in New York early in June 1937, Mr. J. P. Morgan made a public statement as follows:
Anybody is justified in doing anything so long as the law doesn't say it's wrong."
Since the above statement, Mr. Morgan as issued explanations. His excuse was that the statement was merely an "offhand remark." Undoubtedly, had he issued a formal statement he would have been more cautious.
I do not wish to waste any time moralizing on J. P. Morgan. The fact that he admitted his statement was "offhand" is sufficient to understand that he meant what he said. The unfortunate thing is that he pretty well stated what is the prevailing idea of a great many of our big industrial leaders. If there is no law, but a question of ethics and morals, they feel it unnecessary to observe a moral or ethical course. Mr. Morgan therefore stated for himself and his class that the only way they can be kept from doing wrong is to have a law providing that they be forced to do so under penalty.
Truthfully, the statement by Mr. Morgan is a monstrous doctrine. Mind you, he says anybody "is justified" in doing anything—mind you, anything—"so long as the law doesn't say it's wrong." In other words, if you can work young ladies for five or six dollars a week who will be forced into prostitution—and the law does not say it is "wrong"—then you are justified in doing it.
PROFIT ON WAR O. K.; "LAW DOESN'T SAY IT'S WRONG"
Mr. Morgan has, as a matter of fact, followed this philosophy all of his life. In the Nye investigation it was shown the financial profit that he and his partners made out of the World War. I do not say that he alone, with evil intent, caused the war, but he and his partners and the character of their operations had a great deal to do with our entering it.
Certainly it was the extension of credit and the consequent inflation of prices that directly led to our getting into the war. This was Mr. Morgan's big job. After he had done his job, he got his money out of the United States Government and out of the American taxpayers. Then 5,000,000 Americans got in the Army and Navy and thousands of them got killed. Mr. Morgan got the cash and the American people got the war, the deaths, and the taxes.
Apparently he believes he was justified in his course because "the law doesn't say it's wrong."
Mr. Morgan, in stating what he believed to be the truth, brought out strongly the necessity of having laws for the protection of the welfare of the American people. That means the necessity of minimum wages, social security, and other legislation to establish fixed minimum rights.
HENRY FORD HAS A PRIVATE ARMY
Mr. Henry Ford, for instance, has a police force of gunmen, ex-pugs, racketeers, thugs, and former convicts which he calls "Ford's Service Men", which really is a private army used to intimidate his employees. Mr. Ford uses these men in order to be above the law of his country.
Now, if the United States Government had "service men" to the extent of Mr. Ford, we would have a standing army of six and one-half million men. Undoubtedly Mr. Ford believes his private army and their practices are "justified", because the law does not say they are "wrong."
INSULL—HIS PAPER EMPIRE; THE LAW DID NOT SAY IT WAS "WRONG"
Mr. Insull built up a great paper empire. Thousands of people bought his phony stocks and hundreds of millions of dollars of American people's money was lost. Apparently he, too, thought that he was "justified" because the law did not say it was "wrong."
Returning to Mr. Morgan, I am not trying to make Mr. Morgan any special kind of a villain. Indeed, the unfortunate thing is that his ideas do not necessarily apply to people who are "rich", but many people who are "poor." The people as a whole made profits out of the war, too. Mr. Morgan was not alone.
But the idea of many of our "great industrial leaders", that they have no social and moral responsibility to the people of the United States, is a distressing one.
PRAYER AND POVERTY. "CHURCH WORK"—EDGERTON
For further instance, the other day John E. Edgerton, who opens his mills regularly with prayer—and poverty—in Nashville, Tenn., and who is one of the worst labor haters in America, refused to answer a question before the Joint Congressional Committee on Minimum Wages, whether a man and his family could live on $16 a week. He said it was absolutely irrelevant to the minimum-wage bill. When the crowd laughed at him he smugged into a contemptuous smirk and spoke of his "church work."
The truth is that he has been one of the most reactionary leaders of the South and has continuously done everything to degrade the South and bring lower wages to the southern people. Such misleaders as he should be required to follow the law, in order that other employers who have social consciousness may be protected in their decent standards.
PUBLIC MORALITY AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF "ANYTHING GOES"
I could go on giving these examples by the dozen for weeks upon weeks. For, indeed, much of our public morality is based on the idea that "anything goes"—if you do not get caught, or if the "law" does not say it is "wrong." The moral is, jump through a loophole if you get the money, even though you land on thousands of other people's rights and cause suffering and poverty by the act.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of practices which are indecent, immoral, which are not prohibited by the law. One of the big cries of the businessmen, and especially the big businessmen, is that "the Government should stay out of business", and that business should be let alone and have "self-government." Still, when remarks are made on an "offhand" nature it generally comes to the surface that you can do anything—whatever you care to do, whether it is honest or dishonest, whether it is cruel, brutal, indecent, immoral, or unpatriotic, just so there is not a law to put you in prison.
COMMON SENSE DEMANDS LAWS AND STANDARD PRACTICES
That is the reason we need laws to protect the people of this country, laws which can be enforced. That is the reason labor must organize and be protected in that right by the dignity of American law. That should be done without reference to people being "rich" or "poor."
But again, the people must exercise restraint, and not blame everything on the "rich." I have heard very poor people say: "Well, Morgan is smart. Wouldn't you do the same thing if you had the chance?" I have heard men refer to Henry Ford as though he were some grand old patriarch. I have heard others say that anybody would do what Insull did if they had "half a chance."
All of this indicates to me that we cannot depend on a patriarch as the head of a factory, for even if he is good he may die. Nor can we depend on business institutions any more than on human beings, when operating without laws. That is because there are enough men without social responsibility who will make it impossible for the decent people to comply with high ethical and moral standards.
We need not complain too much of Mr. Morgan's statement; too many people believe the same thing. For that matter, I pay my income tax, but no more than required.
But the statement of Mr. Morgan leads me to repeat that, in plain common sense, we must have laws.
Seventy-Fifth Congress, First Session
Extension of Remarks of Hon. Maury Maverick of Texas In the House of Representatives
Thursday, June 17, 1937
Mr. Speaker, about 10 days ago I visited Detroit and addressed the United Auto Workers of America, which was Saturday, June 5, 1937. This was one of the most interesting trips I have ever made, and which I shall describe before I include a copy of my address.
Arriving in Detroit, I found a thousand automobile workers in General Motors plants from all over the country were meeting to consider their agreement with General Motors and to appoint a committee to negotiate for them. It was like any national convention, although it represented only one single union of one automobile corporation. Think of it! This is a whale of a big union. They have 350,000 members at present, and more are joining daily.
There was a great crowd in a hall downtown, and I walked among the men, having to push my way through at one point. I thought that I was bumping my way through a hall crowded with granite pillars, the men were so hard and strong. Before I arrived at the platform, from the number of southerners who spoke to me, it seemed as if half of them were from the South. Since then, upon investigation, I find that probably 30 or 40 percent of them are actually from the South.
I stayed around Detroit for a couple of days and had the pleasure of meeting a great many of the automobile workers. If there ever was an authentic American movement it is this organization. As for any "foreign" ideas of any kind these men have none whatever. Of course, I presume that there may have been a Communist here and there, but not any more Communists than you would find anywhere else. There are all kinds of men in the movement. But, on the whole, they were the finest looking bunch of men that I have ever seen in the United States of America.
I have seen other organizations where men have been starved down; others where the people were erratic, some who were crackpots, some that were neurotic. But these were all strapping, fine, clean, decent young American men, most of them between 21 and 35 years of age.
Which brings up a point. When you are about 35, and an industrial worker, it is time to be kicked out in the street. And that is one of the problems these men face, and they know it.
I talked to a great many of them on various subjects. They are well informed and enthusiastic. I do not mean that they have Ph.D. degrees, but I do mean that the ones I met read, study, and think. Another thing that interested me was that the headquarters of the organization was not like some union organizations I have seen. There are no bums hanging around with a bar off at the side in which to drink, shoot the bull, and carouse.
There was a neat office, with a lady at the switchboard in front—just like at Mr. J. P. Morgan's, Mr. Ford's, or anybody else's office. There were various economists, statisticians, and men who had education and who were advising the head of the organization, Homer Martin.
I have read some things about Homer Martin and how tough he is. He is no pansy, but in the vulgar sense is certainly not tough. He was once a preacher, although he has been in organized labor for a long period of time. He is not in any way pretentious, but a simple, religious, sincere man, typically American, and who makes a very good speech. (Note.—He does not talk like a preacher.)
At the big mass meeting I attended, which was near Dearborn and Mr. Ford's plant, but specifically at Baby Creek Park, Detroit, there were assembled some 10,000 men. It had rained hard all day long, and I did not expect to see anyone at the park at all. It was muddy, and the people stood up to their ankles in the mud. The rain slowed down to a drizzle, just as we arrived, but after I had spoken a while it broke into a heavy shower. I looked closely and did not see a single person leave during all the speeches.
My address was as follows:
Mr. Chairman and fellow Americans, I am very happy to be here. I am speaking in the Baby Creek Park, and before we are through organizing it's going to be a Big River Forest full of organized men. [Applause.]
Oh, my friends, I want you to know in the first place that down my way labor is not very well organized; labor is not very well organized anywhere in the South. But let us get organized North, South, East, and West, and let us do it for the purpose of preserving American liberty and the American standard of living.
You know, my friends, I thought it a little bit significant and that it really meant something, because the very first tune you played was John Brown's Body Lies A'Moldering in the Grave. That is the same tune they played and the same song they sang when the slaves were freed in the South.
Yes, fellow Americans; that's what we are going to do for the people of the Ford plant. [Applause.] Or, better, in modern parlance, we will cooperate with them in organizing so that they may protect their own rights.
Then I sort of laughed a little bit, you know, when I thought of the story of Frankenstein. Frankenstein—your Frankenstein—was a fellow who built a monster.
The story goes that he made a mechanical robot. He played around with his robot and made him do everything he told him to. The job was perfect.
But it was such a perfect job that finally the robot ate his creator alive. Mr. Ford has tried to play Frankenstein, but his beating up our Frankenstein will do no good. Ford's gangsters will make a monster of Ford, and the spirit of your Frankenstein will go marching on. [Applause.]
This business of organizing is all plain common sense. Why shouldn't free-born Americans organize? It is sensible and proper, and to say that American citizens should not have the right to organize is to say that democracy is wrong and that we have not sense enough to get along with each other or to govern ourselves.
In speaking of this we must realize that we now have an opportunity which may never come again. Everywhere I go I see the people are alive, that they are trying to understand their probems, and that they want a decent country for themseves and their children in which to live.
This is a major sweep—this movement of the United Automobile Workers and the C.I.O.—it is a major move of the citizens of the United States of America. It is in the cards! We hear a lot of propaganda against organization, but whenever you hear it just realize where it comes from.
Sensible Americans will not be moved by this misleading propaganda. People who try to organize are called all kinds of names—radicals, Communists—and are said to be un-American. Let me tell you, it always makes me sick when somebody says that because a man wants to get a decent living for his wife and children, "Oh, he is a Communist."
Well, I want to know, since when came the time that an American couldn't stand up on his hind legs and fight like hell for his rights? [Applause.] Unionism, my friends, is good Americanism and true democracy.
Let us review some labor and business history of the past year and a half. Who was it that defied the Government of the United States of America? Well, when Congress—the Congress you elected—enacted the Wagner law, and when the President—the President you elected [applause]—signed the law, 57 of these big, big Liberty League lawyers [boos] got together, representing the great corporations. And what did they do? They told the big corporations that the law was unconstitutional and void and to violate it. Yes; they told them to violate the Wagner law, the law of the land, the law of the United States of America—for it was only a labor law!
I ask you, did any lawyers of organized labor order that any law be destroyed and broken? Have they told unions to violate the law? No! There hasn't been anything like that.
Now, let's follow what happened to the Wagner Labor Act. Those 57 lawyers, the biggest ones in America—they claim for themselves—had "declared", in their arrogance, the law to be unconstitutional, and said that it should be violated.
In the meantime, the President of the United States suggested that the judiciary be reformed. What happens? Along comes the Supreme Court of the United States and says that the law is constitutional and that the big corporations must obey it! These 57 big corporation lawyers "held it unconstitutional" in advance, defied the law of the land, and conspired to break these laws.
Listen to this: You people have your rights. You are free-born Americans, and if you have any inferiority complex get rid of it. You have just as much brains, you have just as much sense, and you have better leadership than the industrialists of this country. [Applause.] Sometimes you do not believe this. But the "upper crusters" always try to make the people believe that they're dumb and are being betrayed by their own leaders; and when I say that you have the brains and you have better leadership you know I am telling you the truth.
I want to talk to you just a few minutes about some of the serious problems we have in this country. Labor is not the only problem. So I am going to discuss with you the subject of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. [Boos.]
Now, fellow Americans, there is a function for the Supreme Court of the United States. I am a lawyer, too, like the judge over there, and I belong to the National Lawyers Guild.
But that's not the point. There is a function for the Supreme Court, which I will explain later.
But, first of all, there is one simple thing which you understand as well as anybody. It is that you don't have to be a lawyer at all to understand what the Constitution says. You know how to read as well as any judge does.
I am not going to give you any complicated arguments, because it's raining anyhow. What is happening is that the Supreme Court has entered the field of legislation and is breaking down the laws which you have enacted through the men whom you elect to office. This hurts business as well as labor, because there is no stability and no one knows what is going to happen next.
Believe me, fellow Americans, it is none of the business of judges to decide whether a law is wise or not, discreet or not, or whether they like it or not. The trouble is that the Supreme Court has not been attending to its own business—and when it begins to attend to its own business the controversy will all be over. Just remember that.
What are the functions of the courts of the United States? Their functions are to enforce the laws, including labor laws, protect the liberties of the people, settle cases between people, and to decide conflicts of State and National laws, and to declare acts of the Congress and the various States unconstitutional when they violate the liberties of the people, and the actual wording of the Constitution.
It is not their function to use all kinds of magic words to break down the laws, but their function to uphold them.
For instance, the Guffey coal law, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, neither of these laws were violating any liberties. No laborer, no State, no farmer came into court in either case. But the Court said it was protecting "States' rights", laborers, farmers, and then went out of its way to break down a law of the people. It should protect the civil and religious liberties, protect a man against police brutality and persecution and unlawful arrest, guarantee him habeas corpus, and preserve his rights as an American citizen.
Well, the rain is coming down and we are getting wet. But we are not "all wet" in what we are doing and saying. [Laughter.] It is mighty nice of you people to listen, and it means to me that you are going to get organized. [Applause.]
Well, for the last few days I have been reading in the papers about Mr. Ford and how he wants all the boys to be good boys and to be loyal to him. Trust in Mr. Ford! One of my friends came up here and gave me one of these papers that employees had been signing at the Ford plant. So I read it over.
Now, I haven't talked to the 100,000 Ford workers; but I know Americans all over the United States of America. I know people who work in the Ford plant are as good people as any and certainly as intelligent. And I know that no man of average intelligence is going to readily throw away his constitutional rights and give up the welfare of himself and his family and his future to one single man, as this pledge does.
It starts off: "We, the following employees of the Ford Motor Co., wish to take this means of voluntarily"—get that [laughter]—"expressing our complete confidence and agreement with the policies of Mr. Henry Ford."
Oh, me. That's not so, and everybody knows it. [Applause.]
Then Mr. Ford's publicity man, aided by the "service man", says this: "It is our hope that these policies shall be continued in the future as they have been in the past." Imagine that!
I am quoting again: "That is without interference or hinderance from any source whatever"—in a pig's eye!—except to get busted on the nose and lose your job if you don't sign on the dotted line. There is intimidation, of course. But remember, the Wagner Labor Act is the law, and the Government of the United States protects you now!
It says down here at the bottom, "Cost of printing is borne by employees." Well, if that don't beat the Dutch. That's the funniest one of all. [Laughter.]
Down at the bottom of the page they have a little union bug, but there isn't any number of the plant. They are probably hoping that nobody would notice that. Let's discuss that frankly for a minute. I think the union label is phony. Anyhow, Ford uses it to make people think he is friendly to organized labor.
But get this; if he is really in favor of union printing, why doesn't he favor unionization for the automobile workers? [Applause.] He wants to force automobile workers to be scabs, so why doesn't he get a scab printer? Or vice versa, if he has a union printer, why doesn't he have union automobile workers?
The truth is, this is a lot of hypocrisy. They must think the workers of the United States are a set of fools. Well, boys, go on and sign this thing all you want to, but then get organized so you can protect the rights of yourselves and your families. [Applause.] On the way up here I read some more stuff supposed to be very wise indeed. They are what they call "Fordisms." You see, Mr. Ford, not being such a literary man himself, hires men who can read and write to get these "Fordisms" out for him.
Let me read what they have written for him:
"Our men ought to consider whether it is necessary for them to pay some outsider every month for the privilege of working at Ford's. Figure it out for yourself. If you go into a union, they have got you. What have you got? We have made a better bargain than you could."
That is Fordism, and you are supposed to take that and read it like a kid reads a catechism, and believe it all. You are supposed to bow your head like a baby. You are supposed to be a bunch of dunces to swallow all that.
Well, after reading that I wrote some myself, and this is the answer you want to give Henry Ford. Here is what it is. We will call it, not Fordism, but we will call it Americanism.
Let me read:
"We men ought to consider whether it is sensible or wise to pay small dues every month in order to obtain our God-given right to protect our rights, liberty, our jobs, and our property. We have figured it out for ourselves with our own brains"—I want to suggest you use your own brains—"which we propose to use from now on. We will get our union. We will get protection. We can make a better bargain when we work together and bargain collectively.
"Mr. Ford, we have always been loyal to you, and always will, but we must also be loyal to our wives and children, our fellow Americans, who also have the right of collective bargaining, which is guaranteed by the law of the United States of America. Mr. Ford, we trust that you will not defy the law of the United States of America." [Applause.]
"'What has been the result of strikes?' you ask, Mr. Ford. The result has been the recognition of tens of thousands of free-born Americans who can live without fear of company police, spies, hired thugs, murderers, and private armies. Mr. Ford, you cannot stop the march of progress nor break down the self-respect of your fellow Americans. We call upon you now in peace and good will to consider these things." And that is the message to Mr. Ford. [Applause.]
I am told that Mr. Ford has some of his "service men" in this crowd and a few spies. If any are carrying back messages to him, let them take what I have just said with a few words in addition.
"Mr. Ford, they say you are a great producer and that you can speed up production more than any man in America. We can attest that this is true; that you are a great producer. But outside of that, Mr. Ford, you are not what is called a great man. It is possible that you may think that you are a great man and you may have so many 'yes-men' around you, so many men who fear you, that you cannot learn the truth about yourself or learn your own mind. But so far, Mr. Ford, you have not proved to be anywhere near a great man."
Now, my fellow Americans, listen to this: Mr. Ford may be a multimillionaire—and it seems to me it has been mentioned that he is a billionaire—but listen to this; this is sensible; this is the truth, when it comes down to books, when it comes down to spirit, when it comes down to the love of your country, your home, and your children, well, Mr. Ford isn't a damn bit better than any person in this audience, nor a bit better than any other decent American in this country. [Applause.]
It is not that we have no confidence in big men. We have confidence in one big man, and he is our President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. [Applause.] He is the President of a great democracy.
Listen. One thing the American people must learn, and that is we can't stand up and have our laws handed down to us when the judges get ready. We can't stand humbly, with our heads hanging, like dumb yoked oxen, and have our bosses telling us what wages they care to hand us when they get ready. We are not slaves. We are free-born Americans!
This old business of being told something is coming from on high to be handed to the people is the same old stuff they've peddled for centuries. It is the same old argument they pulled in the time of the Civil War. My people all over the South—and, say, I know we've got a lot of southerners in this audience—well, the slave owners said: "Why, it's an outrage to take our Negro slaves from us. We know how to take care of these slaves better than anyone else can tell us. The slaves are our property and we will do with them as we please."
And all of the slave owners felt absolutely righteous because the Supreme Court said that they could not only have their slaves and slavery forever but that the Congress of the United States couldn't even prohibit slavery in the new Territories of the United States, where the labor market would have been ruined for every white man and every farmer and every merchant.
The truth of the matter is we are in a similar position economically, socially, and politically, as we were just preceding the Civil War. Mr. Ford is no more enlightened than were the slave owners in 1861, and less cultured and educated. And if he has any spies in the audience, they can go back and tell him that, too.
Fellow Americans, we must realize that we have a job on our hands, that it's a hard job, but that we can succeed. And while I am doing it I want to tell you something about John L. Lewis. I am not a laboring man, but I know and appreciate John L. Lewis. I think he is the greatest labor organizer in America, because he has intelligence and character and because he is honest. [Applause.] Of course I get letters telling me how he is un-American, but take a look at him. I see nothing un-American in having a strong body, a strong mind, and better leadership than the other side. The fact that he stands up for the rights of the ordinary man certainly is not un-American.
Somebody says to me, "What about Bill Green?" [Boos.] Well, my friends, you ought not boo Bill Green, because Bill is a nice man, a nice fellow. We are not fighting Bill Green, and certainly we are not fighting any labor organization. We are trying to build America. The point is the United Automobile Workers is a fine organization; it is the strongest one in the field; and Lewis is the strongest man in the field; and Homer Martin, your leader, is absolutely O. K. [Applause.]
They say comparisons are odious, but let us make them, anyway. The truth is, I have met some of these big industrialists, not many, but enough to know what they are in a representative way; and I can tell you that the reason you are going to win is because John Lewis has more brains than Mr. Knudsen, Mr. Ford, and the rest of those fellows put together. [Applause.]
Well, I see it's raining cats, dogs, alarm clocks, cylinder heads, nuts, bolts, car bodies—anyhow, it is raining, yet you stay to listen, and that shows that you are going to win.
Just look at those boys up there on that high fence [indicating]. Those young men are Americans who have got to live. They have got to have a country to live in; they've got to have jobs. Say, you kids go back to your parents and say: "Papa, you join that union, by golly. I'm growing up and I want to have a free country to live in."
Look at all these posters around here. Look at all of them. There's one over there that says, "General Motors 100 percent behind Ford workers." That is the American spirit! Over here is the Chrysler promise of cooperation, "Ford motor employees, you are not alone."
Then over here [indicating] is the best one of all, "Make Dearborn a part of the United States of America." [Applause.] When Dearborn has become a part of the United States the first thing we will do is establish a museum. In it we will put Henry Ford, just as in the Museum down in Washington they have the Indians. For, indeed, Ford appears to have about as much knowledge of decent industrial relations as the red Indians we found when our forefathers arrived 300 years ago.
What I want to say to you is this—this final thing. And that is that the Automobile Workers of America, Henry Ford, Chrysler, the owners of the General Motors Corporation, the Fisher Body Co.—all of these persons, organizations and corporations—have got to stand up before public opinion of the United States of America. Mr. Ford has announced in effect that he will not recognize a union nor bargain with them collectively. He has thereby announced that he is above the people of the United States, its Government, and all three branches at that—Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. Personally, I do not think that public opinion will stand for Mr. Henry Ford getting away with that.
As far as I am concerned, I am willing to go anywhere in this country and fight for ordinary American rights and the right to organize into a union is merely an ordinary American right. There is nothing extreme about it. Also, I am frank in saying that I have a selfish reason, because I want my own people to be organized; I want my own people to have a decent purchasing power, so they can get one of your Fords and ride around in it. Also I might say, live in decent houses and educate their children.
If Mr. Ford doesn't want to show himself up to be a stupid man, he had better get behind these people here and recognize their union rights.
The immediate objective is the organization of the Ford plant. But there are greater things, my fellow Americans, than Mr. Ford, and what we want to do is to build the United States of America. We want to be a part of this great country in a dignified way. We abhor violence in ourselves and we abhor it in thugs and gangsters and Ford service men and murderers of steelworkers, too. We do not believe in violence and we do not practice it. What we want is a square deal for all Americans, where people can grow and live and proper and be happy and decent.
I believe there are a lot of other Congressmen and Senators and millions of others in this country who will go down the line with you 100 percent.
I thank you for the honor of being here. [Applause.]
Friday, May 28, 1937
Mr. Speaker, arriving in New York early in June 1937, Mr. J. P. Morgan made a public statement as follows:
Anybody is justified in doing anything so long as the law doesn't say it's wrong."
Since the above statement, Mr. Morgan as issued explanations. His excuse was that the statement was merely an "offhand remark." Undoubtedly, had he issued a formal statement he would have been more cautious.
I do not wish to waste any time moralizing on J. P. Morgan. The fact that he admitted his statement was "offhand" is sufficient to understand that he meant what he said. The unfortunate thing is that he pretty well stated what is the prevailing idea of a great many of our big industrial leaders. If there is no law, but a question of ethics and morals, they feel it unnecessary to observe a moral or ethical course. Mr. Morgan therefore stated for himself and his class that the only way they can be kept from doing wrong is to have a law providing that they be forced to do so under penalty.
Truthfully, the statement by Mr. Morgan is a monstrous doctrine. Mind you, he says anybody "is justified" in doing anything—mind you, anything—"so long as the law doesn't say it's wrong." In other words, if you can work young ladies for five or six dollars a week who will be forced into prostitution—and the law does not say it is "wrong"—then you are justified in doing it.
Mr. Morgan has, as a matter of fact, followed this philosophy all of his life. In the Nye investigation it was shown the financial profit that he and his partners made out of the World War. I do not say that he alone, with evil intent, caused the war, but he and his partners and the character of their operations had a great deal to do with our entering it.
Certainly it was the extension of credit and the consequent inflation of prices that directly led to our getting into the war. This was Mr. Morgan's big job. After he had done his job, he got his money out of the United States Government and out of the American taxpayers. Then 5,000,000 Americans got in the Army and Navy and thousands of them got killed. Mr. Morgan got the cash and the American people got the war, the deaths, and the taxes.
Apparently he believes he was justified in his course because "the law doesn't say it's wrong."
Mr. Morgan, in stating what he believed to be the truth, brought out strongly the necessity of having laws for the protection of the welfare of the American people. That means the necessity of minimum wages, social security, and other legislation to establish fixed minimum rights.
Mr. Henry Ford, for instance, has a police force of gunmen, ex-pugs, racketeers, thugs, and former convicts which he calls "Ford's Service Men", which really is a private army used to intimidate his employees. Mr. Ford uses these men in order to be above the law of his country.
Now, if the United States Government had "service men" to the extent of Mr. Ford, we would have a standing army of six and one-half million men. Undoubtedly Mr. Ford believes his private army and their practices are "justified", because the law does not say they are "wrong."
Mr. Insull built up a great paper empire. Thousands of people bought his phony stocks and hundreds of millions of dollars of American people's money was lost. Apparently he, too, thought that he was "justified" because the law did not say it was "wrong."
Returning to Mr. Morgan, I am not trying to make Mr. Morgan any special kind of a villain. Indeed, the unfortunate thing is that his ideas do not necessarily apply to people who are "rich", but many people who are "poor." The people as a whole made profits out of the war, too. Mr. Morgan was not alone.
But the idea of many of our "great industrial leaders", that they have no social and moral responsibility to the people of the United States, is a distressing one.
For further instance, the other day John E. Edgerton, who opens his mills regularly with prayer—and poverty—in Nashville, Tenn., and who is one of the worst labor haters in America, refused to answer a question before the Joint Congressional Committee on Minimum Wages, whether a man and his family could live on $16 a week. He said it was absolutely irrelevant to the minimum-wage bill. When the crowd laughed at him he smugged into a contemptuous smirk and spoke of his "church work."
The truth is that he has been one of the most reactionary leaders of the South and has continuously done everything to degrade the South and bring lower wages to the southern people. Such misleaders as he should be required to follow the law, in order that other employers who have social consciousness may be protected in their decent standards.
I could go on giving these examples by the dozen for weeks upon weeks. For, indeed, much of our public morality is based on the idea that "anything goes"—if you do not get caught, or if the "law" does not say it is "wrong." The moral is, jump through a loophole if you get the money, even though you land on thousands of other people's rights and cause suffering and poverty by the act.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of practices which are indecent, immoral, which are not prohibited by the law. One of the big cries of the businessmen, and especially the big businessmen, is that "the Government should stay out of business", and that business should be let alone and have "self-government." Still, when remarks are made on an "offhand" nature it generally comes to the surface that you can do anything—whatever you care to do, whether it is honest or dishonest, whether it is cruel, brutal, indecent, immoral, or unpatriotic, just so there is not a law to put you in prison.
That is the reason we need laws to protect the people of this country, laws which can be enforced. That is the reason labor must organize and be protected in that right by the dignity of American law. That should be done without reference to people being "rich" or "poor."
But again, the people must exercise restraint, and not blame everything on the "rich." I have heard very poor people say: "Well, Morgan is smart. Wouldn't you do the same thing if you had the chance?" I have heard men refer to Henry Ford as though he were some grand old patriarch. I have heard others say that anybody would do what Insull did if they had "half a chance."
All of this indicates to me that we cannot depend on a patriarch as the head of a factory, for even if he is good he may die. Nor can we depend on business institutions any more than on human beings, when operating without laws. That is because there are enough men without social responsibility who will make it impossible for the decent people to comply with high ethical and moral standards.
We need not complain too much of Mr. Morgan's statement; too many people believe the same thing. For that matter, I pay my income tax, but no more than required.
But the statement of Mr. Morgan leads me to repeat that, in plain common sense, we must have laws.
A Texas Norther In Congress
Maury Maverick, an unbranded Texan whose grandfather put his family name into the English language as a noun because he refused to sear with a red-hot iron the 453 cattle that came into his reluctant custody in payment of a debt, has achieved in the Congress of the United States what people declared was no longer possible. In half of his first term he made his name known to all thinking and reading Americans. Not by wearing a broad-brimmed Stetson hat and a flowing tie and high boots—he swears no man in his family ever was in the cattle business or ever wore such articles of attire. Not by offering a pension panacea for all our ills nor by demanding that people share their wealth before devising a new and sound economic order. He has fired no pistols on the plaza in front of the Capitol and he has not rushed with clenched fists upon any fellow member to win a first-page position nor has he sought, like one now dead, to stop the machinery of Congress by a one-man filibuster.
His distinction Maury Maverick achieved, in all his Congressional verdancy, because he has deep and passionate feelings, because he is no respecter of personages or musty rules, and because he had something to say and said it. "Too much," many cynical observers have declared; "he is weakening his influence by talking all the time and casting his lot with too many reforms."
To which the answer is that Maverick is stronger today than when he took the oath; but that if he were steadily losing ground it would make no difference to him. He knows what he wants when he wants it, and you cannot be in the House of Representatives and fail to be aware of it. He is brusque, aggressive; some say bull-headed and add something about a china shop. "Roughneck" is another description, and there is something in his appearance to suggest the wide open spaces.
But I prefer to lay that onrushing manner to other causes. He is afraid of no one; he is too deeply impressed with the gravity of the crisis in which the United States finds herself and the darkness of the more distant future; he has not a second to lose in doing his share. And he has four things for which he will fight, bleed, and die, in and out of Congress: peace; preservation of our personal and Constitutional liberties (which means a free press, the right to free assembly, and complete freedom of utterance); conservation and development of our natural resources (such as Boulder Dam, the TVA, and the general soil-erosion, reforestation, and resettlement plans of Secretary Wallace).
And the fourth of these is again peace. For they brought this man into a hospital in France to die, with several German bullets in him, one of which hit his spinal column. They put him in a bed six inches from that of a German, a good part of whose face had remained on the battlefield. But the German could still talk a little, and he mumbled things about old-age pensions and unemployment that Maury Maverick, with that bullet in his spine, never forgot. And the German taught his American enemy something else. Not over one foot away, he died in terrible convulsions. "One can learn," says Maverick—if he speaks of it. One can learn—also one can never forget. You don't forget if for sixteen long years you suffer pain in your spine. You forget less if then you go to the Mayos and they saw off part of five vertebrae—and leave you with much more pain per second than all the time before. Would you be very polite and quiet and unaggressive under these circumstances? Or would you carry on roughly with unfailing courage, amazing vigor and fortitude, and a bit of clatter and clash just to dull things and be oblivious awhile? And wouldn't you be for peace? Especially if you had two youngsters who are likely to be of age about the time the next world war breaks loose?
Why shouldn't Maverick speak out and make a nuisance of himself and go to the White House, as he did last August with a volunteer delegation of nine Congressmen, and tell the President of the United States to his face that whether His Excellency wished it or not they were going to have neutrality legislation with nice, large mandatory provisions in it? "But I don't want mandatory provisions in it," said F. D. R. "But that's precisely what you are going to get," they assured him; and he got it. Naturally Maverick insists on more neutrality legislation, does not want any loans or credits given to any belligerents, and seeks to have Messrs. Morgan & Company and others of their variety muzzled and chained to their offices, so that they won't help again to send young men to give lodging in their spines to machine-gun bullets, by tying us up to somebody else's war machine.
Not that he has become a pacifist. Nothing so dreadful—or so sane—as that. Probably, if the drums were to beat and the troopships were on the tide once more, Maverick would be just inconsistent enough to volunteer again—if that spine permitted. He belongs to that group that thinks that the next big war will about end everything but he will stick with the country if her rulers once more order the citizens out to make something safe—democracy, Christianity, or just plain business loans and prosperity. The fighter in him would not let him stay put if men were being disemboweled in no man's land again; the leader in him would say that his place were at the front.
EARLY LIFE OF A QUEER FISH
It is that leadership in him which, together with his complete divorce from all conventionality, has sent him to the fore in Congress and given us the gratifying assurance that a man of worth and power can be heard in the lower house as soon as he arrives in it. I do not know whether his fearlessness is due to that extremely rare discovery by men in office that courage is the truest road to success or whether it was just born in him. But what an odd fish he is in the Congressional aquarium is certainly proved by his coming out squarely against the Townsend old-age pension when it was not necessary for him to do so. No wonder some of his associates think him crazy. He goes looking for trouble. This is what he said:
Nothing pussyfooting there. Nothing stradling or equivocating, but straight from the shoulder, despite the fact that the Townsend Plan was reported to be going strong in Texas. People may quibble over Maury Maverick's manner and style and choice of words and wish he would not shoot so often and be so noisy about it, but no one is ever going to accuse him of straddling. When he is asked why he hits out so hard, he draws himself up and says: "Having died twice in France it isn't worth while to avoid one political death by deing a demagogue."
Well, this Congressional comet is a true product of Texas. He was the youngest of eleven children, which, he says, is the "reason why the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Manufacturers' Association, and the Liberty League believe in birth control." He solemnly declares that he was "born amid the clashing of thunder, and the heavens were rent asunder" and to make sure that you believe it he adds, "I can remember it as plain as day. The stork and I came in through a big bay window which was open. I crawled down from the window sill, took my clothes off, and went to sleep by the side of my mother."
When he had made his mother's acquaintance in the course of years he found that she was and is the "best cultured and best educated woman I know." She taught him to read instructive books, taught him to get at facts before forming his conclusions and opinions—and she could do so because she was an exceptionally well-informed woman. He is proud of his ancestry and that his forebears were here by 1620; that a Maverick ancestor was one of the first four to spill blood in the Revolution; and that his grandfather, Samuel Maverick, fought at the Alamo, though not in its final siege. Obviously no one disgusted by his "radicalism" and his rapid-fire denunciations can tell him to go back where he came from—just as his wounds and his two medals for valor prevent militarists from impugning his motives or his courage when he exposes military claptrap and love of power.
His father having gone broke and obviously not being a believer in birth control, Maury had to work hard on a farm. When he went to school he did not like his studies much but he still studied all the time. He had excellent advantages and plenty to eat, and his mother saw to it that he read in some of his leisure time. Most of his boyhood traveling was done on horseback; the foundation of his self-confidence was surely laid when at the age of nine he and some eight other boys, the eldest fourteen, rode a hundred miles across country, shifting for themselves and once living off corn meal for three days. This is the nearest he ever came to pioneering, perhaps his nearest approach to the towpath which every budding American statesman is supposed to have trod.
MAVERICK SOUNDS OFF
Probably it is a shock to some New Englanders to learn that not everybody in Texas was once a cowboy and that there are people of ancient lineage and inherited traditions there and that Maverick is one of them. They might not realize it to hear him talk, because of his breeziness, his occasional slang, the accent of the people he serves.
But they would delight to hear him talk nonetheless—they could not help it. He told the House one day about an undesired invitation he had received from the Southern Industrial Council:
After the conference was held, he denounced it in these words:
It is safe to assume that Mr. Maverick has received no more invitations from the Southern Industrial Council.
Delightful, too, was his suggestion that there should be two new "days" for the House of Representatives. His proposal:
Brevity may be the soul of wit; with Maury Maverick it serves other purposes. He frequently writes letters four words long. His reply to a five-page attack upon him by a constituent who opposed the utility bill:
That constituent was lucky he didn't receive these remarks, to which Mr. Maverick has also resorted:
When it comes to the question of the revision of the Constitution, Mr. Maverick rushes in to let people know where he stands:
FOR PEACE
It was his determination to do all within his power to achieve peace that made this yearling Congressman come to the front with the neutrality bill sponsored in the Senate by Senators Nye and Clark and in the house by Mr. Maverick. He gave a year of study to it, and a speaking trip into twenty-four States brought him the conviction, which is shared by others who have been in touch with popular assemblages, that the American people are interested in nothing so much as their preservation from entanglement in the next war—that they value their sons' lives above any number of dollars. As between the Administration bill, which was shelved at least for the present, and the Maverick bill, the writer of this article favors the latter, because Mr. Maverick has sought to make action mandatory upon the President wherever possible. To the undeniably serious criticism that it is impossible to foresee each and every situation, the reply is that risks must be run in any case and that the President can always call an extra session and that the President should not again be subject to the kind of pressure which Mr. Wilson faced from political and business circles by the time that our Eastern industry had, to a large degree, become an integrated part of the British war machine.
Mr. Maverick is especially eager to have a law which makes it mandatory for the President to declare embargoes just as soon as war begins. Asked when modern wars begin, since, as in the cases of China and Japan, and Italy and Ethiopia, they may take place without a declaration of war, the Congressman was necessarily somewhat vague, as everyone must be:
When asked at a hearing whether he would apply the embargoes to his own State, he replied with admirable forthrightness that he had already publicly declared in Houston, the "greatest cotton center in the world," that he
If that seems a sweeping statement, it is most encouraging to note his later assurance:
That Mr. Maverick is wholly against the granting of credit and loans to belligerents naturally follows—not because he underestimates the difficulty of enforcement or the possibility of "rerouting" a loan, let us say to Canada, but because he feels that something must be done and done now before the hysteria of wartime is at hand. He knows that in this neutrality matter all the experts disagree and that there are absolutely no precedents. But he thinks that there is no reason whatever for not attempting some steps, for pioneering in this vital field. Only one other subject—the TVA—arouses him as passionately; for that he stands heart and soul. He has visited it, studied it carefully for days, and poured forth pages and pages about it into the Congressional Record.
TO LIBERTY'S RESCUE
Naturally a man with Mr. Maverick's devotion to peace, with his family inheritance, with his love of liberty watches with dismay the growing influence of the army and navy lobbies in Washington, the increasing attempts to gag the people and muzzle the press, and the growing denials of civil liberties the Constitution guarantees. He has been especially active in opposing the McSwain bill, to provide penalties for the exertion of "mutinous influence" upon army and navy and one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation ever offered in Congress since the alien and sedition bills. It originated with the Navy Department, which is so uncertain of its enlisted forces as to believe that they yield to the blandishments of communists whever they come into contact with them. A few cases of communists offering handbills and other propaganda have so terrified the Navy Department, despite the fact that no mutinous conduct due to this cause has ever been exposed to public knowledge, that it has drawn a bill as alarming in its provisions as to make it possible under it to arrest the editor of the Atlantic Monthly for printing a recent article by Admiral Sims. For that article declared that the navy's promotion system is bringing to the top incompetent commanding officers—which might certainly incite some sailors to "disaffection" by making them undesirous of serving under incompetent superiors.
Well, here is the way Messrs. Maverick and Kvale reject the measure, in words which no one can misunderstand and which bespeak the true patriotism of the writers:
Here endeth the picture of the Texas Norther who blew into Washington and roared through the halls of Congress. But don't think of him as one lacking in tact or charm or ability. At a dinner of the Economic Club in New York in February of this year he held a large audience of hard-boiled businessmen spellbound. They insisted that the rules of the Club be broken so that he could speak longer than the allotted time—and they made him speak again! There were two other speakers on the program; Maverick stole the show. He told the audience things utterly opposed to its views—and went off with its applause and its friendship. Who shall say how far he may go if his constituents value him as they should in the years to come?
Oswald Garrison Villard
Forum and Century
June, 1936
Maury Maverick, an unbranded Texan whose grandfather put his family name into the English language as a noun because he refused to sear with a red-hot iron the 453 cattle that came into his reluctant custody in payment of a debt, has achieved in the Congress of the United States what people declared was no longer possible. In half of his first term he made his name known to all thinking and reading Americans. Not by wearing a broad-brimmed Stetson hat and a flowing tie and high boots—he swears no man in his family ever was in the cattle business or ever wore such articles of attire. Not by offering a pension panacea for all our ills nor by demanding that people share their wealth before devising a new and sound economic order. He has fired no pistols on the plaza in front of the Capitol and he has not rushed with clenched fists upon any fellow member to win a first-page position nor has he sought, like one now dead, to stop the machinery of Congress by a one-man filibuster.
His distinction Maury Maverick achieved, in all his Congressional verdancy, because he has deep and passionate feelings, because he is no respecter of personages or musty rules, and because he had something to say and said it. "Too much," many cynical observers have declared; "he is weakening his influence by talking all the time and casting his lot with too many reforms."
To which the answer is that Maverick is stronger today than when he took the oath; but that if he were steadily losing ground it would make no difference to him. He knows what he wants when he wants it, and you cannot be in the House of Representatives and fail to be aware of it. He is brusque, aggressive; some say bull-headed and add something about a china shop. "Roughneck" is another description, and there is something in his appearance to suggest the wide open spaces.
But I prefer to lay that onrushing manner to other causes. He is afraid of no one; he is too deeply impressed with the gravity of the crisis in which the United States finds herself and the darkness of the more distant future; he has not a second to lose in doing his share. And he has four things for which he will fight, bleed, and die, in and out of Congress: peace; preservation of our personal and Constitutional liberties (which means a free press, the right to free assembly, and complete freedom of utterance); conservation and development of our natural resources (such as Boulder Dam, the TVA, and the general soil-erosion, reforestation, and resettlement plans of Secretary Wallace).
And the fourth of these is again peace. For they brought this man into a hospital in France to die, with several German bullets in him, one of which hit his spinal column. They put him in a bed six inches from that of a German, a good part of whose face had remained on the battlefield. But the German could still talk a little, and he mumbled things about old-age pensions and unemployment that Maury Maverick, with that bullet in his spine, never forgot. And the German taught his American enemy something else. Not over one foot away, he died in terrible convulsions. "One can learn," says Maverick—if he speaks of it. One can learn—also one can never forget. You don't forget if for sixteen long years you suffer pain in your spine. You forget less if then you go to the Mayos and they saw off part of five vertebrae—and leave you with much more pain per second than all the time before. Would you be very polite and quiet and unaggressive under these circumstances? Or would you carry on roughly with unfailing courage, amazing vigor and fortitude, and a bit of clatter and clash just to dull things and be oblivious awhile? And wouldn't you be for peace? Especially if you had two youngsters who are likely to be of age about the time the next world war breaks loose?
Why shouldn't Maverick speak out and make a nuisance of himself and go to the White House, as he did last August with a volunteer delegation of nine Congressmen, and tell the President of the United States to his face that whether His Excellency wished it or not they were going to have neutrality legislation with nice, large mandatory provisions in it? "But I don't want mandatory provisions in it," said F. D. R. "But that's precisely what you are going to get," they assured him; and he got it. Naturally Maverick insists on more neutrality legislation, does not want any loans or credits given to any belligerents, and seeks to have Messrs. Morgan & Company and others of their variety muzzled and chained to their offices, so that they won't help again to send young men to give lodging in their spines to machine-gun bullets, by tying us up to somebody else's war machine.
Not that he has become a pacifist. Nothing so dreadful—or so sane—as that. Probably, if the drums were to beat and the troopships were on the tide once more, Maverick would be just inconsistent enough to volunteer again—if that spine permitted. He belongs to that group that thinks that the next big war will about end everything but he will stick with the country if her rulers once more order the citizens out to make something safe—democracy, Christianity, or just plain business loans and prosperity. The fighter in him would not let him stay put if men were being disemboweled in no man's land again; the leader in him would say that his place were at the front.
EARLY LIFE OF A QUEER FISH
It is that leadership in him which, together with his complete divorce from all conventionality, has sent him to the fore in Congress and given us the gratifying assurance that a man of worth and power can be heard in the lower house as soon as he arrives in it. I do not know whether his fearlessness is due to that extremely rare discovery by men in office that courage is the truest road to success or whether it was just born in him. But what an odd fish he is in the Congressional aquarium is certainly proved by his coming out squarely against the Townsend old-age pension when it was not necessary for him to do so. No wonder some of his associates think him crazy. He goes looking for trouble. This is what he said:
The Townsend Plan is the most fantastic proposal, and the most unjust to old people, ever offered in America. . . . The Townsend plan is a brazen, unconscionable, and hopeless demand on the poor people, and merely keeps our nation from getting to our real problems.
Nothing pussyfooting there. Nothing stradling or equivocating, but straight from the shoulder, despite the fact that the Townsend Plan was reported to be going strong in Texas. People may quibble over Maury Maverick's manner and style and choice of words and wish he would not shoot so often and be so noisy about it, but no one is ever going to accuse him of straddling. When he is asked why he hits out so hard, he draws himself up and says: "Having died twice in France it isn't worth while to avoid one political death by deing a demagogue."
Well, this Congressional comet is a true product of Texas. He was the youngest of eleven children, which, he says, is the "reason why the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Manufacturers' Association, and the Liberty League believe in birth control." He solemnly declares that he was "born amid the clashing of thunder, and the heavens were rent asunder" and to make sure that you believe it he adds, "I can remember it as plain as day. The stork and I came in through a big bay window which was open. I crawled down from the window sill, took my clothes off, and went to sleep by the side of my mother."
When he had made his mother's acquaintance in the course of years he found that she was and is the "best cultured and best educated woman I know." She taught him to read instructive books, taught him to get at facts before forming his conclusions and opinions—and she could do so because she was an exceptionally well-informed woman. He is proud of his ancestry and that his forebears were here by 1620; that a Maverick ancestor was one of the first four to spill blood in the Revolution; and that his grandfather, Samuel Maverick, fought at the Alamo, though not in its final siege. Obviously no one disgusted by his "radicalism" and his rapid-fire denunciations can tell him to go back where he came from—just as his wounds and his two medals for valor prevent militarists from impugning his motives or his courage when he exposes military claptrap and love of power.
His father having gone broke and obviously not being a believer in birth control, Maury had to work hard on a farm. When he went to school he did not like his studies much but he still studied all the time. He had excellent advantages and plenty to eat, and his mother saw to it that he read in some of his leisure time. Most of his boyhood traveling was done on horseback; the foundation of his self-confidence was surely laid when at the age of nine he and some eight other boys, the eldest fourteen, rode a hundred miles across country, shifting for themselves and once living off corn meal for three days. This is the nearest he ever came to pioneering, perhaps his nearest approach to the towpath which every budding American statesman is supposed to have trod.
MAVERICK SOUNDS OFF
Probably it is a shock to some New Englanders to learn that not everybody in Texas was once a cowboy and that there are people of ancient lineage and inherited traditions there and that Maverick is one of them. They might not realize it to hear him talk, because of his breeziness, his occasional slang, the accent of the people he serves.
But they would delight to hear him talk nonetheless—they could not help it. He told the House one day about an undesired invitation he had received from the Southern Industrial Council:
You know, when a man who does not know me pokes his nose into my cotton patch and talks to me about coming to a free barbecue, I always smell a rat. I wrote back that I'd rather buy my own meal.
After the conference was held, he denounced it in these words:
Under the pretext of Southern decency, on which we Southerners pride ourselves, some hundred Congressmen and Senators foregathered to hear the Democratic administration insulted and the President treated derisively. It was absurd, contemptible, vicious, insidious, cowardly. It was an appeal to prejudice of such a type that would isolate the South from the rest of the nation.
It is safe to assume that Mr. Maverick has received no more invitations from the Southern Industrial Council.
Delightful, too, was his suggestion that there should be two new "days" for the House of Representatives. His proposal:
Let's have a Quaker Day, when no one will speak except from divine inspiration, and a Murder Day when we'll kill all those who spoke on Quaker Day.
Brevity may be the soul of wit; with Maury Maverick it serves other purposes. He frequently writes letters four words long. His reply to a five-page attack upon him by a constituent who opposed the utility bill:
Dear Sir:
Ph-f-f-ft.
Very truly yours,
Maury Maverick
That constituent was lucky he didn't receive these remarks, to which Mr. Maverick has also resorted:
The utility bill will break an organization which is more powerful than the government. Once it is broken we can proceed to govern the people. The TVA bill will conserve natural resources and furnish cheap power. The sapheads that yell about the government interfering in business don't know what they're talking about. A company goes in and drains the State for profit—say, did you ever see a utility company plant a tree except in the front yard to attract investors?
When it comes to the question of the revision of the Constitution, Mr. Maverick rushes in to let people know where he stands:
Mr. Speaker, in the last few months I suppose more guff and nonsense, not to mention malicious misinformation, has been peddled about on the American Constitution than at any time in our history. The fact that anyone should mention an amendment to the Constitution is cause for spiteful character assassination. Amending the Constitution is certainly constitutional, for amending it is provided in the Constitution itself. This is certainly an elementary statement. We all "revere" our forefathers, most of us at least as much as those who pretentiously blat in the public prints, but we also know that our "forefathers" were practical, intelligent, liberal men, who created this nation by revolting against England, and who thereafter set up a constitutional government, providing for constitutional amendments and changes. The purpose in doing this was to forever make the forcible overthrow of government unnecessary and improper—making the ballot the basis of changes to meet future conditions.
FOR PEACE
It was his determination to do all within his power to achieve peace that made this yearling Congressman come to the front with the neutrality bill sponsored in the Senate by Senators Nye and Clark and in the house by Mr. Maverick. He gave a year of study to it, and a speaking trip into twenty-four States brought him the conviction, which is shared by others who have been in touch with popular assemblages, that the American people are interested in nothing so much as their preservation from entanglement in the next war—that they value their sons' lives above any number of dollars. As between the Administration bill, which was shelved at least for the present, and the Maverick bill, the writer of this article favors the latter, because Mr. Maverick has sought to make action mandatory upon the President wherever possible. To the undeniably serious criticism that it is impossible to foresee each and every situation, the reply is that risks must be run in any case and that the President can always call an extra session and that the President should not again be subject to the kind of pressure which Mr. Wilson faced from political and business circles by the time that our Eastern industry had, to a large degree, become an integrated part of the British war machine.
