The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972 Page: 10
566 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
press, employs men of the lowest moral character to break down the laws
which attempt to regulate it or drive it out of a county or State.'
Putting "Rum on the Run in Texas" was a difficult assignment.
Effective use of the local option provisions of the Constitution of 1876
dried up North Texas, outside of Dallas and Fort Worth, by 19go3 In
the central and southern portions of the state, including Houston and
San Antonio, the Mexican, German, and black minorities joined with
wet, conservative Democrats to repulse the dry offensive between 1904
and 1911. Supporters of liquor plausibly contended that a majority of
the party did not endorse prohibition, and the narrow defeat of a
prohibition amendment to the state constitution in July, 1911, added
weight to these claims."
Divided goals also hampered the cause of temperance. While Dem-
ocrats like Love, Sheppard, and Cone Johnson viewed prohibition as
part of a general effort to reform Texas and purify its politics, some
of their dry allies took a more limited position. The ministerial spokes-
men of the Baptists and Methodists, the members of the Anti-Saloon
League, and such splinter groups as the Prohibition Party and the
Women's Christian Temperance Union tended to emphasize doctrinal
purity instead of electoral success. Ambitious leaders insisted upon
fine ideological distinctions among degrees of allegiance to the cause
and occasionally tried to read faltering members out of the coalition."
The peculiar nature of the one-party system further complicated
the task of the prohibition Democrats. Fluid and unstable, Texas
politics resisted attempts to make a single issue the key to party loy-
alty. Strong personalities, like Joseph Weldon Bailey, Oscar B. Col-
quitt, and James E. Ferguson, caused factional divisions that cut
across wet and dry alignments. The severe limitations on governmen-
tal power in the state constitution circumscribed the influence of of-
*D. E. Simmons (comp.), Statewide Prohibition Handbook (Houston, 1911), 52. The
Anti-Saloon League, The Brewers and Texas Politics (2 vols., San Antonio, 1916), and
"Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda," Senate Docu-
ments, 66th Cong., 1st Sess. (Serials 7597-7599), Document No. 62 (3 vols., Washington,
1919), I, 953-992, document the activities of the liquor camp.
10H-. A. Ivy, Rum on the Run in Texas (Dallas, 1910), 30-35; Sybal Hazel, "Statewide
Prohibition Campaigns in Texas" (M.A. thesis, Texas Tech University, 1942), 81-87;
Sean Collins Murray, "Texas Prohibition Politics, 1887-1914" (M.A. thesis, University
of Houston, 1968), 70o-76.
11M. M. Crane to Samuel Palmer Brooks, October 29, 1913, Samuel Palmer Brooks
Papers (Texas Collection, Baylor University Library); Crane to Cone Johnson, May 27,
1916, Cone Johnson Papers (Fondren Library, Southern Methodist University); Corpus
Christi Caller, quoted in San Antonio Express, July 29, 1911; Texas Christian Advocate
(Dallas), October 9, 1913; San Antonio Express, May 3o, 1916.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972, periodical, 1972; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101201/m1/22/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Texas State Historical Association.