AN ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SENIOR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES IN WEST TEXAS: GEOGRAPHY AND VITAL FORCES

by DON R. FISHER, B.S., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN EDUCATION

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

Approved

Accepted

May, 1988 Copyright 1988 Don R. Fisher ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have on occasion longed for the quaint simplicity of being on the end of a log in one of the two roles—educator or student—in which I have spent much of my life. But we live in complex times, and Mark Hopkins notwithstanding, a number of people helped me make this study a reality. To them, I extend my sincere appreciation for their support and encouragement.

Dr. Sabe M. Kennedy, Chair of the Advisory Committee, always found the time to provide the guidance and assurance I needed to complete the project. Dr. Dan L. Flores reminded me that Texas, with its long and colorful history, offered endless possibilities for studying people and the institutions they produced. Dr. Clyde Kelsey directed and supervised my PUP research project and motivated me to further examine the unique aspects of higher education in West Texas. This study is dedicated to Virginia C. Fisher, my wife, who is also my best friend, my editor, my typist, and my word processor extraordinaire. Ginny kept me going, and, like many long-suffering spouses, received far less than she deserved in thanks and appreciation for all her good work.

11 Sul Ross State University 86 Texas Tech University 92 Other Four-Year or Degree-Granting Institutions West of the lOOth Meridian . . 98 V. REGIONALISM AND FUNDING 102 Equity and the Permanent University Fund . . . 105 The Ad Valorem Tax Fund Ill Other Arrangements and a New Fund 119 VI. VITAL FORCES 124 Regionalism 125 West Texas Matures 134 Turner and Webb Revisited 140 Planning and Coordination 144 SOURCES CONSULTED 151

IV ABSTRACT

The development of higher education in West Texas mirrored the state's experience with colleges and universities. For more than a century, Texas lacked a plan for development of higher education. Political considerations were paramount, and West Texas best characterized the state's bits-and-pieces development process. As they had done in the eastern part of the state during the decade of the Republic and the early years of statehood, Protestant church groups founded colleges in West Texas well in advance of state-supported institutions. Many of the early church-related colleges failed, but those which survived marshalled local support and became symbols of community solidarity and regional pride. The first publicly-funded college in West Texas, appropriately named West Texas State Normal, opened in Canyon in 1910. In the next fifteen years, three other state colleges were founded in West Texas: The School of Mines, Sul Ross State, and Texas Technological College. Boosters hailed Texas Tech as a people's college with a mandate to serve the young men and women of a dynamic region.

The University of Texas and Texas ASM benefitted for years from the largess of the Permanent University Fund (PUF). However, until the advent in 1947 of the ad valorem tax fund, colleges in West Texas and other parts of the state had difficulty funding major construction projects. The ad valorem tax fund satisfied construction needs until its demise in 1982. Responding to requests from Texas Tech and other institutions, the voters in 1984 approved a constitutional amendment to establish a new dedicated fund and to distribute PUF benefits more evenly among UT and A&M system institutions.

The geography of West Texas and the>people who settled there combined to produce vital forces which are clearly reflected in the colleges and universities of the region. This particular brand of regionalism sparks some internal competition but presents a united front in the face of apathy or neglect, real or perceived. The vital forces which emerged from the West Texas frontier experience made higher education with its abundant opportunities readily available to all the people of the region.

VI histories of several West Texas colleges which seem to have much in common. Finally, this study deals with human behavior and how that behavior was and still is molded by both environmental and societal forces. The very size of Texas and its settlement patterns, the location of constitutionally established institutions, and the perspectives of many people all contributed to the development of a unique group of colleges and universities in West Texas.

Vlll CHAPTER I

BEGINNINGS AND COMMITMENT

In 1925 a select group of educators from around the United States assembled in Texas in the capital city of Austin. These men and women had come to Texas under the auspices of the Legislature to be a part of the Texas Education Survey Commission. The Commission members included a number of people who were college or university professors and administrators. They served on a committee which devoted its time to evaluating the many aspects of the state's system of higher education. The year 1925 was indeed a propitious time for anyone— resident or visitor—to make such an evaluation. From 1876 to 1925 fourteen state-supported four- year institutions opened their doors.^ Although another twenty-three came into being in the next fifty years, most of these degree-granting institutions and their respective centers or extension campuses had their origins in the 1920's. In short, while the state's senior colleges and universities have undergone phenomenal changes in the past sixty-odd years, the

Ijune Rayfield Welch, The Colleges of Texas (Dallas: GLA Press, 1981), pp. 2-254 passim. system was largely in place when the Survey Commission's committee on higher education made its report. The committee reached this conclusion: There is in Texas no more interesting question than that presented by the program of higher edu­ cation. The size of the state, the varied conditions found in its different portions, and certain constitutional provisions affecting some of the institutions of higher learning, all contribute to make it an extremely complex problem.2 In its conclusion, the committee recognized a salient feature of Texas higher education: it was complex. According to the committee, this complexity resulted from factors related to geographical (size, climatic and soil conditions) and constitutional (by implication, political) considerations. One may assume that the committee felt that these issues played a significant role in how the system had begun and how it had expanded to that point. This study will place the committee's findings in historical context and show how West Texas best represents the bits-and-pieces development process that characterized Texas higher education for the better part of a century. Although this study will focus on a geographical entity and the perceptions and forces which flow from it, it is essential at this juncture to deal

2Texas, Legislature, Texas Educational Survey Commission, Higher Education, by D.L. Coffman, et al., vol. 6, Texas Educational Survey Report, 1925, p. 3.

1 with the origins of the educational system in Texas, with special emphasis on higher education.

Early Higher Education in Texas On 2 March 1836 a few days before the fall of the besieged Alamo, delegates assembled at Washington-on-the Brazos adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence. George Childress, credited with the authorship of the document, bitterly chastised the Mexican government of the period, for failing to provide for the education of the children of the Anglo-settlers. In Childress' words: It [the Mexican government] failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources (the public domain) and although, it is an axiom, in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.^ With the Anglo-Texans in control, nearly fifty years passed before the framework of a bottom-to-top educational system appeared in the state. For a long while apathy was to blame, but once that was overcome, a lack of planning was the major problem in higher education. The earliest concept of a system of public education, to include higher education, for all of Texas

^Texas, Declaration of Independence, adopted in Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, 2 March 1836. belongs to Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. Lamar, one of the heroes of the Battle of San Jacinto, became the second president of the struggling Republic of Texas on 22 October 1838, two and one-half years after the battle. In his first message to the Texas Congress, Lamar expressed his belief that a "cultivated mind is the guardian genius of Democracy" and that education was "the only dictator that freemen acknowledge . . . the only security that freemen desire."^ Undoubtedly aware of the Republic's financial difficulties, Lamar called on the Texas Congress to make "a suitable appropriation of lands to the purpose of general education" which, he judged, could be made "without inconvenience, to the Government, or the people."5 Since land was by far the most plentiful material resource available to the Republic, Lamar also reasoned that a "liberal endowment" could be made for the establishment of a university without the expenditure of painfully scarce funds. Lamar sent his message to the Republic's legislative body in December-1838. In just over a month, the Texas Congress responded to Lamar's eloquent plea for

^Charles Adams Gulick, Jr., ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 2 (Austin: A.C. Baldwin & Sons, Printers, 1922), p. 348. 5ibid., p. 349.

L The Texas Republic existed for almost ten years— March 1836 to December 1845. Other than the fifty-league grant, nothing was done for public higher education during that time. Prompted by religious fervor and an appreciation for certain benefits derived from an advanced education, mainline Protestant groups moved resolutely into Texas. Willis Rudy characterized this ante-bellum period as one in which the trend in higher education was toward the setting up in the wilderness of "new Yales and new Princetons more stubbornly denominational than their parent institutions."^ m a very real sense, the Republic of Texas actively promoted the establishment of private colleges. Drawing on the most abundant of its material resources, the Republic gave four-league grants of land to each of seven private colleges between 1839 and 1845. Although, by the Treaty of Annexation, Texas as a state retained all of its vast public land holdings when it joined the union, it stopped the practice of making land grants to private colleges.^0

^S. Willis Rudy, "The Revolution in American Higher Education," Harvard Educational Review 21 (January 1951):156. l^U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 5, "Joint Resolution of Congress Annexing Texas," pp. 797-798 cited by Eby, Source Materials, pp. 205-207. There were no public colleges or universities in the state for forty years after the winning of independence from Mexico, but between 1839 and 1880 some thirty private colleges were established in Texas. All but a few were church affiliated, founded by either Methodist, Presbyterian, or Baptist groups for the purposes of training ministers or offering college-level studies in an atmosphere liberally sprinkled with denominational doctrine.^^ A number of private institutions were founded during the 1840's, but only Baylor University and Austin College have retained their original names. Baylor, established at Independence in 1845, moved to Waco; Austin College, begun in Huntsville in 1849, is now located in Sherman.^2

Texas became a state on 29 December 1845. Less than two months later, J. Pinckney Henderson, the new state's first governor, sent a message to the Legislature in which he urged the members to "make suitable provision" for the support of public education. Henderson's request and a similar one from the next governor, George T. Wood, bore no fruit. During the

Hjames A. Tinsley, "Genesis of Higher Education in Texas," The Philosophical Society of Texas Proceedings 32 (December 1968):56. l^Eby, Source Materials, p. 207.

J 8 administration of Governor P.H. Bell, who followed Wood in office, an effort was made to revive Lamar's dream of a complete system of public education. In 1851 Bell asked the Legislature to create the two universities mentioned in the 1839 Republic of Texas act. Bell reminded the Legislature that the fifty leagues of land were still there to be surveyed and set .apart for the endowment of the two universities. The Legislature took no action.13

The reluctance of the Legislature to do anything about higher education during the fifteen years between annexation and the beginning of the Civil War seemed to reside in the belief of many legislators that "common schools" were the only educational institutions deserving of state resources for the forseeable future. One legislator referred to universities as "ovens to heat up and hatch all manner of vice, immorality and crime."^^ He observed that it was manifestly unfair for the children of wealthy parents to attend universities built by the state with money obtained from poor families. Still another state lawmaker who opposed publicly supported higher education argued that any appropriation

13ibid., p. 214. 14ibid., pp. 322-324. of land or money would be better spent on "neighborhood" institutions. He also contended that since the state had already chartered a number of privately owned colleges, there was no need to establish a state-run institution which was likely to fail because of poor attendance or an inadequate curriculum.^^

After about a year and a half of periodic debate on the merits of a state university, by which time most of the fifty-league grant had been surveyed, the Legislature finally addressed the university issue. On 11 February 1858 "An Act to Establish a University of Texas" was passed. The act again confirmed the fifty- league grant (all but about 4600 acres had been located and surveyed) and provided $100,000 in U.S. bonds as "seed money" for a university fund. Evidently, in the process of drafting the act, those in the Legislature who considered themselves "friends of the University" also looked back at an 1854 act encouraging the construction of railroads in Texas and decided on a particularly magnanimous expression of support. The 1858 act allocated to the University of Texas one-tenth of the sections of land reserved to the railroad coinpanies in the 1854 act. By the terms of the 1854 legislation.

15ibid., pp. 328-329.

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railroad companies were given sixteen sections (10,240 acres) for every mile of railroad built. In the 1858 statute, the University received one-tenth, or 1024 acres per mile of railway.^^ At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, there were only about 300 miles of railroad in Texas.1'7 As will be shown, the act of 1858, had it remained in force, might have resulted in an endowment of land as valuable as the one the University of Texas eventually acquired.

The survey of the fifty-league grant had been essentially completed at the time of the 1858 act establishing the University. University land was in nine counties, six of which were in northeastern Texas along or near the Red River. Two were west of Fort Worth about 125 miles, and the remaining county, McLennan, lay astride the Brazos River in fertile east-central Texas.^^ Even though land sales were few, a University fund did exist. The state's timing seemed reasonably good since in other parts of the United States momentum was building for an expansion of public higher education. The University of Texas and the nebulous "second university" possessed all the prospects for an auspicious beginning.

l^Gammel, Laws of Texas, vol. 4, pp. 1020-1023. l^s.G. Reed, The History of Texas Railroads (Houston: St. Clair Publishing Company, 1941), p. 178. IL 11

However, a bloody civil war, a bitter post-war era, and twenty-five more years lay ahead before the University of Texas opened its doors.

Enjoying the separation from most of the ravages of war afforded by geography, Texans attempted to get back to normal as soon as possible after the Civil War. The Constitution of 1866 confirmed previous land appropriations for the University, and with an eye to the size of the state, the Legislature passed a rather peculiar and seldom referred to act on 12 November 1866. This act amended the 1858 University act, directing that the proceeds from land sales not required for the establishment and maintenance of the University of Texas be reserved for the "benefit of a similar University which, at some future time, may be necessary in a different portion of the State."^^ The same act also gave the still nonexistent University of Texas about $134,500 in state bonds.

The next day, 13 November 1866, the Legislature passed an act which made the "similar University" the purview of legislators from fifteen East Texas counties.

l^Thomas L. Miller, The Public Lands of Texas 1519-1970 (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), pp. 117-118. l^Gammel, Laws of Texas, vol. 5, p. 1103.

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The act indicated that should a second university be established, it would be called "East Texas University." The legislation cited the increasing population, the vastness of the state, and the difficulty of travel as the rationale for another university.

During the Reconstruction era in Texas, the "Radicals" (Republicans) governed Texas under the Constitution of. 1869, but that constitution made no reference to the lands granted to the University. Furthermore, Texas seemed no closer to having a state university than it was more than a decade earlier. The Federal government, however, began to indirectly pressure Texas on behalf of higher education. The government in Washington gave the states until 23 July 1871 to make a decision about accepting the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1362 regarding the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges. The Federal government offered Texas a grant of 180,000 acres of land scrip to begin an A&M college.20

20Land scrip usually took the form of certificates which entitled the holder to a parcel of land. In the early days of the Republic, the Land Office sold land scrip to settlers on the condition they locate the land and pay for the survey of it. Sale of land by the Republic was a way of raising money. In the case of the Morrill Act, land scrip provided most states, none of which had the vast public domain of Texas, with a method of financing the founding of the A&M colleges. 13

Six months before the deadline for acceptance of the grant. Governor Edmond J. Davis sent a message to the Legislature advising that the college to be established "be incorporated with the State University."21 The Legislature responded three months later on 17 April 1871 by passing an act which established the A&M College of Texas. The Legislature, apparently convinced that it must somehow meet the federally-imposed deadline, gave the Governor only ten days to appoint three commissioners to select a site for the college. By the terms of the act, the commissioners in turn had a mere thirty days to find 1280 acres of "good land," hire an architect, and contract for "suitable buildings" to be constructed by July 23, 1871. 22 T^e monumental task outlined for the commissioners by the Legislature actually took five and one-half more years to complete, but the "A & M Act" was enough to satisfy the Federal government, and Texas got the land scrip from Washington. Some Anglo-Texans, still sympathetic to the Southern cause, vilified Governor Davis because his very presence reminded them of the Confederate defeat, the occupying Union Army, and Reconstruction. Despite this.

2lEby, Source Materials, p. 531. 22Gammel, Laws of Texas, vol. 6, pp. 938-939.

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Davis deserves some praise for his work in securing a land-grant college for Texas. Davis and his Radicals are also credited with the creation of a public school system in the state. In addition, school acts passed by the Legislature during the Davis administration provided for the education of Blacks or freedmen as they were often called. Dr. William C. Nunn noted that such legislation angered Anglo-Texans "who feared the schools would soon be 'integrated.'"23

The Commitment to Higher Education Another four years went by, and Texas was no closer to having a state university than it was in 1858. But the Reconstruction era was drawing to a close, and a convention assembled in Austin in September 1875 to write a new constitution for the state. In February 1876 the voters of the state ratified the document drafted by the convention, and the Constitution of 1876 went into effect in April of that year. This new constitution—still in effect today—directed the Legislature to "as soon as practicable establish, organize and provide for the maintenance, support and direction of a University of the

23vjilliam C. Nunn, Texas Under the Carpetbaggers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), p. 243. 15 first class."24 The constitution allowed the University the original fifty-league grant and specified the establishment of a Permanent University Fund, but withdrew the one-tenth alternate section of the lands granted to the railroads. To compensate for this blow to the newly designated Permanent University Fund, the constitution gave the University one million acres of the state's unappropriated public domain. The unappropriated public domain by that time lay in semi-arid West Texas. According to one former Commissioner of the Texas Land Office, the railroad land was worth about five dollars per acre and the land in West Texas about fifty cents per acre.25 One researcher noted, however, that the practice of granting land to railroads was suspended by the Reconstruction constitution of 1869. In that year there were 500 miles of railroad in the state for which 8000 sections or 5,120,000 acres of land had been granted. The University's share would have been one-tenth or 512,000 acres.26 Railroad land grants were resumed in

24Texas, Constitution, art. VII, sec. 10. 25w.C. Walsh, quoted in John J. Lane's History of Education in Texas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903), pp. 143-144. 26Aldon S. Lang, Financial History of the Public Land in Texas (Waco: Baylor University, 1932) , p. 136. 16

1873 by a constitutional amendment and were continued by the Constitution of 1876. All such grants were ended in 1882, but by then, approximately 32 million acres had been given to the railroads.27 ^^e University would have received one-tenth, or 3.2 million acres, if the Constitution of 1876 had not decreed otherwise. Those who supported a liberal endowment of land for the University expressed displeasure about the paltry one million-acre grant during the Constitutional convention in 1875. For the next seven years, "friends of the University" agitated for more land to compensate for that lost under Article VII of the state's new constitution. The appetite for a University "of the first class" was further whetted by the opening of the University's agricultural and mechanical "branch" in the fall of 1876. As Walter Prescott Webb explained, "The frontier could see more sense in the 'useful arts' than it could in less practical forms of education."28 webb also noted that the state had promptly sold the 180,000 acres of land scrip it had received in 1871 from the Federal government. The land went for eighty-seven cents an acre and the $156,000 received was invested. When A&M

27Miller, Public Lands, p. 102 28walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1951) , p. 403. i^ 17 began operation, its board of directors had $209,000 in a permanent fund. The case for more land for the Permanent University Fund (PUF) was aided considerably by O.M. Roberts who became governor in 1879. The efforts of Roberts and legislators of like mind almost bore fruit in April 1882 at a special session of the Legislature. Roberts recommended an "appropriation of two million acres of land to the University fund for the support of the main University and its branches."29 A bill reflecting that amount of land passed in the Senate, but was defeated in the House. As Roberts remarked, however, "the effort was not in vain." The following year, as the first buildings at the University were nearing completion, the Legislature on 10 April passed an act which set aside two million acres of the public domain for educational purposes. The act stipulated that one million acres was for the "permanent endowment of the University of Texas and its branches" and one million was for the "common free schools of the State."30

2^0.M. Roberts, "Establishment of the University of Texas," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (April 1898):262. 30Gammel, Laws of Texas, vol. 10, p. 377. 18

Thus, in the forty-five years between Lamar's vision and the opening of the University, the land granted to the PUF was a nominal 2,221,400 acres. Of the fifty-league grant, 216,805 acres had actually been surveyed, and no one seemed to be able to account for the missing 4595 acres. The survey of the 1876 constitutional grant of one million acres yielded 984,960 acres, but the survey of the 1883 grant from the Legislature was 1,087,917 acres. The three grants as surveyed added up to 2,289,682 acres, but two General Land Office Commissioners in the past forty years declared that because of inaccuracies in early surveys, the number of acres of land given to the University was actually 2,329,168. Of this amount, the 216,805 acres of the original grant were sold along with about 640 acres of the West Texas grants, leaving to the PUF 2,111,759 acres.31 In just seven years—1876 to 1883, Texas moved from being a state with only church-related or other independent colleges to being one with three public institutions: The University of Texas, Texas A&M College, and Sam Houston Normal (established in 1879) . It could

3lBascom Giles, History and Disposition of Texas Public Domain (Austin: General Lnad Office, 1945), p. 17; and Jerry Sadler, History of Texas Land (Austin: General Land Office, 1961 and 1964), p. 24. L 19 be argued that this relatively sudden and dramatic commitment to public higher education, especially to the University, would not have been possible without the state's vast public land holdings. Certainly, retention of public lands made Texas unique among the states and provided it a tremendous asset with which to support education. Nevertheless, it is humbling to note that if the State of Texas seemed generous with its land in support of education, it was inordinately charitable when encouraging railroad building within its borders. In the same period that the University of Texas PUF received 2.1 million acres, railroad companies were given title to about 32 million acres or almost twenty percent of the land in the state. The railroads in turn sold the land to raise capital for construction and related requirements.3 2

The railroads were symbolic of the nation's shift from a rural-agrarian society to one which was urban- industrial. The Civil War brought that fact into sharp focus and made it abundantly clear to all. North and South alike, that industrial strength was a major factor in the victory of Union forces over the Confederates.

