The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 18, 1918, Page 4

SRR e R T T s et e AVE we crossed the state line yet?” I asked my traveling companion on the train. Be- fore he got a chance to answer a young fellow across the aisle who had got on at the last station, put a question of his own. “How far do you-all reckon it is over yonder?” My companion smiled. 5 “Yes, we're in Texas now,” he said. I might have known for myself if I had noticed that a “Jim Crow” daycoach had been hooked onto the train, for negroes only; that at every station were two waiting rooms, one for whites and one labeled “colored waiting room” or “negro waiting room.” I might have known we were in Texas by noticing the plowing up of fields of bare cotton : stalks with teams of three, four and five black, brown and yellow mules. Texas is a great state—no doubt about it. In every state I have visited the natives have some reason to brag—either their state has the biggest crops or the richest mines or the best climate or - the most wealth per capita. There may be doubt about some of these things—the matter of climate, especially, is always open to argument. But-there is no doubt whatever that Texas is the biggest state in the Union. Texas contains 250,000 square miles of territory. Maybe that doesn’t mean so much in itself. But, as any Texan will tell you, Germany and England might both be dropped in the middle of Texas and still leave plenty of room to navigate - in; or when you consider that Texas might be laid out, in a strip of land a mile wide, that would reach from the earth to the moon, with enough left over to girdle the mdbn a couple of times, its size begins to be borne in upon your mind. THE WAGON TRAMPS AND THEIR LOT IN TEXAS Texas has plenty of other claims for notice be- sides its size. never has been any government land; the only state which was an independent republic before state- hood. It is a land of cotton, with the biggest cotton crop of the United States, which in turn has the biggest cotton crop of the world. It is also a state of negroes (locally known as “niggers”), Mexicans, mules, “hound dawgs” (principally “yaller”) and incomparably good Southern cooking. Don’t talk about good eating until you have tasted fried chicken, red snapper, yams, and such dainties, prepared by a Southern cook, S All these things, even the “hound dawgs,” I think, are in Texas’ favor. But there are some things on the other side of the scale. Texas has more land, by many mil- - lions of acres, than any other state. But the other day, when I Forded from Waco through some of the most pros- perous farming country of central Texas, I saw a strange looking con- trivance coming down the road. It looked like a camping wagon. A man sat in front, driving a pair of mules. - Beside him sat a half-starved looking - woman. Inside the covered wagon I - saw an assortment of household goods, bedding, a cookstove and a plow. A pony that looked more nearly starved than the woman was led behind. A half mile farther we met another out- fit, a good deal like the first, and then another. I asked the farmer I was riding with what those people were, It is the only state in which there * A group of Leagué boosters in Texas. than the average 'dog does, and is as full of tricks as a kitten. Year, Texas manager for the Nonpartisan league, “They’re wagon tramps,” he said. ~ “Probably renters—tenant farmers—looking for a new place to rent, or maybe they own a little land and got burned out and can’t get a loan on it on account of the homestead law. They haven’t enough money to ride on trains, so they turn wagon tramps, look- ing for a place to farm on shares on any terms that the landlord makes, or if they can’t get that, a chance to work at day labor.” And when I learned that Texas, with the richest endowment of lands of any state in the Union, also has a larger percentage of tenant farmers than any other state, with one exception, I came to the con- clusion that there were some things that Texans wouldn’t care to brag about. LAND PROBLEM DATES 'WAY BACK IN 1835 Texas has two problems—Iland and cotton. The land problem has been a big one ever since the first large settlements began, a century ago, and the cotton problem followed when they began to raise cotton on that land. This is the story of the land problem. ’ To know the real story of Texas you have to look back to around 1830, when Texas, a part of Mexico, was being settled by Americans who came in colonies from Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and other Southern states. Texas was joined with Coahuila, as the state of Coahuila and Texas, repub- * lic of. Mexico, just as North and South Dakota used to be joined as the territory of Dakota. There grew to be differences between the Mexican and Amer- ican settlers. The Americans claimed that the . tariff duties were manipulated to their disad- vantage, that they were taxed unfairly, just as the American colonists in the North were in 1776. But the Mexican population of Coahuila was in the ma- jority in the legislature of Coahuila and Texas, and impositions continued. The land problem appeared in 1835.. The legisla- ture that year, controlled by the Mezxicans, started to graft on public lands in_ earnest. Against the protests of the Texans the legislature, controlled by the Coahuila Mexicans, started to sell great tracts of Texas lands for small sums to New York and A PAGE FOUR: Otto Hueske of MéGregor, at the extreme right, is the owner of Bill, an educated ram, who obeys his master’s voice better Mr. M. S. Good- is the man wearing a hat. Coahuila capitalists. Finally they sold a huge tract of 400 square leagues (about 2,000,000 acres) for $30,000, about a cent and a half an acre. Texans determined to try and get self government. They .assembled a convention to draft a proposed consti- tution. A man named Sam Houston was chairman of the committee which prepared the proposed constitution, If you ask a Texan to name the two greatest Americans, there is a good chance that George Washington or Woodrow Wilson will be one of them. Or he may name as one of them Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson or Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln. But the other one—the one he will name first, will always be Sam Houston. HOUSTON A FRIEND OF THE DOWNTRODDEN And Houston deserves this regard from Texans. He is one of the most remarkable characters, 1 think, in American history. Born in Virginia, his fam- ily moved to Tennessee when he was 2 Youngster, and when his elder brothers wanted him to settle down and work in a store he ran away and lived with the Cherokee Indians until he was 18. Then he got a job teaching school to earn enough money to pay some debts he owed the Indians, became a soldier "in a war against a tribe hostile to the whites and the Cherokees, and then studied law and started to practice. He was a big, fine looking fellow. He had seen life on all sides, knew the problems of the common people, was a good mixer and his peo- ple sent him to congress. He made a good record there, came back and was elected governor of Tennessee. He married a beautiful Southern girl, daughter of a prominent Tennessee family, Then a strange thing happened. Houston sud- denly resigned as governor. He left his wife and dropped out of sight. It came out later that he had left the state in disguise and had gone to live again with his old friends, the Cherokee Indians. A few years later, in 1833, he turned up in Texas and soon became the same leader among men that he had been in Tennessee. But Houston differed from other Texans in some ways. © He had more sym- pathy for the downtrodden,” and especially for the Indians. There are some passages in [ the dealings of Texas with the Indians that are not pleasant reading. These unfair practices stopped when Houston became a power. Aré you wondering why Houston left the governorship and his wife in Tennessee? His friends, in Tennessee and Texas wondered, for many years. Houston never told. Then it came out. He had come home, three. days after his -marriage, to find his bride in tears. He had forced her to tell him what was the matter and learned she was in love with another man, but her parents, ambitious to have her marry the governor of Tennessee, had forced her to say “yes” to Houston against her will. Sam Houston left— gave up everything he had gained in life to set her free. - That ‘was the kind of a man the - Texans chose to draw up their consti- tution. - The proposed constitution Hq o they drew had one remarkable provi- g sion for which Sam Houston was per-, sonally responsible-a provision that the state should never give its author- ity to private banking concerns. Per- .haps Texans looked far to the future R