welcome to our discussion of the progressive era in the first decades of the 20th century so we're going to look basically 1901 to 1920. and before we look in detail at the situation in texas as in the last few lectures i'd like to give you a general overview of the progressive era in the united states now progressive area the progressive reforms were promoted by middle class idealists in both political parties this was not a grassroots movement from the poor people nor was it generated by the wealthy and the basic goal of progressivism was to promote reform of social and economic institutions through laws and governmental regulation to ensure social social justice and what were they trying to eliminate they were trying to eliminate child labor the consumption of alcohol they wanted to promote economic competition they wanted to make the factories safer and they also wanted to give women the right to vote and there were some other reforms one of which we'll talk about in texas was the desire to make the country more democratic through political reforms now before 1900 people generally favored institutions other than the government to deal with those who were suffering from poverty or social issues there were some exceptions but generally people looked at institutions such as the churches which often when there were economic downturns would provide donated food would set up kitchens to provide hot soup and churches of course still do that today there was also charity from companies and individuals which of course still continues today and there were a number of voluntary organizations that started largely in the 1850s and 1860s some examples of those are the salvation army and you've probably seen volunteers with the salvation army outside large stores in the december holiday season someone usually dressed up as santa claus ringing the bell and they have a bucket um and that money goes to poor people you have the young man's christian association the ymca and the counterpart for women the young women's christian association the wyca when labor unions formed in the last few decades of the 19th century they often provided assistance to members of the labor union who were sick or had a sick family member or someone who was injured on the job and there are many many other examples now what we're going to see is because of the nature and the scope of the problem many middle class people favored continuing of course these non-governmental measures but really placing the focus on action that the the government could take and at this time particularly the federal government now why progressivism around 1900 well there's several reasons one was since the civil war there'd been an increasing gap between the rich and the poor and we we saw how the era after the civil war was often called the gilded age because there were a number of quite extremely wealthy people and people said the country was gilded it had a golden covering because there was much suffering underneath that gold there was industrialization but as i underlined here it was unregulated there were very very virtually no regulations these would be regulations in the economic sphere and also regulations to protect the workers in terms of number of hours in terms of child labor and safety measures we take for granted there were new machines there were there was virtually no protection for the workers so if a worker accidentally turned the wrong way his arm or her arm could be caught up in a machine and the arm could be sliced off there was just and there was no regulation either of food so particularly in the making of sausage and the processing of meats people around 1900 on a per capita basis ate much more meat than is the case today particularly beef or pork and sausage of course was a combination and there were horrific horrific accounts most famous of which is upton sinclair's famous novel the jungle when people read that they were literally sick to read that dead rats rats had been killed with rat poison we just picked up from the floor and thrown in the big blender that was making sausage and that led of course to legislation such as the 1906 pure food laws and the formation of the food and drug administration the fda which we still have to regulate the safety of food and the fda of course also looks at the safety and efficacy of medicines we we saw urbanization there was much less in texas as we'll see but there was some urbanization in texas and this was largely unplanned people just moved to the city that's where the jobs were particularly the immigrants went to the cities because that's where their family or friends were who had written home to say you must come here you can get a a much better job at home you have all these people moving into small geographic area and it caused all sorts of problems as you can imagine there was also in religious terms what was called the social gospel movement and this was among protestants white protestants middle class protestants many of whom said you know we need to look at the teachings of the gospels of christ and we need to put them in action here on earth and not just go to church and pray and this of course led to a number of voluntary associations that were church related such as the ymca that i just mentioned and the salvation army actually both of those organizations were first established in britain and then a few years later they started in the united states also in terms of thinking charles darwin wrote his famous book on evolution the origin of species in 1859 and it had a profound impact um throughout the world and in the united states as in western europe many of the wealthy people at first said well the reason we're wealthy is why well we're animals we human beings we we are and it's social darwinism society works like the animal kingdom and we the wealthy are wealthy not because we're bad because we are more fit it's the evolution the process of evolution in the economic sphere and so we really shouldn't do anything for the poor because if we help the poor we are disturbing the natural process of darwinian evolution in the economic sphere well that was increasingly rejected by more and more people and certainly by the progressives who said no that is not the case we have to take efforts to help your workers to help the poor those who are mentally ill or whatever and another major source of progressivism were journalists journalists working for newspapers which were widely read at the time who would go out and themselves see what was happening some of them actually went out with the the recent invented camera to take photographs because as we all say a