32Thomas L. Miller, The Public Lands of Texas 1519 - 1970 (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, I97T)7 pp. 117-118. 20

Many Americans recognized that the burgeoning industrial revolution which had produced new weapons during the war could be used to exploit the untapped resources of a continent. In the late 1860's there was, as Rudy observed, "an urban, industrial nation about to come into being and bound to fashion a system of higher learning to meet its scientific, technical, and professional necessities."33 Private colleges and universities could provide some of the training, but the solutions to the needs of a growing nation for higher education were the land-grant colleges and the state universities. Frederick Rudolph reasoned that the movement toward publicly-supported higher education was Jeffersonian in nature. That is, in a free democratic society, the state expects its citizens to be educated and thus should provide the means for that education, to include higher education. "The state university," Rudolph decided, "was defined in the West and Midwest where frontier democracy and materialism would help support a practical-oriented popular institution."34

In a much more recent interpretation than Rudolph's, Ronald Butchart attributes the drive to

33Rudy, "Revolution in Higher Education," p. 158. 34F]:ederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), i 21

establish colleges and universities on the Western frontier after the Civil War to the emergence of a middle class. He argued that education was planted on the Plains, in the Rockies and in the Pacific coast states "by migrants with middle class cultural allegiances." This education "took on its specific forms as a result of the uses the middle class sought to make of education."35 In dealing with education in the trans-Mississippi West, Butchart commited an error, which, even for a historian is understandable. He excluded Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas from consideration in trans-Mississippi educational development because, as he incorrectly concluded, those three states "followed the heritage of the South rather than that of the West or North."36 That may be true for Arkansas and Louisiana and even for that part of Texas with ties to the Old South. Butchart's generalization, however, like many about Texas, may be misleading. Within a decade after the Civil War, Texas had only one foot firmly in the soil of the Old South; the other foot had come down, albeit tentatively, in the West. As

p. 277. 35Ronald E. Butchart, "Education and Culture in the Trans-Mississippi West: An Interpretation," Journal of American Culture 3 (Summer 1980):355. 36ibid., p. 371. i 22

Fehrenbach remarked about Texas settlement, "The men who crossed the Sabine were still Southerners. The men who moved across the 100th meridian . . . were Western Americans."37 j^ deference to Butchart, Fehrenbach perhaps should have mentioned that while the West Texas settlers were forced to abandon many of their "Old South ways," they learned how to grow cotton on the Plains and successfully extended the influence of their churches to virtually every corner of West Texas.

In the case of Texas and some other states, two prominent figures in twentieth century higher education believe that forces other than just the availability of land or the prospects, however vague, for social mobility were at work in building colleges and universities. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman selected eight states—Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, California, North Carolina, and Texas—as those in which support of public higher education is particularly strong. "Like medieval cathedrals, public universities in these states seem to have become symbols of communal solidarity, a focus of civic pride, and a tribute to faith in ideas that transcend the here and

3'7T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1968), p. 566. 23 now." Referring to the same eight states, Jencks and Riesman concluded, "Once a state has made a commitment to public higher education, it seems to perpetuate itself even in conditions that would not have favored it initially."38

Jencks and Riesman may well have had Texas in mind when they wrote that comment. As Texas moved into the last decade of the nineteenth century, it did have pluralistic opportunities for higher education. Nevertheless, constitutional provisions and subsequent acts of the Legislature on behalf of public colleges and universities began to shift leadership in higher education to state government and away from the denominational and proprietary interests. The state joined the national trend toward public higher education in a bold, characteristically Texas fashion. Perhaps what was as equally characteristic was the fact that development, if that term may be applied, was proceeding without a great deal of planning. West Texas, the very subject of this study, illustrates the state's handicap in planning.

38christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The Academic Revolution (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968), p. 173. 24

In summary, it seems essential, even critical, that a tired but applicable cliche be employed. History does not happen as some classroom presentations would have it seem, in a vacuum. Countless variables impinge upon the people and events which are said to "make history." So it is with this regional history. The interpretation of the information available will strive to place the story of higher education in West Texas in the context of localities, the region, the state and the United States. Geography, politics at virtually all levels, culture, and the evolutionary process of higher education in this country.have a bearing on what transpired. The study entails "suggesting an answer to the basic question: 'What does this mean?'"39 if there is a cause to be supported, it is primarily a better understanding of how and why the region arrived at its present status in higher education.

39David B. Gracy, "The Writing of Regional History," The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 44 (October 1968):167. CHAPTER II THE WEST TEXAS FRONTIER

The previous chapter dealt with the first fifty years of higher education in Texas. Politics dominated that period, and geography received only nominal consideration. As settlers moved into West Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, development of higher education began to shift from the political to the geographical arena. For purposes of this study, it is essential that a definition be provided for that geographical arena known as West Texas.

Boundaries When Jefferson Davis became Secretary of War in 1853, one of his goals was to reorganize the U.S. Army in order to adapt it to the needs of the country, most specifically the western frontier.1 Davis brought official scrutiny to a problem that many citizens of the United States had been aware of for several decades: the Great Plains (or the "Great American Desert" as it was sometimes called) differed markedly from the Eastern

iMaurice Matloff, ed., American Military History (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), p. 181.

25 26

woodland environment. In his 1856 report to President Franklin Pierce, Davis observed that when pioneers moved into the wilderness of the Mississippi, they found an abundance of land favorable to agriculture. This, Davis noted, allowed military posts to advance just ahead of and to protect the pioneers, while the troops could in turn receive logistical support through local procurement of subsistence and other necessities. That changed, however, with the advance of the frontier. Davis called for a revison of a policy made obsolete by geography. Referring to War Department reconnaissance reports, he declared: Those reports sufficiently show that, with few exceptions, the country lying between the one hundredth meridian of longitude and the coast- range of mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean, is not susceptible of cultivation without the aid of artificial means. A limit has therefore, been reached, beyond which civilization has ceased to follow in the train of advancing military posts, and the service and support of the military peace establishment is essentially altered.2 As any erstwhile student of geography knows, lines of latitude and longitude seldom coincide precisely with shifts in terrain or a major change from one type of geography to another. Neveitheless, Davis' choice of

2Rowland Dunbar, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches (Jackson, Miss.: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923), pp. 71-72. 27 the 100th meridian to divide the familiar and more hospitable East from the unfamiliar and foreboding West was not arbitrary. The 100th meridian generally tracks the natural division between major soil, vegetation, and climatic differences separating the lower, interior United States from the higher elevations of the Great Plains.3 The 100th meridian is also the eastern border of the Texas Panhandle and extends through the state to the Rio Grande just south of the city of Eagle Pass (Figure 1). During Davis' tenure as Secretary of War, less than five percent of the people in Texas lived west of the 100th meridian. After 130 years there is still less than ten percent of the state's population living west of that line.^

The 100th meridian is not the only east-west dividing line in Texas; Davis himself could possibly have chosen another line of demarcation further to the east. That, of course, would not have changed the influence of the geography west of the 100th meridian. The demographics of the area have also remained essentially

3Edward B. Espenshade, Jr. and Joel L. Morrison, eds., Goode's World Atlas (Chicago, 1974), pp. 76-83. ^Terry G. Jordon, et al., Texas: A Geography (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 48-55; and J. William Davis and Ruth Cowart Wright, Texas: Political Practice and Public Policy, 3rd ed. (Dubuque: Kendall/ Hunt Publishing Company, 1982), p. 9. i

28

Figure 1. Map of Texas Showing 100th Meridian.

1^ 29

the same in relation to the rest of the state. That does not mean that this study is one devoted to the philosophy of geographical determinism loosely bolstered by some dates and other facts concerning colleges and universities which are in or have been in the region. Certainly geography is a factor to be considered in any scheme of human development; but as one observer remarked, "Different cultures reacting with each other and with the environment over a period of time produced the regional pattern which makes up Texas."^ Regional boundaries are by nature somewhat inexact because they often defy the limits placed on them by cabinet secretaries, legislative bodies, or students of history. They seldom fit neatly into the mold of geographical determinism. Davis' concern for the protection of settlers and the support of his troops was commendable, but there remained the certainty that regardless of where Davis or others drew lines representing barriers, the people moving west would cross them.

Settlement of the Region A part of the motivation for the almost insatiable desire of the peoples of Western civilization to explore

^D.W. Meinig, Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), pp. 18-19. 30 new frontiers and subdue the wilderness therein is the Biblical injunction to do so. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven^ and every living thing that moves upon the earth.^

In Roderick Nash's words: . . . wilderness as fact and symbol permeated the Judeo-Christian tradition. Anyone with a Bible had available an extended lesson in the meaning of wild land. Subsequent Christian history added new dimensions. As a result the first immigrants approached North America with a cluster of precon­ ceived ideas about wilderness. This intellectual legacy of the Old World to the New not only helped determine initial responses but left a lasting imprint on American thought.^ A cynic might contend, looking back at the efforts of the three European nations which figured most prominently in the early settlement of North America, that there were a number of other reasons with less Biblical basis for colonization and control of the wilderness. In that day, as in this, greed, "enlightened national self-interest," and callings of a divine nature could exist side by side. Three principal European powers undertook the colonization of North America—

^Genesis 1: 27-28 (NEB). "^Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 8. 31

France, England, and Spain. It was the latter which had the first and, some may argue, the most profound and lasting influence on Texas. According to Webb: Spain's fourfold purpose was to conquer, convert, exploit, and incorporate the natives; and the colonial policy, designed to effect this purpose was peculiarly applicable to the docile and seden­ tary Indians of Mexico. It was not applicable to the nomadic and propertyless people who could not be conquered, would not stay converted, had no property to be confiscated, and steadfastly refused to produce any.^ The nomadic people to which Webb referred were the Indians living on the plains of West Texas and eastern New Mexico. The coming of the Spaniards enabled these Indians, in time, to acquire horses and thus increase their resistance to the imposition of Spanish rule. Faced with this situation, the Spanish perhaps balanced the undesireability of West Texas against any good rationale for controlling the area. Erna Fergusson believed this was consistent with the character of the Spanish colonizer-soldier: Indefatigable as a soldier, he sought always a subject population to hew his wood and draw his water. Where he found that, preferably with gold and silver thrown in, he settled. Where he did not, as on the Texas plains, he passed by. Consequently, the Spanish domain in what is now the United States was limited to

^Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1931), p. 88. 32

the arable valleys, especially where sedentary Indians dwelt.9

With Spain's lack of interest in Christianizing and civilizing the wilderness of West Texas, it remained for the Anglo-American pioneers to begin the process. The Anglo-Americans rediscovered in the 1850's what the Spanish had learned three centuries earlier: the plains of West Texas and the country extending on to El Paso resisted the press of civilization. Professor Joe B. Frantz observed that for most of the nineteenth century, Texas had only one area that settled ahead of the natural movement, that being El Paso. . . . When gold was discovered in California, the process of settlement leapfrogged across the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast."10 Lured by gold, Anglo-American adventurers could rationalize as easily as the Spanish a decision to bypass the semi-arid lands of West Texas. In their treks westward, they were no doubt spurred on by the thought of having to contend with the mounted and formidable Commanche and Kiowa Indian tribes. After the Civil War a combination of factors, geopolitical, social, and cultural, conspired against settlement in West Texas for most of the remainder of the nineteenth century. The

^Erna Fergusson, Out Southwest (New York: Alfred Knopf Co. , 1940) , p. 58. lOjoe B. Frantz, Texas: A Bicentiennial History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), p. 167. 33 farm frontier, along with other civilizing influences, remained at a respectful distance east of the 100th meridian for about twenty-five years after the Civil War ended. The cattle business, however, forged ahead. In less than ten years after Appomattox, the U.S. Army made West Texas safe for cattle ranching. The Indian threat in Texas all but disappeared after the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon in September 1874. The slaughter of buffalo by white hunters who killed for what the hides would bring, had been proceeding for several years prior to that final confrontation between the Commanche and Kiowa tribes and the Army. As the buffalo disappeared, so did the Indians' principal source of food, clothing and shelter. When they lost their horses at the Battle of Palo Duro, the Indians resigned themselves to life on Oklahoma Territory reservations.H With the departure of the Indians and the buffalo, the "cattle kingdom" spread from South Texas, and in Webb's words "utilized the Plains area, which would otherwise have lain idle and useless."12 Webb may, on occasion, have been given to exaggeration in his assessments of the history of his beloved Southwest.

llMatloff, Military History, p- 310. 12webb, The Great Plains, p. 224. .^.1

34

Farming, however, was not a major occupation west of the 100th meridian in Texas until almost 1900 when some of the very large West Texas ranches were sold and subsequently divided.13 Larry McMurtry offered this explanation of a way of life which brought his grandfather to land near Clarendon in the Panhandle: Pioneers didn't hasten to West Texas like they hastened to the southern and eastern parts of the state. At first glance the region seemed neither safe nor desireable; indeed it wasn't safe, and it took the developing cattle industry to render it desireable.1^ The cattle business did indeed contribute in many ways to the settling of the frontier in West Texas, but the American mission to subdue the wilderness could not be completely fulfilled by a relatively small number of cowboys tending to sprawling cattle herds on the Plains. One of the two most "civilizing" influences that truly conquered the Plains was farming. "Uncultivated land," as an early nineteenth century report declared, was "absolutely useless."1^ Andrew Jackson, President of the U.S. when Texas became a republic, posed this rhetorical question in an 1830 address:

13Terry, Texas, p. 158. l^Larry McMurtry, Iji A Narrow Grave (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 145. l^source not mentioned, quoted in Nash, Wilderness, p. 32. 35

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embelished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute.16

Farmers, tied to parcels of land, tended to be stable and prompted the establishment of villages and towns oriented toward support of the farm community. Education, the second and perhaps most significant civilizing influence, closely followed farmers and farming. Ray Allen Billington called the desire for schools on the frontier an "impulse to perpetuate Eastern civilization." He added, ... it also shaped the ambition of the small- propertied farmers and entrepreneurs who made up the bulk of the frontier population. Schools were first on their agenda, for education would bridge the gap between Eastern culture and Western primitivism, perpetuate traditional values and learning, and even (some frankly admitted) help sell real estate in pioneer communities. . . . Schools satisfied both the idealism and the practical instincts of the pioneers.1^ Billington noted that before the Civil War, the idealistic aspects of college and university curricula held sway over the "practical arts" in the West. Western

l^Andrew Jackson, "Second Annual Message," A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Government Printing Office, 1896-99), p. 251. l^Ray Allen Billington, America's Frontier Heritage (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 78. 36 institutions tried to duplicate those in the East by immersing students in the classical subjects—the liberal arts of the day—Greek, Latin, logic, rhetoric, and natural philosophy.18 Nash suggested that the religious fervor to conquer the wilderness brought the denominational college to the West. The curricula of such institutions was largely classical. He cites as an example Joseph P. Thompson who, in an 1859 speech to the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education of the West, advocated the expansion of colleges with a religious foundation. Thompson exhorted his audience to "go into the wilderness of the West; there open springs in the desert, and build a fountain for the waters of life."l^

Perceptions In the narrative accompanying the 1890 Eleventh Census, the Superintendent of the Census Bureau remarked, "Up to and including 1890 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken by pockets of settlement that there can hardly be

18lbid., p. 79. l^Joseph P. Thompson, The College As a_ Religious Institution (New York, 1859), p. 34, quoted in Nash, Wilderness, p. 39. 37

said to be a frontier line."20 By 1890 the West Texas frontier met the criteria of a wilderness virtually subdued. When the Census Bureau completed its 1890 count, there were indeed, with the exception of El Paso, only "pockets of settlement" in West Texas. Abilene, just on the east side of the 100th meridian was established in 1881. Amarillo and Lubbock trace their origins to 1887 and 1891, respectively. Virtually all the cities and towns which exist today were in 1890 little more than a ranch headquarters, a railroad siding, a trading post, or a tiny settlement of three, four, or five families. W.C. Holden of Texas Tech-determined that in an area three times the size of New England there were only 755,000 people or about four to five people per square mile.21 Holden's area and population figures included some people living between the 98th and 100th meridians, so one may conclude that settlement beyond the 100th meridian was very sparse.

Ray Allen Billington speculated that the statement about the closing of the frontier sparked what Barzun and

20u.S. Bureau of the Census, Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890: part I, Population (Washington, D.C., 1892), p. xlviii. . 21w.C. Holden, "Immigration and Settlement in West Texas," The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 5 (June 1929):78. 39 some merit in Turner's hypothesis, pronounced it in need of "painstaking revision" and judged it an inadequate 24 guide to American development. What may have aroused Turner's supporters and his detractors most was his idea about what fostered educational institutions, constitutional government, cultural endeavors, and made the machinery of democracy work in America. Behind these activities. Turner said to the historians in Chicago, were "vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions." (Italics 25 mine.) Turner believed that American institutions were compelled by the frontier to adapt themselves to what an expanding people needed or wanted. By implication, institutions were imbued with the flexibility required to make the transition from frontier conditions to the complexity of urbanization. A critic asserted, however, that the search for Turner's "vital forces," or the American spirit" (in more recent times, "the right stuff") accounted for the inability of historians to

^George Wilson Pierson, "The Frontier and American Institutions," in Turner Thesis, p. 83. ^^Turner, "Significance of the Frontier," in Turner Thesis, p. 1. 40 arrive at a "proper understanding" of the problems 26 confronting the U.S. Richard Hofstadter agreed that Turner may have attributed too much to the frontier's effect on American development but firmly contended that had not Turner forcefully overstated his case no one would have paid much attention. This overstatement in the hypothesis was, he remarked, "one of the conditions of its being taken seriously." In Hofstadter's words: For over two hundred and fifty years the American people shaped their lives with the vast empty interior of the continent before them. Their national existence up to Turner's day had been involved with conquering, securing, occupying, and developing their continental empire. It is hard to believe that this process of westward settlement, so demanding, so preoccupying, so appealing to the imagination, so productive of new and rich resources for the economy, could have been carried on so long without having some considerable effect on their politics, . . . their habits and institutions. In that Texas had the dimensions of an empire itself, Hofstadter's words certainly ring true. Texas, and particularly West Texas, had an experience similar to that of other frontier states. It was a laboratory for governmental, social, and cultural experiments in the extension of public activitiec.

^^Louis M. Hacker, "Sections—Or Classes," in The Turner Thesis, p. 64. Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historian (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. 119. 41

The similarity between West Texas and other states in the Plains frontier in the late 1800's and early 1900's ended with the physical and human geography of the Lone Star State. The sheer size of West Texas accounted for much of the difference in physical geography. The portions of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma west of the 100th meridian taken together are only about one-third larger than all of West Texas. With the exception of Oklahoma, those states mentioned located their major public institutions of higher learning (universities and land-grant colleges) in the easternmost parts of their territory. But none of these institutions is more than 350 to 400 miles from the western corners of its respective state.

While it may be an impressive aspect of geography, size alone fails to adequately pinpoint the uniqueness of West Texas compared to other states. One geographer- historian warned against the tendency to over simplify regional history by always connecting regions with a larger whole rather than examining them on their own terms. Of the Plains he observed that the "trans­ formation of experience into images of perception gave 2 8 results as diverse as the environments themselves."

2 8 Arthur Clark quoted in Craig Miner, West of Wichita (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986), p. 4 42

For example, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma entered the Union during or after the Civil War with constitutions which provided the framework of a system of 29 higher education. Texas lacked that framework, and this absence of a constitutional precedent from the beginnings of statehood permitted the freewheeling boosterism and political maneuvering which produced the public institutions of West Texas. Meinig, in his excellent study dealing with the cultural aspects of human geography in Texas, labeled the population of West Texas as "perhaps the purest example of the 'native white Anglo-Saxon Protestant' culture in Texas." He referred to West Texans and their parents and grandparents who settled the region as people with roots reaching "back into the Southern backwoods." 30 In contrast, most of the settlers in the Dakotas and Nebraska were either foreign-born immigrants (Scandanavians, Germans, and other northern Europeans), people from neighboring midwestern states, or adventuresome folk who came to the Plains from as far

29 Jim 3. Pearson and Edgar Fuller, eds.. Education in the States; Historical Development and Outlook (Washington, D.C: National Education Association, 1969), pp. 436-1050 passim. 30 Meinig, Imperial Texas, pp. 105-106. 43

away as New England.^"'- Settlers in the Plains states north of Texas were not without a desire for educational opportunities, but they lacked the self-confident agressiveness and the "strong sense of superiority and destiny" which characterized the people who pushed into 32 West Texas. Pioneers in the Oklahoma Panhandle, in western Nebraska, and western North and South Dakota spoke of their remoteness from the centers of higher education in their respective states, but did little to remedy the problem, if indeed it was a problem for them. Oklahoma west of the 100th meridian consists of three counties with a combined population of about 27,000 and has one four-year college. The other states have only one or two four-year colleges west of the 100th meridian. All but the one college in Oklahoma and a mining school in Rapid City, South Dakota began as teachers colleges and still

31 Miner, West of Wichita, p. 20; Dorothy Weiner Creigh, Nebraska: A Bic'entennial History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977), p. 11; Clement A. Lounsberry, Early History of North Dakota (Washington, D.C: Liberty Press, 1919), p. 565; and Roy Gittinger, The University of Oklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1942), pp. 5-7. 32 Meinig, Imperial Texas, p. 7. 44 have essentially that same mission as the 1980's draw to a close, . 33

Because it did, and still does, have in common with the Plains States certain aspects of physical and human geography, Texas may not be unique in some overriding sense. But the special mix of geography and culture in West Texas produced a regional distinction which touched every aspect of life including higher education. In the context of this mix. West Texas and its four-year colleges and universities deserve the appellation unique. In The Modern Researcher, Barzun and Graff comment at length on the "great systems" of history. As they contend, "The continuing argument whether people or 'forces' are the ultimate cause of events is itself affected by changing circumstances and what they inspire 34 in the minds of the living." The 1925 committee reporting on Texas higher education saw the state constitution as a "force" with no small impact on the system of colleges and universities. In that vein it may be argued that any state constitution is a product of

3 3 American Universities and Colleges, 13th ed. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987), passim; and Pearson and Fuller, Education in the States, pp. 436-1050 passim, 34 Barzun and Graff, Modern Researcher, p. 160. 45 many things, among which are likely to be the cultural backgrounds of the people, the economic situation, and the political and social climate of the time in which the document was written. In short, the writers of any constitution are probably influenced by their experiences and, as Barzun and Graff suggest, by changing circumstances and what they inspire.

