Pro­logue	...............................	p. 1 – 5
Chap­ters 1 and 2	...............................	p. 5 – 19
Chap­ters 3 and 4	...............................	p. 20 – 31
Chap­ters 5 and 6	...............................	p. 32 – 44
Chap­ters 7 and 8	...............................	p. 45 – 60
Chap­ters 9 and 10	...............................	p. 61 – 78
Chap­ters 11 and 12	...............................	p. 79 – 95
Chap­ters 13 and 14	...............................	p. 96 – 120
Notes	...............................	p. 121 – 123
Bib­li­og­ra­phy	...............................	p. 124 – 126

PRO­LOGUE

I grew up in Hidal­go Coun­ty, Texas, eight miles from the Rio Grande in the town of M^cAllen. It was a good place to live, new coun­try in 1920, when my par­ents moved there from Mem­phis, Ten­nessee, tak­ing me, a two-​year-​old, with them.

It was a land of lush veg­e­ta­tion, palm trees, cit­rus fruit, flow­ers, and warm weath­er with a fine breeze from the Gulf of Mexi­co. There were also areas of cac­tus, mesquite, and miles of flat brush­land.

In the early days of Hidal­go Coun­ty, how­ev­er, the brush­land was all there was. It took a strong, tough breed of men and women from all over the United States to turn that piece of Texas into the “Magic Val­ley.”

It had been a rugged, wild coun­try in the days of the mid-1700's when grants from the King of Spain were bestowed upon favored sol­diers. It was still rugged in 1852 when the coun­ty was cre­ated. The early set­tlers lived in hous­es made of mud or adobe walls and often had thatched roofs. They used river boats on the Rio Grande for tra­v­el.

The Ang­los, or “Grin­gos,” were pour­ing in and mixing with the descen­dants of the fam­i­lies of the orig­i­nal set­tlers of Span­ish or Mexi­can her­itage. In the fol­low­ing years these fam­i­lies along the Rio Grande sur­vived raids by ban­dits, smug­glers, and rustlers. They sur­vived raids from Mexi­co, and they sur­vived tra­v­el on impos­sible roads. They began build­ing a string of mod­ern towns along High­way 83 in a line going from west to east con­sist­ing of Mis­sion, M^cAllen, Pharr, San Juan, Alamo, Donna, Wes­la­co, and Mer­cedes. Direct­ly south of M^cAllen, bor­der­ing on the Rio Grande River, was the town of Hidal­go, and direct­ly north of Pharr was the coun­ty seat, Edin­burg. Elsa, Edcouch and other small­er towns were estab­lished with­in the coun­ty.

By 1920, Hidal­go Coun­ty was no longer a vast, mesquite-​covered wilder­ness. It was an irri­gated, fer­tile val­ley. Every­thing had changed except pol­i­tics. The same “boss” or “jefe” type gov­ern­ment, where a hand­ful of peo­ple con­trolled the politi­cal des­tiny of the coun­ty, was still there. It was still the same hand­ful of men who had con­trolled the coun­ty since late in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.

This group had brought the Val­ley suc­cess­ful­ly through per­ilous times. They had made a great con­tri­bu­tion in tam­ing the wilder­ness. Their prob­lem was that they did not rec­og­nize that the times were chang­ing, that “boss” rule was no longer an accept­able form of gov­ern­ment to those com­ing in from other set­tle­ments in the United States.

These out­siders bought with them ener­gy, brains, money and enough knowl­edge of gov­ern­ment to under­stand that their politi­cal des­tinies and their taxes were being han­dled by a group who, prob­a­bly because of neces­si­ty, had long ago aban­doned the ideas of a citizens' par­tic­i­pa­tory gov­ern­ment. The fron­tier heroes were grad­u­al­ly becom­ing the vil­lains of the next gen­er­a­tion. I grew up think­ing that the politi­cal bat­tle that ensued was a clear-​cut con­fronta­tion between good and evil. It was, how­ev­er, more of a con­fronta­tion between the old and the new. Who were the “bad” guys in the entire west­ern expan­sion? The Indi­ans? The big cat­tle­men? The farm­ers? Each was fight­ing for his sur­vival to pre­serve the lifestyle he pros­pered under and under­stood.

For what­ev­er the motives, the bit­ter and some­times dead­ly politi­cal bat­tle was form­ing that would endure for the last half of the 1920's. Hun­dreds of peo­ple devoted six years of their lives to end­ing what they con­sid­ered to be cor­rupt and undemo­crat­ic gov­ern­ment. There were scores of names in the news­pa­per accounts at the time, but the four that appeared over and over were Ed Couch, founder of the towns of Wes­la­co and Edcouch, Dave Kir­gan, land devel­op­er and mayor of Wes­la­co, Frank Free­land, mayor of M^cAllen, and my father, Gor­don Grif­fin, a M^cAllen attor­ney and the firey ora­tor of the move­ment.

These four men, along with count­less others, believed total­ly that their bat­tle was as impor­tant as that waged against Boss Tweed in New York City. They prac­ti­cal­ly aban­doned their busi­ness­es, their fam­i­lies, and some­times they placed their lives in dan­ger. After the six years were over the lead­ers of oppos­ing fac­tions put away their grievances, became friends again, and worked to help Hidal­go Coun­ty sur­vive the Depres­sion. Many of my clos­est friends were the chil­dren of the same peo­ple father fought against so bit­ter­ly. Gor­don Grif­fin and J. E. Leslie, who opposed each other as can­di­dates for dis­trict judge, actu­al­ly shared a law office in M^cAllen until my father moved to Brown­wood, Texas. So how much did these six years accom­plish? It was only a small begin­ning, but they set Hidal­go Coun­ty on the road to chang­ing times. They pro­moted the onward sweep of democ­ra­cy, and they brought about the first begin­nings of the end of “bossism” in south Texas.

– Ruth Grif­fin Spence –

CHAP­TER ONE

The his­tory of Hidal­go Coun­ty lead­ing up to the politi­cal war­fare of the 1920's actu­al­ly began in 1519 when Alon­zo de Pine­da dis­cov­ered the Val­ley. He came across the mouth of the Rio Grande River as he was explor­ing the Gulf Coast under the orders of Fran­cis­co de Garay, the gov­er­nor of Jamaica. On Pineda's map he referred to the river as Rio de los Pescadores (fish­er­men).

Atten­tion was focused on the Val­ley by other events. In 1528, an expe­di­tion was ship­wrecked there, and the few sur­vivors spent the win­ter some­where in the area of Hidal­go or Willa­cy Coun­ties. The Span­ish con­tin­ued explo­rations through­out the area, and small set­tle­ments were estab­lished. Var­i­ous expe­di­tions and skir­mish­es occurred dur­ing the war between Mexi­co and Texas and later between the United States and Mexi­co.

Short­ly before Hidal­go Coun­ty, named for the Mexi­can patriot priest, Miguel Hidal­go, was cre­ated and sep­a­rated from Cameron Coun­ty in 1852, John Young of Edin­burgh, Scot­land, was granted a license to oper­ate a ferry along the Rio Grande. The ferry trav­eled from the lit­tle vil­lage called by the Mexi­cans “La Habita­cion” or “Ran­cho San Luis” across the river to Reynosa. Young set­tled a few miles from San Luis, where he built a plant to make a crude sugar candy called “pil­on­cil­la.”⁽¹⁾ He also pre­pared bar­rels of brown sugar for ship­ment. He soon bought more land, includ­ing the vil­lage of San Luis and renamed it Edin­burgh. Edin­burgh, on the Rio Grande, soon became the coun­ty seat of Hidal­go Coun­ty with a brick court­house and a jail made of mesquite logs. These build­ings were later washed away by flood waters of the Rio Grande. In 1885, the post office depart­ment changed the name of the town to Hidal­go.

On Septem­ber 2, 1852, the first recorded meet­ing of the Commissioners' Court was held at Smith's Store in Edin­burgh (Hidal­go). It was presided,over by the Chief Jus­tice of Hidal­go Coun­ty, Madi­son M. Stevens. Judge Stevens had the unusu­al dis­tinc­tion of being, with­in a very brief time, a tav­ern keep­er, a ranger, a sher­iff of Cameron Coun­ty, a steam­boat wood­yard oper­a­tor, a jus­tice of the peace, and the coun­ty judge. In spite of these var­ied occu­pa­tions, two years later he dis­ap­peared from the records of the coun­ty.⁽²⁾

Thad­deus M. Rhodes was coun­ty clerk. Unlike Stevens, he had a long record of ser­vice to the Val­ley. Mr. Rhodes, a ranch­er, had a rep­u­ta­tion among sev­er­al Indian tribes as being a good medicine man. He served as coun­ty judge for seven con­sec­u­tive terms from 1876 until 1890. By 1870 he owned a wide strip of land along the river and had large herds of horned cat­tle.

The coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers and other offi­cials had both His­pan­ic and Anglo names, and their busi­ness was uncom­pli­cated. They han­dled coun­ty finances by licens­ing four fer­ries at five dol­lars a month which pro­vided the coun­ty with twen­ty dol­lars a month plus fees. The funds effi­cient­ly han­dled by the trea­sur­er and even after ten years never amounted to more than a few hun­dred dol­lars. The early meet­ings, how­ev­er, were very dis­or­der­ly, and one com­mis­sion­er, Mar­tin Nor­graves, was fined for “inso­lent lan­guage and intoxi­ca­tion in court.”⁽³⁾

There was dif­fi­cul­ty in obtain­ing the tax records from the tax col­lec­tor of Cameron Coun­ty, J. .;Camp­bell, after Hidal­go was sep­a­rated from it. Camp­bell dis­ap­peared into north Texas with the Cameron/Hidal­go Counties' tax rolls. Until he could be located late in 1853, no prop­er­ty taxes could be col­lected.⁽⁴⁾

On Febru­ary 29, 1854, there appeared anoth­er record of errat­ic behav­ior of a Hidal­go Coun­ty pub­lic offi­cial. The commissioners' court ordered the coun­ty clerk to send an adver­tise­ment to the mag­a­zine Amer­i­can Flag, to warn the pub­lic against Elisha Thor­oughs­man. He had been deposed as Hidal­go County's Deputy Sher­iff and the Con­sta­ble of Precinct Two and driv­en out of the coun­ty for horse steal­ing.⁽⁵⁾

For sev­er­al years Edin­burgh (Hidal­go) was plagued by bor­der raids by Juan Corti­na. In 1859, Corti­na adopted guer­ril­la type war­fare, and the Amer­i­cans retal­i­ated in kind. Corti­na lost an esti­mated 150 men killed and more wounded. The Val­ley from Rio Grande City to Brownsville was in ruins from the raid­ing and plun­der­ing, and there remained for a time only one fam­i­ly in Edin­burgh. The town was bankrupt because in one of the raids all the funds in the hands of the deputy col­lec­tor of cus­toms, and all coun­ty funds, were stolen. Gov­er­nor Sam Hous­ton and others appealed to Pres­i­dent Buchanan for aid, so Robert E. Lee, who was then sta­tioned in San Anto­nio, came to the Val­ley. When Lee arrived in Edin­burgh, oppo­site Reynosa, he found these two towns almost at war with each other. He suc­ceeded in bring­ing about an under­stand­ing between them and warned the Mexi­cans that they must pre­vent the raids. Dur­ing the Civil War there were other raids in Hidal­go Coun­ty by Corti­na, who was now aid­ing the Feder­al troops.

After the war most of the sol­diers were with­drawn from the lower Rio Grande Val­ley, and the ban­dit raids increased. In 1876, Cap­tain L. H. M^cNelly led sev­er­al raids from Hidal­go Coun­ty into Mexi­co to recov­er cat­tle and to cap­ture the ban­dits. After these bold raids, the Texas Rangers brought peace to the coun­ty.

Politi­cal­ly, Hidal­go Coun­ty was on its own. Except dur­ing war time or bor­der raids, the United States and Texas sim­ply ignored it. Con­se­quent­ly, the peo­ple referred to their coun­ty as the “Repub­lic of Hidal­go” and counted on it to end the smug­gling com­ing from Mexi­co, to build roads, to build schools, to make Span­ish and Amer­i­can laws fit togeth­er, and to do all the other things that inde­pen­dent republics do.

The first court inter­preter was “Gen­er­al Jose M. Car­va­jal, who, while serv­ing the coun­ty, was under indict­ment in the U. S. Court in Brownsville (1852–1853) for trea­son.”⁽⁶⁾ His crime was lead­ing expe­di­tions into Mexi­co from Hidal­go Coun­ty, attempt­ing to make a free state out of the Mexi­can state of Tamauli­pas. Vio­lence occurred about 1890 when Thad­deus Rhodes, first Coun­ty Clerk of Hidal­go Coun­ty and a vet­eran of the Mexi­can War, retired as coun­ty judge after hav­ing served for many years. There were two strong fac­tions in the coun­ty, the “Reds” and the “Blues,” so des­ig­nated so that the illit­er­ate vot­ers, both cit­izens and aliens of the coun­ty, would know in which col­umn to place their mark. The fac­tions dis­agreed over Rhodes' suc­ces­sor. As a com­pro­mise, both groups agreed on a man named M^cCabe who was sup­posed to be a mem­ber of nei­ther fac­tion; Soon, how­ev­er, Dis­trict Judge John C. Rus­sell removed M^cCabe, pos­si­bly for incom­pe­tence.

Judge Rus­sell, him­self, had been involved with Val­ley pol­i­tics since his arrival there before the Civil War. He had come to the Val­ley from Illi­nois where he had stud­ied law with Abra­ham Lin­coln. He replaced M^cCabe with Max Stein, but the friends and fam­i­ly of M^cCabe were vin­dic­tive and bent on revenge. Mrs. M^cCabe shot Max Stein in the pub­lic plaza in Reynosa.

Judge Rus­sell again was remem­bered in Hidal­go Coun­ty pol­i­tics for his action when a group of men, deter­mined to cap­ture the court­house and the coun­ty records, gath­ered on the out­skirts of Hidal­go (for­mer­ly Edin­burgh). Judge Rus­sell, with only an inter­preter to help him, went out into the crowd of men and per­suaded them to go home. This was called “The Con­spir­a­cy of 1890.”⁽⁷⁾

Again about 1890, anoth­er politi­cal rev­o­lu­tion occurred soon after Judge Rhodes, a Demo­crat, stepped down and was final­ly per­ma­nent­ly replaced by Judge W. P. Dougher­ty, who con­tin­ued the Demo­crat­ic dom­i­na­tion of the coun­ty court­house. Dr. Alexan­der M. Headley and his Repub­li­can fol­low­ers decided to take over the court­house by force. The coun­ty offi­cials, fear­ing they might be mur­dered, put in a hur­ried call for the Texas Rangers and fled across the river to Reynosa. Dr. Headley ruled the coun­ty for sev­er­al days, call­ing his gov­ern­ment “The Inde­pen­dent Repub­lic of Hidal­go.”⁽⁸⁾ He could not gain pos­ses­sion of the records, how­ev­er, because they were locked in an iron box. He also tried to col­lect duties at the bor­der, but at that inva­sion of feder­al pre­rog­a­tives, a United States Mar­shall from Brownsville came up the river with a posse, and Headley fled back to his home in Starr Coun­ty.

Dur­ing the 1890's, Stan­ley Welch, a Demo­crat, became Dis­trict Attor­ney in Hidal­go Coun­ty. Later he was elected Dis­trict Judge. On elec­tion morn­ing of 1906, Judge Welch was found mur­dered in his bed in Rio Grande City in the neigh­bor­ing coun­ty of Starr, which was also part of his dis­trict.

Even­tu­al­ly, Albert Car­era, a Repub­li­can, was tried for the crime, sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, and sent to the pen­i­ten­tiary at Huntsville. Later he escaped and fled.

Imme­di­ate­ly after the body of the judge was found, the Texas Rangers were called in to inves­ti­gate the case, but their behav­ior was great­ly crit­i­cized. On the way from Sam Fordyce to Rio Grande City the Rangers met a wag­onload of shout­ing, singing Mexi­can Amer­i­cans. The Rangers ordered them to stop, but the cel­e­brat­ing His­pan­ics fired on them. The Rangers returned the fire and fought off their attack­ers.⁽⁹⁾ Accord­ing to Miss Anna Kelsey, who remem­bered the inci­dent and who was a friend of the Ranger cap­tain, the politi­cal rival­ry between the Demo­crats and Repub­li­cans was so heated at that time that vio­lence was a com­mon occur­rence. The cel­e­brat­ing group was return­ing from an elec­tion party in La Grul­la, a near­by town, and hear­ing the approach­ing Rangers, thought they were mem­bers of the oppos­ing fac­tion and fired on them. Thus anoth­er vio­lent chap­ter was added to the politi­cal his­tory of the Val­ley.⁽¹⁰⁾

CHAP­TER TWO

In the 1880's, John Clos­ner came to the Val­ley and soon became a deputy sher­iff. By all accounts, he was an excel­lent peace offi­cer. With­in weeks after he became a deputy he had sev­er­al encoun­ters with drink­ing, fight­ing men who were unaware that law enforce­ment was under­go­ing a change in Hidal­go Coun­ty. He just as quick­ly put either law­break­ers of the “Blue” fac­tion or the “Red” fac­tion in jail. In 1890, he was elected sher­iff along with other coun­ty offi­cials who sup­port­ed him in his peace­keep­i­ng activ­i­ties. The impor­tance of the posi­tion of a tough sher­iff in those days helped to explain the pow­er­ful lock he and the next sher­iff, A. Y. Baker, had on the coun­ty offi­cials and on the politi­cal life of Hidal­go Coun­ty for four decades. One of the oppos­ing politi­ci­ans hired a Mexi­can ban­dit to kill Clos­ner. The first was unsuc­cess­ful, and anoth­er was hired. Pan­cho Garza was to kill both Clos­ner and anoth­er tough law enforce­ment offi­cer, Andres E. Chavez, a cus­toms offi­cial. A tip led Closner's deputies to sur­round­ing the shack on the banks of the Rio Grande River where Garza was hid­ing. After a gun­fight, Garza was killed. This ended the plot­ting against the life of Sher­iff Clos­ner.

By 1896, Sher­iff Clos­ner had rounded up sev­er­al “gangs of crim­i­nals” who had brought cat­tle thefts to a halt, and by work­ing close­ly with a Mexi­can law enforce­ment offi­cer he had made it almost impos­sible for a crim­i­nal to escape free into Mexi­co. There was no spring ses­sion of court in 1896 because there were no cases on the dock­et.⁽¹⁾

John Clos­ner served as sher­iff for twenty-​two years until his res­ig­na­tion in 1912. At that time, he became coun­ty trea­sur­er, and the coun­ty commissioners' court appointed A. Y. Baker as sher­iff. Clos­ner served until Febru­ary, 1918, when an audit of the finances alleged that he had mis­ap­pro­pri­ated over $150,000 from the coun­ty drainage and school dis­tricts. He was forced to resign.⁽²⁾

Clos­ner came from Claris, Wis­con­sin. He began clear­ing 800 acres of land six miles east of Hidal­go on a farm which was known as San Juan Plan­ta­tion. While he was sher­iff, he bought more land cheap­ly for twenty-​five cents to one dol­lar an acre. Dur­ing the drought from 1889 to 1895 he began an irri­ga­tion project.

As the water from the Rio Grande irri­gated his farm land, his alfal­fa and sugar cane pro­duced boun­ti­ful crops. While others had pro­duced cane before he had, no one had ever been as suc­cess­ful as he. He became known as the “Sugar King,” and fur­nished sugar for the area from Brownsville to Lare­do. When he exhib­ited his cane at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904, he was awarded a Gold Medal for the finest cane there.

As Clos­ner was expand­ing his land to 50,000 acres for grow­ing pota­toes and onions, as well as alfal­fa and sugar cane, W. F. Sprague of La Coma Ranch was grow­ing cot­ton on 130,000 acres of land. These two large landown­ers were coun­ty offi­cials, Clos­ner still sher­iff, and Sprague was a coun­ty com­mis­sion­er.⁽³⁾ They also fig­ured promi­nent­ly in the mov­ing of the court­house from the town of Hidal­go.

The mov­ing of the court­house became a leg­end in Hidal­go Coun­ty and, as with most leg­ends, there were sev­er­al ver­sions of the story. Still to the present time the rumor per­sists that the action was ille­gal, and the coun­ty offi­cials stole the records in the mid­dle of the night and moved the coun­ty seat to Chapin, the present town of Edin­burg. There is, how­ev­er, an account of an elec­tion held on Octo­ber 1, 1908, in the Coun­ty Commissioner's Min­utes, Vol. C, p. 150, “Order to Hold Elec­tion,” and Vol. C., pp. 518–519, “Record of Elec­tion.”