photograph is worth a thousand words and they would take pictures of poor people they would write articles on all the horrific conditions and these are what today we call investigative journalists at the time they were called muck raking journalists or muck breakers and i'll show you on the next slide why they're called that okay this is a drawing from the time and the person holding the flashlight and the rake is a muck raking journalist muk m-u-c-k you may not be familiar with the word it means you know dirt and slimy liquid for instance if you i don't know if you leave a jar of some kind of food too long in the refrigerator like a year or two and you know you open it up at the bottom it might be muck and that in the progressive sense is referring to all the bad things happening in society and there is a journalist using his or her rake because there were female journalists and the light of journalism to expose this and make people aware and i can't overemphasize the impact of these journalists because people generally were not aware of many of these conditions until they read about them in the newspapers or some of the early magazines that were appearing now it's important to note that the the progressives were not revolutionaries neither the journalists nor uh the public that considered themselves progressive they weren't revolutionaries in the sense that they wanted to destroy cap capitalism the capitalist system of life the contrary they wanted to improve it they wanted to reform it and regulate it and i mentioned this because there were some revolutionaries at this time and previously some had come over from eastern europe such as the anarchists who would go out and you know throw bombs during strikes and call for a revolution but the progressive movement in the u.s was not a revolutionary movement and the next point i put in red with two stars the central point of the progressive movement was that the government must be more active and this really focused now on the federal government the previous 15 or 20 years in the 1880s and 1890s there had been a number of reforms in local governments and city governments i'm excited city governments and state governments and now that continued but the focus really shifted to the national or federal government the progressives very much considered themselves modern modern in the sense that they were scientific they were going to have experts get together to investigate a problem come up with possible solutions and then they wanted to educate others particularly using journalists and then pass legislation or government regulations to deal with the problem now president theodore roosevelt who was affectionately called at the time teddy roosevelt uh was really the first activist president in the united states and he was in the forefront of the early progressives he was very very dynamic in fact he was often called a steam engine in pants and when he became president he wanted what he called his square deal he wanted greater government control of companies he wanted to conserve the environment he started setting up the first national parks he was not interested more broadly in what we call the environment today he and other conservationists at the time wanted to focus on conservation of wild areas such as yellowstone park in wyoming places like that they didn't even focus on toxic waste coming out of factories and dumping into rivers or horrific smoke conditions in cities rather they focus mainly on nature in the west and the third major element was to protect consumers against contaminated food and medicine and i mentioned this a few minutes ago and all three of these actions required legislation or regulation by the federal government this is one of the iconic photos of teddy roosevelt a hearty laugh he was from a very wealthy family a very very wealthy family he had been a quite sickly boy had studied at home he used to lift weights and things to try and put on some muscles and he was a good student and all but then he took two years off after college and went off to the west and worked as a real life cowboy i mean he actually lived with the cowboys rode with him for two years so for many many in the united states he was viewed as the rugged individualist many wealthy people thought he was a traitor to his social and economic class because he was pushing all those reforms and let's look quickly at some of the major goals of the progressive era in the united states and of course we'll see much of this in texas woman's suffrage giving women the right to vote became a major goal and it's interesting between 1880 and 1910 during that 30-year year period the number of women employed outside of the house tripled from about three to eight million women so women were becoming more engaged in what traditionally had been quote men's jobs and after the civil war the 15th amendment to the u.s constitution was adopted which you'll recall gave black men the right to vote but not women neither white nor black women and at that time most men genuinely believed that women should not go into politics because politics was a very corrupt uh activity in which bargains were struck and you know they were worried that that would corrupt women's moral purity and i'm i must add that some women agreed it's not entirely clear how many because there weren't public opinion polls on everything like there is today but you know some women particularly in the 1860s would have agreed that women's a woman's place was in the home raising the children making a good home and not out in the corrupt world of politics now from 1869 a few years after the civil war until 1914 women could vote but only in the western states most of the western states this did not generally include texas black women were not involved in this movement either as participants or the goal wasn't to give black women the vote the goal was more to give white women the vote but so black we'll talk about a minute blacks which generally not included in any of the progressive reforms except to the extent that they benefited from things like the end of child labor and the 19th amendment to the u.s constitution was of course adopted shortly after world war ii in 1920 giving men you should be giving women the right to vote and it's interesting in the very first election in which women had the right to vote in the 1920 election women were 40 of the voters now this is a map showing at what time uh what date women achieved the right to vote and you can see texas is included that by 1914 women didn't have a complete right to vote they could vote in some elections but not more generally the darker green uh