Mr. Maverick is especially eager to have a law which makes it mandatory for the President to declare embargoes just as soon as war begins. Asked when modern wars begin, since, as in the cases of China and Japan, and Italy and Ethiopia, they may take place without a declaration of war, the Congressman was necessarily somewhat vague, as everyone must be:
The status of war, it seems to me, will be determined on the basis of the major activities of those two nations or if troops of one nation are on the soil of a foreign nation.
When asked at a hearing whether he would apply the embargoes to his own State, he replied with admirable forthrightness that he had already publicly declared in Houston, the "greatest cotton center in the world," that he
would just as soon close every port in the United States, including Houston and Galveston if it would save the life of one human being.
If that seems a sweeping statement, it is most encouraging to note his later assurance:
The reaction I got was to the effect that the people in Houston or Galveston that are in the cotton and oil business would be willing to lose all the money that it was possible to make if they thought it would save human lives and keep us out of war.
That Mr. Maverick is wholly against the granting of credit and loans to belligerents naturally follows—not because he underestimates the difficulty of enforcement or the possibility of "rerouting" a loan, let us say to Canada, but because he feels that something must be done and done now before the hysteria of wartime is at hand. He knows that in this neutrality matter all the experts disagree and that there are absolutely no precedents. But he thinks that there is no reason whatever for not attempting some steps, for pioneering in this vital field. Only one other subject—the TVA—arouses him as passionately; for that he stands heart and soul. He has visited it, studied it carefully for days, and poured forth pages and pages about it into the Congressional Record.
TO LIBERTY'S RESCUE
Naturally a man with Mr. Maverick's devotion to peace, with his family inheritance, with his love of liberty watches with dismay the growing influence of the army and navy lobbies in Washington, the increasing attempts to gag the people and muzzle the press, and the growing denials of civil liberties the Constitution guarantees. He has been especially active in opposing the McSwain bill, to provide penalties for the exertion of "mutinous influence" upon army and navy and one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation ever offered in Congress since the alien and sedition bills. It originated with the Navy Department, which is so uncertain of its enlisted forces as to believe that they yield to the blandishments of communists whever they come into contact with them. A few cases of communists offering handbills and other propaganda have so terrified the Navy Department, despite the fact that no mutinous conduct due to this cause has ever been exposed to public knowledge, that it has drawn a bill as alarming in its provisions as to make it possible under it to arrest the editor of the Atlantic Monthly for printing a recent article by Admiral Sims. For that article declared that the navy's promotion system is bringing to the top incompetent commanding officers—which might certainly incite some sailors to "disaffection" by making them undesirous of serving under incompetent superiors.
Well, here is the way Messrs. Maverick and Kvale reject the measure, in words which no one can misunderstand and which bespeak the true patriotism of the writers:
This measure, put forward apparently casually and in as inconspicuous a manner as possible, is a direct, unnecessary, and wanton assault on the freedom of the press and of speech, and on our traditional rights of immunity against unreasonable search and seizure. At the very least, it is a sop designed to cater to the prejudices of those so-called patriotic groups who think that the most becoming garb for the Statue of Liberty is a strait-jacket and that American freedom consists of allowing the liberties of the people to be anaesthetized into complete coma. At worst, it is an underhanded attempt to prevent the American people from criticizing or organizing to oppose the magnificent grabs of the mutinous makers and the other special selfish special interests and to put the whole authority of the United States behind unimpeded appropriations for the relief of the Schwabs, du Ponts, and Morgans, who thrive on battleships and munitions contracts. It is also a snide effort to prevent that free discussion which would help to prevent foolish and unnecessary wars.
Here endeth the picture of the Texas Norther who blew into Washington and roared through the halls of Congress. But don't think of him as one lacking in tact or charm or ability. At a dinner of the Economic Club in New York in February of this year he held a large audience of hard-boiled businessmen spellbound. They insisted that the rules of the Club be broken so that he could speak longer than the allotted time—and they made him speak again! There were two other speakers on the program; Maverick stole the show. He told the audience things utterly opposed to its views—and went off with its applause and its friendship. Who shall say how far he may go if his constituents value him as they should in the years to come?
Oswald Garrison Villard
Forum and Century
June, 1936
What Made Maury Run
In December, 1936, Oswald Garrison Villard, longtime liberal editor of The Nation, wrote his friend Representative Maury Maverick (1895-1954), of San Antonio, Texas, that he wanted to inform the public of the congressional burdens caused by the New Deal's economic emphasis. He asked that Maverick's secretary send him a statistical breakdown of a week in the life of a congressman.
Deeply devoted to his job, the brash and boisterous Maverick had already, in the first of the two terms he would serve, won a national reputation by ignoring the protocol of silence observed by freshmen in the House. He had no patience with hypocrisy or with official language that obfuscated issues, for which he coined the word gobbledygook. He was intensely proud of his colonial heritage, of his grandfather who had signed the Texas Declaration of Independence; and he saw, as his historic mission, the safeguarding of individuals' rights and the nation's natural resources. This same grandfather, Samuel Maverick, according to a frequently repeated legend, added a word to the English language when, probably through an oversight of his slaves, he failed to brand a small herd of cattle in his possession. Thereafter, "maverick" was the common name for an unbranded animal, and in time the word stood for a politician independent of party control. Maury Maverick, both in Congress and in a term as mayor of San Antonio, from 1939 to 1941, lived up to the name.
The secretary's report indicated that Congressman Maverick received 150 letters and forty callers daily, attended up to six weekly committee meetings, and was often at his desk late into the night. During adjournment, there was some surcease, though the office seekers increased and the phone never stopped ringing. But the secretary's simple listing of statistics didn't tell of the "pangs and pains" or the "emotional strain" the congressman endures, so Maverick took pen to paper and did the job himself. -Barbara S. Kraft, American Heritage, August 1972
In the first place, no one ever talks to a Congressman unless they are either unemployed, angry, or in a state of defeat. The "successful" men have no time to talk to a Congressman and you receive no visits from your friends, because your office is always packed and jammed with unfortunate people demanding immediate attention. You are constantly besieged to make speeches, and you are supposed to make facetious remarks and tell two or three jokes generally—generally jokes which are wholly outside of the realm of thought—and then to make a very grave speech, complimenting the group you address.
It is impossible for a Congressman to walk down the street, even with his wife and children, or with his best friends or associates. Leaving the Maverick Building and going to the St. Anthony Hotel, which is only two short blocks, I am frequently stopped as many as ten or twenty times. Each person starts out by saying: "Congressman. Can I see you just a minute?" or "You're the hardest man to find in town. I've been trying to get you for six weeks." Or similar approaches. In biting cold weather, and already late, it is necessary to listen to a long story which has no point, with a great mass of irrelevant data,—all of which could have been handled as a routine matter by my secretary in the first place.
Point: There is absolutely no time for the average Congressman to study, make research, and improve his mind. His secretarial staff is insufficient for the amount of work. With large numbers of people calling all the time, the telephone ringing incessantly, and work to be done, the physical part of the task, the simple administrative duties, simply weight the Congressman down. It is perfectly natural, therefore, for Congressmen to break under the impact and give up entirely using their own brains.
Second point: Democracy is likely to break down of its own weight. After great hullabaloo, accusations and counter-accusations, a man is elected to office. Then the people prevent him from doing his duty. Strangely enough, in reference to Congressmen, the people have no respect at all for each other. Attempting to talk to one constituent means nothing to another—he will break in and start talking about his own affairs. I know that this is not the plight of the lawyer, businessman, or average citizen who is "prominent"—because before I was in Congress people talked to me one at a time.
Historical psychological background (in deep confidence): In times past, the royalty had a touch of magic. There is no royalty now, and no one to settle a man's problems. If he is a Catholic, he can go to a priest for confession and, I understand, get some consolation. But if he wants a pension, is out of a job, has been fired, has been given a dishonorable discharge from the Army and wants to get back in, is going to lose his home because he hasn't paid anything on his HOLC loan since he made it some 12 to 16 months before, or wants a job for a "friend," or has anything the matter with him at all, the only person who will even speak to him, or whom he can speak to, is the degraded remnant of royalty—the Congressman. Hence, no Congressman can walk down the street of his home town naturally. He cannot stop at a shop window, because he will be pinched, slapped on the back, or jerked away and asked questions and told views until he gives up in disgust, calls a taxicab, and hides his head so he can get home and get away from it all.
As for Washington, the situation is not quite as bad, but there come all day long cranks of all kinds who have a "plan" to solve the depression, or a fool-proof "pension system," and most of them are good people who have some hold on you and you have to speak to them. I have an additional burden, and this is true of all Congressmen who are unfortunate enough to have Revolutionary, 1812, Mexican War and Civil War relatives. Thank God there are no Abolitionists in my family, or I would break under the strain. But there are plenty of others—I think I have you beat by several generations of them.
Then in Washington life, it has a feature which is disgusting. You are invited to a supper, and frequently an important one. It is supposed to start at seven, and it starts at eight. It's supposed to close at nine, but then everyone makes a speech, it is impossible to get away, and sometimes they last until eleven or twelve o'clock. You go home, having eaten too much, smoked too much, and listened to too much tiresome bull; you sleep too late; get to your office late. You can't get in on account of the people blocking the door waiting to see you, and you have a mass of correspondence which you probably don't answer in the morning and which is deferred until that night. You get behind further and further.
When any man makes a speech who has some self-respect, he has to make research. This is almost impossible, and so you send to the Library to get your books. You, of course, cannot read a speech, because Congressmen don't listen, anyway, which necessitates an extreme familiarity with your subject if you talk without manuscript. The result is frequently slipshod speeches.
I hand you herewith a typical example of correspondence which I received this morning—one of my friends, whom I have known for twenty-five years, suggests that I lack sincerity because I disagree with him on the Supreme Court. I have written him a very sharp letter and have told him to mind his own business—but the customary thing for most Congressmen is to write a letter and say they appreciate the suggestion, and so on.
I can truthfully state the following, of every Congressman:
Republican, or Democrat, he works harder than any two businessmen.
He is above average, and I do not believe that there is a single Member of Congress who would accept a bribe in money in any sum.
He is generally a better representative than his constituents deserve.
His health is bad because of his constant application to work, and statistics show that Congressmen die of acute indigestion, heart trouble of various kinds, such as coronary thrombosis, also arterio-sclerosis, and diseases due to improper diet.
He really wants to learn, study and apply himself, but conditions of being a modern messenger boy simply make it impossible.
In December, 1936, Oswald Garrison Villard, longtime liberal editor of The Nation, wrote his friend Representative Maury Maverick (1895-1954), of San Antonio, Texas, that he wanted to inform the public of the congressional burdens caused by the New Deal's economic emphasis. He asked that Maverick's secretary send him a statistical breakdown of a week in the life of a congressman.
Deeply devoted to his job, the brash and boisterous Maverick had already, in the first of the two terms he would serve, won a national reputation by ignoring the protocol of silence observed by freshmen in the House. He had no patience with hypocrisy or with official language that obfuscated issues, for which he coined the word gobbledygook. He was intensely proud of his colonial heritage, of his grandfather who had signed the Texas Declaration of Independence; and he saw, as his historic mission, the safeguarding of individuals' rights and the nation's natural resources. This same grandfather, Samuel Maverick, according to a frequently repeated legend, added a word to the English language when, probably through an oversight of his slaves, he failed to brand a small herd of cattle in his possession. Thereafter, "maverick" was the common name for an unbranded animal, and in time the word stood for a politician independent of party control. Maury Maverick, both in Congress and in a term as mayor of San Antonio, from 1939 to 1941, lived up to the name.
The secretary's report indicated that Congressman Maverick received 150 letters and forty callers daily, attended up to six weekly committee meetings, and was often at his desk late into the night. During adjournment, there was some surcease, though the office seekers increased and the phone never stopped ringing. But the secretary's simple listing of statistics didn't tell of the "pangs and pains" or the "emotional strain" the congressman endures, so Maverick took pen to paper and did the job himself. -Barbara S. Kraft, American Heritage, August 1972
In the first place, no one ever talks to a Congressman unless they are either unemployed, angry, or in a state of defeat. The "successful" men have no time to talk to a Congressman and you receive no visits from your friends, because your office is always packed and jammed with unfortunate people demanding immediate attention. You are constantly besieged to make speeches, and you are supposed to make facetious remarks and tell two or three jokes generally—generally jokes which are wholly outside of the realm of thought—and then to make a very grave speech, complimenting the group you address.
It is impossible for a Congressman to walk down the street, even with his wife and children, or with his best friends or associates. Leaving the Maverick Building and going to the St. Anthony Hotel, which is only two short blocks, I am frequently stopped as many as ten or twenty times. Each person starts out by saying: "Congressman. Can I see you just a minute?" or "You're the hardest man to find in town. I've been trying to get you for six weeks." Or similar approaches. In biting cold weather, and already late, it is necessary to listen to a long story which has no point, with a great mass of irrelevant data,—all of which could have been handled as a routine matter by my secretary in the first place.
Point: There is absolutely no time for the average Congressman to study, make research, and improve his mind. His secretarial staff is insufficient for the amount of work. With large numbers of people calling all the time, the telephone ringing incessantly, and work to be done, the physical part of the task, the simple administrative duties, simply weight the Congressman down. It is perfectly natural, therefore, for Congressmen to break under the impact and give up entirely using their own brains.
Second point: Democracy is likely to break down of its own weight. After great hullabaloo, accusations and counter-accusations, a man is elected to office. Then the people prevent him from doing his duty. Strangely enough, in reference to Congressmen, the people have no respect at all for each other. Attempting to talk to one constituent means nothing to another—he will break in and start talking about his own affairs. I know that this is not the plight of the lawyer, businessman, or average citizen who is "prominent"—because before I was in Congress people talked to me one at a time.
Historical psychological background (in deep confidence): In times past, the royalty had a touch of magic. There is no royalty now, and no one to settle a man's problems. If he is a Catholic, he can go to a priest for confession and, I understand, get some consolation. But if he wants a pension, is out of a job, has been fired, has been given a dishonorable discharge from the Army and wants to get back in, is going to lose his home because he hasn't paid anything on his HOLC loan since he made it some 12 to 16 months before, or wants a job for a "friend," or has anything the matter with him at all, the only person who will even speak to him, or whom he can speak to, is the degraded remnant of royalty—the Congressman. Hence, no Congressman can walk down the street of his home town naturally. He cannot stop at a shop window, because he will be pinched, slapped on the back, or jerked away and asked questions and told views until he gives up in disgust, calls a taxicab, and hides his head so he can get home and get away from it all.
As for Washington, the situation is not quite as bad, but there come all day long cranks of all kinds who have a "plan" to solve the depression, or a fool-proof "pension system," and most of them are good people who have some hold on you and you have to speak to them. I have an additional burden, and this is true of all Congressmen who are unfortunate enough to have Revolutionary, 1812, Mexican War and Civil War relatives. Thank God there are no Abolitionists in my family, or I would break under the strain. But there are plenty of others—I think I have you beat by several generations of them.
Then in Washington life, it has a feature which is disgusting. You are invited to a supper, and frequently an important one. It is supposed to start at seven, and it starts at eight. It's supposed to close at nine, but then everyone makes a speech, it is impossible to get away, and sometimes they last until eleven or twelve o'clock. You go home, having eaten too much, smoked too much, and listened to too much tiresome bull; you sleep too late; get to your office late. You can't get in on account of the people blocking the door waiting to see you, and you have a mass of correspondence which you probably don't answer in the morning and which is deferred until that night. You get behind further and further.
When any man makes a speech who has some self-respect, he has to make research. This is almost impossible, and so you send to the Library to get your books. You, of course, cannot read a speech, because Congressmen don't listen, anyway, which necessitates an extreme familiarity with your subject if you talk without manuscript. The result is frequently slipshod speeches.
I hand you herewith a typical example of correspondence which I received this morning—one of my friends, whom I have known for twenty-five years, suggests that I lack sincerity because I disagree with him on the Supreme Court. I have written him a very sharp letter and have told him to mind his own business—but the customary thing for most Congressmen is to write a letter and say they appreciate the suggestion, and so on.
I can truthfully state the following, of every Congressman:
Republican, or Democrat, he works harder than any two businessmen.
He is above average, and I do not believe that there is a single Member of Congress who would accept a bribe in money in any sum.
He is generally a better representative than his constituents deserve.
His health is bad because of his constant application to work, and statistics show that Congressmen die of acute indigestion, heart trouble of various kinds, such as coronary thrombosis, also arterio-sclerosis, and diseases due to improper diet.
He really wants to learn, study and apply himself, but conditions of being a modern messenger boy simply make it impossible.
Maury Maverick, M.C.
The GAG Threatens!
Congress Has Two Bills to Strangle Liberty
Among the merry bills now pending in Congress there are two clamoring for fang and claw: the "military disaffection" bill and the Kramer sedition bill.
Both of them have one purpose in common: to strangle that fundamental liberty of utterance and ink upon which our very existence as a free people is predicated. In plain English, the GAG!
The first of them, a hybrid, ostensibly intended to insulate the army and navy lambkins from all subversive wiles and blandishments, contains vast search and seizure privileges which would in effect put the civilian population under military domination. Although Senator Tydings, one of the original authors, has dropped it, some strong force keeps it alive.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Representative Charles Kramer, Democrat, of Hollywood, makes it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. That sounds very patriotic, but there is something else in the woodpile.
Such suppressive laws were tried just after the Revolution, but with little success. It has been only since the World War and particularly since the depression that really strong efforts have been made to end political democracy by the gag.
Now let us examine the forces behind these present bills. To begin with, there is the dear old Chamber of Commerce of the good old U. S. A.! The United States Chamber of Commerce promotes edition bills and gag legislation under a pretense of "fighting the communists." But it also campaigns lustily against "government regulation" and says the government should "let business alone." In effect, while fulminating against government in business, it favors interference by the government in the newspaper business. Some of my liberal friends, always searching avidly for some deep and sinister reason, say the Chamber expects to win the next election. And, if it does, they continue, there will be a law all ready, passed by foolish Democrats, that will enable it to start persecutions under the new fascist state.
This line of reasoning is a little too complicated for the Chamber brethren. They do, however, represent Big Business and Big Industry; and the leaders go at it shrewdly enough to know just what they are after. And what they are after is to put a gag on the American people, so that Big Business, including shipbuilders and munitions makers, can go unmolested. And of course they want to suppress criticism of the status quo.
Secretary of Navy Drugged by Admirals
The Secretary of the Navy favors the military-disaffection bill and the Kramer sedition bill, lock, stock, and barrel. This is understandable. For the Secretary has long been a complacent promoter of big appropriations for the navy; and he is the doting grandfather of his little boys, the admirals. When an admiral talks, he sits and beams and bows assent. He is surrounded by salty gentlemen with hermetically sealed brains, men who have been calked down and insulated intellectually since they went on work relief at seventeen years of age—automatons in thought; suave, pleasant fellows. The Secretary of the Navy is drugged and lying for dead on the banks of the Potomac, while they take the wheel.
Many of the "patriotic" societies are for the gag bills. That is also understandable. The members themselves are used by such upper groups as the United States Chamber of Commerce. Through the espionage department of the navy they are constantly being given "secret information," marked CONFIDENTIAL. All this appeals to their vanity.
Secretary of War Knows Bill of Rights
The Secretary of War is not for the sedition bills. He is a reasonably liberal fellow. He has really read the Bill of Rights and he does not let his generals push him around in an intellectual wheel chair. Secretary of War Dern was fooled about the military-disaffection bill in the beginning. The uniforms behind the Secretary of the Navy, in a circuitous way, worked Secretary Dern into signing a letter approving the gag bill. Dern was outraged and has since let it be known that he is not for the bill.
The Chamber of Commerce is still using the same old tiresome stuff about communists and the Red Menace. Liberals-who-hate-the-Chamber and those-who-think-they-are-communists come back by calling the Chamber boys fascists.
Both sides in this squabble err. But in all this inaccurate, sometimes vicious, false, and violent talk there are several important points. The first and most important is that talk is guaranteed to be free by the Constitution, with no limitation and no exception. The laws of libel and slander are still in effect, as also are laws against criminal conspiracy, treason, overt acts, and dozens and dozens of others protecting the army and navy, the country, and the Constitution.
Yes, the Bill of Rights Is Still In Effect
Also, the Bill of Rights is still in effect. Navy people seem to forget this. They forget, as well, that freedom of speech and press is guaranteed in the very first amendment to the Constitution. That amendment says that there shall be no abridgment to the freedom of the press, or of speech or of religion—and says so forcefully. There are no ifs or provides in it. And the fourth amendment to the Constitution says that the government must stay out of our homes and that we have a right to our papers. It doesn't say, in either amendment, that VIOLENT TALK is prohibited. Nor does it say that the communists, fascists, or Liberty Leaguers cannot say what they like. Nor does it say that our door can be knocked in and our houses ransacked because we might say something about fraud in a navy contract or because our papers happen to be red, white, blue, or yellow jackets. Nor does it say that we should be put in jail for having in our possession some print which offends the aesthetic sense or moral or political ideas of some official or picayunish naval officer.
Everybody already knows this. Everything I have said is obvious. We all know liberty is supposed to work in both ways, equally for the benefit of top, low-down, and under-dogs.
But still the sedition bills come on. And that seems surprising, because never before in peacetime since the alien and sedition acts of the Adams administration has a serious effort been made to pass a sedition act. What happened to those laws is well known.
If we review the question of freedom of speech and press historically, preceding the Revolution, we find that our forefathers—and we had forefathers of all kinds—demanded and got the Bill of Rights, the right of civil liberties. But it is also true that Oriental countries and Africa have never enjoyed such a thing. When Russia suffered the communist revolution, the people lost nothing so far as freedom of speech and press was concerned. Passing from the old order to communism meant merely changing the gag to other mouths.
Advocacy and Overt Act
For a long time before the American Revolution, western Europe and England enjoyed more freedom of expression than any other portion of the world. And such freedom was greater in England than any part of western Continental Europe. There, at an early date, a distinction was made between the right of the government to prohibit in advance printed matter and the right to slander and libel suits, by individuals, afterwards. The general Anglo-American concept has been that a newspaper can print what it please and take the consequences afterwards for civil libel and slander. But, as for general advocacy of anything by word of mouth, print, or symbol—including advocacy of violence against the government—this has been considered a right in England, as well as here.
Let us compare advocacy and overt act. Mere advocacy of "overthrowing" the government, violent talks, words, not deeds: thee are within the limitations of freedom. Overt act, however slight, criminal conspiracy: these are both against the law now.
Those who proposed the Bill of Rights, having recently endured bitter oppression and a bitter revolution knew that the most extreme speech, including all manner of violent talk and all manner of blowing off steam, would help prevent revolutionary measures and would aid in the maintenance of free and orderly government.
These men wanted to form a government in perpetuity. They put no limit whatever on freedom of speech and press. In spite of this, soon after our Revolution, the alien and sedition acts were passed. They rightly became so grossly unpopular with the people that the latter upheld President Jefferson when he declared:
This temporary bill ran out, and no one dared attempt to renew it. Its constitutionality was never passed upon. It has always been universally regarded, however, as directly in violation of the Constitution, as any similar law must be.
At this session of Congress the military-disaffection and the Kramer bills were for a time regarded as dead. Suddenly they popped up and might have passed; at any rate, they are still actively before Congress and should be watched by all who do not want to be gagged or jugged for using their own brains. Each of them is worse than the alien and sedition acts. With the navy-Chamber of Commerce lobby behind it, either may be pushed to the floor at any time. This in spite of the fact that the newspapers of the country—radical, reactionary (including the Wall Street Journal), liberal, and conservative, with the exception of the Hearst papers, strongly oppose the bills. Likewise, the army is sick of the whole sedition business. "Patriotic" and veterans' organizations have announced their support, but many of those which are bona fide are becoming suspicious. The usual perfunctory support of such organizations does not as a rule impress the opposition with either the bills or the motives behind the support.
Anyhow, these bills strike directly at the veteran and should be fought by all the veterans' friends. Usually at a veterans' convention, any resolution which damns the "communists" is passed with a whoop—although it might well work grievous harm to the veterans themselves. Yet many veterans' leaders embrace this program as a stock in trade. The average veteran functions automatically on a vague emotional mania to gag those who he thinks are communists. Seeing red, he is blind to the consequent garroting of the liberties of the average citizen and his own oral suicide. He does not realize he is throwing a boomerang that will, sooner or later, fly back in his own mouth.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Mr. Kramer of Hollywood, gives a man a five-year rest in a federal prison for advocating the "overthrow" of the government. This bill, like the military-disaffection bill, sound innocent enough, but in the light of decisions on the sedition act during the World War pretty nearly anything could be construed as a violation of it. The author of the bill, for instance, gave as one of his passionate reasons the fact that in the San Francisco strike a cartoon had been printed of the President of the United States! He recently defended this point of view on the floor of the House. All that I could see about the cartoon was that it was an excellent one, and I'm sure that President Roosevelt would laugh at it himself.
Both Bills Legally Unnecessary
Both the naval-military gag and the Kramer bills violate the first amendment (freedom of speech, press, religion) and the fourth amendment (search and seizure) to the Constitution.
They also have another vicious quality in common: they are legally unnecessary. The army and navy need no additional military legislation. They are protected by enough military and naval statutes to choke an admiral. Our services also have the Court Martial Manual, which puts a soldier or sailor practically at the mercy of his superiors but which, in any event, has always maintained discipline. Both services have dozens of laws protecting them from outsiders or civilians, and the navy has additional laws by which the President of the United States can set up so-called defensive areas and make practically any kind of regulation he wants for the protection of the minds of his admirals and the sailor boys, including necessary penalties.
Any competent naval or military officer will tell you further legislation is not needed. A few officers in the espionage department of the navy, who do nothing but draw their pay, manufacture propaganda for so-called patriotic organizations, and agitate against and libel and slander decent taxpayers, have worked themselves up to such red heat that they really believe there is some danger. In their officially libelous documents they solemnly include the twenty million Protestants of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ! They get violent hysterics about such persons as Jane Addams! They proclaim their fear for the patriotism of their gobs through the blandishments of handsome gals of the Sex Squad of Red Russia! In their distorted imaginations every person who does not agree with them is a paid spy of the U.S.S.R.!
Civil Population Loses Liberties
The great danger of the navy gag, as well as the Kramer bill, is of course to the public, the civil population. The army and the navy are in no danger of being "overthrown," nor is there danger of any sedition; and both services will know it. The cute little point involved in all this "patriotic" hullabaloo is that, should the navy gag bill be passed, the navy and army will be given almost supreme power over all the American people. The impatient gaggers know this. They have counted on it.
It is true that the military must ask for search warrants under the law. But it would be easy enough, upon the vaguest type of suspicion, to ask for a search warrant, have one federal deputy carry the warrant and a squad of soldiers or sailors assist the deputy by carrying along their guns, bayonets, and tear-gas bombs. A great job could be done by kicking in our doors, as the dragoons of Louis XIV did; presses of newspapers and periodicals could be destroyed; in fact, a peach of a time could be had by all—except any citizen of the United States who talked or thought differently from our naval or military officers.
Such power could be used in strikes. It could be used in ordinary times against the critics of large government appropriations. It could be used for anything which might remotely "disaffect' any soldier or sailor or disturb the imagination of any military or naval man. During the War the sedition act meant nearly anything that might be called criticism; and, as for the press, it was not even necessary for the soldier to have seen any printed criticism to brand the publisher guilty. This navy gag law goes further—it gets everybody from the printer or through the publisher to the newsboy!
Chamber! Heil the Commander in Chief!
And, strangely enough, the proponents of this legislation have forgotten that the President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the United States Army and Navy! It would be swell to clamp our friends of the Liberty League in jail for yammering about our Commander in Chief. During the latter part of January our admirals, after accepting an invitation to talk before an organization, refused to talk, and Secretary Swanson let the Assistant Secretary of the Navy order the band to walk out because a Liberty Leaguer had "insulted the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States" before this group. It is lucky for the speaker that the proposed legislation was not then in effect: he would have been carried, free of charge, to the nearest jail. Nevertheless I am not in favor of such gag legislation, for the reason that another Commander in Chief might put me—or you—in a federal prison for expressing my own opinions. Though, for that matter, the situation would have its amusing side if the United States Chamber of Commerce should find itself in a federal juzgado for criticizing the President—i.e. the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States of America!
Sedition Bills Destructive of Military Discipline
From a military viewpoint, any such legislation will injure discipline, because a soldier will naturally resent the slur cast on his patriotism and integrity. Moreover, he will naturally become inquisitive of the actions of the so-called subversive element. As a soldier and former officer, I know the whole affair is nonsense. Forbid a soldier to read, and he will read. Denounce communism, and he may swallow the Red Russian, beard (if any) and all. Treat him like a human being with self-respect, and he'll go to hell for you.
At any rate, these suppressive and oppressive laws are a stupid and unkind reflection on the soldier and sailor of America—and, of course, on the average American. Russia's and Germany's soldiers and sailors revolted when their conditions became intolerable—not-withstanding the strictest types of sedition and repressive laws. In this country sedition laws will do no good—wore, they will cause a spirit in our military forces directly contrary to good order and military discipline.
All the cowardly arguments generally used in campaigns of this kind are now being used by those who are trying to restrict the freedom of speech and press. There are three kinds of gaggers and alarmists. One is the weak but in-offensive, honest person, who believes that the country is in grave danger. It is a sort of a gratification of his inhibitions, a sort of self-importance complex, whereby he can assume the worries of state—and harass other citizens. For the last seventeen years the Communist Menace has been chronically on the verge of overthrowing the government. The government still stands, which surely is proof enough that, from a governmental viewpoint, we do not need any militaristic gag legislation. I have been hearing of the Red Menace until I am blue in the face. There is always voting "Present," in a loud, hoarse voice, a menace of some kind, and I am getting tired of the Red Peril.
Average citizens, either singly or in organizations, are continually prodded by selfish groups into making "protests" and "demands" for the protection of "Americanism." Here in Washington, mustered into claques, they plant themselves to cheer Congressmen as they make "home consumption" and "patriotic" speeches, wherein the communist and the foreigner are deported forthwith out of the country, with jobs and a return of prosperity for all good Americans thereby guaranteed.
There is another class of tom-tom beater, and that is the group interested strictly from a business viewpoint. I mean the shipbuilders and munitions interests, money patriots and agitators, and the real minds which control such organizations as the United States Chamber of Commerce. These men do not care personally about the right of freedom of speech or press, because they hardly expect it to be restricted for them and because of their economic power. Conversely they are not interested in the right of freedom of speech for those who lack the economic power. They have not sense enough to realize that the government may change and may take liberty from them.
There are also the army and navy groups and the men who have been on the payroll of the government since they were seventeen or eighteen years old, professional "patriots" and professional guests of the government, who knew very little besides their narrow military or naval life and practically nothing about the general welfare of the American people. Also, I may add, less than nothing about political democracy.
Composite Picture of an Idiot
All told, the picture is far from pretty. It is a composite portrait of mixed motives—of honesty misled, of low shrewdness, stupidity, vanity, ignorance, broken nerves, fear, cruelty, and credulity—and this can be seen in the full face, as well as in the twitching eyes. All we can do about it is to give that ugly face a punch and change the expression—or knock it out for all time.
Maury Maverick
Forum and Century
May, 1936
Congress Has Two Bills to Strangle Liberty
Among the merry bills now pending in Congress there are two clamoring for fang and claw: the "military disaffection" bill and the Kramer sedition bill.
Both of them have one purpose in common: to strangle that fundamental liberty of utterance and ink upon which our very existence as a free people is predicated. In plain English, the GAG!
The first of them, a hybrid, ostensibly intended to insulate the army and navy lambkins from all subversive wiles and blandishments, contains vast search and seizure privileges which would in effect put the civilian population under military domination. Although Senator Tydings, one of the original authors, has dropped it, some strong force keeps it alive.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Representative Charles Kramer, Democrat, of Hollywood, makes it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. That sounds very patriotic, but there is something else in the woodpile.
Such suppressive laws were tried just after the Revolution, but with little success. It has been only since the World War and particularly since the depression that really strong efforts have been made to end political democracy by the gag.
Now let us examine the forces behind these present bills. To begin with, there is the dear old Chamber of Commerce of the good old U. S. A.! The United States Chamber of Commerce promotes edition bills and gag legislation under a pretense of "fighting the communists." But it also campaigns lustily against "government regulation" and says the government should "let business alone." In effect, while fulminating against government in business, it favors interference by the government in the newspaper business. Some of my liberal friends, always searching avidly for some deep and sinister reason, say the Chamber expects to win the next election. And, if it does, they continue, there will be a law all ready, passed by foolish Democrats, that will enable it to start persecutions under the new fascist state.
This line of reasoning is a little too complicated for the Chamber brethren. They do, however, represent Big Business and Big Industry; and the leaders go at it shrewdly enough to know just what they are after. And what they are after is to put a gag on the American people, so that Big Business, including shipbuilders and munitions makers, can go unmolested. And of course they want to suppress criticism of the status quo.
Secretary of Navy Drugged by Admirals
The Secretary of the Navy favors the military-disaffection bill and the Kramer sedition bill, lock, stock, and barrel. This is understandable. For the Secretary has long been a complacent promoter of big appropriations for the navy; and he is the doting grandfather of his little boys, the admirals. When an admiral talks, he sits and beams and bows assent. He is surrounded by salty gentlemen with hermetically sealed brains, men who have been calked down and insulated intellectually since they went on work relief at seventeen years of age—automatons in thought; suave, pleasant fellows. The Secretary of the Navy is drugged and lying for dead on the banks of the Potomac, while they take the wheel.
Many of the "patriotic" societies are for the gag bills. That is also understandable. The members themselves are used by such upper groups as the United States Chamber of Commerce. Through the espionage department of the navy they are constantly being given "secret information," marked CONFIDENTIAL. All this appeals to their vanity.
Secretary of War Knows Bill of Rights
The Secretary of War is not for the sedition bills. He is a reasonably liberal fellow. He has really read the Bill of Rights and he does not let his generals push him around in an intellectual wheel chair. Secretary of War Dern was fooled about the military-disaffection bill in the beginning. The uniforms behind the Secretary of the Navy, in a circuitous way, worked Secretary Dern into signing a letter approving the gag bill. Dern was outraged and has since let it be known that he is not for the bill.
The Chamber of Commerce is still using the same old tiresome stuff about communists and the Red Menace. Liberals-who-hate-the-Chamber and those-who-think-they-are-communists come back by calling the Chamber boys fascists.
Both sides in this squabble err. But in all this inaccurate, sometimes vicious, false, and violent talk there are several important points. The first and most important is that talk is guaranteed to be free by the Constitution, with no limitation and no exception. The laws of libel and slander are still in effect, as also are laws against criminal conspiracy, treason, overt acts, and dozens and dozens of others protecting the army and navy, the country, and the Constitution.
Yes, the Bill of Rights Is Still In Effect
Also, the Bill of Rights is still in effect. Navy people seem to forget this. They forget, as well, that freedom of speech and press is guaranteed in the very first amendment to the Constitution. That amendment says that there shall be no abridgment to the freedom of the press, or of speech or of religion—and says so forcefully. There are no ifs or provides in it. And the fourth amendment to the Constitution says that the government must stay out of our homes and that we have a right to our papers. It doesn't say, in either amendment, that VIOLENT TALK is prohibited. Nor does it say that the communists, fascists, or Liberty Leaguers cannot say what they like. Nor does it say that our door can be knocked in and our houses ransacked because we might say something about fraud in a navy contract or because our papers happen to be red, white, blue, or yellow jackets. Nor does it say that we should be put in jail for having in our possession some print which offends the aesthetic sense or moral or political ideas of some official or picayunish naval officer.
Everybody already knows this. Everything I have said is obvious. We all know liberty is supposed to work in both ways, equally for the benefit of top, low-down, and under-dogs.
But still the sedition bills come on. And that seems surprising, because never before in peacetime since the alien and sedition acts of the Adams administration has a serious effort been made to pass a sedition act. What happened to those laws is well known.
If we review the question of freedom of speech and press historically, preceding the Revolution, we find that our forefathers—and we had forefathers of all kinds—demanded and got the Bill of Rights, the right of civil liberties. But it is also true that Oriental countries and Africa have never enjoyed such a thing. When Russia suffered the communist revolution, the people lost nothing so far as freedom of speech and press was concerned. Passing from the old order to communism meant merely changing the gag to other mouths.
Advocacy and Overt Act
For a long time before the American Revolution, western Europe and England enjoyed more freedom of expression than any other portion of the world. And such freedom was greater in England than any part of western Continental Europe. There, at an early date, a distinction was made between the right of the government to prohibit in advance printed matter and the right to slander and libel suits, by individuals, afterwards. The general Anglo-American concept has been that a newspaper can print what it please and take the consequences afterwards for civil libel and slander. But, as for general advocacy of anything by word of mouth, print, or symbol—including advocacy of violence against the government—this has been considered a right in England, as well as here.
Let us compare advocacy and overt act. Mere advocacy of "overthrowing" the government, violent talks, words, not deeds: thee are within the limitations of freedom. Overt act, however slight, criminal conspiracy: these are both against the law now.
Those who proposed the Bill of Rights, having recently endured bitter oppression and a bitter revolution knew that the most extreme speech, including all manner of violent talk and all manner of blowing off steam, would help prevent revolutionary measures and would aid in the maintenance of free and orderly government.
These men wanted to form a government in perpetuity. They put no limit whatever on freedom of speech and press. In spite of this, soon after our Revolution, the alien and sedition acts were passed. They rightly became so grossly unpopular with the people that the latter upheld President Jefferson when he declared:
The sedition law is no law, and I will disobey it if it comes in the way of my functions.
This temporary bill ran out, and no one dared attempt to renew it. Its constitutionality was never passed upon. It has always been universally regarded, however, as directly in violation of the Constitution, as any similar law must be.
At this session of Congress the military-disaffection and the Kramer bills were for a time regarded as dead. Suddenly they popped up and might have passed; at any rate, they are still actively before Congress and should be watched by all who do not want to be gagged or jugged for using their own brains. Each of them is worse than the alien and sedition acts. With the navy-Chamber of Commerce lobby behind it, either may be pushed to the floor at any time. This in spite of the fact that the newspapers of the country—radical, reactionary (including the Wall Street Journal), liberal, and conservative, with the exception of the Hearst papers, strongly oppose the bills. Likewise, the army is sick of the whole sedition business. "Patriotic" and veterans' organizations have announced their support, but many of those which are bona fide are becoming suspicious. The usual perfunctory support of such organizations does not as a rule impress the opposition with either the bills or the motives behind the support.
Anyhow, these bills strike directly at the veteran and should be fought by all the veterans' friends. Usually at a veterans' convention, any resolution which damns the "communists" is passed with a whoop—although it might well work grievous harm to the veterans themselves. Yet many veterans' leaders embrace this program as a stock in trade. The average veteran functions automatically on a vague emotional mania to gag those who he thinks are communists. Seeing red, he is blind to the consequent garroting of the liberties of the average citizen and his own oral suicide. He does not realize he is throwing a boomerang that will, sooner or later, fly back in his own mouth.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Mr. Kramer of Hollywood, gives a man a five-year rest in a federal prison for advocating the "overthrow" of the government. This bill, like the military-disaffection bill, sound innocent enough, but in the light of decisions on the sedition act during the World War pretty nearly anything could be construed as a violation of it. The author of the bill, for instance, gave as one of his passionate reasons the fact that in the San Francisco strike a cartoon had been printed of the President of the United States! He recently defended this point of view on the floor of the House. All that I could see about the cartoon was that it was an excellent one, and I'm sure that President Roosevelt would laugh at it himself.
Both Bills Legally Unnecessary
Both the naval-military gag and the Kramer bills violate the first amendment (freedom of speech, press, religion) and the fourth amendment (search and seizure) to the Constitution.
They also have another vicious quality in common: they are legally unnecessary. The army and navy need no additional military legislation. They are protected by enough military and naval statutes to choke an admiral. Our services also have the Court Martial Manual, which puts a soldier or sailor practically at the mercy of his superiors but which, in any event, has always maintained discipline. Both services have dozens of laws protecting them from outsiders or civilians, and the navy has additional laws by which the President of the United States can set up so-called defensive areas and make practically any kind of regulation he wants for the protection of the minds of his admirals and the sailor boys, including necessary penalties.
Any competent naval or military officer will tell you further legislation is not needed. A few officers in the espionage department of the navy, who do nothing but draw their pay, manufacture propaganda for so-called patriotic organizations, and agitate against and libel and slander decent taxpayers, have worked themselves up to such red heat that they really believe there is some danger. In their officially libelous documents they solemnly include the twenty million Protestants of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ! They get violent hysterics about such persons as Jane Addams! They proclaim their fear for the patriotism of their gobs through the blandishments of handsome gals of the Sex Squad of Red Russia! In their distorted imaginations every person who does not agree with them is a paid spy of the U.S.S.R.!
Civil Population Loses Liberties
The great danger of the navy gag, as well as the Kramer bill, is of course to the public, the civil population. The army and the navy are in no danger of being "overthrown," nor is there danger of any sedition; and both services will know it. The cute little point involved in all this "patriotic" hullabaloo is that, should the navy gag bill be passed, the navy and army will be given almost supreme power over all the American people. The impatient gaggers know this. They have counted on it.
It is true that the military must ask for search warrants under the law. But it would be easy enough, upon the vaguest type of suspicion, to ask for a search warrant, have one federal deputy carry the warrant and a squad of soldiers or sailors assist the deputy by carrying along their guns, bayonets, and tear-gas bombs. A great job could be done by kicking in our doors, as the dragoons of Louis XIV did; presses of newspapers and periodicals could be destroyed; in fact, a peach of a time could be had by all—except any citizen of the United States who talked or thought differently from our naval or military officers.
Such power could be used in strikes. It could be used in ordinary times against the critics of large government appropriations. It could be used for anything which might remotely "disaffect' any soldier or sailor or disturb the imagination of any military or naval man. During the War the sedition act meant nearly anything that might be called criticism; and, as for the press, it was not even necessary for the soldier to have seen any printed criticism to brand the publisher guilty. This navy gag law goes further—it gets everybody from the printer or through the publisher to the newsboy!
Chamber! Heil the Commander in Chief!
And, strangely enough, the proponents of this legislation have forgotten that the President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the United States Army and Navy! It would be swell to clamp our friends of the Liberty League in jail for yammering about our Commander in Chief. During the latter part of January our admirals, after accepting an invitation to talk before an organization, refused to talk, and Secretary Swanson let the Assistant Secretary of the Navy order the band to walk out because a Liberty Leaguer had "insulted the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States" before this group. It is lucky for the speaker that the proposed legislation was not then in effect: he would have been carried, free of charge, to the nearest jail. Nevertheless I am not in favor of such gag legislation, for the reason that another Commander in Chief might put me—or you—in a federal prison for expressing my own opinions. Though, for that matter, the situation would have its amusing side if the United States Chamber of Commerce should find itself in a federal juzgado for criticizing the President—i.e. the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States of America!
Sedition Bills Destructive of Military Discipline
From a military viewpoint, any such legislation will injure discipline, because a soldier will naturally resent the slur cast on his patriotism and integrity. Moreover, he will naturally become inquisitive of the actions of the so-called subversive element. As a soldier and former officer, I know the whole affair is nonsense. Forbid a soldier to read, and he will read. Denounce communism, and he may swallow the Red Russian, beard (if any) and all. Treat him like a human being with self-respect, and he'll go to hell for you.
At any rate, these suppressive and oppressive laws are a stupid and unkind reflection on the soldier and sailor of America—and, of course, on the average American. Russia's and Germany's soldiers and sailors revolted when their conditions became intolerable—not-withstanding the strictest types of sedition and repressive laws. In this country sedition laws will do no good—wore, they will cause a spirit in our military forces directly contrary to good order and military discipline.
All the cowardly arguments generally used in campaigns of this kind are now being used by those who are trying to restrict the freedom of speech and press. There are three kinds of gaggers and alarmists. One is the weak but in-offensive, honest person, who believes that the country is in grave danger. It is a sort of a gratification of his inhibitions, a sort of self-importance complex, whereby he can assume the worries of state—and harass other citizens. For the last seventeen years the Communist Menace has been chronically on the verge of overthrowing the government. The government still stands, which surely is proof enough that, from a governmental viewpoint, we do not need any militaristic gag legislation. I have been hearing of the Red Menace until I am blue in the face. There is always voting "Present," in a loud, hoarse voice, a menace of some kind, and I am getting tired of the Red Peril.
Average citizens, either singly or in organizations, are continually prodded by selfish groups into making "protests" and "demands" for the protection of "Americanism." Here in Washington, mustered into claques, they plant themselves to cheer Congressmen as they make "home consumption" and "patriotic" speeches, wherein the communist and the foreigner are deported forthwith out of the country, with jobs and a return of prosperity for all good Americans thereby guaranteed.
There is another class of tom-tom beater, and that is the group interested strictly from a business viewpoint. I mean the shipbuilders and munitions interests, money patriots and agitators, and the real minds which control such organizations as the United States Chamber of Commerce. These men do not care personally about the right of freedom of speech or press, because they hardly expect it to be restricted for them and because of their economic power. Conversely they are not interested in the right of freedom of speech for those who lack the economic power. They have not sense enough to realize that the government may change and may take liberty from them.
There are also the army and navy groups and the men who have been on the payroll of the government since they were seventeen or eighteen years old, professional "patriots" and professional guests of the government, who knew very little besides their narrow military or naval life and practically nothing about the general welfare of the American people. Also, I may add, less than nothing about political democracy.
Composite Picture of an Idiot
All told, the picture is far from pretty. It is a composite portrait of mixed motives—of honesty misled, of low shrewdness, stupidity, vanity, ignorance, broken nerves, fear, cruelty, and credulity—and this can be seen in the full face, as well as in the twitching eyes. All we can do about it is to give that ugly face a punch and change the expression—or knock it out for all time.
Maury Maverick
Forum and Century
May, 1936
Racial Politics in San Antonio, Texas, 1938-1941
On May 20, 1941, San Antonio Mayor Maury Maverick left a sick bed against doctor's orders and went to a Greater San Antonio campaign rally at Hermann Sons Hall. The ailing Maverick was entering the final week in a tense runoff campaign for mayor. He expected few votes from San Antonio's East Side, where most of the city's blacks lived. Somewhere out there, east of Hermann Sons Hall, a black racketeer was trying to defeat him. Why should the racketeer corral most of the black vote? Maverick could not understand these East Side people. Unlike blacks elsewhere, in his view they rejected his New Deal liberalism in favor of reactionary machine candidates. Such behavior, he thought, must stem from their political immaturity and his opponent's cleverness. In 1941, far from Washington and the national issues he enjoyed, Maury Maverick fought San Antonio's masters of local politics. The frustrations of this losing battle would soon drive him to racist campaign rhetoric that clashed with his historical reputation as an advanced southern liberal.
By the time Maverick took part in this San Antonio showdown the liberal legend surrounding his name had already taken root. Only six years earlier, in 1935, the thirty-nine-year-old Maverick had claimed his seat in the U. S. House of Representatives and soon after took "a running broad jump onto the nation's front pages. . . ." He certainly did not get there because of a pretty face. On the contrary, his protuberant greenish eyes and his unusually wide mouth gave him an unmistakably toadlike appearance. But this "Unbranded Bullfrog's" words and actions drew far more attention than his looks. Determined to live up to his surname, with its connotations of independence and unpredictability, Maverick soon developed an outspoken, almost deliberately provocative political style. Both Maverick's natural speaking talents and his staunch defense of the right to free expression reinforced his candor.
Maverick's liberal image did not spring solely from his colorful style. His actual positions on a wide range of issues proved that his reputation had substance. As tax collector of Bexar County—the site of San Antonio—Maverick had pushed for political reform and for a more vigorous relief policy in the early 1930s. From his congressional position he supported expanded work-relief programs and a minimum-wage law. He defended civil liberties against legislative attacks and loudly complained when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled against New Deal programs.
Maverick deserved the reputation he earned in Congress, but the legend that surrounded him has obscured the real tensions he faced as a southern liberal. The most difficult internal struggle that Maverick and other pioneering southern liberals of his era waged was over race. A staunch champion of civil rights in the abstract, Maverick, nevertheless, had to cope with a regional legacy of irrational prejudices and traditions. Few of Maverick's nonsouthern contemporaries appreciated his personal battle over the issue. In fact, on the national level, there was little sense that Maverick's flamboyant liberalism had any flaws or inconsistencies. Maverick's friendly biographer, Richard B. Henderson, noted in 1970 that "Maverick was often wrestling with himself. . ." over this matter, but Henderson never fully described how the peculiar racial situation in San Antonio and Maverick's own paternalistic theories intensified this struggle.
Maverick's identity as a southern liberal pressured him to confront the issue of race before he had fully worked out his own feelings. Ironically, circumstances thrust a southern identity upon him. His precongressional correspondence contains few indications of special concern for a South's regional problems. On the contrary, Maverick's early interests focused on national, international, and universal questions, and they remained preferred topics for him throughout his life.
Maverick's primary regional ties, to the extent that he had any, were to the Southwest, not to the South. His hometown of San Antonio was not a Deep South city, and Texas was not a Deep South state. "The Great Southwest. . . ," Maverick wrote in the 1930s, "is the land of my forefathers, a strange and distant illusion."
During Maverick's first two terms in office Franklin D. Roosevelt focussed attention on the South as an economic problem and, incidentally, as an important cog in the Democratic New Deal coalition. The suggestions of such southern regionalists as Howard W. Odum and Herman C. Nixon enjoyed a sympathetic audience of New Dealers in Washington. A wave of regionally oriented southerners like Aubrey W. Williams and Will W. Alexander found themselves working for the Roosevelt administration. By Maverick's second term he too had sensed the growing interest in the South as a region, and he made it the subject of several magazine articles. Many chapters of his autobiography, A Maverick American, published in 1937, deal with southern topics.
Maverick's "adoption" of the south and its problems yielded him good publicity. He was, according to many, the most liberal southerner on Capitol Hill. By emphasizing his southernness he grabbed the limelight from other liberal congressmen, but his new role as a regional representative forced him to confront that quintessentially southern problem—the issue of race. Because he was unprepared for this confrontation, the resulting inner conflict temporarily shattered Maverick's liberal idealism that all minorities and oppressed people would recognize the fairness of his policies and support him.
Some of Maverick's early thoughts on racial issues appear in his correspondence with Forrest Bailey, national director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the late 1920s. In 1928 Maverick presented his racial philosophy, which would remain basically unchanged until after World War II: "I do not believe in social equality oft [sic] the races, and act accordingly. I have my prejudices, which are mine. However, I should not deny a negro his civil liberties and would go down the line to see that the Constitution is obeyed." In May of the following year Maverick further explained to Bailey: "Social equality comes with not economic equality but economic superiority. In other words, when the colored people have had more than enough of the world's goods for a full generation then they'll be equal."