The Texas Constitution of 1876 with its many amendments is just such a document. It may not qualify as "unique" in the annals of state constitutions, but it is a classic example of the very nature of Texas. As the 1925 Committee discovered, the constitution also placed an indelible stamp on the shape of Texas higher education. That 1876 document represented the response of many Texans to what they regarded as "outside" governance of the state during Reconstruction. Instead of the brief-basic type constitution similar to that of the United States and to previous Texas constitutions, the 1876 document was a long, detailed statutory constitution. Davis and Wright offer this explanation for it: One of the two major objectives of the writers of the constitution of 1876, then, was to get as much power as possible directly into the hands of the people of Texas. The other, a reaction against the reconstruction governor and legislature which were 46

generally regarded as both corrupt and abusive, was to diffuse and limit power 'so no one official or group of officials could alone wield any great amount of power over the lives of Texans. Thus while many state constitutions deal with education at all levels in rather broad, general terms, delegating certain authority to the governor and the legislature to foster and support public schools and systems of higher education, the Texas constitution, after discussing public schools, originally mentioned only a university and its A&M branch. There was no suggestion of a system of higher education nor any wording which might permit an expansion of higher education beyond that contemplated in 1876. This does not mean that each of the other four- year institutions in Texas had to be the subject of a constitutional amendment. Rather, they were established by statutes. The rationales for these legislative acts as they pertain to this study will be dealt with later. Financing of the constitutionally established institutions and the others is yet another matter. From their beginnings, the University of Texas and its agricultural and mechanical branch had a special or dedicated fund. By the middle of the twentieth century.

^^Davis and Wright, Texas: Political Practice and Policy, pp. 39-40. 47

another dedicated fund for higher education was created. It is these funding arrangements, apart from normal appropriations, and the accompanying plethora of regulations governing such arrangements that have invariably required changes to the state constitution. Dedicated funds have spawned a fair share of the more than 270 amendments to the 1876 constitution. The impact of the funding amendments on the institutions in West Texas will also be covered in detail in a subsequent chapter.

Called more to gather facts than to be an agent for change, the 1925 Survey Commission's committee on higher education reported at length on the operations of the institutions in existence at the time. There were five specialized four-year colleges devoted to what Webb called the "practical arts," one state university, and eight teachers colleges. Most of the latter group had originally been designated as "normal" colleges, but legislation enacted in 1923 changed that designation to 3 6 "state teachers colleges." The missions of all of the four-year institutions were generally quite clear, even if the reasons for their having become a part of the •^^Texas, Legislature, Legislative Budget Board, "A Brief History of the Seventeen Universities Participating in the Ad Valorm Tax Fund," undated.

1^ 48 state system were not. The committee did not question the need for the teachers colleges and the other institutions, nor their number. Their report commended Texas educators for striving to give more people opportunities for schooling beyond high school. The problem, the committee implied, was the lack of a Texas- sized plan. The committee politely, but firmly, reported to the state legislators what some of those elected officials undoubtedly already knew. There was "no carefully devised state policy to guide the Legislature in the establishment of new colleges." The committee found that "new schools in the field of higher education were established on the basis of political 37 consideration." Commenting on politics as a path to the development of state colleges and universities, Lyman A. Glenny wrote, "The successful politician [proves] his merit by bringing home an insane asylum, a prison, or a 3 8 college. Frequently it makes little difference which." Comparisons, however, always have some degree of risk associated with them. In the case of Texas, such

^^Texas Educational Survey Commission, Higher Education, pp. 42-43. ^^Lyman A. Glenny, Autonomy of Public Colleges (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1959), p. 13. 49

comparisons may border on the hazardous. Discussing higher education in Texas, one observer described the problem thusly:

The temptation to compare Texas with other states, or with the rest of the nation risks skipping over an important feature: it is Texas' insularity which demands first consideration. The state is sufficiently large and diverse to have acquired a complicated history marked by rivalries, contrasts, identity crises, and differences within its borders.

This may explain in part why neither the Legislature nor any other state agency responded in the wake of the 1925 committee's assessment of higher education in Texas. When movement toward greater centralized planning in higher education in Texas did occur several decades later, it could hardly be attributed to the 1925 findings. Insularity, an inclination to be detached in out­ look and experience rather than a wilful disregard of facts, accounted in large measure for Texas' situation in higher education for many years. Influenced by insularity, some Texans might simply term what happened during the first fifty years of public higher education in Texas a natural course of events and choose to be content with the status quo. Larry L. King, well-known

39 John R. Thelin, "Looking for the Lone Star Legacy: Higher Education in Texas," History of Education Quarterly 17 (Summer 1977):221-222. 50

author and observer of life in Texas, seems to believe that the state is possessed of "indigenous xenophobic instincts." Xenophobia may be too strong, but historians and historical geographers would probably concur with the idea that the rivalries, contrasts, and differences within Texas are more fundamental than Texas chauvinism. The Texas of reality and myth—the "imperial Texas"—may have appeared to go its own way, unified, and with a "damn-the-torpedoes" mentality, but it is the crux of this study to show that such may not be the case. The cultural, political, and spatial dynamics which produced the regions of Texas touched all aspects of human . activity; higher education, public and independent, was no exception. It is Texas west of the 100th meridian that best characterizes this separateness within Texas. This was the last part of the state to be settled, the last part to reluctantly bid farewell to the frontier. Obviously, conditions were not the same as Austin's colonists faced almost seventy years earlier when the first Anglo-Americans came to Texas. Texans still had a frontier, a treeless wilderness to subdue, but this time there were no foreign powers or Indians to reckon with.

Larry L. King, "LBJ and Vietnam," In A Sense of History, ed. American Heritage Press, Inc. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985), p. 793.

•N 51

The Civil War scars were rapidly fading, prosperity was at hand, and state-supported higher education had gained a firm foothold. The stage was set for the state to consider establishing colleges and universities in West Texas. The coming of railroads did not shorten the distances between settlers west of the 100th meridian and the state institutions of higher learning in Austin, College Station, or elsewhere in the eastern part of the state. Perhaps preoccupied with other concerns, the executive and legislative leadership of the state did not have the perspective the years have given to twentieth century historians. Texas officials undoubtedly knew the state covered a vast area, but could not see just how that should influence educational development. Jencks and Riesman observed: With the possible exception of sectarian fission, geographic isolation has probably been the most common reason for founding a college in America. Ever since colonial times states and cities have been unhappy about depending on colleges located beyond their physical and cultural boundaries. All states and many cities have therefore set up their own instituions responsive to local conditions. This was the case in West Texas, and that evolutionary process will be examined in the remainder of this study. While the founding and development of individual institutions, most especially those granting

41 Jencks and Riesman, Academic Revolution, p. 156. b 52 bachelor or higher degrees, will be covered, it is beyond the scope of this study to provide a detailed chronicle of historical events from each institution. Administrators, faculty members, former students or friends have written of the birth and subsequent development of most of the colleges and universities in the region. These works range from a page or two in a book about all Texas colleges and universities to scholarly journal articles, to well researched books. None of these writings necessarily advance new historical truths or erect theoretical frameworks. Taken together, however, they seem to sketch a discernable pattern in higher education in West Texas. CHAPTER III VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS

This chapter deals with the founding of private four-year colleges and universities in West Texas. While it will not be simply a chronological listing, neither this chapter, nor the following one on public institutions will provide a detailed account of the history of each school which will be considered. In the case of several of these colleges and universities, most notably Texas Tech, definitive histories have been written. However, the two chapters on institutions will focus on selected events which seem to be particularly pertinent to this study. The development of higher education in West Texas was in many ways a reinactment of the state's first half- century of experience with colleges and universities. In 1840 the Republic faced a void in higher education; West Texas had a similar problem in 1890. Other, more complex factors influenced the situation in the 1890's and into the first several decades of the twentieth century, but development in West Texas took almost fifty years before it became roughly comparable to that in the eastern part of the state. Inspired to bring education and The Word

53

^ 54 to the western frontier of Texas, the denominational groups moved far in advance of any state-sponsored effort to fill the void in West Texas higher education. The same had been true for the Republic in the 1840's. Local boosters of public higher education in West Texas later discovered that they needed the same missionary zeal as the church groups if they were to succeed in establishing and developing public institutions 300 to 600 miles from Austin.

Hardin-Simmons University The 100th meridian slices through the western one- third of Taylor County's approximately 900 square miles. Even if that were not the case, it would be singularly inappropriate to ignore the role that the Taylor County seat of Abilene played in West Texas higher education. Named after Abilene, Kansas, the original end of the Chisholm Trail, the Texas community was founded by cattlemen in 1881. At that time it was little more than a stock shipping point on the Texas and Pacific Rail­ road. 1 In the eleven years which followed, the settlement not only g^ew, but because of the work of dedicated clergy and laymen in the Baptist Church,

iTexas, State Department of Highways and TransDortation, Texas Travel Handbook, p. 3. 55 witnessed the opening of the first permanent degree- granting institution in West Texas. Almost fifty years ago, R.C. Crane wrote a meticulously detailed account of the beginnings in Abilene of what is now called Hardin-Simmons University. Crane, well known in Texas historical circles, reported that the Sweetwater Baptist Association came together in Sweetwater for its sixth annual session in August 1890 to consider establishing a "Baptist high school" within the boundaries of the association.2 The Sweetwater Baptist Association stretched from Baird, about twenty miles east of Abilene, to El Paso on the west and from Haskell over fifty miles north, to Ballinger about the same distance to the south. Crane noted that it was an area larger than either Kentucky or Tennessee.3

Dr. R.C. Burleson, president of Baylor University and "prominent in Baptist denominational and school affairs in Texas," came all the way from Waco to the Sweetwater Baptist Association meeting with only one purpose in mind. As Crane discovered, Burleson had reached the conclusion that Texas Baptists had enough

2R.C. Crane, "The Beginnings of Hardin-Simmons University," The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 16 (October 1940):65. 3ibid., p. 61. 56 schools and wanted to discourage the establishment of any more. In his speech to the assembled members of the Association, Burleson argued that West Texas had too few people to build and sustain a school. Crane reported that Burleson received a polite hearing from the Association. Clergy and laity alike even "admitted the truth and logic of Dr. Burleson's argument." But citing a need to plan for the future "in a new country of great possibilities," they overwhelmingly adopted a resolution to locate a school within the bounds of the Association.^

In the year following the 1890 meeting in Sweet­ water, the Association locating committee chose Abilene as the site for the proposed school. Association officials planned to call their institution Abilene Baptist College. Crane suggested that within the Association boundaries there was little competition between settlements, but at least two Abilene businessmen were vying for the privilege of donating acreage for the school in their newly platted and thriving community.^ The Association suffered from a shortage of ready cash for construction, but in early 1892 efforts of Association officials to raise funds came to the

4ibid., p. 67. 5ibid., p. 68. 57 attention of Dr. James B. Simmons, secretary of the Baptist Home Mission Society with headquarters in New York City. Dr. Simmons donated over $12,000 to the Association for the institution's first building, and on 16 September 1892 the institution's first students entered Simmons College, not Abilene Baptist. Simmons became a university in 1925 and changed its name to Hardin-Simmons in 1934 after receiving generous cash gifts from Mr. and Mrs. John G. Hardin of Burkburnett, Texas.^

Abilene Christian University Within the first two decades after the opening of Hardin-Simmons, events at both the national and state levels prompted the founding of a second church-related school in Abilene. Born on the nineteenth-century frontier, the Church of Christ (Disciples of Christ) has been termed the "most American" of the six largest religious groups in the United States.^ Within this church body, which gained strength in numbers and influence in the late 1800's, a conflict arose between conservative and liberal factions over certain points of

^Welch, Colleges of Texas, p. 92. ^Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations, 7th ed (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), p. 75. 58

doctrine. About the turn of the century, the conflict finally precipitated a split. The more liberal group retained the designation "Christian Church" (Disciples); the conservative congregations became known collectively as the "Churches of Christ."8

Imbued with the missionary zeal characteristic of the Christian Church (Disciples) and its conservative off-spring, A.B. Barret, on the faculty of Southwestern Christian College in Denton and a minister in the Church of Christ, came to Abilene in December 1905 to discuss with local Church of Christ leaders the advantages of combining the study of Christianity with traditional school subjects.^ The Abilene churchmen voted to support Barret's proposition to establish a Christian college- level institution; and during the first half of 1906, Barret set out to raise the necessary funds. A man named Childers sold his home in Abilene to the school at a price "considerably below its market value," and in September 1906 Barret opened Childers Classical Institute

^Ibid., p. 101. To be precise, an individual congregation is called the " Church of Christ," but the entire body is habitually referred to as the "Church of Christ" rather than the collective "Churches of Christ." ^Guy A. Scruggs, "Abilene Christian College," The West Texas Historical Association Year Book, 21 TOctober 1945):4. 59 to some fifty students, about one-half of whom were boarding students. The other half lived in Abilene.10 Barret's students were engaged in elementary and secondary studies and not college courses, but in the Abilene of the early 1900's, having a school with offerings through the secondary level was sufficient for a time.

In terms of enrollment. Barret's educational venture enjoyed a moderate success during the 1907-08 school year, but the school suffered from a lack of money. Judging the problems too difficult to overcome. Barret resigned the presidency of Childers Classical Institute in the spring of 1908 and returned to Denton. While struggling to stay open in the next four years, the school saw a succession of four presidents at its helm. The school also came to be known as Abilene Christian Training School rather than Childers Classical Institute, its official title. In the spring of 1912, the fortunes of Childers Classical Institute took a decidedly upward turn; the Board of Trustees elected Jesse P. Sewell president. Under Sewell's stewardship, the institution became a state accredited junior college in 1914 and a standard

lOibid., p. 5. 60

four-year college by 1919. Although school publications bore the name Abilene Christian Junior College or Abilene Christian College, the Board of Trustees did not drop the name Childers Classical Institute until 1920.11

ACC prospered in the 1920's and threatened to outgrow its original campus. The Board of Trustees acquired a new 800-acre site on the east side of Abilene after considering and rejecting a move of the college to either Wichita Falls or San Angelo. The move to the new site in 1929 and the subsequent incurring of indebtedness for a campus full of new buildings came quite literally on the eve of the Great Depression. By 1933 ACC faced the possibility of going into receivership because of its capital debt. Even before their generosity was extended to Simmons College, Baptists John and Mary Hardin of Burkburnett, Texas came to the aid of the financially troubled ACC Two members of the ACC Board of Trustees appealed to the Hardins for a donation and the couple responded by giving ACC bonds worth $160,000. The bonds were sufficient to relieve the indebtedness of the College and give it the stability it needed for continued growth. The Board of Trustees changed the name of the institution to Abilene Christian University in 1976.

lllbid., p. 10.

M M li 61

McMurry College From the earliest days of the Republic of Texas, the Methodist Church proved itself as dedicated to the establishment of colleges as other main-line protestant denominations. Martin Ruter, a Methodist missionary, came to Texas in 1836, and before he died two years later, he secured pledges of support for the first college in Texas. Rutersville University, as it was known, held its first session in 1840. Rutersville foundered and lost its identity within a decade.12 A number of other Methodist-sponsored colleges elsewhere in Texas, including West Texas, were also relatively short­ lived. Seemingly undaunted by the failure of institutions at Clarendon, Plainview, and Stamford in the first eighteen years of the twentieth century, the Methodists looked around West Texas for a site where they might establish still another college.13 They chose

Abilene. The Northwest Texas Conference of the Methodist Church voted in 1920 to establish a college in Abilene. In return the city "promised forty acres for a campus.

12Tinsley, "Genesis of Higher Education in Texas," p. 53. 13welch, Colleges of Texas, p. 174. 62 streetcar service, and free water."1^ The college was named McMurry in honor of Methodist Bishop William F. McMurry. Its first president, James W. Hunt, grew up in Crosby County east of Lubbock. Hunt, an ordained Methodist minister, had been the last president of Stamford College. In 1923 McMurry opened its doors with an enrollment of 200 in the last two years of high school and the first two years of college. In 1926 when McMurry conferred its first baccalaureate degrees, the student body numbered nearly 400. The high school program had been dropped, and McMurry joined ranks with the two other colleges in Abilene to form a triumvirate of denominational institutions. Together, Hardin- Simmons, Abilene Christian, and McMurry had helped convert a small settlement on the edge of what had been a largely uninhabited frontier region two decades earlier into what was indeed a "college town."

Wayland Baptist University About 200 miles northwest of Abilene lies the small Texas city of Plainview. Founded in 1887, Plainview, like Abilene, benefitted from the zeal of Texas Baptists for higher education. While the Panhandle and South Plains were still very sparsely settled, the

l^ibid. 63 members of the Staked Plains Baptist Association, meeting in 1906, proposed the establishment of a college in Plainview. In 1907 physician James H. Wayland and his wife gave to the Association twenty-five acres of land and $10,000 "with the provision that members of the Association and citizens of Plainview would raise an additional $50,000 and would support the College."15 Chartered in 1908 as the Wayland Technical and Literary Institute, the school opened in 1910 as Wayland Baptist College. The year before. Dr. I.E. Gates, named as the first president of Wayland by the trustees, arrived in Plainview and found himself responsible for "a hole in the ground with a name."l^

Wayland's enrollment pattern was similar to that of several other denominational colleges begun in West Texas in the early part of the twentieth century; the student body consisted of many age groups. For the first few years, the school offered elementary, secondary, and junior college programs. The public school system had not yet become well established in that area, and Wayland

l^wayland Baptist University, Catalog 1985/1986, p. A-11. l^Vera Wofford, "Wayland College: The Result of One Man's Dream," Plainview Daily Herald, 17 May 1967. 64 supplied a need until the 1920's.l'7 Just as many of its counterparts in West Texas did, Wayland struggled through the depression period. It survived to make the transition from junior college to senior college in 1948 and to achieve university status in 1981.

Lubbock Christian Universi.ty Although it did not figure prominently in the first half-century of West Texas development, Lubbock Christian University deserves mention in any discussion of senior college institutions in the region. Begun in 1954 as a school with only the early elementary grades, LCU opened its doors as a junior college in September 1957. Just over a decade later, LCU began the shift from junior to senior college status and was fully accredited as a senior college in December 1972. LCU is numbered among the twenty-one colleges and universities sponsored by the Church of Christ in the U.S. and elsewhere. Having begun its history as a college using surplus buildings from nearby Air Force bases, LCU now has a modern physical plant capable of supporting a modest enrollment of about 1500.1^

l^welch. Colleges of Texas, p. 138 IQibid., p. 216. 65

Local Support and Survival The mere fact that the three church-related colleges in Abilene and the one in Plainview overcame a host of difficulties, largely financial, to become thriving institutions does not, taken alone, make them unique. Many private or, to use the more inclusive and descriptive term, "independent" colleges and universities have suffered at some point in their histories from a shortage of operating funds, as well as money for scholarships, facilities, and other needs. For them there has never been "formula funding" or, except for special situations, any other state-appropriated monies. Such institutions must instead place great reliance on tuition rates substantially higher than the public sector and on gifts and endowments from friends, former students, and philanthropists such as the Hardins. Finally, there is an unequivocal need for local community support, both moral and material. Most colleges, whether beginning or well established, public or independent, require varying amounts of community support, but the environment and related demographics of West Texas made such support in the period from 1900 to about 1935 a matter of life or death—of institutions.