There were some legit­i­mate rea­sons for mov­ing the court­house to a new coun­ty seat. The erod­ing waters of the Rio Grande often caused flood­ing. There was no other trans­porta­tion to the town, and it was not in the geo­graph­ic cen­ter or the coun­ty.

A bet­ter rea­son than all the others was the fact that John Clos­ner, W. F. Sprague, and D. B. Chapin, all three coun­ty offi­cials, had orga­nized a town­site com­pa­ny and bought up 50,000 acres of land on which the present coun­ty seat of Edin­burg is located.

Clos­ner had sold his pros­per­ous San Juan Plan­ta­tion near Hidal­go, the coun­ty seat, for $250,000, and Sprague, the cot­ton farmer/coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, had put up money from the sale of his land. D. B. Chapin, lawyer and coun­ty judge, con­tributed his legal advice and secured the land for the new com­pa­ny.

In 1949, Vir­ginia Arm­strong inter­viewed Judge Chapin in Cor­pus Christi three years before his death at the age of eighty-​one. She quoted the judge as say­ing:

“As a result of this sit­u­a­tion, I pre­pared peti­tions to the coun­ty judge (him­self) to order the elec­tion for the pur­pose of mov­ing the coun­ty seat to the town which I called Chapin, which con­sisted of one store and a post office in the mid­dle of 50,000 acres….

After this peti­tion was signed by prac­ti­cal­ly all the vot­ers of Hidal­go Coun­ty, I issued an order as coun­ty judge call­ing for an elec­tion … to be held on a cer­tain Sat­ur­day ….

Exten­sive notice was given of the act by the press of Texas and as a result there­of, the gov­er­nor ordered two com­pa­nies of Rangers … to pro­tect the peace against what my oppo­nents called the tyran­ny (of myself).”⁽⁴⁾

Arm­strong also stated, “Anoth­er story told at this late day is that there was an elec­tion all right, but no one knew of it much, except those who favored the move.”

Fur­ther to com­pli­cate the leg­end, Ann Magee, who as a child of seven, resided at the San Juan Plan­ta­tion at the time of the elec­tion, wrote that she checked old min­utes of the Hidal­go Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers and learned that the order call­ing for the elec­tion was recorded Septem­ber 5, 1908, by the coun­ty judge dur­ing a vaca­tion of the commissioners' court. In the order, Judge Chapin stated that he had care­ful­ly stud­ied the appli­ca­tion for an elec­tion to move the coun­ty seat of Hidal­go Coun­ty from its present site to the town of Chapin and found it in order and was there­fore set­ting an elec­tion date of Octo­ber 10, 1908, and fur­ther ordered the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers to meet on Octo­ber 17 to can­vass the returns. He saw no need to state that it was he who pre­pared the appli­ca­tion.⁽⁵⁾

The results of the elec­tion were, how­ev­er, can­vassed by Coun­ty Judge S. P. Sil­ver on Octo­ber 12. It was a dif­fer­ent judge and a dif­fer­ent date from the one pro­vided for in the order. Before the elec­tion, Judge Chapin resigned and the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers replaced him with S. F. Sil­ver of Mer­cedes. The rea­son for this, accord­ing to Chapin, was so there could be no charges of fraud. Anoth­er cause seemed to be that as the story of the elec­tion was rumored around the coun­ty, some in Mer­cedes vehe­ment­ly objected to the move because they wanted the court­house moved to their town instead of to unde­vel­oped land with no town in sight. The coun­ty offi­cials thought a promi­nent man from Mer­cedes serv­ing as judge might bring in some extra votes.

As oppo­si­tion grew, a group from Mer­cedes went to the Brownsville court to get an injunc­tion to call off the elec­tion, how­ev­er, accord­ing to Tom May­field, Judge Sil­ver and the other coun­ty offi­cials spent the day in Reynosa where no one could serve them with papers. May­field, a color­ful law enforce­ment offi­cer, was still chief of police in Pharr at the age of eighty-​one. He was an employ­ee of John Clos­ner, a deputy sher­iff, and also the precinct judge at Hidal­go in 1908. Accord­ing to him, he was the only offi­cial left around, but since he was only a deputy sher­iff, he could not be served.⁽⁶⁾

When the votes were to be can­vassed by the commissioners' court, the same pro­ce­dures were fol­lowed. An injunc­tion was issued to stop the can­vass­ing, but no offi­cial could be found. The result of the elec­tion was 422 for removal to Chapin and 90 against. Sev­en­ty of those opposed came from Mer­cedes.

By all accounts, this was an unusu­al elec­tion. When all reports were com­pared, it seemed that the elec­tion was called by a coun­ty judge in the absence of the commissioners' court, on a peti­tion drawn up by him­self and pre­sented to him­self for mov­ing the court­house to land owned by him­self and two other coun­ty offi­cials. The elec­tion of 1908, obscured as it is in con­flict­ing reports, set the uncom­mon pat­tern for decid­ing politi­cal issues that would be used in Hidal­go Coun­ty for the next twen­ty years.

Ann Magee con­tin­ued her descrip­tion by stat­ing that at dusk on elec­tion day four wag­ons cov­ered with tarpaulins with double teams of mules headed for Hidal­go. The mules were unhitched around the court­house. The drivers and other work­ers began load­ing the records for the move to Chapin. Two other wag­ons were added to carry food sup­plies for both the work­ers and the ani­mals. There were also oxcarts loaded with bricks for a tem­po­rary vault to be built in Chapin to hold the records.

Mr. W. L. Lip­scomb, fore­man of the San Juan Plan­ta­tion and M^cGee's father, was in charge of the gen­er­al prepa­ra­tions and respon­sible for the care of the mules and oxen. A car­a­van of spe­cial deputies on horse­back was headed by the Coun­ty Trea­sur­er, A. Y. Baker, and assist­ing him were T. S. May­field and Coun­ty Judge D. B. Chapin. Also in the group were John Clos­ner, Sher­iff; Andres Chavez, Coun­ty Clerk; and Joe Alamia, Tax Asses­sor and Col­lec­tor. These men were all armed.

On the site of the future town of Chapin, wait­ing for those mov­ing the records, were camped about ten engi­neers who had sur­veyed the land for Judge Chapin. With them were approx­i­mate­ly 400 His­pan­ic work­men who had been hasti­ly sum­moned for the job and who had bare­ly fin­ished clear­ing the brush for the site of the new coun­ty square.

They were awak­ened from their sleep of exhaus­tion about 3:00 a.m. by the sound of gun­fire. A few min­utes later a car­a­van of loaded wag­ons moved into the clear­ing led by the cel­e­brat­ing coun­ty offi­cials, fir­ing their guns in jubi­la­tion.

Engi­neer E. M. Card, who was super­vis­ing the clear­ing, described the activ­i­ty in an unpub­lished mono­graph.

The wag­ons car­ried the new cap­i­tal in the form of old coun­ty records, togeth­er with the all-​important returns of the elec­tion and res­o­lu­tions which spec­i­fied that the Coun­ty seat of Hidal­go Coun­ty should be moved from its old place on the banks of the Rio Grande to the cen­ter of a broad stretch of delta brush eight miles from the near­est rail­road, which had hith­er­to been inhab­ited only by the howl­ing coy­ote and his kin of the wilds.

The next day lum­ber from M^cAllen arrived which was used for floor and walls about three feet high. Over this was spread a tent where the coun­ty records were kept. With­in a few days a two-​story board house was con­structed, and a crude vault was fash­ioned from the bricks hauled from Hidal­go.

The coun­ty gov­ern­ment quick­ly adapted to its new loca­tion, and the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers held their first meet­ing on Novem­ber 9, 1908. A month later the vot­ers approved a bond issue for $75,000 to build a new court­house. The court­house was com­pleted in June, 1910. Still in gov­ern­ment were W. F. Sprague, Com­mis­sion­er; A. Y. Baker, Trea­sur­er; and John Clos­ner, Sher­iff. In 1911, the name of Chapin was changed to Edin­burg. It was named for the first coun­ty seat, the Scot­tish name of Edin­burgh, except now the 'h' was left off the spelling.

CHAP­TER THREE

Mexi­co strug­gled inter­nal­ly after the res­ig­na­tion in 1911 of Pres­i­dent Por­firio Diaz. For nine years there was rev­o­lu­tion fol­lowed by counter-​revolution. From 1911 until 1915 Mexi­co had nine pres­i­dents most of whom gov­erned very briefly. Both Pres­i­dent Taft and Pres­i­dent Wil­son warned Amer­i­cans to leave Mexi­co. Wil­son even sent in war­ships for a brief peri­od in 1914 to pro­tect Amer­i­can inter­ests and lives. It was impos­sible for the Rio Grande Val­ley to escape the tur­moil of those times.

Final­ly in 1915 the United States rec­og­nized Venus­ti­ano Car­ran­za as Pres­i­dent of Mexi­co. Fran­cis­co (Pan­cho) Villa – a ban­dit who had been one of Carranza's gen­er­als – now revolted against the Pres­i­dent. Prob­a­bly Pan­cho Villa was never in the Val­ley but his men were. Many acts of vio­lence took place in Hidal­go Coun­ty dur­ing these days of unrest in Mexi­co.⁽¹⁾

In the midst of these trou­bled times rumors were wide­ly cir­cu­lated about the Plan of San Diego. The story was so incred­ible that most Val­ley res­i­dents regarded it as a joke. There were, how­ev­er mis­giv­ings over the grow­ing Ger­man influ­ence in Mexi­co and over the unex­plained con­duct of many Mexi­can Amer­i­cans with whom the Ang­los had lived in har­mo­ny for years.

In Jan­uary 1915, Tom May­field still deputy sher­iff of Hidal­go Coun­ty, arrested a Mexi­can nation­al Basilio Ramos Jr. in M^cAllen. He had in his pos­ses­sion a copy of the Plan of San Diego. It con­sisted of fif­teen para­graphs and was signed by Mexi­cans from Mon­ter­rey and Nuevo Lare­do. The lead­er was a for­mer school teach­er from San Diego, Texas, Augustin S. Garza.

On Febru­ary 20, 1915, accord­ing to the plan, the peo­ple of Mexi­can descent were to rise up, killing all the Ang­los they could and declar­ing the inde­pen­dence from the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexi­co, Ari­zona, Colorado, and Cal­i­for­nia. An army was to be estab­lished con­sist­ing only of His­pan­ics, Blacks, and Japanese. Indi­ans were to be encour­aged to join the con­spir­a­cy. All white males over six­teen were to be taken cap­tive and held until all ran­soms could be col­lected for them. Then they were to be shot.

After these five states were lib­er­ated, they were to form into an inde­pen­dent repub­lic that would request annex­a­tion to Mexi­co. Then the next six adjoin­ing states were to be freed and orga­nized into a Black repub­lic which would serve as a buffer state between Mexi­co and the United States.⁽²⁾

C. H. Pease, a banker from Ray­mondville, attended a meet­ing held in Brownsville in Octo­ber, called by the city's mayor. Over 200 cit­izens from all over the Val­ley attended. They were advised that there was lit­tle help from the state or feder­al gov­ern­ment. The near­est help was in San Anto­nio. The peo­ple would have to defend their own homes. They were told to buy up the arms from local stores to pre­vent their falling into hands of the con­spir­a­cy lead­ers. Just how exten­sive and seri­ous the plot was if it had not been dis­cov­ered, Mr. Pease did not know, “But,” he said, “that if it would have actu­al­ly been attempted there seems to be lit­tle doubt.” He con­tin­ued:

I felt much con­cerned as I boarded the train that evening for Ray­mondville. On the train were squads of armed sol­diers in each coach. After we pulled out of Har­lin­gen and began to enter the heav­i­ly tim­bered coun­try around Comer Sta­tion, the train slowed down. Look­ing out of the win­dow I saw sol­diers in the bag­gage car ahead with muz­zles of their guns pro­ject­ing from the open door ready for instant action. The train pro­ceeded at a snail's pace. Cold chills ran up and down my spine.

That night when I got home the first thing I heard was the story of anoth­er raid on a near­by ranch which had just been brought me. The next day some of us talked over the sit­u­a­tion and dis­cussed what we could do to defend our­selves. Ray­mondville and Lyford were com­par­a­tive­ly iso­lated set­tle­ments. The farm­ers were but few and wide­ly scat­tered. Hun­dreds of square miles of brush sur­rounded us on all sides, and this seemed to be the ter­ri­tory in which the mau­raud­ing bands were oper­at­ing. We decided to appeal to the com­man­der of the troops at Fort Brown for mil­i­tary pro­tec­tion. Before we could do so, how­ev­er, some­thing else hap­pened.

The next morn­ing, Fri­day, soon after I had come down to the bank, the tele­phone rang. I stepped to the phone. The call was from one of our cus­tomers in Lyford giv­ing the infor­ma­tion that twelve Mexi­cans had just appeared at Sebas­tian, ten miles south of Ray­mondville, and held up a corn shelling out­fit there. Scarce­ly had I turned from the phone when I noticed a crowd out­side which had gath­ered about a car which had just driv­en up. The car was driv­en by a young man who hap­pened to be at the corn sheller at the time of the raid. From him I heard the details of the affair and was stunned to learn that the lead­er of the gang was a young Mexi­can farmer to whom we had only a short time pre­vi­ous­ly loaned $200 on his crop, osten­si­bly to enable him to har­vest it. He was a man we regarded as a rep­utable, inde­pen­dent farmer. This piece of news seemed to con­firm our worst fears. We were in the pres­ence of a gen­er­al upris­ing. Who now could we trust? Even while we talked I was called to the phone. Again I heard the voice of our Lyford cus­tomer. In tones that evi­denced great agi­ta­tion he gave me the startling infor­ma­tion that later news had come from Sebas­tian. Mr. Austin and his son, both liv­ing in Sebas­tian, had been taken from their homes, led into the brush a few hun­dred yards away and shot down in cold blood, fol­low­ing which the raiders had dis­ap­peared into the brush, leav­ing the bod­ies of the vic­tims on the ground.⁽³⁾

Although there was no con­certed upris­ing, there were con­tin­u­ous raids result­ing in death, from across the river. Many Val­ley cit­izens were panic strick­en.

Then both the state and the United States gov­ern­ments sent mil­i­tary men to the Val­ley, and by July 1, 1916, there were 110,957 troops sta­tioned along the Rio Grande from Brownsville to Rio Grande City. The raids came to a halt by the end of 1916.

There is no ques­tion that for many years most Anglo cit­izens of the bor­der believed in the valid­i­ty of the Plan of San Diego. This belief was reinforced when the Zim­mer­man Note was made pub­lic in 1917.

The Zim­mer­man Note, named for the sign­er who was the Ger­man Sec­re­tary of State for For­eign Affairs, was written Jan­uary 19, 1917 to the Ger­man Ambas­sador in Mexi­co. In it Ger­many pro­posed an alli­ance with Mexi­co to fund an attack by that coun­try to regain Texas, New Mexi­co and Ari­zona. The knowl­edge of this note which was pub­li­cized the United States cetain­ly gave cre­dence to the Plan of San Diego. Also, the Mexi­can press was very anti-​American. At a later date, how­ev­er, some Val­ley res­i­dents were inclined to think that the plot was the brain­child of some wealthy Amer­i­cans whose prop­er­ty in Mexi­co had been con­fis­cated. In 1919 and 1920 an inves­ti­ga­tion was con­ducted by a sub­com­mit­tee of the United States Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, chaired by Sen­a­tor Fall. J. Lee Stam­baugh and Lil­lian J. Stam­baugh stated:

There is strong indi­ca­tion that Sen­a­tor Fall, Cap­tain Han­son and many of the wit­ness­es were high­ly prej­u­diced against the Mexi­can gov­ern­ment and that the prin­ci­pal pur­pose of the inves­ti­ga­tion was to bring about inter­ven­tion in Mexi­co. Sen­a­tor Fall had owned exten­sive oil inter­ests and other prop­er­ty in Mexi­co, and he was the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of others who owned or had owned prop­er­ty in that coun­try.⁽⁴⁾

Although the report was biased and anti-​Mexican, it did reflect an accu­rate account of the suf­fer­ing along the Rio Grande. The total of Ang­los killed or wounded on both sides of the bor­der from 1910 until early in 1920 was 785. Prop­er­ty dam­ages and loss­es were over half a mil­lion dol­lars. The report did not tally the loss­es suf­fered by Mexi­can Amer­i­cans, but they were heavy. Final­ly, how­ev­er, the bor­der raids and the bandits' destruc­tion ended in Hidal­go Coun­ty.

Time and time again in the early days of Hidal­go Coun­ty the Texas Rangers were called in to quell upris­ings and bring about law and order. These were tough fron­tier times. A crit­i­cism of them was that “they shoot first and then inves­ti­gate.” They often dealt with des­per­a­dos and ban­dits where more law abid­ing meth­ods might have failed.

A few of the Rangers, how­ev­er, were inex­pe­ri­enced or need­less­ly harsh. As a result, some inno­cent cit­izens of Mexi­can descent were killed or intim­i­dated.

In Jan­uary, 1919, J. T. Canales, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Brownsville, intro­duced a bill to bring about reform in the Ranger orga­ni­za­tion by upgrad­ing the pay and the skills of the Rangers. He also called for an inves­ti­ga­tion of abus­es in the orga­ni­za­tion.

Wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied on both sides before the leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee. The Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee­man from Brownsville, R. B. Crea­ger, tes­ti­fied that approx­i­mate­ly 200 Mexi­can Amer­i­cans had been killed dur­ing the last three years, and he felt that nine­ty per­cent of these had been inno­cent of any wrong­do­ing. He advo­cated dis­band­ing the Ranger orga­ni­za­tion. Others tes­ti­fied that the Rangers had been the only effec­tive force against con­stant ban­dit raids through­out the Val­ley. Fee­l­ings ran high in the Val­ley dur­ing these hear­ings and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Canales' life was threat­ened.⁽⁵⁾

CHAP­TER FOUR

One of the ways he used to con­trol his con­stituents was doing a favor at a criti­cal time for a law­break­er. If a per­son was arrested for a crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, his rel­a­tives would go to the boss to plead for his influ­ence on the judge for lenien­cy. The boss would con­tact the judge, who depended on the “jefe” for his elec­tion, and sug­gest clemen­cy. Then the accused and all of his fam­i­ly would be indebted to the boss for­ev­er.

There was the reward sys­tem. For a favor to the boss, a per­son might be awarded a reduc­tion in taxes, or a road con­tract, or an appointive job in coun­ty, city, or school dis­trict gov­ern­ments.

Of course, there was the poll tax sys­tem. The Boss, or his “Las Ratas,” the rats, bought up large num­bers of poll taxes made out to some­one. This is where the “overs and unders” entered the pic­ture. An ille­gal voter could eas­i­ly be sub­sti­tuted for a dead man. The poll tax receipts were kept by the boss until elec­tion time when they were handed out until after the vot­ing. Then they were col­lected again.

If the illit­er­ate voter needed help, “La Rata” was always there to assist him. To make things even eas­i­er, in the gen­er­al elec­tion the Demo­crats usu­al­ly used a blue color and the Repub­li­cans used red. (In Starr Coun­ty the Demo­crats used red, the Repub­li­cans blue. In Cameron Coun­ty, the reverse was true.) All the voter had to do was to choose the prop­er color and scratch out the names in the other columns.

The Demo­crat­ic Party was almost always in con­trol at the state level, but not always at the coun­ty. In a Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry elec­tion, the boss con­tacted his favorite in the governor's race to learn how many votes from that coun­ty would be nec­es­sary to win, and that is how many votes that coun­ty deliv­ered.

To keep the elected offi­cials in line, the boss often required from those he sup­port­ed an undated res­ig­na­tion. If at some future time the office­hold­er dis­pleased the boss, only a date was added to the pre-​signed res­ig­na­tion. It is sur­pris­ing to know how strong the Repub­li­can Party was in the early days of Val­ley his­tory. The rival­ry between the two par­ties was so intense it some­times resulted in politi­cal mur­ders.

Both par­ties orga­nized torch light parades the evening before the elec­tion in all of the bor­der towns. The lead wagon of the parade was filled with kegs of beer. This was fol­lowed by a band; not nec­es­sar­i­ly good music, but loud. All along the streets beer was passed out to the bystanders who imme­di­ate­ly joined the parade.

