The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 18, 1918, Page 6

AR ‘ing its lands away to the ‘Railroads began. to be * their coming as an omen - were safeguarded to a considerable extent, but not completely. The republic finally set aside millions of acres for schools and a capitol building, confirmed most of the titles granted by the legislature of Coahuila and Texas after throwing out the most flagrant steals, gave a tract of 4605 acres to every white head of a family in the state, about one- fourth as much to each single man, bigger grants yet to every man who had fought in the Texas army, issued land scrip to settle several million dollars of debts of the republic and then decreed that the rest of the land was the property of the state. Perhaps you think there wasn’t much land left for the state. But there was. Although the amount covered by the Mexican grants, by the grants to heads of families, single men and soldiers, and by grants to the schools were enormous, Texas had in all 160,000,000 acres to play with. Was it any wonder that the old timers thought it was an in- “exhaustible supply? RAILROADS GRAB LAND OWNED BY PEOPLE . One of the first things that the Texans thought about was the necessity of having railroads. At this time, nearly half a century before government ownership of railrcads began to be a real issue, there was a considerable contingent of Texans who believed that the state should build its own roads. Their idea was that the state should build the roadbed, lay the rails and construct terminal facili- ties, and then lease the road for a term of years to railroad corporations which were already com- peting for the privilege of tapping the state. The idea was that later, if Texas considered it advisable, the leases could be termi- nated and the state could buy its own rolling stock and operate the roads for the benefit of all the people. The other plan was the one that was being fol- lowed by the federal gov- ernment — to allow the railroads to build and own the lines themselves and to pay them for the work with great grants of land. There was a short but bitter battle be- tween the state owner- ship men and the rail- roads and the railroads won. Texas embarked on a mad career of giv- railroads. Twenty sec- tions to the mile of rail- road was the usual gift. built. The people hailed of prosperity. The rail- road managers and politicians friendly to them capitalized this feeling and began to scheme on new ways to get the land and money that was the heritage of Texas. Lines of railroad were built that had no other purpose than to get land for their promoters. Still the railroads were not getting ahead fast enough to suit the greed of their promoters. - A new scheme was devised. The state had several million dollars being held in trust as a permanent fund for the benefit of the common schools. The politicians proposed that this money be loaned the railroads to help them in their development and they- forced through the legislature bills for this purpose, loan- ing school money at the rate of $6,000 per mile, . and in addition freeing the railroads from taxation.- . STATE WAS LOOTED BY THE RAILROAD PIRATES There was an enormous increase of railroad building to get the $6000 per mile. The school funds were raided. When it came time for repay- ment many of the roads were found to be bankrupt and the state suffered huge losses. Every possible scheme was figured out to loot the state of its lands and money. Two roads con- solidated into the International & Great Northern. One road, under the terms by which it was built, was entitled to 20 sections of land for each mile of road, the other road was entitled to borrow state funds. to finance itself and to exemption from taxa- tion. Under the combination the roads claimed all the original privileges that had ‘been granted:to ‘each—that is, both the land grant and the loan and freedom from. taxation. The legislature of Texas “compromised” the case by giving the I. & G. N.- 20 sections of land for each additional mile of rail- road and exemption from all taxation for 25 years, besides preserving to each road its original grants. The state was looted in other ways. It had set aside approximately 3,500,000 acres to provide a fund for state buildings. This entire grant was turned over to a syndicate of Chicago and English capitalists, in return for which Texas got a capitol building. It is a fine capitol—but that 3,500,000 acres is worth $30 an acre today. Figure for your- self how much that made the capitol cost. Even the gifts to the railroads and the capitol grant did not get rid of the land quickly enough and new schemes were devised. Laws were passed giving land away for each well that was drilled. Other laws were passed giving land grants for the dredging of rivers. - Every dry creek in Texas, nearly, had a few wagonloads of sand scraped out of it and the men who had operated the scrapers then came to the statehouse and got in return for their “work” deeds to thousands of acres of valu- able lands. The people of Texas, who had broken away from Mexico because Mexico had started to “graft” on their lands, had let their government get into the hands of ‘as bad a bunch of grafters as the Mexicans. HOUSTON. NOT IN FAVOR ‘OF TEXAS' SECESSION Where were the people’s leaders during all this time? Something more must be said about Sam Houston, whose voice had been lifted at the first against land grafts. Houston was sent to Wash- ington as one of Texas' first senators after state- hood. There he had offended the slave owning class of Texas by lining up generally with the This is a typical picture of a Texas cotton field at picking time. .The picture was taken on the farm of W. 8. Brown near Mathis, Texas. The cotton is packed in the wagon in the rear until it is filled, then a team of mules is hitched