NOT SO DEEP IN THE HEART OF DIXIE: TEXAS
Texan cities moseyed down a different trail than the post-Civil War Deep South, for various reasons:
- Texas attracted an in-migration pattern all its own. The political culture that developed, especially in its interior, was not that of the Old South.
- Larger than France, Texas supported several sub-regional, metro-sized urban/ economic clusters.
- The state experienced periods as a colony and independent nation, forming its own distinctive identity/culture previous to joining the Union in 1845.
- Remarkably isolated and “wild westie,” Texas was off the radar screens of Wall Street and Big City corporate behemoths, allowing local banking and finance systems to operate with some autonomy.
- While on the edges of the Old South planter economy and politics, a distinctly different cattle/meat-packing agglomeration naturally developed in its interior.
Early twentieth-century discovery of rich oil/gas resources, producing a powerful “platform” agglomeration as the auto industry in Michigan, yanked much of the Old South territories into developing brand new economic bases. And, like it or not, there was something in Texan water that nourished the most unbridled competitive entrepreneurism yet seen on the continent. Texans seemingly evolved a Darwinian gene for the competitive urban hierarchy.
And, Texas being Texas, its distinctive ED (thoroughly Privatist) displayed one characteristic above all—hyperbolic exuberance. Providing muscle for that exuberance was a political process/policy system dominated by its largely self-made business elite and a political culture which seemed “Tidewaterish” given its citizenry’s willingness to follow that elite. Pre-1920 Texan-style economic development is as pure a business elite-driven ED as has ever existed in America. Competing with other cities was evident from day one. Most Texan cities were growth machines from birth, and remain so to the present day. Despite such intense competition, it’s amazing that the present-day urban hierarchy—Houston (1st), San Antonio (2nd) and Dallas (3rd)—has characterized Texas since 1930.
EARLY RISE OF TEXAN CITIES
Eastern coastal/border Texas was part of a Deep South cotton–rice/slave-based export economy—one that caused its reluctant joining with the Confederacy. Coastal regions with only one natural harbor (Galveston) required infrastructure, sustained population growth and new markets to develop further, but Union victory and the geography/ climate of inland Texas halted cotton expansion. Other sectors developed in the inland plains areas. In the early 1870s a network of inland Texan cities formed around cattle-raising and a “get those doggies to market” economy. Thanks to cattle, railroads followed: Houston (1856–61), Dallas (1871), Fort Worth (1876), San Antonio (1877) and El Paso (1881). Serious Texan city-building followed the railroads (Wheeler, 1968, pp. 47–8).
Galveston was Texas’s most populous city in 1870 (almost 14,000), followed by San Antonio (12,000) and Houston (9000). Municipal business elites were already active in city-building and economic development in most Texan cities, San Antonio being an exception: “The business communities of Dallas [Fort Worth] and Houston historically have had more aggressive attitudes toward growth than has San Antonio. Part of the explanation for this lies in the social origins of each nineteenth-century merchant group” (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 10). Ethnic immigration flows differed for Galveston, Houston and San Antonio. Aggressive competition among cities typically motivated Texan business elites, but less so San Antonio elites, who mostly competed among themselves to tap the federal military post located there.
Texan Business Cultures
Houston’s business class originated from the mid-Atlantic and New England. The Allen brothers (John and Augustus, from New York) incorporated the city in 1837; they were responsible for Houston’s first railroad linkage with neighboring Galveston and Beaumont (1856). By 1861, of the 450 miles of Texas railroad then existing, 80 percent went to Houston: “This aggressive rail-building program thus laid the foundations for individual fortunes and significant local capital accumulation for further urban investments.” Houston business elites continued their aggressiveness after the Civil War, evidenced by a 1866 business-led public meeting at which “Houstonians approved a coherent blueprint for the city’s future development” (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 11). Cotton was the export crop at that time.
Prominent leaders of Dallas business came from the Upper South and Middle West and included John S. Armstrong, John C. McCoy and John Nealy Bryan (the town’s first settler). Incorporated in 1856, Bryan (1866) also “presided over a public meeting in which the fledgling business community laid out its goals for future development, especially railroad connections to Eastern markets” (Miller and Johnson, 1978, p. 11). The goal was quickly achieved in 1871 by businessman William Galson, who raised funds and donated land to steal away the Houston and Texas Central Railroad (H&TC) from another location. These actions were repeated to acquire the Texas and Pacific Railroad connection (that one cost $200,000 in bonds and $5000 cash) (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 11). Dallas, too, brought in the railroad as its first step in economic development.