The four colleges in Abilene and Plainview shared the ability to overcome seemingly insurmountable 66 financial obstacles and had another common thread in their history. Again, this thread is not unique to West Texas but is an inseparable part of the support picture. At the inception of each of these four colleges, their promoters forged an alliance with the community. In essence, the promoters proposed to locate a college in the community in return for certain material support. Even in sparsely settled West Texas, people wanted educa­ tional opportunities for their children; and to a great extent the state was not, at the time, providing those opportunities. Appropriately, all four of the institu­ tions began existence with, or included, elementary or secondary programs and phased them out as the public school availability improved and as the college curriculum became the dominant feature of each institution. Religion played a role, but above all else, these four were local colleges. One writer explained the phenomenon thusly: Once the agreement concerning location was made and an institution established, the process of sinking roots into community life and binding the cultural and economic fortunes of the town and immediate vicinity with those of the college proceeded rapidly.1^

l^David B. Potts, "American Colleges in the Nineteenth Century: From Localism to Denominationalism." History of Education Quarterly 11 (Winter 1971):367. 67

The author of this formula for success makes no assumptions, nor perhaps should he, about one intangible variable. That is simply, degree of commitment. If, for example, the above formula for establishing an independent, denominationally-affiliated college is applied to a fairly populous area such as east-central Texas in 1910, the degree of commitment does not need to be nearly as great as in the Plainview or Abilene of 1910 or 1920. The relatively few people who did live in the towns and the even fewer number on the closest farms and ranches became so motivated by their desire for education of any ilk and by their.feeling of isolation from the rest of Texas that their institutions not only survived but thrived. For every independent college which survived the early years of the settlement of West Texas, two or more closed their doors permanently after relatively few years of operation. Central Plains Academy, called "the first institution of higher education on the Staked Plains," opened in 1890. The institution, sponsored by the Quakers, began life with high hopes and a leader with impressive academic credentials. Jesse H. Moore, the only president of Central Plains Academy, held degrees from Haverford and Johns Hopkins. Moore struggled to recruit area youth, but was never able to build a firm 68

base of support for the college. According to the daughter of one of the area pioneers who took an interest in the institution. Central Plains Academy suffered from a lack of money, adverse weather, and finally a plague of grasshoppers. The institution, with eighteen graduates to its credit, closed its doors in 1893.20

The Northwest Texas Conference of the Methodist Church founded Clarendon College in 1898. Initially a junior college. Clarendon gained senior-level status in 1925 but fell on hard times in terms of community support when the church attempted to move the institution to Amarillo. The Methodists closed the college in 1927 and sold the property to the city of Clarendon. Anxious to have a college, the voters of Clarendon and surrounding Donley County voted to establish a public junior college district in the fall of 1927.21 Still another Methodist-sponsored college came into existence in 1910 in Plainview. The Church of the Nazarene (earlier known in Texas as Holiness Church of Christ) opened the institution in 1907 as the Central Plains College and Conservatory of Music. The Nazarenes

20Lecture by Mrs. Alma Holmes to Lubbock Women's Club History Roundtable, 2 February 1956. 21webb, Walter P., ed. The Handbook of Texas vol. 1 (Austin: The State Historical Association, 1952), p. 335; and Welch, Colleges of Texas, p. 174. I 69

relinquished control to the Methodists in 1910. The Methodists renamed the institution Seth Ward College for the first native Texan to become a Methodist bishop. Seth Ward College stayed in operation until 1916. That year fire destroyed both the administration building and the girls dormitory. The college had lost the boys dormitory to fire in 1914. College officials managed to finish the academic year in the local Methodist church but elected not to attempt to rebuild Seth Ward. After selling the property and settling the debts owed by the college, Seth Ward trustees donated the remaining funds to the founding of McMurry College.22 Stamford, Texas was the location for one other Methodist Church college in West Texas. Before becoming twice frustrated in its efforts to win a public college, Stamford witnessed the founding of Stamford Collegiate Institute which was commonly called Stamford College. The college opened with 256 students in 1907, but eleven years later a fire which destroyed the administration building forced the board of trustees to close the

22Diane Cook, "Memories, Keepsakes of Seth Ward Remain," Plainview Daily Herald, 17 May 1967; and C Gwin Morris, "Plainview: The Evolution of a West Texas Town, 1887-1922," The West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 51 (October 1975):32-33. i 70 college. The board divided the property between the city and a local Methodist church.23

The Presbyterians were successful in establishing colleges in the eastern part of Texas but did not enjoy the same good fortune in West Texas. In 1883 the Buffalo Gap and San Saba presbyteries of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church opened Buffalo Gap College south of Abilene in Taylor County. E.V. White characterized the small college as one "which survived for many years and which did much to inspire the youth of the entire West."24 The college seemed unable to compete with educational opportunities available in the growing community of Abilene and ceased operation in 1896. In the early years of the twentieth century, the Christian Church (Disciples) regarded Texas Christian University as something of a "flagship" institution. Christian Church officials desiring to establish colleges in West Texas looked to TCU for sponsorship and moral, if not financial, support. T.E. Shirley of Hereford managed to raise sufficient funds to open the Hereford College

23w3lch, Colleges of Texas, p. 174; and W.F. Ledlow, "History of Protestant Education in Texas," (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Texas, 1926), p. 50.

24E.V. White, "Education in the Early Days of West Texas," The West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 14 (October 1938):30. 71 and Industrial School in September 1902. Shirley and others in the community requested that TCU sponsor the college, but such sponsorship never materialized. In 1905 officials in Hereford renamed the institution Pan- Handle Christian College. That title was not popular with area residents and the Board of Trustees restored the institution's original name, Hereford College, three years later. In 1911 the Board of Trustees, unable to cope with the lack of financial support, closed Hereford College and sold the property of the institution to the Hereford Public School Board.25

The Christian Church founded Midland Christian College in 1909. The institution began its first session in 1910 with about 200 students. Frank F. Elkin, a Midland Christian College supporter and alumnus of TCU, asked his alma mater to sponsor the fledgling college, but again TCU declined. Robert L. Marquis, who later became president of Sul Ross and of North Texas State, served for a time as president of Midland Christian College. Unable to maintain an enrollment large enough to meet expenses. Midland Christian closed its doors in 1921.26

25i^ebb, Handbook of Texas, vol. 1, p. 801. 26ibid., vol. 2, p. 188. 72

Two other institutions which existed during the early years of West Texas settlement deserve mention because their very establishment exemplified that which was good about the influence of the frontier on the development of higher education. W.D. Twichell of Amarillo saw a need for some form of higher education in his community. Together with James D. Hamlin and four others, Twichell opened a proprietary institution in two store buildings in 1897. Twichell called his institution Amarillo College and did not seek to be affiliated with any church group. One of the Amarillo College faculty members was also the pastor of a local Christian Church (Disciples) congregation, but there is no record that the Christian Church was ever interested in making Amarillo College one of its own. Beset by financial problems, the college closed in 1910.27

The second institution springing from the frontier spirit was only a few miles from Amarillo. It owed its establishment to a genuine frontier legend, Charles Goodnight. It is likely that more has been written about Colonel Charles Goodnight than about any rancher in the United States. His JA Ranch, southeast of Amarillo near Palo Duro Canyon, at one time occupied 1,335,000 acres

27ibid., vol. 1, p. 88. 73 with over 100,000 head of cattle. According to one source. Goodnight wanted an agricultural college which would teach both young men and women to solve the problems of farming and ranching on the plains of West Texas. In 1898 Goodnight joined forces with an educator. Dr. Marshall Mcllhaney, to open Goodnight College at the small settlement of Goodnight, Texas. Mcllhaney served as first president and installed a liberal arts curriculum rather than one dealing with agricultural studies. After the college had been in operation several years. Goodnight suggested to the Northwest Texas Conference of the Methodist Church that it assume control of the institution. The Methodists did not accept Goodnight's offer. Goodnight then offered his college to the Baptists who did accept responsibility for the college in 1905. The Baptists changed the name of their newly acquired college to Goodnight Academy, and by 1908 the number of students reached 200. Enrolllment gradually diminished until 1917 when the church determined that the college could no longer remain in operation. A believer in the benefits of higher education. Goodnight donated over $100,000 to the college. As Goodnight College or as Goodnight Academy, the institution served the children of 74

both farmers and cattlemen until state-supported schools and colleges were available in the area.28

William C Holden, who very probably knew West Texas development as well as any historian in the region, offered this explanation of the West Texas psyche: West Texans have the feeling that their section constitutes all but a state itself. This intense feeling of sectionalism belongs distinctly to the people of the western part of the state: the residents of the older part have had a self- satisfied, complacent attitude. They have had all that they want; the institutions of the state were naturally placed in that part which was already settled when the institutions were built.29 The successful church-related independents, regardless of denomination or amount of religious fervor, however commendable that fervor might have been, remained on the educational scene because they were allied with the ambitions of local citizens, as well as those of students and their parents. As Jencks and Reisman astutely noted, "If Baylor University wants Waco businessmen to support it as 'their' local college ... it cannot conduct its affairs in a way that discourages local non-Baptists from applying."30

28F. Stanley, The Texas Panhandle: From Cattlemen to Feed Lots (Borger, Texas: Jim Hess Printers, 1971), p7 3T57 29v^illiam C Holden, Alkali Trails (Dallas: The Southwest Press, 1930), p. 98. 30jencks and Reisman, Academic Revolution, p. 324. I 75

With its isolation. West Texas, a curious and occasionally amusing blend of reality and perception, required almost the same response from those who sought state-supported colleges as it did from those church committee members who welcomed their respective denominational college promoters. These local boosters realized early in their quests for a nearby state college, that the challenges in their struggle were as large as the land itself. Obtaining an enabling act, initial funding, and continuing support from the Legislature for colleges in West Texas demanded from West Texas citizens a degree of commitment which for many would last five to ten years, for others, several decades, and for some, a lifetime. 11

CHAPTER IV COLLEGES FOR THE PEOPLE

By 1900, politicians and the regional press were reminding people of a good many services the state had not provided them. A general impression was growing in West Texas that, as far as the mother state was concerned, it was an unloved stepchild. West Texas might not know yet just what it was going to do, but it was going to have its rights. One of its rights, people began to believe, was a tax-supported institution of higher learning.1 That state-supported higher education would come to West Texas in the early 1900's was never an issue. How long it would take and in what forms it might manifest itself were serious questions. They were questions fraught with many complications, most of which could be attributed to state and local politics. Almost eighty years of public higher education in West Texas has seen the Texas state legislature debate, create, subsequently fund, alter or redesignate a variety of institutions to satisfy the needs or demands of the constituency residing west of the 100th meridian. Among those which the Legislature brought into being are four

Ijane Gilmore Rushing and Kline A. Nail, Evolution of a University; Texas Tech's First Fifty Years (Austin: MadFona Press, 1975), p. 4.

76 77 state institutions which were pioneers in the development of higher education in West Texas.

West Texas State University On 14 January 1909 State Representative T.J. Barrett of Anson, a small community twenty miles northwest of Abilene, introduced a bill in the Taxas House of Representatives "to establish the West Texas State Normal College" somewhere west of the 98th meridian.2 Known as HB 5, Barrett's bill made its way successfully through both houses and was sent to Governor Campbell for signature. The Governor duly endorsed the bill and appointed Lieutenant Governor A.B. Davidson, House Speaker John Marshall, and State School Superintendent Robert B. Cousins as members of a locating committee to select a site for the college. Some twenty-seven towns competed for the honor of having the college, and the committee selected Canyon—then called Canyon City—about twenty miles south of Amarillo. Stamford, one of the communities seeking the college, apparently resented losing. Stamford boosters sent a terse telegram to the selection committee which met in Fort Worth. The telegram read: "We congratulate you on

2Texas, House of Representatives, Journal, 31st Legislature, Regular sess., 1909, p. 28. 78 the discovery of Canyon City. It is second only to Dr. Cook's discovery of the North Pole."3 West Texas State Normal began operation in September 1910 with former State Superintendent Cousins as its first president. Like nearly all state colleges founded for the purpose of training teachers. West Texas State Normal had a modest beginning. And like other colleges, public and independent, in the region. West Texas State offered both high school and college-level course work. Dr. Cousins guided the college through its first eight years of existence, then yielded the reins to Dr. Joseph A. Hill. Dr. Hill had been a member of the faculty since the college began in 1910 and remained its president for thirty years, a tenure which puts him in the company of but a handful of college and university presidents in the history of higher education in the U.S. In 1923 the name of West Texas State Normal was changed to West Texas State Teachers College.^ Under Dr. Hill's leadership. West Texas State became the first of the teachers colleges in Texas to offer graduate-level work

3v. Ruth Lowes, "Informal History of West Texas State University,'' Papers 1980-84, File "Manuscript Notes and Letters," Panhandle Plains Museum Archives, Canyon, Texas. ^Texas, House of Representatives, Journal, 38th Legislature, Regular sess., 1923, p. 928. 79

and to grant the Master's degree. From his writings, it seems evident that Dr. Hill possessed a particularly good sense of place. More to the point, he managed by determination and force of personality during his presidency to translate that sense of place into a well- defined mission for West Texas State. He wanted the institution to serve the region, but at the same time not move too rapidly from a traditional role to a more general, diversified one. Near the end of his many years as president. Dr. Hill commented on the paradox of growth in Texas higher education: My fear is that Texas will never attain the stature in education that her people deserve until she recovers from her long-sustained disease of megalomania. It is my judgement that if our school should get very much larger it would lose much of the fine quality that has characterized its past. Yet, under existing conditions we have no choice. . . . Growth is essential to survival. Our service must be greater and must reach many more people if West Texas State is to hold the stature she now has.^ Dr. Hill made these remarks in a speech to the West Texas State faculty on the eve of his last year as president. It was two years after the end of World War II, and Texas colleges and universities were entering a twenty-year period of almost unrestrained growth. Teachers colleges were becoming more diversified; and Dr.

^Joseph A. Hill, One Man's Faith: Selected Speeches (Canyon: West Texas State College Press, 1954), p. 208. I 80

Hill, undoubtedly proud of the mark made by West Texas State in the region, particularly the Panhandle, was perhaps skeptical of how his college would fare in the post-war years. The college, now designated a university, has survived and maintains a stable enrollment of 6500 to 7000 students.

The University of Texas at El Paso Just as it was inevitable that public higher education would come to the "interior" of West Texas, it was equally certain that the Texas Legislature, aided by members from the western-most tip of Texas, would be reminded by the second decade of the twentieth century that El Paso was part of the state and needed a college. Six hundred miles from Austin, El Paso boasted a population of 15,000 in 1900 and had become, among other things, a headquarters for mining activities. From 1902 to 1910, the local newspaper and chamber of commerce promoted the idea of a school of mines but failed to secure enough support to prod the Legislature into action. In the years between 1910 and the convening of the 33rd Legislature in January 1913, Lwo seemingly unremarkable and unrelated events occurred; and the movement to establish the long-awaited school of mines began in earnest. 81

The first event occurred in Austin. In 1910 the University of Texas declared that it would no longer admit students to its "arrangement of courses leading to a degree in mining engineering."^ The second event was the closing of a prep school called El Paso Military Institute located on land adjoining the U.S. Army post. Ft. Bliss. State legislators from El Paso who favored the establishment of a college now had a common-sense rationale with both academic and environmental implications. As a bonus, the prep school land and structures could be acquired by the city for a campus. State Senator Claude B. Hudspeth and Representatives Richard Burger and Eugene Harris shepherded through their respective houses of the legislature two bills. Conference committee action brought the bills together, and passage of a compromise bill came in April 1913. After Governor Colquitt signed it, the bill became "an Act creating a State School of Mines and Metallurgy, for the purpose of teaching the scientific knowledge of mining and metallurgy ... to the end that the mineral

^Francis L. Fugate, Frontier College: Texas Western at ^ Paso, The First Fifty Years (El Paso: Texas Western pTeii, 1964), p. 11. 82 wealth, oil, etc., may be developed upon the State school lands of this State."7

Anyone with an understanding of and an appreciation for the finer points of Texas politics might speculate that the act was deliberately worded so as to make the legislator opposed to the bill appear to be against the development of the school lands as well. The wealth those lands would produce could only have been imagined, but income from public land was emminently acceptable since it did not involve levying taxes on the people. As it happened, the school lands were indeed developed, but the founding of the mining school at El Paso had little, if any, bearing on that development. The act bringing the mining school into being stipulated that it would be governed by the University of Texas Board of Regents. By the spring of 1914, the El Paso Chamber of Commmerce and city businessmen managed to raise enough money to purchase the land and buildings of the defunct El Paso Military Institute. In September 1915 the School of Mining and Metallurgy opened under the leadership of Dean S.W. Worrell with a faculty of thirteen and a student body of twenty-seven.

7Texas, Senate, Journal, 33rd Legislature, Regular sess., 1913, p. 763. 83

Like many schools without the fire-fighting resources of the late twentieth century, the School of Mines suffered a devastating fire early in its history. The fire caused some temporary hardships but proved to be a blessing. Professors held classes in makeshift quarters and administrative problems abounded. However, the school was able to rebuild in a fashion more in keeping with its environment close by the rugged Franklin mountains. Dean Worrell's wife, evidently impressed by an article about Bhutan in the April 1914 issue of National Geographic, suggested that the design of new buildings be in the style of those in the mountainous Himalayan kingdom. The buildings in Bhutan seemed suited to the terrain which was similar to that around El Paso. Henry C Trost of the El Paso architectural firm of Gibson and Robinson faithfully reproduced the Bhutanese design in five^ buildings, some of which were in use before the formal opening in 1918.^

Becoming the College of Mines and Metallurgy in 1919, the institution struggled to maintain and subsequently to expand its niche in West Texas higher education. The 36th Legislature made the college a

Qwillard B. Robinson, "Temples of Knowledge: Historic Mains of Texas Colleges and Universities," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 77 (April 1974):479. 84

branch of the University, something more than merely being "supervised" by officials in Austin.^ These actions in El Paso and Austin afforded greater stature; but with none of the liberal arts and business courses or the other curricular requirements for awarding bachelors' degrees, the college was forced in the early 1920's to compete with the local junior college for students. A pair of inter-related factors eventually gave the College of Mines an advantage over the junior college. The first of these was that the College of Mines, even with its miniscule enrollment of between ninety and 100 students in 1921, had status. It was a branch of the University of Texas. Austin would not neglect its "distant cousin." Of perhaps greater significance was the second factor: a subtle micro-form of geographical determinism was at work. A burgeoning city, in the desert and at the very edge of Texas, seemed to warrant being designated as an academic oasis. A degree-granting institution would benefit the "isolated" El Paso area more than a junior college during that period. With the approval of officials in Austin, The College of Mines began adding courses. In 1931 the University of Texas Board of

^University of Texas, Catalog of the Department of Mines and Metallurgy, Bulletin No. 2029, May 20, 1920; and university of Texas, Catalog of the College of Mines & Metallurgy, Bulletin No. 2129, May 20, 1921. I 85

Regents "authorized the conferring of the Bachelor of Arts degree" and gave the college its own president.10 Speaking of this event, a latter-day Chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents remarked that "1931 marked the beginning of the institution as a four-year liberal arts school."H

In the next two decades, enrollment in the College of Mines more than tripled, and in 1949 the 51st Legislature was persuaded to change the name of the institution to Texas Western College since it had outgrown its original mission and become far more diversified.12 within a few years local boosters campaigned for a new name. The boosters felt that Texas Western College needed to be called something more appropriate for a growing institution in a developing metropolitan area. Less than twenty years after becoming Texas Western, the institution received from the expanding University of Texas System a new name and a new status. The 60th Legislature obligingly gave all

lOcollege of Mines and Metallurgy, Catalog, 1931- 1932, p. 2. llw.W. Heath, "An Official View," in Jubilee Papers; Progress Reports and Addresses (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1964), p. 3. 12Texas, House of Representatives, Journal, 51st Legislature, Regular sess., 1949, p. 809. 86 institutions in the UT system the name "University of Texas" followed by the city or area in which the institution was located. Thus Texas Western became the University of Texas at El Paso or "UTEP." As the University of Texas at El Paso, the institution offers its students a wide range of courses in business, education, humanities, and science, and true to its origins, it still provides training in mining engineering and related specialties. UTEP, because of its location, maintains strong ties with Mexico and other countries in Latin America. As former UTEP President Joseph M. Ray noted with obvious pride, the "universities of Columbia and the government of that country honored UTEP with their Cultural and Educational Award and conferred on Dr. Clyde E. Kelsey, Jr., Director of our Inter-American Institute, the Order of San Carlos."13

Sul Ross State University In the northwest corner of Brewster County, largest of Texas' 254 counties, lies the city of Alpine. Brewster is one of a trio of counties—Presidio and Jeff Davis being the others—which make up the Big Bend area. Together the three counties comprise one-third of the

13joseph M. Ray, On Becoming a University: Report on an Octennium, Jubilee Papers (El Paso: Texas Western Press, l9"68) , p. 14. 87 land in Texas west of the Pecos River (often called the "Trans-Pecos"). Because of its central site in the three-county area, Alpine became the location of the "Tri-County Teachers' Institute" near the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Operating only in the summer, the Institute grew in popularity and was redesignated the "Alpine Summer Normal."14

Despite the sparse population, support for a normal school grew in the Trans-Pecos area, and Alpine seemed to be the logical place. Early in the Regular Session of the 35th Legislature in January 1917, a bill was introduced to provide for "the establishment, maintenance and government of a State Normal College at Alpine in Brewster County, Texas."15 The bill cleared both houses of the Legislature and was signed into law by Governor James Ferguson on April 4, 1917. Although the bill had little opposition, it was rewritten in committee with wording which made the establishment of the college contingent on considerable support from the citizens of Alpine and Brewster County. Such support ranged from the usual requirement of land for the college to the

l^ciifford B. Casey, Sul Ross State University: The Cultural Center of Trans-Pecos Texas (Seagraves, Texas: Pioneer Book Publishers, 1976), p. 16. l^Texas, House of Representatives, Journal, 35th Legislature, Regular sess., 1917, p. 575. 88 provision of a water supply. One could read into the enabling act that Legislators from the "east side" of the state were not too enthusiastic about the possibilities of success for a college in the wilds of far West Texas. No one seemed to object to the name of the new normal: Sul Ross, short for Lawrence Sullivan Ross, a Texas hero in the Civil War, a governor of the state, and president of Texas A&M College at the time of his death in 1898.