As the chil­dren fol­lowed Pied Piper, so did the poten­tial vot­ers fol­low the parade into a large cor­ral pre­pared by either the Blues or the Reds. All night drink­ing, singing, and hand­shak­ing pre­vailed. The cor­ral was guarded by “Las Ratas” so that no one could escape into the other party's cor­ral. Here the cel­e­brants stayed until the polls opened the next day, and they were then deliv­ered to their respec­tive vot­ing boxes. This is the way the sys­tem worked for years in Hidal­go and other south Texas coun­ties.

In read­ing Hidal­go County's his­tory, it is obvi­ous that by about 1890 the sys­tem was in oper­a­tion. It con­tin­ued unabated until it reached its zenith under the lead­er­ship of A. Y. Baker.

The name A. Y. Baker has appeared ear­li­er in this writing. For about twen­ty years he was the most con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure in Hidal­go Coun­ty. Whether he was vil­lain or hero depended on one's point of view. He came to the coun­ty in 1896 as a mem­ber of the Texas Rangers. In 1904, he resigned to join the United States Cus­toms Ser­vice, and in 1908, he was appointed coun­ty trea­sur­er by the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers. Baker received his appoint­ment because of the influ­ence of James B. Wells of Brownsville. Wells was the first of the Val­ley boss­es. Archie Parr of Duval, John Clos­ner and A. Y. Baker of Hidal­go, and Manuel Guer­ra of Starr were all Well's protégés. He defend­ed Baker in the Cerda mur­der trial in 1903. In return, Baker gave tes­ti­mo­ny favor­able to Wells in a later mur­der case. Baker entered into the inner cir­cle of Hidal­go Coun­ty pol­i­tics by being appointed coun­ty trea­sur­er.⁽²⁾ In 1912, appar­ent­ly with only the coun­ty commissioners' bless­ing, he and John Clos­ner, Sher­iff, traded jobs.

Baker con­tin­ued to be re-​elected sher­iff for six­teen years. He was also elected in 1919 as the first mayor of Edin­burg after it became an incor­po­rated town. He became pres­i­dent of the first bank in Edin­burg, and he and Joe Pate owned the Inter­na­tion­al Bridge cross­ing the Rio Grande.

Baker had a color­ful career, both as a Ranger and as a sher­iff. One inci­dent in which he was involved con­cerned the theft of sev­er­al head of cat­tle from the King Ranch. Sergeant Baker and two other Rangers came upon a Mexi­can Amer­i­can fence-​rider more than three miles from the fence line. This aroused their sus­pi­cion, so they searched the area and found sev­er­al unbranded calves tied to bush­es, and a bit far­ther they dis­cov­ered a man brand­ing a calf. The man fired at Baker, hit­ting his horse in the head. Baker imme­di­ate­ly shot his attack­er with his Winch­ester. The dead man was iden­ti­fied as Ramon de la Cerda, whose fam­i­ly owned the adjoin­ing ranch to the King prop­er­ty. An inquest was held at which time the jurors declared that Baker fired in self-​defense. He was sup­port­ed by King and other promi­nent ranch­ers, although obvi­ous­ly not by the Cerda fam­i­ly. Six days later friends of de la Cerda secret­ly dug up the body and demanded a sec­ond inquest. This time evi­dence was intro­duced to show that the man had been dragged and mis­treated in addi­tion to being shot. There was great crit­i­cism of the Rangers in the His­pan­ic press. The Rangers responded with harsh treat­ment toward the Cerda sym­pa­thiz­ers.

Of course, enmi­ty between Baker and the fam­i­ly of the slain man erupted. Soon after, an attempt was made to assas­si­nate Baker from ambush. He and two other Rangers were rid­ing toward their camp when they were fired on by men using Winch­esters and shot­guns. Ranger W. E. Roe­buck was killed as was one of the hors­es. Baker was wounded in the leg. One of the two men doing the shoot­ing was Alfre­do de la Cerda, younger broth­er of Ramon. Alfre­do had pre­vi­ous­ly threat­ened Baker.

De la Cerda was released on bond only to be shot by Baker on Eliz­a­beth Street in Brownsville. When the grand jury met to inves­ti­gate, the jury and Judge Stan­ley Welch (who was later mur­dered in Rio Grande City) “praised the Rangers for hav­ing per­formed a ser­vice which the local offi­cers were unable to do.”⁽³⁾ Although the grand jury and judge had praised Baker and the Rangers, a dif­fer­ent response came from Marce­lo Garza, Sr., of Brownsville, “a respected busi­ness­man, one of Brownsville's most high­ly regarded cit­izens of Mexi­can descent.”⁽⁴⁾ He claimed to be an eye­wit­ness to the killing.

He stated that Cerda sat in the door­way of the store of Thomas Fer­nan­dez, talk­ing to the owner. Ranger Baker approached, “stalk­ing him like a wild ani­mal,” and shot the unarmed man. Then Baker ran into a near­by saloon where other Rangers were wait­ing for him. The entire group left the saloon by the alley door and rushed to Fort Brown for pro­tec­tion by the Feder­al troops from an angry mob of cit­izens.

The Stam­baughs told anoth­er story of Baker after he became sher­iff. A group of desert­ers from Carranza's army crossed into Texas near the town of Hidal­go. There were sev­er­al encoun­ters between this group and United States sol­diers. A few were killed – on both sides. Sher­iff Baker and his deputies, mem­bers of the Third United States Cav­al­ry, and a few Texas Rangers fol­lowed the raiders to the river where the desert­ers crossed into Mexi­co. Sher­iff A. Y. Baker, a fear­less law­man, stood on the north bank of the river in plain view to draw the fire of the ban­dits so that the others could locate them. Eleven Mexi­cans were killed and forty were wounded. One sol­dier was injured.⁽⁵⁾

CHAP­TER FIVE

As Hidal­go Coun­ty entered the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, irri­ga­tion was becom­ing a way of life. Brush­land was cleared and con­verted into farm­land. Town­sites were laid out. In 1907, the cit­rus indus­try began when a Cap­tain Fitch set out the first grape­fruit orchard in Mer­cedes. The same year Charles Volz of Mis­sion planted a grove. Cot­ton and veg­eta­bles were added to the pro­duce of the Magic Val­ley.

By 1904, the land boom was on. Land that had sold for twenty-​five cents to one dol­lar per acre before the rail­roads came had risen in 1906 to ten to fifty dol­lars. By 1910, the same land was bring­ing $100 to $300 per acre.

The land com­pa­nies were in full pur­suit of the “Snow-​diggers.”^(l) Names asso­ci­ated to early Hidal­go devel­op­nent were those of peo­ple who were buy­ing up tracts of land for improve­ment and resale. They included Jim M^cAllen, John Clos­ner, John Con­way, James Hoit, W. E. Stew­art, C. H. Swal­low, Dave Kir­gan, A. J. M^cCall, Willard Fer­gu­son, N. Pharr and others. John Shary was the num­ber one colo­niz­er from 1910 to 1920 and was respon­sible for the set­tling of over 50,000 acres of Val­ley land, pre­dom­i­nant­ly in Hidal­go Coun­ty. Soon Lloyd and Elmer Bentsen began to bring in those from north­ern states to the coun­ty.

Trains were arriv­ing in the Val­ley every two weeks from all over the coun­try. The land com­pa­nies made all the arrange­ments. Books and pam­phlets mak­ing extrav­a­gant claims about the fer­tile lands were printed along with sheets of songs extolling the plea­sures of life in the Magic Val­ley. As the trains rolled toward the Rio Grande, the exu­ber­ant prospec­tive buy­ers clapped their hands as they sang along to favorite tunes of their high expec­ta­tions of a bright, new future in the Val­ley.

The out of state buy­ers were met at the train by sales­men with a car­a­van of auto­mo­biles. The sales­men kept their group togeth­er and iso­lated them from those rep­re­sent­ing other land com­pa­nies very much as the “Blue” and “Red” politi­cal par­ties did with their prospec­tive vot­ers and for the same rea­son. Wives were encour­aged to accom­pa­ny their hus­bands so the sales could be closed in the holi­day atmo­sphere as the buy­ers par­tied, played cards and met new peo­ple.

One of the famous “snowdig­gers” who was attracted to Hidal­go Coun­ty in 1909 was William Jen­nings Bryan. He was brought to the Val­ley by John Con­way. Bryan decided to buy forty acres in the Mis­sion area, but when it was learned that the “Great Com­mon­er” was in the Val­ley to buy prop­er­ty, he was so besieged by pro­mot­ers that he retreated across the river to Mexi­co, where he stayed until he com­pleted his deal. He became very inter­ested in local affairs, and when he returned to the Val­ley, he always par­tic­i­pated in speak­ing and events there.

Many new­com­ers were now enter­ing Hidal­go Coun­ty whose names would be remem­bered through the twen­ties, thir­ties and into the for­ties and fifties, as they sought to improve by their efforts not only the eco­nomics of the coun­ty, but also to pro­mote the demo­crat­ic spir­it in coun­ty gov­ern­ment. Appar­ent­ly, the only records kept about the thou­sands of peo­ple who worked for this goal were the news­pa­per accounts, and while some names appeared in these sto­ries, most were lost to his­tory. For­tu­nate­ly, the results of their ded­i­ca­tion were not.

The town of Wes­la­co, orga­nized in 1919, was home to many of those who were most vocal in express­ing their dis­plea­sure with Hidal­go Coun­ty gov­ern­ment offi­cials who, they claimed, were squan­der­ing taxpayers' money to pro­mote the wel­fare of them­selves and their friends rather than that of the rest of the cit­izens. Per­haps Wes­la­co was such a seed bed of anger because until 1929 it oper­ated as a gen­er­al law city which meant that it had no char­ter and its city offi­cials had to work through the coun­ty in its deal­ings with the state.

Two of the newcomers' strongest voic­es were from Wes­la­co, E. C. “Ed” Couch and D. E. “Dave” Kir­gan. Ed Couch was born Jan­uary 8, 1879. He and Allie Couch and their five chil­dren moved from Knox City, Texas, where Couch had been pres­i­dent of the bank, to Hidal­go Coun­ty. He and his brother-​in-​law started the Wes­la­co Town­site Com­pa­ny. They bought land, divided it into lots to sell. Couch was con­sid­ered to be the pri­ma­ry founder of Wes­la­co. In 1926, he with anoth­er devel­op­er, laid out the town­site of Edcouch, ten miles north of Wes­la­co. This site was soon named for him. Couch was pres­i­dent of the first bank in Wes­la­co and par­tic­i­pated in other enter­pris­es in the early his­tory of the town.

Dave Kir­gan was born Octo­ber, 1877, and came to the Val­ley in 1919 or 1920 with the W. E. Stew­art Land Com­pa­ny. He and R. C. Waters founded the Gulf Coast Secu­ri­ty Land Com­pa­ny and brought in land par­ties of prospec­tive buy­ers. Later, these two men both par­tic­i­pated in the revolt of the towns­peo­ple against the coun­ty gov­ern­ment. Kir­gan was also asso­ci­ated with Vir­gle C. Thomp­son in land devel­op­ing. Kir­gan, a big, burly man who always had a cigar in his mouth, was elected mayor of Wes­la­co in the spring of 1927 and served for four years. He promised to com­plete the work nec­es­sary for obtain­ing a Home Char­ter for his town. After his elec­tion, he kept this promise along with others call­ing for a city audit of its finan­cial con­di­tion. He secured $160,000 bond issue for streets, water and sewer, and built a fine city hall. When the build­ing was opened and ded­i­cated on Octo­ber 16,1928, the address­es were made by Ed Couch and Dave Kir­gan.

As the roads were paved dur­ing Kirgan's tenure, the Wes­la­co cit­izens, high­ly sus­pi­cious of the coun­ty offi­cials, refused to let Sher­iff A. Y. Baker con­trol the let­ting of the con­tracts as he had in the past. To be dou­bly sure there was no inter­fer­ence with their roads by the coun­ty, the Wes­la­co cit­izens stood guard with shot­guns dur­ing the paving to be sure it was done to their spec­i­fi­ca­tions. When the city hall was awarded a Texas His­to­ri­cal Mark­er in 1978, some of those streets were still in use.⁽²⁾

Anoth­er town that was heav­i­ly involved in the reform move­ment was M^cAllen with its mayor, Frank Free­land, as an out­spo­ken crit­ic of Hidal­go Coun­ty gov­ern­ment. Free­land was born May 19, 1880, in Hills­bor­ough, Illi­nois. He fin­ished his school­ing in 1897 and worked with the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road. He received a coal min­ing engi­neer cer­tifi­cate and worked at that pro­fes­sion for ten years. In 1917, he moved to the Val­ley and bought a farm near M^cAllen. He was very active in com­mu­ni­ty affairs, serv­ing as mayor from 1923 until 1929, and he served for many years on the hos­pi­tal board. Gor­don Grif­fin was born in Laud­erdale Coun­ty in West Ten­nessee on Decem­ber 25, 1888. His father, John Grif­fin, was from Grif­fin, Geor­gia, and as a very young man he joined the Con­feder­ate Army and fought under Gen­er­al John B. Gor­don. His youngest son was named for the gen­er­al. After the war, John never returned to Geor­gia. Instead, he set­tled in Ten­nessee, where he mar­ried Edmo­nia Eloise Bent­ly. John Grif­fin died when his son, Gor­don, was one year old, leav­ing his wife to rear eight chil­dren alone on a small Ten­nessee farm.

Gor­don Grif­fin attended Laneview Col­lege in Tren­ton, Ten­nessee. Then he earned a degree in 1915 from Cum­ber­land Uni­ver­si­ty Law School in Lebanon, Ten­nessee. He began the prac­tise of law in Ridge­ly, Ten­nessee, where he opened the office. At the age of twenty-​two, he was elected the third mayor of the town and served in that capac­i­ty in 1911 and 1912. For sev­er­al years, he had a law office in Tip­tonville, Ten­nessee, and later in Mem­phis. He mar­ried Mary S. Prichard from Halls.

Gor­don Grif­fin was exact­ly what the land devel­op­ers in the Rio Grande Val­ley were look­ing for. He was young, ener­get­ic, loved hard work, and was always look­ing for green­er, more excit­ing fields. The idea of help­ing to trans­form a vast mesquite-​covered wilder­ness into a gar­den spot held great appeal for him. A large pic­ture enti­tled “The Val­ley Sales Orga­ni­za­tion Excur­sion Party in the Rio Grande Val­ley,” dated July 28, 1920, in M^cAllen showed Grif­fin and sixty-​six other eager prospec­tive buy­ers who had been brought to Hidal­go Coun­ty by the Bentsen broth­ers. Grif­fin brought his wife and baby daugh­ter from Mem­phis, passed the Texas bar exam in 1920, and began a twenty-​two year law career in M^cAllen. A por­tion of those years were spent in fight­ing what he con­sid­ered cor­rupt boss pol­i­tics, cen­ter­ing on Archie Parr in Duval Coun­ty and encom­pass­ing all of south Texas.

CHAP­TER SIX

By the mid-1920's, hun­dreds of the Hidal­go Coun­ty res­i­dents were begin­ning to won­der about pri­vate­ly, and later to ques­tion pub­licly, the fate of coun­ty funds. They also won­dered why no one out­side the “Baker Ring” could be elected to pub­lic office. The office­hold­ers of the coun­ty had been a closed cor­po­ra­tion since 1890. The voic­es were becom­ing so loud that they attracted the atten­tion of a nation­al mag­a­zine. Owen P. White in “High Handed and Hell Bent,” Collier's, (June 22, 1929), pp. 8, 9, 47, explained some of the caus­es of such out­spo­ken dis­con­tent.

One cause was roads. One road in par­tic­u­lar was referred to as the “Nick­el Plated High­way to Hell.” It stretched less than eight miles from M^cAllen to Hidal­go over per­fect­ly flat, level land and was built at a cost to the tax­pay­ers of $1 mil­lion, or over $100,000 per mile. (This was in the early 1920's.) It ended at a sixty-​cent toll bridge, an exclu­sive fran­chise owned most­ly by A. Y. Baker, which came to a full stop at a saloon and dance hall owned by one of Hidal­go County's pub­lic offi­cials. Many other prob­lems with roads sur­faced, the cost padded, the bonds sold to “friends” of the coun­ty offi­cials at six per­cent less than was offered by other local bankers and busi­ness­men, and the funds deposited in “friend­ly” banks, selected by the same coun­ty offi­cials.

Anoth­er com­plaint was schools. One huge red struc­ture called the Tabas­co School was located out in the mid­dle of mesquite bush­es, miles out­side of the irri­gated area with less than five dwellings in sight in any direc­tion. Its total enroll­ment was 129 stu­dents, and it had cost the tax­pay­ers $400,000. It had equip­ment of every type still uncrated after three years of occu­pan­cy, all bought from “friend­ly” firms, of course. Edin­burg, a town of about 6,000 in 1929, had a school that cost the tax­pay­ers $3,000,000. The bonded indebt­ed­ness of the Edin­burg school dis­trict was $1,250,000, the actu­al value of the school prop­er­ties. The offi­cials, how­ev­er, called anoth­er bond issue val­ued at $1,700,000 on the same prop­er­ty. A notice of the bond elec­tion was posted on a cou­ple of mesquite trees out in the brush and one on the back door of the court­house, where it would not show when the door was open. There were 500 votes cast, and the elec­tion car­ried, how­ev­er, the next day 800 tax­pay­ers signed a state­ment assert­ing that they had known noth­ing about the elec­tion. Only those with boss pre­paid poll taxes appar­ent­ly knew of it.

R. P. Ward, an admin­is­tra­tor employed by the com­bined high school and junior col­lege, resigned in protest in July, 1928, when he learned of the new bond issue of $1,700,000. Accord­ing to Ward, there was no way the school sys­tem of Edin­burg could sup­port a $3,000,000 school. He stated in his res­ig­na­tion that he had learned of the bond issue only in the after­noon of the day of the elec­tion, but that the rest of the fac­ul­ty did not know of it until the next day.

There was the prob­lem of war­rants. These were inter­est bear­ing cer­tifi­cates of indebt­ed­ness against Hidal­go Coun­ty issued by the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers with­out the knowl­edge of the tax­pay­ers, sup­pos­ed­ly for the improve­ment of cer­tain streams and rivers in the coun­ty. But no improve­ments were in evi­dence. The indebt­ed­ness of the coun­ty con­tin­ued to increase, but the cit­izens had no knowl­edge of how the money was being used. Protests began. The clam­or of the vot­ers grew loud­er, and now an aroused cit­izen­ry planned bold new steps.

Thou­sands of angry res­i­dents orga­nized into a reform orga­ni­za­tion, but there seemed to be no way this group could oper­ate with­in the Demo­crat­ic Party. B. D. Kim­brough, law part­ner of Gor­don Grif­fin and a man with a keen legal mind, explained in M^cAllen to a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the elec­tion frauds the impos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting on the bal­lot as Demo­crat­ic can­di­dates.

Mr. Kim­brough stated to the con­gress­men that the Hidal­go Coun­ty politi­cal machine or “ring” had been built around A. Y. Baker, the present sher­iff, who had come to the coun­ty some thir­ty years before. He had been a Texas Ranger, a good offi­cer, a fear­less offi­cer, but had instilled in the minds and hearts of une­d­u­cated farm­work­ers of the coun­ty an abject fear. From that begin­ning, the real power of his machin­ery was in the con­trol he had over the illit­er­ate vot­ers, both alien and cit­izen. This block vote was used to influ­ence bond elec­tions as well as the elec­tion of pub­lic offi­cials. Since the coun­ty offi­cials con­trolled all the pri­ma­ry elec­tion machin­ery, there was no way to break this power with­in the Demo­crat­ic party.^(l)

Most of those in the reform move­ment had been life­long Demo­crats, but now they turned to the Repub­li­can Party. They did not go into the Demo­crat­ic Party pri­ma­ry elec­tions or con­ven­tions. They wanted to increase democ­ra­cy rather than restrict it. They believed strong­ly in the two party sys­tem and would not go into the Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry to attempt to nom­i­nate one set of can­di­dates, and then vote for the oppos­ing party's can­di­dates in the gen­er­al elec­tion.

The pur­pose of this grass roots move­ment, call­ing itself the Cit­izens Repub­li­can Orga­ni­za­tion, was to remove from office those who had dom­i­nated Hidal­go Coun­ty pol­i­tics through a large part of its his­tory. This was to be a Her­culean effort.

When the Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion met in the coun­ty court­house in Edin­burg on August 4, 1928, approx­i­mate­ly 100 peo­ple attended. In those days, the Repub­li­can Party did not have enough votes for a pri­ma­ry elec­tion, so they selected all of their can­di­dates at con­ven­tions. Also, this was before the pri­ma­ry elec­tions and con­ven­tions had been moved up to May and June.