San Antonio, a town built around the state’s largest military base, was originally settled by Irish and German immigrants direct from Europe, and by Deep South businessmen. The electorate and business community were soon dominated by a German and cotton-state southerner coalition. The extremely individualistic policy system that followed distributed benefits to individual businesses, neighborhoods and ethnic groups rather than fostering overall community growth. For many decades San Antonio consistently was unable to reach consensus on a future-oriented communitywide development plan—in contrast to Dallas and Houston. The one major exception was an 1880s’ project that developed a site for a new fort (Fort Sam Houston) in response to the military’s threat to move its existing base unless the city made a suitable site available (Johnson, 1968, pp. 33–57).
San Antonio’s business community lived off the military base, and that installation defined their economic development perspective:
San Antonio has no parallel to Dallas and Houston community commitment to local development; there was no public meeting immediately following the Civil War [and] San Antonio’s major merchants exhibited a striking indifference to … the railroad … San Antonio was the last [1877] of the three major metropolitan areas to be hooked into the national railroad and commercial network during the nineteenth century. (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 12) Moreover, San Antonio failed in its early attempt to establish a board of trade (1872), and did not found a chamber of commerce until 1910—decades after other Texan communities (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 15).
Houston Port Authority: Digging a Ditch Really Made a Difference
In 1890 Houston, about 45 miles inland from Galveston, was home to about 27,000; Galveston was home to 29,000.16 Connecting the two cities was a not very impressive, shallow sliver of water called Buffalo Bayou. Cargo from large ships would break bulk in Galveston, transfer to barges and ship to Houston via Buffalo Bayou. Houston Congressman Tom Ball got the bright idea to convert that sliver of water into a shipping canal to transform the city into a deep-water port, but he got nowhere for ten years. And then the storm struck.
A 1900 hurricane devastated Galveston. Shortly after the storm (January 1901) oil was discovered at Spindletop (near Beaumont); this was the opening shot of the Texas oil boom. After the storm Congressman Ball persuaded House colleagues to fund 50 percent of the cost to dredge the bayou. All that was needed was the other 50 percent (about $1.25 million). It took some persuasion, but by 1909, with port authorities springing up like weeds, the county formed the Harris County Houston Ship Canal Navigation District (it’s a port authority anyplace else). A campaign commenced for port authority voter approval and bond—both were approved. In January 1911 the Port Authority of Houston went into operation. Shortly after, it issued bonds—but no one would buy them. Jesse H. Jones,17 then a mere bank president, convinced each Houston bank to ante up; the bonds were purchased.
The canal was dredged. By 1920 Houston surpassed Galveston in export tonnage. By 1930 Houston was the nation’s third busiest port, and in the same year became the largest city in Texas. In 2010 Houston’s 2.1 million tons contrasted with Galveston’s 48,000, and by 2013 the Houston Port Authority was the nation’s top port (foreign tonnage) and home to the world’s second-largest petrochemical facility. Houston seized regional advantage from the channel because the city had previously developed into a premier rail hub. Control of the hub allowed Houston to siphon off agricultural produce and raw materials (and financial capital) that otherwise would have gone to New Orleans.
Houston’s success prompted other Texan cities to develop port authorities: throughout the 1920s they were created in Brownsville (1925), Corpus Christi (1926), Post Isabel-San Freeport (1927), Brazos River, (1927) and Benito (1928). By 2013, 16 Texas port authorities were operating. This spurred other Gulf Coast cities to do the same. Florida port authorities were not far behind as Palm Beach established theirs in 1915 and St. Lucie in 1920; Tampa Port Commission was in operation by 1924, and Port Everglades (Broward County) Florida in 1927. Lake Charles Louisiana established its port authority in 1924. These port authorities tapped into the 1910 federal Rivers and Waters Act, which provided the first significant dose of federal funding for what would eventually be an important section of the future 3000-mile Intracoastal Waterway.
Investment capital for both rail and channel (similar to Carolina textile mills) came from the purchase of stock and channel bonds by the general community and local banks, leveraged with state loans, land grants and assistance from the federal government. More investment, and risk assumption, was needed to install pipelines, storage facilities and refineries required for the budding petrochemical industry. Drawing upon eastern speculative capital, Houston entrepreneurs laid pipelines to new refineries (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 22). The aggressiveness of Houston business elites, leveraged with state and federal tax dollars, was a dramatic departure from Deep South economic development. Prominent in spurring the animal spirits of Houston’s private elite was an intense rivalry among the business elites of the Houston– Galveston–Beaumont–New Orleans Gulf Coast urban hierarchy.