Almost a decade later, when Roosevelt's New Deal was in full swing, Maverick again stressed the economic component of America's racial problems in his autobiography: "The first thing to do about the question is to see the colored people eat, and have jobs. . . . If economic opportunities are fair, and the different races show restraint, other questions will work themselves out." Thus according to Maverick economic progress must form the basis for general racial progress. Ideally blacks should first attain economic gains; only then could they expect political and social equality. Maverick advocated the protection of blacks' civil liberties, but his definition excluded the right to fully effective suffrage. Pressing for political and social equality would violate the restraint necessary to prevent a white backlash.
Maverick's economically oriented racial theories may have come from socialist publications that he read as a youth. Many American socialists of the early twentieth century believed that social equality for blacks would emerge as capitalism disappeared. The New Deal reformers that Maverick later met in Washington also shaped his racial ideas. New Dealers emphasized economic causes and solutions to social problems. They thought that racism resulted from economic depression in the South, and their solutions consisted of attempts to reduce poverty between the races. This exciting task would then reduce race consciousness and foster unity. Maverick accepted this analysis because it reinforced his racial notions and his budding faith in regional planning.
Whatever the sources of Maverick's racial theories, their content placed him within the mainstream of southern liberalism in the early 1930s. Like Maverick, many other southern liberals compromised between deeply ingrained racial prejudice and sincere desire for racial change by avoiding the controversial issues of political and social equality. Instead they concentrated on reducing the obvious hardships caused by low standards of living and unfair law enforcement.
This philosophy had definite limitations, though it had advanced beyond the views of the previous generation. By 1937 Maverick was publicly advocating equal pay for equal work, opportunities for blacks to participate in organized labor, and assurances of equal access to jobs and education. But he made no firm commitment to the concept of social equality between the races. He relegated this issue to the comfortably distant future. Like many white reformers he did not recognize that social and economic inequality fed on each other. Maverick's unsympathetic dismissal of blacks' social goals drew little attention in the early 1930s, but it became increasingly unpalatable to black leaders as they grew more assertive in the early 1940s.
Maverick's support of the white primary also flawed his racial liberalism. Maverick inherited his position on this issue from the southern progressives of the early twentieth century. In order to end manipulation of black votes, progressives in several southern states had established nominating elections that barred blacks from participation. They promoted these measures as replacements for undemocratic nominating conventions, but white primaries became de facto elections in the heavily Democratic South. These measures thus removed blacks from political participation and made their votes useless to corrupt politicians. Of course white primaries effectively disfranchised blacks. But southern progressives did not see this as a real problem. Essentially paternalistic in their racial attitudes, they believed they could work politically to improve racial conditions better than blacks themselves could. In his support of the white primary Maverick revealed this same paternalism.
The political situation of blacks in Maverick's hometown of San Antonio also influenced his position on the white primary. A strong machine had long operated in the city. Since the late teens San Antonio blacks had participated in city government through this machine. At that time a black man named Charles Bellinger became an aide to a prominent member of the machine. Bellinger realized that the city's black preachers were the key to an organized black vote. Working through these preachers Bellinger built up a strong bloc of black voters. In the 1930s Bellinger was reputedly able to deliver 5,000 to 8,000 votes to this machine.
This was a sizable bloc in a city noted for its political apathy. During the 1930s San Antonio's Mexican-American population ranged from 35 to 40 percent of the total, and this impoverished group tended to refrain from organized political participation. The city's military, oil, and cattle interests often resided in the city only seasonally. When they were in town they seemed willing to let the professional politicians run the city. Bellinger's bloc of organized, reliable black voters made up as much as 25 percent of the total in some city and county elections, despite the fact that blacks made up only about 8 percent of the city's population. By mobilizing his bloc, Bellinger obtained benefits for the black community as well as protection for his own real estate and gambling interests.
In a state that had largely disfranchised its black citizens, San Antonio blacks had to fight and protect the utility of their voting bloc. They conducted vigorous and largely successful "Pay Your Poll Tax" campaigns to overcome this particular obstacle to voting. Although such things are difficult to prove, it seems likely that Bellinger and other machine members at times provided poor blacks with funds to pay this impost, despite the illegality of such actions.
The white Democratic primary posed more difficult problems, but certain factors worked in favor of the city's blacks. In the first place, the city's municipal elections were nonpartisan, so white primary directives did not apply to them. Second, during the 1920s the U. S. congressional district that included San Antonio contained one of the strongest Republican party organizations in the state. In a real two-party situation the general election became an important contest, and blacks gained bargaining leverage. The city's blacks had lost this advantage by 1934, however. Intraparty squabbles, the death of popular Republican congressman Harry M. Wurzbach, and the redistricting that created the Twentieth Congressional District had, by that year, reduced the Republicans' power. Even without these circumstantial advantages, the black bloc itself, once it had been formed, had a self-preserving quality that tended to defeat the purposes of various white primary measures. During the stormy history of the white primary in Texas the institution sometimes developed loopholes as a result of imperfectly drawn legislation or successful court challenges. During such periods county Democratic officials had fought over this question for years by the time Maverick entered politics. These officials, who were often members of the machine, at times decided that the utility of an organized black vote outweighed the ideological considerations of white supremacy. Thus blacks sometimes voted in nominally white Democratic primaries. The power of the bloc served to protect the black vote, and the machine earned the reputation of being an opponent of the white primary in spite of the self-serving nature of its opposition.
As a liberal reformer, Maverick had belonged to the antimachine camp since his first involvement in Bexar County politics in 1929. Early on Maverick realized the significance of Bellinger's powerful black bloc and worked to support the white primary. In 1932 the white primary issue erupted in the middle of Maverick's campaign for renomination as the Democratic candidate for the position of county tax collector. Two months before the July primary, in its Nixon v. Condon decision, the U.S. Supreme Court have overturned the latest version of Texas's white primary that allowed the Democratic State Executive Committee to determine party membership qualifications. The party as a whole had reinstated the white primary at its annual convention in late May, but the Supreme Court's ruling cast enough doubt on the legality of the institution to encourage further challenges.
On July 10, 1932, C. A. Booker, a black San Antonian represented by white machine lawyer Carl Wright Johnson, filed for an injunction to force party officials to allow him to vote in the July 23 primary. When the federal district court in San Antonio granted Booker's injunction the day before the primary, Maverick and a fellow reform candidate sprang into action to get the injunction overturned. They eventually succeeded, but not before approximately one thousand blacks voted in the primary on election day. The reformers, including Maverick, won anyway, but the whole affair permanently damaged Maverick's relationship with San Antonio blacks. As one of Maverick's colleagues put it, "[Maverick] became a famous liberal. But one part of the liberal hegemony, the blacks, never forgave him for his midnight intervention in the Booker case. Maury, characteristically, never forgave them either—never forgave them for not forgiving him." In 1934 Maverick again tried to get unenthusiastic country Democratic party officials to enforce the state organization's white primary policy.
Why did Maverick support the white primary so strongly? His biographer has indicated that Maverick's motive in these endeavors was purely practical; he wished to reduce the voting strength of his political opposition. This explanation flies in the face of Maverick's lifelong dedication to civil rights and civil liberties. Surely the idealistic Maverick needed a better excuse than "practical politics" to justify involvement in an effort to abridge his fellow citizens' suffrage. Although Maverick never discussed his motives, his stand probably grew out of a conviction that, in their present economically depressed conditions, blacks would inevitably fall prey to the advances of corrupt politicians. For Maverick, the goal of clean elections and progressive government took precedence over political equality for blacks. As with social equality, political equality would come about at some future date when blacks had overcome their "political immaturity."
For whatever reason Maverick supported the white primary, apparently until the U. S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1944. His support seriously affected his relationship with his black constituents at home, but it had surprisingly little impact on his national reputation as a racial liberal at first. National-level racial reformers seemed either uninformed or unconcerned with Maverick's position on this issue until 1940.
In spite of Maverick's position on social equality and the white primary, an aura of racial liberalism surrounded him during his two congressional terms. His concept of economic equality impressed blacks hard hit by the Great Depression. But more than anything else, Maverick's stand in favor of antilynching legislation marked him as an ultraliberal on racial issues. No southerner other than Maverick voted for the Gavagan Anti-Lynch Bill in 1937. Many southern liberals hesitated to endorse antilynching legislation because it aroused suspicions about federal intervention in local affairs. Maverick may have inherited some southern prejudices, but he had not qualms about a strong federal government. His solitary support made him an obvious target of praise by black racial reformers. But Maverick actually approached this legislation as a civil rights of both blacks and whites. He stressed that he was not supporting the bill in order to gain black votes.
The immediate and sweeping praise Maverick received from black leaders for his antilynching stand embarrassed him. "I do not want colored people to run up to me with a red bandana handkerchief, singing 'Coming Through the Rye'," he stated soon after the antilynching vote. He then complained that antilynching legislation was "always approached in the ship-shod manner of degraded politics—catering to the negro vote. . . ." He did not want anyone to think that this had been his motive. He began to work on a general bill for federal enforcement of the entire Bill of Rights, subsuming the racial issue under this broader campaign.
Three years later, in a moment of frustration over what he perceived as the ingratitude of racial reformers, black and white, Maverick implied that his stand on the antilynching bill cost him his 1938 bid for congressional renomination. But this seems unlikely. Maverick earlier stated that there was little reaction to the vote in his district. Antilynching legislation evidently provoked little interest among his Bexar County constituents.
Maverick's 1938 primary defeat resulted from more general causes. He faced a determined and well-financed campaign in which the San Antonio city machine played an important role. By 1938 the real control of the machine lay in the hands of three men. Tall, gray-haired, and dignified, Mayor Charles Kennon (C. K.) Quin furnished a full complement of legitimate and illegitimate patronage. Owen W. Kilday was a bushy-browed, hot-tempered son of Ireland from Uvalde County, Texas. He provided political acumen and influence among the city's numerous Catholics. In 1940 he became even more powerful as sheriff and chief dispenser of county jobs for Bexar County. Although Charles Bellinger had died two years earlier, the machine hoped that his son, Harvard-educated Valmo C. Bellinger, would be able to continue the black bloc tradition, at least in the city's nonpartisan municipal elections where the white primary did not apply.
In 1938 Quin and Kilday moved the San Antonio machine against Maverick in the Democratic primary. Their goal was to replace him with Owen Kilday's brother, Paul Joseph Kilday. Vice-President John Nance Garner, the crusty patriarch of Texas Democrats, apparently cooperated in this effort. Conservative interests in the state wanted Maverick out, and the nation's turn to the right in 1938 provided an appropriate atmosphere for that change. Mayor Quin helped remove him by padding the city payroll. Later investigation indicated that he may have paid as much as $3,000 of city funds to 400 extra city employees hired at election time.
In the July 27 primary Kilday defeated Maverick by 493 votes out of 49,151 cast. Unless Maverick could somehow defeat Kilday in the general election, he would lose his congressional seat. Maverick and his friends toyed with the idea of an independent candidacy in the general election. Here success would depend on San Antonio black voters. Barred from the primary, they made up the largest group of unpledged voters in the district. Even though Maverick had denied that he expected or desired black votes in return for his stand on the antilynching bill, he evidently counted on some. He believed that with his liberal reputation he could break the pattern of black support for machine candidates.
Maverick may have judged the situation correctly; he knew he could count on some support from some national black leaders. Most Bexar County blacks were ambivalent about Maverick, but some indicated support. Many signatures on his petition for candidacy belonged to blacks. A columnist for the San Antonio Register, which was owned by Valmo Bellinger, even had kind words for Maverick after his primary defeat. The columnist reminded readers that Paul Kilday had attacked Maverick's antilynching vote during the primary campaign. Bellinger himself may have considered supporting Maverick. Certainly his inherited gambling empire would be safer with Maverick in Washington than with him unemployed and loose in San Antonio, a consideration that Bellinger's white cronies had seemingly overlooked.
Maverick's independent campaign never materialized, however. The Texas secretary of state decided that his bid was illegal, since he had already run in the Democratic primary. This decision put an end to Maverick's 1938 congressional aspiration, but he did not retire from politics. Reasoning that further attempts to regain his congressional seat would fail as long as the San Antonio machine remained intact, Maverick turned to municipal politics. His new goal was to break the machine and to establish local support that would later enable him to return to Washington where he had friends and influence.
A less energetic man might have paused before tackling San Antonio's established order; conditions there seemed to preclude quick and easy revisions. Maverick knew from previous experience that the city's apathetic voters were difficult to rouse. Although the city's commercial and financial groups were suffering under heavy taxes and offered potential support for reform, this conservative group shunned sweeping changes. These kind of conditions had helped the machine maintain the status quo for decades.
By entering city politics Maverick pitted himself against the Quin-Kilday-Bellinger triumvirate and challenged an entire political style. He had several handicaps in this contest. Whereas political theory had created many of Maverick's policies, practical politics dictated machine action. Maverick spoke out on issues; the machine dodged them or manufactured them. Maverick's primary goal was to establish progressive city government; the machine's goal was to stay in power. Maverick saw local affairs as specific examples of broader national issues. San Antonio's machine politicians were artists of local politics; they saw power as something accumulated from the bottom up and wielded from the top down, and they carefully maneuvered their reserves of power.
Maverick's principles and his national, rather than local, orientation were disadvantages in the San Antonio arena, but he soon received a lucky break. In December 1938 a grand jury indicted Mayor Quin for misapplication of public funds, citing as evidence San Antonio's July city payroll. Although Quin escaped the charges, some members of the machine dropped him as a mayoral candidate in 1939. For a while this machine faction supported Theo M. Plummer, the city's tax commissioner, and even police chief Owen Kilday originally joined the anti-Quin group. But Quin refused to bow out and announced his own candidacy and his own slate of commissioner candidates. Although Plummer eventually withdrew from the mayoral race, the incumbent commissioners stayed in. In addition, Leroy Jeffers, a friend of the Kildays but also the assistant district attorney who had prosecuted Quin, announced his mayoral candidacy and his slate of commissioner candidates. The machine had fallen into total disarray. Meanwhile, on February 2, 1939, Maverick had entered the fray by announcing his candidacy for mayor. He soon joined with a group of reform-minded commission candidates to form the Fusion ticket. The challenge to San Antonio's divided machine was on.
Maverick started his mayoral campaign confident that he could collect a sizable portion of the black vote. His congressional fame as a racial liberal would help him; it gained him endorsements from black weekly newspapers in Houston, Dallas, and Waco. He could also point to the encouragement he received from blacks during his still-born 1938 campaign. But he failed to take into account the fact that support for him as a congressional candidate might not translate into support for him as a mayoral candidate.
As a congressional candidate Maverick stood for the New Deal, and San Antonio blacks benefited from the New Deal. In 1935 blacks made up somewhere between 7 and 8 percent of the city's population, but they accounted for approximately 14 percent of the city's relief recipients. Despite complaints of discrimination in the administration of some specific programs, the city's blacks cautiously approved of New Deal efforts in general.
In the 1939 mayoral campaign Maverick ran as a progressive municipal reformer rather than as a New Dealer. This platform had much less appeal for the city's blacks. The machine had facilitated black political participation and had provided tangible benefits such as street paving, lighting, schools, police protection, and jobs. Reformers, including Maverick, had reduced black political participation by supporting the white primary. Whatever their ultimate goals had been, the progressives had never improved black standards of living. As mayor, Maverick could neglect or roll back gains blacks had made under machine rule. Bellinger and his political aides emphasized the patronage benefits blacks had enjoyed under machine administrations and stressed that no one knew what Maverick would do as a local official.
Despite the black community's caution, subtle changes that would enhance Maverick's chances for black support were taking place on the East Side. Black political and civic organizations had appeared; some were tied to national groups. In the 1930s many of these national organizations maintained that the future of blacks lay with the forces of liberalism. Even if Charles Bellinger had lived, he would have been forced to deal with the increasing political diversity among San Antonio blacks. His death and Maverick's challenge simply accelerated this trend toward greater diversity.
As a nationally known racial liberal, Maverick enjoyed support from some of the new black organizations. The Bexar County Educational League, a local group opposed to the machine, endorsed Maverick. The National Negro Congress (NNC) collected money for Maverick's campaign through its San Antonio branch headed by George J. Sutton. The NNC's national office sent word of its official endorsement of Maverick to thousands of local blacks. Evidently even some elements of the normally nonpartisan National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) considered endorsing Maverick, though the group finally decided to remain neutral.
The support Maverick received from these nascent organizations held qualitative, not quantitative, significance. Even with the help they provided, Maverick ran behind Quin on the East Side. On May 9 Maverick won the three-cornered mayoral contest, receiving almost 41 percent of the 44,873 votes cast. Quin, his closest opponent, got 33 percent of the citywide vote. Yet in the city's black precincts Maverick received only 35 percent of the vote. He never admitted that his share of the black vote was even this large; at the time and almost a year later Maverick asserted that he had only received 21 percent of the black vote. Yet the precinct returns from the black neighborhoods, as well as the estimates that San Antonio blacks forwarded to their national organizations, indicate that Maverick received more black votes than he thought. Definite cracks had appeared in the black bloc; liberal black organizations helped deliver some votes for Maverick and the Fusion ticket. The machine no longer could claim the support of all but a few dissenting blacks. If he had worked with these new black organizations Maverick could have benefited from the changes in the black community.
Maverick's analysis of the election, however, discouraged him from cultivating this support. He dwelt bitterly on the East Side results, still refusing to admit that blacks had supported him as much as they had. Considering his liberal record, he reasoned, blacks ought to have trusted him to advance the whole community's general interest. But local blacks actually had as much reason to distrust him as to trust him. Already predisposed to doubt the political maturity of blacks in general, Maverick evidently concluded that black San Antonians voted against him, not out of caution or rational choice, but rather because the machine bribed them or misled them and thus subverted the democratic process. Maverick's strategy toward the black community followed from this analysis. He had to destroy the machine in order to liberate the East Side. He was unwilling to make direct appeals to blacks and therefore could do little to nurture the black support already committed to him.
As mayor, Maverick spent little time analyzing the local political scene, black or white. Relentless machine attacks diverted his attention. When free, Maverick chose to invest his time and energy making speeches and renewing Washington contacts in preparation for the 1940 presidential campaign. He administered the city's government efficiently but neglected local politics, as his relationship with San Antonio blacks showed.
Maverick could have cultivated local black support at the beginning of his term. Tom Miller, then mayor of Austin, wrote that "if he uses a little judgment with the negroes he can make firm friends out of them," even though "they have been a little prejudice [sic] against him on account of some of his alleged past actions." Surprisingly, even the Bellinger forces seemed friendly at first. An editorial in the San Antonio Register proclaimed that if Maverick kept his campaign promises to improve city health, sanitation, and recreational facilities, he would "certainly win undivided loyalty. . . and possibly gain even greater support from the Negroes than was accorded the late Mayors John Tobin and C. M. Chambers, behind whom the Race stood solidly." Valmo Bellinger actually met with Maverick representatives in 1939, but no political agreements resulted. As long as Bellinger continued in the lottery business, he and Maverick had little basis for allegiance.
Any black support Maverick received would have to come from sources other than those controlled by Bellinger. Unfortunately, Maverick failed to woo those sources and botched his public relations with blacks. An exasperated Elisha Thompson, vice-president of the San Antonio Negro Voters' League, sent a hand-delivered message to get his attention; Thompson chided him for being elusive. Paul Johnson, a black college graduate, worked diligently to collect Maverick support within the NAACP, the Negro Chamber of Commerce, and the Negro Voters' League, but when he wrote Maverick reporting his successes, Maverick replied with a vague note of thanks, expressing no interest in the details.
Maverick took for granted the valuable support of the National Negro Congress. The NNC was founded under the leadership of John P. Davis in 1935 as an umbrella organization to coordinate the efforts of other black groups. It was one of the most militant black political organizations in America. Its members openly criticized New Deal policies that discriminated against blacks. Despite Maverick's somewhat gradualist racial philosophy, this organization consistently backed him with local and national resources. In 1939 the local NNC surveyed San Antonio blacks to see what public improvements they most desired. This local chapter sent Maverick the results soon after his election. Typically, Maverick was out of town, but John E. Babcock, the city's public relations director, assured the NNC that the city would take action. One year later a dissatisfied NNC committee appeared before the mayor and commissioners, claiming the city had done nothing.
The NNC committee complained specifically that the city had failed to hire enough blacks, thus raising the important but touchy issue of patronage. Maverick had always disapproved of political hiring, preferring, like any good progressive, civil service recruitment to assure competent, efficient public employees. But patronage was a deeply entrenched part of the San Antonio political scene, and it created problems for Maverick as mayor. The day after Maverick's victory, Dan Quill, San Antonio's postmaster and an astute political observer, said that "Maury has a very difficult task ahead of him, and the worst thing is some 3,000 workers he had and everyone of them without jobs, plus about 1,700 city employees, everyone of whom is going to do everything possible to keep his job."
Blacks on the city payroll were, if possible, even more determined to maintain their positions than their white counterparts. Public employment had a special attraction for blacks and other racial minorities. Private industry seldom offered white-collar positions to blacks, so they anxiously sought them in the public sector. In addition to economic security, these jobs provided symbolic evidence of racial progress. Blacks also wanted efficient city government, but unlike Maverick, they had racial goals as well. The situation held great potential for creating misunderstandings on both sides.
During Maverick's administration the number of blacks on the city payroll increased from thirty-one to ninety-one, but the number holding white-collar positions declined. While the Maverick administration hired black garbage collectors, janitors, and maids, it removed black health inspectors, librarians, and nurses. In doing so, Maverick angered the most politically active elements in the black community. C. H. M. Furlow, secretary of the Negro Voters' League, lost his position as food inspector. Mrs. Pearl Arzolia Thompson, a police department employee, was also fired after having held white-collar city positions for twelve years. As a result, she became an implacable and active foe of the Maverick administration. Even George J. Sutton, the local NNC president and a Maverick supporter, protested the removal of a nurse from the Negro clinic. Maverick replied that the nurse was incompetent and promised to replace her, yet the number of Negro city nurses dropped from three to one during the Maverick administration. Maverick's civil service reforms in the police department prevented blacks from entering the force for almost two years. Remaining black workers also experienced salary cuts. Despite Valmo Bellinger's biases, his words provide a summary of the dismay many blacks must have felt toward the Maverick administration by 1940: "Maverick. . . is determined not to see a Negro in any leading capacity. . . . [He] 'has made brave and courageous speeches in the South and over the country for civil rights and for economic justice to the Negro, but here in San Antonio he hasn't done a goddam thing for Negroes that they didn't receive and to a much greater extent under Quin or Tobin'."
Maverick had indeed often urged increased economic opportunities for blacks, and his administration did hire large numbers of them to serve in menial jobs. But the assignment of white-collar jobs presented complex problems. In his campaign Maverick had promised efficient government and removal of political appointees from the payroll. The police and health departments, where many blacks held white-collar jobs, were the specific targets of reform. Many of these people lost their jobs as the Maverick administration made changes. If Maverick made efforts to hire blacks to replace those who had been fired, these efforts were not vigorous enough to satisfy even those who, like the members of the NNC, already supported him. He certainly did not win over hostile or uncommitted blacks with his hiring policies. On the contrary, the results of Maverick's efficiency drive confirmed suspicions that his progressive reform would backfire against the black community.
Maverick brushed off local blacks' criticism of his public relations and patronage policies because he believed he had little chance of winning black votes anyway. By 1940 frustrated local blacks evidently appealed to their national organizations to get Maverick's attention. In an ironic twist, national black leaders found themselves trying to explain San Antonio's black citizens to their own mayor. In January Maverick received a letter from William Pickins, national director of branches of the NAACP, who assured Maverick that more San Antonio blacks supported him than it might appear. In a phrase that must have infuriated the reform-minded Maverick, he explained that San Antonio blacks "do not dare sometimes to turn the old machine loose, lest the new machine fail and leave them high and dry." A few months later, after Maverick's actions had further disillusioned even his national supporters, John Davis, secretary of the NNC, felt compelled to remind Maverick that not all San Antonio blacks were "gamblers, racketeers, and voters whose votes were at the disposal of the highest bidder."
In early 1940 Maverick's national black critics grew louder. They questioned not only his judgment but also his commitment to racial reform. In March 1940, for instance, Maverick went to Washington, D. C., to testify before a House subcommittee on behalf of an impeccably liberal cause—the abolition of the poll tax. Although he argued the right cause, his line of reasoning dismayed more militant racial reformers. Maverick virtually endorsed the white primary when he claimed that it would prevent Negro domination even if the poll tax were abolished. His main concern, he told the subcommittee, was to enfranchise the poor white man, not the black man. This pragmatic approach infuriated John Davis. Soon after Maverick testified, Davis wrote a caustic letter of disapproval. Several other blacks objected to Maverick's testimony, and some of his northern friends also demurred. At the same time the southern press attacked him for his position on the poll tax itself.
Caught in the classic crossfire so often aimed at southern liberals, Maverick protested loudly. In April 1940 Maverick spoke on the poll tax before the second general meeting of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), an organization that had been formed in 1938 to combat the South's economic problems and its disregard for the civil rights of both blacks and whites. In martyred tones Maverick chided blacks and northern liberals for their impatience. He thought he deserved his liberal credentials and willingly took abuse from southern conservatives, but criticism from other liberals disturbed him. He had not changed, he said, yet now fellow liberals acted as if he were a turncoat. Though Maverick continued to oppose the poll tax, his enthusiasm for the cause waned appreciably.
In fact, the rising tides of racial liberalism had swamped Maverick. The atmosphere of the nation was changing, but Maverick had not modified his basic attitudes in over a decade. Now economic equality was no longer enough. Political and social equality had also become goals. The acceleration of the movement left Maverick and other southern liberals struggling with their prejudices; they were dangerously close to lashing out at what they believed was the source of their confusion—the black race. Maverick himself recognized this danger. The bitter example of Tom Watson haunted him. But he vowed he "would never go the Tom Watson way"; he would not turn upon those he felt had betrayed him. Yet he defensively challenged blacks to make the first move toward improved race relations in the South, advising them to "free themselves from political domination of any machine or party, and when they vote, vote for those who stand for better living conditions for the Negro people, and don't support those who flatter, cajole, promise, and extend temporary political or financial benefits."
Maverick's own interpretation of the local situation had reinforced his prejudices about blacks' political abilities. He would not uphold their right to political equality until they proved themselves worthy by "properly" exercising the limited rights they already had.
Unfortunately for Maverick, events in the spring of 1940 kept the white primary issue alive. In May the NAACP launched a statewide fund-raising drive to finance a legal challenge to Texas's white primary. Prominent black San Antonians, including Valmo Bellinger, participated in the effort, and it received ample publicity in the San Antonio Register. In his official capacity Maverick could do little to aid or to hinder the NAACP effort. But his earlier stand put his black supporters in a difficult position during the campaign, especially since the machine had often opposed the white primary. San Antonio blacks chafed under the white primary's limitations, but they felt secure in their ability to affect San Antonio's "nonpartisan" municipal elections.
Maverick and the commissioners shattered this security in November 1940 when they submitted a proposal for a new city charter. In the handling of this issue Maverick's strong dedication to progressive municipal reform once again overwhelmed his tenuous commitment to racial liberalism. In his 1939 campaign Maverick had advocated charter revisions in order to reduce the machine's ability to dominate city elections. The machine had long ago subverted the supposedly incorruptible commission form of government. To correct this problem Maverick wanted the city to adopt a council-manager plan in which an elected council appointed a professional, disinterested administrator to manage city affairs. As a general theory of municipal government the council-manager plan contained nothing inimical to black political participation. Maverick's handling of the reform, however, and the specific provisions of the plan offered to the voters in 1940, outraged the black community. Maverick failed to appoint any blacks to the committee drafting the reform, and when his black supporters pointed out this oversight he still took no action. More important was the fact that portions of the committee's plan threatened to curtail black political influence.
Because of the apathy of San Antonio's white population, the organized black bloc had for years carried disproportionate weight in the citywide commissioners' elections. Although the at-large nature of these elections made the victory of a black candidate for mayor or commissioner very unlikely, the black community had been able to use its bloc to bargain with the white machine for racial benefits. In the new plan, however, the committee proposed to replace the election of at-large commissioner candidates with candidates chosen from eleven geographically based councilman districts. Such a change would have prevented a black bloc from operating as a swing vote in the mayoral and the commissioners' races. On the other hand, single-member districts usually enhance the possibilities of black officeholding. But the council districts the committee proposed divided the black community, gerrymandering it out of the opportunity to affect any council race. In short, the new plan would have reduced the blacks' former advantages without replacing them with any new opportunities.
If Maverick had been as fearlessly dedicated to racial reform as he was to many other controversial issues, he might have tried to influence the charter committee to create at least one predominantly black district. Not only would this have been seen as a stunningly liberal move, but it might have garnered a political payoff. If properly constructed, single-member council districts could have given the reformers a big bargaining chip in the black community. The machine, after all, had never offered blacks a chance for elected office.
But Maverick exercised no such liberal leadership. The committee's plan promised to achieve his major goal of breaking the machine's hold over municipal politics by splitting the black vote so the machine could gain nothing through "unprincipled" attempts to win black votes. The plan, however, created a situation in which no political candidate, machine or otherwise, could gain much by courting blacks. In other words, the destruction of black political power was, for Maverick, an acceptable solution to the "irresponsible" use of such power. He endorsed the plan as written, though he did not vigorously campaign for it.
The black community reacted immediately to the charter proposal. Coming so late in the year the election took everyone by surprise. For San Antonio blacks 1940 was an off year, since municipal elections normally occurred in odd-numbered years. Many blacks had probably failed to pay their poll taxes, even though a year earlier the farsighted editor of the San Antonio Register had warned that a special election might occur. Because of the short period between the announcement of the plan and the election, the campaign took on a tone of desperation.
The effort to defeat the charter united the black community. Robert (Bob) Sullivan, former Maverick supporter and head of the Bexar County Educational League, cochaired the Colored Anti-City Manager committee with Valmo Bellinger. Black ministers opposed the plan from their pulpits. The lists of speakers at the Anti-City Manager rallies included the names of the leaders of "Santone" society. Key members of the NAACP, the Negro Voters' League, an the Negro Chamber of Commerce opposed the plan, and even he had "little to say" about it.
The Anti-City Manager forces won, eliciting a nearly unanimous vote against the plan among blacks on the East Side. An editorial in the San Antonio Register claimed the election demonstrated that "when confronted by a common danger, the Negroes of San Antonio can, and will, present a determined united front against any inroads that might threaten their civil and economic security." Many San Antonio blacks saw the charter as a threat to the effectiveness of their municipal suffrage. Although some blacks probably excused Maverick from complete responsibility for the plan, the whole affair appears to have had his blessing.
For Maverick the East Side results of the special election confirmed the pessimistic conclusions that he had drawn after the 1939 election—the machine dominated San Antonio's black voters. Certainly machine politicians had exploited the issue, and on the surface the unity of the black vote recalled past triumphs of machine manipulation. But many blacks had opposed the plan in a rational exercise of political choice. Maverick, however, believed blacks to be incapable of such rationality, and he prepared for his 1941 reelection campaign expecting little black support.
Maverick again faced C. K. Quin as his major opponent in 1941. Moreover, during Maverick's two years in office, Owen Kilday had entrenched himself as county sheriff. In addition, a change in state law required San Antonio city officials to receive a majority, rather than a plurality, of votes. With the machine reunited, no split would aid Maverick. If the machine regained power through winning the mayor's office too, all of Maverick's new reforms would disappear, forcing any later challenges to start from scratch. Maverick had no time to play tug-of-war with a city machine for memories in the nation's capital were short. To return to Congress and to regain his privileged position in national politics, he had to destroy the machine completely.
Maverick decided to run on his excellent administrative record. As a progressive reformer he had secured much-needed improvements in the police and health departments and had rationalized tax collection. He had erected new tourist attractions in the city and had made a dent in the city's vice and gambling industries. Yet Maverick had made political mistakes and the machine focused on these mistakes to augment their campaign promises of more patronage jobs for blacks. Maverick had left town too often running off to make controversial speeches or to visit his Washington friends. Maverick was a "red"; had he not upheld the Communists' right to use the Municipal Auditorium? At black and Mexican-American rallies, the Anti-Mavericks chipped away at the mayor's image as a racial reformer, reminding audiences of their exclusion from city jobs and promising changes.
Maverick's record contained few items that he could use to counter the racially oriented appeals. He had worked for the city as a unit, not for individual groups. He complained about the Anti-Mavericks' special appeals. "You would think Kilday was a carpetbagger from the North down here just after the Civil war, attempting to raise the colored people against the whites," Maverick declared after Owen Kilday reminded blacks of certain deteriorations in their patronage benefits. Yet Maverick's opponents easily dragged him away from his record and into the quicksand of special-interest politics.
Meanwhile, the machine recognized changes in San Antonio's black political structure and quickly adapted. The Anti-Mavericks exploited the remnants of Valmo Bellinger's East Side influence, but they also branched out, collecting support through the back Bexar County Civic Association. The Reverend O. S. Wilkenson and J. W. ("Pops") Hemmings, who had lost his city job as director of the Negro Recreation Department, headed this new organization. It contained black voters who disliked Maverick but shied away from the disreputable Bellinger forces. Maverick had missed his opportunities to consolidate such support.
The May 13 election discouraged the Maverick forces. The race between Maverick and Quin was close, and the presence of four minor mayoral candidates on the ballot meant that no one received a majority. Quin received a plurality with 17,435 votes to Maverick's 16,202. Maverick lost much of the West Side Mexican-American vote he had received in 1939. As he expected, he lost heavily on the East Side, but, once again, blacks had not voted as a bloc. In fact, more blacks voted for Maverick in 1941 than in 1939. He received 35 to 45 percent in some precincts. But Maverick, facing a tough runoff against Quin, searched wildly for a scapegoat. In his eyes San Antonio blacks had rejected him even though he embodied the New Deal liberalism that he believed was the true salvation for blacks all over the country. Maverick's disappointment and views of black voting habits kept him from acknowledging their increased support. What he interpreted as blacks' loyalty to the machine once again proved to Maverick that the city's blacks could not discern their own best interests. But this time Maverick contemplated this "fact" in the heat and desperation of a campaign that would determine his long-term political future. He had to win the election and break the machine so that he could eventually return to Washington as a champion of the people.
In his mind a group of irresponsible blacks stood between him and his cherished goals. He had fought his prejudices and had made concessions on racial issues. Having earned the praise of racial reformers in the 1930s, he thought his painful struggles were over. But now it seemed to him that blacks' demands were insatiable. He could never satisfy them, so why should he continue to try? Why should he treat these black people with careful consideration when they were about to ruin his election chances? Perhaps he could still win if he could somehow arouse white San Antonians. And so, at some point during the hectic days before the runoff election, Maverick decided to discard all efforts to maintain a liberal stance on race. Instead, he appealed to whites only. Frustration with San Antonio blacks made his demagoguery ring true, and he began to sound more and more like Tom Watson.
"If it hadn't been for the Negro vote, the complete Greater San Antonio ticket would have been reelected in the city's primary election," Maverick lashed out at a Denver Heights rally three days after the first vote. "Valmo Bellinger, son of the late Charles Bellinger, is Quin's chief supporter. . . ." Maverick declared that he no longer cared whether he got any black votes or not; he was "tired of petting Negroes!"
Sick and desperate, Maverick began the final week of campaigning by addressing an audience at Hermann Sons Hall on May 20. He raised the specter of Negro domination at which he himself had scoffed in the past: "If Quin goes into the city hall, Bellinger will be the most important man there. . . . Even your cook would be more important than you. We can't afford to have San Antonio dominated by the colored race."
Shocked black supporters of Maverick immediately protested, reminding Maverick that their hundreds of votes contributed to keeping him in the race. Leading black ministers jointly condemned all forms of racketeering in an effort to refute Maverick's contention that Valmo Bellinger controlled all blacks. The Bexar County Civic Association disclaimed any ties to Bellinger. But Maverick continued to vent his frustrations until the runoff election on May 27.
Amazingly, Maverick's tirades had only a slight effect on the black vote. Maverick's share of the vote in the black precincts dropped from almost 38 percent in the first election to 36 percent in the runoff. Maverick's scorned black supporters were loyal indeed. But his demagoguery gained him no white support either. The final tally gave Quin 20,982 votes to Maverick's 19,799. By doing virtually nothing, or at least nothing in public, Quin had gained bits of support throughout the city with a nice chunk from the Mexican-American West Side. Maverick never broke the machine and never held elected public office again, though within months he returned to Washington as a wartime administrator.
Maverick probably never recognized how his challenge to the machine affected San Antonio's black political development. During the time of his involvement in city politics, several changes had occurred in the black community. First, no one succeeded Charles Bellinger after his death, and Valmo Bellinger never could deliver a black bloc vote in the face of a real challenge. The closest Bellinger came to victory was in 1939, but even then the black bloc was starting to fall apart as black turnout, freed from the discipline imposed by Charles Bellinger, declined. More important, significant segments of the black community that did vote escaped Valmo Bellinger's control. Valmo Bellinger probably was not as good a politician as his father had been, but he also faced a changed black community.
In a way the black bloc vote destroyed itself. By voting as a bloc, San Antonio blacks received political experience and knowledge of government operations. Their political power shielded them from the kinds of intimidation that kept so many other southern blacks from developing alternate political tactics. The black bloc vote brought improved schools where black children learned to read and to interpret current events. Many of the black community's new clubs, political and otherwise, had affiliations with national organizations. Through these groups San Antonio blacks learned how blacks all over the country felt about various issues and people. The city's black voters became more independent and their political environment became more complex.
At the very time that San Antonio blacks were developing independent political viewpoints, Maury Maverick arrived to challenge the San Antonio machine. His challenge actually forced the disintegration of the black bloc vote. Confusion resulted within the black community when it received conflicting political advice about Maverick. The machine counseled blacks to oppose him, yet national black organizations supported him even as they sternly urged him to continue his evolution as a racial liberal. Maverick's challenge forced cracks in the bloc in 1939, and by 1941 one could no longer call it a bloc, though Maverick himself did. The machine would retain some influence in the black community for years to come, but its control would never again be as monolithic as it had been in the legendary days of Charles Bellinger.
Logically Maverick, had he recognized them, could have exploited these changes more effectively than he did. After all, his liberal reputation had caused some of them. But he was more interested in questions of national policy than in the characteristics of his own constituents, and he missed the discontinuities between national and local politics. When Maverick entered municipal politics, he considered San Antonio blacks to be just a small subset of American blacks who should automatically favor the new Deal and the type of racial liberalism that he had been advocating for years. After all, many national black leaders had endorsed him. But San Antonio blacks had their own standards, and their expectations were higher than those of most southern blacks. Maverick never really took this local variation into account.
Even if Maverick had been more in touch with his black constituents' demands, his racial prejudices curbed his efforts to gain black votes. Maverick suffered from acute ambivalence in his attitude toward black political support. He was willing to accept, and at first even expected, the votes of San Antonio's partially enfranchised black citizens. He had, after all, actively supported economic equality for all races, and he had voted for antilynching legislation. Yet he had no firm commitment to uphold black political rights. At bottom, he felt that blacks could not be trusted to make rational political decisions in their own best interests. In 1939 Maverick was at least superficially willing to be proved wrong about blacks' political abilities, but the only evidence that he would accept was a wholehearted, unequivocal vote for him. When this failed to materialize, he minimized the black support that he did have and reverted to his original position by lumping all blacks together and viewing them as political puppets manipulated by an unscrupulous machine. As a result, he gave up any attempt to win black votes, partly because he felt such attempts would be doomed to failure and partly because he was disgusted at the idea of opportunistically appealing to such "unworthy" voters.
This attitude led the liberal "Texas Firebrand" into seemingly uncharacteristic behavior during his tenure as mayor. He upheld the white primary even though it deprived blacks of an effective franchise. He instituted progressive civil service reforms at the expense of the already painfully small group of black white-collar workers in the city. He stood back while the all-white charter committee that he had selected attempted to gerrymander blacks out of a voice in city affairs. And in 1941 he stooped to racial demagoguery in an attempt to gain votes.
This turned out to be the low point in Maverick's attitude toward blacks, however. Once out of elected office, Maverick's racial theories, which had been static for so long, began to evolve once again. By the time of his death in 1954 he had developed a more consistently liberal attitude toward blacks.
One of the touchiest aspects of the issue of political equality disappeared from the realm of controversy in 1944 when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled the white primary illegal. However Maverick reacted to this decision at first, by 1952 he was willing to accept black voters as an integral component in the Texas liberal coalition. In fact, he chastised Adlai E. Stevenson's campaign workers for failing to recognize their importance. He even reached some kind of modus vivendi with Valmo Bellinger. In a 1952 letter to Walter White he praised a speech that Bellinger had made at a Democratic party meeting that they had both attended.
Maverick's position on social equality also changed, perhaps in part because of his new perception of blacks as political allies. In 1952 he wrote noted southern liberal Virginia Durr, describing the racially integrated political buffets that he had begun hosting in his home. He staunchly opposed racial segregation at political fundraising affairs during the 1952 presidential campaign.
Maverick had at last taken the southern liberal's final step. His prolonged hesitancy to follow the black civil rights movement to its logical conclusion is a poignant testimony to the durability of southern racism. After all, Maverick fought fearlessly for civil rights throughout his adult life. In the case of blacks, he balked, not out of timidness or even political pragmatism, but rather because since childhood he had absorbed the idea that white people should treat black people with benevolent paternalism. It took almost an entire lifetime for him to admit the mistakenness of this attitude.
Judith Kaaz Doyle
The Journal of Southern History
May, 1987
On May 20, 1941, San Antonio Mayor Maury Maverick left a sick bed against doctor's orders and went to a Greater San Antonio campaign rally at Hermann Sons Hall. The ailing Maverick was entering the final week in a tense runoff campaign for mayor. He expected few votes from San Antonio's East Side, where most of the city's blacks lived. Somewhere out there, east of Hermann Sons Hall, a black racketeer was trying to defeat him. Why should the racketeer corral most of the black vote? Maverick could not understand these East Side people. Unlike blacks elsewhere, in his view they rejected his New Deal liberalism in favor of reactionary machine candidates. Such behavior, he thought, must stem from their political immaturity and his opponent's cleverness. In 1941, far from Washington and the national issues he enjoyed, Maury Maverick fought San Antonio's masters of local politics. The frustrations of this losing battle would soon drive him to racist campaign rhetoric that clashed with his historical reputation as an advanced southern liberal.
By the time Maverick took part in this San Antonio showdown the liberal legend surrounding his name had already taken root. Only six years earlier, in 1935, the thirty-nine-year-old Maverick had claimed his seat in the U. S. House of Representatives and soon after took "a running broad jump onto the nation's front pages. . . ." He certainly did not get there because of a pretty face. On the contrary, his protuberant greenish eyes and his unusually wide mouth gave him an unmistakably toadlike appearance. But this "Unbranded Bullfrog's" words and actions drew far more attention than his looks. Determined to live up to his surname, with its connotations of independence and unpredictability, Maverick soon developed an outspoken, almost deliberately provocative political style. Both Maverick's natural speaking talents and his staunch defense of the right to free expression reinforced his candor.
Maverick's liberal image did not spring solely from his colorful style. His actual positions on a wide range of issues proved that his reputation had substance. As tax collector of Bexar County—the site of San Antonio—Maverick had pushed for political reform and for a more vigorous relief policy in the early 1930s. From his congressional position he supported expanded work-relief programs and a minimum-wage law. He defended civil liberties against legislative attacks and loudly complained when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled against New Deal programs.
Maverick deserved the reputation he earned in Congress, but the legend that surrounded him has obscured the real tensions he faced as a southern liberal. The most difficult internal struggle that Maverick and other pioneering southern liberals of his era waged was over race. A staunch champion of civil rights in the abstract, Maverick, nevertheless, had to cope with a regional legacy of irrational prejudices and traditions. Few of Maverick's nonsouthern contemporaries appreciated his personal battle over the issue. In fact, on the national level, there was little sense that Maverick's flamboyant liberalism had any flaws or inconsistencies. Maverick's friendly biographer, Richard B. Henderson, noted in 1970 that "Maverick was often wrestling with himself. . ." over this matter, but Henderson never fully described how the peculiar racial situation in San Antonio and Maverick's own paternalistic theories intensified this struggle.
Maverick's identity as a southern liberal pressured him to confront the issue of race before he had fully worked out his own feelings. Ironically, circumstances thrust a southern identity upon him. His precongressional correspondence contains few indications of special concern for a South's regional problems. On the contrary, Maverick's early interests focused on national, international, and universal questions, and they remained preferred topics for him throughout his life.
Maverick's primary regional ties, to the extent that he had any, were to the Southwest, not to the South. His hometown of San Antonio was not a Deep South city, and Texas was not a Deep South state. "The Great Southwest. . . ," Maverick wrote in the 1930s, "is the land of my forefathers, a strange and distant illusion."
During Maverick's first two terms in office Franklin D. Roosevelt focussed attention on the South as an economic problem and, incidentally, as an important cog in the Democratic New Deal coalition. The suggestions of such southern regionalists as Howard W. Odum and Herman C. Nixon enjoyed a sympathetic audience of New Dealers in Washington. A wave of regionally oriented southerners like Aubrey W. Williams and Will W. Alexander found themselves working for the Roosevelt administration. By Maverick's second term he too had sensed the growing interest in the South as a region, and he made it the subject of several magazine articles. Many chapters of his autobiography, A Maverick American, published in 1937, deal with southern topics.
Maverick's "adoption" of the south and its problems yielded him good publicity. He was, according to many, the most liberal southerner on Capitol Hill. By emphasizing his southernness he grabbed the limelight from other liberal congressmen, but his new role as a regional representative forced him to confront that quintessentially southern problem—the issue of race. Because he was unprepared for this confrontation, the resulting inner conflict temporarily shattered Maverick's liberal idealism that all minorities and oppressed people would recognize the fairness of his policies and support him.
Some of Maverick's early thoughts on racial issues appear in his correspondence with Forrest Bailey, national director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the late 1920s. In 1928 Maverick presented his racial philosophy, which would remain basically unchanged until after World War II: "I do not believe in social equality oft [sic] the races, and act accordingly. I have my prejudices, which are mine. However, I should not deny a negro his civil liberties and would go down the line to see that the Constitution is obeyed." In May of the following year Maverick further explained to Bailey: "Social equality comes with not economic equality but economic superiority. In other words, when the colored people have had more than enough of the world's goods for a full generation then they'll be equal."
Almost a decade later, when Roosevelt's New Deal was in full swing, Maverick again stressed the economic component of America's racial problems in his autobiography: "The first thing to do about the question is to see the colored people eat, and have jobs. . . . If economic opportunities are fair, and the different races show restraint, other questions will work themselves out." Thus according to Maverick economic progress must form the basis for general racial progress. Ideally blacks should first attain economic gains; only then could they expect political and social equality. Maverick advocated the protection of blacks' civil liberties, but his definition excluded the right to fully effective suffrage. Pressing for political and social equality would violate the restraint necessary to prevent a white backlash.
Maverick's economically oriented racial theories may have come from socialist publications that he read as a youth. Many American socialists of the early twentieth century believed that social equality for blacks would emerge as capitalism disappeared. The New Deal reformers that Maverick later met in Washington also shaped his racial ideas. New Dealers emphasized economic causes and solutions to social problems. They thought that racism resulted from economic depression in the South, and their solutions consisted of attempts to reduce poverty between the races. This exciting task would then reduce race consciousness and foster unity. Maverick accepted this analysis because it reinforced his racial notions and his budding faith in regional planning.
Whatever the sources of Maverick's racial theories, their content placed him within the mainstream of southern liberalism in the early 1930s. Like Maverick, many other southern liberals compromised between deeply ingrained racial prejudice and sincere desire for racial change by avoiding the controversial issues of political and social equality. Instead they concentrated on reducing the obvious hardships caused by low standards of living and unfair law enforcement.
This philosophy had definite limitations, though it had advanced beyond the views of the previous generation. By 1937 Maverick was publicly advocating equal pay for equal work, opportunities for blacks to participate in organized labor, and assurances of equal access to jobs and education. But he made no firm commitment to the concept of social equality between the races. He relegated this issue to the comfortably distant future. Like many white reformers he did not recognize that social and economic inequality fed on each other. Maverick's unsympathetic dismissal of blacks' social goals drew little attention in the early 1930s, but it became increasingly unpalatable to black leaders as they grew more assertive in the early 1940s.
Maverick's support of the white primary also flawed his racial liberalism. Maverick inherited his position on this issue from the southern progressives of the early twentieth century. In order to end manipulation of black votes, progressives in several southern states had established nominating elections that barred blacks from participation. They promoted these measures as replacements for undemocratic nominating conventions, but white primaries became de facto elections in the heavily Democratic South. These measures thus removed blacks from political participation and made their votes useless to corrupt politicians. Of course white primaries effectively disfranchised blacks. But southern progressives did not see this as a real problem. Essentially paternalistic in their racial attitudes, they believed they could work politically to improve racial conditions better than blacks themselves could. In his support of the white primary Maverick revealed this same paternalism.
The political situation of blacks in Maverick's hometown of San Antonio also influenced his position on the white primary. A strong machine had long operated in the city. Since the late teens San Antonio blacks had participated in city government through this machine. At that time a black man named Charles Bellinger became an aide to a prominent member of the machine. Bellinger realized that the city's black preachers were the key to an organized black vote. Working through these preachers Bellinger built up a strong bloc of black voters. In the 1930s Bellinger was reputedly able to deliver 5,000 to 8,000 votes to this machine.
This was a sizable bloc in a city noted for its political apathy. During the 1930s San Antonio's Mexican-American population ranged from 35 to 40 percent of the total, and this impoverished group tended to refrain from organized political participation. The city's military, oil, and cattle interests often resided in the city only seasonally. When they were in town they seemed willing to let the professional politicians run the city. Bellinger's bloc of organized, reliable black voters made up as much as 25 percent of the total in some city and county elections, despite the fact that blacks made up only about 8 percent of the city's population. By mobilizing his bloc, Bellinger obtained benefits for the black community as well as protection for his own real estate and gambling interests.
In a state that had largely disfranchised its black citizens, San Antonio blacks had to fight and protect the utility of their voting bloc. They conducted vigorous and largely successful "Pay Your Poll Tax" campaigns to overcome this particular obstacle to voting. Although such things are difficult to prove, it seems likely that Bellinger and other machine members at times provided poor blacks with funds to pay this impost, despite the illegality of such actions.