Until the next biennial session in 1919, the Legislature did not appropriate any funds to build facilities or subsequqently operate the college. Meanwhile, the citizens of Alpine responded willingly in satisfying the conditions of the enabling act. By June 1920 the new normal opened its doors for a summer session. Enrollment was disappointingly low, and by the end of the summer, the president, Thomas Fletcher, resigned, apparently in the belief that Sul Ross would not succeed. The Board of Regents quickly replaced Fletcher with Robert L. Marquis, one of the first faculty members of West Texas State. Upon accepting the presidency of the fledgling college. Marquis remarked that "extreme West Texas had long been neglected, relative to the extension of educational facilities, and 89 was not only deserving of, but entitled to have one of the state normal colleges within the territory."1^ Sul Ross opened its first regular academic year on 20 September 1920 with 118 students. The 1921 Brand, yearbook of the college, included in its first few pages a brief message to the faculty and students from President Marquis: I congratulate you upon the accomplishments of this, the first year in the life of the institution. You have worked in an unchartered field and you are therefore pathfinders and pioneers. . . . Your accomplishments of the past year prove you to be worthy descendants of a courageous and hardy ancestry, men and women who built states and empires. I congratulate you.17 Sul Ross survived the next two years, fending off threats of closure and of relocation to Ballinger, in West Texas but 250 miles northeast of Alpine.18 The 1923 legislative (38th Legislature) session yielded both moral and monetary support for Sul Ross and changed its designation, along with the other state normals, to "State Teachers College." President Marquis left Sul Ross in May 1923 to accept the presidency of North Texas State Teachers College. The Board of Regents again

l^casey, Sul Ross, p. 21. 17sul Ross State Normal College, The Brand, Yearbook, 1921. IScasey, Sul Ross, p. 32. 90

turned to West Texas State for a successor, in Horace W. Morelock, a professor of English at the college in Canyon, the Regents very likely got far more of a perfect match of personality for the institution and its environment than they could possibly have imagined at the time. Educated at the University of Tennessee and at Harvard, Morelock quite literally put Sul Ross "on the map." In a semi-autobiographical account of his experiences as an educator, he indicated that Sul Ross was often treated like the unwanted step-child of Texas higher education. Of efforts to remove Sul Ross from the Trans-Pecos, Morelock observed dryly, "Some of its foster parents wanted to kill it outright; others who had in their hearts a small reservoir of the milk of human kindness wanted to move it to a more stimulating environment."19 Morelock affirmed and strengthened the ties that bound Sul Ross to Alpine and the Big Bend country. He sought out individuals who had a stake in the area or an interest in the college and requested their support. In 1928 Herbert Kokernot, a prominent rancher in the Alpine area offered to give Sul Ross College a section of land for grazing sheep and cattle. The stock, procured by the college, were to be part of a

l^Horace W. Morelock, Mountains of the Mind (San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1956), p. 178. I 91

course in range animal husbandry. Kokernot asked only that the Legislature appropriate $20,000 for barns, pens, and other equipment. The Legislature did not act on the offer at its next regular session. Treating this as a temporary setback, Morelock wrote, "Not enough of the Legislature had at that time discovered the Big Bend Country and it had to wait a long time for 'statehood.'"20

Seeking ways of promoting Sul Ross, Morelock turned to official college publications. Fully aware of the fact that the Legislature prohibited the use of appropriated funds for advertising, the energetic president had his staff send to various Texas public school systems Sul Ross bulletins describing a wide range of summer school course offerings, workshops, and field trips in the cool air of the Davis Mountains. Morelock remained as president of Sul Ross for twenty-two years and retired at the end of the regular academic year in 1945. In addition to his success in making Sul Ross a thriving college, Morelock is credited with encouraging the federal government to designate the Big Bend country as a national park. Along with other former state normals Sul Ross underwent a series of name changes from

20ibid. I 92

"State Teachers College" to "State College" to, finally, "State University."

Texas Tech University The land-grant college of Texas was twenty years old when State Senator R.D. Gage of Pecos suggested that it might be appropriate for West Texas to have its own agricultural and mechanical college. Gage's idea died aborning.21 West Texas had far more cattle than people, and farming on the semi-arid plains was not a major industry. In a scant fifteen years the picture changed considerably. At the 1911 Regular Session of the Legislature, J.J. Dillard, who represented twenty-seven West Texas counties introduced a bill in the state House of Representatives to establish a.West Texas A&M college, Dillard's bill also died, but the idea for the college which the bill envisioned remained alive. Proponents of a West Texas A&M college managed to make their hopes a plank in the 1916 gubernatorial campaign platform of James E. ("Farmer Jim") Ferguson. With Ferguson's support, a bill to establish a West Texas A&M college passed both the House and Senate and was signed into law on 20 February 1917.

21ciifford L. Gibbs, "The Establishment of Texas Technological College" (Master's thesis, Texas Technological College, 1939), p. 7. 93

Unfortunately, the prospects for the immediate establishment of a West Texas A&M college ran afoul of Governor Ferguson's political manueverings. The governor seemed to have a penchant for precipitating trouble between his office and Texas higher education. Ferguson attempted to falsify the results of balloting by the committee convened to choose a site for the West Texas A&M College. Ferguson announced that Abilene had been picked, but three of the five committee members "compared notes" and determined that none of them had voted for Abilene. When this discovery was made public, action on the West Texas A&M enabling act came to a standstill. Coincidentally with this scandal, Ferguson found himself at odds with officials of the University of Texas because of his veto of certain appropriations for that institution.22 m consideration of this and other serious irregularities in Ferguson's performance as governor, the Legislature in a special session during the summmer of 1917, impeached "Farmer Jim" and removed him from office. The Legislature also repealed the act for the West Texas A&M College, and the people of the region were forced to begin anew their campaign for a specialized college. By mid-1920 a new organization, the

22seth S. McKay and Odie B. Faulk, Texas After Spindletop (Austin: Steck-Vaughn Company, 1965), p. 118. 94

West Texas Chamber of Commerce, had as one of its major goals the establishment of a West Texas A&M college. For the second time in four years, a bill to establish the college was submitted; and for the second time in four years, it passed and was sent to the governor. This time Governor Pat Neff, citing the poor economic conditions and the status of the state treasury as reasons, vetoed the bill.23

Given sixty-five years of historical perspective, one may be tempted to conclude that the frustration of 1921 simply strengthened the resolve of West Texans, led by the strong, well-organized West Texas Chamber of Commerce, to win the college they felt they needed. Indeed, it would appear that by the 1923 biennial legislative session, the men who represented West Texas in the Legislature were prepared to get the enabling act passed and approved by the governor—at all costs. Mrs. William H. Bledsoe recalled her husband's effort to secure passage of the West Texas A&M bill at the regular session of the 38th Legislation in January 1923. The "Judge," her title for Senator Bledsoe, introduced a bill in the Senate for the establishment of a West Texas A&M

23Homer Dale Wade, Establishment of Texas Technological College: 1916-1923 (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, .1956) , p. 54. 95 college. Representative Chitwood of Sweetwater introduced a similar bill in the House.24

Senator Bledsoe sought support for his bill from Representative Carpenter, leader of the Dallas delegation in the House. Carpenter disliked the name "West Texas A&M" and suggested that it be changed. According to his wife. Judge Bledsoe irreverently exclaimed to Carpenter, "I don't care what the hell you call it, just so we get the school." Carpenter selected the name "Texas Technological College" and the process of moving the bill through the two houses of the Legislature commenced. Mrs. Bledsoe remembered Judge Bledsoe "speaking to the bill" (SB 103) on the floor of the Senate. Someone questioned the need for the college contemplated by the bill. The person flatly declared, "You don't need that bill. Why don't the students from out there come down to the University?" Judge Bledsoe silenced his critic by retorting, "They [the students] are nearer to five other state universities than they are to their own."25 ^ check of a road atlas of the United States would confirm Bledsoe's assessment. The Universities of New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and even Nebraska are each

24interview with Mrs. William H. Bledsoe by Bill J Henderson, Lubbock, Texas, August 1964. 25ibid. 96 less than 500 miles from much of the Panhandle. Amarillo, close to the center of the Panhandle's twenty- six counties, is over 525 miles from Austin,

Judge Bledsoe's SB 103 eventually passed both houses of the Legislature and made its way to the governor's office on 6 February 1923. Governor Neff, deluged by telegrams and other appeals for his signature from West Texas politicians, members of the West Texas Chamber of Commerce, and other interested citizens, signed the bill on 10 February 1923. West Texas public opinion played a significant role in bringing the case for the establishment of a college to the Legislature. But it was the political skill of Bledsoe, Chitwood, and others which guided the final bill through both houses to the governor's desk. Governor Neff appointed a Locating Board consisting of a state cabinet officer and four prominent educators. They were: Locating Board Chairman S.B. Cowell, chairman of the State Board of Control; Dr. F.M. Bralley, president of the College of Industrial Arts; Dr. S.M.N. Marrs, state superintendent of education; Dr. W.B. Bizzell, president of Texas A&M; and Dr. W.B. Sutton, acting president of the University of Texas. At its office in Austin, the Locating Board received thiry-seven applications from communities "north of the 29th parallel 97 and west of the 98th meridian." This was the general location for the college stipulated in the law. In a 1975 interview, W. Hamilton Wright, a reporter for the Fort Worth Record, recalled how he had journeyed from town to town with the Locating Board. Wright enjoyed the same hospitality accorded the board, and as a newspaper man, could cover the proceedings with some detachment and more than a little bit of humor. Wright chuckled about the fact that Cowell, who was Chairman of the Locating Board and blind, seemed to enjoy "seeing" all the sites visited.26 According to Wright, other members of the Board treated Cowell with respect and insured that the Chairman received a thorough briefing on all the aspects of each prospective site.27

Having begun its itinerary on 14 July 1923, the Locating Board reached Ft. Worth on 7 August after visiting one or two of the thirty-seven communities each

26interview with W. Hamilton Wright by David Murrah, Abilene, Texas, 23 May 1975. 27Texas, Locating Board, Texas Technological College, Briefs and Other Descriptive Material submitted by various Texas cities, 1923. The sites visited by the Locating Board were: Abilene, Amarillo, Ballinger, Big Spring, Boerne, Brady, Brownwood, Buffalo Gap, Cisco, Claude, Clyde, Coleman, Colorado City, Crosbyton, Floydada, Haskell, Lampasas, Lubbock, Memphis, Menard, Midland, Miles, Munday, Paint Rock, Plainview, Post, Quanah, San Angelo, Seymour, Snyder, Spur, Stamford, Stanton, Sweetwater, Tulia, Vernon, and Wilson. 98 day during the twenty-five day period. In a Ft. Worth hotel on 8 August 1923, the board reached the decision to award the Texas Technological College to Lubbock. This time there were no irregularities. Lubbock met all the stipulations in the enabling legislation and the additional conditions set forth by the Locating Board.28 Texas Technological College began its first academic year in the fall of 1925 with over 900 students. The first degrees were conferred in 1927; and W.B. Bizzell, by that time president of the University of Oklahoma, gave the commencement address.29 in 1969 the Legislature, in recognition of the growth of the institution and its multipurpose nature, changed the name to "Texas Tech University." True to the history of the establishment and development of Texas Tech, this change occurred amid a flurry of controversy. The issues will be treated briefly in a subsequent chapter.

Other Four-Year or Degree-Granting Institutions West of the 100th Meridian After passing the Texas Technological College bill in 1923, the Legislature waited forty years before

28Texas, Locating Board, Texas Technological College, Letter to All Applicants for the Location of the Texas Technological College, dated 1 March 1923. 29welch, The Colleges of Texas, p. 185. 99

aquiescing in the creation of another four-year college in West Texas. San Angelo, frustrated in its bid for Texas Tech, nevertheless sought the establishment of a post-secondary institution in the area. In 1928 San Angelo College came into existence as a junior college for the citizens of Tom Green County. The junior college grew and prospered through the late 1950's when a movement began in San Angelo to make the college a four- year institution. Local boosters pointed to the fact that the nearest public senior college was in Stephenville, 158 miles away.30 The first Angelo State College bill failed to pass the 1961 Regular Session of the Legislature, but in 1963 at the next Regular Session, the bill cleared both houses and was signed into law by Governor John Connally. San Angelo College officially became Angelo State College on 1 September 1965. Less than four years later, the 61st Legislature, in a spate of institutional name-changing, redesignated the college Angelo State University.31 Texas neared the end of its century-long growth in public post-secondary education in the early 1970's. In

30jack Bates, "The History of Angelo State University," The West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 60 (1984), p. 116. 31vernon's Revised Statutes, Chapter 5, art 2654.3, p. 348. I I 100 this period two more degree-granting state-supported institutions made their appearance in West Texas. In 1969 Texas A&I in Kingsville received authority from the Legislature to establish an upper-level "study center" in Laredo.32 Laredo Junior College provided an academic curriculum at the freshman and sophomore levels and leased space to the Texas A&I Center. The first junior- and senior-level students enrolled at Texas A&I University, Laredo in August 1970. In 1971 the Legislature passed a statute permitting Texas A&I, Laredo to have a graduate program. Finally, at its regular biennial session in 1977, the Legislature changed the name of the institution to Laredo State University and severed the connection with Texas A&I.33

The history of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin resembles that of Laredo State University. Both Midland and Odessa had community colleges in 1969, but some of the citizens of Midland and Ector Counties, in which the two cities are situated, believed that they should have an institution which would provide graduate courses along with the last two years of undergraduate work. Again, the 61st Legislature, which seemed to be

32ibid., art. 2628e, pp. 340-341. 33Laredo State University, Catalog 1987/1989, September 1987, p. 21. 101 particularly attentive to post-secondary needs, real or perceived, brought forth the legislation creating the institution that Midland and Ector Counties had sought.34 In the fall of 1973, some four and one-half years after the enabling legislation, UTPB admitted its first students.35 west Texas now had seven baccalaureate degree-granting public post-secondary institutions and no prospects for any more.

34F.J. waddell, "A Historical Review of the Coordination of Higher Education in Texas (Ph.D. dissertation. North Texas State University, 1972), pp. 53-58. The establishment of UTPB and several other "latter-day" institutions in the University of Texas System is due in part to the efforts of University of Texas Regent Frank Erwin. At one point in his tenure, Erwin wanted to establish a University of Texas "branch" in every state senatorial district. There are thirty-one such districts. It is extremely doubtful that Erwin would have ever achieved his goal, but his efforts help illustrate the politicization of Texas higher education over the years. 35welch, Colleges of Texas, p. 228. CHAPTER V REGIONALISM AND FUNDING

There is, as Professor Holden implied in Alkali Trails, a certain logic at work in the legislative authorization of a college or university in a substantially well-populated section where the citizens presumably are prepared to embrace public higher education. Once a college or university is established, revenue gathered from all corners of the state maintains that institution. Holden suggested that the citizens tend to grow smug about the sources of revenue devoted to "their" college or university. As Holden concluded about Texans living in the eastern half of the state: They have seen no reason why the property of the western part of the state should not be taxed to help pay for and maintain the established institutions of the state. They . . . left the West Texans to fuss and fume about 'unequal distribution,' 'intolerable neglect,' and the 'need for unified sectional action.'1 When Holden wrote those words, he may also have recalled a 1920 West Texas Chamber of Commerce resolution directly related to the movement to secure a West Texas A&M college. The Chamber lamented the 1917 loss of the college legislation with Governor Ferguson's impeachment

Inolden, Alkali Trails, p. 98

102 I I 103

and removal from office. Cried the resolution. West Texas has been deprived of an A. and M. College, notwithstanding West Texas pays a huge tax for the purpose of providing agricultural education for her citizens . . . and the whole State of Texas is under both a legal and moral obligation ... to re-enact the West Texas A. and M. Bill.2

When the Legislature met in January 1921, it considered, for the second time in four years, the issue of a West Texas A&M college. Representative E.M. Rosser of Snyder researched state revenue records and, according to Wade, found some interesting statistics which lent considerable credence to the claim of the WTCC that the region may have been neglected. Rosser discovered that the counties within the boundary to be served by the West Texas A&M college possessed: . . . rendered taxable values in the amount of $972,798,088; total rendered values of the State [are] $3,320,838,714; therefore the counties within this boundary pay taxes on approximately one-third of the wealth of the State. There are two normal schools and one junior agricultural college within the boundary, which jointly received during the year 1920, the sum of $481,044.17. The amount received from the State by other like schools (not including the university) aggregated the sura of $2,047,074.91. According to the above statistics. West Texas pays in $1.00 in $3.00 and receives in return $1.00 out of $5.00. We are not adopted children . . . and are entitled to the same consideration in the

2WeSt Texas Today, July 1920, p. 13. I '11

104

education of our children as other sections of our great empire state.3

The Legislature passed the second West Texas A&M bill on 12 March 1921, and Governor Neff vetoed it on 1 April. Nevertheless, West Texans, led by their legislators and the West Texas Chamber of Commerce, made their point in Austin. In 1923, on the third .try, the West Texas A&M bill became the Texas Technological College bill, passed the Legislature, and was signed by Governor Neff. The passage of the bill authorizing Texas Technological College constituted a dual victory for West Texas. In the first, perhaps more tangible victory, development of higher education in the region received a boost like none before or since. West Texas had in Texas Technological College the foundation of what would become the only multi-purpose state university north and west of Austin. By means of the second, more ethereal victory. West Texas shed some of its image as a region useful to the state only because of its sheer size and corresponding revenue-producing ability. Until 1923

3wade, Texas Technological College, p. 49. Rosser's reference to two normal schools meant West Texas State and Sul Ross. The "junior agricultural college" was Tarleton at Stephenville, then a two-year branch of Texas A&M College. For purposes of this study, Stephenville, Texas is not included as it is not west of the 100th meridian. Rosser evidently ignored the Texas School of Mining and Metallurgy in El Paso. He may have simply considered it part of the University of Texas. fc 105

West Texas was similar in many ways to a colony. Its economic activity was restricted to the production of raw materials, and transportation costs plus other outside forces determined the price of those raw materials.4

Equity and the Permanent University Fund West Texas captured Texas Tech for its very own; further development could proceed apace with Tech as an institutional role model. Development in Texas higher education, however, depended on land. Not the relatively small amount of land needed for a campus; Texas Tech had that. It was the land lavishly distributed to others as well as that still owned by the State of Texas when Texas Tech was established. Having been annexed to the United States in 1845 without giving up its vast public land holdings, Texas spent the first half-century after the Civil War giving away, trading away, or setting aside millions of acres of that land. Most of it lay west of the 100th meridian. The state traded 3,025,000 acres of the Panhandle for the money to build the capitol. The state constitution and subsequent legislation set aside 2,100,000 acres of land for the Permanent University Fund (PUF) and 1,000,000 acres for the public schools.

4carl F. Kraenzel, The Great Plains in Transition (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), p. 220. 106

Finally, the state gave to several railroad companies over 32,000,000 acres to entice those companies to cover Texas with a network of steel rails. Most of the land given to the railroads was in West Texas; the capitol, school, and Permanent University Fund (PUF) lands were all west of the 100th meridian.

Having achieved recognition through their fight for Texas Technological College, West Texans abandoned all talk of "seccesion" in the spring of 1923. The bill that Governor Neff signed on 1 April 1923 included an appropriation of $1,000,000 to pay for land, buildings, and equipment for the Texas Technological College. Once established, the college would depend on biennial appropriations for additional construction and operating expenses. Having "secured the blessings" of a public college for their young men and women. West Texans undoubtedly regarded their efforts as proof that they did not deserve to be regarded as colonists. The college rising on the plains provided ample evidence that West Texans had begun to share in the wealth of their state. While citizens of West Texas communities celebrated their victory and prepared for Locating Board visits, another West Texas activity was about to produce an event with a major impact on the development of higher education both in the region and in the rest of Texas.