Dallas—Fort Worth: Competition Makes Good Neighbors
Dallas and Fort Worth (about 35 miles apart), like Minneapolis-St. Paul, have been joined at their respective hips since birth. Despite their geographical closeness, however, the two possess separate identities: “Fort Worth—‘Cowtown’—is ‘where the West begins … [and Dallas] ‘Big D’, is where the East runs out’” (Melosi, 1983, p. 162). Rivals arguably until the 1974 opening of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, both communities shared a business/economic development culture yet were separated by different lifestyles and economic base: “They existed because their tenacious and aggressive founding fathers brought transportation facilities to them—by hook or crook. Dallas and Fort Worth were built by men with an intense desire for economic gain” (Melosi, 1983, p. 162).
Dallas (founded in 1841) was, by 1870, the regional center/county seat—its economy based on cotton, cattle, sheep/wool, wheat and hides. When the first railroad opened in 1873, the population of Dallas was 3000; by 1890 it surpassed 40,000. By then rail linked Dallas to St. Louis and other eastern cities. Fort Worth, on the other hand, an army post, was established in 1849. Its economy centered on the army and cattle. In 1873 its population had declined to 600, so local businessmen organized a campaign that, by 1876, “bought” access to the Texas and Pacific Railroad; that railroad’s cattle yards did the rest. By 1890 Fort Worth had attracted over 23,000 residents. In 1890 both cities were essentially agricultural processing centers: Dallas, cotton; Fort Worth, cattle/wheat (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 18). In their first decades of meaningful economic life both cities had developed into solid, viable and distinctly separate regional economic/political centers, well connected by rail to the outside world. And then the story got interesting!
The rivalry that developed between the two neighboring business elites proved to be as intense and longstanding as any in America. While Fort Worth was smaller, its growth rate was higher than Dallas’s. At the turn of the century it was anyone’s guess which would best the other. After 1900 Fort Worth mounted a determined and successful campaign to make itself a nationally important meat-packing center. Earlier, in the 1890s, Fort Worth’s board of trade had attracted a meat packer to town—pretty logical given that a trail brought cattle into town. To follow up, in 1896 the board of trade held a Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show (we did not make this up!) to market its emerging “cluster.” In 1901 the board of trade helped raise $100,000 cash on the barrel to bring in two additional meat packers—critters named Armour & Co. and Swift & Co. In the lingo of the day, the $100,000 cash was called a “bonus”—and bonuses were usually paid to industrial promoters or “site selectors.” Fort Worth’s subsequent growth (230 percent between 1904 and 1909) cemented the board’s commitment to attraction and incentives as its core economic development approach. By 1914 these two facilities employed 5000 workers, and by 1929 Fort Worth was the state’s largest meat-packing center—an industry outranked in Texas only by petroleum refining (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 18).
Not to worry about the shameful use of public and private incentives to attract companies—the Fort Worth Chamber quickly found redemption by hosting a 1909 conference of Texan chamber secretaries. At the conference, it righteously condemned cash bonuses to industrial promoters, expressing a desire “to run them out of the state” (Mead, 2014, p. 163). From that point on, Texas, I am told, has never used an incentive again—yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus.