The white Democratic primary posed more difficult problems, but certain factors worked in favor of the city's blacks. In the first place, the city's municipal elections were nonpartisan, so white primary directives did not apply to them. Second, during the 1920s the U. S. congressional district that included San Antonio contained one of the strongest Republican party organizations in the state. In a real two-party situation the general election became an important contest, and blacks gained bargaining leverage. The city's blacks had lost this advantage by 1934, however. Intraparty squabbles, the death of popular Republican congressman Harry M. Wurzbach, and the redistricting that created the Twentieth Congressional District had, by that year, reduced the Republicans' power. Even without these circumstantial advantages, the black bloc itself, once it had been formed, had a self-preserving quality that tended to defeat the purposes of various white primary measures. During the stormy history of the white primary in Texas the institution sometimes developed loopholes as a result of imperfectly drawn legislation or successful court challenges. During such periods county Democratic officials had fought over this question for years by the time Maverick entered politics. These officials, who were often members of the machine, at times decided that the utility of an organized black vote outweighed the ideological considerations of white supremacy. Thus blacks sometimes voted in nominally white Democratic primaries. The power of the bloc served to protect the black vote, and the machine earned the reputation of being an opponent of the white primary in spite of the self-serving nature of its opposition.
As a liberal reformer, Maverick had belonged to the antimachine camp since his first involvement in Bexar County politics in 1929. Early on Maverick realized the significance of Bellinger's powerful black bloc and worked to support the white primary. In 1932 the white primary issue erupted in the middle of Maverick's campaign for renomination as the Democratic candidate for the position of county tax collector. Two months before the July primary, in its Nixon v. Condon decision, the U.S. Supreme Court have overturned the latest version of Texas's white primary that allowed the Democratic State Executive Committee to determine party membership qualifications. The party as a whole had reinstated the white primary at its annual convention in late May, but the Supreme Court's ruling cast enough doubt on the legality of the institution to encourage further challenges.
On July 10, 1932, C. A. Booker, a black San Antonian represented by white machine lawyer Carl Wright Johnson, filed for an injunction to force party officials to allow him to vote in the July 23 primary. When the federal district court in San Antonio granted Booker's injunction the day before the primary, Maverick and a fellow reform candidate sprang into action to get the injunction overturned. They eventually succeeded, but not before approximately one thousand blacks voted in the primary on election day. The reformers, including Maverick, won anyway, but the whole affair permanently damaged Maverick's relationship with San Antonio blacks. As one of Maverick's colleagues put it, "[Maverick] became a famous liberal. But one part of the liberal hegemony, the blacks, never forgave him for his midnight intervention in the Booker case. Maury, characteristically, never forgave them either—never forgave them for not forgiving him." In 1934 Maverick again tried to get unenthusiastic country Democratic party officials to enforce the state organization's white primary policy.
Why did Maverick support the white primary so strongly? His biographer has indicated that Maverick's motive in these endeavors was purely practical; he wished to reduce the voting strength of his political opposition. This explanation flies in the face of Maverick's lifelong dedication to civil rights and civil liberties. Surely the idealistic Maverick needed a better excuse than "practical politics" to justify involvement in an effort to abridge his fellow citizens' suffrage. Although Maverick never discussed his motives, his stand probably grew out of a conviction that, in their present economically depressed conditions, blacks would inevitably fall prey to the advances of corrupt politicians. For Maverick, the goal of clean elections and progressive government took precedence over political equality for blacks. As with social equality, political equality would come about at some future date when blacks had overcome their "political immaturity."
For whatever reason Maverick supported the white primary, apparently until the U. S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1944. His support seriously affected his relationship with his black constituents at home, but it had surprisingly little impact on his national reputation as a racial liberal at first. National-level racial reformers seemed either uninformed or unconcerned with Maverick's position on this issue until 1940.
In spite of Maverick's position on social equality and the white primary, an aura of racial liberalism surrounded him during his two congressional terms. His concept of economic equality impressed blacks hard hit by the Great Depression. But more than anything else, Maverick's stand in favor of antilynching legislation marked him as an ultraliberal on racial issues. No southerner other than Maverick voted for the Gavagan Anti-Lynch Bill in 1937. Many southern liberals hesitated to endorse antilynching legislation because it aroused suspicions about federal intervention in local affairs. Maverick may have inherited some southern prejudices, but he had not qualms about a strong federal government. His solitary support made him an obvious target of praise by black racial reformers. But Maverick actually approached this legislation as a civil rights of both blacks and whites. He stressed that he was not supporting the bill in order to gain black votes.
The immediate and sweeping praise Maverick received from black leaders for his antilynching stand embarrassed him. "I do not want colored people to run up to me with a red bandana handkerchief, singing 'Coming Through the Rye'," he stated soon after the antilynching vote. He then complained that antilynching legislation was "always approached in the ship-shod manner of degraded politics—catering to the negro vote. . . ." He did not want anyone to think that this had been his motive. He began to work on a general bill for federal enforcement of the entire Bill of Rights, subsuming the racial issue under this broader campaign.
Three years later, in a moment of frustration over what he perceived as the ingratitude of racial reformers, black and white, Maverick implied that his stand on the antilynching bill cost him his 1938 bid for congressional renomination. But this seems unlikely. Maverick earlier stated that there was little reaction to the vote in his district. Antilynching legislation evidently provoked little interest among his Bexar County constituents.
Maverick's 1938 primary defeat resulted from more general causes. He faced a determined and well-financed campaign in which the San Antonio city machine played an important role. By 1938 the real control of the machine lay in the hands of three men. Tall, gray-haired, and dignified, Mayor Charles Kennon (C. K.) Quin furnished a full complement of legitimate and illegitimate patronage. Owen W. Kilday was a bushy-browed, hot-tempered son of Ireland from Uvalde County, Texas. He provided political acumen and influence among the city's numerous Catholics. In 1940 he became even more powerful as sheriff and chief dispenser of county jobs for Bexar County. Although Charles Bellinger had died two years earlier, the machine hoped that his son, Harvard-educated Valmo C. Bellinger, would be able to continue the black bloc tradition, at least in the city's nonpartisan municipal elections where the white primary did not apply.
In 1938 Quin and Kilday moved the San Antonio machine against Maverick in the Democratic primary. Their goal was to replace him with Owen Kilday's brother, Paul Joseph Kilday. Vice-President John Nance Garner, the crusty patriarch of Texas Democrats, apparently cooperated in this effort. Conservative interests in the state wanted Maverick out, and the nation's turn to the right in 1938 provided an appropriate atmosphere for that change. Mayor Quin helped remove him by padding the city payroll. Later investigation indicated that he may have paid as much as $3,000 of city funds to 400 extra city employees hired at election time.
In the July 27 primary Kilday defeated Maverick by 493 votes out of 49,151 cast. Unless Maverick could somehow defeat Kilday in the general election, he would lose his congressional seat. Maverick and his friends toyed with the idea of an independent candidacy in the general election. Here success would depend on San Antonio black voters. Barred from the primary, they made up the largest group of unpledged voters in the district. Even though Maverick had denied that he expected or desired black votes in return for his stand on the antilynching bill, he evidently counted on some. He believed that with his liberal reputation he could break the pattern of black support for machine candidates.
Maverick may have judged the situation correctly; he knew he could count on some support from some national black leaders. Most Bexar County blacks were ambivalent about Maverick, but some indicated support. Many signatures on his petition for candidacy belonged to blacks. A columnist for the San Antonio Register, which was owned by Valmo Bellinger, even had kind words for Maverick after his primary defeat. The columnist reminded readers that Paul Kilday had attacked Maverick's antilynching vote during the primary campaign. Bellinger himself may have considered supporting Maverick. Certainly his inherited gambling empire would be safer with Maverick in Washington than with him unemployed and loose in San Antonio, a consideration that Bellinger's white cronies had seemingly overlooked.
Maverick's independent campaign never materialized, however. The Texas secretary of state decided that his bid was illegal, since he had already run in the Democratic primary. This decision put an end to Maverick's 1938 congressional aspiration, but he did not retire from politics. Reasoning that further attempts to regain his congressional seat would fail as long as the San Antonio machine remained intact, Maverick turned to municipal politics. His new goal was to break the machine and to establish local support that would later enable him to return to Washington where he had friends and influence.
A less energetic man might have paused before tackling San Antonio's established order; conditions there seemed to preclude quick and easy revisions. Maverick knew from previous experience that the city's apathetic voters were difficult to rouse. Although the city's commercial and financial groups were suffering under heavy taxes and offered potential support for reform, this conservative group shunned sweeping changes. These kind of conditions had helped the machine maintain the status quo for decades.
By entering city politics Maverick pitted himself against the Quin-Kilday-Bellinger triumvirate and challenged an entire political style. He had several handicaps in this contest. Whereas political theory had created many of Maverick's policies, practical politics dictated machine action. Maverick spoke out on issues; the machine dodged them or manufactured them. Maverick's primary goal was to establish progressive city government; the machine's goal was to stay in power. Maverick saw local affairs as specific examples of broader national issues. San Antonio's machine politicians were artists of local politics; they saw power as something accumulated from the bottom up and wielded from the top down, and they carefully maneuvered their reserves of power.
Maverick's principles and his national, rather than local, orientation were disadvantages in the San Antonio arena, but he soon received a lucky break. In December 1938 a grand jury indicted Mayor Quin for misapplication of public funds, citing as evidence San Antonio's July city payroll. Although Quin escaped the charges, some members of the machine dropped him as a mayoral candidate in 1939. For a while this machine faction supported Theo M. Plummer, the city's tax commissioner, and even police chief Owen Kilday originally joined the anti-Quin group. But Quin refused to bow out and announced his own candidacy and his own slate of commissioner candidates. Although Plummer eventually withdrew from the mayoral race, the incumbent commissioners stayed in. In addition, Leroy Jeffers, a friend of the Kildays but also the assistant district attorney who had prosecuted Quin, announced his mayoral candidacy and his slate of commissioner candidates. The machine had fallen into total disarray. Meanwhile, on February 2, 1939, Maverick had entered the fray by announcing his candidacy for mayor. He soon joined with a group of reform-minded commission candidates to form the Fusion ticket. The challenge to San Antonio's divided machine was on.
Maverick started his mayoral campaign confident that he could collect a sizable portion of the black vote. His congressional fame as a racial liberal would help him; it gained him endorsements from black weekly newspapers in Houston, Dallas, and Waco. He could also point to the encouragement he received from blacks during his still-born 1938 campaign. But he failed to take into account the fact that support for him as a congressional candidate might not translate into support for him as a mayoral candidate.
As a congressional candidate Maverick stood for the New Deal, and San Antonio blacks benefited from the New Deal. In 1935 blacks made up somewhere between 7 and 8 percent of the city's population, but they accounted for approximately 14 percent of the city's relief recipients. Despite complaints of discrimination in the administration of some specific programs, the city's blacks cautiously approved of New Deal efforts in general.
In the 1939 mayoral campaign Maverick ran as a progressive municipal reformer rather than as a New Dealer. This platform had much less appeal for the city's blacks. The machine had facilitated black political participation and had provided tangible benefits such as street paving, lighting, schools, police protection, and jobs. Reformers, including Maverick, had reduced black political participation by supporting the white primary. Whatever their ultimate goals had been, the progressives had never improved black standards of living. As mayor, Maverick could neglect or roll back gains blacks had made under machine rule. Bellinger and his political aides emphasized the patronage benefits blacks had enjoyed under machine administrations and stressed that no one knew what Maverick would do as a local official.
Despite the black community's caution, subtle changes that would enhance Maverick's chances for black support were taking place on the East Side. Black political and civic organizations had appeared; some were tied to national groups. In the 1930s many of these national organizations maintained that the future of blacks lay with the forces of liberalism. Even if Charles Bellinger had lived, he would have been forced to deal with the increasing political diversity among San Antonio blacks. His death and Maverick's challenge simply accelerated this trend toward greater diversity.
As a nationally known racial liberal, Maverick enjoyed support from some of the new black organizations. The Bexar County Educational League, a local group opposed to the machine, endorsed Maverick. The National Negro Congress (NNC) collected money for Maverick's campaign through its San Antonio branch headed by George J. Sutton. The NNC's national office sent word of its official endorsement of Maverick to thousands of local blacks. Evidently even some elements of the normally nonpartisan National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) considered endorsing Maverick, though the group finally decided to remain neutral.
The support Maverick received from these nascent organizations held qualitative, not quantitative, significance. Even with the help they provided, Maverick ran behind Quin on the East Side. On May 9 Maverick won the three-cornered mayoral contest, receiving almost 41 percent of the 44,873 votes cast. Quin, his closest opponent, got 33 percent of the citywide vote. Yet in the city's black precincts Maverick received only 35 percent of the vote. He never admitted that his share of the black vote was even this large; at the time and almost a year later Maverick asserted that he had only received 21 percent of the black vote. Yet the precinct returns from the black neighborhoods, as well as the estimates that San Antonio blacks forwarded to their national organizations, indicate that Maverick received more black votes than he thought. Definite cracks had appeared in the black bloc; liberal black organizations helped deliver some votes for Maverick and the Fusion ticket. The machine no longer could claim the support of all but a few dissenting blacks. If he had worked with these new black organizations Maverick could have benefited from the changes in the black community.
Maverick's analysis of the election, however, discouraged him from cultivating this support. He dwelt bitterly on the East Side results, still refusing to admit that blacks had supported him as much as they had. Considering his liberal record, he reasoned, blacks ought to have trusted him to advance the whole community's general interest. But local blacks actually had as much reason to distrust him as to trust him. Already predisposed to doubt the political maturity of blacks in general, Maverick evidently concluded that black San Antonians voted against him, not out of caution or rational choice, but rather because the machine bribed them or misled them and thus subverted the democratic process. Maverick's strategy toward the black community followed from this analysis. He had to destroy the machine in order to liberate the East Side. He was unwilling to make direct appeals to blacks and therefore could do little to nurture the black support already committed to him.
As mayor, Maverick spent little time analyzing the local political scene, black or white. Relentless machine attacks diverted his attention. When free, Maverick chose to invest his time and energy making speeches and renewing Washington contacts in preparation for the 1940 presidential campaign. He administered the city's government efficiently but neglected local politics, as his relationship with San Antonio blacks showed.
Maverick could have cultivated local black support at the beginning of his term. Tom Miller, then mayor of Austin, wrote that "if he uses a little judgment with the negroes he can make firm friends out of them," even though "they have been a little prejudice [sic] against him on account of some of his alleged past actions." Surprisingly, even the Bellinger forces seemed friendly at first. An editorial in the San Antonio Register proclaimed that if Maverick kept his campaign promises to improve city health, sanitation, and recreational facilities, he would "certainly win undivided loyalty. . . and possibly gain even greater support from the Negroes than was accorded the late Mayors John Tobin and C. M. Chambers, behind whom the Race stood solidly." Valmo Bellinger actually met with Maverick representatives in 1939, but no political agreements resulted. As long as Bellinger continued in the lottery business, he and Maverick had little basis for allegiance.
Any black support Maverick received would have to come from sources other than those controlled by Bellinger. Unfortunately, Maverick failed to woo those sources and botched his public relations with blacks. An exasperated Elisha Thompson, vice-president of the San Antonio Negro Voters' League, sent a hand-delivered message to get his attention; Thompson chided him for being elusive. Paul Johnson, a black college graduate, worked diligently to collect Maverick support within the NAACP, the Negro Chamber of Commerce, and the Negro Voters' League, but when he wrote Maverick reporting his successes, Maverick replied with a vague note of thanks, expressing no interest in the details.
Maverick took for granted the valuable support of the National Negro Congress. The NNC was founded under the leadership of John P. Davis in 1935 as an umbrella organization to coordinate the efforts of other black groups. It was one of the most militant black political organizations in America. Its members openly criticized New Deal policies that discriminated against blacks. Despite Maverick's somewhat gradualist racial philosophy, this organization consistently backed him with local and national resources. In 1939 the local NNC surveyed San Antonio blacks to see what public improvements they most desired. This local chapter sent Maverick the results soon after his election. Typically, Maverick was out of town, but John E. Babcock, the city's public relations director, assured the NNC that the city would take action. One year later a dissatisfied NNC committee appeared before the mayor and commissioners, claiming the city had done nothing.
The NNC committee complained specifically that the city had failed to hire enough blacks, thus raising the important but touchy issue of patronage. Maverick had always disapproved of political hiring, preferring, like any good progressive, civil service recruitment to assure competent, efficient public employees. But patronage was a deeply entrenched part of the San Antonio political scene, and it created problems for Maverick as mayor. The day after Maverick's victory, Dan Quill, San Antonio's postmaster and an astute political observer, said that "Maury has a very difficult task ahead of him, and the worst thing is some 3,000 workers he had and everyone of them without jobs, plus about 1,700 city employees, everyone of whom is going to do everything possible to keep his job."
Blacks on the city payroll were, if possible, even more determined to maintain their positions than their white counterparts. Public employment had a special attraction for blacks and other racial minorities. Private industry seldom offered white-collar positions to blacks, so they anxiously sought them in the public sector. In addition to economic security, these jobs provided symbolic evidence of racial progress. Blacks also wanted efficient city government, but unlike Maverick, they had racial goals as well. The situation held great potential for creating misunderstandings on both sides.
During Maverick's administration the number of blacks on the city payroll increased from thirty-one to ninety-one, but the number holding white-collar positions declined. While the Maverick administration hired black garbage collectors, janitors, and maids, it removed black health inspectors, librarians, and nurses. In doing so, Maverick angered the most politically active elements in the black community. C. H. M. Furlow, secretary of the Negro Voters' League, lost his position as food inspector. Mrs. Pearl Arzolia Thompson, a police department employee, was also fired after having held white-collar city positions for twelve years. As a result, she became an implacable and active foe of the Maverick administration. Even George J. Sutton, the local NNC president and a Maverick supporter, protested the removal of a nurse from the Negro clinic. Maverick replied that the nurse was incompetent and promised to replace her, yet the number of Negro city nurses dropped from three to one during the Maverick administration. Maverick's civil service reforms in the police department prevented blacks from entering the force for almost two years. Remaining black workers also experienced salary cuts. Despite Valmo Bellinger's biases, his words provide a summary of the dismay many blacks must have felt toward the Maverick administration by 1940: "Maverick. . . is determined not to see a Negro in any leading capacity. . . . [He] 'has made brave and courageous speeches in the South and over the country for civil rights and for economic justice to the Negro, but here in San Antonio he hasn't done a goddam thing for Negroes that they didn't receive and to a much greater extent under Quin or Tobin'."
Maverick had indeed often urged increased economic opportunities for blacks, and his administration did hire large numbers of them to serve in menial jobs. But the assignment of white-collar jobs presented complex problems. In his campaign Maverick had promised efficient government and removal of political appointees from the payroll. The police and health departments, where many blacks held white-collar jobs, were the specific targets of reform. Many of these people lost their jobs as the Maverick administration made changes. If Maverick made efforts to hire blacks to replace those who had been fired, these efforts were not vigorous enough to satisfy even those who, like the members of the NNC, already supported him. He certainly did not win over hostile or uncommitted blacks with his hiring policies. On the contrary, the results of Maverick's efficiency drive confirmed suspicions that his progressive reform would backfire against the black community.
Maverick brushed off local blacks' criticism of his public relations and patronage policies because he believed he had little chance of winning black votes anyway. By 1940 frustrated local blacks evidently appealed to their national organizations to get Maverick's attention. In an ironic twist, national black leaders found themselves trying to explain San Antonio's black citizens to their own mayor. In January Maverick received a letter from William Pickins, national director of branches of the NAACP, who assured Maverick that more San Antonio blacks supported him than it might appear. In a phrase that must have infuriated the reform-minded Maverick, he explained that San Antonio blacks "do not dare sometimes to turn the old machine loose, lest the new machine fail and leave them high and dry." A few months later, after Maverick's actions had further disillusioned even his national supporters, John Davis, secretary of the NNC, felt compelled to remind Maverick that not all San Antonio blacks were "gamblers, racketeers, and voters whose votes were at the disposal of the highest bidder."
In early 1940 Maverick's national black critics grew louder. They questioned not only his judgment but also his commitment to racial reform. In March 1940, for instance, Maverick went to Washington, D. C., to testify before a House subcommittee on behalf of an impeccably liberal cause—the abolition of the poll tax. Although he argued the right cause, his line of reasoning dismayed more militant racial reformers. Maverick virtually endorsed the white primary when he claimed that it would prevent Negro domination even if the poll tax were abolished. His main concern, he told the subcommittee, was to enfranchise the poor white man, not the black man. This pragmatic approach infuriated John Davis. Soon after Maverick testified, Davis wrote a caustic letter of disapproval. Several other blacks objected to Maverick's testimony, and some of his northern friends also demurred. At the same time the southern press attacked him for his position on the poll tax itself.
Caught in the classic crossfire so often aimed at southern liberals, Maverick protested loudly. In April 1940 Maverick spoke on the poll tax before the second general meeting of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), an organization that had been formed in 1938 to combat the South's economic problems and its disregard for the civil rights of both blacks and whites. In martyred tones Maverick chided blacks and northern liberals for their impatience. He thought he deserved his liberal credentials and willingly took abuse from southern conservatives, but criticism from other liberals disturbed him. He had not changed, he said, yet now fellow liberals acted as if he were a turncoat. Though Maverick continued to oppose the poll tax, his enthusiasm for the cause waned appreciably.
In fact, the rising tides of racial liberalism had swamped Maverick. The atmosphere of the nation was changing, but Maverick had not modified his basic attitudes in over a decade. Now economic equality was no longer enough. Political and social equality had also become goals. The acceleration of the movement left Maverick and other southern liberals struggling with their prejudices; they were dangerously close to lashing out at what they believed was the source of their confusion—the black race. Maverick himself recognized this danger. The bitter example of Tom Watson haunted him. But he vowed he "would never go the Tom Watson way"; he would not turn upon those he felt had betrayed him. Yet he defensively challenged blacks to make the first move toward improved race relations in the South, advising them to "free themselves from political domination of any machine or party, and when they vote, vote for those who stand for better living conditions for the Negro people, and don't support those who flatter, cajole, promise, and extend temporary political or financial benefits."
Maverick's own interpretation of the local situation had reinforced his prejudices about blacks' political abilities. He would not uphold their right to political equality until they proved themselves worthy by "properly" exercising the limited rights they already had.
Unfortunately for Maverick, events in the spring of 1940 kept the white primary issue alive. In May the NAACP launched a statewide fund-raising drive to finance a legal challenge to Texas's white primary. Prominent black San Antonians, including Valmo Bellinger, participated in the effort, and it received ample publicity in the San Antonio Register. In his official capacity Maverick could do little to aid or to hinder the NAACP effort. But his earlier stand put his black supporters in a difficult position during the campaign, especially since the machine had often opposed the white primary. San Antonio blacks chafed under the white primary's limitations, but they felt secure in their ability to affect San Antonio's "nonpartisan" municipal elections.
Maverick and the commissioners shattered this security in November 1940 when they submitted a proposal for a new city charter. In the handling of this issue Maverick's strong dedication to progressive municipal reform once again overwhelmed his tenuous commitment to racial liberalism. In his 1939 campaign Maverick had advocated charter revisions in order to reduce the machine's ability to dominate city elections. The machine had long ago subverted the supposedly incorruptible commission form of government. To correct this problem Maverick wanted the city to adopt a council-manager plan in which an elected council appointed a professional, disinterested administrator to manage city affairs. As a general theory of municipal government the council-manager plan contained nothing inimical to black political participation. Maverick's handling of the reform, however, and the specific provisions of the plan offered to the voters in 1940, outraged the black community. Maverick failed to appoint any blacks to the committee drafting the reform, and when his black supporters pointed out this oversight he still took no action. More important was the fact that portions of the committee's plan threatened to curtail black political influence.
Because of the apathy of San Antonio's white population, the organized black bloc had for years carried disproportionate weight in the citywide commissioners' elections. Although the at-large nature of these elections made the victory of a black candidate for mayor or commissioner very unlikely, the black community had been able to use its bloc to bargain with the white machine for racial benefits. In the new plan, however, the committee proposed to replace the election of at-large commissioner candidates with candidates chosen from eleven geographically based councilman districts. Such a change would have prevented a black bloc from operating as a swing vote in the mayoral and the commissioners' races. On the other hand, single-member districts usually enhance the possibilities of black officeholding. But the council districts the committee proposed divided the black community, gerrymandering it out of the opportunity to affect any council race. In short, the new plan would have reduced the blacks' former advantages without replacing them with any new opportunities.
If Maverick had been as fearlessly dedicated to racial reform as he was to many other controversial issues, he might have tried to influence the charter committee to create at least one predominantly black district. Not only would this have been seen as a stunningly liberal move, but it might have garnered a political payoff. If properly constructed, single-member council districts could have given the reformers a big bargaining chip in the black community. The machine, after all, had never offered blacks a chance for elected office.
But Maverick exercised no such liberal leadership. The committee's plan promised to achieve his major goal of breaking the machine's hold over municipal politics by splitting the black vote so the machine could gain nothing through "unprincipled" attempts to win black votes. The plan, however, created a situation in which no political candidate, machine or otherwise, could gain much by courting blacks. In other words, the destruction of black political power was, for Maverick, an acceptable solution to the "irresponsible" use of such power. He endorsed the plan as written, though he did not vigorously campaign for it.
The black community reacted immediately to the charter proposal. Coming so late in the year the election took everyone by surprise. For San Antonio blacks 1940 was an off year, since municipal elections normally occurred in odd-numbered years. Many blacks had probably failed to pay their poll taxes, even though a year earlier the farsighted editor of the San Antonio Register had warned that a special election might occur. Because of the short period between the announcement of the plan and the election, the campaign took on a tone of desperation.
The effort to defeat the charter united the black community. Robert (Bob) Sullivan, former Maverick supporter and head of the Bexar County Educational League, cochaired the Colored Anti-City Manager committee with Valmo Bellinger. Black ministers opposed the plan from their pulpits. The lists of speakers at the Anti-City Manager rallies included the names of the leaders of "Santone" society. Key members of the NAACP, the Negro Voters' League, an the Negro Chamber of Commerce opposed the plan, and even he had "little to say" about it.
The Anti-City Manager forces won, eliciting a nearly unanimous vote against the plan among blacks on the East Side. An editorial in the San Antonio Register claimed the election demonstrated that "when confronted by a common danger, the Negroes of San Antonio can, and will, present a determined united front against any inroads that might threaten their civil and economic security." Many San Antonio blacks saw the charter as a threat to the effectiveness of their municipal suffrage. Although some blacks probably excused Maverick from complete responsibility for the plan, the whole affair appears to have had his blessing.
For Maverick the East Side results of the special election confirmed the pessimistic conclusions that he had drawn after the 1939 election—the machine dominated San Antonio's black voters. Certainly machine politicians had exploited the issue, and on the surface the unity of the black vote recalled past triumphs of machine manipulation. But many blacks had opposed the plan in a rational exercise of political choice. Maverick, however, believed blacks to be incapable of such rationality, and he prepared for his 1941 reelection campaign expecting little black support.
Maverick again faced C. K. Quin as his major opponent in 1941. Moreover, during Maverick's two years in office, Owen Kilday had entrenched himself as county sheriff. In addition, a change in state law required San Antonio city officials to receive a majority, rather than a plurality, of votes. With the machine reunited, no split would aid Maverick. If the machine regained power through winning the mayor's office too, all of Maverick's new reforms would disappear, forcing any later challenges to start from scratch. Maverick had no time to play tug-of-war with a city machine for memories in the nation's capital were short. To return to Congress and to regain his privileged position in national politics, he had to destroy the machine completely.
Maverick decided to run on his excellent administrative record. As a progressive reformer he had secured much-needed improvements in the police and health departments and had rationalized tax collection. He had erected new tourist attractions in the city and had made a dent in the city's vice and gambling industries. Yet Maverick had made political mistakes and the machine focused on these mistakes to augment their campaign promises of more patronage jobs for blacks. Maverick had left town too often running off to make controversial speeches or to visit his Washington friends. Maverick was a "red"; had he not upheld the Communists' right to use the Municipal Auditorium? At black and Mexican-American rallies, the Anti-Mavericks chipped away at the mayor's image as a racial reformer, reminding audiences of their exclusion from city jobs and promising changes.
Maverick's record contained few items that he could use to counter the racially oriented appeals. He had worked for the city as a unit, not for individual groups. He complained about the Anti-Mavericks' special appeals. "You would think Kilday was a carpetbagger from the North down here just after the Civil war, attempting to raise the colored people against the whites," Maverick declared after Owen Kilday reminded blacks of certain deteriorations in their patronage benefits. Yet Maverick's opponents easily dragged him away from his record and into the quicksand of special-interest politics.
Meanwhile, the machine recognized changes in San Antonio's black political structure and quickly adapted. The Anti-Mavericks exploited the remnants of Valmo Bellinger's East Side influence, but they also branched out, collecting support through the back Bexar County Civic Association. The Reverend O. S. Wilkenson and J. W. ("Pops") Hemmings, who had lost his city job as director of the Negro Recreation Department, headed this new organization. It contained black voters who disliked Maverick but shied away from the disreputable Bellinger forces. Maverick had missed his opportunities to consolidate such support.
The May 13 election discouraged the Maverick forces. The race between Maverick and Quin was close, and the presence of four minor mayoral candidates on the ballot meant that no one received a majority. Quin received a plurality with 17,435 votes to Maverick's 16,202. Maverick lost much of the West Side Mexican-American vote he had received in 1939. As he expected, he lost heavily on the East Side, but, once again, blacks had not voted as a bloc. In fact, more blacks voted for Maverick in 1941 than in 1939. He received 35 to 45 percent in some precincts. But Maverick, facing a tough runoff against Quin, searched wildly for a scapegoat. In his eyes San Antonio blacks had rejected him even though he embodied the New Deal liberalism that he believed was the true salvation for blacks all over the country. Maverick's disappointment and views of black voting habits kept him from acknowledging their increased support. What he interpreted as blacks' loyalty to the machine once again proved to Maverick that the city's blacks could not discern their own best interests. But this time Maverick contemplated this "fact" in the heat and desperation of a campaign that would determine his long-term political future. He had to win the election and break the machine so that he could eventually return to Washington as a champion of the people.
In his mind a group of irresponsible blacks stood between him and his cherished goals. He had fought his prejudices and had made concessions on racial issues. Having earned the praise of racial reformers in the 1930s, he thought his painful struggles were over. But now it seemed to him that blacks' demands were insatiable. He could never satisfy them, so why should he continue to try? Why should he treat these black people with careful consideration when they were about to ruin his election chances? Perhaps he could still win if he could somehow arouse white San Antonians. And so, at some point during the hectic days before the runoff election, Maverick decided to discard all efforts to maintain a liberal stance on race. Instead, he appealed to whites only. Frustration with San Antonio blacks made his demagoguery ring true, and he began to sound more and more like Tom Watson.
"If it hadn't been for the Negro vote, the complete Greater San Antonio ticket would have been reelected in the city's primary election," Maverick lashed out at a Denver Heights rally three days after the first vote. "Valmo Bellinger, son of the late Charles Bellinger, is Quin's chief supporter. . . ." Maverick declared that he no longer cared whether he got any black votes or not; he was "tired of petting Negroes!"
Sick and desperate, Maverick began the final week of campaigning by addressing an audience at Hermann Sons Hall on May 20. He raised the specter of Negro domination at which he himself had scoffed in the past: "If Quin goes into the city hall, Bellinger will be the most important man there. . . . Even your cook would be more important than you. We can't afford to have San Antonio dominated by the colored race."
Shocked black supporters of Maverick immediately protested, reminding Maverick that their hundreds of votes contributed to keeping him in the race. Leading black ministers jointly condemned all forms of racketeering in an effort to refute Maverick's contention that Valmo Bellinger controlled all blacks. The Bexar County Civic Association disclaimed any ties to Bellinger. But Maverick continued to vent his frustrations until the runoff election on May 27.
Amazingly, Maverick's tirades had only a slight effect on the black vote. Maverick's share of the vote in the black precincts dropped from almost 38 percent in the first election to 36 percent in the runoff. Maverick's scorned black supporters were loyal indeed. But his demagoguery gained him no white support either. The final tally gave Quin 20,982 votes to Maverick's 19,799. By doing virtually nothing, or at least nothing in public, Quin had gained bits of support throughout the city with a nice chunk from the Mexican-American West Side. Maverick never broke the machine and never held elected public office again, though within months he returned to Washington as a wartime administrator.
Maverick probably never recognized how his challenge to the machine affected San Antonio's black political development. During the time of his involvement in city politics, several changes had occurred in the black community. First, no one succeeded Charles Bellinger after his death, and Valmo Bellinger never could deliver a black bloc vote in the face of a real challenge. The closest Bellinger came to victory was in 1939, but even then the black bloc was starting to fall apart as black turnout, freed from the discipline imposed by Charles Bellinger, declined. More important, significant segments of the black community that did vote escaped Valmo Bellinger's control. Valmo Bellinger probably was not as good a politician as his father had been, but he also faced a changed black community.
In a way the black bloc vote destroyed itself. By voting as a bloc, San Antonio blacks received political experience and knowledge of government operations. Their political power shielded them from the kinds of intimidation that kept so many other southern blacks from developing alternate political tactics. The black bloc vote brought improved schools where black children learned to read and to interpret current events. Many of the black community's new clubs, political and otherwise, had affiliations with national organizations. Through these groups San Antonio blacks learned how blacks all over the country felt about various issues and people. The city's black voters became more independent and their political environment became more complex.
At the very time that San Antonio blacks were developing independent political viewpoints, Maury Maverick arrived to challenge the San Antonio machine. His challenge actually forced the disintegration of the black bloc vote. Confusion resulted within the black community when it received conflicting political advice about Maverick. The machine counseled blacks to oppose him, yet national black organizations supported him even as they sternly urged him to continue his evolution as a racial liberal. Maverick's challenge forced cracks in the bloc in 1939, and by 1941 one could no longer call it a bloc, though Maverick himself did. The machine would retain some influence in the black community for years to come, but its control would never again be as monolithic as it had been in the legendary days of Charles Bellinger.
Logically Maverick, had he recognized them, could have exploited these changes more effectively than he did. After all, his liberal reputation had caused some of them. But he was more interested in questions of national policy than in the characteristics of his own constituents, and he missed the discontinuities between national and local politics. When Maverick entered municipal politics, he considered San Antonio blacks to be just a small subset of American blacks who should automatically favor the new Deal and the type of racial liberalism that he had been advocating for years. After all, many national black leaders had endorsed him. But San Antonio blacks had their own standards, and their expectations were higher than those of most southern blacks. Maverick never really took this local variation into account.
Even if Maverick had been more in touch with his black constituents' demands, his racial prejudices curbed his efforts to gain black votes. Maverick suffered from acute ambivalence in his attitude toward black political support. He was willing to accept, and at first even expected, the votes of San Antonio's partially enfranchised black citizens. He had, after all, actively supported economic equality for all races, and he had voted for antilynching legislation. Yet he had no firm commitment to uphold black political rights. At bottom, he felt that blacks could not be trusted to make rational political decisions in their own best interests. In 1939 Maverick was at least superficially willing to be proved wrong about blacks' political abilities, but the only evidence that he would accept was a wholehearted, unequivocal vote for him. When this failed to materialize, he minimized the black support that he did have and reverted to his original position by lumping all blacks together and viewing them as political puppets manipulated by an unscrupulous machine. As a result, he gave up any attempt to win black votes, partly because he felt such attempts would be doomed to failure and partly because he was disgusted at the idea of opportunistically appealing to such "unworthy" voters.
This attitude led the liberal "Texas Firebrand" into seemingly uncharacteristic behavior during his tenure as mayor. He upheld the white primary even though it deprived blacks of an effective franchise. He instituted progressive civil service reforms at the expense of the already painfully small group of black white-collar workers in the city. He stood back while the all-white charter committee that he had selected attempted to gerrymander blacks out of a voice in city affairs. And in 1941 he stooped to racial demagoguery in an attempt to gain votes.
This turned out to be the low point in Maverick's attitude toward blacks, however. Once out of elected office, Maverick's racial theories, which had been static for so long, began to evolve once again. By the time of his death in 1954 he had developed a more consistently liberal attitude toward blacks.
One of the touchiest aspects of the issue of political equality disappeared from the realm of controversy in 1944 when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled the white primary illegal. However Maverick reacted to this decision at first, by 1952 he was willing to accept black voters as an integral component in the Texas liberal coalition. In fact, he chastised Adlai E. Stevenson's campaign workers for failing to recognize their importance. He even reached some kind of modus vivendi with Valmo Bellinger. In a 1952 letter to Walter White he praised a speech that Bellinger had made at a Democratic party meeting that they had both attended.
Maverick's position on social equality also changed, perhaps in part because of his new perception of blacks as political allies. In 1952 he wrote noted southern liberal Virginia Durr, describing the racially integrated political buffets that he had begun hosting in his home. He staunchly opposed racial segregation at political fundraising affairs during the 1952 presidential campaign.
Maverick had at last taken the southern liberal's final step. His prolonged hesitancy to follow the black civil rights movement to its logical conclusion is a poignant testimony to the durability of southern racism. After all, Maverick fought fearlessly for civil rights throughout his adult life. In the case of blacks, he balked, not out of timidness or even political pragmatism, but rather because since childhood he had absorbed the idea that white people should treat black people with benevolent paternalism. It took almost an entire lifetime for him to admit the mistakenness of this attitude.
Judith Kaaz Doyle
The Journal of Southern History
May, 1987
Along the San Antonio River
It was along Commerce Street near here that, nine days after the Council House Fight in 1840, the Comanche Chief Isimanica, almost naked and in full war paint, rode, shaking his clenched fist and shouting defiance at the citizens, at which, wrote Mrs. Mary Maverick, many of the soldiers "were with difficulty restrained."
A City Report, New Style
This is something new, I hope, in city reports.
I have read many city reports, and nearly all of them are very stuffy affairs. They get jumbled up with so many figures that you hardly ever finish the first two pages. This one will be neither stuffy nor statistical. It will carry but three simple financial items, and the description of the accomplishments on which it reports—the beautification of the San Antonio River—will be left to the book of which it is the introduction.
The book—prepared by the Texas Writers' Project, with a Foreword by the W.P.A. State Administrator for Texas—tells the story of the San Antonio River, and of the important and often romantic exciting and tragic events that have occurred beside it. And it describes how the City of San Antonio and the W.P.A. together have developed and carried out the River Beautification Project, by which the winding stream has been made a place of public enjoyment in the heart of a modern streamlined city.
During an earlier city administration, certain public-spirited citizens created a river improvement district and voted a bond issue of $75,000. The bulk of the work and planning was done under the present administration, and we take pride in it.
A city should be clean, sanitary, artistic—a place where people can live as decent human beings. It should have breathing spaces, where citizens and visitors can walk or rest, comfortably and without annoyance. Such spaces, in a thickly settled community, can only be the result of planning.
The large cities of America were not planned. Men built haphazardly, wherever they found what seemed at the moment to be suitable places. The result was ugly factory districts, and crowded and unsanitary residential sections which too often became hideous, unlivable breeding places of crime, sickness, and unhappiness.
Rivers within the cities have been left alone to become dirty canals, their banks occupied by the ugliest types of commerce or by housing that is unfit for human habitation. Their original beauty has been lost. Only planning can restore it.
The River Beautification Project is not a complete plan for San Antonio. It is, however, an important part of a plan to make the city more beautiful and more livable. We believe that in all the United States of America there is no city in which a river has been made a more attractive resort for all the people.
And here, in two lines, is the financial part of the report:
Throughout our nation the W.P.A. has given work and hope to millions of unemployed, and the projects it has undertaken have been useful works to all the people of America. Without it, San Antonio could not have made the progress that it has made, and we are grateful for the support that the Federal Government has given our city.
Following is a supplemental report by Jack White, Chairman of the River Beautification Board. His, most largely, was the energy which aroused public spirit and brought about, with City and W.P.A. aid, the actual fulfillment of the river improvement vision, and the great work that he has done should receive credit from all citizens of San Antonio for all time to come. In addition we want to thank the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the civic clubs and the many women's organizations for enthusiastic cooperation.
Maury Maverick,
Mayor of San Antonio
Citizens' Hopes Come True
Early civilization in Southwest Texas followed closely the rivers in this section because water was always important, not only for transportation, but also for irrigation to raise the things that the early settler had to depend upon for food.
Since the time of the first settlement, the San Antonio River has played many roles, from furnishing life-giving water to providing a setting for historic events.
In the early days it was naturally beautiful, winding its lazy way between narrow banks with their native foliage. Then as the city grew and the languid atmosphere of the town gave way to the rush of modern commerce, through neglect the river lost its charm and became almost a necessary evil. In fact at one time there was a movement by a group of businessmen to fill in the bed of the river through its great bend because it had become an eyesore.
Then came the flood of 1921, when this lazy little stream became a raging torrent that swept through the business district of San Antonio destroying millions of dollars worth of property. This was followed by a flood prevention program to protect San Antonio from such devastation again.
When the flood prevention work had become a reality, new impetus was given to the thought of beautification that had always been in the minds of those of us who appreciated how great a share the river had in the atmosphere that makes our city different from all others, and proposals to again make it attractive were started by a small group. Working hard and long, and with growing appreciation of what the river could mean to our city not only as a thing of beauty but as a recreation center, the River Beautification Board, assisted by many other interested citizens, moved toward turning a liability into an asset. The actual work on the River Beautification Project was carried out under the regime of Mayor Maverick. Due to his ever-enthusiastic cooperation, our board has been able to carry out its plans.
As it is today, the river has recaptured its charm and become a memorial to the past and a setting for the relaxation and enjoyment of present and future generations.
Jack White
Chairman, River Beautification Board
Foreword
Generations of San Antonians have hoped that the slow flowing river which winds through the heart of their city would some day be transformed into a downtown park where they and their visitors could enjoy the native beauty which first attracted their forefathers, those pioneers who settled the City of the Alamo.
It remained for two practical men with vision to conceive the fulfillment of these hopes. The late Edwin P. Arneson, engineer, in whose memory the Arneson River Theatre has been named, and R. H. H. Hugman, architect, converted the hopes into plans which have now been developed into beautiful reality.
For the execution of these plans credit is due James Arthur Hazelrigg, District Manager of the San Antonio Work Projects Administration District, and to the members of the District Staff who assumed and capably discharged the responsibility for this great civic enterprise. However this could not have been done had it not been for the wholehearted and generous cooperation given by the City of San Antonio and for the vigorous, unselfish and untiring efforts of the River Beautification Board.
A greater consideration, however, than this development of San Antonians' hopes into beautiful reality is that the work along the banks of their river provided many months of employment for hundreds of destitute men who had sought long and fruitlessly for private jobs. They labored faithfully and gratefully in the refuse-cluttered mud of the river bottom for meager wages. The result of their labor is eloquent proof of the fact that they did not shirk. What they have created by their toil will endure throughout the years as a tribute to their physical energy and to the wisdom of a government which provides honest work for its unemployed, destitute citizens instead of destroying their characters with the degradation of a dole.
H. P. Drought
State Administrator for Texas,
Work Projects Administration.
Along the San Antonio River
"Who drinks at San Antonio's River once,
will drink from it again."
—From an old Spanish legend.
Thus, in the eighteenth century, was recorded the yearning to return of those who had visited the green and fruitful valley of San Antonio and seen its winding stream. The city's residents do not drink of the river these days, but its charm has not lessened. On the contrary, an elaborate program begun in 1939 and completed in 1941 has made it even more attractive.
The river flows peacefully now, although in earlier times it has swept lives and property before it in uncontrolled floods. Tourists wander along its banks in the shadow of skyscrapers, where once through dust and mud plodded Spanish soldiers, brown-robed missionaries, Canary Island colonists, and daring pioneers who brought a new and clashing type of civilization from east of the Sabine.
In long past years upon a far frontier—first of New Spain and then on the westward march of Anglo-Americans—the stream wound through many a scene of violence and tragedy. The head of a revolutionist upon a pole once sickeningly disfigured it, and other revolutionists by hundreds were herded across it to swift trial and execution. Bugles have wafted from one side to the other a merciless message of extinction, to be followed by the roar of cannon and the crash of musketry. These banks have echoed Indian war whoops, the roisterings of a wild cattle capital, and the lethal crack of bad men's pistols.
It is a narrow river as it flows through San Antonio, for its headwaters are but a few steps beyond the city's northern limits. It twists and turns are so many that in crossing six miles of streets it passes under forty-two highway bridges, and there is a tradition that Indians, after they had become familiar with some of the less creditable habits of white men, called it by a name that meant "Drunken-old-man-going-home-at-night."
European eyes first fell upon it during the spring of 1536, in the opinion of eminent historians, when Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who as a shipwrecked captive of Indians was the earliest Spaniard to see the interior of present-day Texas, visited a valley which, from his later written description, almost certainly was this one.
In 1691 a Spanish expedition halted here at an aboriginal village called Yanaguana, and on St. Anthony of Padua's feast day, June 13, Franciscan Father Damian Massanet celebrated Mass under a cottonwood arbor and named the place of San Antonio. A later expedition, in 1709, gave the same name to the waterway.
On one side of the river, in May, 1718, was established the Mission San Antonio de Valero, which long afterward became a fortress called the Alamo; on the other side, a few days later, the little Villa of Bejar. For more than a century and a half the spread of the town was almost wholly governed by the stream's meanderings, and few important events in the city's early history occurred far from its banks.
Old Scenes and New
Except at a few points where its channel has been moved or straightened, the river flows today in the same pattern as of old. Fed near its source by a creek called the Olmos—normally little more than a trickle but which, before control measures were established, contributed to dangerous floods—it winds amid picturesque surroundings through Brackenridge Park and towards the city's center.
"Who'll Go With Old Ben Milam?"
Near ninth street, it passes the area where Stephen F. Austin's little army of revolutionary Texans, in the autumn of 1835, laid siege to the Mexican-held city after a detachment under James Bowie, in October, had won the Battle of Concepcion in a bend of the river below the town.
The besiegers were ill-clad, ill-fed and insufficiently armed, and the city itself so well fortified that storming it seemed hopeless. Mexican reinforcements were near at hand. An officers' council, on December 4, decided to break camp, raise the siege, and go into winter quarters at Gonzales, but this plan was upset by the shouted challenge: "Who'll go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?"
River Beautification Project
A short distance downstream, at a point 200 feet north of the Fourth Street bridge, is that first unit of a program launched in 1939 by the City of San Antonio and the Work Projects Administration, to increase the beauty of the river and its banks for more than a mile and a quarter and install flood control units for its protection.
Construction in 1940 included three dams, two large footbridges, and numerous flights of steps from the streets down the river banks. These steps, leading from almost every bridge in the improved area, vary in design and material. Rock curbs have been built along both banks of the stream, and extend well below the water level; they are three feet, six inches in width at the base, sloping on the land face to one foot at the top. Walks of flagstone, cobblestone, brick, cement inlaid with pebbles, and concrete blocks follow sometimes one bank, sometimes both, close to the water.
Along the part of the river included in the project it was necessary to dredge to a depth of from three to five feet in the river bed, to remove a centuries-old accumulation of silt and rubbish. For long stretches it was possible to uncover the old gravel bed of the stream. Dark stains on pillars supporting bridges indicate the depths of dredging at various points. Thousands of truckloads of refuse and muck were removed. Old buggy beds, broken wagon wheels, tangled barbed wire, sunken barrels—once the floats of bathhouses—were uncovered. There were also wrecks of bicycles and parts of automobiles, even a few battered tonneaus. Old guns, rusted pistols, and a few cannon balls were found.
Employed on the work were surveyors and engineers, landscape architects, nurserymen, tree surgeons, rock masons, carpenters, painters and plasterers, electricians, plumbers, a drag line operator, laborers and truck drivers.
The extensive improvements included the planting of flowering shrubs of various kinds, trees, bushes, vines, and water growths. In many places repairs with cement and structural steel were necessary to protect certain trees. Along both banks, in the shade of trees and beneath bridges, were placed benches of stone, cement, or rustic cedar.
Floodlights, indirect lighting equipment, and many decorative stand lanterns were installed at a cost of $19,000. Colored lights were placed at points where they could be used effectively. Hidden bulbs beneath the water were set amid thick growths of cannas, flag lilies and hyacinths. The lighting system is controlled by eight switches placed at intervals along the improved section.
A Riverbank Stroll
At the check dam near the Fourth Street bridge, which maintains the natural water level above this point and assists in controlling the artificial level in the area covered by the project, the river walk begins, but it is by no means necessary that one who wishes to stroll beside the stream should start from here. Tourists will find, convenient to their downtown hotels, steps leading from street level to river walk at the Travis, Houston, St. Mary's, Commerce, Navarro and Presa Street bridges. Visitors at La Villita will find the Arneson River Theatre, at the rear of the Cos House, an excellent spot from which to start. Short strolls from any of these points will skirt interesting sections of the river.
At its northernmost beginning, near the Fourth Street bridge, the walk follows the south bank. Across the stream a broad expanse of smooth lawn sweeps down from the old Nat Lewis house, built in 1848, to a fringe of trees along the water. Nat Lewis was a pioneer cattle king and merchant, who bore the nickname "Don Pilon," probably because of his custom of making a gift with each purchase, however small, such presents being by Mexicans called pilon.
A flight of cement steps guarded by stone railings winds down from the east end of the Fourth Street bridge.
Midway between Fourth and Richmond Streets is the site of an old swimming hole of the 1870's and 1880's.
The walk passes in the shadow of a high retaining wall at the rear of the Municipal Auditorium, which stands in what was once the river bed. There is no stairway at the Richmond Street bridge.
Just west of the Navarro Street bridge a flight of cement steps curves down to the path through a stone-arched doorway in the retaining wall. Here the trend of the river is slightly south of west. From where the concrete retaining wall ends, the high bank of the river is supported by an old wall of heavy stone blocks set without cement.
A straight flight of stone steps leads down from the south end of the upper North St. Mary's Street bridge, the first of the three St. Mary's Steet bridges within the project. From its north end, in the rear of one of the old buildings of the Ursuline Convent, another flight of cement steps, decorated with railings of stone masonry, curves gracefully around a chinaberry tree to a boat landing. Here is the beginning of the walk along the north bank.
An Ancient Convent
The central stone building in the convent grounds was built by a Frenchman who expected his wife to join him, but she refused to quit France for the Texas wilderness and the mansion remained deserted until Ursuline nuns from New Orleans converted it into the city's first boarding school for girls and built the convent and chapel, in 1851. The clock tower has faces on three sides. There is no face on the north, because the convent was so far out in the country that no one could imagine enough people living beyond it in that direction to make it of value.
At the Augusta Street bridge are two flights of stairs, one from each end of the structure. The one at the north is of cement with stone railings. At the south end a steep, narrow flight of old stone steps has been utilized. The age of this stairway is indicated by its worn condition.
Just downstream from the Augusta Street bridge the river turns sharply southward. What has been the south bank now becomes the east.
Around this bend moved Ben Milam's three hundred, to enter the city along the Calle de Soledad—the Street of Solitude, because those who had homes there were outside the town's bustle—which is still Soledad Street, a stone's throw from the river at this point.