I 107

Late in May 1923 a drilling bit touched oil-bearing sand at 3035 feet beneath a section of University of Texas land in Reagan County. The drillers made their discovery near the village of Big Lake about 160 miles due south of Lubbock, still over two months away from being officially named the site of the Texas Technological College. The El Paso Times, in an article datelined Big Lake, Texas, reported that a special train operated by the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railroad carried a number of people from El Paso, 300 miles distant, to the well site. The Times article claimed that over 1000 people had come by train and automobile to witness a "genuine gusher." The drilling lease belonged to Texon Oil Company. Haymon Krupp, president of Texon, proudly described to the Times reporter the Sunday afternoon [11 June 1923] attraction: Last Sunday to satisfy the crowds of people from all over the country . . . the well was turned loose for a while, and the oil began flowing steadily and soon shot above the derrick.^ The discovery of oil at the well, christened Santa Rita No. 1 by Texon, opened the door to exploration of much of the remainder of the University of Texas acreage in West Texas. Prior to the discovery of oil on that land, the total amount of money accruing to the Available University Fund(AUF)—the royalties and interest earned

5E1 Paso Times, 13 June 1923, p. 8. 108

by the PUF—in forty years (1883-1923) was a paltry $16,611. By 1926, PUF oil, gas, and sulphur royalties rose to $3,853,257.6 m that same year, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that these royalties, coming as they did from minerals, were a part of the "corpus of the estate" and were not to be regarded as income.7 Such royalties were, instead, a part of the Permanent Fund and thus available for investment. This landmark decision by the court permitted the PUF to commence a series of quantum leaps in value—value exclusive of PUF real estate—that spanned a fifty-five year period.

With perspective afforded by time, one may see that the sudden and dramatic enrichment of the Permanent University Fund occurred against a backdrop of change in the pattern of development of higher education in West Texas. Within twenty-five years the PUF itself would

^University of Texas System, Permanent University Fund Investments, Report for the Fiscal Year Ended August 31, 1981, appendix B. 7state V. Hatcher, Vol. 281-282, Southwestern Reporter, p. 192 (Commissioner of Appeals of Texas, Section B., March 10, 1926). In this case the Texas Attorney General filed suit against state Treasurer W. Gregory Hatcher to compel Hatcher to deposit oil and gas royalty money in the PUF. The treasurer had not done so because he believed he was abiding by a 1925 legislative act which stipulated that such funds were to be put in the Available Fund—or "ready cash." The court held the 1925 act unconstitutional and declared that minerals were "a part of the soil and when once removed were gone forever." 109 also become a prime factor in motivating change, particularly in funding. As was noted earlier in this study, Texas Tech was the only four-year college opened in West Texas between 1925 and 1965. The discovery of oil and gas on University of Texas lands happened to coincide with the passage of Judge Bledsoe's bill, but the advent of Texas Tech and new PUF wealth signaled a shift in Texas away from independent colleges and universities. The message sent from Austin in the mid- 1920 's now seems clear: the state would support expanded higher education in all regions and would sustain its institutions with appropriations and the largess of a dedicated fund. This increased level of commitment did not mean that the independents necessarily lost students, although that happened in some cases, or that the independents lost endowment, although that may also have occurred. What had already begun in much of the U.S. came late to West Texas. As Jencks and Reisman explain it: The lag in subsidies for the private colleges has played an important part in the over-all development of the private sector. . . . the private colleges' income from philanthropy rose four times as fast as GNP between 1910 and 1964. But until the 1950's, private colleges allowed their enrollments to rise almost as fast as gifts. As a result, private colleges' real income £e£ student from endowment and current gifts rose only about 66 percent between 1910 and 1964. The public sector's real tax subsidy per student rose 110

about 120 percent in this same period. The private colleges' failure to attract subsidies comparable to those going to public institutions led to a lag in private instructional expenditures. In 1919-20 . . . the private sector received . . . nearly 70 percent more per student than the public sector. By 1929-30 the advantage was less than 50 percent. In 1949-50 the public institutions spent as much as private ones did.8

On the second point, Santa Rita No. 1 changed the way University of Texas and Texas A&M officials and members of the Legislature viewed funding, particularly for new construction, at the two institutions. Santa Rita No. 1 and the many producing wells which came after also had a salutary effect on the relationship between the Legislature and all the other four-year colleges which depended on the lawmakers for most of their funding needs, including new construction. Thus, the Santa Rita No. 1 drilling platform became a stage on which a complicated funding drama was about to unfold. Development of West Texas public colleges was inextricably linked to legislative appropriations; and appropriations were influenced, albeit subtly at first, by the PUF's metamorphosis. The irony in the drama is that what happened in long-neglected West Texas in May of 1923 had a profound effect on all public higher education in the state.

Sjencks and Reisman, Academic Revolution, p. 271. I Ill

The first act in this funding drama took place between 1923 and 1947. Through legislative fiat the University of Texas and Texas A&M secured their grip on the PUF. The PUF sideshow interested some educators and politicians but was obscured by the larger dramas of the period—the Great Depression and World War II. Within a year after World War II ended, Texas colleges and universities, like those in the other forty-seven states, found themselves participants, at times unprepared, in the greatest federal involvement in higher education since the Morrill Act. The World War II GI Bill brought a tremendous increase in student enrollment to virtually every post-secondary institution across the country. Texas college and university administrators, as well as elected state officials, recognized the need to construct more facilities to accommodate the burgeoning student population. The stage was set for the second act in the funding drama.

The Ad Valorem Tax Fund In 1947, at the first regular session of the Legislature after World War II, the Legislature passed a proposed amendment to Article VII of the state constitution. The amendment provided for the creation of a special fund for building construction at "designated I 112

institutions of higher learning."9 Revenue for the fund would come from a portion of the seven cents ad valorem tax (also called the state property tax) on each $100 property valuation. Such tax was permitted by a series of constitutional amendments spanning a fifty-year period. Originally, the seven cents ad valorem tax had been levied to pay pensions to Texas Confederate veterans and their widows. But as former Texas Governor Preston Smith, a member of the 1947 Legislature, noted, "We looked around and found out that in 1947, Texas had no living Confederates and only a thousand or so widows."10 The amendment saved two cents for the Confederate pension fund and gave the remaining five cents to the construction fund. The voters ratified the amendment in August 1947 at a special election, and money began flowing to the fund the following January. The ad valorem tax amendment represented a great boon to Texas higher education, but it also served as a splendid example of compromise politics and enlightened self-interest. Governor Smith's comments on the origin

^Texas, General and Special Laws, 50th Legislature, Regular sess., 1947, p. 1184. lOinterview with former Texas Governor Preston Smith, Lubbock Texas, 7 April 1983. Governor Smith served in both the Texas House and Senate and as lieutenant governor before being elected governor in 1968. 113

of the ad valorem tax fund explain why this is so. He recalled:

In 1945, when I was a state representative, I introduced a bill in the House which would have had the PUF shared among all the state colleges. I had some support, but the bill died in the Appropriations Committee. The University of Texas Regents and the A&M Board of Directors found out about my bill and were upset. In the 1947 Legislature, the Regents and the Directors lobbied to get money for their schools and at the same time lobbied for a fund for the other colleges. As a result we got the amendment passed.H Governor Smith, a longtime friend of Texas higher education, was very much in favor of a dedicated fund. He indicated that he did not believe that the colleges outside the PUF should have to engage in a biennial scramble for construction money. With the ad valorem tax fund, the senior colleges which existed in 1947 had the promise of money to secure comprehensive building programs. Funds raised by the ad valorem tax were apportioned among the fourteen designated institutions, four of which were in the Texas A&M or University systems. (Table 1 shows the ad valorem apportionment for the years 1948 to 1977.) The amendment provided that every ten years a reallocation of funds would be made based on average student enrollment. The governing boards of the designated institutions cou.ld issue bonds secured by their apportionment of the fund.

lllbid. ^^1 114

TABLE 1 PERCENTAGE PARTICIPATION IN AD VALOREM TAX FUND

1948- 1958- 1967- 1972 University 1957 1966 1971 1977

East Texas 8.1% 6.5% 4.0% 4.1% North Texas 12.6 17.0 11.0 10.6 Prairie View 5.3 * * Sam Houston 5.6 7.4 4.4 5.3 Southwest Texas 6.8 5.7 4.2 5.3 Stephen F. Austin 4.6 4.4 4.5 5.7 Sul Ross 2.2 2.3 1.0 0.9 Tarleton 5.7 * * Texas A&I 4.8 6.6 3.5 3.9 Texas Tech 16.5 21.1 13.4 12.2 Texas Women's Univ. 11.5 5.5 2.5 2.4 UT - Arlington 6.2 * 13.2 11.9 UT - El Paso 4.7 * * * West Texas 5.4 5.5 3.4 3.2 Lamar * 10.0 8.3 8.3 Texas Southern •k 7.9 3.1 2.9 Angelo State * * 2.1 2.2 Midwestern State * * 2.7 2.6 Pan American * * 2.6 2.9 University of Houston * * 16.1 15.0 *Not Participating

SOURCE: Matching Projected Resources to Estimated College Construction Finance Needs in Texas, by James W. McGrew, Executive Director (Austin: Texas Research League, 1976), p. 13. 115

The ad valorem tax amendment granted authority to Texas A&M and the University of Texas to issue bonds for $5,000,000 and $10,000,000, respectively, to support construction projects. The bonds were to be secured by PUF income. Meeting in 1955, the 54th Legislature also devoted some of its time to adjusting the higher education picture in Texas. A proposed constitutional amendment made several significant changes to the manner in which PUF and ad valorem tax monies could be used. The number of designated receipients of ad valorem tax funds was changed to twelve. Even though two institutions were added to the list, four in the Texas A&M and University of Texas systems were deleted for a net loss of two. The amendment required that the four institutions deleted from the ad valorem tax fund—Arlington, Tarleton, and Prairie View under Texas A&M and Texas Western under the University of Texas—were to receive support for construction from the PUF. The Legislature included two provisions in the proposed amendment to allow the PUF more flexibility. First, Texas A&M and the University of Texas were permitted to issue bonds in amounts up to twenty percent of their respective shares of the PUF. Second, the University Regents who managed all PUF income, were allowed greater latitude in the investments 116

which they could make with PUF money. The Regents could purchase corporate bonds and preferred and common stocks, assuming they exercised "the judgement and care" ordinarily displayed by persons of "prudence, discretion and intelligence."12 The Legislature did insist on retaining the right of approval on all construction projects on campuses in the Texas A&M and University of Texas systems. The amendment passed at the November 1956 general election.

A decade later, the Legislature once again asked the voters to bless another constitutional revamping of higher education. This time the ad valorem tax was raised to ten cents on $100 assessed property valuation. Arlington State College moved out of the Texas A&M System and into the University of Texas System, but lost PUF benefits. To compensate, the Legislature declared Arlington State, along with four newcomers (Table 1) to the state "system," eligible for ad valorem funds. The number of institutions benefitting from what had once been a Confederate Veteran pension fund jumped from twelve to seventeen. The amendment which accomplished all this oassed at a special election on 2 November 1965.

l^Texas, General and Special Laws, 55th Legislature, Regular sess., 1955, p. 1821.

^ 117

The flood of constitutional amendments effecting important changes in Texas higher education began subsiding somewhat after 1965. At the November 1968 general election, voters approved an amendment allowing the University of Texas System Regents to use PUF monies for additional types of investments. The amendment included guidelines for the Regents to follow in selecting these investments. In 1978 the state Attorney General's office reminded the beneficiaries of both the PUF and the ad valorem tax fund that all interest accruing to these funds must be used to retire outstanding bond obligations and to finance permanent improvements. Interest income remaining in the Available University Fund after debt service was, the Attorney General declared, subject to legislative appropriation. In practice, "legislative appropriation" meant that the Legislature simply appropriated the PUF income— the AUF—to Texas A&M and the University of Texas at each biennium. In recent years, the Legislative appropriation of the AUF has also included these words, "It is the intent of the Legislature that appropriations made from the Available University Fund be used solely for the purposes of establishing academic excellence."1^ in

l^Texas, Legislature, Text of Conference Committee Report, H.B. 656 (Budget), 67th Legislature, Regular 118

short, after debt service and expansion of physical facilities, the two universities were permitted to use AUF money for essentially any educational purpose pertaining to their respective campuses. For the state Fiscal Year 1981 (1 September 1980 to 31 August 1981) the University had $23,423,863 and A&M had $7,550,002 to spend after debt service and physical plant expansion.14 The University's proportionally greater amount may be accounted for in part by the fact that all money from surface leases on PUF lands goes to the University's share of the AUF. In Fiscal Years 81 and 82, this "non- divisible" income was almost five million dollars. The Legislature permits the University Regents to use that money for a variety of operating expenses. One of the most interesting ways in which the University uses the surface lease income is in matching private grants for the endowment of academic positions.15 while there are eleven academic institutions in the Texas A&M and University of Texas systems benefitting from the PUF,

sess., 1981, p. III-32. l^Texas, Legislature, Legislative Budget Board, "Permanent University Fund," May 13, 1982, Exhibit 3. l^Interview with Mr. Frank Graydon, Budget Director, University of Texas System, Austin, Texas, 27 July 1982. Mr. Graydon confirmed what was published in the state budget report previously cited. i 119

only the College Station campus and UT Austin may use PUF income for "academic excellence."16

Other Arrangements and a New Fund In a century of development and political machinations, Texas found itself with what might charitably be called a "unique" system for funding the various aspects of higher education in the state. By 1979, the PUF had been responsible for a prodigious amount of construction for over fifty years; the ad valorem tax fund had been doing such work for just over thirty years. The universities which received no money from either the PUF or the ad valorem tax fund managed to make other arrangements to fund campus construction projects.

Such arrangements included direct appropriations from general revenue and so-called "tuition bonds." These bonds, secured by tuition and fees, have been referred to by at least one non-profit social research organization as "gimmick bonds."17 This unflattering

l^Texas, Coordinating Board, Texas College and University System, Informing the Future; A Plan for Higher Education for the Eighties, January 1981, p. 29. l^Matching Projected Resources to Estimated College Construction Finance Needs in Texas, by James W McGrew, Executive Director (Austin: Texas Research League, 1976), p. 23.

\ 120 name stems from the fact that the issuance of such bonds rather subtly permits the amount of bonded indebtedness to exceed the state debt limit without a constitutional amendment. The statutory basis for using some tuition money to support bonded debt is found in a 1941 piece of legislation called the Skiles Act. This act permitted colleges "to use $5 from each enrolled student for each regular semester and $2.50 from each enrolled student for each summer term."18 However, when all tuition for any given period is used to secure bonds, it is not available to be applied to an instituiton's general operating expenses. As a result, the Legislature must appropriate more money from general revenue. In good economic times, this revenue may not be "missed." In hard times or when the electorate begins to seek tax relief through its elected representatives, tuition bonds may not "float." At the regular biennial session of the Legislature in 1979, State Representative Wayne Peveto introduced a bill which made property valuations uniform at 100% of assessed market value, but reduced the ad valorem tax to .0001<: per $100 valuation. The bill passed, and beginning in Fiscal Year 80, the state simply stopped collecting the tax altogether. Thus the seventeen

l^Texas, Education Code, sec. 55.17(d), p. 616. 121

institutions supported by the ad valorem tax fund found themselves in the same category as the nine which had no dedicated fund. Midwestern State University, an institution which had benefitted from the ad valorem tax fund since 1965, filed suit in 1980 in Austin claiming that the Legislature's action to reduce the tax was unconstitutional. Before the suit could come to trial. Governor Clements called a special session of the Legislature in May 1982. During the session, the Legislature drafted a proposed constitutional amendment repealing the ad valorem tax. The proposed amendment passed both houses and was placed on the ballot for consideration by the voters at the November 1982 general election. The voters approved the amendment, and the state again had only one dedicated fund for higher education. At the special session, the Legislators appropriated $151.4 million to be used by the institutions not covered by the PUF until another way could be devised to fund construction costs.

At the 1983 Regular Session, the Legislature approved a proposed constitutional amendment with two major provisions related to financing major repair and rehabilitation (MRR) and construction. The first provision gave authority for a designated fund to be I 122

financed from general revenues. The second provision legalized extending PUF benefits to all Texas A&M and University of Texas system institutions. Initially, the House and Senate disagreed over the amount to be appropriated each year for the new designated fund. Near the end of the regular session, the two houses compromised on a figure of $100 million to be appropriated each year until the fund reached two billion dollars. At that point, appropriations from general revenues would cease, but the legislators could change the fund level at five-year intervals. The proposed amendment was submitted to the voters at the November 1984 general election and was approved by an almost three-to-one margin.1^

The amendment, perhaps the longest in the history of the Constitution of 1876, authorizes the establishment of a fund to provide some monetary assistance beyond formula funding for the acquisition of land, construction or repair of facilities, or the accomplishment of other improvements in physical plants. Despite the complex and convoluted wording of the amendment, all of the degree- granting institutions in West Texas which are not in the

l^Mike Kingston, ed. Texas Almanac ^ 1986-1987, Sesquicentennial Edition (Dallas: The Dallas Morning News, 1985), p. 478. i 123

University of Texas System, are eligible to receive support.20 Universities in West Texas, other than UTEP and UTPB can take some consolation in the replacement of the ad valorem tax fund with the new higher education fund (or Capital Higher Education Fund—CHEF—as it was named at Texas Tech). The new fund should make it easier for all the eligible institutions to weather the state's economic woes and slashed budgets.

20Texas, Constitution, art. VII, sec. 17 and 18, as amended. The fund received its initial appropriation of $100,000,000 in the fiscal year beginning 1 September 1985.

^ CHAPTER VI VITAL FORCES

The act creating the Texas Technological College required the institution to be west of the 98th meridian and north of the 29th parallel. That area encompasses well over 100,000 square miles, with the stroke of Governor Neffs pen on SB 103, the state defined the often amorphous entity of West Texas. The boundaries made the region slightly larger than the state of Wyoming.

The latest edition of the Random House unabridged dictionary defines regionalism in government as "the principle or system of dividing a city, state, etc., into separate administrative regions." For literature, the same dictionary holds that regionalism is "the theory or practice of emphasizing the regional characteristics of locale or setting ... ."1 As much as any region of Texas, West Texas is perhaps a nearly perfect embodiment of both definitions of regionalism. Regionalism may also be feelings, a consciousness of and loyalty to a distinct area, usually characterized by a common culture.

iThe Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, Inc., 1987).

124 125

background, or interest. West Texas has at times been obsessed, or at best preoccupied, with such feelings. Professor Holden made what is perhaps the most insightful comment of all about West Texas regionalism when he wrote in Alkali Trails that "the Texas Technological College stands today as a living monument to the existence of West Texas self-consciousness."2

Regionalism Holden's astute comment offers a suitable point of departure from which to launch a final analysis of the development of higher education in West Texas. Having won the Texas Technological College, West Texans could claim victory in the battle for a college and in the struggle to gain the attention of the Texas media and the politicians in Austin. West Texans had not yet won the war for full recognition; that campaign would continue for a number of years. One example of West Texas' poor step-child relationship with the rest of Texas is revealed in remarks by Newton Harrell, former member of the Board of Regents for the state teachers colleges. Mr. Harrell, who owns a ranch near Canyon, Texas, served for twelve years (1942-1954) on the board governing these colleges: West Texas, Sul Ross, East Texas, Stephen F.

2Holden, Alkali Trails, p. 126

^1 126

Austin, Southwest Texas, and Sam Houston. He also sat as president for two of his twelve years on the board. "There wasn't anybody this side of Dallas but me on the board," Harrell jokingly complained. "I could never get any of the rest of the board members to come out to West Texas. . . . The politics of Texas are in central and east Texas. They [politicians in central and east Texas] didn't pay any attention to West Texas."3 Harrell told of the difficulty in replacing Dr. Hill when the venerable president of West Texas State decided to retire. Unable to get the other board members interested in conducting interviews, Harrell took it upon himself to select Dr. James P. Cornett who was a dean at Baylor University. At a board meeting in Austin, Harrell announced his choice for president of West Texas State. Walter Woodul, a former lieutenant governor of Texas and president of the board, left the meeting to phone former governor Pat Neff who was president of Baylor. Harrell recalled that while the president was gone, one board member mentioned that he knew of a man he wanted Harrell to interview. Another board member ended any further discussion by declaring that Harrell knew who he wanted

^Interview with Newton Harrell by Claire Kuehn, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas, 23 January 1986. ii 127

for West Texas State and suggested that the board approve Dr. Cornett. They did.4

Mr. Marshall Formby, who had been on the Texas Tech Board of Directors and Board of Regents as well as the Coordinating Board, lamented the fact that politics in Texas fostered in young people the "idea of going away from West Texas" for education.5 Formby was a Texas Tech board member when that institution received legislative authorization for a medical school. Formby said he also wanted a school of veterinary medicine for Texas Tech, but the Legislature refused to fund it. Revealing a West Texas bias regarding the veterinary school at Texas A&M, Formby insisted that veterinarians graduating from A&M "wouldn't work with cattle, but went to Houston to open dog and cat hospitals."^ Formby, perhaps the personification of West Texas self- consciousness, also observed that when the time came for a name change, "Texas A&M College," without fanfare or debate, became "Texas A&M University." The change of "Texas Technological College" to "Texas Tech University" prompted an argument of West Texas proportions. Formby

4lbid. ^Interview with Marshall Formby by David Murrah, Plainview, Texas, 12 May 1976. 6ibid. i 128

felt it important to keep the distinct name—the one with which the institution had been christened—and the "Double T" symbol.7 To him, it was a simple enough matter to shorten the "Technological" to "Tech" and replace "college" with "university" in the institution's name. Formby could neither accept nor understand a name change merely for the sake of improving the image of Texas Tech in the state or elsewhere in the nation. Formby and others of like mind were undoubtedly pleased about retaining their "Double T" when the Legislature did authorize the name "Texas Tech University" in 1969. Saving the "Double T" reveals something about the culture of West Texas and, in a small way, explains how that culture, influenced by the geography of the region, dealt with the development of higher education. Rushing and Nail maintained that Texas Tech was a "people's college" established through a "grass roots" movement, with the idea that it would be "big and broad enough to become anything that might be needed by the people it was designed to serve."^ Changing the name of Texas Tech to "Texas State University" (one recommendation), or any other more academically appropriate name, would be, as

^ibid. ^Rushing and Nail, Evolution of a University, p. 24. i 129

Formby implied, tatamount to turning one's back on one's heritage. The proponents for name change evidently failed to perform a basic task when confronted with the brand of regionalism found in West Texas. That task was to look at the land and the people there and attempt to discover what was true about those people. As Henry Nash Smith wrote, "The culture of Texas must depend finally on one thing: the ability of Texans to relate themselves to their specific environment."^ The West Texans of the first three decades of the 1900's "related themselves" to the frontier that had only very recently "officially" disappeared. Indeed, West Texas qualified as a portion of the final frontier of the continental United States which Turner dealt with in his treatise on The Significance of the Frontier in American History. In 1890 the population in the Panhandle and most of the remainder of West Texas was sparse, but homesteading Anglo-Americans controlled the region. In the forty years between the 1890 census and completion of the initial development of higher education in West Texas, the pioneering spirit and the frontier mentality directly touched three generations and influenced those that came after. Many of the men and women who settled in West

^Henry Nash Smith, "Culture," Southwest Review 6 (Winter 1928), p. 253. 130

Texas in the 1880's and 1890's had, in the 1870's, faced Indian raids elsewhere in Texas and contended with the barrier to settlement represented by the formidable Commanches and Kiowas. The children of those settlers who came at or just before the turn of the century were among those who led the struggles in the Legislature for "equal" educational opportunity for West Texas. Finally, it was the children of those who fought in Austin for the colleges that were among the first beneficiaries of the victories.