The group met, held an enthu­si­as­tic con­ven­tion, nom­i­nated a full slate of can­di­dates, as well as del­e­gates, to the state con­ven­tion. They were not great­ly dis­turbed when five del­e­gates, two of whom had voted that same day in a Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry, a vio­la­tion of the law, bolted and held a rump con­ven­tion in anoth­er part of the court­house. These five were presided over by Harry Car­rol of Donna. They nom­i­nated no can­di­dates to the state con­ven­tion. The orig­i­nal group that had selected a whole slate of can­di­dates, was presided over by Willard Fer­gu­son of Mis­sion. Del­e­gates from both groups went to the Repub­li­can State Con­ven­tion in Fort Worth on August 1, 1928. The con­ven­tion rec­og­nized the Car­rol del­e­ga­tion.

While the Cit­izens Repub­li­can mem­bers were dis­ap­pointed over this pro­ce­dure, they were not too per­turbed because it did not occur to them at that time that the Repub­li­can Party would real­ly pre­fer a del­e­ga­tion that had held a rump con­ven­tion of five and had cho­sen no can­di­dates over a hun­dred peo­ple who had a slate of can­di­dates and were pre­pared to go forth to do bat­tle for them.

That, how­ev­er, was before the reform group under­stood how boss pol­i­tics real­ly worked in one party states like Texas. The Repub­li­can Party real­ly did not want a slate of can­di­dates oppos­ing the Demo­crats sur­round­ing A. Y. Baker. Again, the expla­na­tion was described by William A. Shep­herd, “A Job for Jack,” Collier's, (June 15, 1929), pp. 8, 9, 56, 57. Shepherd's mate­ri­al came from a Sen­ate Inves­ti­gat­ing Com­mit­tee under the aus­pices of both Demo­crats and Repub­li­cans and was headed by Sen­a­tor Smith Brookhart of Iowa.

The facts brought to light were startling. Even though in one party states, the oppos­ing party was often poor­ly orga­nized and strug­gling to sur­vive, its votes to Pres­i­den­tial Con­ven­tions were just as valu­able as those in which the party was in the major­i­ty. The num­ber of these del­e­gates was based on the pop­u­la­tion of the states, not on the num­ber of Repub­li­cans in it. Every four years, back­ers of var­i­ous pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls dick­ered in finan­cial terms with these del­e­gates just as ardent­ly as with those in the states they hoped to carry in Novem­ber. After all, the del­e­gates chose the party's nom­i­nee, not the vot­ers.

There had always been the accepted rules that were observed by both politi­cal par­ties on the ques­tion of patron­age. Thus, when there was a Demo­crat­ic Pres­i­dent in the White House, the Demo­crat­ic con­gress­men were allowed to send to the var­i­ous cab­i­net mem­bers the names of indi­vid­u­als from their state or dis­trict whom they wished to have appointed for such jobs as feder­al judge, feder­al attor­neys, United States mar­shalls, cus­tom offi­cials, post­mas­ters, and hun­dreds of other office­hold­ers. The stronger the sup­port of the Demo­crat­ic mem­ber of Congress for the admin­is­tra­tion, the bet­ter chance that his rec­om­mended can­di­date had of becom­ing an office­hold­er. The Repub­li­cans fol­lowed the same pro­ce­dure. But in south­ern one party states, there were no Repub­li­can mem­bers of Congress; there­fore, in a Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion there were no elected offi­cials to receive the plums of politi­cal patron­age.

In these states, includ­ing Texas, the few Repub­li­cans in the state named one of their most influ­en­tial mem­bers as “ref­er­ee.” This ref­er­ee had as much power in the Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion as any Repub­li­can con­gress­man, and had mil­lions of dol­lars worth of politi­cal jobs to hand out to the faith­ful. Accord­ing to William Shep­herd,

Being a politi­cal ref­er­ee is about as sweet a politi­cal job as there is in pol­i­tics Do you think a Repub­li­can ref­er­ee, in any Demo­crat­ic state, goes into a wild, des­per­ate fight at elec­tion time to have Repub­li­can con­gress­men elected from his state? He does not.

For this rea­son, Mr. R. B. Crea­ger of Brownsville in Cameron Coun­ty entered into the his­tory of the adjoin­ing coun­ty of Hidal­go. It was alleged by many Hidal­go Coun­ty vot­ers that Mr. Crea­ger did not want any Repub­li­can can­di­dates on the bal­lot in Hidal­go Coun­ty oppos­ing the peren­ni­al Demo­crats. He had con­trolled the Repub­li­can Party in Texas since 1921, and he wanted the state to remain solid­ly Demo­crat­ic, so his power would not be dimin­ished by hav­ing to share it with other Repub­li­can office­hold­ers. There were also sev­er­al huge books list­ing the pledges of over 1,000 cit­izens in Texas who had promised cer­tain sums to Creager's Repub­li­can Orga­ni­za­tion for the priv­i­lege of being appointed to a feder­al office.

The reform­ers, with­out real­iz­ing it, had taken on not only the Demo­crat­ic entrenched estab­lish­ment, but the Repub­li­can one as well.

CHAP­TER SEVEN

In July 1928, Carl and Ruth Arm­strong became pub­lish­ers and edi­tors of a new news­pa­per, the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, printed in Edin­burg, Texas. This paper, though it changed own­er­ship about a year later, remained staunch­ly com­mit­ted to the reform move­ment. It was estab­lished as an answer to the Edin­burg Val­ley Review, which took a strong pro-​administration stance.

On the front page of the Septem­ber 19, 1928 edi­tion, Ruth Arm­strong dra­mati­cal­ly attacked the coun­ty gov­ern­ment offi­cials by stat­ing:

Hidal­go Coun­ty has suf­fered the pangs of politi­cal perdi­tion from those scions of pub­lic life who have insisted on get­ting easy money. If you and your neigh­bor shall prop­er­ly insist upon it, there shall be no more easy money for any­one who sits com­fort­ably ensconced at the court­house with noth­ing to do but write out a few war­rants when he wish­es to build a house, buy a car, or take a trip to Europe.

On Septem­ber 23, 1928, the M^cAllen Daily Press, which sup­port­ed the admin­is­tra­tion but was fair in its news cov­er­age, wrote the story of the first meet­ing of the Cit­izens Repub­li­can Orga­ni­za­tion.

Declar­ing that most of the coun­ty offices have been “vacant” since the last elec­tion, Gor­don Grif­fin, M^cAllen attor­ney, fired the open­ing gun of the cam­paign of the Cit­izens Repub­li­can tick­et against the present coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion at a mass meet­ing attended by approx­i­mate­ly 1,000 per­sons who jammed the audi­to­ri­um of the M^cAllen High School and almost filled the cor­ri­dors of the build­ing in their eager­ness to hear the speak­er. The meet­ing was called to order by Cecil R. Ful­ton, young M^cAllen lawyer, who intro­duced W. C. Baker, cashier of the Secu­ri­ty State Bank of Wes­la­co, as chair­man of the assem­bly. In a short address before intro­duc­ing the can­di­dates run­ning on the tick­et, Mr. Baker attributed the pres­ence of such a large num­ber of per­sons to the “sen­ti­ment of an aroused pub­lic.” He said, “The gov­ern­ment of Hidal­go Coun­ty has become destruc­tive to the life, lib­er­ty and pur­suit of hap­pi­ness of the cit­izens, and it is our duty to amend this gov­ern­ment and to sub­sti­tute the above order.”

The news­pa­per con­tin­ued by list­ing the can­di­dates for office on the Cit­izens Repub­li­can tick­et who were intro­duced to the crowd. They were: E. C. Couch, Wes­la­co, Coun­ty Judge; Ernest M. Smith, Edin­burg, Leg­is­la­tor; F. W. Lem­burg, M^cAllen, Coun­ty Clerk; Robert Hen­der­son, Com­mis­sion­er of Precinct Two; Dr. D. R. Han­d­ley, Sher­iff; Mrs. Fred Wright, Mer­cedes, Coun­ty School Super­in­ten­dent; and Har­burd Tarp­ley, Wes­la­co, Tax Col­lec­tor. Great applause greeted each of the can­di­dates as they acknowl­edged the intro­duc­tion.

Dave Kir­gan, Mayor of Wes­la­co, and an elo­quent speak­er, deliv­ered a short address in which he char­ac­ter­ized a “protest against invis­ible gov­ern­ment.” He stated that the Cit­izens Repub­li­can group pledged its deter­mi­na­tion to have a cer­ti­fied pub­lic audit of the county's records.

As the meet­ing came to a close, enthu­si­asm rose high­er and high­er when the call was made for con­tri­bu­tions, money was sub­scribed rapid­ly, approx­i­mate­ly $1,000 being pledged with­in a short length of time. The entire pro­gram was fre­quent­ly inter­rupted by cheer­ing, stamp­ing of feet, yells, and out­bursts of applause for the tick­et that was pre­sented and deri­sion of the present admin­is­tra­tion. Gales of laugh­ter swept over the large crowd time after time as the speak­ers referred to their oppo­nents, but at no time did the hun­dreds of lis­ten­ers become dis­or­der­ly.

The Cit­izens Repub­li­cans had tried to get a good cross sec­tion of the coun­ty for its can­di­dates. Ed Couch of Wes­la­co was a banker and a devel­op­er. F. W. Lem­burg, born in Mason Coun­ty, Texas, had been with a bank there for twenty-​one years. He had moved to M^cAllen to be vice-​president of its bank and was active in the town's Cham­ber of Com­merce. Mrs. Fred Wright had moved to the Val­ley in 1913. She had a degree from Lom­bard Uni­ver­si­ty in Gales­bury, Illi­nois, and had done post grad­u­ate work in both Chica­go Uni­ver­si­ty and Columbia. She had been super­in­ten­dent of schools in Mer­cedes from 1915–1925, and was active in civic and club work. Har­burd Tarp­ley had been a teach­er in Arling­ton before mov­ing to Wes­la­co, where he had been both a teach­er and school super­in­ten­dent. In 1928, he was in real estate and Pres­i­dent of the Wes­la­co Cham­ber of Com­merce. Dr. D. R. Han­d­ley was a phar­ma­cist, doc­tor, and owned an orchard. Ernest M. Smith was a native Texan, a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Law School in 1914, and a prac­tic­ing lawyer in Edin­burg.

The reform­ers did not nom­i­nate a can­di­date for dis­trict clerk to run against Charles Fort­son. Fort­son of Mis­sion broke with the admin­is­tra­tion and denounced its poli­cies and atti­tudes.

Grif­fin … so ably and fear­less­ly set forth his argu­ments … that his mere appear­ance on the plat­form now is the sig­nal for round after round of deaf­en­ing applause …

Grif­fin kept remind­ing the audi­ence of the han­dling of the bond issues and the cost of the “Nick­el Plated High­way to Hell.” Two or three meet­ings a week were held through­out Hidal­go Coun­ty at Mer­cedes, Donna, Edcouch, and at each meet­ing the speak­ers, who always included Kir­gan, Free­land, Couch, and Grif­fin, plus other aroused cit­izens, con­tin­ued to dis­cuss the county's admin­is­tra­tion. There was the con­stant com­plaint that the coun­ty offi­cials were never in the court­house or avail­able to the pub­lic. Also, there was no finan­cial state­ment of the coun­ty ever issued to the tax­pay­ers, con­trary to the law which said such a state­ment was required four times a year. Accord­ing to both M^cAllen papers the atten­dance con­tin­ued to climb so that four or five thou­sand peo­ple were attend­ing the meet­ings. “The redemp­tion of the past, the sal­va­tion of the present, and the hope of the future lie in the removal of that gang from Edin­burg,” declared Gor­don Grif­fin, and the crowd roared its approval.

As the meet­ings con­tin­ued, bat­tles were being fought on other fronts. One was waged by Sid Hardin, who had not bro­ken with the Demo­crat­ic Party but had run for Congress in the Demo­crat­ic Pri­ma­ry. He went into a dis­trict court in San Anto­nio ask­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion of vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties. He charged that ille­gal vot­ers had cast marked bal­lots in the elec­tion. He sin­gled out the “ring” activ­i­ties of Hidal­go Coun­ty, com­posed of A. Y. Baker, L. E. Tin­kler and Cam Hill, all of Edin­burg, the activ­i­ties of A. M. Bruni of Lare­do, of Archie Parr of Duval Coun­ty, and of Horace Guer­ra of Starr Coun­ty.

Anoth­er bat­tle shaped up con­cern­ing the Repub­li­can Party. Although the Repub­li­can State Con­ven­tion, on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Repub­li­can Com­mit­tee­man, R. B. Crea­ger, had refused to seat the duly elected del­e­gates led by Willard Fer­gu­son of Mis­sion, Fer­gu­son later pre­sented the Cit­izens Repub­li­can slate of can­di­dates to the coun­ty clerk, Cam Hill, to be printed on the Novem­ber bal­lot. Hill refused on the grounds that the other del­e­ga­tion, the one that had nom­i­nated no offi­cers, had been rec­og­nized by the Repub­li­can State Con­ven­tion.

The reform­ers filed an appli­ca­tion for a manda­tory writ of injunc­tion in the dis­trict court in Edin­burg. The case was Ed C. Couch, et al, ver­sus Cam E. Hill, et al. The man­damus pro­ceed­ings came out of the refusal of the coun­ty clerk to have printed on the offi­cial bal­lots the names of the can­di­dates run­ning on the Cit­izens Repub­li­can tick­et for coun­ty offi­cers. The injunc­tion was ask­ing that the offi­cial be restrained from print­ing the bal­lot with­out the names of the Repub­li­can can­di­dates. “It is said that the refusal was made for the rea­son that the names were not cer­ti­fied by the prop­er author­i­ty, which is the coun­ty chair­man of the Repub­li­can Party.”⁽¹⁾

The case was set for Octo­ber in the dis­trict court. Accord­ing to news­pa­per sto­ries at the time, hope ran high among the mem­bers of the reform orga­ni­za­tion that the case would be decided in their favor. The dis­trict judge, Hood Boone, part of the coun­ty administration's group, decided the case against Fer­gu­son.

Fer­gu­son appealed to the Fourth Court of Civil Appeals which upheld the lower court, declar­ing that exec­u­tive com­mit­tees of politi­cal par­ties were supreme in mat­ters set­tling intra-​party dis­putes.

The Cit­izens Repub­li­cans, hav­ing been denied the right to list their can­di­dates on the bal­lot as Repub­li­cans, still were not dis­cour­aged. Now the women, who had been active since the begin­ning, moved into the fore­front. Early in Octo­ber, sixty women met in Edin­burg to orga­nize the Women's Good Gov­ern­ment League, and even though in the 1920's most women did not take active part in pol­i­tics, the names of some women lead­ers began to be found in the news­pa­per sto­ries. Grade Call­away, Edin­burg attor­ney, accom­pa­nied by his broth­er Gibb Call­away, Brown­wood lawyer who rep­re­sented the can­di­dates of the Cit­izens Repub­li­cans, addressed the first meet­ing of the women's orga­ni­za­tion. Mrs. R. A. Mit­tlestead was cho­sen the pre­sid­ing offi­cer, Mrs. Neal Brown, sec­re­tary, and a com­mit­tee of four com­posed of Mrs. H. O. Schaleben, Mrs. E. F. Jor­dan, Mrs. V. C. Wein­net, and Mrs. A. G. Haige were to pro­vide pro­grams for their week­ly meet­ings. The women con­tin­ued to meet, and the num­bers increased at each gath­er­ing.

The Women's Good Gov­ern­ment League assumed as its major project the con­duct­ing through­out the coun­ty of schools to teach vot­ers to write in the names of the can­di­dates. The women worked tire­less­ly night after night teach­ing the intri­ca­cies of the prop­er pro­ce­dure for write-​in votes. Vot­ers had to mem­o­rize the names of the can­di­dates, the prop­er spelling of the names, and the posi­tion for which they were run­ning. They also had to remem­ber to scratch out the names of the oppos­ing can­di­dates on the bal­lot. The reform­ers also sent over 2,000 tele­grams to Pres­i­dent Coolidge, appeal­ing to him to pro­vide feder­al super­vi­sion in the Novem­ber elec­tion. Sev­er­al tele­grams stated, “An impar­tial feder­al inves­ti­ga­tion would reveal greater cor­rup­tion than Teapot Dome.”⁽²⁾

A wire from Assis­tant United States Attor­ney John Mar­shall, in answer to the 2,000 tele­grams sent to the Pres­i­dent, advised the Hidal­go Coun­ty cit­izens that their appeal should be sent to the United States Dis­trict Attor­ney, H. M. Hold­en, at Hous­ton. A lengthy, impas­sioned tele­gram was sent Mr. Hold­en. Two des­per­ate para­graphs from the wire found in the files of F. B. Free­land stated:

Elec­tion irreg­u­lar­i­ties with­out par­al­lel in the United States have been in cus­tom here for sev­er­al years. There is ample evi­dence of ille­gal prac­tices in hold­ing elec­tions, so much evi­dence in fact that only a cur­so­ry inves­ti­ga­tion on your part would con­vince you readi­ly. There are con­di­tions that you will find amaz­ing, cor­rupt and total­ly with­out sanc­tion by law.

… We must have feder­al relief. As lead­ers of the good cit­izens of Hidal­go Coun­ty we no longer can accept the respon­si­bil­i­ty for what the peo­ple will do unless aid is sent imme­di­ate­ly. Ten thou­sand attended a mass meet­ing last week and fee­l­ing there was such that we may not be able to hold the cit­izens in check much longer. We need not only guard at the bal­lot boxes but we need hon­est, force­ful and intel­li­gent super­vi­sion of the elec­tion itself.

(Signed) Com­mit­tee for elec­tion relief in Hidal­go Coun­ty … F. B. Free­land, Mayor of M^cAllen; D. E. Kir­gan, Mayor of Wes­la­co, R. E. Erwin, Y. P. Yarbor­ough, Grade Call­away.

The M^cAllen Daily Press called Mr. Hold­en on Novem­ber 1, 1928 less than a week before the elec­tion. Mr. Hold­en stated that he had asked the F.B.I. to make a “pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion” to ascer­tain whether or not a for­mal inves­ti­ga­tion was nec­es­sary. Asked if there would be an imme­di­ate inves­ti­ga­tion, he told the Press, “I see no rea­son for any rush.”

Mr. Free­land and D. E. Wor­ley went to Hous­ton to present United States Dis­trict Attor­ney Hold­en with affi­davits and evi­dence point­ing out alleged elec­tion irreg­u­lar­i­ties of past elec­tions. Mr. Hold­en promised an inves­ti­ga­tion, but warned this could not be done before the Novem­ber elec­tion.

Gov­er­nor Moody ordered Texas Rangers to Edin­burg to pre­serve the peace. When the Rangers arrived they were were not needed. Sher­iff A. Y. Baker had already taken care of the sit­u­a­tion by plac­ing a large num­ber of his armed deputies in each precinct to pre­serve the peace.

CHAP­TER EIGHT

Owen P. White wrote in Collier's, June 22, 1929, p. 48,

Before the polls closed the tax­pay­ers knew they had won if they could only get a square count, and all night long the men and women both patrolled the neigh­bor­hood of the vot­ing booths to keep the enemy from steal­ing the bal­lot boxes.

That, how­ev­er, was a use­less pre­cau­tion, because, as the said enemy con­trolled all the elec­tion machin­ery includ­ing the Commissioners' Court, which would cer­ti­fy the returns, there was no need to steal the boxes. They had other ways of doing it, but as you may recall, it was a long time before they made up their minds which method to employ.

Hidal­go Coun­ty was the last coun­ty in the United States to send in its returns; 9,000 votes had been cast; more than 5,000 of those bore the names of the Repub­li­can can­di­dates, written in by Repub­li­can tax­pay­ers, and yet the Demo­crat­ic Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers cer­ti­fied it was a sweep­i­ng Demo­crat­ic vic­tory.

The Cit­izens Repub­li­cans had a can­di­date who was a late­com­er to the Novem­ber elec­tion, Gor­don Grif­fin. After all of the other Demo­crat­ic nom­i­nees had been cho­sen in the pri­ma­ry elec­tion, and after the Repub­li­can nom­i­nees had been refused a place on the bal­lot, J. E. Leslie, dis­trict judge, found that he had made a mis­cal­cu­la­tion about the expi­ra­tion of his term of office. He thought he had two more years to go. He had been appointed to fill an unex­pired term, and the coun­ty clerk had assumed that Leslie's term would run for four years. Instead, the appoint­ment made by the gov­er­nor was (by law) only until the next elec­tion. Judge Leslie had ties with the coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion but was con­sid­ered a fair man. The Cit­izens Repub­li­cans, how­ev­er, wanted a clean sweep of the incum­bents, and they par­tic­u­lar­ly wanted their cham­pi­on, Gor­don Grif­fin, to be the dis­trict judge.