Project workers dubbed this curve "Crawfish Bend" when the dredged thousands of those crustaceans from the mud of the river here.
On the right, at the turn, short flights of steps drop down from the east end of Rodriguez Street over a series of rock-walled terraces. They end at the river bank, in a little parked area shaded by a leaning oak. Downstream, as the river curves first easterly, then westerly, although still flowing toward the south, the walks continue on both banks, beneath the Convent Street, East Martin Street and East Pecan Street bridges. No steps from the streets above are at these points. Climbing ivy covers the high old retaining walls along this section.
At Armistead Street a flight of cement steps curves down from the highway level, through a rock-arched doorway in the retaining wall, to a boat landing guarded by cedar posts. A little farther on, a tall, gnarled old cottonwood growing above the wall overhangs the walk along the west bank. Opposite it ancient fig trees hug the east wall, their upper branches topping its crest.
The Heart of the City
Now the stream is entering the business heart of the city. From a rocky opening beneath the walk on the west bank gushes a noisy cascade that foams and gurgles around three artificial boulders; it comes from the outlet of the air-cooling system of the Milam Building. At the east end of the East Travis Street bridge another stairway descends.
Between East Travis and East Houston Streets, cantilever walks at the street level follow a graceful, shallow reverse curve of the river. A short distance below East Travis Street a flight of cement steps comes down from a path that leads to Soledad Street, passing beneath the cantilever walk to end at a boat landing.
Two stairways descend at the East Houston Street bridge, at which point the river walk continues along the west side of the stream only. Near the foot of the stairway on this bank is another boat landing, and cement benches are shaded by a row of slender cypress trees.
The first bridge at this point was built in 1853, prior to which the river had been crossed by a ford. Near here the city's first bank was established in 1808 by Don Antonio de la Garza, and it is said that he minted money by permission of the Spanish government. A little beyond, to the west, was the Buffalo Camp Yard, made use of in the early 1870's by traders in buffalo hides.
A short distance below East Houston Street, above the east bank, appear the tops of trees that stand where once was the patio of a house occupied in 1859 by Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee.
Palace, Figs, and Tree of Heaven
Along the west bank, as early as 1740, gardens spread behind houes along Soledad Street. Only a few yards downstream stood the residence of Don Juan Martin de Veramendi, who became vice governor of Texas in 1830, a building so large and luxuriously furnished that it was called the Veramendi Palace. Here the aristocracy gathered for lavish social events, and here the great frontiersman James Bowie wooed and won Ursula Veramendi, the vice governor's daughter. During the Battle of San Antonio this house was occupied by some of Ben Milam's men, and Milam was killed near the front doorway by a Mexican sharpshooter on the third day of the battle. He was buried that night not far from where he fell, with military and Masonic honors.
In the former garden of the Veramendi Palace is a building that housed the Bexar County Court in the 1880's, now used by a department store. Between that building and the river are fig trees of great size, said to have been planted by the Veramendis, two of which, growing above the stone retaining wall, rise to a height of more than two stories of the surrounding buildings. A third, its gnarled roots prying apart the rocks, juts out midway between the top and bottom of the wall and turns sharply upward to merge its branches with those of the trees above. From across the stream the combined branches and huge leaves appear to be one giant fig tree. A little farther along is an ailanthus or "tree of heaven," planted by an early Spanish settler.
Presently the river turns at right angles toward the east. On the west bank just before the course of the stream changes, stood the house built by Samuel A. Maverick in 1839, in which San Antonio men gathered for defense when the city was seized and briefly held by the Mexican Gen. Adrian Woll in 1842. Maverick, whose small herd of unbranded cattle brought into the English language the descriptive common noun "maverick," became mayor of San Antonio in 1839, and 100 years later his grandson Maury Maverick was inducted into the same office.
In what was once Samuel Maverick's riverbank garden grows a towering willow that stretches its twisted arms far out over the stream. On the opposite bank is a retaining wall, heavily overgrown with ivy, that was built by John Twohig in 1869, and from beyond the wall rise the roof and tall chimneys of the remains of the Twohig house, which date from the early 1840's. Twohig operated a bank, and gained the name "the breadline banker" for his custom of distributing each Saturday barrelfuls of bread to the city's poor.
On the river bank here is a cypress from whose trunk a "twin" tree lifts feathery branches on the other side of the retaining wall. Tradition says that from this tree Mexican soldiers fired on Texans who went down to the river bank for water during the Battle of San Antonio, and that the sharpshooter who killed Ben Milam did so from its branches.
A Center of Exciting Events
West and southwest of the river at this bend as established the Villa of San Fernando, when colonists from the Canary Islands were brought in by the Spanish government in 1731, and the center of their little community was the San Fernando Church which now, as San Fernando Cathedral, is still at the city's geographical center. Near it is the old Spanish Governor's Palace, and west of that is the great Mexican quarter.
Just beyond where the Maverick house was later built is the point at which victory for the Texans in the Battle of San Antonio was assured when, after four days' desperate fighting, they reached the fortified plaza at the end of Soledad Street. General Cos raised the white flag of surrender on the morning of the fifth day.
At this same point, in the "wild and woolly" period of the 1880's was the "fatal corner" near which occurred many major homicides, including the sensational killing of Ben Thompson and King Fisher in the Vaudeville Theatre. A little beyond was Santa Anna's headquarters during the siege of the Alamo, in which he is said to have had a bogus marriage to a San Antonio girl performed by henchmen attired in vestments stolen from a priest. And less than two blocks from the river started the Council House Fight of 1840, in which 33 Comanches and seven white men were killed.
Where the river turns eastward, an artificial cut-off channel runs due south. This is a unit of the city's flood control project of 1922, which takes care of the steam's overflow in times of high water. The River Beautification Project has supplemented this flood prevention measure with a floodgate dam and 48-inch water-level gate into the cut-off. Across an isthmus that is but little more than three blocks wide, the straight artifical channel rejoins the river, which to cover the same distance has wound and twisted east and south and west, beneath nine highway bridges, to make of the land within the great loop a hammer-headed peninsula.
A walk from West Commerce Street leads across the floodgate dam and down a short flight of steps to a circular, rock-walled observation point. Set in the wall of the superstructure is a tile panel—a creation of the Work Projects Administration Arts and Crafts project—picturing in colors the story of the Mexican snipers in the near-by cypress tree.
Three of the four graceful arches in the dam contain heavy steel doors or gates, operated by hand, which shut off or regulate the flow of water. Gates in the two middle arches span the river, while the one at the south end affects the cut-off channel. In times of heavy rain and abnormally high water, the closing of the river dam diverts the flow into the old cut-off; the river itself below this point receives the drainage of a relatively small area, which in turn is controlled by a floodgate at the terminal dam where the beautification project ends.
It is within the great three-sided bend between these two dams that the most extensive improvements of the project have been made. This section also contains many benches, which at shady spots invite the stroller to rest and are popular at lunchtime with downtown store and office workers.
In the River's Big Bend
At the upper dam the river walk passes beneath one of its arches, near which a flight of cement steps with stone railings curves down from West Commerce Street at the dam's south end.
The old rock walls of building foundations along the south bank are covered with heavy growths of climbing ivy. Midway between the dam and the north St. Mary's Street bridge a wrought iron fence tops the wall of a terraced cafe garden. Through a little arched gateway and up a short flight of steps are visible bright-colored tales and the green of potted shrubbery. Just beyond, an old, overhanging balcony with a railing of decorative wrought iron work clings to the ivy-covered wall high above the walk.
On the north bank of the stream the old Twohig retaining wall continues for a short distance until it is joined with the foundation of the San Antonio Public Service Company Building. The bank has a carpet of grass, with clumps of cannas and water lilies growing along the water's edge. Giant willows, cypress trees and cottonwoods line both banks in this section. About midway between the dam and North St. Mary's Street, John Twohig had a private footbridge which for years connected his residence with his place of business on West Commerce Street.
It was along Commerce Street near here that, nine days after the Council House Fight in 1840, the Comanche Chief Isimanica, almost naked and in full war paint, rode, shaking his clenched fist and shouting defiance at the citizens, at which, wrote Mrs. Mary Maverick, many of the soldiers "were with difficulty restrained."
The walk continues along the south bank beneath the North St. Mary's Street bridge, from the south end of which a flight of steps leads down to a boat landing guarded by a cedar railing. Approximately a hundred yards farther on the river is spanned by the curve of a Venetian-type stone bridge. Above and beyond the old rock retaining wall on the north bank rise the stone buildings of the former St. Mary's College, established in 1852, now the night school of St. Mary's University, and where this bridge touches that bank was the college boat landing. Many of the students in the 1860's and 1870's came to school by water.
From this point the riverbank walks are on both sides of the stream.
On the north bank, a short way downstream from the footbridge, water from the cooling system of the Majestic Theatre Building gushes from an opening arched with rough rocks, and tumbles, foaming, down three uneven steps of a moss-covered cascade. Back of the opening rise the weathered stones of an old retaining wall. Banana trees and decorative shrubs flank the cascade. Between North St. Mary's and Navarro Streets, the walk along the south bank at the street level is of cantilever construction.
A square-block stairway of cement steps and rock walls leads down from the south end of the Navarro Street bridge to a boat landing guarded by round-topped cement posts and an iron railing. Near by, a bracket of cedar holds an arc light. Beneath the south end of the bridge is a drinking fountain, set in the top of an artificial boulder. The steps at the north end of the bridge are of cement with a wrought iron handrail, and descend in a sharp reverse angle.
On the north bank, just east of the Navarro Street bridge, a huge cottonwood lifts high a tall, straight trunk before it spreads its broad-leafed branches. Close by is a great cypress, more than nine feet in circumference at the base, whose topmost branches rise to a great height. Here was once the garden of the old Herff residence, and it is said that this cypress was planted by members of the Herff family, who were leaders among the cultured Germans, refugees from their homeland, whose exodus to Texas began in the 1840's.
Near at Hand, The Alamo
Now the river is swinging toward the northeast, and presently, when it has passed beneath the North Presa Street bridge, it turns abruptly to run south. But a block and a half distant, here, is the Alamo, the mission-fortress in which in 1836, William Barret Travis, James Bowie, Davy Crockett, James Butler Bonham and more than 180 others resisted the overwhelming Mexican forces of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and died to the last fighting man.
A cement stairway with a wrought iron handrail leads down from the north end of the Presa Street bridge, supported by two graceful cement arches. At the foot of the stairs is a reproduction of one of the square-faced street lamps that were used in the gas-light era. Along this section of the north and east bank ran the corrals and stables of the cavalry detachment of Department Military Headquarters, U. S. Army, which in the 1870's occupied a building at the corner of Presa and Houston Streets.
Along the south bank of the river—which around the curve becomes the west bank—a widening of the stream necessitated the construction of a cement cat-walk over the water. Beneath its low surface are concealed electric lights. At the edge of the walk runs an iron handrail supported by squat cement columns. The rail is painted a bright blue to match the color of heavy beams beneath the Presa Street bridge. This walk spans more than 150 feet of water, and leads to the foot of stairs at the west end of the Crockett Street bridge.
Among the more than 30 flights of steps utilized in the project—no two stairways being exactly alike—this one, of composite design and construction, is unusually notable. The upper part is of cedar, hand-hewn and notched, and the huge logs that form the quaint, inverted tripod supports are bound with iron bands. Steps and railings are of cedar. The supports and guards of the mid-landing and of the lower steps are of stone, and the steps are of cement. The handrail is of wrought iron.
The walk that follows the east bank has a rustic cedar railing. At the east end of the Crockett Street bridge a reverse-angled stairway is supported by a twisted column constructed of brick.
First Public Utility
In 1786 a grant of land on the city side of the river at about this point was made by the Spanish authorities to one Francisco Calaorra, in consideration of his agreement to use his boat as a public ferry to the Alamo side. Thus, oddly, the first public service transportation in this inland city was by water.
Along the section between Crockett and West Commerce Streets are overhanging balconies on some of the older buildings. High retaining walls are covered with thick growths of climbing ivy, and there are willow, pecan and cypress trees, one of the pecans leaning far out over the stream in a leafy arch that reaches nearly to the opposite bank.
From both the east and west ends of the West Commerce Street bridge, flights of cement steps curve down to broad boat landings. Here is the site of the first bridge ever to span the San Antonio River, built in 1736. One hundred years later, on the west bank close to the bridge, stood the Mexican battery from which, at Santa Anna's orders, was sounded the no-quarter bugle call, the deguello, which was the signal for the Alamo assault.
Beneath the east end of this bridge the water from the cooling system of the Joske Building flows from beneath an arch of honeycombed rock, flanked by beds of ferns. Within the arch are hidden colored lights which at night are reflected in the tumbling spray.
A few feet south of the bridge, on the east bank, stood a house reputed to have been the boarding place of William Sidney Porter (O. Henry) during the brief time that he worked as a reporter in San Antonio.
At the east end of the Market Street bridge is a flight of cement steps, its cypress handrail supported by wrought iron balusters. There is also a stairway with stone rails at the west end of the bridge, at the foot of which the walk along the west bank temporarily ends. The walk along the east bank continues.
On the west bank, south of the Market Street bridge, stands a row of cypress trees planted at about the turn of the century, their feathery tops reflected in the water. On the crest of the grassy bank behind the trees the profusion of blossoms and ordered greenery is the garden of the headquarters building of the City Water Board.
A long, steep flight of steps leads down to the east bank between the walls of two buildings in the 200 block of South Alamo Street. A few steps south is the arch of an old drain made of loose stone construction laid without cement.
As the river turns sharply westward, the east bank becomes the south bank, and runs parallel to Villita Street. Two worn and broken flights of stone steps come down from the rear of old houses. From beneath the low wall at the foot of the bank a spring, uncovered by project workers, trickles into a shallow rock basin built for it.
A City Outdoor Theatre
Just around the Villita bend is the Arneson River Theatre. Its concession house and projection room is at the top of the high south bank, and below it, down the slope of the bank, are tiers of grassy seats from which an audience of close to a thousand can view the action of play or motion picture across the river, where a concrete stage stands before a permanent backdrop of three narrow, mission-type bell arches above a stone wall. Adjacent, on the downstream side of the stage, is a building housing the dressing and property rooms, on the roof of which is a dove cote. Mission architecture prevails in both the concession house and the dressing room structure.
Old Villita
Along the south bank near this point La Villita (The Little Town) had its beginning with a few huts early in San Antonio's history, probably in 1722. At first its houses were crude jacales that sheltered Indian converts of the Mission San Antonio de Valero. These were replaced by structures of adobe with thatched roofs. With the passing of the mission era the place was occupied by the families of the Spanish soldiers then stationed in the Alamo. It was a humble little community until a disastrous flood in 1819 almost destroyed the Villa de San Fernando, downstream across the river. On its higher ground La Villita escaped the flood; to it migrated the aristocratic families of San Fernando, and the little village became an exclusive residential area.
The fortunes of war during the hectic years of the Mexican and Texas revolutions brought strife to the village. The aristocrats fled and the houses were deserted or occupied by Indian or lowly peon. Then came new people from the Old World. German, French and Polish settlers—many of them well born—made their homes here, halfway between the battered ruins of the Alamo and the crowded plazas of the business district. The transplanted home life of these Europeans blended with the Spanish and Anglo-American in a harmonious mixture of cultures, and again the place became a center of prosperity and the more exclusive social life.
With the passing of years came decay. Families that had given culture, refinement and art to the Little Town moved elsewhere as the city grew. The section's buildings fell slowly into disrepair and neglect. The architectural record of La Villita's history was in danger of being forever lost when Mayor Maury Maverick, in 1939, proposed the restoration of a city block—on Villita Street, between Nacional, King Philip V and South Presa Streets—that should authentically exhibit all the influences of the past. Carried out as a National Youth Administration project, the undertaking was far advanced at the beginning of 1941.
Directly behind the concession house of the Arneson River Theatre, and reached by a walk beneath an arched gateway, is the first unit of restored La Villita—the residence at 513 Villita Street that is called the Cos House, in which Gen. Martin Perfecto de Cos, Santa Anna's brother-in-law, signed the formal articles of capitulation after the Texans had won the Battle of San Antonio.
The building's restoration is as near as possible to its early design. Ancient fireplaces remain, and interior woodwork is replaced in the early manner. Modern improvements, in the interest of public service, include rest rooms for men and women and a fully equipped kitchen for the preparation of luncheons and dinners. A wide, tile-floored porch on the east side faces a garden courtyard landscaped with native trees and shrubs and containing a concrete dance floor and a raised pool. The surrounding wall is six feet in height, with panels designed to be set along its inside surface depicting in bas-relief incidents of local history.
Preservation of the Past
Diagonally across Villita Street from the Cos House is the principal group of the La Villita restoration. In the old buildings that have been preserved and renewed every effort has been made to retain as nearly as practicable the architecture of the various periods represented, and such buildings as are new are designed to harmonize with and supplement them. Several of the structures are to house native arts and crafts, visitors being able to observe, as it was done in earlier days, the fabrication of wrought iron, the weaving of rugs, blankets and draperies, and the making of native pottery and tile. Original designs for the workers employed are to be created in an art department.
Names that honor patriots of South and Central America have been given to some of the buildings, and Argentinian being commemorated by the Jose de San Martin House, and a Brazilian by the Caxias House, the furnishings for which are expected to be supplied by the government of Brazil. There is also a Canada House, and other names are to be similarly selected.
Occupying the southeast corner of the restored area, the largest structure of the group will be the Bolivar Building, named in honor of Simon Bolivar, the South American liberator. A combination library, museum, and community center, this two-story, squared-stone edifice of 120 by 30 feet was designed to follow the architectural style of the United States frontier military posts of the 1850's. The basic funds for its erection were obtained from the Carnegie Foundation, and work had been started at the 1941 New Year.
Along the north front and around the west end of the building will run broad upper and lower galleries. Two steps will lead down from the ground level to the floor of the downstair porch, on which will open five sets of double doors, each of the half-door type to permit the upper sections to be thrown open for light and ventilation even though the lower sections may not be in use. The lower floor is planned to contain the library and museum, a large reading room, a smaller research room, storerooms and workrooms. It is intended that the museum shall exhibit interchangeable collections of Spanish, Mexican, Central American, South American, and Texas relics, arts and crafts, and that the library shall contain books, archives, records and manuscripts on Spanish, Mexican and Texas history. Museum display racks and cases, and library book shelves, will be arranged for correct lighting and public convenience. The reading room at the west end with a large fireplace set in a tile panel of flower-bud design, will have comfortable chairs and tables, and the research room at the southeast corner, with a smaller fireplace, is to be furnished in much the same manner.
Two long outside stairways will lead from the lower gallery to the upper, from which five sliding doors, guarded by iron grille work, will open into a second floor entertainment hail 84 by 30 feet. Equipped with folding chairs and a movable stage, the hall will be available for concerts, lectures, plays, and meetings.
In Villita is a heroic statue of the Mexican patriot, Hidalgo, who raised the standard of revolt against Spain in 1810. The statue was presented by President Manuel Avila Camacho and Col. Gonzales Santos to Mayor Maverick for Villita.
The purpose of the re-creation of La Villita was thus expressed in the city ordinance which sanctioned it.
Once City's Social Center
At the downstream edge of the Arneson Theatre an arched footbridge of stone masonry connects the two units of the theatre, and at its north end is another old street lamp standard. Beyond this footbridge the riverbank walks are again on both sides of the stream.
On the north bank, the City Water Board building is in part the Old Casino Club building and opera house, built in 1858, which for many years was a social and entertainment center. In the rear of this structure a large granjeno tree trails its tangled branches far out over the walk, to dip its dark green, artificial-looking leaves and sprays of yellow berries into the water. The small berries are edible, and there is a folk belief among local Mexicans that captive mockingbirds fed granjeno berries sing more sweetly than others.
Stone stairways lead down from both ends of the South Presa Street bridge, just west of which a tiny island close to the north bank on which grows a leaning cypress, is reached by a low—arched footbridge. This island marks the approximate site of the dam which served the old Nat Lewis mill, built in 1847. Near by, set in the top of an artificial boulder, is a drinking fountain.
Opposite, on the south bank between South Presa and Navarro Streets, a level area is covered by a concrete floor, to which steps lead from the south end of the Navarro Street bridge. It is marked off into stalls—separated by lengths of only iron railings once used in San Pedro Park, which were salvaged and reconditioned by project workers—from which curios are sold during the week of the annual Fiesta de San Jacinto. Each stall has water and light connections in the stone wall at is rear.
The Old Indian Ford
Very close to where the Navarro Street bridge stands, an old Indian ford in the early days of the settlement was the only crossing of the river used by all travelers from the north and east. Down past the Alamo came the Nacogdoches road, to turn westward around the river bend through La Villita—where it was joined by the road from La Bahia—and then swing northward across this ford and then westward again to enter the Villa of San Fernando.
On a day in 1811 a grisly warning to all who might be tempted to revolt against Spanish rule was posted here. San Antonians had participated in an ill-starred Mexican revolution earlier in the year, and when Spanish soldiery came to inflict punishment the severed head of Colonel Delgado, one of its leaders, was displayed on a pole where all who crossed the river at this point could behold the lesson.
Here, on the north bank of the stream, long before there was a bridge, stood the old Nat Lewis mill. From above that bank, steps come down to a boat landing that extends beneath the bridge and is guarded at the water's edge by a row of round-topped tie posts, each provided with a large iron ring. Here is a covered slip that houses the maintenance craft of the project. A 16-foot motorboat, equipped with a pump and three hose connections through which the grass, shrubbery and flowers along the banks can be watered from the river, is in operation daily along the project. A hand-operated drawbridge in the river walk gives access to the slip. Along the south bank is a cement rail of a design that resembles small millstones.
Along this section of the river commercial bathhouses were operated in the 1870's and 1880's well patronized by residents who, not owning property on the stream, did not have their own private bathhouses.
Into "Bowen's Island"
The river and its walks now pass into the area once called Bowen's Island—not in fact an island, but nearly so; an irregular peninsula formed by erratic twistings of the river that now have disappeared.
In early days San Antonions hunted, fished, and swam at the "island." Later, in the middle 1870's, Wolfram's "Central Garden," a place of convivial entertainment, was established here and gained great popularity. Still later the area became the favorite lot for visiting circuses and carnivals, and for outdoor rodeos, and continued to be principally so used through the period of the World War. With the adoption of measures for adequate flood control, the river here was straightened. The 31-story Smith-Young Tower Building, which between Navarro and South St. Mary's Streets looms above the south bank, and the Plaza Hotel just beyond, both stand in what was the old river bed.
Enclosed stairs lead down from the north end of the South St. Mary's Street bridge to a boat landing beside which is another reproduction of the old gas street lamps, and along the edge of the landing is another section of San Pedro Park railing. Here the walk along the north bank terminates.
The stairway at the south end of this bridge is of interesting construction, made necessary because quicksands presented a problem as to securing foundations. The stairs spiral downward in delicate design, guarded by a wrought iron railing. From the street level no support is visible, and it is only from the river walk that novel, egg-shaped buttresses can be seen, close to the water line.
Along the north bank at street level, west of South St. Mary's Street, runs a cantilever walk along which are spaced cedar light brackets. And now the river's big bend has been traversed, and the stream is approaching the terminal dam structure, where the beautification project ends.
This terminal structure is a double dam—a set of two falls. At this point the cut-off channel which left the river near West Commerce Street rejoins it, and this double dam operates for flood control in conjunction with the unit at the northern end of the cut-off.
The upstream dam is semicircular, with an arc of about 40 feet. A gently sloping concrete apron is on the upstream side, and the water flows over the smooth rim of the arc in a transparent curtain to a foam-flecked pool below, with a drop of about four feet. The pool or catch basin is roughly oval in shape and about 20 feet long. Its downstream end is flattened by the straight-edged rim of the lower dam, from which the second waterfall drops about eight feet.
Over the lower dam arches a footbridge, its railing on the upstream side of the same millstone design that is used near Navarro Street, which connects walks that northerly lead to Market Street and southerly to Villita Street. From the south end of this bridge steps descend to the flagstoned area beside a basin between the waterfalls.
Past the dams and the cut-off channel, the river moves southward, to wind toward the city limits and thence on its 100-mile journey to the Guadalupe River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico.
A City Report, New Style
This is something new, I hope, in city reports.
I have read many city reports, and nearly all of them are very stuffy affairs. They get jumbled up with so many figures that you hardly ever finish the first two pages. This one will be neither stuffy nor statistical. It will carry but three simple financial items, and the description of the accomplishments on which it reports—the beautification of the San Antonio River—will be left to the book of which it is the introduction.
The book—prepared by the Texas Writers' Project, with a Foreword by the W.P.A. State Administrator for Texas—tells the story of the San Antonio River, and of the important and often romantic exciting and tragic events that have occurred beside it. And it describes how the City of San Antonio and the W.P.A. together have developed and carried out the River Beautification Project, by which the winding stream has been made a place of public enjoyment in the heart of a modern streamlined city.
During an earlier city administration, certain public-spirited citizens created a river improvement district and voted a bond issue of $75,000. The bulk of the work and planning was done under the present administration, and we take pride in it.
A city should be clean, sanitary, artistic—a place where people can live as decent human beings. It should have breathing spaces, where citizens and visitors can walk or rest, comfortably and without annoyance. Such spaces, in a thickly settled community, can only be the result of planning.
The large cities of America were not planned. Men built haphazardly, wherever they found what seemed at the moment to be suitable places. The result was ugly factory districts, and crowded and unsanitary residential sections which too often became hideous, unlivable breeding places of crime, sickness, and unhappiness.
Rivers within the cities have been left alone to become dirty canals, their banks occupied by the ugliest types of commerce or by housing that is unfit for human habitation. Their original beauty has been lost. Only planning can restore it.
The River Beautification Project is not a complete plan for San Antonio. It is, however, an important part of a plan to make the city more beautiful and more livable. We believe that in all the United States of America there is no city in which a river has been made a more attractive resort for all the people.
And here, in two lines, is the financial part of the report:
$75,000 was spent by the City.
$355,000 was spent by the W.P.A.
Throughout our nation the W.P.A. has given work and hope to millions of unemployed, and the projects it has undertaken have been useful works to all the people of America. Without it, San Antonio could not have made the progress that it has made, and we are grateful for the support that the Federal Government has given our city.
Following is a supplemental report by Jack White, Chairman of the River Beautification Board. His, most largely, was the energy which aroused public spirit and brought about, with City and W.P.A. aid, the actual fulfillment of the river improvement vision, and the great work that he has done should receive credit from all citizens of San Antonio for all time to come. In addition we want to thank the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the civic clubs and the many women's organizations for enthusiastic cooperation.
Maury Maverick,
Mayor of San Antonio
Citizens' Hopes Come True
Early civilization in Southwest Texas followed closely the rivers in this section because water was always important, not only for transportation, but also for irrigation to raise the things that the early settler had to depend upon for food.
Since the time of the first settlement, the San Antonio River has played many roles, from furnishing life-giving water to providing a setting for historic events.
In the early days it was naturally beautiful, winding its lazy way between narrow banks with their native foliage. Then as the city grew and the languid atmosphere of the town gave way to the rush of modern commerce, through neglect the river lost its charm and became almost a necessary evil. In fact at one time there was a movement by a group of businessmen to fill in the bed of the river through its great bend because it had become an eyesore.
Then came the flood of 1921, when this lazy little stream became a raging torrent that swept through the business district of San Antonio destroying millions of dollars worth of property. This was followed by a flood prevention program to protect San Antonio from such devastation again.
When the flood prevention work had become a reality, new impetus was given to the thought of beautification that had always been in the minds of those of us who appreciated how great a share the river had in the atmosphere that makes our city different from all others, and proposals to again make it attractive were started by a small group. Working hard and long, and with growing appreciation of what the river could mean to our city not only as a thing of beauty but as a recreation center, the River Beautification Board, assisted by many other interested citizens, moved toward turning a liability into an asset. The actual work on the River Beautification Project was carried out under the regime of Mayor Maverick. Due to his ever-enthusiastic cooperation, our board has been able to carry out its plans.
As it is today, the river has recaptured its charm and become a memorial to the past and a setting for the relaxation and enjoyment of present and future generations.
Jack White
Chairman, River Beautification Board
Foreword
Generations of San Antonians have hoped that the slow flowing river which winds through the heart of their city would some day be transformed into a downtown park where they and their visitors could enjoy the native beauty which first attracted their forefathers, those pioneers who settled the City of the Alamo.
It remained for two practical men with vision to conceive the fulfillment of these hopes. The late Edwin P. Arneson, engineer, in whose memory the Arneson River Theatre has been named, and R. H. H. Hugman, architect, converted the hopes into plans which have now been developed into beautiful reality.
For the execution of these plans credit is due James Arthur Hazelrigg, District Manager of the San Antonio Work Projects Administration District, and to the members of the District Staff who assumed and capably discharged the responsibility for this great civic enterprise. However this could not have been done had it not been for the wholehearted and generous cooperation given by the City of San Antonio and for the vigorous, unselfish and untiring efforts of the River Beautification Board.
A greater consideration, however, than this development of San Antonians' hopes into beautiful reality is that the work along the banks of their river provided many months of employment for hundreds of destitute men who had sought long and fruitlessly for private jobs. They labored faithfully and gratefully in the refuse-cluttered mud of the river bottom for meager wages. The result of their labor is eloquent proof of the fact that they did not shirk. What they have created by their toil will endure throughout the years as a tribute to their physical energy and to the wisdom of a government which provides honest work for its unemployed, destitute citizens instead of destroying their characters with the degradation of a dole.
H. P. Drought
State Administrator for Texas,
Work Projects Administration.
Along the San Antonio River
will drink from it again."
—From an old Spanish legend.
Thus, in the eighteenth century, was recorded the yearning to return of those who had visited the green and fruitful valley of San Antonio and seen its winding stream. The city's residents do not drink of the river these days, but its charm has not lessened. On the contrary, an elaborate program begun in 1939 and completed in 1941 has made it even more attractive.
The river flows peacefully now, although in earlier times it has swept lives and property before it in uncontrolled floods. Tourists wander along its banks in the shadow of skyscrapers, where once through dust and mud plodded Spanish soldiers, brown-robed missionaries, Canary Island colonists, and daring pioneers who brought a new and clashing type of civilization from east of the Sabine.
In long past years upon a far frontier—first of New Spain and then on the westward march of Anglo-Americans—the stream wound through many a scene of violence and tragedy. The head of a revolutionist upon a pole once sickeningly disfigured it, and other revolutionists by hundreds were herded across it to swift trial and execution. Bugles have wafted from one side to the other a merciless message of extinction, to be followed by the roar of cannon and the crash of musketry. These banks have echoed Indian war whoops, the roisterings of a wild cattle capital, and the lethal crack of bad men's pistols.
It is a narrow river as it flows through San Antonio, for its headwaters are but a few steps beyond the city's northern limits. It twists and turns are so many that in crossing six miles of streets it passes under forty-two highway bridges, and there is a tradition that Indians, after they had become familiar with some of the less creditable habits of white men, called it by a name that meant "Drunken-old-man-going-home-at-night."
European eyes first fell upon it during the spring of 1536, in the opinion of eminent historians, when Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who as a shipwrecked captive of Indians was the earliest Spaniard to see the interior of present-day Texas, visited a valley which, from his later written description, almost certainly was this one.
In 1691 a Spanish expedition halted here at an aboriginal village called Yanaguana, and on St. Anthony of Padua's feast day, June 13, Franciscan Father Damian Massanet celebrated Mass under a cottonwood arbor and named the place of San Antonio. A later expedition, in 1709, gave the same name to the waterway.
On one side of the river, in May, 1718, was established the Mission San Antonio de Valero, which long afterward became a fortress called the Alamo; on the other side, a few days later, the little Villa of Bejar. For more than a century and a half the spread of the town was almost wholly governed by the stream's meanderings, and few important events in the city's early history occurred far from its banks.
Old Scenes and New
Except at a few points where its channel has been moved or straightened, the river flows today in the same pattern as of old. Fed near its source by a creek called the Olmos—normally little more than a trickle but which, before control measures were established, contributed to dangerous floods—it winds amid picturesque surroundings through Brackenridge Park and towards the city's center.
"Who'll Go With Old Ben Milam?"
Near ninth street, it passes the area where Stephen F. Austin's little army of revolutionary Texans, in the autumn of 1835, laid siege to the Mexican-held city after a detachment under James Bowie, in October, had won the Battle of Concepcion in a bend of the river below the town.
The besiegers were ill-clad, ill-fed and insufficiently armed, and the city itself so well fortified that storming it seemed hopeless. Mexican reinforcements were near at hand. An officers' council, on December 4, decided to break camp, raise the siege, and go into winter quarters at Gonzales, but this plan was upset by the shouted challenge: "Who'll go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?"
River Beautification Project
A short distance downstream, at a point 200 feet north of the Fourth Street bridge, is that first unit of a program launched in 1939 by the City of San Antonio and the Work Projects Administration, to increase the beauty of the river and its banks for more than a mile and a quarter and install flood control units for its protection.
Construction in 1940 included three dams, two large footbridges, and numerous flights of steps from the streets down the river banks. These steps, leading from almost every bridge in the improved area, vary in design and material. Rock curbs have been built along both banks of the stream, and extend well below the water level; they are three feet, six inches in width at the base, sloping on the land face to one foot at the top. Walks of flagstone, cobblestone, brick, cement inlaid with pebbles, and concrete blocks follow sometimes one bank, sometimes both, close to the water.
Along the part of the river included in the project it was necessary to dredge to a depth of from three to five feet in the river bed, to remove a centuries-old accumulation of silt and rubbish. For long stretches it was possible to uncover the old gravel bed of the stream. Dark stains on pillars supporting bridges indicate the depths of dredging at various points. Thousands of truckloads of refuse and muck were removed. Old buggy beds, broken wagon wheels, tangled barbed wire, sunken barrels—once the floats of bathhouses—were uncovered. There were also wrecks of bicycles and parts of automobiles, even a few battered tonneaus. Old guns, rusted pistols, and a few cannon balls were found.
Employed on the work were surveyors and engineers, landscape architects, nurserymen, tree surgeons, rock masons, carpenters, painters and plasterers, electricians, plumbers, a drag line operator, laborers and truck drivers.
The extensive improvements included the planting of flowering shrubs of various kinds, trees, bushes, vines, and water growths. In many places repairs with cement and structural steel were necessary to protect certain trees. Along both banks, in the shade of trees and beneath bridges, were placed benches of stone, cement, or rustic cedar.
Floodlights, indirect lighting equipment, and many decorative stand lanterns were installed at a cost of $19,000. Colored lights were placed at points where they could be used effectively. Hidden bulbs beneath the water were set amid thick growths of cannas, flag lilies and hyacinths. The lighting system is controlled by eight switches placed at intervals along the improved section.
A Riverbank Stroll
At the check dam near the Fourth Street bridge, which maintains the natural water level above this point and assists in controlling the artificial level in the area covered by the project, the river walk begins, but it is by no means necessary that one who wishes to stroll beside the stream should start from here. Tourists will find, convenient to their downtown hotels, steps leading from street level to river walk at the Travis, Houston, St. Mary's, Commerce, Navarro and Presa Street bridges. Visitors at La Villita will find the Arneson River Theatre, at the rear of the Cos House, an excellent spot from which to start. Short strolls from any of these points will skirt interesting sections of the river.
At its northernmost beginning, near the Fourth Street bridge, the walk follows the south bank. Across the stream a broad expanse of smooth lawn sweeps down from the old Nat Lewis house, built in 1848, to a fringe of trees along the water. Nat Lewis was a pioneer cattle king and merchant, who bore the nickname "Don Pilon," probably because of his custom of making a gift with each purchase, however small, such presents being by Mexicans called pilon.
A flight of cement steps guarded by stone railings winds down from the east end of the Fourth Street bridge.
Midway between Fourth and Richmond Streets is the site of an old swimming hole of the 1870's and 1880's.
The walk passes in the shadow of a high retaining wall at the rear of the Municipal Auditorium, which stands in what was once the river bed. There is no stairway at the Richmond Street bridge.
Just west of the Navarro Street bridge a flight of cement steps curves down to the path through a stone-arched doorway in the retaining wall. Here the trend of the river is slightly south of west. From where the concrete retaining wall ends, the high bank of the river is supported by an old wall of heavy stone blocks set without cement.
A straight flight of stone steps leads down from the south end of the upper North St. Mary's Street bridge, the first of the three St. Mary's Steet bridges within the project. From its north end, in the rear of one of the old buildings of the Ursuline Convent, another flight of cement steps, decorated with railings of stone masonry, curves gracefully around a chinaberry tree to a boat landing. Here is the beginning of the walk along the north bank.
An Ancient Convent
The central stone building in the convent grounds was built by a Frenchman who expected his wife to join him, but she refused to quit France for the Texas wilderness and the mansion remained deserted until Ursuline nuns from New Orleans converted it into the city's first boarding school for girls and built the convent and chapel, in 1851. The clock tower has faces on three sides. There is no face on the north, because the convent was so far out in the country that no one could imagine enough people living beyond it in that direction to make it of value.
At the Augusta Street bridge are two flights of stairs, one from each end of the structure. The one at the north is of cement with stone railings. At the south end a steep, narrow flight of old stone steps has been utilized. The age of this stairway is indicated by its worn condition.
Just downstream from the Augusta Street bridge the river turns sharply southward. What has been the south bank now becomes the east.
Around this bend moved Ben Milam's three hundred, to enter the city along the Calle de Soledad—the Street of Solitude, because those who had homes there were outside the town's bustle—which is still Soledad Street, a stone's throw from the river at this point.
Project workers dubbed this curve "Crawfish Bend" when the dredged thousands of those crustaceans from the mud of the river here.
On the right, at the turn, short flights of steps drop down from the east end of Rodriguez Street over a series of rock-walled terraces. They end at the river bank, in a little parked area shaded by a leaning oak. Downstream, as the river curves first easterly, then westerly, although still flowing toward the south, the walks continue on both banks, beneath the Convent Street, East Martin Street and East Pecan Street bridges. No steps from the streets above are at these points. Climbing ivy covers the high old retaining walls along this section.
At Armistead Street a flight of cement steps curves down from the highway level, through a rock-arched doorway in the retaining wall, to a boat landing guarded by cedar posts. A little farther on, a tall, gnarled old cottonwood growing above the wall overhangs the walk along the west bank. Opposite it ancient fig trees hug the east wall, their upper branches topping its crest.
The Heart of the City
Now the stream is entering the business heart of the city. From a rocky opening beneath the walk on the west bank gushes a noisy cascade that foams and gurgles around three artificial boulders; it comes from the outlet of the air-cooling system of the Milam Building. At the east end of the East Travis Street bridge another stairway descends.
Between East Travis and East Houston Streets, cantilever walks at the street level follow a graceful, shallow reverse curve of the river. A short distance below East Travis Street a flight of cement steps comes down from a path that leads to Soledad Street, passing beneath the cantilever walk to end at a boat landing.
Two stairways descend at the East Houston Street bridge, at which point the river walk continues along the west side of the stream only. Near the foot of the stairway on this bank is another boat landing, and cement benches are shaded by a row of slender cypress trees.
The first bridge at this point was built in 1853, prior to which the river had been crossed by a ford. Near here the city's first bank was established in 1808 by Don Antonio de la Garza, and it is said that he minted money by permission of the Spanish government. A little beyond, to the west, was the Buffalo Camp Yard, made use of in the early 1870's by traders in buffalo hides.
A short distance below East Houston Street, above the east bank, appear the tops of trees that stand where once was the patio of a house occupied in 1859 by Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee.
Palace, Figs, and Tree of Heaven
Along the west bank, as early as 1740, gardens spread behind houes along Soledad Street. Only a few yards downstream stood the residence of Don Juan Martin de Veramendi, who became vice governor of Texas in 1830, a building so large and luxuriously furnished that it was called the Veramendi Palace. Here the aristocracy gathered for lavish social events, and here the great frontiersman James Bowie wooed and won Ursula Veramendi, the vice governor's daughter. During the Battle of San Antonio this house was occupied by some of Ben Milam's men, and Milam was killed near the front doorway by a Mexican sharpshooter on the third day of the battle. He was buried that night not far from where he fell, with military and Masonic honors.
In the former garden of the Veramendi Palace is a building that housed the Bexar County Court in the 1880's, now used by a department store. Between that building and the river are fig trees of great size, said to have been planted by the Veramendis, two of which, growing above the stone retaining wall, rise to a height of more than two stories of the surrounding buildings. A third, its gnarled roots prying apart the rocks, juts out midway between the top and bottom of the wall and turns sharply upward to merge its branches with those of the trees above. From across the stream the combined branches and huge leaves appear to be one giant fig tree. A little farther along is an ailanthus or "tree of heaven," planted by an early Spanish settler.
Presently the river turns at right angles toward the east. On the west bank just before the course of the stream changes, stood the house built by Samuel A. Maverick in 1839, in which San Antonio men gathered for defense when the city was seized and briefly held by the Mexican Gen. Adrian Woll in 1842. Maverick, whose small herd of unbranded cattle brought into the English language the descriptive common noun "maverick," became mayor of San Antonio in 1839, and 100 years later his grandson Maury Maverick was inducted into the same office.
In what was once Samuel Maverick's riverbank garden grows a towering willow that stretches its twisted arms far out over the stream. On the opposite bank is a retaining wall, heavily overgrown with ivy, that was built by John Twohig in 1869, and from beyond the wall rise the roof and tall chimneys of the remains of the Twohig house, which date from the early 1840's. Twohig operated a bank, and gained the name "the breadline banker" for his custom of distributing each Saturday barrelfuls of bread to the city's poor.
On the river bank here is a cypress from whose trunk a "twin" tree lifts feathery branches on the other side of the retaining wall. Tradition says that from this tree Mexican soldiers fired on Texans who went down to the river bank for water during the Battle of San Antonio, and that the sharpshooter who killed Ben Milam did so from its branches.
A Center of Exciting Events
West and southwest of the river at this bend as established the Villa of San Fernando, when colonists from the Canary Islands were brought in by the Spanish government in 1731, and the center of their little community was the San Fernando Church which now, as San Fernando Cathedral, is still at the city's geographical center. Near it is the old Spanish Governor's Palace, and west of that is the great Mexican quarter.
Just beyond where the Maverick house was later built is the point at which victory for the Texans in the Battle of San Antonio was assured when, after four days' desperate fighting, they reached the fortified plaza at the end of Soledad Street. General Cos raised the white flag of surrender on the morning of the fifth day.
At this same point, in the "wild and woolly" period of the 1880's was the "fatal corner" near which occurred many major homicides, including the sensational killing of Ben Thompson and King Fisher in the Vaudeville Theatre. A little beyond was Santa Anna's headquarters during the siege of the Alamo, in which he is said to have had a bogus marriage to a San Antonio girl performed by henchmen attired in vestments stolen from a priest. And less than two blocks from the river started the Council House Fight of 1840, in which 33 Comanches and seven white men were killed.
Where the river turns eastward, an artificial cut-off channel runs due south. This is a unit of the city's flood control project of 1922, which takes care of the steam's overflow in times of high water. The River Beautification Project has supplemented this flood prevention measure with a floodgate dam and 48-inch water-level gate into the cut-off. Across an isthmus that is but little more than three blocks wide, the straight artifical channel rejoins the river, which to cover the same distance has wound and twisted east and south and west, beneath nine highway bridges, to make of the land within the great loop a hammer-headed peninsula.
A walk from West Commerce Street leads across the floodgate dam and down a short flight of steps to a circular, rock-walled observation point. Set in the wall of the superstructure is a tile panel—a creation of the Work Projects Administration Arts and Crafts project—picturing in colors the story of the Mexican snipers in the near-by cypress tree.
Three of the four graceful arches in the dam contain heavy steel doors or gates, operated by hand, which shut off or regulate the flow of water. Gates in the two middle arches span the river, while the one at the south end affects the cut-off channel. In times of heavy rain and abnormally high water, the closing of the river dam diverts the flow into the old cut-off; the river itself below this point receives the drainage of a relatively small area, which in turn is controlled by a floodgate at the terminal dam where the beautification project ends.
It is within the great three-sided bend between these two dams that the most extensive improvements of the project have been made. This section also contains many benches, which at shady spots invite the stroller to rest and are popular at lunchtime with downtown store and office workers.
In the River's Big Bend
At the upper dam the river walk passes beneath one of its arches, near which a flight of cement steps with stone railings curves down from West Commerce Street at the dam's south end.
The old rock walls of building foundations along the south bank are covered with heavy growths of climbing ivy. Midway between the dam and the north St. Mary's Street bridge a wrought iron fence tops the wall of a terraced cafe garden. Through a little arched gateway and up a short flight of steps are visible bright-colored tales and the green of potted shrubbery. Just beyond, an old, overhanging balcony with a railing of decorative wrought iron work clings to the ivy-covered wall high above the walk.
On the north bank of the stream the old Twohig retaining wall continues for a short distance until it is joined with the foundation of the San Antonio Public Service Company Building. The bank has a carpet of grass, with clumps of cannas and water lilies growing along the water's edge. Giant willows, cypress trees and cottonwoods line both banks in this section. About midway between the dam and North St. Mary's Street, John Twohig had a private footbridge which for years connected his residence with his place of business on West Commerce Street.
It was along Commerce Street near here that, nine days after the Council House Fight in 1840, the Comanche Chief Isimanica, almost naked and in full war paint, rode, shaking his clenched fist and shouting defiance at the citizens, at which, wrote Mrs. Mary Maverick, many of the soldiers "were with difficulty restrained."
The walk continues along the south bank beneath the North St. Mary's Street bridge, from the south end of which a flight of steps leads down to a boat landing guarded by a cedar railing. Approximately a hundred yards farther on the river is spanned by the curve of a Venetian-type stone bridge. Above and beyond the old rock retaining wall on the north bank rise the stone buildings of the former St. Mary's College, established in 1852, now the night school of St. Mary's University, and where this bridge touches that bank was the college boat landing. Many of the students in the 1860's and 1870's came to school by water.
From this point the riverbank walks are on both sides of the stream.
On the north bank, a short way downstream from the footbridge, water from the cooling system of the Majestic Theatre Building gushes from an opening arched with rough rocks, and tumbles, foaming, down three uneven steps of a moss-covered cascade. Back of the opening rise the weathered stones of an old retaining wall. Banana trees and decorative shrubs flank the cascade. Between North St. Mary's and Navarro Streets, the walk along the south bank at the street level is of cantilever construction.
A square-block stairway of cement steps and rock walls leads down from the south end of the Navarro Street bridge to a boat landing guarded by round-topped cement posts and an iron railing. Near by, a bracket of cedar holds an arc light. Beneath the south end of the bridge is a drinking fountain, set in the top of an artificial boulder. The steps at the north end of the bridge are of cement with a wrought iron handrail, and descend in a sharp reverse angle.
On the north bank, just east of the Navarro Street bridge, a huge cottonwood lifts high a tall, straight trunk before it spreads its broad-leafed branches. Close by is a great cypress, more than nine feet in circumference at the base, whose topmost branches rise to a great height. Here was once the garden of the old Herff residence, and it is said that this cypress was planted by members of the Herff family, who were leaders among the cultured Germans, refugees from their homeland, whose exodus to Texas began in the 1840's.
Near at Hand, The Alamo
Now the river is swinging toward the northeast, and presently, when it has passed beneath the North Presa Street bridge, it turns abruptly to run south. But a block and a half distant, here, is the Alamo, the mission-fortress in which in 1836, William Barret Travis, James Bowie, Davy Crockett, James Butler Bonham and more than 180 others resisted the overwhelming Mexican forces of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and died to the last fighting man.
A cement stairway with a wrought iron handrail leads down from the north end of the Presa Street bridge, supported by two graceful cement arches. At the foot of the stairs is a reproduction of one of the square-faced street lamps that were used in the gas-light era. Along this section of the north and east bank ran the corrals and stables of the cavalry detachment of Department Military Headquarters, U. S. Army, which in the 1870's occupied a building at the corner of Presa and Houston Streets.
Along the south bank of the river—which around the curve becomes the west bank—a widening of the stream necessitated the construction of a cement cat-walk over the water. Beneath its low surface are concealed electric lights. At the edge of the walk runs an iron handrail supported by squat cement columns. The rail is painted a bright blue to match the color of heavy beams beneath the Presa Street bridge. This walk spans more than 150 feet of water, and leads to the foot of stairs at the west end of the Crockett Street bridge.
Among the more than 30 flights of steps utilized in the project—no two stairways being exactly alike—this one, of composite design and construction, is unusually notable. The upper part is of cedar, hand-hewn and notched, and the huge logs that form the quaint, inverted tripod supports are bound with iron bands. Steps and railings are of cedar. The supports and guards of the mid-landing and of the lower steps are of stone, and the steps are of cement. The handrail is of wrought iron.
The walk that follows the east bank has a rustic cedar railing. At the east end of the Crockett Street bridge a reverse-angled stairway is supported by a twisted column constructed of brick.
First Public Utility
In 1786 a grant of land on the city side of the river at about this point was made by the Spanish authorities to one Francisco Calaorra, in consideration of his agreement to use his boat as a public ferry to the Alamo side. Thus, oddly, the first public service transportation in this inland city was by water.
Along the section between Crockett and West Commerce Streets are overhanging balconies on some of the older buildings. High retaining walls are covered with thick growths of climbing ivy, and there are willow, pecan and cypress trees, one of the pecans leaning far out over the stream in a leafy arch that reaches nearly to the opposite bank.
From both the east and west ends of the West Commerce Street bridge, flights of cement steps curve down to broad boat landings. Here is the site of the first bridge ever to span the San Antonio River, built in 1736. One hundred years later, on the west bank close to the bridge, stood the Mexican battery from which, at Santa Anna's orders, was sounded the no-quarter bugle call, the deguello, which was the signal for the Alamo assault.
Beneath the east end of this bridge the water from the cooling system of the Joske Building flows from beneath an arch of honeycombed rock, flanked by beds of ferns. Within the arch are hidden colored lights which at night are reflected in the tumbling spray.
A few feet south of the bridge, on the east bank, stood a house reputed to have been the boarding place of William Sidney Porter (O. Henry) during the brief time that he worked as a reporter in San Antonio.
At the east end of the Market Street bridge is a flight of cement steps, its cypress handrail supported by wrought iron balusters. There is also a stairway with stone rails at the west end of the bridge, at the foot of which the walk along the west bank temporarily ends. The walk along the east bank continues.
On the west bank, south of the Market Street bridge, stands a row of cypress trees planted at about the turn of the century, their feathery tops reflected in the water. On the crest of the grassy bank behind the trees the profusion of blossoms and ordered greenery is the garden of the headquarters building of the City Water Board.
A long, steep flight of steps leads down to the east bank between the walls of two buildings in the 200 block of South Alamo Street. A few steps south is the arch of an old drain made of loose stone construction laid without cement.