were previous to that date and you can see uh states like idaho wyoming utah and colorado gave women full suffrage as far back as the 1880s and 1890s this is a cartoon at the time um political cartoon entitled the awakening this obviously is in favor of women's suffrage and you have a woman um with the torch um of liberty and she's coming walking from the western states in into the um eastern states which includes texas and the women you can see in those states are reaching out yes yes we want that torch of liberty and right to vote here are just a few photos from the time showing women's efforts to publicize their uh right to vote these this is a sign of it says welcome suffrage envoys people would travel from major city to major city women would and these were generally wealthy women they weren't working their husbands were were wealthy they were bankers or lawyers or or businessmen and the women would go off by themselves and they would um uh engage in this activity if you've ever seen the old british movie mary poppins you recall the what was mary poppins was a nanny and what was the she worked for mr mrs banks and it took the movie took place in london but you can see mrs banks uh going off to women's suffrage uh parades in london and her husband's a very sort of a very wealthy banker and he sort of goes oh touch you know that's fine that's your that's your hobby or something couldn't have cared less about the cause but she obviously did this is a very colorful photo of women driving around you notice there's a woman driving and you know campaigning for votes for women this photo i think is interesting the driver is a man and the women again they're very wealthy upper class women are trying to publicize the need for women to vote this is a parade in washington d.c in 1913. now as i mentioned some women were still opposed to the right acquiring the right to vote um and many men were and this is the headquarters of the national association opposed to women woman's suffrage the name of the organization says it all and these are men outside obviously reading about what they considered the terrible news that women were advocating the right to vote so apart from the right to vote or suffrage women really really advocated the prohibition of alcohol and this was again like suffrage spearheaded by middle class educated women and they viewed alcohol as a real threat to the family and social progress in general for the entire country one of the earth there were a number of organizations set up i won't go through them all but the one of the most famous was the women's christian temperance union and wctu and this at first advocated only temperance which meant temper or limit the consumption of the alc of alcohol so the thought was well if we can just get the men to have one beer or one glass of whiskey will be fine but then very shortly after a few years i decided that approach would not work and so they turned to total prohibition and you notice the title of the organization or the name of the organization includes the word christian this is their their seal this is one of my favorite photos from the time these women who all are quite serious in the photo are saying lips that touch liquor shall not touch ours and many women would carry signs like that and and parade around the cities and one of the major organizations in addition to the wctu was the anti-saloon league a saloon is a bar of course it was men only often there were prostitutes there often there was gambling and so men would go to the saloons not all but some men would have far too much to drink or they had just been paid they'd walk into the saloon and say oh drinks are on me everyone you know spend most of his paycheck buying drinks for everybody in the bar or spending the money on the prostitutes there or losing much or all of the paycheck at the gambling tables so the anti-saloon league was set up to close the saloons and part of it of course was to reduce the consumption of alcohol but the saloons were really viewed as dens of eagle of evil so a number of of wealthy educated women married to very wealthy men in the communities went into these saloons with axes and they broke the liquor bottles and behind the bars there were these beautiful mirrors very elaborate mirrors and they'd throw their their axe or hatchet and break the mirror and the men would just stand there and look because at that you know it was not considered correct for a man to physically restrain a woman who was doing something like that and these were also the wives of very prominent businessmen or or doctors or someone and another reason they attacked the mirrors is often on the mirror there was a painting of a nude woman and they thought that was immoral so they broke these very very elaborate mirrors and i have a photo of one in a few minutes by far the most famous of the women who ran around the country with axes attacking the saloons or bars was carrie nation who actually started her crusade here in houston and the first bar that she and a couple other women went in and you know destroyed um was later renamed the carnation bar in her honor because these women wore carnation flowers um oftentimes to symbol because they're white and that was a symbol of moral purity of the women who were there for moral reasons to destroy the bars here's a photograph of kerry nation she'll look very friendly does she she has the bible open and she's carrying a hatchet uh this is a political cartoon at the time after she had just gone into a bar and you can see up she had destroyed the mirror and you can see next to the mirror there was a painting of a nude lady and he she had just gone and destroyed the bottles of whiskey and the men don't know what quite to do they're they're all horrified and they're not going to go out and throw her to the ground well as promised this is a photo of an actual bar in the state of kansas that carry nation and a few other ladies went in and attacked you can see the very elaborate mirror which was very expensive for the bar to have and you know destroyed many but not all of the whiskey bottles well in 1917 after many decades of particularly women lobbying for prohibition congress did approve prohibition in a law called the volstead act and the volstead act was passed and it gave a one-year grace period before prohibition came into effect and later there was a constitutional amendment to the u.s constitution i might note there was no legal need for an amendment to implement prohibition because of course there's absolutely nothing in the text of the us constitution that mentions prohibition it's it's not as if the constitution