When Jane M^cCal­lum, the Sec­re­tary of State, noti­fied Cam Hill, the coun­ty clerk, that he had neglected to file a name for the dis­trict judge, Hill had wired M^cCal­lum for her to tend to her own busi­ness and “we would tend to our own down here in Hidal­go Coun­ty.”⁽¹⁾ So the Demo­crat­ic coun­ty com­mit­tee met, and con­trary to law, cer­ti­fied Leslie's name to the coun­ty clerk as the Demo­crat­ic nom­i­nee. The Cit­izens Repub­li­cans imme­di­ate­ly filed an injunc­tion suit to pre­vent the clerk and offi­cials from print­ing Leslie's name on the bal­lot; there­fore, in the dis­trict judge's race both can­di­dates for the posi­tion had to be written in by the vot­ers.

The day fol­low­ing the elec­tion, Wednes­day, head­lines in the M^cAllen Daily Press stated, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Elec­tion Still Unde­cided.” The story reported that sev­en­teen of the twenty-​one boxes had been counted, and the results gave the Cit­izens Repub­li­can can­di­dates a lead. In the sheriff's race Hand­ly was lead­ing Baker by sev­er­al hun­dred votes.

The M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, a week­ly, announced on Novem­ber 9, 1928, the Fri­day fol­low­ing the elec­tion on Tues­day, that Gor­don Grif­fin had been elected over his oppo­nent, J. E. Leslie for Judge of the Ninety-​Third Dis­trict by a lead of 580 votes, and that Robert Hen­der­son was elected Com­mis­sion­er of Precinct Two over Mar­vin Evans by a lead of 71 votes. The rest of the tick­et had lost. On Novem­ber 18, twelve days after the elec­tion, the M^cAllen Press announced that the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers had can­vassed the returns and declared Judge J. E. Leslie win­ner of the elec­tion to the office of dis­trict judge to suc­ceed him­self. Gor­don Grif­fin had appar­ent­ly been lead­ing by a safe major­i­ty by car­ry­ing Wes­la­co over­whelm­ing­ly. The com­mis­sion­ers, how­ev­er, had found a dis­crep­an­cy in the Wes­la­co box and had thrown it out in its entire­ty.

The Cit­izens Repub­li­cans, who had set out to defeat the Demo­crat­ic incum­bents in the sum­mer of 1928, who had been denied the right to appear on the Novem­ber bal­lot as Repub­li­cans, who had lost out in the courts to chal­lenge the Repub­li­can party's deci­sion, had now been counted out, ille­gal­ly, they believed, in the Novem­ber elec­tion. Still they did not con­cede.

Instead, they charged elec­tion irreg­u­lar­i­ties, reported the Press, because “A huge major­i­ty in favor of the Cit­izens Repub­li­can can­di­dates was announced early Wednes­day morn­ing.” Those lead­ing the fight against the coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion worked unceas­ing­ly in every precinct and amassed a tremen­dous amount of evi­dence show­ing elec­tion irreg­u­lar­i­ties.

The reform­ers held a giant politi­cal rally in M^cAllen, renamed them­selves The Good Gov­ern­ment League, and hired legal coun­sel to rep­re­sent them. At the rally, Mayor Free­land presided and voiced the opin­ion that the Cit­izens Repub­li­can tick­et had been elected. To this state­ment, the crowd reacted with loud applause. Then Kir­gan spoke, urg­ing the crowd not to vio­late the peace in any way and promis­ing that the fight would never stop until vic­tory had been won.

It was nec­es­sary to keep remind­ing these large crowds of the impor­tance of remain­ing calm for there had been sev­er­al instances, both at ral­lies and on the streets of the towns, of near vio­lence. For­tu­nate­ly, in the cases where armed deputies had drawn guns on their ene­mies, whom they referred to as “grafters,” dur­ing the heat of argu­ments, there had always been bystanders to urge the deputies to put up their guns. Often these bystanders had been other coun­ty offi­cials with cool­er heads. But the fear of vio­lence was always present.

The fol­low­ing tele­gram was dis­patched to Wash­ing­ton to the Hon­or­able Fre­d­er­ick R. Lehlback, Chair­man or the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Com­mit­tee on Cam­paign Expen­di­tures:

Five thou­sand Cit­izens Repub­li­cans of Hidal­go Coun­ty here tonight voted unan­i­mous­ly to respect­ful­ly request you to delay hear­ing on elec­tion con­di­tions in the coun­ty until we can send rep­re­sen­ta­tives with cer­ti­fied evi­dence to be present at the hear­ing Stop Wire us whether you would grant this request and when you will grant con­fer­ence with our rep­re­sen­ta­tives Stop Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ready to leave now.
            F. B. Free­land
            Mayor of M^cAllen.⁽²⁾

The reply came back imme­di­ate­ly:

F. B. Free­land, Mayor of M^cAllen, Texas Select com­mit­tee on cam­paign expen­di­tures House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will arrive Edin­burg, Texas 7:25 A.M. Mon­day, Novem­ber 26th Stop Have wit­ness­es present and state­ments out­lin­ing their tes­ti­mo­ny ready Stop Wire names of wit­ness­es you desire sub­poe­naed.

Fre­d­er­ick R. Lehlback,
Chair­man

When the Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee arrived at Edin­burg on Novem­ber 26, 1928, they were met at the sta­tion by about 1,000 cit­izens bear­ing signs such as “All we want is jus­tice,” “We want clean gov­ern­ment,” and other sim­i­lar plac­ards. The com­mit­tee con­ducted its inves­ti­ga­tions and the results of its work was printed on the Cal­en­dar No.720 of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Jan­uary 2, 1929. The House inves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee con­sisted of the Hon­or­able Fre­d­er­ick R. Lehlback of New Jer­sey as Chair­man, the Hon­or­able John E. Nel­son of Maine, the Hon­or­able Carl R. Chin­blom of Illi­nois, and the hon­or­able Lor­ing M. Black Jr. of New York. B. D. Kim­brough of M^cAllen, George and M. E. Clough of Hous­ton, Ram­sow­er and Sewall, M^cAllen, and Don Bliss, San Anto­nio, rep­re­sented the Cit­izens Repub­li­can Com­mit­tee and pre­sented the group's com­plaints to the Con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee.⁽³⁾

Their first com­plaint was that the coun­ty offi­cials had rejected the returns and refused to count the votes cast in the Wes­la­co elec­tion dis­trict with­out any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by law. The infor­mal count of the Wes­la­co vote indi­cated an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty for the Cit­izens Repub­li­can can­di­dates.

Their sec­ond com­plaint was that sev­er­al thou­sand non-​English speak­ing vot­ers, both aliens and cit­izens, who did not ful­fill the legal qual­i­fi­ca­tions to vote, were per­mit­ted to vote with bal­lots marked by the “ring” work­ers under their direct super­vi­sion.

This reform move­ment was not anti-​Hispanic. It was a move­ment against ille­gal vot­ing. Some of the strongest sup­port­ers of the Good Gov­ern­ment League were those with Span­ish sur­names. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in the early days of south Texas his­tory there were thou­sands of eco­nomi­cal­ly deprived and edu­ca­tion­al­ly dis­ad­van­taged Mexi­can Amer­i­cans who could read and write no lan­guage and who spoke only Span­ish. They were unaware of the elec­tion laws, and for years had been manip­u­lated politi­cal­ly by a hand­ful of Ang­los and other His­pan­ics who used them for their own advan­tage.

The third com­plaint was that a large num­ber of bal­lots of legal vot­ers that were per­fect­ly valid under the law were thrown out as muti­lated for hav­ing names mis­spelled and for devi­ous other triv­ial rea­sons. This, in spite of the fact that legal instruc­tions to elec­tion judges were to count votes when the wish­es of the voter could be ascer­tained.

The Cit­izens Repub­li­can lawyers then explained the Texas elec­tion laws to the Con­gress­men. In Texas there was no reg­is­tra­tion. Vot­ers paid a poll tax and pre­sented the receipt at the time of vot­ing. There was a coun­ty judge and coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers elected by the vot­ers in each coun­ty. Those who held the elec­tions were appointed by these com­mis­sion­ers. The elec­tion judges counted the votes for each can­di­date on tally sheets pro­vided for the pur­pose, and then the returns were made out in trip­li­cate. One set was to remain in the hands of the pre­sid­ing elec­tion judge for one year. One set was given to the coun­ty clerk imme­di­ate­ly on the com­ple­tion of the count­ing, and as soon as pos­sible the infor­mal results were to be made pub­lic. The third set of returns was placed in a sealed enve­lope and deliv­ered, togeth­er with the tally sheets, to the coun­ty judge. The coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers met to can­vass the returns. At that time the coun­ty judge opened the sealed enve­lope and the returns were tab­u­lated and the results were final.

The law stated that the enve­lope should be sealed, but Mr. Kim­brough pointed out that the trend of Texas court deci­sions had been that, in the absence of fraud, result­ing from leav­ing an enve­lope unsealed, through an over­sight of the elec­tion judge, the vot­ers of the dis­trict could not be deprived of their votes.

The lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the coun­ty offi­cials were E. A  M^cDaniel, M^cAllen, B. D. Tarl­ton Jr., Cor­pus Christi, J. R. Daugh­er­ty, Beeville, J. A. Gra­ham, Brownsville, D. W. Glass­cock, Mer­cedes, and E. F. Smith, Austin. The point made in their brief was that the inves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee had no juris­dic­tion unless nation­al offi­cers such as the Pres­i­dent were being inves­ti­gated. Their sec­ond point was that since Gor­don Grif­fin, can­di­date for Judge of the Ninety-​Third Dis­trict Court of Hidal­go Coun­ty, had already filed a suit in the dis­trict court of Travis Coun­ty in Austin to pre­vent Judge Leslie's name from being cer­ti­fied as the elected judge, and since a tem­po­rary injunc­tion had been granted and a trial date set for Jan­uary 8, 1929, that the prop­er place for the facts to be pre­sented would be in a court rather than in a Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee. Their third point was that the charges were untrue. The Wes­la­co box was thrown out for fail­ure to seal the elec­tion returns as required by law. They quoted a pre­vi­ous court case to uphold their posi­tion.

In answer­ing charges about ille­gal vot­ers, the brief stated that while party work­ers had paid many poll taxes for the Mexi­can Amer­i­cans, that it had been done with money obtained from the vot­ers them­selves. As for the muti­lated bal­lots being dis­carded, the brief stated that there had been a large num­ber of such bal­lots because of write-​in can­di­dates, and that the elec­tion judges had been impar­tial in dis­card­ing them.

CHAP­TER NINE

The Con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee held its first for­mal hear­ing on Novem­ber 26, 1928, at the Bap­tist Church in M^cAllen. Mr. Kim­brough, rep­re­sent­ing the Cit­izens Repub­li­can Com­mit­tee, called his first wit­ness, Com­mis­sion­er Mar­vin Evans, who had par­tic­i­pated in the can­vass­ing at which the Wes­la­co returns were dis­carded.

Evans tes­ti­fied that ten days after the elec­tion he saw the unsealed enve­lope. He was sur­prised that it was unsealed. He knew that Wes­la­co had voted heav­i­ly for the Cit­izens Repub­li­can tick­et, but he did not look at the returns. He and the rest of the commissioners' court just threw out the bal­lots because the enve­lope was unsealed. Evans tes­ti­fied there was noth­ing else wrong with the returns.⁽¹⁾

Kim­brough asked if he knew that there were two other copies of the returns, one with the coun­ty clerk and one with the elec­tion judge. He asked if any of the court had requested to see the other two copies to see if the unsealed results were the same. Evans replied in the neg­a­tive. Com­mis­sion­er Evans tes­ti­fied that he had been on the commissioners' court for twelve years, and this was the only time dur­ing that peri­od that the court had ever thrown out a precinct's vote.

Chair­man Lehlback then asked if Coun­ty Judge Cameron had seemed sur­prised when he found that the returns were unsealed, and had he appar­ent­ly just dis­cov­ered it when he turned the enve­lope over even though the returns had been in his pos­ses­sion ever since the elec­tion. Mr. Evans felt that the judge had been sur­prised. Since the coun­ty judge had con­sulted with the coun­ty attor­ney, A. F. Buchanan, Jr., and received a written opin­ion, all before the meet­ing of the commissioners' court, the unsealed enve­lope could hard­ly have been a sur­prise. With the Wes­la­co box counted in the returns, Gor­don Grif­fin would be the new judge of the dis­trict court. With­out the Wes­la­co box, Judge Leslie, the incum­bent, would be the judge. The lawyers for the Cit­izens Repub­li­cans com­mented on this in the brief they pre­pared for the inves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee.

… but our minds are driv­en to the con­clu­sion that the alleged error was of their own mak­ing, con­ceived in sin and born in iniq­ui­ty, the result of nine days' delay in can­vass­ing the returns, dur­ing which time the coun­ty judge, the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers, and the lead­ers of the “ring” adopted this sub­terfuge as the only pos­sible avail­able excuse to throw out the returns show­ing the largest Repub­li­can cit­izen major­i­ty, and there­by hop­ing to retain their politi­cal suprema­cy in the coun­ty through the power of the judi­cia­ry, con­trol­ling the grand jury, and thus pre­vent­ing indict­ments for elec­tion frauds and other crimes, and through con­trol­ling petit juries, reward their own fol­low­ers, and through the strong arm of the law thus con­trol and pun­ish those who dare to com­bat the orgy of crime and cor­rup­tion which has run ram­pant and unchecked in that sec­tion of the coun­try.

… Elec­tors must not be deprived of their votes on account of any tech­ni­cal objec­tion to the man­ner in which the elec­tion has been held, or for any mis­con­duct on the part of its pre­sid­ing offi­cers, if these have not affected the true results of the elec­tion.⁽²⁾

Fol­low­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny by Mr. Evans the rest of the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers took the stand, L. W. Lip­scomb, W. C. Chadick, and S. M. Har­grove. The ques­tions and answers were sim­i­lar to those used with Mr. Evans.

In the con­gres­sion­al report, the chair­man, Sen­a­tor Lehlback, at times quoted direct­ly from the tes­ti­mo­ny. At other times he sum­ma­rized and included the opin­ions of the com­mit­tee. Part of his sum­ma­ry of Coun­ty Judge W. A. Cameron's state­ments was:

He tes­ti­fied that pre­sid­ing Judge Buck­ow, of the Wes­la­co dis­trict, deliv­ered to him per­son­al­ly the enve­lope con­tain­ing the returns from the Wes­la­co dis­trict; that he did not at the time know whether it was sealed or not, but dis­cov­ered the fact a day or two later and a week before the com­mis­sion­ers court met to can­vass the vote. In the course of the week he did not send for Buck­ow to seal the enve­lope.⁽³⁾

He asserted most emphati­cal­ly his dis­be­lief that Buck­ow would have tam­pered with the returns but did imply that they might not have been what they should have been. Judge Cameron also tes­ti­fied that he felt jus­ti­fied in throw­ing out the returns because there had been intim­i­da­tion and boy­cotting of vot­ers in Wes­la­co before the elec­tion.

The Chair­man then asked Judge Cameron if he con­sid­ered it with­in his juris­dic­tion to take into con­sid­er­a­tion what hap­pened before the elec­tion when he was decid­ing on the valid­i­ty of the votes. The judge replied that he felt it was up to his dis­cre­tion to take many mat­ters into con­sid­er­a­tion.

When T. J. Buck­ow, the pre­sid­ing judge of the Wes­la­co box, was called to the stand he tes­ti­fied that he had been a deputy sher­iff, but because the vot­ers of Wes­la­co insti­tuted a suit to pre­vent his being the vot­ing judge that Sher­iff Baker had can­celled his appoint­ment a few days before the elec­tion. He also stated that he thought he had sealed both sets of returns, the one deliv­ered to the coun­ty clerk and the one deliv­ered to the coun­ty judge. In answer­ing the chairman's ques­tion if he would not have noticed such a bulky enve­lope being unsealed, Mr. Buck­ow answered, “I think so. It would be flap­ping around.”

Y. P. Yarbor­ough, who was one of those who helped count the votes, tes­ti­fied that three other coun­ters, Buck­ow and he were all sit­ting around a table. They all signed all three copies of the returns, and Buck­ow then put them in envelopes, sealed them, and put them on top of the bal­lot box.

Mr. Kim­brough asked,

“Are you cer­tain you saw him seal the envelopes at that time?”⁽⁴⁾

“Yes,” replied Mr. Yarbor­ough.

In answer to ques­tions by the con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee mem­bers, Yarbor­ough stated that there was no dis­or­der while the polls were open. He also said that at no time did the elec­tion judge announce the vote that night. One “hench­man” slipped in and got the vote off the tally sheet and took it back to the admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials so that they would know how long they were going to have to hold back the Mer­cedes box and others to see the num­ber of votes they needed to can­cel out the Wes­la­co box. He also stated that when he asked the judge about releas­ing the tally of the votes after the polls closed every two hours, as the law required, he said he was told that the pre­sid­ing judge had the right to do as he pleased and that he would put the first man in jail who did not do as he said.

On the mat­ter of muti­lated bal­lots Yarbor­ough tes­ti­fied: On the bal­lots there would be a vote for Tarp­ley, and they would spell it ‘Tarpe­ly’ and others would spell it ‘Tarpaly’ and he would call it a muti­lated bal­lot and fold it up and mark “muti­lated” on it and throw that aside.

If the name, Han­d­ley, had a lit­tle curve on the tail of the ‘y,’ he could call that an ‘e’ and say that was a muti­lated bal­lot. Lem­burg – if it was written ‘Lim­burg,’ that was a muti­lated bal­lot. If it was F. W. Lem­burg and it looked like a ‘T,’ he would say that is a muti­lated bal­lot.

Mr. Kim­brough. Lem­burg and instances you gave of tick­ets dis­carded because mis­spelled names were on the Cit­izens Repub­li­can tick­et? Mr. Yarbor­ough. All of them. Mr. Black. Were there any Demo­crat­ic votes in the muti­lated ones? Mr. Yarbor­ough. Not a sin­gle one. Mr. Nel­son. Not a sin­gle Demo­crat­ic vote? Mr. Yarbor­ough. Not a sin­gle one.⁽⁵⁾

Mr. B. Perkins, a res­i­dent of Mer­cedes, took the stand. He tes­ti­fied that he had worked with the Eaker orga­ni­za­tion until the past six years and had been friends with the sher­iff. He was asked if to his knowl­edge any Mexi­can aliens had voted in the Mer­cedes box. He replied that some­thing like eighty or nine­ty had voted. He was asked if he had per­son­al knowl­edge of any poll taxes issued to vot­ers who had not paid for them with their own money.

Mr. Perkins stated that he knew thir­ty or forty who would tes­ti­fy to that, although there were many more who would not. He also said that he per­son­al­ly knew of eighty or nine­ty vot­ers who not only had not paid for their poll taxes but who were not even cit­izens.

The pre­sid­ing judge, Paul West, of Mer­cedes was called to the stand. He tes­ti­fied that he had dep­u­tized five guards with firearms for duty with­in the polling place. There were two Cit­izens Repub­li­can chal­lengers present, but they were unarmed. When Mr. Kim­brough asked him where he learned that he had the author­i­ty to have armed men watch­ing the vot­ers, he stated that he had the same author­i­ty as a dis­trict judge and had the right to appoint any­one he saw fit to keep the peace on elec­tion day.

Mr. Kim­brough asked if West were not think­ing of the law that said in an elec­tion offi­cers might dep­u­tize indi­vid­u­als to sup­press riots. Mr. West replied again that he had the same author­i­ty as a dis­trict judge.