As the river turns sharply westward, the east bank becomes the south bank, and runs parallel to Villita Street. Two worn and broken flights of stone steps come down from the rear of old houses. From beneath the low wall at the foot of the bank a spring, uncovered by project workers, trickles into a shallow rock basin built for it.
A City Outdoor Theatre
Just around the Villita bend is the Arneson River Theatre. Its concession house and projection room is at the top of the high south bank, and below it, down the slope of the bank, are tiers of grassy seats from which an audience of close to a thousand can view the action of play or motion picture across the river, where a concrete stage stands before a permanent backdrop of three narrow, mission-type bell arches above a stone wall. Adjacent, on the downstream side of the stage, is a building housing the dressing and property rooms, on the roof of which is a dove cote. Mission architecture prevails in both the concession house and the dressing room structure.
Old Villita
Along the south bank near this point La Villita (The Little Town) had its beginning with a few huts early in San Antonio's history, probably in 1722. At first its houses were crude jacales that sheltered Indian converts of the Mission San Antonio de Valero. These were replaced by structures of adobe with thatched roofs. With the passing of the mission era the place was occupied by the families of the Spanish soldiers then stationed in the Alamo. It was a humble little community until a disastrous flood in 1819 almost destroyed the Villa de San Fernando, downstream across the river. On its higher ground La Villita escaped the flood; to it migrated the aristocratic families of San Fernando, and the little village became an exclusive residential area.
The fortunes of war during the hectic years of the Mexican and Texas revolutions brought strife to the village. The aristocrats fled and the houses were deserted or occupied by Indian or lowly peon. Then came new people from the Old World. German, French and Polish settlers—many of them well born—made their homes here, halfway between the battered ruins of the Alamo and the crowded plazas of the business district. The transplanted home life of these Europeans blended with the Spanish and Anglo-American in a harmonious mixture of cultures, and again the place became a center of prosperity and the more exclusive social life.
With the passing of years came decay. Families that had given culture, refinement and art to the Little Town moved elsewhere as the city grew. The section's buildings fell slowly into disrepair and neglect. The architectural record of La Villita's history was in danger of being forever lost when Mayor Maury Maverick, in 1939, proposed the restoration of a city block—on Villita Street, between Nacional, King Philip V and South Presa Streets—that should authentically exhibit all the influences of the past. Carried out as a National Youth Administration project, the undertaking was far advanced at the beginning of 1941.
Directly behind the concession house of the Arneson River Theatre, and reached by a walk beneath an arched gateway, is the first unit of restored La Villita—the residence at 513 Villita Street that is called the Cos House, in which Gen. Martin Perfecto de Cos, Santa Anna's brother-in-law, signed the formal articles of capitulation after the Texans had won the Battle of San Antonio.
The building's restoration is as near as possible to its early design. Ancient fireplaces remain, and interior woodwork is replaced in the early manner. Modern improvements, in the interest of public service, include rest rooms for men and women and a fully equipped kitchen for the preparation of luncheons and dinners. A wide, tile-floored porch on the east side faces a garden courtyard landscaped with native trees and shrubs and containing a concrete dance floor and a raised pool. The surrounding wall is six feet in height, with panels designed to be set along its inside surface depicting in bas-relief incidents of local history.
Preservation of the Past
Diagonally across Villita Street from the Cos House is the principal group of the La Villita restoration. In the old buildings that have been preserved and renewed every effort has been made to retain as nearly as practicable the architecture of the various periods represented, and such buildings as are new are designed to harmonize with and supplement them. Several of the structures are to house native arts and crafts, visitors being able to observe, as it was done in earlier days, the fabrication of wrought iron, the weaving of rugs, blankets and draperies, and the making of native pottery and tile. Original designs for the workers employed are to be created in an art department.
Names that honor patriots of South and Central America have been given to some of the buildings, and Argentinian being commemorated by the Jose de San Martin House, and a Brazilian by the Caxias House, the furnishings for which are expected to be supplied by the government of Brazil. There is also a Canada House, and other names are to be similarly selected.
Occupying the southeast corner of the restored area, the largest structure of the group will be the Bolivar Building, named in honor of Simon Bolivar, the South American liberator. A combination library, museum, and community center, this two-story, squared-stone edifice of 120 by 30 feet was designed to follow the architectural style of the United States frontier military posts of the 1850's. The basic funds for its erection were obtained from the Carnegie Foundation, and work had been started at the 1941 New Year.
Along the north front and around the west end of the building will run broad upper and lower galleries. Two steps will lead down from the ground level to the floor of the downstair porch, on which will open five sets of double doors, each of the half-door type to permit the upper sections to be thrown open for light and ventilation even though the lower sections may not be in use. The lower floor is planned to contain the library and museum, a large reading room, a smaller research room, storerooms and workrooms. It is intended that the museum shall exhibit interchangeable collections of Spanish, Mexican, Central American, South American, and Texas relics, arts and crafts, and that the library shall contain books, archives, records and manuscripts on Spanish, Mexican and Texas history. Museum display racks and cases, and library book shelves, will be arranged for correct lighting and public convenience. The reading room at the west end with a large fireplace set in a tile panel of flower-bud design, will have comfortable chairs and tables, and the research room at the southeast corner, with a smaller fireplace, is to be furnished in much the same manner.
Two long outside stairways will lead from the lower gallery to the upper, from which five sliding doors, guarded by iron grille work, will open into a second floor entertainment hail 84 by 30 feet. Equipped with folding chairs and a movable stage, the hall will be available for concerts, lectures, plays, and meetings.
In Villita is a heroic statue of the Mexican patriot, Hidalgo, who raised the standard of revolt against Spain in 1810. The statue was presented by President Manuel Avila Camacho and Col. Gonzales Santos to Mayor Maverick for Villita.
The purpose of the re-creation of La Villita was thus expressed in the city ordinance which sanctioned it.
Above all, this project will be for human good, for letting people learn to make a living, to have a way of life; for constitutional democracy, peace and freedom. . . . Among the high. . . purposes is the promotion of peace, friendship and justice between the United States of America and all other nations of the Western Hemisphere. . . . The heritage of early Texas must be preserved.
Once City's Social Center
At the downstream edge of the Arneson Theatre an arched footbridge of stone masonry connects the two units of the theatre, and at its north end is another old street lamp standard. Beyond this footbridge the riverbank walks are again on both sides of the stream.
On the north bank, the City Water Board building is in part the Old Casino Club building and opera house, built in 1858, which for many years was a social and entertainment center. In the rear of this structure a large granjeno tree trails its tangled branches far out over the walk, to dip its dark green, artificial-looking leaves and sprays of yellow berries into the water. The small berries are edible, and there is a folk belief among local Mexicans that captive mockingbirds fed granjeno berries sing more sweetly than others.
Stone stairways lead down from both ends of the South Presa Street bridge, just west of which a tiny island close to the north bank on which grows a leaning cypress, is reached by a low—arched footbridge. This island marks the approximate site of the dam which served the old Nat Lewis mill, built in 1847. Near by, set in the top of an artificial boulder, is a drinking fountain.
Opposite, on the south bank between South Presa and Navarro Streets, a level area is covered by a concrete floor, to which steps lead from the south end of the Navarro Street bridge. It is marked off into stalls—separated by lengths of only iron railings once used in San Pedro Park, which were salvaged and reconditioned by project workers—from which curios are sold during the week of the annual Fiesta de San Jacinto. Each stall has water and light connections in the stone wall at is rear.
The Old Indian Ford
Very close to where the Navarro Street bridge stands, an old Indian ford in the early days of the settlement was the only crossing of the river used by all travelers from the north and east. Down past the Alamo came the Nacogdoches road, to turn westward around the river bend through La Villita—where it was joined by the road from La Bahia—and then swing northward across this ford and then westward again to enter the Villa of San Fernando.
On a day in 1811 a grisly warning to all who might be tempted to revolt against Spanish rule was posted here. San Antonians had participated in an ill-starred Mexican revolution earlier in the year, and when Spanish soldiery came to inflict punishment the severed head of Colonel Delgado, one of its leaders, was displayed on a pole where all who crossed the river at this point could behold the lesson.
Here, on the north bank of the stream, long before there was a bridge, stood the old Nat Lewis mill. From above that bank, steps come down to a boat landing that extends beneath the bridge and is guarded at the water's edge by a row of round-topped tie posts, each provided with a large iron ring. Here is a covered slip that houses the maintenance craft of the project. A 16-foot motorboat, equipped with a pump and three hose connections through which the grass, shrubbery and flowers along the banks can be watered from the river, is in operation daily along the project. A hand-operated drawbridge in the river walk gives access to the slip. Along the south bank is a cement rail of a design that resembles small millstones.
Along this section of the river commercial bathhouses were operated in the 1870's and 1880's well patronized by residents who, not owning property on the stream, did not have their own private bathhouses.
Into "Bowen's Island"
The river and its walks now pass into the area once called Bowen's Island—not in fact an island, but nearly so; an irregular peninsula formed by erratic twistings of the river that now have disappeared.
In early days San Antonions hunted, fished, and swam at the "island." Later, in the middle 1870's, Wolfram's "Central Garden," a place of convivial entertainment, was established here and gained great popularity. Still later the area became the favorite lot for visiting circuses and carnivals, and for outdoor rodeos, and continued to be principally so used through the period of the World War. With the adoption of measures for adequate flood control, the river here was straightened. The 31-story Smith-Young Tower Building, which between Navarro and South St. Mary's Streets looms above the south bank, and the Plaza Hotel just beyond, both stand in what was the old river bed.
Enclosed stairs lead down from the north end of the South St. Mary's Street bridge to a boat landing beside which is another reproduction of the old gas street lamps, and along the edge of the landing is another section of San Pedro Park railing. Here the walk along the north bank terminates.
The stairway at the south end of this bridge is of interesting construction, made necessary because quicksands presented a problem as to securing foundations. The stairs spiral downward in delicate design, guarded by a wrought iron railing. From the street level no support is visible, and it is only from the river walk that novel, egg-shaped buttresses can be seen, close to the water line.
Along the north bank at street level, west of South St. Mary's Street, runs a cantilever walk along which are spaced cedar light brackets. And now the river's big bend has been traversed, and the stream is approaching the terminal dam structure, where the beautification project ends.
This terminal structure is a double dam—a set of two falls. At this point the cut-off channel which left the river near West Commerce Street rejoins it, and this double dam operates for flood control in conjunction with the unit at the northern end of the cut-off.
The upstream dam is semicircular, with an arc of about 40 feet. A gently sloping concrete apron is on the upstream side, and the water flows over the smooth rim of the arc in a transparent curtain to a foam-flecked pool below, with a drop of about four feet. The pool or catch basin is roughly oval in shape and about 20 feet long. Its downstream end is flattened by the straight-edged rim of the lower dam, from which the second waterfall drops about eight feet.
Over the lower dam arches a footbridge, its railing on the upstream side of the same millstone design that is used near Navarro Street, which connects walks that northerly lead to Market Street and southerly to Villita Street. From the south end of this bridge steps descend to the flagstoned area beside a basin between the waterfalls.
Past the dams and the cut-off channel, the river moves southward, to wind toward the city limits and thence on its 100-mile journey to the Guadalupe River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico.
The History of La Villita
The restoration of La Villita "The Little Town" of the early Spanish San Antonio has become a symbol of the unity of our inter-American states, where the culture and patriotism of the American people will be perpetuated. The Bolivar Library and Museum, the calle Hidalgo and plaza Juarez will commemorate these great patrons of liberty in the history of our New World. The site selected is near the heart of San Antonio, bounded on the north by Villita Street, King Philip V on the east, Nacional on the South and South Presa on the West.
In 1718 the Presidio of San Antonio de Bexar and the Villa, as well as the Mission of San Antonio de Valero were on the west side of the San Antonio River. A year or two later the good Franciscan priests decided to move their Indian neophytes to the East side, away from the contaminating influences of the soldiers and settlers and where more land would be available for them to cultivate.
There was a ford across the south bend of the loop, enclosing the Villa San Fernando de Bexar, not far from where the Navarro Street bridge is now. The water was deep elsewhere at that time, so the ford became the crossing place of those enroute between the Villa and Presidio on the west side and the Missions of San Antonio de Valero, Concepcion and San Juan de Capistrano on the east. Travelers were sometimes delayed at this point by high water and caravans made it a camping place, as there was more room for their livestock, so eventually a little settlement grew up there to supply the immediate needs of travelers.
In 1730 the Marquis de Aguayo, Governor General of the New Philippines planned to establish a colony of Canary Islanders here and he sent out a prospectus showing a map of this area with the site of the Villa for them, south of what we now call the Alamo and in the vicinity of what later became La Villita.
Sixteen families of Canary Islanders arrived here on March 9, 1731, in the meantime the Mission Indians had dug irrigation ditches in that area and were cultivating the fields under the direction of the Franciscans, so the Canary Islanders had to move on to find unoccupied land. They first moved to the vicinity of San Antonio but the hostile Indians used the same springs, so they moved down closer to the presidio which occupied the site of our present city hall, to what is now known as the Military Plaza, but was then named the Plaza de los Yslenos.
Soldiers made contacts with the Indian girls and families resulted, which sometimes settled in La Villita, for Dr. Carlos E. Castaneda found a manuscript dated September 27, 1792, in the Saltillo Archives (Vol. 5, pp. 227-234), on the conditions of Villita which stated: The Count of Sierra Gordo mentioned the fact that adjacent to the Missions Valero and just outside of the Villa de San Fernando there grew up a fairly large settlement of families generally called agregados (squatters). It was with these that many of the Mission Indians intermarried." "This is one of the earliest concrete references to the origin and development of La Villita which eventually came to form an important part of the San Fernando and the present San Antonio."
The first mention we find in the Old Bexar County Archives of La Villita was on April 27, 1810. Then followed the revolution against Spain led by Father Hidalgo on September 16, 1810. Captain Juan Baptista Casas, who was said to have lived in La Villita, organized the local revolution which captured the Spanish garrison here. He later was defeated and Delgado, his adherent had his decapitated head stuck on a pole at the Villita ford as a warning to revolutionists who had settled in that vicinity. We next hear of La Villita as the result of the flood in San Antonio in 1819, when nine more persons made applications for homesites there. The Old Spanish Archives of Bexar County list the following families as property owners in La Villita from 1810 to 1832: Archiniega, de los Santos, Ruiz, Hernandez, Martinez, Ximenez, Tepia, de Urrutia, de Soto, Serna, de Luna, Perez, and Navarro. As the ground at La Villita was the highest in the vicinity it was safe above high waters. In 1828 "Deaf" Smith who married Guadalupe Ruiz, established his home in La Villita on the northwest corner of Nueva and South Presa; and ten years later Captain Jack Hays, the valiant Texas Ranger, lived on the opposite corner. The houses must have improved by that time, for when General Martin Perfecto de Cos was there in the fall of 1835, he was said to have occupied the house number 513 Villita Street, and it was there that he signed His Articles of Capitulation, December 11, 1835. This Capitulation was so similar in its results, that it might be called the Saratoga of the Texas War for Independence, for the encouragement given to the Texans, by their conquering a superior force of the enemy, foreshadowed their ultimate victory, as the capitulation of Burgoyne at Saratoga, foreshadowed the success of the American Revolution.
Three months later La Villita again came into the limelight for it was there that General Santa Ana moved his headquarters on February 24, 1836, with his troops near where the San Antonio Junior College, which now stands at 419 South Alamo Street. It would be natural for Santa Anna to occupy the house vacated by his brother-in-law, General Cos, as the house most suitable for the Commanding General. This was probably the one that was struck by a cannon ball on March 1, for Ben, the Negro cook of Santa Anna, relates that he had been living at the General's house, and it was 500 yards from the Alamo and so is the Cos House, as it is now known.
On March 3rd, Travis wrote in his last immortal letter that "the enemy was busily employed in encircling us with entrenchments, to wit: * * in La Villita 300 yards South." It was from La Villita that the dread bugle call, el deguello—death without mercy—was sounded at 4 a. m., March 6, 1836, and by 5:30 a. m., over an hour before sunrise, a hundred eighty-three American defenders had been butchered by more than twenty-five times their number. The final and concluding attack was made from La Villita by the troops under Colonels Juan Morales and Jose Minon with light companies of the battalions of Matamoros and Ximenez and the active battalion of San Luis. They advanced under the cover of the stone houses between La Villita and the Alamo and entering the breach on the southwest corner, opened fire on the Convent and Alamo Chapel opposite, which soon fell under their murderous attack. A glance at the map of San Antonio made by Colonel Ignacio Labastida, the Chief Engineer of Santa Anna, shows the most feasible way to attack the Alamo was under the cover of these houses.
Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant was in San Antonio in December, 1845, and he wrote that the population was then half American and half Mexican, but by 1878 the population had changed, due to the influx of the Germans, until during that year, the City census shows more Germans than all the Americans, English and Irish combined. This was largely due to the fact that many of the German immigrants were men of superior education and were better fitted for clerical and teaching jobs, than the rough farming of a new frontier. Those who had married and had families came to San Antonio from the German colonies at New Braunfels, Fredricksburg and Comfort and took up positions for which they were suited. Not being able to buy suitable homesites west of the San Antonio River, as all desirable places had been taken, they moved to land that was less expensive and where they might build homes safely above the high water mark of the river.
In the City census of 1877 we find in what is now the Villita area, the names of 60 families—32 were German, 6 French, 3 Spanish, 12 Americans and others, 4 Negro and 3 Scotch-Irish. The Germans were responsible for the first culture of San Antonio. Mrs. Sam Maverick writes in her Memoirs that when she first came here in 1838 "very few of the Mexican ladies could write, but they dressed nicely and were graceful and gracious of manner." And she stated, "We exchanged calls with the Navarros, Sotos, Garzas, Garcias, Zambranos, Seguins, Veramendis and Yturris."
The German-English School was started at the Southeastern outskirts of La Villita, where the San Antonio Junior College is now, by the German Casino Association in the early 1850's. Just north of and across the river from La Villita was the German Casino, now occupied by the San Antonio Public Service Company at the South end of Casino Street. These became the center of culture and refinement. Major Jeremiah Y. Dashiel lived at 511 Villita Street where the Villita Art Gallery now is, from about 1858 and Major-General David E. Twiggs lived a few blocks south at the southwest corner of South Alamo and Martinex Street. An evidence of the culture in La Villita is shown in the names of the staff of the San Antonio Public Library, Miss Julia Grothaus, Librarian, Miss Emilie Netter, Assistant Librarian, and Mrs. Minnie Bardenwerper Cameron, Research Librarian, descendants of families who had settled there.
Among the prominent families living at La Villita were the Bardenwerpers, the Duerlers, the Schultezes, the Grothaus, the Elmendorfs, the Krakauers, the Sauers, the Steffels, and the Deutzs, as well as Rafeal Diaz, who later became a Metropolitan Opera Singer, Erastus A. Florian, Medison Earl Lewis, Donald McDonald, Frank E. Pool, Mrs. Minnie Wagner and Mrs. Sarah Eager, the young friend of Col. Robert E. Lee, when he commanded the Department of Texas in 1860.
The Villita is now surrounded by the noise and bustle of a modern city, but so close, that the shadow of the Smith-Young Tower, that beacon that first marks San Antonio, reaches it late in the afternoon. About 40 years ago it started to lose some of its former culture and many of the successful inhabitants moved elsewhere. That the section has endured was due to the loyalty of some of the old families. Now it is being rejuvenated by engineers, architects, artists, historians, city fathers and pioneers interested in its rebirth. When the present plans are followed out, we will have eight buildings with a large tile court surrounded on the street by a high stone wall and shaded by a dozen huge live oak trees. The Bolivar Library and Museum will contain a collection of Latin-American books, manuscripts and other early tokens of culture and above it will be a place for indoor lectures, motion pictures and dancing, while adjoining it will be a Spanish restaurant. Other buildings will be used for the different arts and crafts of early San Antonio, and the workers will be in appropriate costumes.
The odor of sweet flowers will permeate the air and soft music will lull the aching nerves. Old San Antonio will be brought back and peace will abide and the spirit of "dolce for niente" will help us dream of the days gone by and enable us to enjoy the present.
Colonel M. L. Crimmins
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1940
The restoration of La Villita "The Little Town" of the early Spanish San Antonio has become a symbol of the unity of our inter-American states, where the culture and patriotism of the American people will be perpetuated. The Bolivar Library and Museum, the calle Hidalgo and plaza Juarez will commemorate these great patrons of liberty in the history of our New World. The site selected is near the heart of San Antonio, bounded on the north by Villita Street, King Philip V on the east, Nacional on the South and South Presa on the West.
In 1718 the Presidio of San Antonio de Bexar and the Villa, as well as the Mission of San Antonio de Valero were on the west side of the San Antonio River. A year or two later the good Franciscan priests decided to move their Indian neophytes to the East side, away from the contaminating influences of the soldiers and settlers and where more land would be available for them to cultivate.
There was a ford across the south bend of the loop, enclosing the Villa San Fernando de Bexar, not far from where the Navarro Street bridge is now. The water was deep elsewhere at that time, so the ford became the crossing place of those enroute between the Villa and Presidio on the west side and the Missions of San Antonio de Valero, Concepcion and San Juan de Capistrano on the east. Travelers were sometimes delayed at this point by high water and caravans made it a camping place, as there was more room for their livestock, so eventually a little settlement grew up there to supply the immediate needs of travelers.
In 1730 the Marquis de Aguayo, Governor General of the New Philippines planned to establish a colony of Canary Islanders here and he sent out a prospectus showing a map of this area with the site of the Villa for them, south of what we now call the Alamo and in the vicinity of what later became La Villita.
Sixteen families of Canary Islanders arrived here on March 9, 1731, in the meantime the Mission Indians had dug irrigation ditches in that area and were cultivating the fields under the direction of the Franciscans, so the Canary Islanders had to move on to find unoccupied land. They first moved to the vicinity of San Antonio but the hostile Indians used the same springs, so they moved down closer to the presidio which occupied the site of our present city hall, to what is now known as the Military Plaza, but was then named the Plaza de los Yslenos.
Soldiers made contacts with the Indian girls and families resulted, which sometimes settled in La Villita, for Dr. Carlos E. Castaneda found a manuscript dated September 27, 1792, in the Saltillo Archives (Vol. 5, pp. 227-234), on the conditions of Villita which stated: The Count of Sierra Gordo mentioned the fact that adjacent to the Missions Valero and just outside of the Villa de San Fernando there grew up a fairly large settlement of families generally called agregados (squatters). It was with these that many of the Mission Indians intermarried." "This is one of the earliest concrete references to the origin and development of La Villita which eventually came to form an important part of the San Fernando and the present San Antonio."
The first mention we find in the Old Bexar County Archives of La Villita was on April 27, 1810. Then followed the revolution against Spain led by Father Hidalgo on September 16, 1810. Captain Juan Baptista Casas, who was said to have lived in La Villita, organized the local revolution which captured the Spanish garrison here. He later was defeated and Delgado, his adherent had his decapitated head stuck on a pole at the Villita ford as a warning to revolutionists who had settled in that vicinity. We next hear of La Villita as the result of the flood in San Antonio in 1819, when nine more persons made applications for homesites there. The Old Spanish Archives of Bexar County list the following families as property owners in La Villita from 1810 to 1832: Archiniega, de los Santos, Ruiz, Hernandez, Martinez, Ximenez, Tepia, de Urrutia, de Soto, Serna, de Luna, Perez, and Navarro. As the ground at La Villita was the highest in the vicinity it was safe above high waters. In 1828 "Deaf" Smith who married Guadalupe Ruiz, established his home in La Villita on the northwest corner of Nueva and South Presa; and ten years later Captain Jack Hays, the valiant Texas Ranger, lived on the opposite corner. The houses must have improved by that time, for when General Martin Perfecto de Cos was there in the fall of 1835, he was said to have occupied the house number 513 Villita Street, and it was there that he signed His Articles of Capitulation, December 11, 1835. This Capitulation was so similar in its results, that it might be called the Saratoga of the Texas War for Independence, for the encouragement given to the Texans, by their conquering a superior force of the enemy, foreshadowed their ultimate victory, as the capitulation of Burgoyne at Saratoga, foreshadowed the success of the American Revolution.
Three months later La Villita again came into the limelight for it was there that General Santa Ana moved his headquarters on February 24, 1836, with his troops near where the San Antonio Junior College, which now stands at 419 South Alamo Street. It would be natural for Santa Anna to occupy the house vacated by his brother-in-law, General Cos, as the house most suitable for the Commanding General. This was probably the one that was struck by a cannon ball on March 1, for Ben, the Negro cook of Santa Anna, relates that he had been living at the General's house, and it was 500 yards from the Alamo and so is the Cos House, as it is now known.
On March 3rd, Travis wrote in his last immortal letter that "the enemy was busily employed in encircling us with entrenchments, to wit: * * in La Villita 300 yards South." It was from La Villita that the dread bugle call, el deguello—death without mercy—was sounded at 4 a. m., March 6, 1836, and by 5:30 a. m., over an hour before sunrise, a hundred eighty-three American defenders had been butchered by more than twenty-five times their number. The final and concluding attack was made from La Villita by the troops under Colonels Juan Morales and Jose Minon with light companies of the battalions of Matamoros and Ximenez and the active battalion of San Luis. They advanced under the cover of the stone houses between La Villita and the Alamo and entering the breach on the southwest corner, opened fire on the Convent and Alamo Chapel opposite, which soon fell under their murderous attack. A glance at the map of San Antonio made by Colonel Ignacio Labastida, the Chief Engineer of Santa Anna, shows the most feasible way to attack the Alamo was under the cover of these houses.
Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant was in San Antonio in December, 1845, and he wrote that the population was then half American and half Mexican, but by 1878 the population had changed, due to the influx of the Germans, until during that year, the City census shows more Germans than all the Americans, English and Irish combined. This was largely due to the fact that many of the German immigrants were men of superior education and were better fitted for clerical and teaching jobs, than the rough farming of a new frontier. Those who had married and had families came to San Antonio from the German colonies at New Braunfels, Fredricksburg and Comfort and took up positions for which they were suited. Not being able to buy suitable homesites west of the San Antonio River, as all desirable places had been taken, they moved to land that was less expensive and where they might build homes safely above the high water mark of the river.
In the City census of 1877 we find in what is now the Villita area, the names of 60 families—32 were German, 6 French, 3 Spanish, 12 Americans and others, 4 Negro and 3 Scotch-Irish. The Germans were responsible for the first culture of San Antonio. Mrs. Sam Maverick writes in her Memoirs that when she first came here in 1838 "very few of the Mexican ladies could write, but they dressed nicely and were graceful and gracious of manner." And she stated, "We exchanged calls with the Navarros, Sotos, Garzas, Garcias, Zambranos, Seguins, Veramendis and Yturris."
The German-English School was started at the Southeastern outskirts of La Villita, where the San Antonio Junior College is now, by the German Casino Association in the early 1850's. Just north of and across the river from La Villita was the German Casino, now occupied by the San Antonio Public Service Company at the South end of Casino Street. These became the center of culture and refinement. Major Jeremiah Y. Dashiel lived at 511 Villita Street where the Villita Art Gallery now is, from about 1858 and Major-General David E. Twiggs lived a few blocks south at the southwest corner of South Alamo and Martinex Street. An evidence of the culture in La Villita is shown in the names of the staff of the San Antonio Public Library, Miss Julia Grothaus, Librarian, Miss Emilie Netter, Assistant Librarian, and Mrs. Minnie Bardenwerper Cameron, Research Librarian, descendants of families who had settled there.
Among the prominent families living at La Villita were the Bardenwerpers, the Duerlers, the Schultezes, the Grothaus, the Elmendorfs, the Krakauers, the Sauers, the Steffels, and the Deutzs, as well as Rafeal Diaz, who later became a Metropolitan Opera Singer, Erastus A. Florian, Medison Earl Lewis, Donald McDonald, Frank E. Pool, Mrs. Minnie Wagner and Mrs. Sarah Eager, the young friend of Col. Robert E. Lee, when he commanded the Department of Texas in 1860.
The Villita is now surrounded by the noise and bustle of a modern city, but so close, that the shadow of the Smith-Young Tower, that beacon that first marks San Antonio, reaches it late in the afternoon. About 40 years ago it started to lose some of its former culture and many of the successful inhabitants moved elsewhere. That the section has endured was due to the loyalty of some of the old families. Now it is being rejuvenated by engineers, architects, artists, historians, city fathers and pioneers interested in its rebirth. When the present plans are followed out, we will have eight buildings with a large tile court surrounded on the street by a high stone wall and shaded by a dozen huge live oak trees. The Bolivar Library and Museum will contain a collection of Latin-American books, manuscripts and other early tokens of culture and above it will be a place for indoor lectures, motion pictures and dancing, while adjoining it will be a Spanish restaurant. Other buildings will be used for the different arts and crafts of early San Antonio, and the workers will be in appropriate costumes.
The odor of sweet flowers will permeate the air and soft music will lull the aching nerves. Old San Antonio will be brought back and peace will abide and the spirit of "dolce for niente" will help us dream of the days gone by and enable us to enjoy the present.
Colonel M. L. Crimmins
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1940
Old Villita
A Restored La Villita
In San Antonio, the restoration of La Villita, the "Little Town" of Spaniards, has been begun as a historic and architectural monument. Few American cities have such an area, endowed with great age and a distinct and unusual character, partially intact and altogether adaptable to reconstruction.
It is planned, when restoration is completed, that a block-square area almost in the heart of the city's business district shall present an authentic picture of early-day San Antonio—the San Antonio of adobe houses with hand-carved mesquite doors; of flower-bordered acequias, ditches dug to supply water for the fields of Indians; of shady patios with feathery exotic plants, perfumed by rich blossoms trailing over high stone walls. The two centuries of La Villita's existence will echo here in windows with deep recesses shake-shingled roofs, rough flagstone walks, worn stone doorsteps.
To save this storied district from inevitable destruction, the City of San Antonio, through Mayor Maury Maverick, in 1939 secured the area bounded by Villita, South Presa and Hessler Streets and Womble Alley.
Funds and facilities of the National Youth Administration were secured, and the initial work of clearing the site and of laying bare the ancient construction of the buildings was begun.
Seven houses were selected for restoration, but these will by no means complete the project, as plans have been made to add several buildings and features, so that, finally, a complete and authentic "Little Town" will be re-created.
The district demonstrates in its architectural features the expression of several types and generations of people. When disturbing later construction has been removed, these old houses will tell much of the architectural story of San Antonio and the Southwest—of the Spanish colonial, Texas colonial, European immigration, and several later epochs.
Of the section, O'Neil Ford, supervising architect representing the National Youth Administration, has this to say:
Because confusion exists as to the precise date when the houses were built, it was decided not to attempt a restoration to definite years, but only to definite periods. Historians and architects have agreed that the restoration of the Little Town shall be from its earliest construction, about 1722, to include the 1850's, when the last radical changes, repairs, and redecoration occurred. New work will be consistent throughout with the period indicated by each building.
Of restoration methods, Mr. Ford says:
This plan bars all touches of theatrical and bizarre architecture, so easy to fall into a work of this kind.
Painstaking attention to the authenticity of small details occupies the restorers of La Villita. Doors and mantels will be made in the workshops of the National Youth Administration by Mexican woodcarvers: a variety of window types will illustrate the form evolved locally; photographs are being made of details in other old houses scattered about San Antonio, and, from these, shop drawings are perfected as a guide to decoration, cabinet work, hardware, and even structural details. Plans call for the type of planting used by early-day Spanish residents in San Antonio, with native trees and shrubs, and even the walks will be of authentic materials.
The prime objective of this restoration program has been to produce, in La Villita's old setting, and on its foundations, a carefully re-created group of small houses that show clearly what indigenous culture here evolved.
La Villita, restored, will be no museum of buildings, and no mere replica, but a living demonstration of how Southwestern architecture grew.
Tentative plans include the following features:
1. An encircling wall to insure privacy and such isolation as is necessary to create an atmosphere of the past.
2. Restored or reconstructed houses lining the outer borders of the area and having entrances both on the bordering streets and on a large inner court or plaza.
3. The addition of a large structure to be used as a restaurant of typical early-day Spanish colonial type, the cuisine to be Mexican, with service from the kitchens of the main building to vine arbors in the inner plaza.
4. A building to house a Hispanic-American library and museum, planned to be of adobe with the first floor some four or five feet below the ground level. The second floor, which would be used for meetings and social gatherings, as well as for the display of relics, would be reached by a wooden staircase through a balcony.
5. Along the south boundary of the area, a row of open stalls with stone or hewn wood shelves, where various Mexican arts and handicrafts will be displayed. Small workshop courts will be in the rear of each house.
6. The inner court or plaza, which will be beautified by careful planting, the judicious use of fountains, and a typical acequia. This plaza will be used for social events, and here diners will served at tables under the stars, as were those who first sat at San Antonio's open-air chile stands in 1813.
While dulce vendors squat in the shadow of the little courts and tamale women swathed in rebozos scent the air with their pungent pots of steaming edibles, strolling caballeros wearing broad, braided sombreros and short jackets of green silk will sing to their own stringed accompaniment the songs of old Mexico and Spain—and the notes of the guitars, the odor of masa cooking, the soft voices of Latins, will help roll back the years to the time when these songs, these houses, these people, were San Antonio.
Part of the value of this restored La Villita—as seen by its patrons and sponsors—is historical. Part is architectural. And part is the charm and distinction it will present to visitor and native son alike.
The Story of La Villita
Many others, like Olmstead, have been struck by the visible evidence of history in San Antonio; for here it is possible to see the past in old, scarred buildings. As the oldest remaining residential area of the city that has grown in dramatic stages beside the banks of the San Antonio River. La Villita—the "Little Town" of the Spaniards—has stood not on the fringe of events, but within their often stormy center. Villita has had the sometimes good, sometimes bad, fortune to be always a small but highly romantic part of the tale that has been woven beside the twisting river for more than two centuries.
First to dwell on the site, as far as recorded history shows, were the Coahuiltecans. These sedentary Indians had village sites along the river valley; their brush and hide tepees stood under great pecan trees. The women cultivated patches of beans and maize. Where La Villita is today, flint tools of these tribesmen are sometimes found, testifying to the primitive community that was the Little Town's forerunner. Ashes of long-dead fires, found many layers deep, often contain blood-red arrow points made of flint quarried at some unknown distant mine and later shipped here. The great fear of these peaceable dwellers on the river bank was of cannibal Karankawas from the Texas coast—powerful, evil creatures who came up the stream in canoes, seeking plunder and man-meat.
Here, in the spring of 1536, came a stranger who was to write the first description of the area, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spaniard who had survived the expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez. The red men who dwelt on the banks of the river received the Spaniard kindly. Dr. Carlos E. Castaneda, eminent Texas historian, says:
Since the site of La Villita is one of the most desirable in the San Antonio River Valley, it is reasonable to conclude that at least part of the rancho described later by Cabeza de Vaca was in this locality. Here the villagers would have been safe from the constant menace of river floods. If this assumption be true, then this is one of the oldest places of habitation to be described as such, in this country.
More than a hundred years elapsed before Don Domingo Teran de los Rios, breaking new trails for the King of Spain, halted at an Indian village on the banks of this river while Father Damian Massanet said Mass and named the valley San Antonio.
Other conquistadores passed this way, and in 1714 the Indian villagers were visited by French explorer Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who said it was a "likely spot for settlement."
The river that winds past modern Villita Street received its name in 1709 from a friar who never forgot the "richness of the grapes of all kinds, the quality of the mulberry trees which surpassed those of Murcia and Granada, the abundance of nuts, more tasty than those of Castile. . . and the large number of wild turkeys and deer, to say nothing of the herds of numberless buffalo." Father Fray Antonio de San Buenventura Olivares had so great a desire to claim this area for God and King and to win the "more than fifty Indian tribes" of San Antonio Valley that he began a campaign of persuasion which was to end in the establishment of the most famous of all Franciscan missions and its suburb, La Villita.
"The Little Town" is Born
On April 25, 1718, Don Martin de Alarcon, Knight of the Order of Santiago, "Captain General and Governor of the Province of Tejas and such other lands as might be conquered," entered the valley of San Antonio with men and implements sufficient to found a settlement. The persistent dream of Father Olivares had resulted in this expedition, its tangible manifestations including 1,000 bleating sheep, 548 horses, 200 oxen and as many cows—and, vastly more important, 72 persons who were pledged to convert this wild and beautiful valley into a Spanish outpost of civilization. The friar who had brought all this to pass had quarreled with the dashing Alarcon, and marched in alone, bare-footed and dauntless, to found—on May 1—Mission San Antonio de Valero, known today as the Alamo, shrine of Texas liberty, world renowned because of a battle in which every defender died.
Five days after the mission had been founded, Alarcon established the Villa de Bejar on a site near San Pedro Springs. Thus in the beginning, the civil settlement of present-day San Antonio was west of the mission, and the soldiers and settlers lived apart from the Franciscan outpost that was to rule their destiny. But in 1722, on orders of the Marquis of Aguayo, the presidio (fort) of the mission and the homes of the colonists were moved—because of the constant threat of Indian attack—to a spot near Mission San Antonio de Valero. In the archives of San Francisco el Grande, headquarters of the Franciscan Order in the New World, is a yellowed document, the report of Father Olivares to the Viceroy, which says:
Frederick C. Chabot, in With the Makers of San Antonio, has this to say of the Spaniards who were to become the founders of La Villita:
Chabot's list of the military men who were to create homes for themselves in La Villita includes names in modern San Antonio: "Don Diego de Escobar, and family; Alferez Francisco Hernandez, and family; . . . Geronimo Carbajal; . . . Antonio Guerra; Don Francisco de Escobar; Domingo Flores, and family; Xtoval de la Garza; Sebastian Gonzales; Joseph Ximines; . . . Don Francisco Juan de la Cruz, Master Mason; Santiago Peres, Carpenter; Joseph Menchaca," and many others whose descendants today are San Antonians.
Conflicting reports of those who actually participated in the founding of the Villa in the valley of San Antonio obscure the actual number of soldiers and settlers who came to dwell among the Payaya and other tribes of Coahuiltecans. It is reasonably certain, however, that in 1722, when the Villa de Bexar was moved to the vicinity of the mission, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of modern Alamo Plaza, the first few huts of La Villita may have been erected. J.M. Rodriguez and other writers, telling the stories handed down in San Antonio's oldest Spanish families, claim that La Villita soon grew as a place of residence of the married soldiers of the mission garrison. Rodriguez in his Memoirs of Early Texas says:
From legends and scattered fragments of early-day writings, the story of the presidio and adjoining area which probably extended to the locality now know as La Villita can be pieced together. Robert Sturmberg in his History of San Antonio and of the Early Days in Texas (St. Joseph's Altar Society), wrote:
That the modern Villita area must have been at least on the fringe of "Villita San Jose" is attested by old land records and other ancient documents in the archives of Bexar County. Among the petitions for land and deeds to property is one actually describing a typical house of that area:
For this house and its grounds the soldier paid "four she mules. . . thirty mares. . . six gentle horses, give or take. . . .
Another typical house is described by a Mrs. H. Lucas, who wrote, of San Antonio in the 1850's:
Soon after the establishment of the mission, Indian neophytes and soldiers and settlers were given the task of digging one of San Antonio's several acequias (irrigation ditches). To water the fields of the Mission San Antonio de Valero—covering land now occupied by tall buildings in the heart of the city—the Alamo Madre Ditch was dug from its source near the head of the river (in the neighborhood of present-day Olmos Park), and one of its branches passed beside the east walls of the mission. William Corner in his San Antonio de Bexar (A Guide and History), wrote, "From here (the mission) it passes on through the Menger courtyard; thence to supply, in old times, the inhabitants of East Villita." Chabot, in With the Makers of San Antonio, wrote:
The Alamo Madre acequia lined with willows and figs, probably brought the first beauty to the narrow, rutted streets of La Villita. Harking back to those remote days of which there are so few chroniclers. Sidney Lanier, as quoted in Corner's San Antonio de Bexar, painted an imaginary picture of the people of that frontier community:
The Wrong Side of the River
Tradition says that during the next few years La Villita—linked inseparably to Mission San Antonio de Valero because it was the villa of its soldiers—was a poor little district of adobe huts, whose yards and gardens alone were retentious. Difficulties beset the struggling, isolated Spanish outpost: shipments of food and clothing, of pesos due the soldiers, were few and disappointing when they did come. Yet the plight of the soldiers' families was not emphasized until the morning of March 9, 1731, when fifteen families from the Canary Islands marched in—and were promptly given the title of Hidalgos, "sons of noble lineage," by a grateful King who had long despaired of colonizing this wilderness with permanent settlers. The titled islenos (islanders) founded the royal Villa of San Fernando across the river from the Villa de Bexar, on present-day Main and Military Plazas. At once the newcomers adopted an attitude of isolation, closing their homes to the folk from the "wrong side of the river," thus inaugurating a class distinction that was to rankle for many years.
The Rev. Mother Louis (Morin) of the Ursuline Academy, on Navarro Street, is descended from the Curbellos—one of the original sixteen Canary Island families brought to San Antonio. She said (in 1939) that Senor Juan Curbello built his residence on property later known as Bowen's Island—where the 31-story Smith-Young Tower now stands—and that this district, close to Villita Street, was devoted to small "farms" or gardens where flowers and vegetables were raised. Mother Louis said:
Sturmberg, in his History of San Antonio and of the Early Days in Texas, wrote:
San Fernando was the capital of the province of Texas, and its grandees led a gay, luxurious life as compared with the humble existence on the east side of the river. Gregorio Esparza told of the fold who lived in the jacales:
Evil days fell upon the people of San Antonio Valley, rich and poor alike between 1731 and 1750. The Apaches, stirred to fury by the coming of more white men to their old hunting ground, made raid after raid upon the settlements of the King. Horses and burros were stolen from off the very streets of Bexar, and finally, on June 30, 1745, the warriors planned to burn the presidio and wipe out the twin Villas. A boy of the mission gave the alarm, and at once the soldiers and neophytes of San Antonio de Valero went into action. Castaneda, in Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519-1936, Vol. III, describes the event:
A quarrel caused by the policies of a new governor, Carlos Franqui de Lugo soon developed between the religious authorities of the mission settlement and the civil heads of San Fernando. This controversy became serious when the governor ordered the mission guards removed. Growing ill feeling was climaxed in the autumn of 1736 when the padre in charge at the mission attempted to close the one small bridge over the river that connected the two Villas. It is recorded that the governor, who had heard that even he was barred from the narrow span, crossed the bridge in heated defiance, faced the padre in his cell, and threatened to send the missionary back to Mexico "packed on a mule." Father Mariano de los Dolores, the rebellious priest, was forced to leave the bridge open, but retaliated by closing the church of the mission to San Fernando's faithful. Mission guards were not restored until 1737.
In 1762 Mission San Antonio de Valero was in its zenith. Those dependent upon its bounty drew from the resources of the mission rancho, described as having "one hundred and fifteen gentle horses, one thousand one hundred fifteen head of cattle, two thousand three hundred sheep and goats, two hundred mares, fifteen jennets and eighteen saddle mares." (From Documentos para la Historia de la Provincia de Tejas, pp. 163-167.)
In that year the walls of the chapel of the mission collapsed, a symbolic event, for the fortunes of the mission flock were never again to rise. The following year, 1763, a plague decimated the ranks of priests, neophytes, soldiers and settlers. Of this era Stumberg wrote:
Indications are that by this time the region of La Villita was peopled not only by families attached to the mission, but by soldiers of the Presidio of Bexar, a royal garrison maintained for the protection of the Villa of San Fernando and the older mission settlement. In his diary Fray Gaspar de Solis, in 1767, tells only of soldiers attached to the Presidio. Yet the Villa of San Fernando still frowned upon La Villita as the home of less aristocratic Spaniards, the home, as Rodriguez says, of the families of soldiers. Solis, by the way, wrote a remarkable description of the San Antonio River in this area:
The historian Bancroft tells of a law passed in 1778 which dealt a telling blow to the mission and its dependents. The measure provided that all unbranded cattle were the property of the King of Spain, and imposed a fee of four reales a head for all such cattle slaughtered. Edward W. Heusinger in Early Explorations and Mission Establishments in Texas explains that "Since the wealth of the missions consisted in cattle, which it was impossible to herd together and brand, this double-toothed law practically obliged them to pay four reales apiece for the rights to slaughter their own cattle raised on their own lands."
Records disclose that in 1785 the two settlements of San Antonio—that on the east side of the river, including La Villita, and that on the west side, the Villa of San Fernando—became one civil unit under an alcade—a sort of justice of the peace and mayor combines. Until this year, La Villita and all the mission settlement had been under the jurisdiction of the padres.
A movement was now under way for the abandonment of the missions and the secularization of their lands. The Count Revilla Gigedo in his report as Viceroy said, "Neither our acquisitions nor the number of Indians congregated in the actual mission towns do by any means justify the enormous outlay incurred, nor the fatiguing labors undergone by the missionary fathers." In 1790 there arrived in San Antonio refugees from the Presidio of los Adaes, in east Texas, and to these victims of French aggrandizement many of the lands formerly held by Mission San Antonio de Valero were distributed, including, as old land records disclose, lots in the present area of La Villita. By 1793 the mission beside the San Antonio River had been abandoned, and the families who had lived so near it, obedient to its bells, lost their separate identity and became at last simply citizens of Bexar, as this Spanish town was most commonly known.
Speaking of the San Antonio of 1793, Sturmberg wrote:
And now the "Little Town," safe so long under the protection of the padres and their soldiers, was thrust out into the often turbulent life of the city beyond the river.
Stormy Times in Little Town
Forlorn and impoverished, La Villita drowsed on the river bank and remembered better days; and the faithful few who had been taught their Aves in the now deserted mission trudged with little relish to the Church of San Fernando across the river—the haughty, gold-trimmed church of the equally haughty, gold-braided islenos. Bells that had called them to vespers were silent now, and many an old man, ragged and barefoot, stood abashed in the new church of the Canary Islanders, heartsick for the friendly old mission chapel that had never known nor sought magnificence.
In 1803 the solitude of the abandoned Mission San Antonio de Valero was broken by the arrival of the Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras, which occupied the former living quarters of the monks. This military unit hailed from the Villa of San Jose y Santiago del Alamo in Mexico, and its claim to immortality was to bestow the name Alamo upon the battered old mission. Henceforth, records refer to San Antonio de Valero as "the Alamo." Chabot in With the Makers of San Antonio, wrote: "Many of the soldiers of the Alamo Company married Indians and established their homes in the vicinity of the mission. Then Spaniards purchased the old mission lands, and gradually a new town grew up there, which was called La Villita." Thus, it is indicated that the period in which the Alamo received its famous name saw also the naming of the eastern part of the old settlement of the mission as "Little Town."
Meantime the germ of freedom had invaded even the isolated outpost of Bexar, and men of republican persuasion were whispering of revolt from royalist Spain. In 1811 a stirring episode took place among the soldiers of the San Antonio garrison, quartered then in La Villita. In his Memoirs, Jose Antonio Navarro tells how the spirit of revolt seized 2,000 troops of the royal guard holding Texas between San Antonio and the Sabine River. Navarro wrote:
The revolting troops, led by Casas, marched to "the Plaza of the Government," and imprisoned the Spanish governor Salcedo. "Herrera, and other Spanish officers who still slept in the deep slumber of the haze of early morning, confident that no one would dare to attempt anything against their omnipotent persons." Navarro added:
Captain Casas sent his prisoners to Mexico; but the republican revolt had turned, and Casas was finally betrayed by his own compatriots, imprisoned and at last shot for treason. Thus a resident of La Villita, young and zealous, made the first of San Antonio's spectacular sacrifices for freedom. Others quickly followed; in 1813, the "Republican Army of the North," composed of Anglo-American adventurers, Mexican liberals, and Indians, occupied San Antonio, to be defeated in August, 1813, by the Spanish General Arredondo, whose vengeance against the revolutionists almost emptied La Villita of its men. In the barracks of the town nearly 800 prisoners were assembled, and most of these were shot. Inside a small, almost airtight granary 300 prisoners were retained overnight, and 18 suffocated. That night (August 20) is called La Noche Triste (the sad night) in San Antonio history. This was the time when the women of the town were confined in a building derisively called La Quinta (the household), and made to convert 24 bushels of corn every 24 hours into tortillas for the victorious royalist soldiers.
Spanish persecution of the families of liberals was so drastic that the residents of San Antonio, including those of La Villita, fled whenever opportunity for escape was presented. Since La Villita had given birth to the republican movement locally, it suffered most of all.
Echoes of the dark days of 1813 are found in the archives of Bexar County, in petitions of the remaining Bexar citizens for shelter, food, or for life itself. There is the plea of Luisa de Luna, for example, who said in a petition to the Cabildo, or city council:
This petition ended with the words, No se firmar—"I cannot sign." The plea, made on November 22, 1813, was granted that same day when the district commissioner, Don Alvino Pacheco, was ordered to give the unfortunate woman "the house which was seized from the traitor Francisco Ferias."
Many of such petitions in the archives name boundaries of property within the present Villita area. Land granted by Spanish authorities was still occupied by means of primative gestures of possession: the grantee pulled weeds, broke branches from trees, scattered handfuls of dirt about, drove stakes, and otherwise indicated the process of taking possession of the land.
A Cloudburst Brings in Aristocracy
La Villita had been born of piety and nurtured through bloody episodes by its simple faith in the traditions it was heir to from a scarred old mission. Yet it was a humble place, a cluster of primitive houses huddled close for security and reassurance. Its people were humble folk for the most part—largely a mixture of Indian and Spanish blood. Its fortunes, always linked—even though intangibly—with the mission, had reached perhaps their lowest ebb when a natural disaster intervened to change the entire complexion of the area.
In July, 1819, a flood deluged the proud Villa of San Fernando, causing considerable loss of life and carrying away public buildings and the houses of grandees. The waters of the San Antonio River and of San Pedro Creek overflowed every part of the city except the higher ground of the Alamo and La Villita. Governor Martinez reported that "On the morning of the 5th instant, in consequence of a terrific waterspout (doubtless what now would be called a cloudburst) which burst north of the city, the river became so swollen as to run over its banks, causing a general overflow such as has never been beheld in the province before."
Martinez said that the damage was such that "the city may be said to exist no longer," and that its inhabitants, "those who were not victims of the fury of the waters," were reduced to "lamentable destitution." The governor added, "The landed estate belonging to the Royal Domain has been ruined by the overflow." Chabot wrote of the events that followed:
The Bexar County archives have many petitions of this period from the hidalgos of San Fernando who wished to move to Villita's higher ground. Such a petition is the following:
Old as was Villita in that day, it is to be noted from this application that, to those of the upper class who now thought it desirable as a dwelling place, it was "new" Villita.