T.R. Fehrenbach observed that in West Texas "a whole population tried to advance in the teeth of nature and nature defeated them." Fehrenbach retreated a bit from that judgement by acknowledging that "the land did not so much conquer Texans as it shaped them."10 Berl Huffman, a former coach at Texas Tech, agreed with Fehrenbach's assessment. Huffman came to West Texas in the late 1920's, and he characterized the people he came to know as "more on the go, more dynamic." He attributed West Texans' active nature to the fact that most of them had "come in from elsewhere" and settled in a "big arid land unfit for cultivation, almost unfit for habitation.

IOT.R. Fehrenbach, Seven Keys to Texas (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1983), pp. 42-43. i 131

but very invigorating."H Clifford B. Jones, whose titles included ranch manager, president of the West Texas Chamber of Commerce, and president of Texas Tech, worried that West Texans might be too strident. He suggested that the West Texas Chamber of Commerce needed to be more involved in business promotions and less in politics.12 In light of an article in an early issue of West Texas Today, Jones' comment appeared to be justified. West Texas Today, official publication of the West Texas Chamber of Commerce, proclaimed: Schools, colleges, academies, all institutions of learning in western Texas have been carefully safeguarded and watched after by the West Texas Chamber of Commerce. The history of the recognized colleges have interwoven with them the history of efforts on the part of the regional organization of the West to securre adegadequati e appropriations and care by the s tate.l^ The same magazine article unselfconsciously referred to Texas Technological College as "a monument to the West Texas Chamber of Commerce." For about ten years—1918 to 1928—the West Texas Chamber of Commerce and its West Texas Today magazine did

lllnterview with Berl Huffman by Perry McWilliams, Lubbock, Texas, 15 August 1971. 12interview with Dr. Clifford B. Jones by David B. Gracy, II, Lubbock, Texas, 18 May 1970. 13"Educational Aims," West Texas Today, July 1927, p. 15. I 132

indeed bear testimony to what Chamber officials perceived to be the educational needs of West Texas. At times. West Texas Today undoubtedly expressed the concerns of many West Texans that the state was neglecting them. While the issue of neglect seemed valid to many, the Chamber's zealous boosterism leaves a question: Was the mixing of business and politics detrimental to the planned development of public higher education in West Texas? The answer is: Quite likely. Chambers of commerce and other similar organizations consider a college to be "good business" for a community. That is precisely why chambers of commerce, by their very nature, may be prone to cross the line between educational considerations for establishing an institution and the potential advantage of an institution to the business community and thus to community development. Most Texas colleges and universities, public and independent, are in small cities or began their existence in such locales. In small communities the impact of student spending, institutional payrolls, procurement of goods and services, and campus construction projects is felt by a great majority of the businesses of the area. This is particularly true for West Texas. With the exception of UTEP in El Paso, all of the colleges and universities of

;^ 133

the region were established in small cities which even in the late 1980's do not exceed 200,000 population. Once the West Texas Chamber of Commerce and other interested parties secured Texas Tech for the region, further development of higher education there proceeded at a distinctly slower pace. Although West Texas Today continued to devote one issue each year to education, the West Texas Chamber of Commerce turned its attention to concerns other than colleges and universities. For example, the August 1930 issue of West Texas Today complained bitterly of the geography textbooks used by school children in Texas and elsewhere in the U.S. This text, according to the magazine's unnamed writer, falsely represented West Texas to impressionable youngsters by dwelling on the bad weather and scarce rainfall in the region.14 The book contained a section which referred to West Texas as an "arid inter-mountain plateau" with long, severe winters. "Agriculture," the book concluded, "was economically feasible only east of the 100th meridian." The authors of the geography text may have been guilty of exaggeration or questionable terminology for West Texas topography (i.e., "intermountain plateau"). Criticism of a textbook, however, does not compare to mounting a major

14"Education in West Texas," West Texas Today August 1930, p. 12. 134

campaign to establish a college. The Chamber had lost some of its booster spirit.

West Texas Matures In the forty years separating the opening of Texas Technological College and the first term for Angelo State as a four-year college. West Texas kept its self- consciousness to itself. In this period, the community junior college, a uniquely American, institution made its debut in the region.15 By the mid-1970's, there were ten public community colleges in West Texas, only two of which (Amarillo and Clarendon) had been established prior to World War II. There were no independent community junior colleges in West Texas after Lubbock Christian College acquired four-year status. While an extensive discussion of community college development has not been a major part of this study, omission was not intended to diminish the role of these institutions. Community colleges have provided and are continuing to provide

l^Authors of scholarly works on post-secondary education refer to these institutions variously as "community colleges," "junior colleges," "community junior colleges," and "two-year colleges." See James W. Thornton, The Community Junior College (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1966), p. 17; and Arthur Levine, The Undergraduate Curriculum (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1981) , p. 519. "Community junior college" is perhaps the most definitive title, "community college" the most popular. The latter term will be used hereafter in this study. I 135

valuable educational services to their communities. The very existence of community colleges in Laredo and in both Midland and Odessa encouraged and even supplied a modicum of justification for the establishment of upper- division Laredo State University and UTPB. San Angelo College laid the foundation for Angelo State. For the most part, the West Texas community colleges were late arrivals. These colleges appeared on the higher education scene as part of a larger movement in the state and throughout the United States. The ascendence of the community college star had less to do with geography than with social changes across the U.S. in the second half of the twentieth century. In Thornton's words: Most of the people who work to establish, pay for, and attend the community junior colleges have never heard of the philosophers of the movement. Instead they see a pressing and immediate need in their own local community for educational opportunities which are not afforded by their secondary schools or by available colleges or universities. They hear that a nearby community or state has solved similar problems by establishing a junior college. So they investigate, become convinced, and initiate appropriate action to establish such a college for their community.i^ On the West Texas frontier, precise rules--Thornton's "appropriate action"—for establishing institutions of

16james W. Thornton, Jr., tlie Community Junior College, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964), p. 19. I 136 higher education were conspicuously absent. John Thelin, in reviewing the Rushing and Nail history of Texas Tech and another work on the early years of Southern Methodist University, concluded that: SMU's private endowment and Texas Tech's public funding are less important than the over-riding social historical fact that both acted as and were intended to be community colleges. Deference to and enthusiastic acceptance of local customs, beliefs, and religion are presented as a necessary and natural course for a campus which aspired to civic primacy and support. ... It is the Texas-style 'booster college' which has been the critical unit for higher education in that state.1^ Thelin's assessment of Texas booster colleges as community colleges in the broadest possible sense complements the Jencks and Reisman theory of geographic isolation being the most common reason for founding a college in the U.S. The vastness of West Texas served to focus the intensity of this sense of community much as a magnifying glass gathers the rays of the sun into a single small spot capable of starting a fire. The men and women who came to West Texas and settled left behind the "establishment." They sought colleges they could call their own, colleges with the same sense of community they had developed. Rushing and Nail described the expectations of Lubbockites for Texas Technological

l^Thelin, "Looking for the Lone Star Legacy," p. 223. 137

College in this fashion: "They wanted a college in which the faculty would take on the protective coloration of the environment."18

That sense of community as it applied to the development of higher education in West Texas survived internal competion as well as outside pressures and critics. The fact that thirty-seven communities in West Texas wanted the Texas Technological College testifies to the competitiveness of the region. Boerne in the southmost part of the stipulated area is only seventy- five miles southwest of Austin and probably would not have been chosen regardless of what attributes it might have possessed. Big Spring, Snyder, and Sweetwater, however, are all closer to the center of the area, and none of these cities got the nod from the Locating Board. In an interview many years later. Professor Holden implied that State Representative R.M. Chitwood of Sweetwater was disappointed that the city he represented did not get the college.1^ Both Holden and W. Hamilton Wright, the reporter, indicated Judge Bledsoe wrote the Texas Technological College bill in such a way only

l^Rushing and Nail, Evolution of a University, p. 31. lllnterview with W.C. Holden by Susie Pearce, Lubbock, Texas, 4 October 1976. 138

Lubbock would meet all the qualifications for the site of the college. Rushing and Nail steadfastly refused to accept any such allegations and maintained that Lubbock won the college with the integrity of the Locating Board still intact.20

Dr. Hill of West Texas State recalled another example of internal competion. According to Hill, Dr. Horn, first president of Texas Tech, announced prior to Tech's opening in 1925 that it would have "no Department of Education and no education courses." Hill noted, however, that Horn yielded to the pressures to make Tech a "major institution." As Hill said, "when the college opened in 1925, there stood the Department of Education in full uniform. ... In less than ten years Tech was boasting a School of Education larger than the Teachers College at Canyon."21 As for "slings and arrows" from without, Marshall Pennington remembered a comment made at a Texas Western College board meeting in the late 1960's. Pennington, who was the business manager and assistant to the president of the college, said that the board members were discussing the impending name change for all

20Rushing and Nail, Evolution of^ _a University, pp, 24-25. 2lHill, One Man's Faith, p. 207. 139 institutions in the University of Texas System. Judge Dudley K. Woodward, who was board chairman and also a graduate of UT Austin, declared to the board that "no little upstart school like that should have the name 'University of Texas' bestowed on it."22 During the earliest days of Sul Ross State, President Morelock, spoke of the struggle to keep Sul Ross open and in Alpine. In the fall of 1986, The Texas Select Committee on Higher Education met to consider ways of saving money in the funding of colleges and universities in financially troubled Texas. The committee, chaired by Larry Temple, who is also chairman of the state's Coordinating Board, considered the cost- saving measure of closing Sul Ross. To protest any such action, businesses and civic groups in Alpine mounted a letter-writing campaign and a "march on Austin." Students and former students of Sul Ross, though somewhat slower than the people of Alpine to join the campaign, also added their voices to the chorus of complaints. The president of Sul Ross, Jack W. Humphries, reasoned that "the uproar occurred because the Alpine area in West Texas lacks another public college and is isolated from

22interview with Marshall Pennington by David Murrah, Lubbock, Texas, 18 December 1974. 140 the more populous parts of the state which have many colleges and universities."23

Turner and Webb Revisited But the sense of community, no matter how intense it may have been or may still be, does not by itself account for development of higher education in West Texas. Jerome Steffen argued that Plains settlers' economic, political, and social views were already shaped and merely transported intact to a new environment. The settlers overcame the environment by technological advances among which were the railroad, the telegraph, barbed wire and the windmill. (Webb would have included Mr. Samuel Colt's revolver.) Settlers, Steffen suggested, became part of the national economy and did not need to adapt to environmental conditions. In Steffens' view the individuals who occupied West Texas and other lands in the Plains states could best be characterized as problem solvers "who attempted to gain maximum political and economic success while maintaining intellectual and social stability." He added, "The physical and social environment that surrounded

23scott Jaschik, "Citizens' Campaigns Are Foiling State Plans to Shut Down or Merge Public Colleges," The Chronicle of Higher Education 33 (24 June 1987), p. 20. 141

westerners determined in large part the range of their problem solving capabilities."24

Terry G. Jordan, a scholar who has studied the historical geography of Texas, maintained in a recent work that the pattern of settlement in Texas and subsequent development clearly showed that the Anglo- American settlers did not regard grasslands or prairies as hostile or forbidding. As proof, Jordan pointed to the fact that patches of prairie land, abundant in East Texas were considered desirable by all settlers, regardless of their economic status. In Jordan's judgement, the presence of prairies with nearby woods was responsible in large measure for guiding settlement in the eastern part of Texas. Using this line of reasoning, Jordan concluded: Similarly pioneers in the grasslands of western Texas a generation or two later almost always settled by groves of timber or galeria forests. Consequently, it was the latecomers who settled either the closed forests where no prairies were present, or the open grass lands, devoid of timber. Not one single contemporary record of any kind was found that suggested anti-prairie sentiment on the part of Texas pioneers, and it is quite incorrect to view the southern frontiersman as a prairie-avoider.25

24jerome 0. Steffen, Comparative Frontiers: A Proposal for Studying the American West (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), pp. xvi-xvii. 25Terry G. Jordan, "Vegetational Perception and Choice of Settlement Site in Frontier Texas," in Pattern and Process; Research in Historical Geography, ed. Ralph E. Ehrenburg (Washington, D.C: Howard University Press, 142

The analyses of Steffen and Jordan do not apply directly to the subject of this study in that neither mentioned educational institutions. Their comments, however, do serve a useful purpose in this summary. First, Steffen and Jordan joined a long line of historians and historical geographers before them who, with critical eyes, probed the work of Turner and Webb on the development of the frontier in the U.S. Secondly, they fell into the same trap which has lured other critics. The two newcomers were so anxious to correct the generalizations of Turner and Webb that they seemed "to deny that the frontier had any perceptable effect" on the settlers and their institutions.26 Lastly, they failed to see, or perhaps to acknowledge, that implicit in the writings of both Turner and Webb was the belief that the frontier was a geographical location and a social process. Operating alone and in concert, these forces had a clearly discernable effect on the development of higher education in West Texas. The intertwining of these forces created a type of social psychology—

1975), p. 255. 26Robert F. Riegal, "Current Ideas on the Significance of the Frontier," in The American Past: conflicting interpretations of the Great Issues, Sidney Fine and Gerald S. Brown, ed., 4th ed. (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1976), p. iU4.

.^ 143

Holden's "self-consciousness" or possibly a "self- awareness. "

In 1876 Texas made a constitutional and, by all evidence, a moral commitment to higher education. As has been mentioned, this commitment carried with it a certain inevitability that public higher education would eventually reach West Texas. But it was the social psychology of the West Texas frontier which hastened the process. It was the frontier against the settled regions, the new contending with the old, the politically weak against the powerful. That mind-set or "frontier mentality" brought higher education, public and independent, to the region under generally unfavorable conditions. Colleges had no abundance of money to hire faculty; only a few high schools had been opened to prepare students; and there was a dearth of cultural or economic opportunities suited to the kinds of graduates the institutions (with the exception of the teachers colleges) hoped to produce. In the face of these problems, local boosters and politicians insisted that West Texas was a region populated by God-fearing, tax- paying citizens clamoring for tangible recognition in the form of colleges. Frontier times called for action, not deliberation and planning. 144

Planning and Coordination Nearing the last decade of the twentieth century, the emphasis for all of Texas higher education is on planning and missions. The Coordinating Board requires from colleges and universities detailed plans for "new construction, renovation projects, and land acquisition," with consideration, not necessarily approval, given to new construction "clearly justified as critical to the role and scope" of the respective institutions.27 The Board also emphasizes the need for all institutions to develop mission statements and submit them for approval. The Board's rationale leaves little room for debate: This on-going effort of establishing mission statements will aid the Board in evaluating program proposals from a statewide perspective and will assist schools in concentrating their resources to maintain quality programs.28 Even with no knowledge of the historical background of the development of higher education in West Texas or elsewhere in the state, one may safely conclude from the foregoing Coordinating Board report that Texas is moving toward stricter statewide control of its entire post-secondary effort. Inexorable change, with all its complexities, has produced this control. For Texas,

27Texas, Coordinating Board, 1986 Annual Report, p. 8. 28ibid., p. 12. I 145 particularly West Texas, this change is laced with no small amount of irony. West Texas exemplified an every- region-or-locality-for-itself approach to development in Texas higher education. There was no plan, no structure. Now, the pendulum has swung to detailed planning and, for Texas, a well-defined structure as seen in the changing mission statements of institutions. In light of the current status of this evolutionary process, one could be inclined to regard what happened in West Texas as indulgent, unenlightened, or at best a quaint anomoly of life on the frontier. One might ask, "Had some semblance of statewide planning and coordination existed eighty years ago, would today's opportunities in West Texas for a college education be any better?" Probably not, as the constitutional alignment in Texas—a powerful legislature and a weak executive branch—served to fuel the fires of West Texans' frontier spirit and attendant regional boosterism. Any statewide coordination in the first fifty years after Reconstruction ended would very likely have been brushed aside as a nuisance, a minor impedance in the push to conquer the frontier and promote civilization and prosperity. There remains one ancillary question to that of opportunities for a college education in West Texas. Given that only a few of the present baccalaureat 146

degree-granting institutions were originally part of anything remotely resembling a plan, was it merely chance rather than social psychology that produced the number of institutions that do exist in West Texas? There is a vagueness and ambiguity attached to "social psychology" as a reason for the establishment of anything as real and as expensive as a college or university. It is easier to blame chance or the questionable theory of geographical determinism, both of which have definitions. Evidence discussed in this study and in many other sources rules out chance except as chance enters into the selection of the exact site for an institution already authorized by state statute. Neither Turner nor Webb believed that geography alone explained all of American civilization's response to its native land. Both historians perhaps tended to oversimplify the influence of groups of people or technological improvements. Turner "pictured an orderly procession—fur trappers, cattlemen, miners, pioneer farmers, and equipped farmers—with each group playing its part in the transmutation of a wilderness into a civilization."29 Webb seemed inclined to give an inordinate amount of credit to the windmill, Colt

29Ray Allen Billington, "How the Frontier Shaped American Character" in Fine and Brown, ed., American Past, p. 109. i 147

revolver, and barbed wire. He also once indicated that he appreciated the "logic" of geographical determinism.30 But Webb always maintained that his first work. The Great Plains, represented his best effort to portray "the relationship between an environment and the civilization resting upon it."31 Turner also emphasized environmental influences, but not to the exclusion of other factors. As Billington conceded, "... the frontier hypothesis remains one essential—albeit not the only one—for interpreting American history."^2 m that same vein, Barzun and Graff cited Turner's work as one of the few examples of American historiography that has generated a strong thesis. Finally, Larry McMurtry observed that Webb was "shrewd enough to locate, while young, a crucial subject: the effect of the frontier on Western civilization."^3 He declared Webb to be as unsentimental about the West as any one writer from the West has been and judged The Great Frontier as "probably the only book

30Nechah Stewart Furman, "He Cast a Long Shadow: A Study of the Life and Impact of Walter Prescott Webb" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of New Mexico, 1975), p. 73. 31ibid., p. 72. 32Billington, "American Character," in Fine and Brown, p. 109. 33]yicMurtry, Narrow Grave, p. 39. ki 148 by a Texan that could with any accuracy be called major."34

This study has not been about geographical determinism any more than were the writings and speeches of Turner and Webb. People obviously still interact with their environment and are influenced by it, but most of the conditions which contributed to the development of higher education in West Texas have disappeared. The frontier mentality, once associated with vigor and progress, may now be an obstacle to planning and coordination. Since World War II, many colleges in the U.S. established on local cultural or ideological foundations have evolved into universities with national outlooks. Fortunately for higher education in West Texas, that which is good about localism has not yielded entirely to nationalism. The institutions in West Texas still respond to local needs and still draw ninety percent or more of their enrollment from men and women classified as Texas residents.^^ statistics vary from institution to institution, but past records indicate that the great majority of students in West Texas colleges and universities reside within 200 miles of the

34ibid. 35Texas, Coordinating Board, Statistical Supplement, 1981 Annual Report, pp. 60-64. 149 institution they attend.36 ^ven with the mobility common in today's society, the distance from El Paso or Lubbock or Alpine, from Dalhart or Van Horn or Seminole to Austin remains unchanged. For all the boosterism, lack of planning, and sometimes questionable vision accompanying its development, higher education is available to West Texans. Availability is a distinct advantage for all the traditional college-age people who, for a variety of economic and social reasons, elect to remain near their homes while pursuing education beyond high school. And that availability is particularly supportive of the increasing number of non-traditional students at most campuses. Such students are tied to jobs and family and are invariably serious about college work once they make the decision to cross the threshold of the institution. Both groups, and their successors, may be mildly amused at the eccentricities and peculiarities of their forebears. They may take little notice of their environment because fast-food and television have done much to give America a bleary sameness. But if these

36Texas, Commission on Higher Education, Public

v^rt*-:/^^^*^*- /~\ "T T-nca £3nT~rii iiiit-«iii_ i.j_vc=i^a A«v/vf *n^-*.%-.s.* ^^ ^ ^-w-^r.^ .*.A.V,^1LI the college. 150

beneficiaries of the vital forces interacting in West Texas do pause to reflect on what they have, one can only hope that they will be grateful for the opportunities they inherited through the efforts of a dynamic region and a generous state.