Mr. Kim­brough. Do you mind telling the com­mit­tee who told you that was the law, that you had author­i­ty to arm guards and keep them there? Mr. West. I read it myself. Mr. Kim­brough. You read it your­self? Mr. West. Yes. Mr. Kim­brough. That is all.⁽⁶⁾

Chair­man Lehlback then sum­ma­rized West's tes­ti­mo­ny by say­ing:

… This remark­able pre­sid­ing judge at the polls reads an act to sup­press riots and con­se­quent­ly con­ducts the cast­ing and count­ing of votes under the shad­ow of five armed men of his own choos­ing, for which there exists no author­i­ty what­so­ev­er. ⁽⁷⁾

Luther Hugh­es, a lawyer, took the stand and stated that he was a watch­er at the polls in Pan­chi­ta, but that he was not allowed with­in the polling place. He watched from out­side, but when the polls closed he saw on the list of those vot­ing a man whom he had vis­ited that day who was sick in bed and could not get to the vot­ing place. He also stated that he asked Fred John­son, pre­sid­ing judge, after the vot­ing was over, about Mr. Mont­gomery, who was run­ning for the state leg­is­la­ture as an admin­is­tra­tion can­di­date. John­son stated that Mont­gomery had received 128 votes. Hugh­es then asked about Montgomery's oppo­nent, Smith. John­son replied that he had received about half that amount. He said all the tick­et was run­ning about the same.

The fol­low­ing day the paper reported that the elec­tion judge had returned 163 votes for Mont­gomery and 63 for his oppo­nent. Hugh­es stated that he and the other watch­er for the chal­lengers had remained there the entire day to check the num­bers of vot­ers going into vote. When some­one would come out­side who they knew sup­port­ed the Cit­izens Repub­li­can tick­et, they would ask him to give his bal­lot num­ber, and they put that down on a pad with the time he voted. Just before the polls closed at 7:00 p.m., Hugh­es sent in two men who were sup­port­ing the reform­ers with instruc­tions to stay there to vote until the last minute. They returned at seven, say­ing the judge urged them to hurry so they could close the polls. Their num­bers were 206 and 207. The watch­ers stayed and saw no more vot­ers go in, yet the total num­ber of votes reported was 226 with the list of vot­ers show­ing nine­teen names after the men voted just a minute before the polls closed.

Mrs. Schaleben of Edin­burg, tes­ti­fied that four years before when she and others became aware that large num­bers of cit­izens of Mexi­co had voted in the Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry, she went to the Mexi­can Con­sul. She received from him a list of all the Mexi­can cit­izens liv­ing in each precinct of Hidal­go Coun­ty for whom he had records. She com­pared this with the names listed in the Edin­burg box as hav­ing voted and found forty-​two names on both lists. Mrs. Schaleben fur­ther stated that the Mexi­can cit­izens who took pride in being Mexi­can cit­izens did not vote, but others were per­suaded to vote by the admin­is­tra­tion. She then pro­duced an affi­davit sworn to by the moth­er and daugh­ter of a Mexi­can cit­izen who was a friend of hers, show­ing that the man had been out of the coun­ty for a week, yet his name was on the list as hav­ing voted. The brother-​in-​law of the sher­iff was on the voter list, although he had moved to Edin­burg only four months before from Okla­homa while the Texas law required a six month res­i­den­cy in the coun­ty and a year in the state.

When Grade Call­away took the stand, he pro­duced affi­davits from numer­ous His­pan­ics stat­ing that they had received poll taxes through the mail that they had nei­ther requested nor paid for. Nor had they voted. Yet their names were on the list as hav­ing voted. Call­away also said that he and anoth­er watch­er were at the Cipress box, in the north­west por­tion of the coun­ty, from thir­ty min­utes before the polls opened until after clos­ing time. They kept a com­plete record of every­one who entered, includ­ing the judge, clerks, and offi­cers. The total count was fifty-​two and included only one woman.

He tes­ti­fied that he talked to the His­pan­ic men vot­ers and learned from them that their wives did not accom­pa­ny them, but the judge handed them two bal­lots and they marked them both and gave them to the elec­tion judge who placed them in the box. The men were very sur­prised to learn that this was against the law and stated they had always done it like that. The total votes were near­ly twice those counted by Call­away, and near­ly half of the names on the list were women.

Dave Kir­gan and Kim­brough explained it to the com­mit­tee that on the bal­lot pre­sented to illit­er­ate vot­ers who could not write in the name of J. E. Leslie for the Demo­crat­ic can­di­date for judge, that the name was already written on the bal­lot before it was given to the voter. Thus they placed no mark on their bal­lots.

In most cases, rough sur­faces were pro­vided as a place for mark­ing the bal­lots so, as the reform­ers attempted to write in with stub­by lead pen­cils all the names of the can­di­dates and scratch out the names of their oppo­nents, the pen­cil would punc­ture the paper. All such bal­lots were declared muti­lated.

Mr. Kim­brough also explained the hope­less­ness of the court sys­tem under the present admin­is­tra­tion. There was no way the reform­ers could win a chal­lenge of the vot­ing pro­ce­dures in court.

They had tried this in Judge Boone's court attempt­ing to get their candidates' names on the bal­lot. Their case was strong, but the judge said, “I do not care to hear any argu­ment. I deny the writ.”⁽⁸⁾

In crim­i­nal cases where tax­pay­ers tried to get redress for the graft in all the coun­ty con­tracts, the sher­iff hand­picked the grand jurors, so there were never any indict­ments against either the offi­cials or their friends. “Every­body in the orga­ni­za­tion is com­plete­ly sub­servient to A. Y. Baker,” Mr. Kim­brough told the Sen­a­tors.

The entire case for the Cit­izens Repub­li­cans was summed up in the brief pre­sented by Mr. Kim­brough. He stated that every can­di­date of the reform tick­et, with the excep­tion of sev­er­al coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers, were elected. By throw­ing out hun­dreds of muti­lated bal­lots the elec­tion judges had man­aged to count out all of the can­di­dates except Robert Hen­der­son, Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er, and Gor­don Grif­fin, Dis­trict Judge.

The vote for Mr. Grif­fin was so stu­pen­dous­ly over-​whelming that even the inge­nu­ity of the elec­tion judges, directed by shrewd and astute pri­vate coun­sel employed by the “ring” politi­ci­ans, could not count out enough votes to defeat Grif­fin and elect his oppo­nent Leslie.

There­fore, accord­ing to Mr. Kim­brough, the coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion threw out the entire Wes­la­co box.

The con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee summed up its find­ing by stat­ing that throw­ing out the returns from the Wes­la­co box. was “utter­ly with­out jus­ti­fi­able grounds.” The mem­bers believed that the law estab­lished that whether the enve­lope was sealed or not, the votes should have been can­vassed. They con­cluded that the enve­lope had been sealed by the elec­tion judge and that if it had not been, the elec­tion judge, the coun­ty judge, and the dis­trict clerk would all have been aware that it was not sealed because of the size of the enve­lope and the bulk of its enclo­sure. Throw­ing out the box deprived over 1,000 vot­ers their choice for Pres­i­dent, Vice Pres­i­dent, mem­bers of the United States Congress, and their state and coun­ty offi­cials.

The com­mit­tee found that evi­dence of the vot­ing of thou­sands of those whose poll taxes had been paid by the “Baker machine” had been estab­lished. They found that “muti­lated” bal­lots had been thrown out when, accord­ing to the law, if voter pref­er­ece could be ascer­tained, they should have been counted. The com­mit­tee also found that the “Hidal­go Coun­ty elec­tion on Novem­ber 6, 1928, was tainted with whole­sale fraud in var­i­ous forms.” The com­mit­tee rec­om­mended that a search­ing inves­ti­ga­tion be held by the United States Attor­ney Gen­er­al.⁽⁹⁾

Owen P. White later described the depar­ture of the con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee from M^cAllen:

When they were ready to leave being fully as dizzy as if they had taken a ride over the Nick­el Plated High­way and refreshed them­selves at the offi­cial hell at the end of it, one of them was heard to remark: “Well, this all too fancy for us. Philadel­phia at its best was never like this.”⁽¹⁰⁾

White con­tacted Mr. Mar­shall M^cIlheney, who had served as Demo­crat­ic Coun­ty Chair­man of Hidal­go Coun­ty for eleven years, ask­ing him about the administration's reac­tion to the unfa­vor­able report by the Sen­a­tors. M^cIlheney's response was that the orga­ni­za­tion was in no way trou­bled, and he bold­ly declared that the world might just as well know that, regard­less of party lines, R. B. Crea­ger and the Demo­crat­ic orga­ni­za­tion of Hidal­go Coun­ty “ran the show” down in their own cor­ner of Texas.

CHAP­TER TEN

W. R. Mont­gomery, the incum­bent, had been declared the win­ner of the elec­tion for state rep­re­sen­ta­tive over E. M. Smith, the reform can­di­date, after the muti­lated bal­lots and the Wes­la­co box had been dis­carded. Mont­gomery was also run­ning for Speak­er of the House. Smith sent let­ters to all the mem­bers of the leg­is­la­ture, telling them he was con­test­ing the elec­tion. The Good Gov­ern­ment League cir­cu­lated two peti­tions, one to the Texas House ask­ing it to recon­sid­er its action of seat­ing Mont­gomery, before it heard the evi­dence of elec­tion fraud, and one to Mont­gomery ask­ing him to resign.

Over 500 Good Gov­er­ment mem­bers, both men and women, drove to Austin to present the peti­tion to the state leg­is­la­ture. The Asso­ci­ated Press described the event this way, “Never before in the his­tory of Texas has a demon­stra­tion sim­i­lar to the one made before the leg­is­la­ture today by Hidal­go Coun­ty been wit­nessed at the state capi­tol.”⁽¹⁾

It was an impres­sive sight. The car­a­van met a few miles out of Austin, and Mayor Free­land con­ducted it into the city, The pro­ces­sion pro­ceeded slow­ly up Congress Avenue on its way to the capi­tol build­ing on the hill. There were no blar­ing horns, no fly­ing ban­ners, but only small wind­shield stick­ers bear­ing the leg­end “Good Gov­ern­ment – Hidal­go Coun­ty.”⁽²⁾ The drive was made around the gran­ite struc­ture and the 350 mile trip ended qui­et­ly as the cars lined up two abreast on the capi­tol drive­way.

The group had lunch at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel before walk­ing to the capi­tol, and there Gor­don Grif­fin admon­ished them that their action must be above crit­i­cism. This behav­ior would com­bat the pro­pa­gan­da that they were just com­mu­nist trou­ble­mak­ers rather than respectable cit­izens.

Then the group, four abreast, marched up the board­walk to the capi­tol, led by Mayor Kir­gan, Mayor Free­land, Gor­don Grif­fin, and E. M. Smith. Grif­fin, as the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Smith, pre­sented to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Grady Woodruff of Decatur, an eight page peti­tion to be read to the House. The peti­tion car­ried the sig­na­ture of 5,474 legal­ly qual­i­fied, tax­pay­ing vot­ers, ask­ing the House not to seat Mont­gomery until it heard the evi­dence. (There were also 3,800 sig­na­tures on a state­ment prais­ing Mont­gomery from the admin­is­tra­tion and its friends.)

The League mem­bers then took their places in the gal­leries, along the hun­dreds of Austin cit­izens plus mem­bers of the Sen­ate who had adjourned to hear the ses­sion. The audi­ence sat in silence as Woodruff asked the House to hear the peti­tion. The vote was 100 to 26 to do so, but on the sec­ond vote to sus­pend the rules so the House could reopen the inves­ti­ga­tion, the vote fell short of the two-​thirds vote needed. So on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, the House refused to lis­ten to the moun­tains of evi­dence of elec­tion fraud by the Good Gov­ern­ment League, and they also voted “No” to the motion to spend $25,000 on a com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the charges on the grounds that they could not afford it.

So the League was defeated again. There were tears in the eyes of many of the spec­ta­tors for this “action of the House refus­i­ng even to hear the evi­dence was the bit­ter­est dis­ap­point­ment of the entire fight.”⁽³⁾ The only con­so­la­tion was that Mont­gomery had been defeated for Speak­er by W. S. Bar­ron. The Hidal­go del­e­ga­tion filed qui­et­ly out of the capi­tol for their long jour­ney home.

The bat­tle to seat Gor­don Grif­fin as dis­trict judge was a long one and ulti­mate­ly no more suc­cess­ful than the attempt to seat Smith. But there were some moments of tri­umph along the way. Imme­di­ate­ly after the Novem­ber elec­tion, the reform­ers with Kir­gan and Free­land lead­ing the effort, obtained a tem­po­rary injunc­tion pro­hibit­ing the Sec­re­tary of State from issu­ing a cer­tifi­cate of elec­tion to Griffin's oppo­nent. This meant that the returns from all the precincts would be taken to Austin for a recan­vass. This also pro­hib­ited the coun­ty gov­ern­ment from destroy­ing or tam­per­ing with the elec­tion returns.

Then Judge George Cal­houn of the dis­trict court in Austin held that he had juris­dic­tion to hear the Griffin-​Leslie case. The lawyers for Leslie tried to get the case moved back to Hidal­go Coun­ty, but Cal­houn ruled against this. Next he made the injunc­tion per­ma­nent. This made the Good Gov­ern­ment League mem­bers believe than the Wes­la­co box would be included, which, in turn, meant that Grif­fin would be the judge.

In early April the deci­sion in favor of Grif­fin was relayed to the press and the Good Gov­ern­ment Lea­guers went wild. Kir­gan and Free­land quick­ly orga­nized a giant parade to cel­e­brate Griffin's vic­tory described in the M^cAllen papers as well as in the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle of April 3, 1929, which car­ried a large front page pic­ture of Free­land, Kir­gan, and Grif­fin. Begin­ning in Wes­la­co at 10:00, the parade fol­lowed a 100-mile route through all the Hidal­go Coun­ty towns, includ­ing sev­er­al that were hold­ing city and school board elec­tions the fol­low­ing day. In these towns the Good Gov­ern­ment League had can­di­dates run­ning. Ral­lies were held in the parks of Wes­la­co and M^cAllen, and ended in an enthu­si­as­tic mass meet­ing in Edin­burg that night after an all day parade. Bands from both Wes­la­co and M^cAllen with blar­ing horns accom­pa­nied the more than three hun­dred auto­mo­biles that formed a mile and a half long parade. Exul­tant signs and ban­ners pro­claimed, “Hur­rah for Dave and Frank,” “Grif­fin Wins,” “Bye, Bye, A. Y.,” “Vote Right in City Elec­tions,” and “Votes Count, After All.” At the time of the parade the votes in the judge's race, includ­ing the Wes­la­co box, as Judge Cal­houn had instructed, was 4,173 for Grif­fin and 3,591 for Leslie with the Wes­la­co box con­tain­ing 689 votes for Grif­fin and 93 for Leslie.

On Decem­ber 20, 1929, the Third Court of Civil Appeals declared Grif­fin Dis­trict Judge by 582 votes. The court deci­sion stated:

It fol­lows, there­fore, we think, that the returns as sent by the coun­ty judge to the Sec­re­tary of State were false in that they showed the elec­tion of Leslie as dis­trict judge by a major­i­ty of 14 votes when in fact Grif­fin had been elected by a major­i­ty of 582 votes. Based upon such false returns, the Sec­re­tary of State had no law­ful right to issue a cer­tifi­cate of elec­tion to Leslie as it admit­ted­ly appears that she would have done unless restrained.

Judge J. E. Leslie's lawyers, in the mean­time had appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. This court, in March, 1930, a year and a half after the elec­tion of 1928, reversed the opin­ion of the dis­trict and appel­late courts of Travis Coun­ty. The court did not go into the mer­its of the case, of course, but dis­missed it on the grounds that it never should have been tried in the dis­trict court of Travis Coun­ty. The lawyers for Gor­don Grif­fin moved for a re-​hearing in the Supreme Court and vig­or­ous­ly attacked the opin­ion as being con­trary to scores of pre­vi­ous deci­sions of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.

The M^cAllen Mon­i­tor lamented:

That Judge Grif­fin received an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the vote for dis­trict judge is admit­ted by his attor­ney and the friends of Judge Leslie, even by Judge Leslie him­self. To say that Judge Grif­fin is with­out rem­e­dy to obtain the paper cer­ti­fy­ing that he did receive such a major­i­ty of votes appears to us para­doxi­cal …. No stone was left unturned to place him in the judge­ship to which the vot­ers of Hidal­go Coun­ty, by this vote elected him.⁽⁴⁾

The final chap­ter to the story appeared in the M^cAllen Mon­i­tor June 27, 1930. The rehear­ing of the case was denied by the Texas Supreme Court because:

No Court has juris­dic­tion over an elec­tion before an elec­tion cer­tifi­cate has been issued and that because Leslie has never been issued a cer­tifi­cate of elec­tion no court can right­ful­ly inter­vene.

In May 1930, Robert Hen­der­son, fee­l­ing that he alone could do noth­ing to change the coun­ty gov­ern­ment, resigned and the coun­ty commissioners' court reap­pointed Mar­vin Evans, who for eight years prior to the 1928 elec­tion, had served as com­mis­sion­er. The reins of gov­ern­ment of Hidal­go Coun­ty were still safe­ly and firm­ly in the hands of the “Baker Machine.”

CHAP­TER ELEVEN

The reform group, now orga­nized under the name of The Good Gov­ern­ment League, had learned that there were no short­cuts to defeat­ing the Baker politi­cal orga­ni­za­tion. They had learned that there were many ways of los­ing an elec­tion and that even the court sys­tem, the guardian of the people's rights, was not always immune to politi­cal pres­sure. They were also to learn that there were haz­ards, other than politi­cal, con­fronting those engaged in fight­ing the sta­tus quo in Hidal­go Coun­ty. Some of these haz­ards were amus­ing in ret­ro­spect. Others were dead­ly in their con­se­quences.

There were Good Gov­ern­ment League jokes such as the one about their oppo­nents vot­ing the “over and unders.” Anoth­er was the story of the lit­tle boy in Edin­burg, sit­ting on the court­house steps the morn­ing after the elec­tion, sob­bing. When asked by a kind­ly passer­by what the prob­lem was, his response was that his daddy had been dead for six years, but that he had come back the day before to vote and hadn't come to see them. A true story was that the League had a big rally and parade planned, only to have the oppo­si­tion strew the streets with tacks so that with­in a mat­ter of min­utes the parade had come to an abrupt stop.⁽¹⁾

There were all kinds of attacks on the char­ac­ters of the par­tic­i­pants. Mr. Free­land was sued short­ly after the 1928 elec­tion on charges of swin­dling the City of M^cAllen. The cham­ber of com­merce prompt­ly met, pass­ing res­o­lu­tions express­ing con­fi­dence in Mr. Free­land and ask­ing the City of M^cAllen to hire attor­neys to defend him. These res­o­lu­tions were printed on the front pages of the local papers, and the suit was soon dropped.

San­ti­a­go Guz­man had been a deputy tax col­lec­tor for the coun­ty for four years. When he arrived at work on the morn­ing of August 16, he was fired with­out warn­ing from his job. The rea­son given him was that there was no work for him to do, yet he had already been assigned the task of mak­ing the delin­quent tax roll and had been work­ing on it for some time. When he ques­tioned the rea­son given him, he was accused of not being loyal to the tax col­lec­tor and of hav­ing fur­nished infor­ma­tion to the League or the “Inde­pen­dents,” as they were also called. Guz­man stated, “All the records of the Tax Col­lec­tors office are pub­lic. I do not know what infor­ma­tion I could have given out to the Inde­pen­dents that any­one would not be enti­tled to.”⁽²⁾

Actu­al­ly Guz­man had become a high­ly vis­ible speak­er in the His­pan­ic orga­ni­za­tion that was work­ing close­ly with, and as part of, the League. He also had run on the League's tick­et for the city coun­cil in Edin­burg against the incum­bents. The Brownsville Her­ald car­ried a story of the whole­sale dis­missal of teach­ers in the Edin­burg school dis­trict. “Dis­loy­al­ty to the school offi­cials” was the rea­son given. Fifty-​four of the system's eighty-​five teach­ers had either been fired or had received such a cut in salary that they had resigned. H. C. Baker, rel­a­tive of A. Y., was the super­in­ten­dent. S. D. Hen­drix, prin­ci­pal of the A. Y. Baker Junior High School, stated he was given no rea­son for his dis­missal. L. T. Hook­er, pro­fes­sor of zool­o­gy in the junior col­lege and high school, and A. M. Weir were offered a sharp cut in salary and resigned. Blanche Hor­ton, math teach­er in the junior col­lege, was told that she was dis­missed for dis­loy­al­ty. All of them had been known as sup­port­ers of the Inde­pen­dents. Min­nie Walk­er said she was open­ly told she was dis­missed for vot­ing for the Inde­pen­dent can­di­dates in the Edin­burg school board elec­tion.⁽³⁾

The fol­low­ing day the Her­ald con­tin­ued the story by inter­view­ing H. C. Baker, super­in­ten­dent. He denied that any mem­ber of the fac­ul­ty had been dis­charged for politi­cal rea­sons. On the con­trary, he said they had been “dropped from the staff in the inter­est of har­mo­ny in the sys­tem.”