on and the cotton is taken to the gin to be ginned (cleaned of seed) and baled. northern senators in fighting against the admission of new slave owing states. The slave owners worked up a big sentiment in Texas for slavery on the issue of letting the negroes do thc work and the white men rest in idleness. Just before the Civil war Houston returned to Texas and became a candidate for governor. So great was his ‘popularity that he was elected by an enormous vote, in spite of a hot campaign of the slave owners against.him, but the legislature that was elected along with him was pro-slavery. Then the Civil war broke out and state after state in the South broke away from the Union. Houston, brave and successful soldier though he had been in fighting against Mexican oppression, was what would be called in these days a pacifist. He urged against secession by Texas. He did not believe that Texas should go to war to protect the private property. of its slave owning class. He said to the people of Texas: : “This will be a long war and a bitter one. We . in the South are hot headed and impulsive; we may win at first, but the men of the North are cooler and more-tenacious. They will fight till they win and their fight will take the lives of thousands of sons of Texas.” ; But the war fever was on and the war party won control. - The pro-slavery legislature ousted Sam Houston, savior of Texas, from the governor's chair, and the Lone Star state joined the confed- eracy. Houston went to his country home. . He died during the war, a broken and discredited man. He was, for the time, not in harmony with the con- trolling political forces of Texas. - . Sam Houston today is the hero of Texas. Every word that ‘he said came true.. Texa lost many ? PAGE SIX : : e P e AR thousands of lives and many millions of dollars in the war and lost them in vain. Slavery went into the discard. People came gradually to see that he had been right all along—that Houston was. right and the others were wrong, back in the days of the revolution, when they called him a coward for re- treating before Santa Anna; that Houston was right when he counseled fair treatment for the In- dians; that he was right when he advised for peace and against war. " And they see in Texas today that Houston was right when he protested back in the ’40’s, against validation of land grafts that were the entering wedge in a wholesale system of grafts that con- tinued for the next 50 years. For the 160,000,000 acres of Texas lands did not prove inexhaustible. Grafts of thousands and millions of acres at a time gradually cut down the total. Exorbitant interest charges by bankers and occasional crop failures gradually froze out the small owners and the vast . lands of Texas gradually came into the control of a few thousand great landlords. HOMESTEAD LAW NOT FARMER’S PROTECTION A dozen 'years ago Texas woke up to. discover that all the valuable public land in control of the state had passed into the hands of private owners. Much of this land is being held, unimproved and nearly tax free, for speculation. Much of it is being rented on shares to tenant farmers. In 1910, ac- cording to the federal census, 53 farmers in Texas out of every 100 were tenants. According to inves- tigation of the committee on industrial relations, in 1915, in 82 counties, 60 per cent of the farmers were tenants. It is estimated that every day when the sun goes down in Texas, 159 farmers who have been farm owners be- come renters.™ The founders of Texas attempted to pre- vent tenancy by passing what is known as the homestead law. Accord- ing to this law, up to 200 acres of land constitutes a “homestead” and can not be taken away from a farmer by forced sale. Although the intent of this law undoubtedly was to - protect the farmer, the way it has worked out has been - different. Since debts can not be collected against a home- stead, naturally money will not be loaned upon it. When a 200-acre farmer has a little tough luck and needs a small loan ‘to help him along, he can not get the money. So he has to pack up his _ things in his wagon, abandon his farm and join the “wagon tramps,” drifting around the state, looking for a chance to'work at day labor or to rent a new place. Most of the tenants used to rent on the basis of giving the landlord a third on a grain crop and a fourth on cotton. number of tenants and the demand for land has be- come 80 enormous that the landlords have been able to make sterner conditions. Texas, today, is in worse condition than ever be- fore. Ome half of the state has been burned out by drouth. The farmers from this half have joined with the usual number of tenants seeking new loca- tions after the first of the year, and the roads are almost blocked in some portions by “wagon tramps,” bidding against each other for a chance to work the lands of some wealthy landlord. Other millfons of acres are held unproductive and nearly tax free. and there are thousands of abandoned farms, which the owners can not raise the money to operate. Nearly half the farmers are disfranchised by the operation of a poll tax law which requires them to pay a poll tax of $1.75 during January to be able to vote the next November. The farmer must appear .at the county seat in person to pay it, in the dead of winter. Most Texas roads are in bad condition, especially in January. Most of the farmers lack Fords to travel in; the best they have is mule teams. It is. a criminal offense to lend a man poll tax ‘money, and thousands of farmers, from one year's end to the other, hardly see $10 of real money. But with all these impediments aainst action, the But recently the increase in the farmers of Texas have the power to remedy land’ conditions if they will. They can restore Texas to the position that it once occupfed—the greatest state for' free farmers in the nation, !