^ SOURCES CONSULTED

Primary Sources Government Papers and Official Documents Gammel, H.P.N. Laws of Texas 1822-1897. Austin: The Gammel Book Company, 1898. The Gammel work provides the researcher with- information on legislation dating back to the time of Mexican rule. It is the single best source for laws passed during the days of the Republic of Texas. State V. Hatcher. Vol. 281-281. Southwestern Reporter. Texas. Comptroller of Public Accounts. The High Finance of Higher Education: A Special Financial Report, by Bob Bullock. March 1985. State Controller Bob Bullock deals with the issue of university interest income from accounts over which the state has nocontrol. Texas. Constitution. Texas. Coordinating Board, Texas College and University System. Informing the Future: A Plan for Higher Education for the Eighties. January 1981. Most of the recommendations made in this publication have come to pass as the decade of the 80's draws to a close. Texas. Coordinating Board, Texas College and University System. Texas Higher Education in Transition. October 1978. Texas. Coordinating Board, Texas College and University System. Working Papers. January 1981. This companion to Informing the Future contains contributions from prominent educators relating to the development of higher education in Texas. Texas. Department of Highways and Public Transportation. Texas Travel Handbook. 1985. Texas. General and Special Laws. 50th Legislature, Regular sess., 1947.

151 152

Texas. General and Special Laws. 54th Legislature, Regular sess., 1955.

Texas. House of Representatives. Journal. 31st Legislature, Regular sess., 1909. Texas. House of Representatives. Journal. 35th Legislature, Regular sess., 1917. Texas. House of Representatives. Journal. 38th Legislature, Regular sess., 1923. Texas. House of Representatives. Journal. 51st Legislature, Regular sess., 1949. Texas. Legislature. Legislative Budget Board. "A Brief History of the Seventeen Universities Participating in the Ad Valorem Tax Fund." undated. Texas. Legislature. Legislative Budget Board. Working papers, 1982. Texas. Legislature. Texas Educational Survey Commisison. Higher Education, by D.L. Coffman, et al. Vol. 6, Texas Educational Survey Report, 1925. This volume as well as other volumes in the Survey Commission report provide valuable insight into the status of Texas education, top to bottom, in the mid- 1920's. Texas. Legislature. Text of Conference Committee Report, H.B. 656 (Budget). 67th Legislature, Regular sess., TWSl. Texas. Senate. Journal. 33rd Legislature, Regular sess., 1913. Texas. Senate. Special Committee on Higher Education Financing in Texas. Final Report to 67th Legislature, 13 January 1981. The special committee was created in the 66th Legislature in 1979 and delivered its report on facility financing, formula funding, financial administration and declining enrollments to the 67th Legislature in January 1981. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890: Part I, Population. Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1892. 153

Qther Published Primary Sources

Benedict, H.Y., ed. A Source Book Relating to the History of tlie University ^ Texas. Austin: UniviTsTty of Texas, 1917. Benedict's volume is the definitive work for the constitutional and legislative beginnings of the University of Texas and, indeed, all higher education in the state.

Dunbar, Rowland, ed. Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches. Jackson, Miss.: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923. Eby, Frederick, ed. Education in Texas Source Materials. Austin: University of Texas, 1918. Eby's compilation of official documents and other material is the bible for research into nineteenth- century Texas education. Epenshade, Edward B., Jr. and Morrison, Joel L., eds. Goode's World Atlas. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1974. Gulick, Charles Adams, Jr., ed. The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Vol. II. Austin: A.C. Baldwin & Sons, Printers, 1922. Lamar's writings give any researcher a glimpse of life and politics in the Republic of Texas. Hill, Joseph A. One Man's Faith: Selected Speeches. Canyon: West Texas State College Press, 1954. Dr. Hill's speeches offer a refreshing and frank appraisal of Texas and Texans, particularly of the land and people in the Panhandle. Matching Projected Resources to Estimated College Construction Finance Needs in Texas. By James W. McGrew, Executive Director. Austin: Texas Research League, 1976. Ten years before the drop in oil prices hit Texas, the Texas Research League promoted a more equitable distribution of funding of construction requirements in public universities. The arguments put forth in this document are sound and apparently well researched. 154

Richardson, J.D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897. 10 vols. AHdFew Jackson. "Second Annual Message," 1830. Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1896-99. Texas Research League. "Bulletin on Texas State Finance." Bulletin No. 6, March 15, 1983. Another excellent TRL document. Wright, Hamilton. "The Winning of the West Texas College." Report presented to the Executive Board Meeting of the West Texas Chamber of Commerce at Amarillo, 21 June 1926.

Unpublished Material Bledsoe, Mrs. William H. Southwest Collection, Lubbock, Texas. Interview by Bill J. Henderson, August 1964. This interview with Mrs. Bledsoe stands as a splendid argument for the Southwest Collection's pursuit of oral history. Furman, Nechah Stewart. "He Cast a Long Shadow: A Study of the Life and Impact of Walter Prescott Webb." Ph.D. dissertation. University of New Mexico, 1975. Furman's obvious admiration for Webb does not obscure a balanced, scholarly treatment of the man and his work. Gibbs, Clifford L. "The Establishment of Texas Technological College." Master's thesis, Texas Technological College, 1939. Gibbs wrote his thesis at a time when many of the parties to the founding of Texas Tech were still living. Thus, his thesis has been the source of material for other histories of Tech including that of Rushing and Nail. Graydon, Frank. University of Texas System, Austin, Texas. Interview, 27 July 1982. Mr. Graydon's experience in state government and with the University of Texas, particularly in the area of financing higher education, made him an especially valuable source. 155

Hardt, Annanell. "The Bi-Cultural Heritage of Texas." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Texas at Austin, Although this paper does not address hiaher education to any extent, it does contain an%xcellent treatment of the melting of cultures in Texas. Harrell, Newton. Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas. Interview by Clair Kuehn, Archivist, 23 January 1986. A delightful person, Mr. Harrell provided in this excellent interview some of the greatest insights possible on the development of higher education in West Texas.

Holden, W.C. Southwest Collection, Lubbock, Texas. Interview by Susie Pearce, 4 October 1976. Jones, Clifford B. Southwest Collection, Lubbock, Texas. Interview by David B. Gracy, II, 18 May 1970. Keel, Thomas. Legislative Budget Board, Austin, Texas. Interview, 26 July 1982. Mr. Keel, who retired not long after this interview, possessed a great deal of knowlege about the appropriations and budget process in the Texas Legislature. Lewis, Tim. Governor's Budget Office, Austin, Texas. Interview, 27 July 1982. Panhandle-Plains Museum Archives. Lowes, V.R. Correspondence from Alumnae, 1980-84. "An Informal History of West Texas State University." 1984. Smith, Preston. Former governor of Texas, Lubbock, Texas. Interview, 7 April 1983. The statue of Governor Smith, recently erected on the South side of the Texas Tech Administration Building, stands as mute testimony to his support of Texas higher education in general and of Texas Tech in particular. 156

Waddell, F.J. "A Historical Review of the Coordination of Higher Education in Texas." Ph.D. dissertation. North Texas State University, 1972. Waddell's work remains as one of the best reservoirs of information about the political infighting related to the Texas Commission on Higher Education and its successor organization. The Coordinating Board.

Webb, William A. Coordinating Board, Texas College and University System, Austin, Texas. Interview, 26 July 1982.

Secondary Sources \ Books Andrews, Ruth Horn. The First Thirty Years: A History of Texas Technological College, 1925-1955. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1956. Barzun, Jacques and Graff, Henry F. The Modern Researcher. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1977. One who researches historical material can not afford to be without this superbly written book. Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. Billington, who in the second half of the twentieth century is probably the leading expert on the Turner thesis, is himself an astute historian and an engaging writer. . The Genesis of the Frontier Thesis. San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1971. Brickman, William W. Research in Educational History. New York: New York University Bookstore, 1949. A work calculated to help keep writers of educational history on the right paths. Brubacher, John S. and Rudy, Willis. Higher Education in Transition, An American History: 1636-1956. New YorkT Harper & Row, Publishers, 1958. One of a few complete treatments of U.S. higher education history. 157

Burnette, 0. Lawrence, Jr., ed. Wisconsin Witness to Frederick Jackson Turner. Madison: Wisconsin State Historical Society, 1961.

Casey, Clifford B. Sul Ross State University: The Cultural Center of Trans-Pecos Texas. Seagraves, Tex.: Pioneer Book Publisher, 1976. Davis, J. William and Wright, Ruth Cowart. Texas: Political Practice and Public Policy, 3rd ed. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1982. An excellent source of information about Texas government, especially the state Constitution. Dawson, Irving, et al. The Impact of the Texas Constitution on Education. Houston: Institute for Urban Studies, 1973. A compact work covering the current education system in Texas from public schools to public universities. Eby, Frederick. The Development of Education in Texas. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1925. This work is the excellent narrative companion to Eby's Source Materials. Edwards, Everett E. The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938. This may be considered primary source material for Turner's work. Edwards compiled the writings and made commentary. Ehrenberg, Ralph E., ed. Pattern and Process: Research in Historical Geography. Washington, D.C: Howard University Press, 1975. As the name implies, this work represents an important collection of guidelines for research in historical geography. Evans, C.E. The Story of Texas Schools. Austin: The Steck Company, 1955. This publication is third in line behind the works of Eby and Benedict as resource material for all of Texas education. Featherstone, Solon R. The Romance of Hardin-Simmons University. Abilene, Tex.: The Book Store, 1968. 158

Fehrenbach, T.R. Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans. New York: MacMillan and Company, 1968. Fehrenbach's look at Texas is very likely one of the most balanced treatments of a state sometimes noted for exaggeration and braggadocio. Fergusson, Erna. Out Southwest. New York: Alfred Knopf Co., 1940. Fine, Sidney and Brown, Gerald S., eds. The American Past—Conflicting Interpretations of the Great Issues, 4th ed. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1976. Fine and Brown include assessments of Turner's frontier thesis. Foerster, Norman. The American State University: Its Relation to Democracy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1937. Foerster's work makes an excellent beginning for any research involving public higher education in the U.S. Fox, Daniel E. Traces of Texas History. San Antonio: Corona Publishing Company, 1983. This recent compilation of research combines history and archaeology in a detailed view of Texas before 1900. Frantz, Joe B. Texas: A Bicentennial History. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1976. One of the best known Texas history scholars. Professor Frantz possesses a captivating style and the ability to make historical events relevant to the present. Fugate, Frances L. Frontier College: Texas Western a^ ^ Paso, The First Fifty Years. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1964. Giles, Bascom. History and Disposition of Texas Public Domain. Austin: General Land Office, 1945. The former state land commissioner provides a detailed account of Texas' land and the loss thereof. Glenny, Lyman A. Autonomy of Public Colleges. New York: McGraw-Hill book Co., 1959.

^ 159

''^^PrAar± ?" 0"i = ial View." In Jubilee Papers: fff||iS|g||EO£ts and Addresses. El Paso: Texas Western

"°^Al?r«rAlfred aA .'*^°'*^^'^-,? Knopf, 1978^ .Progressiv e Historian. New York:

""^Pr^^/'^a^'nirress, lyjU™. ^- ^^^^^^ Trails. Dallas: The Southwest Holden's book distills the essence of West Texas. Jencks, Christopher and Riesman, David. The Academic Revolution. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968. This is another essential volume for the historian of higher education. Jencks and Riesman's scholarly work gives the rationale for much of the development of higher education throughout the U.S. Jones, Harriot Howze, ed. El. Paso: A Centennial Portrait. El Paso: Superior Printing, Inc., 1973. Jordan, Terry G. Texas: A Geography. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984. Jordan, not a follower of Turner and his Frontier Thesis, takes a scholarly view of Texas geography but tends to trivialize certain aspects of the historical geography of the state. King, Larry L. "LBJ and Vietnam." In A Sense of History, pp. 788-802. Edited by American Heritage. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985. Kraenzel, Carl F. The Great Plains in Transistion. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955. Lane, John J. History of Education in Texas. Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1903. Lane's book completes the quartet of books needed before one can begin to write about Texas education. Lang, Aldon S. Financial History of the Public Lands in Texas. Waco: Baylor University, 1932. This small volume compliments Bascom Giles' book on Texas lands. Malone, Michael P., ed. Historians and the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. i 160

Marshall., S.L.A. Crimsoned Prairie. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972. The famous military historian showed considerable respect for the fighting abilities of the Indians. Matloff, Maurice, ed. American Military History. Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1968. McKay, Seth S. Seven Decades of the Texas Constitution of 1876. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1943. McKay's book gives the researcher an overview of the constitution by which Texas is governed and a springboard from which to launch further research. McMurtry, Larry. Ijn a^ Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968. The Pulitzer Prize winning McMurtry is certainly the pre-emminent dean of Texas writers and probably one of the foremost living writers in the U.S. Mead, Frank S. Handbook of Denominations, 7th ed. Nashville: Abingdon, 1980. This is the most complete and concise work of its kind available. Meinig, D.W. Imperial Texas: An Interpretative Essay in Cultural Geography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969. Meinig defined regions in Texas and combined surveys, charts, and solid research to produce a clear picture of the culture of Texas in relation to its geography. Miller, Thomas L. The Public Lands £f Texas 1519-1970. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1972. Miner, Craig. West of Wichita. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986. Morelock, H.W. Mountains of the Mind. San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1956. Morris, Don H. and Leach, Max. Like St^rsShii^ Brightly. Abilene, Tex.: AbiTene ZTPTrTstian college Press, 1953. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. 161

Pearson, Jim B. and Fuller, Edgar, eds. Education in the States: Historical Development and Outlook. Washington, D.C National Education Association, 1969. Ray, Joseph M. On Becoming a. University; Report on An Octennium. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 19681 Reed, S.G. The History of Texas Railroads. Houston: St. Clair Publishing Company, 1941. Richardson, Rupert N. Famous Are Thy Halls. Abilene, Tex.: Abilene Printing and Stationery Co., 1964. Robertson, James Oliver. American Myth, American Reality. New York: Hill & Wang, 1980. Rudolph, Frederick. The American College and University: A History. New York: Vintage Books, 1962. Rudolph's scholarly work is one of the three or four most definitive books on history of higher education in the United States. Rushing, Jane Gilmore and Nail, Kline A. Evolution of £ University; Texas Tech's First Fifty Years. Austin, Madrona Press, Inc., 1975. The best work on Texas Tech. Rushing and Nail are not without their criticisms, but cast loving eyes over the campus of the institution which might have been called West Texas A&M. Sadler, Jerry. History of Texas Land. Austin: General Land Office, 1961 and 1964. Shannon, Fred A. Critiques of Research in the Social Sciences, Vol. Ill, An Appraisal of Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains: A Study in Institutions and Environment. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1940. Shannon attempted to pick apart Webb's work and made some valid points while at it. Webb, however, defended his thesis and seemed to have won the debate recorded in the last pages of this book. Taylor, George Rogers, ed. The Turner Thesis. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1949. 162

Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of Sections ^^Anierican History. New York: Henry Holt~Ind Company, A series of Turner's essays assembled by Max Farrand and Avery Craven. Craven is one of the best known of Turner's proteges.

Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 195]^

. The Great Plains. Mew York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1931. Welch, June Rayfield. The Colleges of Texas. Dallas: GLA Press, 1981.

Periodicals

Bates, Jack. "The History of Angelo State University." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 60 (1984):110-126. Well-written, concise account of Angelo State development. Butchart, Ronald E. "Education and Culture in the Trans- Mississippi West: An Interpretation." Journal of American Culture 3 (Summer 1980):351-371. Crane, R.C. "The Beginning of Hardin-Simmons University." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 16 (October 1940) :61-75. Crane's eye for detail makes this an invaluable source of information about HSU. . "The Claims of West Texas to Recognition by Historians." The West Texas Historical' Association Year Book 12 (July 1936):11-13. . "The West Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College Movement and the Founding of Texas Technological College." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book. 7 (June 1931):3-34. Crane's article was the first scholarly account of the founding of Texas Tech. Gibbs as well as Rushing and Nail made ample use of Crane's perspective when writing their accounts of Texas Tech. 163

Fehrenbach, T.R. "Seven Keys to Understanding Texas." Atlantic, March 1975, pp. 120-127.

Garraghan, Gilbert J. "Non-Economic Factors in the Frontier Movement." Mid-America 23 (October 1941): ^bJ —271 . Article deals with the influence of religion in settling the frontier. The author's point on missionaries and their zeal for establishing schools and colleges is well taken.

Gracy, David B. "The Writing of Regional History." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 54 (October 1968) :161-170'; Gressley, Gene M. "The Turner Thesis—A Problem in Historiography." Agricultural History 32 (October 1958):227-249. One of the best compilations of material for and against the Turner thesis. Holden, W.C. "Immigration and Settlement in West Texas." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 5 (June 1929):66-78. Jaschik, Scott. "Citizens' Campaigns Are Foiling State Plans to Shut Down or Merge Public Colleges." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 24 June 1987, pp. 1, 20-21. McLachlan, James. "The American College in the Nineteenth Century: Toward a Reappraisal." Teachers College Record 80 (December 1978):287-306. Morris, C Gwin. "Plainview: The Evolution of a West Texas Town." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 51 (October 1975):24-36. Morton, Ben L. "Perspective From a State Coordinator of Higher Education." Educational Record 5 (Summer 1970): 296-304. Norman, Mary Anne. "Pioneer Educational Experiences in the Nineteenth-Century Southwest." Red River Valley Historical Review 5 (Spring 1980):25-42. Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. "The Traits and Contributions of Frederick Jackson Turner." Agricultural History 19 (1945):21-23. 164

Pickens, Donald K. "Walter Prescott Webb's Tomorrows." Red River Valley Historical Review 6 (Winter 1981): 25-34.

Potts, David B. "American Colleges in the Nineteenth Century; From Localism to Denominationalism." History of Education Quarterly 11 (Winter 1971):363-380. Roberts, O.M. "Establishment of the University of Texas." The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (April 1898) :233-265. Robinson, Willard B. "Temples of Knowledge: Historic Mains of Texas Colleges and Universities." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 77 (April 1974): 455-480. Rudy, S. Willis. "The Revolution in American Higher Education." Harvard Educational Review 21 (January 1951);155-170. Rudy, Willis. "Higher Education in the United States, 1862-1962." School and Society 90 (15 May 1962): 218-221. Schafer, Joseph. "Turner's Frontier Philosophy." The Wisconsin Magazine of History 16 (June 1933) :451-469. Scruggs, Guy A. "Abilene Christian College." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 21 (October 1945):3-19. Scruggs' article is to ACU what Crane's was to HSU. It is in some ways a better source than any of the books written about ACU. Smith, Henry Nash. "Culture." Southwest Review 6 (Winter 1928):248-255. Sokolow, Jayme A. "The Demography of a Ranching Frontier: The Texas Panhandle in 1880." Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 15 (1982) : 73-97. Starr, Richard J. "Academic Culture and the History of American Higher Education." Journal of General Education 5 (October 1950):6-16. 165

Thelin, John R. "Looking for the Lone Star Legacy: Higher Education in Texas." History of Education Quarterly 17 (Summer 1977) :221-228. Thelin's article is one of the best of its kind on the subject of higher education in Texas. Tinsley, James A. "Genesis of Higher Education in Texas." The Philosophical Society of Texas Proceedings 32 (December 1968):51-56. Weinryb, Elazar. "The Justification of a Causal Thesis: An Analysis of the Controversies Over the Theses of Pirenne, Turner, and Weber." History and Theory 14 (1975) :32-56. White, E.V. "Education in the Early Days of West Texas." The West Texas Historical Association Year Book 14 (October 1938):24-31. Wofford, Vera. "Wayland College: The Result of One Man's Dream." Plainview Daily Herald, 17 May 1967. Woodring, Paul S. "A Century of Teacher Education." School and Society 90 (5 May 1962):236-242.