says and the people have the right to drink alcohol the constitution is silent on that topic but on this and many other controversial issues supporters like to see their position codified in an amendment to the u.s constitution but the volstead act was was sufficient and of course when prohibition was lifted in the early 1930s not only was the volstead act appeal but it was necessary to have another amendment to the u.s constitution to repeal the 19th amendment and that's interesting because two of the amendments to the u.s constitution deal with alcohol and there have been only 18 amendments in total yes 18 amendments in total to the constitution since the bill of rights the first 10 amendments was adopted a few years after the constitution itself was adopted so and of course now many many people want whatever their favorite issue is made into a constitutional amendment you know whether it's the issue controversial issues like gay marriage abortion rights etc etc so this is a photo in the next lecture we'll talk about the 1920s but this is a photo of federal agents destroying barrels of beer by pouring them into the sewer system and we'll we'll talk a little more in the next lecture that prohibition in the cities was a failure because of the many many tens of thousands of illegal bars or speakeasies that were set up although prohibition was generally respected in the small towns and farming communities but in the cities most of the large cities had rampant corruption and the police departments were bought out by the um alcohol the corruption from alcohol interests and we'll talk more about that in the next class okay so we've looked at prohibition of alcohol women's suffrage and another and there were many other reforms such as eliminating child labor shortening the number of hours safety in the factories etc etc i'm not going to go into all of them here this is just an introduction to the major issues that impact texas another area though was making the united states democracy more democratic and so during this period of time there was a much uh progressives focused on having direct election of u.s senators uh you will recall the constitution set up a system where u.s senators of which of course they're two from each state were not elected by the people but rather were appointed by the state legislature each state legislature for instance in texas the texas legislature would decide which two people would go to washington to be the u.s senators and many people thought well that was not terribly democratic the people had no say other than the fact that they had voted for the politicians in the state capital in our case austin and they wanted to have direct election of u.s senators so an amendment to the u.s constitution was passed and this was necessary because it had to change the actual wording of the u.s constitution to allow for direct election of u.s senators which of course we have today but for for um over half of the history of the united states u.s senators were not directly elected other political reforms involved setting up initiative referendum and recall all of these were provisions that allowed for instance once you get a certain number of people to sign a petition um that the issue must be on considered in the next election a referendum is asking for a special election on a specific issue and recall is when you get a certain number of people to sign a petition and then this is to recall a politician from office before the the next election and all three of these are particularly used in the state of california but they're used throughout the united states and some of them in the state of texas and one major major reform in the political area was setting up primaries in each of the political parties to choose candidates previously the most influential people in the political parties would get together in a party convention and decide who was going to be their candidate well the average person did not have the time to do that because they had a job they could not travel for instance in the state of texas to austin to attend a three or four day convention and so the feeling was that there should be a primary election of course we have this system today where members of either republican or democratic party can select among a list of names the person they want to be the candidate and this reform which we'll look at in more detail in a few minutes in texas was particularly important in a state like texas which had only one dominant party and at the time we're talking about in the early 1900s the by far the most dominant party in texas was the democratic party we've already seen that so whoever was selected as a democratic candidate to be a us representative a u.s senator governor or whatever would automatically fulfill that position because the republican candidate would simply not be elected and on the issue of race president teddy roosevelt and virtually all the other white progressives had a major blind spot or you could call it just simple racism they did not consider how to improve the lot of uh people of other races they they didn't look at the black people in particular i mean blacks would benefit in as part of the general population for instance when child labor was eliminated or factory hours were reduced et cetera et cetera but there was no special program to uh focus on on blacks and particularly with increased the segregation in the south nor did it include the indians and some immigrant groups that were really discriminated against us and at this time we're talking about the catholics now let's shift our gears and focus exclusively on on texas i've looked in some detail at the progressive movement but now you'll understand how it fits in with texas well in the last 15 or 20 years of the 19th century texas had already taken some action that was considered very progressive for instance in 1889 the texas legislature passed anti-trust legislation to limit large corporations that were interfering with competition in the marketplace and this was one year before the u.s congress passed the famous sherman anti-trust act from the the uh 12-year period from 1891 to 1903 three consecutive texas governors hog culberson and sayers were all very progressive and that largely is due to the influence of edward house who was their main political advisor and we'll see mr house again shortly because he became president woodrow wilson's main advisor and in the 1890s the state of texas began serious regulation of the railroads as well as the insurance industries well starting off the 20th century galveston experienced a horrific category 4 hurricane which killed