Dallas’s strategy, on the other hand, was to diversify its economic base. Building upon its 1880 strength, cotton processing, Dallas expanded that sector into the nation’s largest inland cotton center. From that sector, Dallas grew an agricultural machine-building sector into the second largest producer of farm machinery in the world (Humann, 1976, p. 28). Local investors funded the Praetorian Mutual Life Company (1898), Southwestern Life (1903) and Southland Life (1908); and, lo and behold, Dallas developed a home-brewed insurance sector. On top of that, Dallas banks working with the chamber of commerce:
promoted [and financed] an ambitious interurban rail network radiating north and south out of Dallas. As lines progressed, representatives from the chamber made weekly excursions to every town now connected to Dallas to encourage economic ties to their city … By 1906, Dallas was the state’s most important banking center. This campaign to make Dallas a financial powerhouse culminated in 1914 when the city won an intense competition with five rivals (including Fort Worth) to become the headquarters for the Eleventh District of the Federal Reserve. (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 19)
If sheer momentum generates its own fortune, Dallas was the unexpected beneficiary of Henry Ford’s unsolicited decision to locate a sales and service center there in 1909 (two employees). Since Dallas bought Ford’s cars, possessed a growing workforce and its banks were willing to finance Ford, a Ford assembly plant was built in the city in 1913. Within a year it was replaced by a larger plant—and in 1925 by a still larger facility:
During the twenties, Dallas became a significant industrial center, at least by southern standards. The number of manufacturing jobs doubled during the decade. Local boosters sought to solidify this boon by formally incorporating industrial development into their strategic planning. In 1928, the city’s financial leaders organized Industrial Dallas Inc., and raised five hundred thousand dollars to fund a four-year campaign to attract even more business. They did quite well. (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 19)
Dallas Inc. and Texas lore have since alleged that 1000 companies came to Dallas during that campaign. Whatever! By 1930 Dallas had become the state’s third largest population center. “In retrospect, it appears that Dallas’s businesspeople won this race by adopting a more sophisticated approach to economic development than their adversaries had” (Miller and Johnson, 1968, p. 18). Dallas’s sector diversification strategy beat out Fort Worth’s also successful strategy of cluster agglomeration.
Dallas City Beautiful
Planning in northern City Beautiful cities initially focused on parks. Louisville was as far south as Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. would go (ignoring North Carolina’s Biltmore). The City Beautiful movement, with its preoccupation with parks and wide boulevards, was less successful in the South, including Texas. Shrubs maybe, comprehensive plans no! City Beautiful’s best southern example arguably is Dallas.
The Dallas Civic Improvement League formed in 1902 expressed the fond desire to make Dallas a “more beautiful place to live … [in that] in the whole civilized world there is no more slovenly community than Dallas.” The League’s program included park planning and a special park tax, but in a close referendum they were both rejected (Wilson, 1989, p. 257). The baton was picked up and carried to a successful conclusion by the COO of the Dallas Morning News, George B. Dealey, a close friend of Kansas City’s City Beautiful planner George Kessler. Dealey, enamored with the Harrisburg PA model of City Beautiful, believed that community/business organization supportive of planning was a key lesson appropriate to Dallas. In January 1910, launching his newspaper campaign, Dealey allied with the Dallas Chamber of Commerce to commence a “crusade against ugliness.” Outside speakers were invited and a spearhead organization, the Dallas City Plan and Improvement League (also associated with the chamber) was formed.
Dealey wasted little time getting his friend Kessler on board. Kessler completed his plan in 1912, but its contents clearly revealed that Dallas City Beautiful was not to be a parks and boulevard initiative, or even a civic center complex, but a city “practical or functional” program. Its intent was to clear up the mess made of downtown Dallas by uncoordinated, speculative, incremental development. Its most disruptive proposal was to remove at-grade rail lines that made travel impossible and congestion inevitable. Another major feature was a Trinity River levee to protect the downtown floodplain from its periodic floods. Kessler also envisioned an industrial waterfront port. A third initiative was a unified downtown central railroad station that facilitated at-grade railway removals. Some park development, connecting boulevards and associated playgrounds were also included, but “Kessler scotched all talk of beautification, for this was to be a strictly utilitarian measure” (Wilson, 1989, p. 254).
Significant elements of the plan—such as Union Station (1916) and the removal of the horrendous Texas and Pacific Railway tracks from the CBD—were successfully implemented. But bonds for parks and boulevards were rejected. The Trinity River levee project was built into the 1927 Ulrickson Plan which, in an extended series of projects and bonds, completed the levee, along with parks, water/sewer systems, flood control, library expansion and an airport by 1938. Persistence does work apparently.
The Dealey-led effort culminated in the establishment of a bunch of downtown planning organizations: the Dallas Property Owners Association; the Central Improvement League of the Eastern District; a chamber subsidiary (the Metropolitan Development Association); and the Kessler Plan Association (KPA). Planners as well as engineers were hired, and through the 1920s these organizations guided the development of downtown Dallas. By the end of the decade, however, sustained growth and an unwillingness of Dallas late 1920s “populist” working-class politicians (such as J. Waddy Tate, the “hot dog mayor”) to follow ‘intrusive” planning advice isolated the KPA and it failed in 1932 (Wilson, 1989, pp. 254–78), ending the last of the Dallas City Beautiful program.
Ron W. Coan 