Thus, from the time of the 1819 flood, began the change of Villita from a lowly community of modest homes to an exclusive residential area where lived many of the oldest and most aristocratic families of San Antonio. This character it was to retain for many years. Not all the former land owners in La Villita wished to sell at once, but the inducement of profitable prices for small lots that had been granted them by the King gradually had its effect. For awhile Villita presented the contrast offered by fine and humble houses in proximity. As Mrs. Lucas wrote, "The back yard or patio was either a place with a fountain and flowers or it was just a dust heap with a scraggly cactus in a corner and a skinny rooster in search of insects in the dust pile." (From Memoirs of Mrs. H. Lucas, Frontier Times, Vol. 3 Jan., 1926).
The Scene of a Surrender
On the streets of San Antonio, as the nineteenth century entered its second decade, Americanos in increasing numbers appeared. Although this old town was still predominately Latin, the influx of colonists brought by Anglo-American empresarios (colonizers) to widely scattered communities in the now Mexican province of Texas (for Mexico had won its independence in 1821), had naturally increased the non-Latin population.
Among the newer residents was Erastus (Deaf) Smith. He had come to Texas in 1819, and wooed a belle of the town, half French and half Spanish, whose parents lived in La Villita. When the couple was wed in 1828 they at once established their domicile in the house which still stands at 301 South Presa Street. Deaf Smith had earned a reputation for courage among the Indians and Spaniards; his name was to become well known in Texas history, and soon, for again the idea of freedom was gnawing at the minds of many who walked the streets of the old pueblo. Throughout the province, those newly adopted Americanos spoke and dreamed of a day when this land might be wrested from Mexico.
During these years La Villita again knew the scourge of Indian warfare, as indeed did every person dwelling in the San Antonio Valley. The Menchaca Memoirs (Chabot) tell how the prices of food rose, because "by reason of the city being surrounded by Indians, the people (were) unable to get out of town." A sack of corn sold for $3, a pound of coffee was $2.50, and tobacco was $1 an ounce. "The people being in such pressure, would at the risk of their lives go out in the country to kill deer, turkey, etc., and cook herbs for the support of their families." Menchaca wrote. "The persons who were engaged in agriculture had to go in squads of fifteen or twenty or more to look for their oxen; and while working hard to keep their arms with them." Menchaca described the murder of one Domingo Bustillos by a Tonkawa, placing the scene near La Villita.
Into this atmosphere of unrest and trouble, in 1828, came a handsome brown-haired, blue-eyed stranger—James Bowie, onetime slave runner for the pirate Lafitte, a chivalrous adventurer generally known—although some credit the invention to his brother Rezin—as the creator of the bowie knife. Bowie met and became enamored of Ursula Veramendi. Spanish beauty of San Antonio, and many were the silks and satins and velvets aired along Villita Street when the dashing frontiersmen and the aristocratic beauty were married in San Fernando Church on April 22, 1831. And there were tears in Little Town, when, in 1822, news came that Bowie's lovely wife and their babies had died in Mexico of the plague. That tragedy almost broke the heart of the man whom Texas Indians had given the name Fighting Devil, and he no longer danced with the belles or teased the duennas of La Villita on occasions when the Spanish aristocracy made merry in the midst of growing anxiety. For the talk of freedom had now become a war; in 1835 a motley army led by Stephen Austin, first Anglo-American colonizer and known as the Father of Texas, marched upon San Antonio and encamped along the river near the Old Mill, at a site occupied today by a residence at 1215 North St. Mary's Street.
Bowie had returned, but this time as an enemy, and his old friend kept their relationship a secret. For the town was held by a Mexican general, Martin Perfecto de Cos—young and handsome, but not the man to brook alliances with a rebel Texan.
The Little Town was under the direct scrutiny of the Mexican general, for according to tradition and certain writers, he occupied the adobe house at 513 Villita Street—a small building that remains today as it was then, low, long and narrow, with few windows and thick walls. In the Rise of the Lone Star, by Driggs and King, a San Antonio pioneer is quoted thus:
The Texas colonial revolutionists arrived near the city in October, 1835, and had several skirmishes with Cos' troops, but never near Villita. Then on December 4, when the officers had decided to abandon the siege, and their soldiers—cold, hungry, ragged and unpaid—had started breaking camp, a bold frontiersman named Benjamin F. Milam shouted, "Who'll go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?"
The answer of those Texas volunteers—farmers, tradesmen, lawyers, adventurers—is outstanding in Texas history. They followed "old Ben Milam" into San Antonio, and after five days of fighting, in which Milam was killed, they took the city. And now a historic scene occurred in the little house on Villita Street.
General Cos was a brother-in-law of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, dictator-president of Mexico, and Cos had been sent to Texas to subdue the rebels. In this he had failed. On December 9 he flew a white flag from the Alamo, where at first his guns had boomed defiance and warning to the Texans, and under a flag of truce made a verbal offer of surrender; then withdrew that part of his army which was in the center of the city in the Alamo side of the river. On the cold morning of December 11, in the little building that is now at 513 Villita Street, he faced the Texan commander, Gen. Edward Burleson, to discuss articles of capitulation.
Here the terms of surrender, providing for the withdrawal of the Mexican army from Texas, were written and signed. One condition stressed by Burleson as that a large group of convicts, who had been brought in chains to San Antonio as reinforcements for Cos, must all be taken by the general himself to below the Rio Grande. Brief excerpts from the historic document signed on Villita Street follow:
On December 14, at dusk, General Cos led his vanquished troops from the Alamo and Villita areas. Whooping, jubilant, the Texans swarmed into the Alamo, and the houses of La Villita must have been shuttered and dark, for the Little Town knew not these tall, noisy strangers with their buckskin garb and long squirrel guns.
When the Alamo Fell
But as days passed and many of the Texas soldiers remained—although many drifted homeward, confident that the evolution had successfully ended—the eastern bank of the river earned many agreeable things about these newcomers; even shared, in several instances, the enthusiasm of the volunteers for freedom from the tyrannical rule of Santa Anna. Some of the homes of La Villita now even gave of their men to this cause, for the old families had always had a weakness for revolutions.
In Ehrenberg's With Milam and Fannin, a soldier who was fighting for the unrecognized Texas rebel government told of the days that followed Cos' departure:
Meantime in Mexico Santa Anna prepared an army of more than 6,000 men to crush the Texas revolution. Gen. Sam Houston, former governor of Tennessee and now a leader in the Texas cause, sent Bowie to destroy the Alamo so that it would not fall into Mexican hands: but the little garrison that remained was unwilling to evacuate the post. If the Mexican army could be held here, they argued, the settlements of the Austin Colony and others might escape destruction. So, in the winter of 1835-36, the tall senores continued to frequent the streets of La Villita. Among them was Col. William Barret Travis, red-haired lawyer known as the "gallant captain", who shared with Bowie the military responsibility, and David Crockett, the famous Tennessee backwoods congressman who had recently said to his late constituents, following his defeat for reelection: "You can all go to hell—I'm going to Texas."
Rumor became certainty on the morning of February 23, 1836. Before dawn of that day an atmosphere of excitement spread from the humble jacales of the poorer Mexican district west of San Pedro Creek. Ox carts lumbered through the rutted, twisting streets, piled high with the household goods of departing San Antonio Mexicans. Travis, pricking up his ears, demanded the reason for this exodus, but most of the hurried travelers were loyal republicans and made evasive answers. As chickens squawked and pigs squealed while their owners carted them away, and cows lowed and children shouted, the Texas leaders stood in the midst of the confusion and realized that the invading army from below the Rio Grande must not only have started, but that its arrival must immediately impend.
Travis placed a sentinel in the bell tower of San Fernando Church, to watch for signs of an approaching enemy. At noon he reported figures with glittering lances moving in the direction of Alazan Creek. Scouts sent out encountered the vanguard of Mexican cavalry. The bell of the parish church rang out the alarm, and soon the soldiers of the Alamo were at their posts. Between 185 and 200 men comprised the garrison, and there were 18 small guns along the fortifications. Each of the volunteers had proved by remaining here that he was indeed determined to "die if need be."
In the flurry that followed news of the rapid approach of the Mexicans, Davy Crockett said calmly to Travis, "And here am I, Colonel; assign me to some place, and I and my Tennessee boys will defend it all right." Miss Williams wrote that "Travis then replied that he wished Crockett to defend the picket wall extending from the end of the barracks on the south side to the corner of the church." That order was to become most important to La Villita, for Crockett's cannon, during the twelve days of the siege, sent its projectiles into that section, and much damage—although it is unrecorded—must have been done.
By two o'clock in the afternoon of that first day Santa Anna's forces had occupied the town. A blood-red flag, the flag of no quarter, flew from the tower of the church of San Fernando. Santa Anna's demand for unconditional surrender was answered by the Texans with a cannon shot fired from their eighteen pounder—Crockett's gun. The siege of the Alamo had begun.
What followed is a story known to all the world, the story of not more than 200 men facing fully 5,000 picked troops in an uneven struggle that was in its effects to end in the independence of Texas.
For the tattered soldiers inside the Alamo there were days of cannonading and a few encounters of a minor nature, as hope of reinforcements dwindled and finally died. James Butler Bonham, boyhood chum of Travis, had borrowed money to come to Texas and fight beside his friend; he tried in vain to bring relief to the beleaguered garrison. And although the houses of La Villita were deserted, since all women and children had abandoned the city for safer places, much of this historic struggle occurred in and near the Villita area. Proof that at least one of the Mexican batteries was here is contained in a letter from Travis to the president of the Texas convention, then in session to declare independence from Mexico:
Mrs. S. J. Wright, in Our Living Alamo, has also mentioned the Villita battery. Old reports and maps show that the branch of the Alamo Madre acequia that passed beside the Alamo's east walls, now known as the "Villita ditch," separated the besieged Texans and the besieging Mexicans on the east side of the mission fort. General Cos, forced by Santa Anna to break the parole given by him after the Battle of San Antonio, was assigned to attack the southeast fortification (including the chapel of the Alamo, the only building in the fort that remains today), and his command was stationed near La Villita, when at last orders were given for an attack on the Alamo.
Mexican batteries were silenced by ten o'clock of the night of March 5, as preparations were made in profoundest silence by the Mexicans for a daybreak assault. That night, Little Town must have known the quiet creeping figures of dragoons as they went quietly through the darkness, collecting scaling ladders, crowbars and axes to use in the attack. These soldiers were obedient to the dictator yet fully conscious of the bloody dawn but a few hours distant. None knew better than these hired fighters of Mexico the awful price they would have to pay for the Alamo, for they had sampled the aim of the long rifles, and had tested the endurance and courage of the tall senores.
A Mexican soldier writing to his brother said, in a letter published in El Mosquito Mexicano, April 15, 1836:
Thus, part of the attacking forces were in the direction of La Villita. At the rise of the moon Mexican troops completely surrounded the Alamo; within its defenders slept, for this was their first respite in many days from constant cannonading. Sentinels had been posted but they must also have slept, for they gave no alarm. Coffee might have kept them awake: they had no coffee.
At five o'clock on the morning of March 6 Santa Anna stood upon the Commerce Street bridge, whose approach is on the spot then occupied by a Mexican battery. To the wild notes of the deguello, a bugle call that for centuries had been associated with "no quarter," the legions of Santa Anna moved forward to awaken the ragged handful of Texans to their last dawn.
Of the battle thus begun on a bleak March day, of the hand-to-hand fighting, the desperate resistance, the death of every male defender inmate of the Alamo, much has been written. Blood ran that day in the old acequia that had watered the flowers of La Villita in happier times. Flames of the funeral pyre erected at Santa Anna's command—where the bodies of the Texas patriots were reduced to ashes—afforded ghastly illumination in La Villita that night. Only a few remained there to remember that horror; and for months afterwards, while all living people shunned the Alamo and its environs as a place of death, the homes of Little Town stood deserted.
The direct result of the Battle of the Alamo was the Battle of San Jacinto, where the independence of Texas was secured by the defeat of Santa Anna and his army. Deaf Smith, who had distinguished himself as a scout for the Texas army, in this battle was won further renown by destroying Vince's bridge—thereby impending the advance of Mexican reinforcements, and preventing the escape of Mexican soldiers during the battle. Thus, a resident of La Villita helped avenge the butchery of the Alamo and materially assisted in the conquest of Santa Anna, its author.
Although today removed from the Alamo by modern streets lined with modern buildings, La Villita retains its inheritance as a part—however small—of the epic story of that shrine. Its narrow streets and venerable houses recall the days when Travis, Bowie, Bonham and Crockett were here. Grantland Rice, writing for the New York Tribune in 1916, said that they sometimes come back:
Newcomers to Little Town
While Texas pursued its career as an independent nation in the late 1830's and early 1840's, new faces were seen in la Villita, and again its history and character gradually changed. The land west of San Antonio was still unpeopled and dangerous, and the old city of the Dons was considered a remote and unsafe outpost—threatened by Indians, as in the past, but also, now, by avenging expeditions of Mexicans. Yet more and more non-Latin settlers were becoming citizens. In 1838 the picturesque John Coffee Hays, called "Captain Jack," a mighty Indian fighter whose father had owned The Hermitage in Tennessee, came to San Antonio with a company of Texas Rangers, of which historic band he was the first duly appointed captain. In the Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick, San Antonio's First American Woman a footnote on page 28 locates the domicile of Jack Hays within the Villita area:
Hayes was the most daring and skilful type of frontiersman, grammatical, gallant and well bred; time after time he saved Texas settlements from destruction at the hands of the fierce Commanches. Single-handed he once killed an entire advance scout of picked Commanche warriors. The hero of hundreds of battles, he was later to become San Francisco's first sheriff.
The Mavericks, Samuel A. and Mary A., came to San Antonio in 1838, and Mrs. Maverick became a valuable chronicler of her times. She told how Hays and two companions attended a formal ball given by the Yturri family for Mirabeau Buonoparte Lamar, President of the Republic of Texas:
Mrs. Maverick describes bathing in the river, which since earliest recorded history here had been a favorite pastime. Floating bath houses were beginning to appear in the stream; and following the afternoon bath at four o'clock a lunch was often spread; as Mrs. Maverick wrote, "we had a grand good time, swimming and laughing, and making all the noise we pleased." Scenes such as this were occurring where the river hugged Villita Street—where once the Indian wards of the Alamo had bathed.
With the 1840's came an entirely new element to La Villita—German immigrants imported by the society of nobles of which Count Solms-Braunfels, founder of New Braunfels and other Texas German settlements, was a leader. A number of these strangers in San Antonio were attracted to the Villita area because of its elevation above the river, and because the dwindling fortunes of many of the old Spanish families were compelling them to sell their holdings here. Others, crowded now by a growing town, wished to move where there were fewer neighbors.
A number of the aged houses of La Villita were crumbling, some were in ruins. Over the walls of some of these new plaster and mortar was placed by the neat Germans; new roofs went on, steep-pitched like those of the Fatherland. Thus a number of the buildings in this area assumed a Teutonic character, quaint and attractive, and prim little gardens replaced the opulence and tropic abandon of old patios. Others of the old houses remained untouched, for their owners stayed on, a little resentful of the changes wrought by newcomers.
Among these innovations were matters of custom. In mid-afternoons the rich odor of coffee floated over the housetops, as flaxen-haired housewives had Kaffee klatsch with their neighbors. Miss Julia Vogt, 505 Sixth Street, remembered how her family observed this genial custom:
Miss Vogt also recalled that some of the Villita families who had chickens often had to gather eggs "all over Alamo Plaza, which was all in brush."
Mrs. Anna Guerguin, 108 City Street, also a descendant of former residents of the Villita area, said that her family had five meals a day: "Breakfast, then coffee or broth at ten a.m.; then dinner, coffee at four, and last of all supper." Mrs. Guerguin also recalled that when birthdays occurred, friends went uninvited to participate in a feast and merrymaking. "As their friends had come to their birthdays and were welcome, so they in turn went to their friends' birthdays knowing that they would also be welcome."
A time-honored dish among these pioneer families is a salad made of boiled smoked herrings, beets, hard-boiled eggs, pickles, apples, Irish potatoes and dressing. This concoction was a standby in the new racial parts of La Villita. So also was Gefeullteskraut, a veal pocket stuffed with kraut.
And now Christmas in Little Town had a dual personality. The families of Spanish descent still trooped to worship in the church of San Fernando; still placed burning candles in their windows in the week before the birth-date of the Christ Child, to direct the wandering souls of Mary and Joseph to their abodes. Sometimes bands of performers in Los Pastores, a play of the Nativity, performed here for their patrons. The San Antonio version of this Christmas drama, one of more than seventy existing in Ameria, originated in the humble jacales of the trans-San Pedro area; sometimes the players had sponsors among wealthy old Spanish families.
So on Christmas Eve, from the patio of one of those old Spanish homes in La Villita one might have heard the five thousand lines of rhymed and unrhymed dialogue and song of Los Pastores, and from the house next door the merry sounds of a Middle-European celebration of Saint Nicholas. From one household, the shepherds of the play reciting softly, as they knelt before the rustic manager:
From the household nearby, the booming voice of a jolly Saint Nick clad in a red suit and with bushy white whiskers, as he distributed toys amid the uproarious enthusiasm of little and big celebrators.
Mrs. Albert Steves of San Antonio recalled a typical Christmas of the immigrants of those early days here, and particularly the delicious little cakes made with honey and anise seed which were baked in November in anticipation of the holidays. Although one local store—Pentenreider's—had toys for sale, many of the toys were made at home. Every household had a Christmas tree, and home-made ornaments included chains of glazed paper. Walnuts and pecans were gilded and hung from the tree by strings; but big red apples were the brightest and costliest decorations. The real celebration of the holiday occurred on Christmas Eve; it was inaugurated by a huge turkey dinner, followed by two ceremonies of present giving—one at the Christmas tree for the children, the other in a separate room for the grownups. The children of the household invariably gathered around the dinner table and sang Holy Night. On Christmas Day families exchange gay, informal calls, and were served cookies and wines.
Yet though this new racial element, with it inherited love of music, art and drama, brought new life and the promise of a different type of achievement to La Villita, this area and indeed the entire city remained predominately Spanish—was still a frontier outpost. Julia Nott Waugh in Castro-ville and Henry Castro quotes the diary of Auguste Fretelliere, who wrote:
It is safe to assume that at least part of the houses of La Villita answered to one or the other of these two descriptions, and that they were in sharp contrast with the increasing number of residences of German families. Many of these immigrants, such as the Bardenwerpers, were of noble descent, and their homes were rapidly becoming centers of musical and dramatic efforts. Mrs. Sarah Eagar, who is credited with having been the first non-Latin girl born in San Antonio, moved in 1846 with her parents, the Wilson Riddles, to a house on South Alamo Street. Mrs. Eagar in 1939—active and in possession of all her faculties at the age of 97—said that the boundaries of La Villita were then considered to be from Villita to Martinez Streets and from South Alamo to South Presa Streets. The Riddle place, however, was decidedly on the outskirts of the smaller, older area near the river. Mrs. Riddle, who was from Virginia, found living conditions in San Antonio primitive and asked her husband, "Why did you bring me to this country?" To which he replied, "To see if you could stand it."
Wilson Riddle had been one of the victims of the several Mexican invasions against San Antonio in the 1840's, before he moved to the peaceful rustic environs of La Villita. He died, only one year after he had become a resident of Little Town, of the results of a harsh imprisonment in Mexico.
To Villita in 1847 a new kind of figure came, a threadbare, earnest young minister, John Wesley DeVilbiss. He found "five or six ladies in the city (San Antonio) representing nearly as many churches—a Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian, and some others friendly to the gospel." The Reverend Mr. DeVilbiss attacked the practice of holding cock fights on the main plazas on Sunday mornings while he was preaching, and was rescued from a "ducking in the river" at the hands of the town's gamblers by the warning of the above-mentioned ladies. This Methodist parson and his colleague in San Antonio, the Rev. John McCullough, a Presbyterian, were hard pressed for quarters to house their infinitesimal flocks. The two Protestant preachers held services jointly; but DeVilbiss had his own Sunday School class, of which a member was Augusta Evans, the writer, who lived for a time in La Villita. Soon after this, DeVilbiss "took the preliminary steps toward building a church in the city." He told his story in Reminiscences of a Superannuated Preacher in the book entitled Life of John Wesley DeVilbiss:
But Protestantism in the form of a church building was not yet to invade La Villita—Roman Catholic by ancient inheritance. The Reverend Mr. DeVilbiss sadly tells us that he never built the church for the bell; he was pursuaded by Mr. McCullough to assist in building an adobe church "on Main Street. . . with the understanding that we should occupy the house cojointly, and when we built they would return the material (furnished by DeVilbiss) either in kind or in money. Our bell was moved over to the new church. . . . This as near the close of the year 1847. About this time I learned that the title to our church lot was not good, and we lost the lot, and did not receive even indemnity for the purchase money. This was a severe stroke to me, as I had felt that with the lot we had at least a good foothold on the soil of San Antonio; but now, after two years' hard labor, we had no place to call our own."
A Decade of Change
The environs of La Villita were described in 1849 by John Meusebach in the manuscript collection entitled Wurzbach's Memoirs and Meusebach Papers:
Still other racial elements—notably Polish and French—came to La Villita in the 1850's and 1860's. Erasmus Andrew Florian was of the former group; a political exile from Warsaw, he came to San Antonio to help found one of the city's first banks. The Florians moved to La Villita when it was considered San Antonio's most aristocratic section, according to Miss Mamie Florian, 826 N. St. Mary's Street, "I still pronounce the name of this district 'Veeheeta', which early residents called it," Miss Florian said in 1939. "Our old home is just across the street from the present Villita Art Gallery. La Villita was the home of the elite in San Antonio." Miss Florian said that one of their neighbors was Augusta Evans.
In 1858 the German citizens—including those of the Villita area—formed the Casino Association, a select social organization, and erected a club and opera house on Market Street (part of the old building is today occupied by the San Antonio Water Company). This center of social and cultural life was at the back door of La Villita, just across the river. These residents also founded, in this year, the German-English School, whose old rock buildings—all intact—are occupied today by the San Antonio Junior College. This school at the present 419 South Alamo Street served the little boys and girls of La Villita for many years: in it they learned both German and English, and the girls learned to sew, paint china, and make wax flowers. Juius Berends promoter of the school, was a former nobleman. He arranged for the first school building to be dedicated to the poet, Fredrich von Schiller. Terms lasted eleven months of the year. Some of the boy students rode horseback to school and gave riding exhibitions between classes.
In The Alamo City, Pearson Newcomb thus described La Villita during the 1850's:
Yet, though many of its houses were still unchanged, the Little Town must have showed unmistakable signs of transition. Dozens of families whose forebears came directly to San Antonio from France, Poland or Germany now occupied the old Spanish buildings, and had infused their particular types of plants, trees, architectural ornamentation, and customs into the area. Architectural changes especially became manifest, as Miss Florian testifies:
The Florian residence at 510 Villita Street is an example of the sturdy type of architecture chosen by those who remodeled the old houses. Stone was the commonest building materials, as it was cheap and durable; the builder was in each case the architect and designed or remodeled his house according to his needs.
Progress and Personalities
Across the street from the Florians lived the Diaz family, and here Rafael Diaz (who became a Metropolitan Grand opera tenor) spent his boyhood. At that time the Florian place reached back to Hessler Street; then, as today, Womble Alley ran through from north to south, crossing Nacional Steet.
The Lutheran Church of St. John, known to early residents of Villita as the Rooster Church because of the rooster on its weather vane, was already drawing its congregations to Nueva Street when the Florians became residents. The Florian children on Sunday mornings watched the members file inside, the women each holding a prayer book across which a freshly laundered white handkerchief was folded. Residents of the Villita section were hospitable, Miss Florian remembers, doing much leisurely visiting.
Where the Public Service Company building is on the corner of Villita and South Presa Streets, for a time lived the family of Dr. Clifford in a house that, Miss Florian said, "stood up high from the ground as if it were on stilts."
Mrs. Mary Elmendorf, 220 Arciniega Street, also remembers much of La Villita during the 1860's. Her grandmother, Mrs. Louisa Wueste, lived in the building occupied in 1939 by the Villita Art Gallery, 311 Villita Street. This housewife was an artist whose paintings adorn many San Antonio homes—all of the portraits cameo-clear, vibrant with feeling and color. On the northwest corner of South Presa and Nueva Streets lived the artist Iwonski, a friend of Mrs. Wueste. Iwonski had come with the European colonial rush to Texas, had fought Indians, and milked cows. He was an exile from his country and eventually returned.
Mrs. Elmendorf remembers another one-time occupant of the house at the corner of Villita and South Presa Streets. His name was Lemnitzer, and he was a cabinet-maker, a wood carver and "a fixer"—"he fixed anything that needed mending." Lemnitzer compounded a salve which was used by many of the residents of La Villita; but though the salve is only an odorous memory, many of Lemnitzer's hand-carved wooden candlesticks and other articles of household use remain as prized possessions among descendants of his former patrons.
An enterprise that later became a large factory started on Villita Steet, where Gustave Duerler inaugurated a candy manufactory, Mrs. Elmendorf said:
On the corner of Nueva and Presa Streets, Mrs. Elmendorf recalled, was the little grocery store of the Teutonic Mr. Kresser: the groceryman's wife was French, and when politics changed in Europe relations in the family were sometimes strained, 'for Mrs. Kresser never forgot she was a Frenchwoman." Mr. Kresser built some small stone houses which he rented as apartments; these buildings were in a yard which had a well that served all the "apartment" dwellers.
Next door to the Kresser property on Presa Street, stood a one-story adobe building called "the haunted house." Children so feared this place that many of them refused to pass it, even while on their way to the little grocery store to buy candy.
At the southwest corner of Villita Street and Womble Alley, in those days, lived a shoemaker named Scheuermann. He made high shoes of a sturdy build, and for years shod most of the pupils of the German-English School.
One of the residents of Villita Sstreet was a fortune teller, Mrs. Geissler, who lived in a small adobe house near the shoe-maker. The lovelorn, the hard-pressed, the bereaved, all found their way to the tight-shut doors of the mystic.
On the south corner of Villita and South Alamo Streets was the McAllister residence, a one-story house. This was a musical center; a daughter married Professor Katzenberger, who promoted, directed and participated in lively, hearty home-talent "operas." A neighbor in the Villita area, a Mr. Lapentz, sponsored amateur dramatic events, especially featuring plays of Schiller and Goethe. Much of the early local effort toward development of music and the drama originated with one or the other of these. Daughters of the families of the district starred in theatricals held in the Casino, and were applauded mightily.
In the McAllister home the powerful soprano of the Professor's wife, Anna, was frequently heard practicing roles in Martha, The Bohemian Girl and other operas. Here the amateur performers were drilled and trained, with five of the six McAllister children taking part in each performance. So successful were the presentations that the oldest son, Willie, organized one of the city's first orchestras; the second son, Joe, a violinist, later became an orchestra leader. A daughter, Lula, became the first supervisor of music in the city's public schools.
Mrs. F.W. McAllister, 123 Slocum Place, had this to say of those old days in La Villita:
A descendant of one of the French families of La Villita, Miss Biencourt, still lives on Villita Street in a residence next to the Art Gallery. Her great-grandparents were named Desmazieres and lived in a two-story stone house in the Villita area; orchards of peaches, pomegranates, persimmons and grapes surrounded the house, and the grounds were green and cool. In this home, in 1861, a dinner was given for Robert E. Lee and other Virginians. Mrs. Sarah Eagar, then a pretty young lady home from boarding school in Mississippi, tells that someone proposed a toast, mentioning a threatening war. She said that Lee lifted his glass and answered. "If Virginia secedes I go with her."
Many Villita families had slaves, yet some of them were Unionists. Conflicting emotions shook the Little Town during the Civil War, but the fighting was distant, and life continued here much as usual except that most of the men were absent.
Times Change. . . Villita Does Not
Following the Civil War, La Villita settled down to a placid and undisturbed existence. Modernity came slowly but surely to the other San Antonio streets of the Dons, but not so surely to Villita. Joined to the city now by law, by geography, and by extended settlement surrounding it, the Little Town nevertheless remained a close, closed community; its families in many respects lived as villagers of a section distinct from the remainder of the municipality. Old names were perpetuated, old customs continued, and although progress entered the venerable doors in the form of the individual achievement of its residents, La Villita presented an almost unchanged face to the world.
A storm in 1868 damaged some of the aged Spanish buildings. At eight o'clock of the night of May 19 a terrific pounding of hail-stones began, and when it had finished roofs were torn, walls scarred and in some places broken, chimneys were crushed and windows smashed. Repairs entailed some redecoration.
La Villita was joined to the city beyond by bridges made of planks laid on barrels that floated on the water. White canvas bath houses also floated on barrels; bathing in the river was an increasingly popular pastime.
Charles Herff, member of a pioneer San Antonio family, recalled that when a cholera epidemic descended upon San Antonio at the conclusion of the Civil War, a new activity occupied the small boys of La Villita—as indeed it involved all the youngsters of the city. The municipal recorder announced that for every two rat tails delivered to the then city hall, called the "Bat Cave", he would pay five cents. The ancient nether regions of the houses of La Villita had a thorough exploration of small businessmen searching out rats.
Mr. Herff added:
In the 1870's the families of La Villita were leaders in many developments of a cultural character. Prof. L. J. Schuetze, 520 Hays Street, recalled the old Saengerfests and Volkfests of this decade, large gatherings in San Antonio of German singing societies from all parts of Texas. Parades opened the conventions, and displays of fireworks, pageants, concerts and contests occupied the entire community for several days. These celebrations were usually climaxed on Bowen's Island, near La Villita, with mammoth picnics. Noted actors were presented at the Casino Club, and at Turner Hall amateur and professional vied for honors in many a melodrama. In 1872 Sidney Lanier fraternized with the artistically-inclined old families of La Villita, participating in local Maennerchor musical events. Lanier composed Field Larks and Blackbirds a score for wind instruments, while in this atmosphere of hearty and enthusiastic musical endeavor.
Professor Schuetze spoke of the environs of La Villita in the 1870's and 1880's, revealing that many of the families living close to the river in the Villita and adjoining areas had ducks and geese, and these fowls congregated on Alamo Plaza at an iron fountain erected to furnish water for horses and mules. The Professor said:
During the wild period from 1870 to 1890, when San Antonio was a wide-open town enriched by drives of longhorns to northern markets over the celebrated cattle trails, La Villita looked sedately on from its perch across the river; it had no part in the lurid night life and frequently fatal gunfights. In the gay 1890's its sons and daughters attended the "magnificent balls" and other social events of the lavish decade, but the ornate gingerbread architecture so cherished then did not invade Villita. A few of the old families moved to more spacious, less crowded sections, but their old houses were little changed, sometimes not at all.
And so the twentieth century arrived, bringing skyscrapers and paved streets; the paving was welcomed by Villita, which had long waded through mud or walked over ruts in the narrow thoroughfares. But the skyscrapers stopped just short of the old village.
Today, surrounded by the noise and bustle of a modern city, La Villita faces its greatest transformation—its restoration to the heydays of yesterday. Through its forlorn recent years, when the section stood forgotten and largely in disrepair, various civic-minded groups have urged its complete restoration. That the section has endured is due largely to the loyalty of its families, many of whom cling to their faithful old houses of stone and adobe. Since the acquisition of the block-square area by the City of San Antonio, its shabby little streets have been invaded by engineers, architects, artists, historians, city fathers, pioneers—all interest in or actually engaged in the project of restoration. Neglected so long, La Villita still seems a little aloof to all this interest and to-do.
The little village of the padre's day is being born again. To its creaking old bones youth is returning. When the present plans have been fulfilled, there will be patios again, with palms and poinsettias; there will be the tang of tamales in the air, the soft sound of tortillas being patted out by copper-colored women on matates, the plaintive notes of guitars accompanying such wistful melodies as La Golondrina.
The San Antonio of the distant past will be presented here, and on historic ground. Strife and turmoil may grip the outside world, but not this rejuvenated village of two centuries. Perhaps its future visitors may sense in it an unchangeable serenity, the seclusion and poise of time itself.
Compiled and written by the Writers' Project of the Works Projects Administration in the State of Texas
Maury Maverick, Mayor of San Antonio, Cooperating Sponsor
Published by the City of San Antonio, 1939
A Restored La Villita
In San Antonio, the restoration of La Villita, the "Little Town" of Spaniards, has been begun as a historic and architectural monument. Few American cities have such an area, endowed with great age and a distinct and unusual character, partially intact and altogether adaptable to reconstruction.
It is planned, when restoration is completed, that a block-square area almost in the heart of the city's business district shall present an authentic picture of early-day San Antonio—the San Antonio of adobe houses with hand-carved mesquite doors; of flower-bordered acequias, ditches dug to supply water for the fields of Indians; of shady patios with feathery exotic plants, perfumed by rich blossoms trailing over high stone walls. The two centuries of La Villita's existence will echo here in windows with deep recesses shake-shingled roofs, rough flagstone walks, worn stone doorsteps.
To save this storied district from inevitable destruction, the City of San Antonio, through Mayor Maury Maverick, in 1939 secured the area bounded by Villita, South Presa and Hessler Streets and Womble Alley.
Funds and facilities of the National Youth Administration were secured, and the initial work of clearing the site and of laying bare the ancient construction of the buildings was begun.
Seven houses were selected for restoration, but these will by no means complete the project, as plans have been made to add several buildings and features, so that, finally, a complete and authentic "Little Town" will be re-created.
The district demonstrates in its architectural features the expression of several types and generations of people. When disturbing later construction has been removed, these old houses will tell much of the architectural story of San Antonio and the Southwest—of the Spanish colonial, Texas colonial, European immigration, and several later epochs.
Of the section, O'Neil Ford, supervising architect representing the National Youth Administration, has this to say:
These houses are not of self-conscious architecture. They were built by men who were seeking a new and permanent security in a new land. The houses they built were elemental structures providing the minimum requirements of comfort and shelter.
Because confusion exists as to the precise date when the houses were built, it was decided not to attempt a restoration to definite years, but only to definite periods. Historians and architects have agreed that the restoration of the Little Town shall be from its earliest construction, about 1722, to include the 1850's, when the last radical changes, repairs, and redecoration occurred. New work will be consistent throughout with the period indicated by each building.
Of restoration methods, Mr. Ford says:
At no time do we expect to affect picturesqueness or "sweetness" at the expense of good sense or structural honesty, either in those things we may build or in the parts we may restore. The men and women of the historical societies are agreed that we will not make this a series of precious little surprises and features of interest but that we will make every effort to have one general atmosphere of cool shady places, of profuse banks of blossoming native trees and shrubs. . . surrounded by houses returned as nearly as possible to their first condition.
This plan bars all touches of theatrical and bizarre architecture, so easy to fall into a work of this kind.
Painstaking attention to the authenticity of small details occupies the restorers of La Villita. Doors and mantels will be made in the workshops of the National Youth Administration by Mexican woodcarvers: a variety of window types will illustrate the form evolved locally; photographs are being made of details in other old houses scattered about San Antonio, and, from these, shop drawings are perfected as a guide to decoration, cabinet work, hardware, and even structural details. Plans call for the type of planting used by early-day Spanish residents in San Antonio, with native trees and shrubs, and even the walks will be of authentic materials.
The prime objective of this restoration program has been to produce, in La Villita's old setting, and on its foundations, a carefully re-created group of small houses that show clearly what indigenous culture here evolved.
La Villita, restored, will be no museum of buildings, and no mere replica, but a living demonstration of how Southwestern architecture grew.
Tentative plans include the following features:
1. An encircling wall to insure privacy and such isolation as is necessary to create an atmosphere of the past.
2. Restored or reconstructed houses lining the outer borders of the area and having entrances both on the bordering streets and on a large inner court or plaza.
3. The addition of a large structure to be used as a restaurant of typical early-day Spanish colonial type, the cuisine to be Mexican, with service from the kitchens of the main building to vine arbors in the inner plaza.
4. A building to house a Hispanic-American library and museum, planned to be of adobe with the first floor some four or five feet below the ground level. The second floor, which would be used for meetings and social gatherings, as well as for the display of relics, would be reached by a wooden staircase through a balcony.
5. Along the south boundary of the area, a row of open stalls with stone or hewn wood shelves, where various Mexican arts and handicrafts will be displayed. Small workshop courts will be in the rear of each house.
6. The inner court or plaza, which will be beautified by careful planting, the judicious use of fountains, and a typical acequia. This plaza will be used for social events, and here diners will served at tables under the stars, as were those who first sat at San Antonio's open-air chile stands in 1813.
While dulce vendors squat in the shadow of the little courts and tamale women swathed in rebozos scent the air with their pungent pots of steaming edibles, strolling caballeros wearing broad, braided sombreros and short jackets of green silk will sing to their own stringed accompaniment the songs of old Mexico and Spain—and the notes of the guitars, the odor of masa cooking, the soft voices of Latins, will help roll back the years to the time when these songs, these houses, these people, were San Antonio.
Part of the value of this restored La Villita—as seen by its patrons and sponsors—is historical. Part is architectural. And part is the charm and distinction it will present to visitor and native son alike.
The Story of La Villita
We have no city, except, perhaps, New Orleans, that can vie, in point of the picturesque interest that attaches to old and antiquated foreignness with San Antonio. Its jumble of races, costumes, languages and buildings; its religious ruins, holding to an antiquity, for us, indistinct enough to breed an unaccustomed solemnity; (all). . . combine with the heroic touches of its history to enliven and satisfy.
Many others, like Olmstead, have been struck by the visible evidence of history in San Antonio; for here it is possible to see the past in old, scarred buildings. As the oldest remaining residential area of the city that has grown in dramatic stages beside the banks of the San Antonio River. La Villita—the "Little Town" of the Spaniards—has stood not on the fringe of events, but within their often stormy center. Villita has had the sometimes good, sometimes bad, fortune to be always a small but highly romantic part of the tale that has been woven beside the twisting river for more than two centuries.
First to dwell on the site, as far as recorded history shows, were the Coahuiltecans. These sedentary Indians had village sites along the river valley; their brush and hide tepees stood under great pecan trees. The women cultivated patches of beans and maize. Where La Villita is today, flint tools of these tribesmen are sometimes found, testifying to the primitive community that was the Little Town's forerunner. Ashes of long-dead fires, found many layers deep, often contain blood-red arrow points made of flint quarried at some unknown distant mine and later shipped here. The great fear of these peaceable dwellers on the river bank was of cannibal Karankawas from the Texas coast—powerful, evil creatures who came up the stream in canoes, seeking plunder and man-meat.
Here, in the spring of 1536, came a stranger who was to write the first description of the area, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spaniard who had survived the expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez. The red men who dwelt on the banks of the river received the Spaniard kindly. Dr. Carlos E. Castaneda, eminent Texas historian, says:
They (The Spaniards) were. . . given presents of ochre, beads, and a few little bags of silver. . . . They were by this time in the vicinity of present day San Antonio, where the Indians had established a rancho because of the natural facilities of the region for settlement. "If this deduction of mine is true," declares Dr. (Robert) Hill, after many years of painstaking study, "then San Antonio is the oldest identifiable village within the present limits of the United States."
Since the site of La Villita is one of the most desirable in the San Antonio River Valley, it is reasonable to conclude that at least part of the rancho described later by Cabeza de Vaca was in this locality. Here the villagers would have been safe from the constant menace of river floods. If this assumption be true, then this is one of the oldest places of habitation to be described as such, in this country.
More than a hundred years elapsed before Don Domingo Teran de los Rios, breaking new trails for the King of Spain, halted at an Indian village on the banks of this river while Father Damian Massanet said Mass and named the valley San Antonio.
Other conquistadores passed this way, and in 1714 the Indian villagers were visited by French explorer Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who said it was a "likely spot for settlement."
The river that winds past modern Villita Street received its name in 1709 from a friar who never forgot the "richness of the grapes of all kinds, the quality of the mulberry trees which surpassed those of Murcia and Granada, the abundance of nuts, more tasty than those of Castile. . . and the large number of wild turkeys and deer, to say nothing of the herds of numberless buffalo." Father Fray Antonio de San Buenventura Olivares had so great a desire to claim this area for God and King and to win the "more than fifty Indian tribes" of San Antonio Valley that he began a campaign of persuasion which was to end in the establishment of the most famous of all Franciscan missions and its suburb, La Villita.
"The Little Town" is Born
On April 25, 1718, Don Martin de Alarcon, Knight of the Order of Santiago, "Captain General and Governor of the Province of Tejas and such other lands as might be conquered," entered the valley of San Antonio with men and implements sufficient to found a settlement. The persistent dream of Father Olivares had resulted in this expedition, its tangible manifestations including 1,000 bleating sheep, 548 horses, 200 oxen and as many cows—and, vastly more important, 72 persons who were pledged to convert this wild and beautiful valley into a Spanish outpost of civilization. The friar who had brought all this to pass had quarreled with the dashing Alarcon, and marched in alone, bare-footed and dauntless, to found—on May 1—Mission San Antonio de Valero, known today as the Alamo, shrine of Texas liberty, world renowned because of a battle in which every defender died.
Five days after the mission had been founded, Alarcon established the Villa de Bejar on a site near San Pedro Springs. Thus in the beginning, the civil settlement of present-day San Antonio was west of the mission, and the soldiers and settlers lived apart from the Franciscan outpost that was to rule their destiny. But in 1722, on orders of the Marquis of Aguayo, the presidio (fort) of the mission and the homes of the colonists were moved—because of the constant threat of Indian attack—to a spot near Mission San Antonio de Valero. In the archives of San Francisco el Grande, headquarters of the Franciscan Order in the New World, is a yellowed document, the report of Father Olivares to the Viceroy, which says:
He (Alarcon) likewise succeeded in establishing a Spanish villa and presidio in the valley of San Antonio, with thirty families, in the most pleasant spot to be found in the entire province where (they) enjoy the greatest advantages and facilities anyone can desire.
Frederick C. Chabot, in With the Makers of San Antonio, has this to say of the Spaniards who were to become the founders of La Villita:
Alarcon. . . was therefore instructed to establish a colony of Spaniards on the banks of the San Antonio, with at least thirty families or settlers, with soldiers, conceding to them in the name of His Majesty, all the favors and privileges accorded by the royal laws. . . . It was also ordered that the soldiers in Texas serve for the erection and construction of settlements. It was particularly ordered that at least ten soldiers be left for the defense of the mission. . . on the San Antonio River. . . . It was also ordered that the Spaniards and soldiers, who were to remain at the mission, were to be married and have their families with them, as the Indians were surprised when the soldiers did not bring their wives. . . . Most noteworthy of all (in Alarcon's expedition) was the company of militia.
Chabot's list of the military men who were to create homes for themselves in La Villita includes names in modern San Antonio: "Don Diego de Escobar, and family; Alferez Francisco Hernandez, and family; . . . Geronimo Carbajal; . . . Antonio Guerra; Don Francisco de Escobar; Domingo Flores, and family; Xtoval de la Garza; Sebastian Gonzales; Joseph Ximines; . . . Don Francisco Juan de la Cruz, Master Mason; Santiago Peres, Carpenter; Joseph Menchaca," and many others whose descendants today are San Antonians.
Conflicting reports of those who actually participated in the founding of the Villa in the valley of San Antonio obscure the actual number of soldiers and settlers who came to dwell among the Payaya and other tribes of Coahuiltecans. It is reasonably certain, however, that in 1722, when the Villa de Bexar was moved to the vicinity of the mission, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of modern Alamo Plaza, the first few huts of La Villita may have been erected. J.M. Rodriguez and other writers, telling the stories handed down in San Antonio's oldest Spanish families, claim that La Villita soon grew as a place of residence of the married soldiers of the mission garrison. Rodriguez in his Memoirs of Early Texas says:
Villita, meaning little town, was settled by some of the soldiers who came with the Mexican Army and those who had intermarried with Indians, and who were not supposed to be the very best people. In fact there was a great distinction between the east and the west side of the river. The west side of the river was supposed to be the residence of the first families here, and the descendents of the Indians and Spanish soldiers settled on the east side of the river.
From legends and scattered fragments of early-day writings, the story of the presidio and adjoining area which probably extended to the locality now know as La Villita can be pieced together. Robert Sturmberg in his History of San Antonio and of the Early Days in Texas (St. Joseph's Altar Society), wrote:
Viceroy Marquis de Valero, knowing the dangers that beset the newly founded Mission, ordered Martin de Alarcon. . . to send a strong military protection to the Mission San Antonio de Valero. Thereupon, in fact during the same year, 30 soldiers with their families were moved. . . to the new Mission site. A small village was built for them close to the Mission (on the east side of the river), and it received the name of San Jose de Alamo. In later years when the Missions were abandoned by the Franciscan Fathers, the soldiers moved into the Mission. . . . Of the Villita San Jose there is no historic information available to the writer with the exception that the huts or houses were located close to the Mission San Antonio de Valero.
That the modern Villita area must have been at least on the fringe of "Villita San Jose" is attested by old land records and other ancient documents in the archives of Bexar County. Among the petitions for land and deeds to property is one actually describing a typical house of that area:
Mathias de la Cerda sells to Joseph Salinas, a soldier of the presidio: A house of stone and mud, 12 varas long and five wide, with a jacal that serves as a kitchen all of woven twigs and grass. . .
For this house and its grounds the soldier paid "four she mules. . . thirty mares. . . six gentle horses, give or take. . . .
Another typical house is described by a Mrs. H. Lucas, who wrote, of San Antonio in the 1850's:
This was a very primitive town when we first came here. The houses were one-story and built of adobe, one room deep with dirt floors, and no connecting doors leading from room to room; a person went outside to enter another room at the back. The sills were more than a foot high, the window sills were three feet wide and the walls were three feet thick. The windows were iron-barred and one could sit in the window seat and chat with a passerby or flirt with an admirer. The floors were of dirt and kept hard by sprinkling and sweeping with brooms of brushy wood tops.
Soon after the establishment of the mission, Indian neophytes and soldiers and settlers were given the task of digging one of San Antonio's several acequias (irrigation ditches). To water the fields of the Mission San Antonio de Valero—covering land now occupied by tall buildings in the heart of the city—the Alamo Madre Ditch was dug from its source near the head of the river (in the neighborhood of present-day Olmos Park), and one of its branches passed beside the east walls of the mission. William Corner in his San Antonio de Bexar (A Guide and History), wrote, "From here (the mission) it passes on through the Menger courtyard; thence to supply, in old times, the inhabitants of East Villita." Chabot, in With the Makers of San Antonio, wrote:
They had worked four years in bringing water from the river to the fields. All the work had been done with bars, and the missionaries themselves had not lacked a single day of work. President Father Joseph Gonzales was especially zealous, and was the one who worked the most, for he appreciated the importance of irrigation to his mission.
The Alamo Madre acequia lined with willows and figs, probably brought the first beauty to the narrow, rutted streets of La Villita. Harking back to those remote days of which there are so few chroniclers. Sidney Lanier, as quoted in Corner's San Antonio de Bexar, painted an imaginary picture of the people of that frontier community:
Ah, here they come, the inhabitants of San Antonio, from the church-door; vespers is over; the big-thighed, bow-legged, horse riding Apache steps forth, slowly, for he is yet in a maze—the burning candles, the shrine, the genuflexions, the chants, are all yet whirling in his memory; the lazy soldier. . . the soldier's wives, the squaws, the catechumens, the children, all wend their ways across the plaza. Here advances Brother Juan, bare-footed, in a gown of serge with his knotted scourge a-dangle from his girdle: he accosts the Indian, he draws him on to talk of Manitou, his pale face grows intense and his forehead wrinkles as he spurs his brain on to the devising of arguments that will convince this wild soul before him of the fact of the God of Adam, of Peter, and Francis.
The Wrong Side of the River
Tradition says that during the next few years La Villita—linked inseparably to Mission San Antonio de Valero because it was the villa of its soldiers—was a poor little district of adobe huts, whose yards and gardens alone were retentious. Difficulties beset the struggling, isolated Spanish outpost: shipments of food and clothing, of pesos due the soldiers, were few and disappointing when they did come. Yet the plight of the soldiers' families was not emphasized until the morning of March 9, 1731, when fifteen families from the Canary Islands marched in—and were promptly given the title of Hidalgos, "sons of noble lineage," by a grateful King who had long despaired of colonizing this wilderness with permanent settlers. The titled islenos (islanders) founded the royal Villa of San Fernando across the river from the Villa de Bexar, on present-day Main and Military Plazas. At once the newcomers adopted an attitude of isolation, closing their homes to the folk from the "wrong side of the river," thus inaugurating a class distinction that was to rankle for many years.
The Rev. Mother Louis (Morin) of the Ursuline Academy, on Navarro Street, is descended from the Curbellos—one of the original sixteen Canary Island families brought to San Antonio. She said (in 1939) that Senor Juan Curbello built his residence on property later known as Bowen's Island—where the 31-story Smith-Young Tower now stands—and that this district, close to Villita Street, was devoted to small "farms" or gardens where flowers and vegetables were raised. Mother Louis said:
Villita was built for the soldiers and their wives; the Canary Islanders were considered noble people and the soldiers' families, common people; and the soldiers' quarters were thus in different places from that given to the aristocratic Islanders of the San Fernando settlement.
Sturmberg, in his History of San Antonio and of the Early Days in Texas, wrote:
In following this narrative it is well to bear in mind that the Mission San Antonio de Valero and the village San Jose de Alamo located on the east side of the river; and the city of San Fernando and the Presidio de Bexar, located on the west side of the river, constituted two different communities, each having their own civil administration. They even had trouble about their respective water rights for irrigation purposes.
San Fernando was the capital of the province of Texas, and its grandees led a gay, luxurious life as compared with the humble existence on the east side of the river. Gregorio Esparza told of the fold who lived in the jacales:
We were of the poor people. . . to be poor in that day meant to be very poor indeed—almost as poor as the Savior in His manger. We were not dissatisfied with it. . . . There was a time to eat and sleep and look at growing plants. Of food we had not overmuch—chile and beans, beans and chile.
Evil days fell upon the people of San Antonio Valley, rich and poor alike between 1731 and 1750. The Apaches, stirred to fury by the coming of more white men to their old hunting ground, made raid after raid upon the settlements of the King. Horses and burros were stolen from off the very streets of Bexar, and finally, on June 30, 1745, the warriors planned to burn the presidio and wipe out the twin Villas. A boy of the mission gave the alarm, and at once the soldiers and neophytes of San Antonio de Valero went into action. Castaneda, in Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519-1936, Vol. III, describes the event:
One hundred mission Indians came to the rescue and so stoutly did they attack the invaders that they were soon put to flight. The soldiers and Indians now gave chase. . . . The fate of Fort St. Louis (La Salle's for in Texas) might have been the fate of San Antonio had it not been for the timely aid of the mission Indians of Valero. . . .
A quarrel caused by the policies of a new governor, Carlos Franqui de Lugo soon developed between the religious authorities of the mission settlement and the civil heads of San Fernando. This controversy became serious when the governor ordered the mission guards removed. Growing ill feeling was climaxed in the autumn of 1736 when the padre in charge at the mission attempted to close the one small bridge over the river that connected the two Villas. It is recorded that the governor, who had heard that even he was barred from the narrow span, crossed the bridge in heated defiance, faced the padre in his cell, and threatened to send the missionary back to Mexico "packed on a mule." Father Mariano de los Dolores, the rebellious priest, was forced to leave the bridge open, but retaliated by closing the church of the mission to San Fernando's faithful. Mission guards were not restored until 1737.