more than 6 000 residents there were about 30 to 35 000 residents in galveston so a significant percentage of them died the entire city was covered by five feet of water so the if you i'm sure you've been to galveston it's a low-lying island and it was just covered with five feet of water so the only way to survive was to do what well to go up on top of a building or you know if you have a two-story house you go upstairs but the problem is many many of those homes were just completely destroyed to this very day it remains the most devastating natural disaster in american history and until the day of the hurricane galveston had been the largest city in the state and it had been the most important port in texas for exports of cotton and everything else and following the the hurricane the the major port became houston uh a ship channel was made they had the dredge you know the bottom uh to make sure the uh the inlet for ships was deep enough so you have the houston ship channel it goes up into houston while houston can certainly be affected by hurricanes as we all saw with hurricane harvey and others it wasn't right on the coast unexposed and so immediately following the hurricane in galveston martial law was declared to prevent people from stealing what it was ever left and a massive cleanup followed they constructed a new six mile sea wall which was 17 or 18 feet high it's still there of concrete and then the entire city was elevated in some places 17 or 18 feet of sand were added to the level of the city to bring it up to the top of the sea wall and this is at a time when they didn't have our modern you know caterpillar tractors and everything else they did have some they had steam engines and so they got the sand by running large pipes out into the offshore pumping up sand from the bottom of the ocean and just filling in it was a tremendous effort um the houses that weren't destroyed the people decided they wanted to keep they were elevated you know they just physically elevated the buildings and houses there's a short five or six minute video from a news station in canvas and it explains the process of rebuilding galveston it has some great photographs of the damage uh this is just one this is one of the most famous photographs of a house sort of flipped at a 45 degree angle but many many other houses were totally destroyed because people's homes were built of wood and they were totally destroyed there was a large orphanage there st mary's right on the coast with um where 90 nuns and um orphans were found drowned it was very very tragic the hurricane led to a progressive advance in municipal or city government the uh the city has set up a new form of government called a sim city commission government and at first the commissioners were appointed by the governor and then later it changed where the commissioners were appointed by an elected mayor and elected city council and the idea was this is very much in the progressive spirit we're going to get experts some scientific experts in so each commissioner was responsible for a single city function you have a police commissioner a fire water sanitation to deal with the many issues etc etc and this was going to be expert and scientifically managed administration of the city and as i mentioned the commissioners were within a few years actually appointed by locally elected mayors and city councils and the state legislature in austin approved this thought it was a great idea hundreds of cities in texas adopted this same system of government and it was also adopted in some other states in the far north of texas in the city of amarillo in 1912 they introduced yet a new form of city government called the city manager method where the mayor and the city council who are directly elected handle the legislative functions of the city government for instance you know writing ordinances and making decisions but the city manager was hired to administer the daily affairs of the city it's somewhat similar to the commission's system in that the manager would then be an overall charge of making sure you know the water systems working or the the police the fire you know all the other essential function functions of any city anywhere in the world we spoke a few minutes ago about in the national context setting up political primaries and this was so important in texas because the democratic party was so dominant and in 1905 texas set up primary elections for each of the parties and then that was further developed 1918 they added a runoff election between the top two candidates in the primary election and of course this is what we have today so let's say there are 10 candidates running to be the republican or democratic candidate let's say for governor uh the one with the most votes does not add automatically become if the person doesn't have more than 50 of the votes so they'd take the top two and then they'd have another election to decide who was the actual candidate now looking a little more at women in texas you had the women's christian temperance union we already discussed set up in texas women very active here to promote prohibition of alcohol and then you had the texas equal suffrage association was formed to urge voting rights for texas women now black and mexican-american women were not included in these groups and so they set up their own federations and here we see some suffrage activists at the state capitol and this is in 1913. okay looking briefly at the economy the economy remained essentially the same with cotton and cattle exports continuing to dominate economic activities in the state and politically texas remained very much a conservative southern state and jen genuinely approved most the progressive movement in general and most progressive reforms although there were some in texas the rapid buildup of the cities in the 1890s led to increased state laws and practices to segregate the races this had not been such a priority for white texans when the blacks were were living out on small farms but when they started moving into cities many blacks decided that should be whites decided that they needed to segregate the races at the same time a greater effort was made to prevent the blacks from voting now texas is well known now as an oil state if you were to ask most people outside of texas or around the world what is texas well they say a cowboy or an oil well right and the first major oil strike it wasn't the first discovery of oil was near beaumont just east to houston at spindletop and this was a tremendous tremendous oil field and it really started the boom of oil in texas and of course at the same time there was more demand