The Press: Texas Magazines

Ioway, Ioway, that’s where the tall corn grows. . . .

By thy rivers gently flowing, Illinoize, Illinoize. . . .

Songs are all right. They go handily from mouth to mouth. But certainly the sovereign states of the U. S. have matters of more permanent value than dithyrambs. Texas has. What does it do with them? It puts them into a new magazine called Bunker’s Monthly, 160 pages of eye-easy type. Does Vermont (native state of Calvin Coolidge) fill as many pages each month with readable material of its own efforts? No. Does Iowa (home state of Average American Citizen Roy Lewis Gray) do as well? No.

Texas, of course, was once a republic in itself, a land where tradition makes bloody Alamo a Bunker Hill and Sam Houston a George Washington. It is now the largest state in the Union, the seat of the Democratic National Convention (at Houston). Bunker’s Monthly, however, is no passing boom sheet, no harp twanging the glories of yesteryear. It is substantial in size, pleasing in appearance, broad in editorial content. New Yorkers and Californians can read it with profit.

It has subscribers in all states except Delaware, South Carolina, Vermont. Who knows but what it may some day become the Atlantic Monthly of the prairies, oil fields and canyons? It was several years in the planning; the first two issues (January, February) have appeared on schedule.

Chester R. Bunker, president of the biggest printing plant in the southwest, put up the money for Bunker’s Monthly.

Peter Molyneaux, 46, able newspaperman and romantic historian, who came to Texas to cure bad lungs and who was director of publicity of the campaign that made Dan Moody governor, is editor.

History. Texas has a past that gives Editor Molyneaux and his readers much to think about. The French let the Spaniards have Texas; and the Mexicans in revolt took it away from the Spaniards.

Then in 1821 across the Sabine River came mild-mannered Stephen F. Austin of Missouri and his band of settlers “to redeem Texas from its wilderness state by means of the plow alone.” Paradoxically, these people became loyal citizens of the Mexican Republic and ousted rebels from the land. But when Santa Anna, the Mexican general of the dark and cruel eyes, turned his guns on the Alamo (Roman Catholic mission at San Antonio), a different story began. Colonel Travis, Davy Crockett and 180 Texans refused for eleven days to be ousted from the Alamo.

Their food and gunpowder gave out.

Dozens of men and mules died side-by-side with dry, festered tongues. Children were fed flies. Santa Anna brought up bigger guns, battered down the stone walls of the Alamo, butchered the remaining haggard Texans in cold blood. Only a Negro and a few women were spared. All through Texas cries went up: “Remember the Alamo.” But Texans were not given to cries without action. To get Santa Anna, they chose a commander named Sam Houston, 6 ft., 3 in. in his moccasins, of whom President Andrew Jackson said: “Thank God, there is one man at least in Texas who was made by the Almighty and not by a tailor.”* Commander Houston wasted no time in routing the Mexicans at the battle of San Jacinto and capturing General Santa Anna.

Thus the rawboned Republic of Texas clinched its independence. Soon it was recognized as a sovereign nation by the U. S., Great Britain, Belgium, France.

Although most Texans looked to ultimate annexation by the U. S., yet there was one president of the Republic,† Mirabeau B. Lamar, who had a dream of empire.

He saw a cotton and mineral country without tariff restrictions, sending raw materials to England in exchange for manufactured products. England liked this and her agents began to talk turkey with Texans. The U. S. Congress, alarmed lest the “golden moment to obtain Texas” be lost, adopted in 1845 a resolution to annex Texas. A year later the Mexican War broke out, not because of the annexation of Texas, but (according to Editor Molyneaux in Bunker’s Monthly) because U. S. soldiers occupied Tamaulipas which was Mexican territory.

Texas Today. Population, 5,308,483.

Area, 265,896 square miles. Manufactured products, more than a billion dollars a year. Cotton crop, average of 4,000,000 bales a year (largest in U. S.). Petroleum, 142,618,000 barrels a year. And then there are cattle, sheep, iron ores, lumber, potash, gypsum, brick clays and helium, which caused Captain W. P. Erwin to predict that Texas will have “the greatest airport the world will ever know.” Perhaps it is because they have so much ground to cover that Texans tend to be Iong-legged. Some say Texans are a dizzy race . . . polo ponies … a Riviera on the Rio Grande . . . black fingers in the sky in the oil fields . . . snow-white balls in the cotton country . . . daylight bank robbers of the younger generation . . .

“Ma”‘ Ferguson* . . . Dan Moody for Vice President . . . shiny skyscrapers in Dallas, Galveston, Fort Worth … a harbor for ocean steamers at Houston fifty miles from the sea … high altitudes good for the lungs, low altitudes good for swimming.

Bank Robbers. An immediate problem in Texas is revealed in the February Bunker’s Monthly by W. M. Massie, president of the Texas Bankers’ Association. He writes an article justifying his organization’s standing offer of reward posted in 1,500 banks: $5,000 for each DEAD ROBBER Not one cent for a hundred live ones Mr. Massie believes that live bank robbers “rarely are identified, more rarely convicted, and most rarely kept in the penitentiary when sent there—all of which operations are troublesome and costly.” He points with a banker’s pride & joy to the three dead and two wounded robbers, the captured gang and the single successful burglary during the six weeks which the $5,000 rewards have been in effect.

He neglects to state that two innocent Mexicans were shot in front of a bank in Midland, Tex., for the sake of rewards—a fact which caused the distant New York World to cry: “[This shows] how vicious it is to meddle with the principles and processes of the law.” Houston Gargoyle. The Texan younger generation, by no means entirely given to bank robbing, is reading with gusto a weekly, entitled the Houston Gargoyle, which appeared in January. A sample of its humor may be found on a page headed, “I Hereby Resolve”: “Al Smith—’That I will join the Ku Klux Klan and invite Bill McAdoo to have a cup of tea.’ “McAdoo—’That I will accept Al’s invitation and surprise him by bringing a wee drappie on the hip.’ ”

*An exaggeration.

†Texas had four presidents: David G. Burnet (1836), Sam Houston (1836-38), Mirabeau B.

Lamar (1838-41), Sam Houston (1841-44), Anson Jones (1844-46).

*Mrs. Miriam Amanda Ferguson, governess of Texas (1925-27).