In 1762 Mission San Antonio de Valero was in its zenith. Those dependent upon its bounty drew from the resources of the mission rancho, described as having "one hundred and fifteen gentle horses, one thousand one hundred fifteen head of cattle, two thousand three hundred sheep and goats, two hundred mares, fifteen jennets and eighteen saddle mares." (From Documentos para la Historia de la Provincia de Tejas, pp. 163-167.)
In that year the walls of the chapel of the mission collapsed, a symbolic event, for the fortunes of the mission flock were never again to rise. The following year, 1763, a plague decimated the ranks of priests, neophytes, soldiers and settlers. Of this era Stumberg wrote:
The decline of the Mission San Antonio de Valero proceeded very rapidly from 1763 on. The savage Indians preferred to follow the French doctrine—preferred the wild and easy life to the orderly life of the mission. The older, converted Indians and their children soon acquired the habits of the soldiers and their families; many of them moved out of the mission into the Villita San Jose de Alamo and their children married with the children of the Mexican soldiers.
Indications are that by this time the region of La Villita was peopled not only by families attached to the mission, but by soldiers of the Presidio of Bexar, a royal garrison maintained for the protection of the Villa of San Fernando and the older mission settlement. In his diary Fray Gaspar de Solis, in 1767, tells only of soldiers attached to the Presidio. Yet the Villa of San Fernando still frowned upon La Villita as the home of less aristocratic Spaniards, the home, as Rodriguez says, of the families of soldiers. Solis, by the way, wrote a remarkable description of the San Antonio River in this area:
The road of the presidio is wooded with mesquite, huisaches, pin oaks and oaks. The river contains fish: barbos, piltontes, seafish, sardines, eels and others. In these woods. . . are great numbers of cattle and horses, many animals such as deer, wolves, coyotes, rabbits, and now and then a lion, some wild cats wild boar along the banks of the river, blue ducks, geese, turkey, quail. . . screech owls which do not call like those outside, but have a different manner of screeching. . .
The historian Bancroft tells of a law passed in 1778 which dealt a telling blow to the mission and its dependents. The measure provided that all unbranded cattle were the property of the King of Spain, and imposed a fee of four reales a head for all such cattle slaughtered. Edward W. Heusinger in Early Explorations and Mission Establishments in Texas explains that "Since the wealth of the missions consisted in cattle, which it was impossible to herd together and brand, this double-toothed law practically obliged them to pay four reales apiece for the rights to slaughter their own cattle raised on their own lands."
Records disclose that in 1785 the two settlements of San Antonio—that on the east side of the river, including La Villita, and that on the west side, the Villa of San Fernando—became one civil unit under an alcade—a sort of justice of the peace and mayor combines. Until this year, La Villita and all the mission settlement had been under the jurisdiction of the padres.
A movement was now under way for the abandonment of the missions and the secularization of their lands. The Count Revilla Gigedo in his report as Viceroy said, "Neither our acquisitions nor the number of Indians congregated in the actual mission towns do by any means justify the enormous outlay incurred, nor the fatiguing labors undergone by the missionary fathers." In 1790 there arrived in San Antonio refugees from the Presidio of los Adaes, in east Texas, and to these victims of French aggrandizement many of the lands formerly held by Mission San Antonio de Valero were distributed, including, as old land records disclose, lots in the present area of La Villita. By 1793 the mission beside the San Antonio River had been abandoned, and the families who had lived so near it, obedient to its bells, lost their separate identity and became at last simply citizens of Bexar, as this Spanish town was most commonly known.
Speaking of the San Antonio of 1793, Sturmberg wrote:
On the south side of our present-day Gas and Electric Company's plant where there are two bridges, there was located the principal ford for wagons and riders on horseback. For the convenience of the general public a log was thrown across the narrowest part of the stream. . . . Where Villita Street begins or ends on South Alamo Street, there was the main part of the Villita. After crossing the stream one entered at once into the city of San Fernando. . . . Houses were built closely together; they were all the one-story kind and topped with flat roofs. The construction was the only practical one for warding off the attacks of savage Indians. . . . The combined population of the city and Villita never exceeded 2,000 or 3,000 souls, whilst at times, it fell below those numbers. . . The peninsula, formed by the river and extending to the Alamo, was called Protero. There was also a collection of houses around the Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) and extending to the Villita.
And now the "Little Town," safe so long under the protection of the padres and their soldiers, was thrust out into the often turbulent life of the city beyond the river.
Stormy Times in Little Town
Forlorn and impoverished, La Villita drowsed on the river bank and remembered better days; and the faithful few who had been taught their Aves in the now deserted mission trudged with little relish to the Church of San Fernando across the river—the haughty, gold-trimmed church of the equally haughty, gold-braided islenos. Bells that had called them to vespers were silent now, and many an old man, ragged and barefoot, stood abashed in the new church of the Canary Islanders, heartsick for the friendly old mission chapel that had never known nor sought magnificence.
In 1803 the solitude of the abandoned Mission San Antonio de Valero was broken by the arrival of the Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras, which occupied the former living quarters of the monks. This military unit hailed from the Villa of San Jose y Santiago del Alamo in Mexico, and its claim to immortality was to bestow the name Alamo upon the battered old mission. Henceforth, records refer to San Antonio de Valero as "the Alamo." Chabot in With the Makers of San Antonio, wrote: "Many of the soldiers of the Alamo Company married Indians and established their homes in the vicinity of the mission. Then Spaniards purchased the old mission lands, and gradually a new town grew up there, which was called La Villita." Thus, it is indicated that the period in which the Alamo received its famous name saw also the naming of the eastern part of the old settlement of the mission as "Little Town."
Meantime the germ of freedom had invaded even the isolated outpost of Bexar, and men of republican persuasion were whispering of revolt from royalist Spain. In 1811 a stirring episode took place among the soldiers of the San Antonio garrison, quartered then in La Villita. In his Memoirs, Jose Antonio Navarro tells how the spirit of revolt seized 2,000 troops of the royal guard holding Texas between San Antonio and the Sabine River. Navarro wrote:
Stationed there were officers of the most famous troops of Nuevo Leon and Nuevo Santander. . . San Antonio was at the apogee of its prosperity. Thousands upon thousands of silver and gold coins arrived in the city every two months for the luxurious maintenance of the troops. It was a very common occurrence to see any given soldier spend $100, for breakfast; and with the same serenity as we might now invite a friend to join us in a glass of beer. . . Common to all human society the citizens and troops of San Antonio began to suffer some anxiety concerning the political fate of Mexico. . . The descendents of the first Islenos, settlers of Bexar as legitimate original Hidalgos, who were those with the greatest daring, suggested methods of humiliating the haughty Spanish governors. . . Three sargeants were then chosen to seduce the army. They were Miguel Meyna, Blas Jose Perales and Trinidad Perez. These placed the entire troop on a war footing in the barracks, which at that time was in the place known as La Villita here in San Antonio. At dawn, January 22, 1811, they offered this army to the Captain of Militia of Nuevo Santander, Juan Baptista Casas, who accepted the honor and was placed in command of 1,500 men.
The revolting troops, led by Casas, marched to "the Plaza of the Government," and imprisoned the Spanish governor Salcedo. "Herrera, and other Spanish officers who still slept in the deep slumber of the haze of early morning, confident that no one would dare to attempt anything against their omnipotent persons." Navarro added:
This memorable day of January 22, 1811, was the first on which the Mexicans of San Antonio de Bexar announced their desire to break forever the chains of their ancient colonial slavery.
Captain Casas sent his prisoners to Mexico; but the republican revolt had turned, and Casas was finally betrayed by his own compatriots, imprisoned and at last shot for treason. Thus a resident of La Villita, young and zealous, made the first of San Antonio's spectacular sacrifices for freedom. Others quickly followed; in 1813, the "Republican Army of the North," composed of Anglo-American adventurers, Mexican liberals, and Indians, occupied San Antonio, to be defeated in August, 1813, by the Spanish General Arredondo, whose vengeance against the revolutionists almost emptied La Villita of its men. In the barracks of the town nearly 800 prisoners were assembled, and most of these were shot. Inside a small, almost airtight granary 300 prisoners were retained overnight, and 18 suffocated. That night (August 20) is called La Noche Triste (the sad night) in San Antonio history. This was the time when the women of the town were confined in a building derisively called La Quinta (the household), and made to convert 24 bushels of corn every 24 hours into tortillas for the victorious royalist soldiers.
Spanish persecution of the families of liberals was so drastic that the residents of San Antonio, including those of La Villita, fled whenever opportunity for escape was presented. Since La Villita had given birth to the republican movement locally, it suffered most of all.
Echoes of the dark days of 1813 are found in the archives of Bexar County, in petitions of the remaining Bexar citizens for shelter, food, or for life itself. There is the plea of Luisa de Luna, for example, who said in a petition to the Cabildo, or city council:
That being one of the most unhappy women in this province because my husband Vicente Travieso was one of those carried away by his caprices and want of judgment to help the iniquitous part of the insurrection for which reason they have sequestrated everything that belonged to my husband and me. . . And all this has been taken from me as well as my personal clothing and so I have been reduced to misery and want. I and four small children. . . So I apply to the benignity and powerful protection of your highness in order that, moved by pity you will have the charity to give me one of the rooms of the house known as mine, one of the small cows so that my unhappy and unfortunate children will have something to nourish them. . .
This petition ended with the words, No se firmar—"I cannot sign." The plea, made on November 22, 1813, was granted that same day when the district commissioner, Don Alvino Pacheco, was ordered to give the unfortunate woman "the house which was seized from the traitor Francisco Ferias."
Many of such petitions in the archives name boundaries of property within the present Villita area. Land granted by Spanish authorities was still occupied by means of primative gestures of possession: the grantee pulled weeds, broke branches from trees, scattered handfuls of dirt about, drove stakes, and otherwise indicated the process of taking possession of the land.
A Cloudburst Brings in Aristocracy
La Villita had been born of piety and nurtured through bloody episodes by its simple faith in the traditions it was heir to from a scarred old mission. Yet it was a humble place, a cluster of primitive houses huddled close for security and reassurance. Its people were humble folk for the most part—largely a mixture of Indian and Spanish blood. Its fortunes, always linked—even though intangibly—with the mission, had reached perhaps their lowest ebb when a natural disaster intervened to change the entire complexion of the area.
In July, 1819, a flood deluged the proud Villa of San Fernando, causing considerable loss of life and carrying away public buildings and the houses of grandees. The waters of the San Antonio River and of San Pedro Creek overflowed every part of the city except the higher ground of the Alamo and La Villita. Governor Martinez reported that "On the morning of the 5th instant, in consequence of a terrific waterspout (doubtless what now would be called a cloudburst) which burst north of the city, the river became so swollen as to run over its banks, causing a general overflow such as has never been beheld in the province before."
Martinez said that the damage was such that "the city may be said to exist no longer," and that its inhabitants, "those who were not victims of the fury of the waters," were reduced to "lamentable destitution." The governor added, "The landed estate belonging to the Royal Domain has been ruined by the overflow." Chabot wrote of the events that followed:
Subsequent to this flood began the migration to La Villita. . . where the Martinez family received several royal grants. . . What today is known as the Cos house, on Villita Street. . . was, according to the abstract of the property, a grant to Don Antonio Martinez.
The Bexar County archives have many petitions of this period from the hidalgos of San Fernando who wished to move to Villita's higher ground. Such a petition is the following:
Donicio Martinez, a citizen of San Fernando, prays for a tract of public land in the new Villita, as the site for a house which he desires to occupy as a dwelling.
Old as was Villita in that day, it is to be noted from this application that, to those of the upper class who now thought it desirable as a dwelling place, it was "new" Villita.
Thus, from the time of the 1819 flood, began the change of Villita from a lowly community of modest homes to an exclusive residential area where lived many of the oldest and most aristocratic families of San Antonio. This character it was to retain for many years. Not all the former land owners in La Villita wished to sell at once, but the inducement of profitable prices for small lots that had been granted them by the King gradually had its effect. For awhile Villita presented the contrast offered by fine and humble houses in proximity. As Mrs. Lucas wrote, "The back yard or patio was either a place with a fountain and flowers or it was just a dust heap with a scraggly cactus in a corner and a skinny rooster in search of insects in the dust pile." (From Memoirs of Mrs. H. Lucas, Frontier Times, Vol. 3 Jan., 1926).
The Scene of a Surrender
On the streets of San Antonio, as the nineteenth century entered its second decade, Americanos in increasing numbers appeared. Although this old town was still predominately Latin, the influx of colonists brought by Anglo-American empresarios (colonizers) to widely scattered communities in the now Mexican province of Texas (for Mexico had won its independence in 1821), had naturally increased the non-Latin population.
Among the newer residents was Erastus (Deaf) Smith. He had come to Texas in 1819, and wooed a belle of the town, half French and half Spanish, whose parents lived in La Villita. When the couple was wed in 1828 they at once established their domicile in the house which still stands at 301 South Presa Street. Deaf Smith had earned a reputation for courage among the Indians and Spaniards; his name was to become well known in Texas history, and soon, for again the idea of freedom was gnawing at the minds of many who walked the streets of the old pueblo. Throughout the province, those newly adopted Americanos spoke and dreamed of a day when this land might be wrested from Mexico.
During these years La Villita again knew the scourge of Indian warfare, as indeed did every person dwelling in the San Antonio Valley. The Menchaca Memoirs (Chabot) tell how the prices of food rose, because "by reason of the city being surrounded by Indians, the people (were) unable to get out of town." A sack of corn sold for $3, a pound of coffee was $2.50, and tobacco was $1 an ounce. "The people being in such pressure, would at the risk of their lives go out in the country to kill deer, turkey, etc., and cook herbs for the support of their families." Menchaca wrote. "The persons who were engaged in agriculture had to go in squads of fifteen or twenty or more to look for their oxen; and while working hard to keep their arms with them." Menchaca described the murder of one Domingo Bustillos by a Tonkawa, placing the scene near La Villita.
Into this atmosphere of unrest and trouble, in 1828, came a handsome brown-haired, blue-eyed stranger—James Bowie, onetime slave runner for the pirate Lafitte, a chivalrous adventurer generally known—although some credit the invention to his brother Rezin—as the creator of the bowie knife. Bowie met and became enamored of Ursula Veramendi. Spanish beauty of San Antonio, and many were the silks and satins and velvets aired along Villita Street when the dashing frontiersmen and the aristocratic beauty were married in San Fernando Church on April 22, 1831. And there were tears in Little Town, when, in 1822, news came that Bowie's lovely wife and their babies had died in Mexico of the plague. That tragedy almost broke the heart of the man whom Texas Indians had given the name Fighting Devil, and he no longer danced with the belles or teased the duennas of La Villita on occasions when the Spanish aristocracy made merry in the midst of growing anxiety. For the talk of freedom had now become a war; in 1835 a motley army led by Stephen Austin, first Anglo-American colonizer and known as the Father of Texas, marched upon San Antonio and encamped along the river near the Old Mill, at a site occupied today by a residence at 1215 North St. Mary's Street.
Bowie had returned, but this time as an enemy, and his old friend kept their relationship a secret. For the town was held by a Mexican general, Martin Perfecto de Cos—young and handsome, but not the man to brook alliances with a rebel Texan.
The Little Town was under the direct scrutiny of the Mexican general, for according to tradition and certain writers, he occupied the adobe house at 513 Villita Street—a small building that remains today as it was then, low, long and narrow, with few windows and thick walls. In the Rise of the Lone Star, by Driggs and King, a San Antonio pioneer is quoted thus:
General Cos lived while in this town in a little adobe building which still stands on La Villita Street. Father saw and talked to him there. The General conversed freely and seemed to bear no animosity. . .
The Texas colonial revolutionists arrived near the city in October, 1835, and had several skirmishes with Cos' troops, but never near Villita. Then on December 4, when the officers had decided to abandon the siege, and their soldiers—cold, hungry, ragged and unpaid—had started breaking camp, a bold frontiersman named Benjamin F. Milam shouted, "Who'll go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?"
The answer of those Texas volunteers—farmers, tradesmen, lawyers, adventurers—is outstanding in Texas history. They followed "old Ben Milam" into San Antonio, and after five days of fighting, in which Milam was killed, they took the city. And now a historic scene occurred in the little house on Villita Street.
General Cos was a brother-in-law of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, dictator-president of Mexico, and Cos had been sent to Texas to subdue the rebels. In this he had failed. On December 9 he flew a white flag from the Alamo, where at first his guns had boomed defiance and warning to the Texans, and under a flag of truce made a verbal offer of surrender; then withdrew that part of his army which was in the center of the city in the Alamo side of the river. On the cold morning of December 11, in the little building that is now at 513 Villita Street, he faced the Texan commander, Gen. Edward Burleson, to discuss articles of capitulation.
Here the terms of surrender, providing for the withdrawal of the Mexican army from Texas, were written and signed. One condition stressed by Burleson as that a large group of convicts, who had been brought in chains to San Antonio as reinforcements for Cos, must all be taken by the general himself to below the Rio Grande. Brief excerpts from the historic document signed on Villita Street follow:
Capitulation entered into by Gen. Martin Perfecto de Cos, of the Mexican troops, and Gen. Edward Burleson, of the colonial troops of Texas. . . . Being desirous of preventing the further effusion of blood and the ravages of civil war, we have agreed on the following stipulations: First. That General Cos and his officers retire with their arms and private property into the interior of the republic under parole of honor that they will not in any way oppose the re-establishment of the federal constitution of 1824. Second. That the 100 infantry lately arrived with the convicts, the battalion of Morelos, and the cavalry, retire with the general, taking their arms and 10 rounds of cartridges for their muskets. Third. That the general take the convicts brought in by Gereral Ugartechea beyond the Rio Grande.
On December 14, at dusk, General Cos led his vanquished troops from the Alamo and Villita areas. Whooping, jubilant, the Texans swarmed into the Alamo, and the houses of La Villita must have been shuttered and dark, for the Little Town knew not these tall, noisy strangers with their buckskin garb and long squirrel guns.
When the Alamo Fell
But as days passed and many of the Texas soldiers remained—although many drifted homeward, confident that the evolution had successfully ended—the eastern bank of the river earned many agreeable things about these newcomers; even shared, in several instances, the enthusiasm of the volunteers for freedom from the tyrannical rule of Santa Anna. Some of the homes of La Villita now even gave of their men to this cause, for the old families had always had a weakness for revolutions.
In Ehrenberg's With Milam and Fannin, a soldier who was fighting for the unrecognized Texas rebel government told of the days that followed Cos' departure:
The restoration of peace had brought back to the city many of its residents who had deserted it during the siege.
With the return of the fugitives, bustle and animation again filled the streets, where Texans and Mexicans walked about their business without fear or resentment. As we strolled in the main thoroughfares, we were pleasantly struck by the graceful gait of the attractive ladies, whose beauty brought back thoughts of the pretty New York girls I had seen up and down Broadway. . . . Mexicans are great pleasure-seekers and spend their lives in dancing, riding, drinking, eating and sleeping. As we were welcome guests among many of the native families of the city, we visited them often. . . . Everybody looked contented; the men chatted with the olive-hued beauties or talked of horses. Besides conversation, cracking pecan nuts or smoking cigarettes seemed to be the most absorbing pastime of the whole assembly.
Meantime in Mexico Santa Anna prepared an army of more than 6,000 men to crush the Texas revolution. Gen. Sam Houston, former governor of Tennessee and now a leader in the Texas cause, sent Bowie to destroy the Alamo so that it would not fall into Mexican hands: but the little garrison that remained was unwilling to evacuate the post. If the Mexican army could be held here, they argued, the settlements of the Austin Colony and others might escape destruction. So, in the winter of 1835-36, the tall senores continued to frequent the streets of La Villita. Among them was Col. William Barret Travis, red-haired lawyer known as the "gallant captain", who shared with Bowie the military responsibility, and David Crockett, the famous Tennessee backwoods congressman who had recently said to his late constituents, following his defeat for reelection: "You can all go to hell—I'm going to Texas."
Rumor became certainty on the morning of February 23, 1836. Before dawn of that day an atmosphere of excitement spread from the humble jacales of the poorer Mexican district west of San Pedro Creek. Ox carts lumbered through the rutted, twisting streets, piled high with the household goods of departing San Antonio Mexicans. Travis, pricking up his ears, demanded the reason for this exodus, but most of the hurried travelers were loyal republicans and made evasive answers. As chickens squawked and pigs squealed while their owners carted them away, and cows lowed and children shouted, the Texas leaders stood in the midst of the confusion and realized that the invading army from below the Rio Grande must not only have started, but that its arrival must immediately impend.
Travis placed a sentinel in the bell tower of San Fernando Church, to watch for signs of an approaching enemy. At noon he reported figures with glittering lances moving in the direction of Alazan Creek. Scouts sent out encountered the vanguard of Mexican cavalry. The bell of the parish church rang out the alarm, and soon the soldiers of the Alamo were at their posts. Between 185 and 200 men comprised the garrison, and there were 18 small guns along the fortifications. Each of the volunteers had proved by remaining here that he was indeed determined to "die if need be."
In the flurry that followed news of the rapid approach of the Mexicans, Davy Crockett said calmly to Travis, "And here am I, Colonel; assign me to some place, and I and my Tennessee boys will defend it all right." Miss Williams wrote that "Travis then replied that he wished Crockett to defend the picket wall extending from the end of the barracks on the south side to the corner of the church." That order was to become most important to La Villita, for Crockett's cannon, during the twelve days of the siege, sent its projectiles into that section, and much damage—although it is unrecorded—must have been done.
By two o'clock in the afternoon of that first day Santa Anna's forces had occupied the town. A blood-red flag, the flag of no quarter, flew from the tower of the church of San Fernando. Santa Anna's demand for unconditional surrender was answered by the Texans with a cannon shot fired from their eighteen pounder—Crockett's gun. The siege of the Alamo had begun.
What followed is a story known to all the world, the story of not more than 200 men facing fully 5,000 picked troops in an uneven struggle that was in its effects to end in the independence of Texas.
For the tattered soldiers inside the Alamo there were days of cannonading and a few encounters of a minor nature, as hope of reinforcements dwindled and finally died. James Butler Bonham, boyhood chum of Travis, had borrowed money to come to Texas and fight beside his friend; he tried in vain to bring relief to the beleaguered garrison. And although the houses of La Villita were deserted, since all women and children had abandoned the city for safer places, much of this historic struggle occurred in and near the Villita area. Proof that at least one of the Mexican batteries was here is contained in a letter from Travis to the president of the Texas convention, then in session to declare independence from Mexico:
Commandancy of the Alamo, Bexar,
March 3, 1836.
To the President of the Convention, Sir: . . . I beg leave of you to communicate to you the situation of this garrison. . . . From. . . the twenty-fifth (of February) to the present date the enemy have kept up a bombardment from two howitzers. . . and a heavy cannonade from two long nine-pounders, mounted on a battery on the opposite side of the river. . . . During this period, the enemy have been busily employed in encircling us with entrenched encampments on all sides, at the following distances, to-wit: In Bexar, four hundred yards west; in Lavillita, three hundred yards south. . . . Their threats have no influence on me or my men, but to make all fight with desperation and that high-souled defence of his country's liberty and his own honor. . . . God and Texas—Victory or Death.
Mrs. S. J. Wright, in Our Living Alamo, has also mentioned the Villita battery. Old reports and maps show that the branch of the Alamo Madre acequia that passed beside the Alamo's east walls, now known as the "Villita ditch," separated the besieged Texans and the besieging Mexicans on the east side of the mission fort. General Cos, forced by Santa Anna to break the parole given by him after the Battle of San Antonio, was assigned to attack the southeast fortification (including the chapel of the Alamo, the only building in the fort that remains today), and his command was stationed near La Villita, when at last orders were given for an attack on the Alamo.
Mexican batteries were silenced by ten o'clock of the night of March 5, as preparations were made in profoundest silence by the Mexicans for a daybreak assault. That night, Little Town must have known the quiet creeping figures of dragoons as they went quietly through the darkness, collecting scaling ladders, crowbars and axes to use in the attack. These soldiers were obedient to the dictator yet fully conscious of the bloody dawn but a few hours distant. None knew better than these hired fighters of Mexico the awful price they would have to pay for the Alamo, for they had sampled the aim of the long rifles, and had tested the endurance and courage of the tall senores.
A Mexican soldier writing to his brother said, in a letter published in El Mosquito Mexicano, April 15, 1836:
I marched under the immediate command of General Cos, and I will tell you what I saw. After a long wait we took our places at 3 o'clock a.m. on the south side, a distance of 300 feet from the fort of the enemy. Here we remained on our stomachs until 5:30 (whew! it was cold), when the signal of march was given by the President from the battery between the north and east.
Thus, part of the attacking forces were in the direction of La Villita. At the rise of the moon Mexican troops completely surrounded the Alamo; within its defenders slept, for this was their first respite in many days from constant cannonading. Sentinels had been posted but they must also have slept, for they gave no alarm. Coffee might have kept them awake: they had no coffee.
At five o'clock on the morning of March 6 Santa Anna stood upon the Commerce Street bridge, whose approach is on the spot then occupied by a Mexican battery. To the wild notes of the deguello, a bugle call that for centuries had been associated with "no quarter," the legions of Santa Anna moved forward to awaken the ragged handful of Texans to their last dawn.
Of the battle thus begun on a bleak March day, of the hand-to-hand fighting, the desperate resistance, the death of every male defender inmate of the Alamo, much has been written. Blood ran that day in the old acequia that had watered the flowers of La Villita in happier times. Flames of the funeral pyre erected at Santa Anna's command—where the bodies of the Texas patriots were reduced to ashes—afforded ghastly illumination in La Villita that night. Only a few remained there to remember that horror; and for months afterwards, while all living people shunned the Alamo and its environs as a place of death, the homes of Little Town stood deserted.
The direct result of the Battle of the Alamo was the Battle of San Jacinto, where the independence of Texas was secured by the defeat of Santa Anna and his army. Deaf Smith, who had distinguished himself as a scout for the Texas army, in this battle was won further renown by destroying Vince's bridge—thereby impending the advance of Mexican reinforcements, and preventing the escape of Mexican soldiers during the battle. Thus, a resident of La Villita helped avenge the butchery of the Alamo and materially assisted in the conquest of Santa Anna, its author.
Although today removed from the Alamo by modern streets lined with modern buildings, La Villita retains its inheritance as a part—however small—of the epic story of that shrine. Its narrow streets and venerable houses recall the days when Travis, Bowie, Bonham and Crockett were here. Grantland Rice, writing for the New York Tribune in 1916, said that they sometimes come back:
There's a tramp of a ghost on the low winds tonight.
An echo that drifts like a dream on its way;
There's the blur of the spectre that leaves for the fight.
Grave-risen at last from a long vanished day;
There's the shout and the cail of grim soul unto soul.
As they rise one by one, out of death's shadowed glen.
To follow the bugle—the drum's muffled roll.
Where the ghosts of the Alamo gather again.
Newcomers to Little Town
While Texas pursued its career as an independent nation in the late 1830's and early 1840's, new faces were seen in la Villita, and again its history and character gradually changed. The land west of San Antonio was still unpeopled and dangerous, and the old city of the Dons was considered a remote and unsafe outpost—threatened by Indians, as in the past, but also, now, by avenging expeditions of Mexicans. Yet more and more non-Latin settlers were becoming citizens. In 1838 the picturesque John Coffee Hays, called "Captain Jack," a mighty Indian fighter whose father had owned The Hermitage in Tennessee, came to San Antonio with a company of Texas Rangers, of which historic band he was the first duly appointed captain. In the Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick, San Antonio's First American Woman a footnote on page 28 locates the domicile of Jack Hays within the Villita area:
Some buildings and the original fence of Hays' San Antonio home still stand on the N. W. cor. of Presa and Nueva sts.
Hayes was the most daring and skilful type of frontiersman, grammatical, gallant and well bred; time after time he saved Texas settlements from destruction at the hands of the fierce Commanches. Single-handed he once killed an entire advance scout of picked Commanche warriors. The hero of hundreds of battles, he was later to become San Francisco's first sheriff.
The Mavericks, Samuel A. and Mary A., came to San Antonio in 1838, and Mrs. Maverick became a valuable chronicler of her times. She told how Hays and two companions attended a formal ball given by the Yturri family for Mirabeau Buonoparte Lamar, President of the Republic of Texas:
(They) had but one dress coat between them, and they agreed to use the coat and dance in turn. The two not dancing would stand at the hall door watching the happy one who was enjoying his turn—and they reminded him when it was time for him to step out of that coat. Great fun was it watching them.
Mrs. Maverick describes bathing in the river, which since earliest recorded history here had been a favorite pastime. Floating bath houses were beginning to appear in the stream; and following the afternoon bath at four o'clock a lunch was often spread; as Mrs. Maverick wrote, "we had a grand good time, swimming and laughing, and making all the noise we pleased." Scenes such as this were occurring where the river hugged Villita Street—where once the Indian wards of the Alamo had bathed.
With the 1840's came an entirely new element to La Villita—German immigrants imported by the society of nobles of which Count Solms-Braunfels, founder of New Braunfels and other Texas German settlements, was a leader. A number of these strangers in San Antonio were attracted to the Villita area because of its elevation above the river, and because the dwindling fortunes of many of the old Spanish families were compelling them to sell their holdings here. Others, crowded now by a growing town, wished to move where there were fewer neighbors.
A number of the aged houses of La Villita were crumbling, some were in ruins. Over the walls of some of these new plaster and mortar was placed by the neat Germans; new roofs went on, steep-pitched like those of the Fatherland. Thus a number of the buildings in this area assumed a Teutonic character, quaint and attractive, and prim little gardens replaced the opulence and tropic abandon of old patios. Others of the old houses remained untouched, for their owners stayed on, a little resentful of the changes wrought by newcomers.
Among these innovations were matters of custom. In mid-afternoons the rich odor of coffee floated over the housetops, as flaxen-haired housewives had Kaffee klatsch with their neighbors. Miss Julia Vogt, 505 Sixth Street, remembered how her family observed this genial custom:
We gathered between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, when friends and neighbors would come in. They served coffee and cake, bread and butter, ham and cheese, and sometimes other things.
Miss Vogt also recalled that some of the Villita families who had chickens often had to gather eggs "all over Alamo Plaza, which was all in brush."
Mrs. Anna Guerguin, 108 City Street, also a descendant of former residents of the Villita area, said that her family had five meals a day: "Breakfast, then coffee or broth at ten a.m.; then dinner, coffee at four, and last of all supper." Mrs. Guerguin also recalled that when birthdays occurred, friends went uninvited to participate in a feast and merrymaking. "As their friends had come to their birthdays and were welcome, so they in turn went to their friends' birthdays knowing that they would also be welcome."
A time-honored dish among these pioneer families is a salad made of boiled smoked herrings, beets, hard-boiled eggs, pickles, apples, Irish potatoes and dressing. This concoction was a standby in the new racial parts of La Villita. So also was Gefeullteskraut, a veal pocket stuffed with kraut.
And now Christmas in Little Town had a dual personality. The families of Spanish descent still trooped to worship in the church of San Fernando; still placed burning candles in their windows in the week before the birth-date of the Christ Child, to direct the wandering souls of Mary and Joseph to their abodes. Sometimes bands of performers in Los Pastores, a play of the Nativity, performed here for their patrons. The San Antonio version of this Christmas drama, one of more than seventy existing in Ameria, originated in the humble jacales of the trans-San Pedro area; sometimes the players had sponsors among wealthy old Spanish families.
So on Christmas Eve, from the patio of one of those old Spanish homes in La Villita one might have heard the five thousand lines of rhymed and unrhymed dialogue and song of Los Pastores, and from the house next door the merry sounds of a Middle-European celebration of Saint Nicholas. From one household, the shepherds of the play reciting softly, as they knelt before the rustic manager:
Ah, the beauty of the Child.
With a mouth of coral.
It is my wish to cover thee
With the weaving of my love.
From the household nearby, the booming voice of a jolly Saint Nick clad in a red suit and with bushy white whiskers, as he distributed toys amid the uproarious enthusiasm of little and big celebrators.
Mrs. Albert Steves of San Antonio recalled a typical Christmas of the immigrants of those early days here, and particularly the delicious little cakes made with honey and anise seed which were baked in November in anticipation of the holidays. Although one local store—Pentenreider's—had toys for sale, many of the toys were made at home. Every household had a Christmas tree, and home-made ornaments included chains of glazed paper. Walnuts and pecans were gilded and hung from the tree by strings; but big red apples were the brightest and costliest decorations. The real celebration of the holiday occurred on Christmas Eve; it was inaugurated by a huge turkey dinner, followed by two ceremonies of present giving—one at the Christmas tree for the children, the other in a separate room for the grownups. The children of the household invariably gathered around the dinner table and sang Holy Night. On Christmas Day families exchange gay, informal calls, and were served cookies and wines.
Yet though this new racial element, with it inherited love of music, art and drama, brought new life and the promise of a different type of achievement to La Villita, this area and indeed the entire city remained predominately Spanish—was still a frontier outpost. Julia Nott Waugh in Castro-ville and Henry Castro quotes the diary of Auguste Fretelliere, who wrote:
The city of San Antonio at that time (1844) had about 1,000 inhabitants, nine-tenths of whom were Mexicans, and the Spanish language was generally spoken. . . . The one which is now Commerce Street bore the name of El Potrero. On it were about twenty Mexican houses, that is to say buildings of rock and adobe with flat roofs of mortar and gravel. They were one-storied and had usually only one door, and two windows with iron grills. A man might think of himself in Palestine. These were the best houses. The others were jacales made of mesquite sticks more or less chinked with clay, with roofs of tules, a kind of rush that grew very abundantly in the San Pedro.
It is safe to assume that at least part of the houses of La Villita answered to one or the other of these two descriptions, and that they were in sharp contrast with the increasing number of residences of German families. Many of these immigrants, such as the Bardenwerpers, were of noble descent, and their homes were rapidly becoming centers of musical and dramatic efforts. Mrs. Sarah Eagar, who is credited with having been the first non-Latin girl born in San Antonio, moved in 1846 with her parents, the Wilson Riddles, to a house on South Alamo Street. Mrs. Eagar in 1939—active and in possession of all her faculties at the age of 97—said that the boundaries of La Villita were then considered to be from Villita to Martinez Streets and from South Alamo to South Presa Streets. The Riddle place, however, was decidedly on the outskirts of the smaller, older area near the river. Mrs. Riddle, who was from Virginia, found living conditions in San Antonio primitive and asked her husband, "Why did you bring me to this country?" To which he replied, "To see if you could stand it."
Wilson Riddle had been one of the victims of the several Mexican invasions against San Antonio in the 1840's, before he moved to the peaceful rustic environs of La Villita. He died, only one year after he had become a resident of Little Town, of the results of a harsh imprisonment in Mexico.
To Villita in 1847 a new kind of figure came, a threadbare, earnest young minister, John Wesley DeVilbiss. He found "five or six ladies in the city (San Antonio) representing nearly as many churches—a Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian, and some others friendly to the gospel." The Reverend Mr. DeVilbiss attacked the practice of holding cock fights on the main plazas on Sunday mornings while he was preaching, and was rescued from a "ducking in the river" at the hands of the town's gamblers by the warning of the above-mentioned ladies. This Methodist parson and his colleague in San Antonio, the Rev. John McCullough, a Presbyterian, were hard pressed for quarters to house their infinitesimal flocks. The two Protestant preachers held services jointly; but DeVilbiss had his own Sunday School class, of which a member was Augusta Evans, the writer, who lived for a time in La Villita. Soon after this, DeVilbiss "took the preliminary steps toward building a church in the city." He told his story in Reminiscences of a Superannuated Preacher in the book entitled Life of John Wesley DeVilbiss:
I secured an eligible lot on Valita (sic) Street, and we elected five trustees. . . I left San Antonio. . . and. . . visited New Orleans, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Wheeling, Lexington, and Frankfort, Ky., and various other places. I did not get much money, but obtained a great deal of material for building, together with many things I knew would sell in San Antonio. Among other things, I obtained a good bell in Cincinnati, the price of which was $110. When I returned, I paid for our lot in hardware that I brought on, and felt that we were succeeding. We still worshipped at the courthouse on the main plaza. I made a frame upon which to hang our bell, and placed it on our Church lot. I wanted to let the people see that we had made a start. Our bell was on one side of the river and our worship about a quarter of a mile from it on the other. I was sexton as well as preacher, and we would ring my bell and then go over to meet my congregation. The Mexicans gave me the very significant cognomen of "El padrecito que tiene la campana," "the little priest who owns the bell."
But Protestantism in the form of a church building was not yet to invade La Villita—Roman Catholic by ancient inheritance. The Reverend Mr. DeVilbiss sadly tells us that he never built the church for the bell; he was pursuaded by Mr. McCullough to assist in building an adobe church "on Main Street. . . with the understanding that we should occupy the house cojointly, and when we built they would return the material (furnished by DeVilbiss) either in kind or in money. Our bell was moved over to the new church. . . . This as near the close of the year 1847. About this time I learned that the title to our church lot was not good, and we lost the lot, and did not receive even indemnity for the purchase money. This was a severe stroke to me, as I had felt that with the lot we had at least a good foothold on the soil of San Antonio; but now, after two years' hard labor, we had no place to call our own."
A Decade of Change
The environs of La Villita were described in 1849 by John Meusebach in the manuscript collection entitled Wurzbach's Memoirs and Meusebach Papers:
There was a long row of dobie, flat roofed buildings running from where the Post Office now is to the Grand Opera House, from there close to the Alamo Church and grass and pear (prickly pear cactus) growing on the top of the houses; all along the bank of the river there were Mexican huts covered with grass. What is now Commerce Street was a lake of water with two rows of cotton wood trees as far as the Alamo Ditch. There were but few houses on the east side of the river. What is now West Commerce Street was very narrow and all small houses, the most of them flat and grass roofs and pear hanging into the street; the two plazas were surrounded by the same kind of houses.
Still other racial elements—notably Polish and French—came to La Villita in the 1850's and 1860's. Erasmus Andrew Florian was of the former group; a political exile from Warsaw, he came to San Antonio to help found one of the city's first banks. The Florians moved to La Villita when it was considered San Antonio's most aristocratic section, according to Miss Mamie Florian, 826 N. St. Mary's Street, "I still pronounce the name of this district 'Veeheeta', which early residents called it," Miss Florian said in 1939. "Our old home is just across the street from the present Villita Art Gallery. La Villita was the home of the elite in San Antonio." Miss Florian said that one of their neighbors was Augusta Evans.
In 1858 the German citizens—including those of the Villita area—formed the Casino Association, a select social organization, and erected a club and opera house on Market Street (part of the old building is today occupied by the San Antonio Water Company). This center of social and cultural life was at the back door of La Villita, just across the river. These residents also founded, in this year, the German-English School, whose old rock buildings—all intact—are occupied today by the San Antonio Junior College. This school at the present 419 South Alamo Street served the little boys and girls of La Villita for many years: in it they learned both German and English, and the girls learned to sew, paint china, and make wax flowers. Juius Berends promoter of the school, was a former nobleman. He arranged for the first school building to be dedicated to the poet, Fredrich von Schiller. Terms lasted eleven months of the year. Some of the boy students rode horseback to school and gave riding exhibitions between classes.
In The Alamo City, Pearson Newcomb thus described La Villita during the 1850's:
Alamo Street continued south from Commerce Street along the river to La Villita, a village consisting largely of thatched roof dwellings, relics of the mission building period. . . . La Villita, the little village or residence section established in the mission building period on the south bank of the river, still retains some of its quaint semi-ancient buildings.
Yet, though many of its houses were still unchanged, the Little Town must have showed unmistakable signs of transition. Dozens of families whose forebears came directly to San Antonio from France, Poland or Germany now occupied the old Spanish buildings, and had infused their particular types of plants, trees, architectural ornamentation, and customs into the area. Architectural changes especially became manifest, as Miss Florian testifies:
In the early 1860's the little settlement of La Villita was considered an aristocratic residential section. Houses were scarce in San Antonio then; when my parents bought ours in La Villita, it was made of stone, and had only four rooms. My family added a room on each side, and there was a kitchen and servant's room in the yard.
The Florian residence at 510 Villita Street is an example of the sturdy type of architecture chosen by those who remodeled the old houses. Stone was the commonest building materials, as it was cheap and durable; the builder was in each case the architect and designed or remodeled his house according to his needs.
Progress and Personalities
Across the street from the Florians lived the Diaz family, and here Rafael Diaz (who became a Metropolitan Grand opera tenor) spent his boyhood. At that time the Florian place reached back to Hessler Street; then, as today, Womble Alley ran through from north to south, crossing Nacional Steet.
The Lutheran Church of St. John, known to early residents of Villita as the Rooster Church because of the rooster on its weather vane, was already drawing its congregations to Nueva Street when the Florians became residents. The Florian children on Sunday mornings watched the members file inside, the women each holding a prayer book across which a freshly laundered white handkerchief was folded. Residents of the Villita section were hospitable, Miss Florian remembers, doing much leisurely visiting.
Where the Public Service Company building is on the corner of Villita and South Presa Streets, for a time lived the family of Dr. Clifford in a house that, Miss Florian said, "stood up high from the ground as if it were on stilts."
Mrs. Mary Elmendorf, 220 Arciniega Street, also remembers much of La Villita during the 1860's. Her grandmother, Mrs. Louisa Wueste, lived in the building occupied in 1939 by the Villita Art Gallery, 311 Villita Street. This housewife was an artist whose paintings adorn many San Antonio homes—all of the portraits cameo-clear, vibrant with feeling and color. On the northwest corner of South Presa and Nueva Streets lived the artist Iwonski, a friend of Mrs. Wueste. Iwonski had come with the European colonial rush to Texas, had fought Indians, and milked cows. He was an exile from his country and eventually returned.
Mrs. Elmendorf remembers another one-time occupant of the house at the corner of Villita and South Presa Streets. His name was Lemnitzer, and he was a cabinet-maker, a wood carver and "a fixer"—"he fixed anything that needed mending." Lemnitzer compounded a salve which was used by many of the residents of La Villita; but though the salve is only an odorous memory, many of Lemnitzer's hand-carved wooden candlesticks and other articles of household use remain as prized possessions among descendants of his former patrons.
An enterprise that later became a large factory started on Villita Steet, where Gustave Duerler inaugurated a candy manufactory, Mrs. Elmendorf said:
Behind the Dueler home was a little adobe one-room house which faced Hessler Alley, as Hessler Street was called then. This little humble place was where the later Duerler candy manufacturing company had its sure beginnings. It can be said that candy was one of the products of old Villita; when a child I used to stand and watch them making it—pink candy, and white.
On the corner of Nueva and Presa Streets, Mrs. Elmendorf recalled, was the little grocery store of the Teutonic Mr. Kresser: the groceryman's wife was French, and when politics changed in Europe relations in the family were sometimes strained, 'for Mrs. Kresser never forgot she was a Frenchwoman." Mr. Kresser built some small stone houses which he rented as apartments; these buildings were in a yard which had a well that served all the "apartment" dwellers.
Next door to the Kresser property on Presa Street, stood a one-story adobe building called "the haunted house." Children so feared this place that many of them refused to pass it, even while on their way to the little grocery store to buy candy.
At the southwest corner of Villita Street and Womble Alley, in those days, lived a shoemaker named Scheuermann. He made high shoes of a sturdy build, and for years shod most of the pupils of the German-English School.
One of the residents of Villita Sstreet was a fortune teller, Mrs. Geissler, who lived in a small adobe house near the shoe-maker. The lovelorn, the hard-pressed, the bereaved, all found their way to the tight-shut doors of the mystic.
On the south corner of Villita and South Alamo Streets was the McAllister residence, a one-story house. This was a musical center; a daughter married Professor Katzenberger, who promoted, directed and participated in lively, hearty home-talent "operas." A neighbor in the Villita area, a Mr. Lapentz, sponsored amateur dramatic events, especially featuring plays of Schiller and Goethe. Much of the early local effort toward development of music and the drama originated with one or the other of these. Daughters of the families of the district starred in theatricals held in the Casino, and were applauded mightily.
In the McAllister home the powerful soprano of the Professor's wife, Anna, was frequently heard practicing roles in Martha, The Bohemian Girl and other operas. Here the amateur performers were drilled and trained, with five of the six McAllister children taking part in each performance. So successful were the presentations that the oldest son, Willie, organized one of the city's first orchestras; the second son, Joe, a violinist, later became an orchestra leader. A daughter, Lula, became the first supervisor of music in the city's public schools.
Mrs. F.W. McAllister, 123 Slocum Place, had this to say of those old days in La Villita:
Looking back upon the residents of La Villita in the middle of the nineteenth century, one realizes the contribution made by the old countries to Texas. Considering this block-wide and three-blocks-long area of San Antonio, bounded on the west by South Presa, on the east by South Alamo, extending northward to the river and southward to Martinez Street, one is amazed by the number of interesting, cultured residents in that very small district.
A descendant of one of the French families of La Villita, Miss Biencourt, still lives on Villita Street in a residence next to the Art Gallery. Her great-grandparents were named Desmazieres and lived in a two-story stone house in the Villita area; orchards of peaches, pomegranates, persimmons and grapes surrounded the house, and the grounds were green and cool. In this home, in 1861, a dinner was given for Robert E. Lee and other Virginians. Mrs. Sarah Eagar, then a pretty young lady home from boarding school in Mississippi, tells that someone proposed a toast, mentioning a threatening war. She said that Lee lifted his glass and answered. "If Virginia secedes I go with her."
Many Villita families had slaves, yet some of them were Unionists. Conflicting emotions shook the Little Town during the Civil War, but the fighting was distant, and life continued here much as usual except that most of the men were absent.
Times Change. . . Villita Does Not
Following the Civil War, La Villita settled down to a placid and undisturbed existence. Modernity came slowly but surely to the other San Antonio streets of the Dons, but not so surely to Villita. Joined to the city now by law, by geography, and by extended settlement surrounding it, the Little Town nevertheless remained a close, closed community; its families in many respects lived as villagers of a section distinct from the remainder of the municipality. Old names were perpetuated, old customs continued, and although progress entered the venerable doors in the form of the individual achievement of its residents, La Villita presented an almost unchanged face to the world.
A storm in 1868 damaged some of the aged Spanish buildings. At eight o'clock of the night of May 19 a terrific pounding of hail-stones began, and when it had finished roofs were torn, walls scarred and in some places broken, chimneys were crushed and windows smashed. Repairs entailed some redecoration.
La Villita was joined to the city beyond by bridges made of planks laid on barrels that floated on the water. White canvas bath houses also floated on barrels; bathing in the river was an increasingly popular pastime.
Charles Herff, member of a pioneer San Antonio family, recalled that when a cholera epidemic descended upon San Antonio at the conclusion of the Civil War, a new activity occupied the small boys of La Villita—as indeed it involved all the youngsters of the city. The municipal recorder announced that for every two rat tails delivered to the then city hall, called the "Bat Cave", he would pay five cents. The ancient nether regions of the houses of La Villita had a thorough exploration of small businessmen searching out rats.
Mr. Herff added:
Smallpox was prevalent every winter but we did not fear it. On the corner of South Alamo and Villita Streets stands an old two-story stone building and formerly there were two stone one-story buildings adjoining. These buildings were a hotbed of smallpox. Along these buildings on South Alamo Street ran a flagstone walk. School children were told to use this sidewalk and to by no means fail to spit on it. This was considered a preventative. We firmly believed this.
In the 1870's the families of La Villita were leaders in many developments of a cultural character. Prof. L. J. Schuetze, 520 Hays Street, recalled the old Saengerfests and Volkfests of this decade, large gatherings in San Antonio of German singing societies from all parts of Texas. Parades opened the conventions, and displays of fireworks, pageants, concerts and contests occupied the entire community for several days. These celebrations were usually climaxed on Bowen's Island, near La Villita, with mammoth picnics. Noted actors were presented at the Casino Club, and at Turner Hall amateur and professional vied for honors in many a melodrama. In 1872 Sidney Lanier fraternized with the artistically-inclined old families of La Villita, participating in local Maennerchor musical events. Lanier composed Field Larks and Blackbirds a score for wind instruments, while in this atmosphere of hearty and enthusiastic musical endeavor.
Professor Schuetze spoke of the environs of La Villita in the 1870's and 1880's, revealing that many of the families living close to the river in the Villita and adjoining areas had ducks and geese, and these fowls congregated on Alamo Plaza at an iron fountain erected to furnish water for horses and mules. The Professor said:
When I was a child I was afraid to pass that corner of Alamo Plaza, for the many ducks and geese were a real menace to youngsters, whom they invariably chased.
During the wild period from 1870 to 1890, when San Antonio was a wide-open town enriched by drives of longhorns to northern markets over the celebrated cattle trails, La Villita looked sedately on from its perch across the river; it had no part in the lurid night life and frequently fatal gunfights. In the gay 1890's its sons and daughters attended the "magnificent balls" and other social events of the lavish decade, but the ornate gingerbread architecture so cherished then did not invade Villita. A few of the old families moved to more spacious, less crowded sections, but their old houses were little changed, sometimes not at all.
And so the twentieth century arrived, bringing skyscrapers and paved streets; the paving was welcomed by Villita, which had long waded through mud or walked over ruts in the narrow thoroughfares. But the skyscrapers stopped just short of the old village.
Today, surrounded by the noise and bustle of a modern city, La Villita faces its greatest transformation—its restoration to the heydays of yesterday. Through its forlorn recent years, when the section stood forgotten and largely in disrepair, various civic-minded groups have urged its complete restoration. That the section has endured is due largely to the loyalty of its families, many of whom cling to their faithful old houses of stone and adobe. Since the acquisition of the block-square area by the City of San Antonio, its shabby little streets have been invaded by engineers, architects, artists, historians, city fathers, pioneers—all interest in or actually engaged in the project of restoration. Neglected so long, La Villita still seems a little aloof to all this interest and to-do.
The little village of the padre's day is being born again. To its creaking old bones youth is returning. When the present plans have been fulfilled, there will be patios again, with palms and poinsettias; there will be the tang of tamales in the air, the soft sound of tortillas being patted out by copper-colored women on matates, the plaintive notes of guitars accompanying such wistful melodies as La Golondrina.
The San Antonio of the distant past will be presented here, and on historic ground. Strife and turmoil may grip the outside world, but not this rejuvenated village of two centuries. Perhaps its future visitors may sense in it an unchangeable serenity, the seclusion and poise of time itself.
Compiled and written by the Writers' Project of the Works Projects Administration in the State of Texas
Maury Maverick, Mayor of San Antonio, Cooperating Sponsor
Published by the City of San Antonio, 1939