for petroleum-based products because you had cars powered by internal combustion engines that needed gasoline and you had trucks that needed diesel you know another product of the crude oil and this led to huge growth in the population and the economy in east texas however there were so many wells drilled in that general area it depleted the fields and by 1909 texas was only the sixth largest uh oil producing state in the country but that will change as we'll see starting in the 1920s when major oil fields are discovered in north and west texas this is a photo at the time of the gusher it was called the gusher because when they the drilling pipe went down and hit the oil so much came up it went up several hundred feet and actually took several days to control the flow now let's look briefly at the growth of cities in 1890 there were no texas cities with more than 40 000 residents however 30 years later in 18 should be 1920 there were four cities with more than a hundred thousand this would be dallas fort worth houston and san antonio they all had more than a hundred thousand so and this is the same thing throughout the united states during this whole period of time rapid urbanization and houston's growth was particularly impacted by the huge port in houston and as i mentioned a few minutes ago there was a ship channel dug to reach the port of houston and this was financed by both the state government and the federal government and in fact they still have ongoing efforts you could you could go off and look out you know around the houston ship channel today well not every day but many days they have big boats they are what are called dredges and they go down and they're scooping up the mud and from the bottom of the ship channel and they blow it out and put it on the side because as the buffalo bayou flows into around the port of houston it's carrying silt and mud and that all settles to the bottom so it's a i think it's a never-ending process and the port of houston at this time we're talking about now started to export not only cotton products some beef but mainly now it's moving more and more to oil look for a moment at immigration well during the progressive era there was a tremendous flood of mexican immigrants and that was largely caused by the revolution in mexico which started around 1910 and many of the battles of that revolution were fought in northern mexico so it's quite understandable people were coming seeking refuge in texas and many of these ref people came over they started working either in the cities or um as laborers on farms they didn't work as generally as tenant farmers but rather they worked for wages on farms and indeed by the 1920s the number of texas residents of mexican origin had reached 10 percent of the population of the state which is more than the number of of blacks in the state and it's continued growing at a faster rate ever since then and the mexican americans as seems natural they wherever they were living they organized churches with spanish language religious services mutual aid societies they set up some spanish-language newspapers and they started to organize politically now while there was segregation against hispanics hispanics is the term we use now previously they were called mexicans because they were virtually all from mexico uh or mexican-americans they were certainly not as rigidly separated as blacks and that said they often lived in separate social communities and but they did interact more than blacks uh with the anglos and work and politics now let's turn for a few minutes to the politics of the progressive movement in texas well thomas campbell was elected governor in 1906 and he was a progressive democrat and he expanded many of governor hogg's reforms dealing with economic regulation and particularly supporting public education campbell initiated banking reforms and he also started legislation to end the system whereby prisoners were leased out to private companies and would receive no compensation and the progressive movement the progressive movement to prohibit alcohol continued and those who favored prohibition of alcohol were called dries and those who favored continued consumption of alcohol were called wet and they wanted to eliminate alcohol through the prohibition on its manufacture sale and consumption and i might note the night the constitutional amendment on prohibition does not explicitly prohibit the consumption of alcohol but only the manufacturer distribution and sale of alcohol so under the terms of the constitutional amendment it was totally legal in the 1920s to consume alcohol and many people did so at home by making their own alcohol particularly gin which has a high alcoholic content and you could go to any supermarket and buy a little kit in a bag with all the ingredients to make gin people tended to make it they didn't have a lot of containers so they'd clean their bathtub and make it and then you know pour it into containers to drink so bathtub gin is what it was called now u.s senator joseph bailey was a conservative democrat he did not favor any of the progressive reforms and he his criticisms of progressives is often called baileyism and this had much attraction for many texans and lasted for many many decades after this now in terms of racial relations all the democrats generally both the conservatives and the progressives supported white supremacy and in 1911 the state legislature passed an amendment to the texas constitution to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol but that was defeated by a narrow margin in an election okay turning to the national stage in 1912 a democratic candidate uh was elected president this is woodrow wilson and he was the first southern democrat since the summer civil war and he worked very very closely with texans so under woodrow wilson's administration texas uh became much more important politically within the democratic party and that continued for much of the 20th century and of course president lyndon baines johnson was a texan now president wilson appointed many texans to his cabinet or senior advisors just a couple examples burleson became postmaster general this was at a time when the u.s post office was by far the major employer of the federal government and the postal service played a vital role in the economy david houston became the secretary of agriculture and thomas gregory was the attorney general of the united states and it's very significant that wilson's chief personal adviser he had no official position but he traveled everywhere with wilson he was his main advisor was the same edward house who had been the main adviser