In all fifty-​six teach­ers left the Edin­burg schools. They (the teach­ers) inter­preted the “dis­loy­al­ty to the school sys­tem” as refer­ring to vot­ing against the administration's school board.

“Although noth­ing offi­cial was told us about politi­cal affil­i­a­tions, it was gen­er­al­ly under­stood that the teach­ers had to sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion to hold their posi­tions,” one depart­ing teach­er said. Prac­ti­cal­ly all of the teach­ers inter­viewed in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter stated the school sys­tem had been invaded by pol­i­tics.⁽⁴⁾

In March, 1929, a bru­tal attack on C. E. Kel­ley, thirty-​one and son-​in-​law of E. C. Couch, occurred. Kel­ley had been attacked in the home of Couch in Wes­la­co. Couch had gone to one of the politi­cal ral­lies, and he had invited Kel­ley to spend the night in his home. Kel­ley awoke to find a per­son with a flash­light in his room. A moment later he was struck by a blunt instru­ment, pre­sum­ably the head of a hatch­et. Kel­ley stag­gered into the liv­ing room where he was found lying uncon­scious in a pool of blood. He made a par­tial recov­ery but never regained the power of speech. He died three months later in June, 1929.

The M^cAllen Mon­i­tor of Octo­ber II, 1929, reported:

Cit­izens of Wes­la­co were in high state of excite­ment Thurs­day morn­ing over what some called the sec­ond attempt to be made on the life of E. C. Couch, promi­nent banker, Good Gov­ern­ment League lead­er, and can­di­date for coun­ty judge in last year's elec­tion. Rev­erend F. G. Daily of that city called Mr. Couch about three o'clock Thurs­day morn­ing and informed him that three men had just awak­ened him with ques­tions as to where Mr. Couch could be found.

After they drove away, Daily noti­fied the police. He was awak­ened by a light in his room from the screen door. He saw a man and walked to the door to ask what he wanted. He was ordered into the yard at gun point. There was a light from a parked car, and he saw two more men. They asked him about Couch and he told them that Couch did not live there. One man reminded him of what had hap­pened to Kel­ley. After argu­ments and abu­sive lan­guage, the men drove away. The Couch home was only a block away from Rev­erend Daily's home. In Wes­la­co, fee­l­ings were elec­tric, “espe­cial­ly since the belief is strong that when C. E. Kel­ley, son-​in-​law of E. C. Couch, was attacked … the assailant had intended to mur­der Mr. Couch.”

Four years later on Novem­ber 3, 1933, the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent con­tained an account of the indict­ment of one of the coun­ty offi­cials, George C. Beck, Mateo Cuel­lar, and Julian Ybar­ra for the mur­der of Claude E. Kel­ley and con­spir­a­cy to mur­der E. C. Couch. The account stated that immu­ni­ty was granted by the dis­trict attorney's office to George C. Beck. He signed the con­fes­sion relat­ing his part as con­tact man in a plot to kill Couch. Beck was given free­dom on a $2,000 bail but was being guarded at his per­son­al request. The for­mer coun­ty offi­cial was taken to the coun­ty jail where he stayed for a few hours until he obtained a bail bond. Bond was at first refused, but then Dis­trict Attor­ney Sid Hardin agreed to the set­ting of a $10,000 bond. The offi­cial main­tained it was all a frame-​up. Mateo Cueilar, who con­fessed to hav­ing com­mit­ted the mur­der, and Julian Ybar­ra, self-​stated accom­plice, were held in the coun­ty jail with­out bond.

Accord­ing to this account in the Inde­pen­dent of the con­fes­sion, Beck stated that he had lived in a state of fear for the past three years while the mur­der mys­tery lay unsolved. He stated that early in 1929 an impor­tant Hidal­go Coun­ty offi­cial (whom he named) came to his store in Hargill and asked him to come to his office in Edin­burg the next morn­ing. When he arrived, two coun­ty offi­cials were present. One asked Beck if he could find some­one to do a spe­cial job for him. Beck replied that he would try to find some­one. Later he went back and told the two offi­cials that Julian Ybar­ra would do the spe­cial job.

Beck was told by the offi­cials to tell Ybar­ra to do away with Ed Couch to which Beck replied, “My God, what's the mat­ter with you? Mr. Couch is not doing you any harm. The man who is hurt­ing you is Dave Kir­gan.”

Beck alleged that he had been paid $700 to give to Ybar­ra. Ybar­ra made a sim­i­lar state­ment.

Mateo Cuel­lar, Wes­la­co street sweep­er, gave a written con­fes­sion that stated he struck Kel­ley in the head with a hatch­et after Kel­ley was awak­ened by the intrud­er the morn­ing of March 18, 1929. He also said that Julian Ybar­ra came to see him in Wes­la­co sev­er­al times and offered him money to kill Couch. His con­fes­sion con­tin­ued:

We left Julian Ybarra's car about 1,000 feet from Couch's home near some vacant lots and went to the house. I picked up a small hatch­et from the back of Julian's car and he was car­ry­ing a sin­gle bar­rel shot­gun. When we got to the house, I said, “Do you go in or do I go in?” Julian told me to go in.

The door was unlocked and I went in. I stubbed my toe as I entered and made a noise but turned to the left through the door. A man got up off the bed and came toward me but I knew it wasn't Ed Couch, because Couch was part­ly bald and had a dif­fer­ent fig­ure.

When the man started for me, I was afraid he might shoot me and I hit him once with the hatch­et. Stag­ger­ing back he fell across the bed and I turned and ran. Julian had also started run­ning and when I caught up with him he asked me what had hap­pened and I told him I hit a man in the head but he was not Couch. We returned to Edin­burg and Ybar­ra got $100 for me and I left Hidal­go Coun­ty in May, 1929.⁽⁵⁾

The trans­ferred dock­et sheets of the Dis­trict Clerk of Hidal­go Coun­ty con­tained the fol­low­ing nota­tions: The case of the State v. George C. Beck, No.4423, was set for June 29, 1935, dis­missed on motion of the State. In the case of State v. the Coun­ty Offi­cial, the case was set for three dif­fer­ent times. Five dif­fer­ent dis­trict attor­neys were appointed to rep­re­sent the state and in each case the attor­neys had them­selves dis­qual­i­fied. Final­ly in April 14, 1937, the case was dis­missed on the motion of the sixth dis­trict attor­ney appointed to rep­re­sent the state. In the case of the State v. Mateo Cuel­lar and Julian Ybar­ra, No.4422, Novem­ber 8, 1933, the defen­dants Mateo Cuel­lar and Julian Ybar­ra, were arraigned in open court and pleaded not guilty. The case was set for Novem­ber 20, 1933, and since the defen­dants were with­out legal coun­sel, the court appointed four attor­neys to defend them. On Novem­ber 20, 1933, the defen­dants entered pleas of not guilty. The case was then trans­ferred to Hays Coun­ty, Texas.⁽⁶⁾

The M^cAllen Daily Press, March 12, 18, 20 and 22, 1934, car­ried the end of the story. The trial was held in San Mar­cos. Both Cuel­lar and Ybar­ra repu­di­ated their con­fes­sions. They tes­ti­fied they had been “brow beat­en” by the police offi­cers into sign­ing their state­ments, but the offi­cers tes­ti­fied that they had used no such force. Regard­ing the $700 that Ybar­ra had once tes­ti­fied he had been paid by the coun­ty offi­cial to kill Ed Couch, be now stated that he had bor­rowed the amount from the offi­cial, whom he had long sup­port­ed, to buy a Ford car two weeks before the mur­der.

Both men were tried, found guilty, and given life sen­tences in prison. No con­nec­tion between them and the two coun­ty offi­cials, except for the bor­rowed $700, was proved in the trial.

CHAP­TER TWELVE

Appar­ent­ly the Good Gov­ern­ment League had made lit­tle dif­fer­ence in politi­cal affairs in Hidal­go Coun­ty, and yet the orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ued to grow, and the group's enthu­si­asm remained high. The women were more active than ever. The Edin­burg women who had first orga­nized met every week. Other groups were estab­lished in Wes­la­co and M^cAllen. At least twice a month there was a social occa­sion for the whole coun­ty. These were both morale boost­ers and fund rais­ers. The women pre­pared sup­pers and the Good Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers bought the meals. The money was put in a fund to help pay legal costs and other expens­es the group was incur­ring. They had enter­tain­ment and speak­ers at all the affairs, and a real fee­l­ing of cama­raderie had grown up among them. More women's names appeared in the news sto­ries: Mrs. E. M. Smith, Edin­burg; Mrs. Harry Ratliff, Wes­la­co; Mrs. J. A. Card, Mis­sion; Mrs. Grade Call­away, Edin­burg; Mrs. Mont­gomery, Wes­la­co; Dr. Ila Davis. The meet­ings now were attended by men and women. An amus­ing side­line appeared in the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent. The same issue (Jan­uary 18, 1929) that car­ried front page head­lines of “Women Take Up Bat­tle for Lib­er­ty” also had a story about a rumor that Hoover might put a woman in his cab­i­net. “Hoover will scarce­ly go so far as to con­sid­er a woman for a cab­i­net posi­tion, since those places nat­u­ral­ly belong to the men of the coun­try,” pon­tif­i­cated the writ­er.

In March of 1929, the League of Latin Amer­i­can Cit­izens was orga­nized. Its goals were to pro­mote the edu­ca­tion of His­pan­ic chil­dren and pride in the His­pan­ic nation­al­i­ty and cul­ture. At the same time the mem­bers pro­fessed to be loyal Amer­i­can cit­izens who paid their own poll taxes and sup­port­ed the can­di­dates who had respect for Mexi­can Amer­i­can peo­ple, not as block vot­ers to be manip­u­lated.

A let­ter addressed to “My Mexi­can Texan Friends of the Coun­ty of Hidal­go” from A. Y. Baker was pub­lished in the March 8, 1929 issue of the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent:

As a pub­lic func­tionary I have tried to prove that the progress of the coun­ty of Hidal­go and the wel­fare of its inhab­i­tants is my great­est ambition. I have been able to main­tain the Demo­crat­ic Party with the aid of my Mexi­can Texan friends and in all the time that has passed, we have had no need for clubs or politi­cal orga­ni­za­tions nor do I see any neces­si­ty for them at present.

A few days later, how­ev­er, a com­bined Hispanic-​Anglo meet­ing was held in San Manuel, eigh­teen miles north of Edin­burg. The area con­sisted most­ly of poor His­pan­ic labor­ers, but 400 of them attended. San­ti­a­go Guz­man spoke fol­lowed by Dave Kir­gan, Mr. Brew­ster of Hidal­go, E. M. Card, M^cAllen, and Dr. H. O. Schaleben, Edin­burg. All the speak­ers were received with enthu­si­asm.

The var­i­ous ele­ments of the reform move­ment con­tin­ued to have meet­ings through­out 1929. Final­ly on Febru­ary 14, 1930, a meet­ing attended by over 4,000 was held in M^cAllen for the pur­pose of orga­niz­ing an offi­cial new Third Party, the Good Gov­ern­ment League. Those in atten­dance pledged them­selves to stay out of both the pri­maries and con­ven­tions of the A. Y. Baker Demo­crats and the con­ven­tions of the R. B. Crea­ger Repub­li­cans. They would make no com­pro­mis­es with either group and would work only with those who pledge them­selves to effi­cient, uncor­rupted coun­ty gov­ern­ment. The exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the new party con­sisted of B. D. Kim­brough, Chair­man, Willard Fer­gu­son, Mis­sion, F. H. Barfield, Edin­burg, J. C. Lemen, San Juan, Y. P. Yarbor­ough, Wes­la­co, Dr. Frank Osborn, newly elected mayor of M^cAllen, Homer Leonard, edi­tor of the M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, C. H. Pease, edi­tor of the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, San­ti­a­go Guz­man, edi­tor of El Defen­sor, Mrs. H. O. Schaleben, Edin­burg, Fred Ben­nett, Mer­cedes, Igna­cio Rodriguez and Fred Flan­ders, Edin­burg.

The name Good Gov­ern­ment League had been used ear­li­er in Hidal­go Coun­ty his­tory. Rum­blings of dis­con­tent against the Clos­ner dom­i­na­tion of the coun­ty sur­faced when Clos­ner moved the coun­ty seat to Chapin. His regime, how­ev­er, was such an improve­ment over the con­stant strife of ear­li­er times that no real oppo­si­tion devel­oped.⁽¹⁾

Again in 1914 about 700 Ang­los paid poll taxes and attempted to have a slate of can­di­dates run in the pri­ma­ry elec­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the lead­er­ship was total­ly unre­li­able, so the League with­drew its can­di­dates. For the next six years, how­ev­er, the League existed and its audi­tor uncov­ered mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tions which resulted in the res­ig­na­tion of John Clos­ner in 1918. The Good Gov­ern­ment League orga­nized in 1930 was a new party, not a con­tin­u­a­tion of the old, with plen­ty of strong lead­er­ship and with His­pan­ic mem­ber­ship as well as Anglo.

Now the name of C. H. Pease fig­ured promi­nent­ly in a new phase of the League's activ­i­ties. Mr. Pease had been a promi­nent Val­ley banker but had moved to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. for three years. In August, 1929, he returned to Hidal­go Coun­ty and took over the edi­tor­ship of the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent. He was a small, dig­ni­fied, gray­ing man whose appear­ance belied his auda­cious, aggres­sive spir­it. Other League lead­ers had asked for finan­cial state­ments from the coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion, but Pease prac­ti­cal­ly moved into the coun­ty clerk's office demand­ing to see the records of the commissioners' court's min­utes. These were sup­posed to be open to the pub­lic, but Cam Hill, Coun­ty Clerk, was always out of his office and his deputies declared they had no author­i­ty to pro­duce them. Every week Pease pub­lished in his news­pa­per his demands to see the coun­ty min­utes and finan­cial records.

Pease had dis­cov­ered that the last avail­able entry was for April, 1921, in Vol­ume F, although the court had met once a month dur­ing all those years. One day Pease went to the coun­ty clerk's office to inquire about a newly announced Vol­ume J on a desk. Again he was told he at it because Cam Hill was not avail­able to show it to him.

Final­ly, Septem­ber 6, the two record books, Vol­umes G and H, were pro­duced for Mr. Pease's inspec­tion. They revealed an astound­ing account of expen­di­tures for the past few years. In spite of the bonded indebt­ed­ness of the coun­ty and the high tax eval­u­a­tion, the bond money was miss­ing. Pease went to Judge Leslie, demand­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. The judge stated he real­ized the neces­si­ty for one but refused to set up a grand jury because his own right to hold the posi­tion of judge was still being con­tested in the Texas courts.

A for­mer coun­ty judge, A. C. Epper­son, who had resigned, stated he had not signed the refund­ing of war­rants for paving roads and for flood con­trol, yet his sig­na­ture was in the records. No work had been done, and no money was in the county's bank account.

There was a record of a pay­ment to Pear­son and Com­pa­ny of Hous­ton for $32,000 just to pave the street around the court­house, but there was no record of pub­lic bids. Drainage dis­trict num­ber one had increased in indebt­ed­ness by $500,000, yet no work had been done. Anoth­er record showed that hun­dreds of friends of the admin­is­tra­tion had their tax assess­ments reduced while the rest of the county's taxes were ris­ing at a stag­ger­ing rate.

Mr. Pease con­tin­ued to dig through the two vol­umes shown to him by the coun­ty clerk. He dis­cov­ered one over­charge after anoth­er includ­ing a sim­ple index sys­tem installed in Cam Hill's office at a cost of $390,000 to the coun­ty. Pease com­pared this to the neigh­bor­ing Cameron County's total cost of a com­plete court-​house and fur­nish­ings for $200,000.

In spite of these rev­e­la­tions Pease became con­vinced that he had not been shown the com­plete and accu­rate records. He was cer­tain the records had been tam­pered with and altered. Both record books G and H were loose­leaf, and he sus­pected that pages had both been removed and added. Every week he demanded on the front page of The Inde­pen­dent to see the true and com­plete account of the busi­ness trans­ac­tions hav­ing taken place in Hidal­go Coun­ty from 1921 through 1929.

On Decem­ber 20, 1929, the M^cAllen Mon­i­tor recorded anoth­er chap­ter in Edi­tor Pease's search for the truth.

Close­ly guarded by sev­er­al deputy sher­iffs, a com­mis­sion of 15 men, rep­re­sent­ing a large major­i­ty of the vot­ing strength of Hidal­go Coun­ty, Mon­day morn­ing saw, for what is believed to be the first time in his­tory, the orig­i­nal min­utes of the commissioners' court of the coun­ty.

Pease had issued an ulti­ma­tum to Cam Hill on the front page of his news­pa­per, stat­ing that he and a com­mit­tee of cit­izens would appear at the court­house at 10:00 Mon­day morn­ing and demand to see the orig­i­nal records. Accord­ing­ly, at the appointed time the Good Gov­ern­ment Lea­guers entered the coun­ty clerk's office and asked to see the Chief Deputy Clerk, Scott Dankers. Dankers was out, as he usu­al­ly vias when Pease came to see him, but this time he returned short­ly. When asked for the orig­i­nal min­utes of the coun­ty commissioners' court from 1921 to date, he stated that he had already shown Pease those records. He was then asked if he would make an affi­davit to that fact. He refused. Then yield­ing to pres­sure, Dankers, F. M. Lem­burg, and an armed deputy, went down into a cel­lar below the vault where the records were cus­tom­ar­i­ly kept and brought up two worn and dusty vol­umes labeled G and H. These two vol­umes con­tained proof of the worse fears of the frus­trated tax­pay­ers of Hidal­go Coun­ty.

The coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion still used stalling tac­tics. The coun­ty audi­tor refused to let the orig­i­nal records of G and H be pho­tographed, and he refused to let them be removed from his office. Mr. Pease set up a table and copied them there in the office. The Coun­ty Judge Cameron was always out of his office or “too busy” to look for the remain­ing two books, but even­tu­al­ly Pease secured Vol­umes I and J. The long kept secrets were now out in the open.⁽²⁾

In Jan­uary, 1930, a taxpayers' league was formed and the group filed case after case in Judge Leslie's court against W. L. Pear­son and O. O. Nor­wood, con­trac­tors, and all the coun­ty offi­cials for exces­sive and ille­gal pay­ments. The towns, the road dis­tricts, the school dis­tricts, all began to file cases to recov­er their stolen funds. Four­teen lawyers donated their ser­vices to the taxpayers' league and to the gov­ern­ment enti­ties suing for their right­ful tax money. The cases took sev­er­al years to be com­pleted. Some were dis­missed, but many were won by those who had fought so tena­cious­ly against the long stand­ing graft of the “Baker Machine.”

Among the many cases filed in Judge Leslie's court after C. H. Pease had brought to light the facts con­cern­ing the mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds, was one in which two coun­ty judges were involved.

Judge J. C. Epper­son had been coun­ty judge at the begin­ning of the decade. He had appar­ent­ly become uneasy at the out­ra­geous machi­na­tions of the coun­ty administration's succ­sess­ful efforts to make all the mem­bers of coun­ty gov­ern­ment wealthy while at the same time plung­ing the coun­ty itself deeply in debt.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Epper­son did not dis­close his mis­giv­ings but sim­ply resigned as a silent protest. In the usual man­ner since 1890, the commissioners' court, with­out con­sult­ing any­one but them­selves, replaced Epper­son with his law part­ner, A. W. Cameron. Cameron was per­fect­ly will­ing to put his sig­na­ture on autho­riza­tions of refund­ing of bonds where Epper­son was not; how­ev­er, lit­tle else changed.

When cases began to be filed in large num­bers against the coun­ty offi­cials, it was right­ly Judge Cameron who was named as defen­dant, not Epper­son. Epper­son, how­ev­er, had not total­ly aban­doned his ties to the admin­is­tra­tion. In fact, he had been appointed by the commissioners' court, presided over by his law part­ner, Judge Cameron, to col­lect delin­quent taxes for a very gen­er­ous per­cent­age of the money. He had made $16,000 on his col­lec­tions in the first four months. He was also receiv­ing, in addi­tion, the same per­cent­age even when the money was paid direct­ly to the tax col­lec­tor.

Bradley Kim­brough, rep­re­sent­ing the tax­pay­ers league, pointed out to the court that Judge Cameron had voted for this unusu­al­ly large fee to his own law part­ner and firm. He would share in the wind­fall even though as a coun­ty offi­cial, he was for­bid­den by law to do so. Judge Cameron insisted that he and Epper­son were no longer part­ners, even though under Kimbrough's prod­ding, he admit­ted that they shared the same office, the same sec­re­tary, the rent, the sta­tionery, and still had the sign on the office door stat­ing they were part­ners. Judge Leslie ruled that Epper­son had to return the money to the coun­ty.

