Bartee Haile
On Apr. 7, 1890, the proud governor gave a guided tour of the new capitol to Jay Gould, who just happened to be in town at the same time Texans were considering regulation of the railroads.
The infamous visitor was the same unscrupulous speculator that made a fortune by cornering the gold market in 1869. After that notorious coup, he added western rail systems to his East Coast holdings and by the 1880’s controlled more than 15,000 miles of American track.
Gould’s vast empire stretched all the way to the Lone Star State and included the Texas and Pacific, Cotton Belt, International and Great Northern, as well as the Missouri, Kansas and Texas and the Houston and Henderson. He was the piper Texans had to pay through the nose to ship by rail.
On a popularity scale, railroad magnates ranked somewhere between horse thieves and the recently departed army of Reconstruction occupation. Giving them 32 million acres of public land was bad enough but to wind up paying exorbitant freight rates in the bargain was intolerable.
Politicians began to feel the mounting pressure for government intervention as early as 1876. That year Gov. Richard Coke responded to the public outcry by calling for a watchdog agency to ride herd on the railroads.
By 1881 the idea had caught fire resulting in a move by members of the Texas House of Representatives to create a railroad commission. Horrified by the specter of fixed rates, Jay Gould hurried to Texas on the pretext of inspecting his companies.
His real mission was, of course, to prevent passage of the commission bill. Warning that “injudicious interference” threatened the growth of the Texas rail network, he noted ominously, “The peril is in legislation. This is the danger always.”
To drive home his point, Gould stopped construction on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas between Fort Worth and Waco. The legislature got the message and ditched the bill.
Six years later, the House actually passed a similar proposal and sent it onto the Senate. But another visit and a few more well-chosen words from Gould sabotaged the legislation.
Capitalizing on his successful prosecution of several rail lines, attorney general Jim Hogg entered the 1890 race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Alarmed by Hogg’s strong support for the dreaded commission, Gould again came running.
His first stop was Austin, where outgoing governor Sul Ross took him on a tour of the brand-new capitol. Playing up to Texas pride, the robber baron marveled, “I think it is the finest in the world. It is certainly the finest that I have ever seen.”
In the only interview he granted during his month-long stay, Gould said all the regulation rhetoric was certain to cause a slow-down in construction. Right on cue the Galveston News ridiculed pro-commission agitation as “stage thunder, full of sound and fury for advancing the plot of a political drama...signifying little or nothing except possibly public office and political promotion for leading actors in the performance.”
From his headquarters in a Dallas hotel, Gould traveled to Denison, Denton, Fort Worth, Jefferson, McKinney, Marshall, Plano, San Antonio, San Marcos, Sherman, Terrell and Texarkana. In each town he deliberately dangled the tempting carrot of construction and soon had city fathers fighting like cats and dogs.
Countering a Cow Town claim that “the most extensive work will be done in Fort Worth,” a Big D newspaper declared, “Dallas is the metropolis, and all the world, with the exception of the little patch preempted by the inhabitants of Fort Worth, has caught on to the fact.” The Austin Statesman took silent satisfaction in the embarrassment of Galveston by reprinting without comment Gould’s telegram to the mayor canceling his visit to the island.
Meanwhile, the Southern Mercury, official voice of the Farmers Alliance, criticized all concerned. “While he (Gould) graciously proposes to take a few dollars out of the millions the people of this state have paid him...and invest in a new depot, a monopoly-serving sycophantic daily press raises a shout of admiration and commands the people to bow down and kiss his great tow.”
Gould left Texas in May 1890 with the firm belief that he had killed two dangerous birds -- the candidacy of the radical Hogg and the cursed commission -- with a single stone. He was dead wrong on both counts.
Fueled by a hatred of track tyrants, an irresistible wave of statewide discontent swept Jim Hogg into office. Among his first acts as governor was the establishment of the Texas Railroad Commission.
Maybe Jay Gould called the tune back east, but in Texas he was strictly second fiddle.
Read the whole story of Bonnie and Clyde plus other outlaws of the Thirties in “Texas Depression Era Desperadoes.” Order your autographed copy today by mailing a check for $24.00 to Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 130011, Spring, TX 77393.