to a number of texas governors the two u.s senators from texas both shepherd and culberson were very strong wilson supporters so this increased the importance of texas in the democratic party now we're going to briefly talk about a phenomenon called ferguson's frigatism it's hard to pronounce fergusonism jim ferguson won the governor's race in 1914 and he claimed he was a hog progressive democrat you'll recall governor hogg had been very progressive and ferguson campaigned that he was speaking for the poor farmers that nobody seemed to be to care about in the progressive movement and he strongly opposed prohibition but he realized there were a lot of people who favored prohibition so we tried to turn the attention away from the issue of prohibition by talking about the real economic distress of sharecroppers and tenant farmers of whom there were many many whites we looked at sharecroppers and tenant farmers in another lecture but not all of them were certainly not all of them were blacks there were many many whites and he be he jim ferguson became known as farmer jim and he would go out and you know meet people in all over the place in rural areas and he'd say you know tomorrow at noon i'll be at such and such an intersection of two roads please come and meet me well ferguson uh won a major victory and that now uh shut the conservatives out of space state politics for uh quite a long time he he particularly targeted university officials who criticized them and these were officials from state-funded universities he took it very personally that they shouldn't be attacking the governor of the state and then he made some attacks on the university which were interpreted as attacking the independence and academic integrity of the university well two years later in 1916 ferguson ran again to be governor for reelection and he defeated in the primary the democratic challenger charles morris and morris was a prohibitionist and but ferguson won the primary and he became re-elected however during the primary election charles morris accused ferguson of financial corruption and said that he was profiting off of of loans from uh and had misappropriated state funds well once reelected ferguson vetoed the legislature's appropriation of funding for the university of texas and that led to an outcry among the many people who supported ut prohibitionists didn't like ferguson anyway and many many got together to oppose him and indeed travis county which is a county in which austin is located the grant travis county prosecutors went to a grand jury which indicted ferguson for embezzlement and misuse of public funds well a special session of the legislature was called technically the governor has to do this and ferguson was not going to call the legislature in special session to remove him from office but he finally agreed that there could be a special session legislature and they voted to impeach ferguson for um misuse of public funds and corruption and after he was impeached the texas senate found him guilty on 10 charges removed him from the office and then took the additional step of disqualifying him from holding any future public office in the state of texas well when this happened and ferguson stepped down the lieutenant governor automatically became governor he completed ferguson's term of office but ferguson and his wife would come back into politics and in fact his wife ma ferguson became governor in the 1920s and we'll talk about her in the next lecture so here we have ma ferguson okay now let's turn briefly the conclusion here to world war one as you recall from your other studies world war one began in western europe in august of 1914 a dispute among the alliances of two major alliances of countries in western europe however president wilson did not want to join um he saw no real u.s interest at first and this is also very reflective of the general feeling of isolationism in the u.s that goes way back to president george washington's farewell address in which he cautioned americans not to get involved in foreign conflicts that do not directly affect the united states and we'll see exactly the same arguments advanced and account for the late us entry into world war ii so americans were watching the war in general but public sentiment was certainly against sending american soldiers to europe well almost three years after the war broke out um there were some incidents such as the sinking of the british passenger ship the lusitania you may recall which over 100 americans as passengers died but the u.s did not go to war over that then in february 1917 president wilson actually broke diplomatic relations with germany when germany said it was going to have unrestricted submarine warfare that meant the german submarines which were very effective in the atlantic were just going to sink any ship they wanted to and even though the united states was neutral that meant that u.s ships could be sunk and of course the germans were interested in this because the united states was supplying britain and france with huge shipments of weapons as well as food well three weeks after germany's announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare the german official named arthur zimmerman sent a telegram or a message to the german embassy in mexico city urging mexico to invade the united states basically said once the war state of war exists between the u.s and germany i invite mexico excuse me the u.s yeah germany i invite mexico to join germany in fighting the united states and once we in germany defeat the united states we promise to give mexico its lost territory that the united states took and this includes the states of new mexico uh arizona and of course texas and then the telegram goes on to ask the mexican government to contact the japanese government and to get them involved and the japanese government would would would get the state of california this is an actual copy of the telegram sent from germany to mexico and it's interesting you see western union telegram well there wasn't much international radio communication at this period it was virtually non-existent so this was sent via telegram through cable under the ocean and it went from germany to london to the united states and then you can see at the top it says it went down from telegraph station to telegraph station it went to galveston texas and then it's directed to the german legation that means the german embassy in mexico city now a glance at it you can see it's in code so nobody can read it unless they can decrypt it well what happened was as this was relayed by western union a commercial company the british government intelligence services had intercepted this in london and their code breakers had broken the code and they realized how politically important this was so they immediately sent it to the president of the united states um who made it public and and the british wanted the united states very much they wanted the united states to come into the war and they hoped that this telegram would convince the united states government the american people that they needed to enter world war one and it's very interesting obviously it was a very secret operation to break the code on this and the british didn't want anyone to know they'd done this so it was agreed with the united states that the united states would say that it received the telegram the text of the telegram the decoded text of the telegram from a spy in mexico city who had gotten it from the german embassy in mexico city and for that very reason you know the british could continue to read that interest intercepts from germany because obviously if the british if the germans knew that the british or the americans were breaking their codes they'd immediately change their codes so well there was an immediate reaction in the united states horrified that germany wanted to carve up the united states and here you can see a famous political cartoon the you have a knife and the man holding the knife is the the czar the the leader of germany and you can see on his right hand taking the knife and on the map of the united states he has for myself that's for germany and then it says for mexico that's for arizona excuse me that's arizona new mexico and texas those states will go to mexico and then the tsar has california for japan question mark well that's because japan had not yet you know joined and so uh germany and so the hope was by offering japan the prospect of taking over california japan could be encouraged into the war well these this is the headline of the new york times germany seeks an alliance against us asked japan and mexico to join her full text of her proposal made public these are huge huge uh headlines in the new york times well you recall we talked earlier about there were a lot of uh germans in texas uh germans who come over many years before loyal american citizens but there was a large german-american population and also texas had a lot of revolutionary violence still on the border with mexico caused by the mexican revolution so most texans wanted to support fighting germany in this war they certainly want didn't want mexico to get involved with germany so there was a tremendous turnout by mexican men to fight one million texas men immediately registered for the draft the selective service system and about 200 000 volunteered for service mainly in the army this is one of my favorite uh military recruiting posters this is from world war one and this is put out by the us navy and it says the navy needs you don't read american history make it so very appropriate since we're in american history class here so you have the soldier telling this person don't read about american history come make it now during the war um the military established or expanded a number of military bases in the san antonio and el paso regions because both have very warm and dry climates particularly we're just starting with the air forces then there was no u.s air force it was part of the army at that point but it was perfect for training pilots because you know san antonio has a very dry climate there's a lot of area to the west of san antonio that's not particularly populated and to this very day the u.s air force conducts much of its pilot training in its bases in san antonio and they also trained many many soldiers in texas which already had some army bases and those were expanded and the texas economy as a whole benefited because of this greatly increased federal military spending in the state now because of the large german population in the state which people feared well you know they've been good loyal texans and americans to now but you know their ethnic identity may trump all that and uh there was a lot of anti-german sentiment in the united states there was there were some symbolic actions taken against germans in and it wasn't just texas throughout the united states uh sauerkraut you know the vegetable dish was renamed liberty cat cabbage in most restaurants throughout the u.s well in texas a governor hobby refused to appropriate funding for the german language department at the university of texas high schools throughout the state stopped teaching german language courses the city of brandenburg formally changed its name to old glory interesting and some city councils form vigilante groups like groups of citizens who went out and kind of harassed german-american communities you know would go out and scream at the german americans who weren't openly supporting germany by any means but because they were german and it's interesting the anti-german sentiment throughout the united states and including texas really increased um popularity of prohibition of alcohol because the major breweries beer breweries in the united states were owned by germans and so it somehow people felt that you know drinking beer was un-american because it was produced by germans and even today one of the major beer companies in the united states is budweiser a very german name and the germans traditionally had had consumed a lot of of beer and finally and this is the last slide i'm sorry this lecture is lasting too long looking at women's voting rights it's interesting in 1918 annie webb lantern ran as a candidate for the superintendent of public instruction in texas and she won and she was the first woman who whoever was elected for a statewide office and in 1919 governor javi proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow women to vote in all elections because women had been allowed to vote in only selected elections and and that was put on the may 1919 referendum ballot along with prohibition well it's interesting prohibition won but women's suffrage lost however shortly thereafter the next year the u.s congress passed the amendment granting women the right to vote which had to be ratified of course as an amendment by three courts quarters of the states so governor hobby immediately called a special session to congress and the texas legislature was the first in the south to ratify the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote and in fact texas was one of the first seven or eight states to ratify the amendment okay in the next lecture we'll look at the 1920s the so-called prosperity decade look forward to talking to you then thank you