One of the last cases set­tled for the plain­tiffs occurred in 1933. At that time the Baker man­sion was awarded to the Edin­burg School Dis­trict when the dis­trict sued the Baker estate for the return of $150,000 of tax money that had been used ille­gal­ly in the build­ing and fur­nish­ing of the house. The school dis­trict used the lux­u­ri­ous home as a fine arts build­ing.⁽³⁾

CHAP­TER THIR­TEEN

The Good Gov­ern­ment League now began enter­ing can­di­dates in all the city and school board elec­tions. The first in M^cAllen in April, 1929, was won hand­i­ly by the whole slate of can­di­dates. Frank Osborn was elected mayor. Dr. Osborn, unlike most of the other active Good Gov­ern­ment lead­ers, was a life­long Repub­li­can. He was born in Chica­go in 1877, attended the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka and grad­u­ated from Omaha Medi­cal Col­lege. In 1907, he, his wife, and his moth­er were trav­e­l­ing to Mexi­co City when a rev­o­lu­tion broke out there, so they stopped in the Val­ley. They never left. He pur­chased a forty acre farm near M^cAllen and began his prac­tice of medicine in 1910. He also, for a time, served as the post­mas­ter of M^cAllen.

The Edin­burg city and school board elec­tions were won by the admin­is­tra­tion tick­ets, but by April 1930, the admin­is­tra­tion had lost in Mer­cedes, Pharr, and Mis­sion. These city and school board elec­tions had all been con­ducted in a fair man­ner with Good Gov­ern­ment poll watch­ers present at each elec­tion.

Only in the Tabas­co school board elec­tion did his­tory repeat itself. Here in this tiny, peace­ful com­mu­ni­ty three armed deputies were stand­ing in the door­way of the polling place and five more were just out­side. The old board was re-​elected by a hand­ful of votes and the “muti­lated” bal­lot maneu­ver was used again.

This time the case was quick­ly filed in Judge Leslie's court by Rudol­fo Vela, E. J. Walk­er, Fred L. Mish­ler, and Louis L. Lon­go­ria, all Good Gov­ern­ment League mem­bers. The judge ordered a new elec­tion to be held after hear­ing the evi­dence of glar­ing fraud. Both sides agreed to this solu­tion, and in the July elec­tion the Baker organization's school board was ousted. Although every sin­gle coun­ty offi­cial was still in office, the pre­vi­ous sup­port­ing city and school board offi­cials were being elim­i­nated, elec­tion by elec­tion.

The Good Gov­ern­ment League was gain­ing news­pa­per sup­port. On Octo­ber 18, 1929, The Mon­i­tor reported that two more news­pa­pers had joined the League. The Rio Grande Sun at Pharr that had been bit­ter­ly anti-​League was now under the man­age­ment of S. E. Tilton, and the Donna Her­ald was under the man­age­ment of Ms. Tilton, both papers pro-​League.

The edi­tor of the M^cAllen Daily Press, C. C. M^cDaniel, was a broth­er of E. A. M^cDaniel, a lawyer who had rep­re­sented the coun­ty offi­cials before the Con­gres­sion­al Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee. Mrs. C. C. M^cDaniel was pub­lish­er. The Press had been sym­pa­thet­ic to the admin­is­tra­tion, but it gave fair cov­er­age to the sto­ries about the orga­ni­za­tion of the Cit­izens Repub­li­can and later the Good Gov­ern­ment League Party. In an edi­to­ri­al of Decem­ber 1, 1929, the Press took its stand with the Mon­i­tor and the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent.

The edi­to­ri­al urged the Baker regime to sur­ren­der its con­trol over the coun­ty gov­ern­ment. “The growth of the coun­ty is retarded, and we as a peo­ple have no mind to go for­ward but come face to face with a politi­cal unrest that is stag­ger­ing the foun­da­tions of our com­mer­cial life.” The edi­to­ri­al con­tin­ued:

We address this arti­cle to the offi­cials in ques­tion … call­ing upon them, for the good of Hidal­go Coun­ty, to imme­di­ate­ly vacate the offices of the coun­ty and have the com­mis­sion­ers court appoint men who will be accept­able and com­pe­tent, and there­by doing a great ser­vice to the coun­ty and peo­ple.

The edi­to­ri­al con­tin­ued by say­ing that it was not in har­mo­ny with democ­ra­cy for the same men to rule. “Long tenure in office encour­ages ring pol­i­tics, and enables the unscrupu­lous politi­cian to build up a politi­cal machine and wrest from the hands of the peo­ple the sacred power of the bal­lot.” The paper con­cluded that it now was with the Good Gov­ern­ment League.

Anoth­er crack appeared in boss con­trol with the suit of R. B. Crea­ger v. F. F. Col­lier and Son Com­pa­ny, et al which was tried in the United States Dis­trict Court in Brownsville. The $1,000,000 dam­age suit arose out of two arti­cles which appeared in the Collier's mag­a­zine enti­tled, “Jobs for Jack,” by William G. Shep­herd, and “High Handed and Hell Bent,” by Owen P. White. Crea­ger, Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee­man for Texas, branded the arti­cles as “libelous, false, and untrue.”⁽¹⁾ He sued the mag­a­zine for $500,000 for each arti­cle. The Mon­i­tor of May 16, 1930, reported the out­come of the trial.

Thou­sands of Hidal­go Coun­ty cit­izens were thrilled with the news Thurs­day morn­ing that the jury in the Creager-​Collier case had decided that Crea­ger was not libeled by the arti­cle, “High-​Handed and Hell Bent” which appeared in Collier's mag­a­zine on June 22, 1929, and told of con­di­tions in Hidal­go Coun­ty ….

Grif­fin and Kim­brough of M^cAllen were employed by Collier's to aid in the defense of the suit. About one hun­dred wit­ness­es were sub­poe­naed, most of them from Hidal­go Coun­ty and thor­ough­ly acquainted with con­di­tions here. Prac­ti­cal­ly all of them tes­ti­fied to the gen­er­al belief in this coun­ty that there has been a politi­cal alli­ance between R. B. Crea­ger and A. Y. Baker.

The night before the court deci­sion Mr. Crea­ger made a speech in Brownsville promis­ing the peo­ple in the city a $1,000,000 pub­lic park built with the money he expected to receive from the two suits. Later the sec­ond case was dis­missed.

From the date of the elec­tion in 1928, con­tin­u­ing through­out 1929 and 1930, the Good Gov­ern­ment League har­rassed and prod­ded both the state and feder­al gov­ern­ments into one inves­ti­ga­tion after anoth­er. Their cause was aided by the Sen­ate Inves­ti­gat­ing Committee's report made in M^cAllen imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the elec­tion. A feder­al grand jury inves­ti­ga­tion was held in Brownsville in Decem­ber 1929. The grand jury adjourned with­out indict­ing any­one for fraud in the 1928 elec­tion.

The fol­low­ing night the League held a giant rally in M^cAllen on the high school foot­ball field to insist that the feder­al gov­ern­ment call a grand jury in anoth­er dis­trict out­side the Val­ley to hear the evi­dence of elec­tion fraud. Each one of the 4,000 peo­ple present sent a tele­gram to the United States Attor­ney Gen­er­al, William D. Mitchell, request­ing anoth­er feder­al inves­ti­ga­tion. Imme­di­ate­ly in response to this plea, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al ordered anoth­er grand jury to be called in Hous­ton.

On Jan­uary 2, 1930, the M^cAllen Mon­i­tor informed its read­ers that A. Y. Baker would not be a can­di­date for sher­iff. Baker's announce­ment stated that he had seen his dreams come true and that he would leave the office to “a land of happy and pros­per­ous peo­ple” after he and the men had gath­ered around him had done a “noble work.” The paper spec­u­lated that Baker was plan­ning to make a race for the gov­er­nor.

Sev­er­al months later Cam Hill resigned and moved to El Paso. He had served as coun­ty clerk for eight years. The com­mis­sion­ers replaced him with one of their own, A. E. Chavez, who had served as coun­ty clerk from 1902 until 1920.

Anoth­er res­ig­na­tion came from H. C. Baker, kins­man of A. Y. in August, 1930. He had been school super­in­ten­dent in Edin­burg for many years, but after the fir­ing and res­ig­na­tion of a large major­i­ty of the Edin­burg teach­ers, the League bom­barded him with peti­tions ask­ing for his res­ig­na­tion. The ris­ing tide of oppo­si­tion to all those con­nected with the “Baker Ring” made his posi­tion unten­able.

Jubi­lant­ly, the Febru­ary 28, 1930, issue of the Mon­i­tor reported that the feder­al grand jury in Hous­ton had returned eight indict­ments against five of the most promi­nent Hidal­go Coun­ty offi­cials, plus a for­mer coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, and two elec­tion judges of the 1928 elec­tion. Ail eight were indicted for con­spir­a­cy to deprive cit­izens of the right to vote in the gen­er­al elec­tion of 1928.

The M^cAllen band was hold­ing a rehearsal in the band house at the time the news of the indict­ments arrived in the city. It marched to Main Street and Austin Avenue where the mem­bers played for thir­ty min­utes for a large num­ber of excited spec­ta­tors. Then they rode to Edin­burg where they held a con­cert on the court­house lawn. Sim­i­lar action was taken by the Wes­la­co city band.

In the May 23, 1930, issue of the M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, Homer Leonard, edi­tor, pleaded with the vot­ers to stay with the coura­geous, those who had formed the Good Gov­ern­ment League. He explained how the new party would oper­ate. It would use the con­ven­tion method of select­ing del­e­gates, and the num­ber of del­e­gates from each precinct would be based on the num­ber of votes for the League in that precinct in the Novem­ber 1928 elec­tion. He con­tin­ued by explain­ing that “those who are still cling­ing to the Demo­crat­ic ship” would have a pri­ma­ry elec­tion on July 26 to select their can­di­dates. He declared that while many of the Demo­crats who had fol­lowed the administration's lead­ers for many years, now felt they needed new lead­er­ship, that they should have cleaned up their party ear­li­er.

In the same paper, Bradley Kim­brough, chair­man of the new party, warned against inter­nal bick­er­ing and strife. “We have won this fight if we con­tin­ue to advance with a solid, united front.”⁽¹⁾ He fur­ther declared that this elec­tion would mean more to the peo­ple of Hidal­go Coun­ty than any elec­tion of the past and “more per­haps than any­thing for which they will ever in the future strive.”

The Demo­crats held a pub­lic meet­ing early in June with D. F. Strick­land of Mis­sion pre­sid­ing. They promised the 500 peo­ple who were there that the present Demo­crat­ic Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would resign, and that a new com­mit­tee would be made up of Demo­crats cho­sen at the precinct con­ven­tions. Sid Hardin denounced “the Baker machine as being one of tyran­ny … that all these things be done to the end that bossism in Hidal­go Coun­ty shall die and that the tur­moil of the past years shall end.” While con­demn­ing the Baker machine, he urged the peo­ple to fore­sake the Good Gov­ern­ment League and enter the Demo­crat­ic pri­maries, giv­ing the League cred­it for win­ning the bat­tle against Bak­erism but stat­ing that no third party could last long.⁽²⁾

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for those who wanted to reunite the Demo­crat­ic Party, the Baker forces refused to resign from the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee and dis­dained to coop­er­ate with a com­mit­tee of Demo­crats who were attempt­ing to work out dif­fer­ences with the League.

The out­come was explained at a League rally attended by over 3,000 at the M^cAllen High School Audi­to­ri­um. Homer Leonard presided. W. B. Spell spoke on the attempted com­pro­mise between the Demo­crat­ic party and the Good Gov­ern­ment League. He told the peo­ple who came to the rally how he and others had tried to com­pro­mise because they wanted to be Demo­crats but, “Right then and there every man in the court­room had a chance to see the Baker machine start its iron roll and roll us out flat.”⁽³⁾

He announced that the fol­low­ing com­mit­tee mem­bers who had met with the Baker peo­ple in the coun­ty court­house in an attempt to com­pro­mise had resigned and others would fol­low suit: W. B. M^cAllen; T. C. Downs, Alamo; Josh Ewing, Donna; Ernest Cal­houn, Pharr; Owen Coun­cil, Mis­sion; V. A. Ram­sow­er, M^cAllen; and C. H. Rupp, Mer­cedes. Spell con­tin­ued:

I have seen the Baker machine in action and know now that there is no mid­dle ground. I have been forced out of my party and back in the Good Gov­ern­ment League to stay. I am autho­rized to say that Strick­land, Swal­low, and Hardin are now ready to join your forces and believe from 1,500 to 2,000 votes will be added to your – I mean our – efforts. Let us not let any­thing else enter into this fight. Let's pledge our chil­dren for the next 20 years to fight Bak­erism, and for God's sake let's stay togeth­er.

Many of the lead­ers who had spent three years of their lives for this cause spoke to the peo­ple. Many of those who had faith­ful­ly attended all the meet­ings, driv­en all over the coun­ty, to Brownsville, to Austin, had given their money unstingi­ly, lis­tened.

Gor­don Grif­fin was the final speak­er:

The Baker Demo­crat­ic machine in this coun­ty is dead. It died Fri­day after­noon in the court­house … when the bright moon of Novem­ber rises, we will for­ev­er be rid of Bak­erism. The Good Gov­ern­ment League stands with arms open to any man or woman who hates Bak­erism, the only qual­i­fi­ca­tion being that he must hate Bak­erism worse than any­thing else in the world.

The M^cAllen Daily Press backed up edi­to­ri­al­ly on July 1, 1930.

Not only were the Demo­crats in the Demo­crat­ic Party wait­ing to join the fight in the hopes for reor­ga­nized Demo­crat­ic Party, but hun­dreds of Demo­crats in the Good Gov­ern­ment ranks as well. They were going to go into the Demo­crat­ic Party and fight it out, but when it was clear­ly seen that there could be no reor­ga­nized Demo­crat­ic Party, and the Baker-​M^cIll­hen­ney forces would still have charge of the elec­tion machin­ery, they knew they would have no chance. Then the only thing that could be done was to stay in the Good Gov­ern­ment Party and fight it out in the Novem­ber elec­tion.

The League held precinct con­ven­tions on July 19, 1930, to select del­e­gates to the coun­ty con­ven­tion. From a list of those cho­sen in M^cAllen, it was obvi­ous that the women were there to stay. Ruth Clark, Mrs. Ida Lage, Mrs. E. D. Card, Mrs. Harry Krei­dler were all on the list. The del­e­gate selec­tion was sim­i­lar through­out the coun­ty. Mayor Osborn was the chair­man of the M^cAllen del­e­ga­tion, and John Ewing, the mayor who would suc­ceed Osborn, was also a del­e­gate.

The coun­ty con­ven­tion met the fol­low­ing week to choose can­di­dates. Kim­brough served as chair­man, and Neda Peder­sori was sec­re­tary. The selected can­di­dates were: Coun­ty Judge, Ed Couch, Wes­la­co; Coun­ty Clerk, L. C. Lemen, San Juan; Tax Col­lec­tor, H. Tarp­ley, Wes­la­co; Coun­ty Sur­vey­or, W. Boyn­ton, Edin­burg; Coun­ty Trea­sur­er, S. C. Guz­man, Edin­burg; Coun­ty Attor­ney, Bryce Fer­gu­son, Pharr; Coun­ty Super­in­ten­dent, Mrs. Fred Wright, Mer­cedes; Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Seventy-​Third Dis­trict, Homer Leonard, M^cAllen; Sher­iff, Tom Gill, Mis­sion; and Tax Asses­sor, D. C. Earnest, Mer­cedes.

Tom Gill, the pic­turesque can­di­date for sher­iff, had come to the Val­ley from Okla­homa, where he had been a law enforce­ment offi­cer. He was a home­spun humorist and a typi­cal Texas cow­boy in appear­ance, bear­ing, and dic­tion. He helped lay­out the site for the town of M^cAllen. He moved to Mis­sion in 1909 and was the owner of one of the first three Fords in the Magic Val­ley. He opened a taxi ser­vice, pio­neered in grow­ing cot­ton, was in the cat­tle busi­ness, and ran a Ford agen­cy. In addi­tion to these enter­pris­es, he served as the first city mar­shall of Mis­sion, served as con­sta­ble, chased horse thieves dur­ing the Car­ranzeo War, and from 1914 to 1919 was in the United States Cus­tom Ser­vice. In 1918, he ran against A. Y. Baker for sher­iff. While los­ing the elec­tion, he car­ried his home town box of Mis­sion two to one. Now, in 1930, he was chal­leng­ing the coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion again.

Homer Leonard, Good Gov­ern­ment League can­di­date for state leg­is­la­ture, was born in Mis­souri 1899. He was a grad­u­ate of the School of Mines at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri. He came to the Val­ley in 1926, and he and Elmer Hall pur­chased the M^cAllen Mon­i­tor. He soon threw in his lot with those who were seek­ing to defeat the coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion. He attended every meet­ing, push­ing the cause in his news­pa­per, and was often one of the speak­ers at the ral­lies. One of the youngest mem­bers of the group, he was not yet thir­ty when he entered the fray.

Between 6,000 and 8,000 Good Gov­ern­ment Lea­guers stood out­side the court­house wait­ing for the out­come of the coun­ty con­ven­tion. This was said to be the largest crowd ever gath­ered in Hidal­go Coun­ty until that time. All stood when Dave Kir­gan asked them to pledge them­selves to stay away from the Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry elec­tions. His speech was fol­lowed by one from Fed­in­cio G. Gar­cia, an attor­ney. Grade Call­away presided and intro­duced the Good Gov­ern­ment League can­di­dates. The crowd gave them a tumul­tuous recep­tion.

Every week the League held meet­ings to keep up the spir­its of the par­tic­i­pants and to raise money. At the meet­ing on Septem­ber 12, Gor­don Grif­fin presided and raised $8,000 in pledges. This was an enor­mous sum for peo­ple in the midst of a depres­sion.

The Demo­crats, too, held meet­ings. They alter­nated between try­ing to lure the League mem­bers back into the party by promis­ing that it had reformed, and con­demn­ing them. A. E. Chavez, who had been the coun­ty clerk for twen­ty years and then replaced Cam Hill, referred to the Lea­guers as “Repub­li­cans, Social­ists, Com­mu­nists, and self-​seeking politi­ci­ans.”

On Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 1, 1930, three days before the gen­er­al elec­tion, the total­ly unex­pected, elec­tri­fy­ing news spread through­out the coun­ty that Sher­iff A. Y. Baker was dead. He was attend­ing a meet­ing in Lynn, twen­ty miles north of Edin­burg, with the Hidal­go Coun­ty water­dis­trict board, com­plet­ing trans­ac­tions involv­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars for cre­at­ing a new water dis­trict. He was drink­ing a cup of cof­fee–when he sank to the ground uncon­scious.

The funer­al was held in the Edin­burg Methodist Church on Sun­day, pos­si­bly the largest funer­al ever held in Hidal­go Coun­ty. There were 260 pall bear­ers.

This was the end of a leg­end that began in 1896, when A. Y. Baker had come to the Val­ley as a Texas Ranger. He was fifty-​five years old and had been sher­iff of Hidal­go Coun­ty for eigh­teen years. He had never lost a politi­cal elec­tion. Even his strongest detrac­tors con­ceded that he had been an effec­tive law enforce­ment offi­cer.

On Mon­day, the day before the Novem­ber 1930 elec­tion, the Good Gov­ern­ment League assem­bled in Mis­sion before noon for a gigan­tic parade. They left Mis­sion at 12:00, accom­pa­nied by the city bands of M^cAllen and Wes­la­co, drove to M^cAllen, Pharr, San Juan, Alamo, Donna, Wes­la­co, Mer­cedes, north to Edin­burg, Elsa, Edcouch, and then back to Edin­burg. Here they held a 5:00 rally that was the cli­max of their three year cam­paign. The cars were dec­o­rated. The peo­ple were weary with their long strug­gle – but, by the thou­sands, they were there.

On elec­tion day of Novem­ber 4, 1930, the heav­i­est vote in the his­tory of Hidal­go Coun­ty was recorded. After a long, unceas­ing bat­tle, the Good Gov­ern­ment League won a sweep­i­ng vic­tory in every office by a two to one vote. Boss pol­i­tics in Hidal­go Coun­ty had come to an end.

CHAP­TER FOUR­TEEN

The years of 1931 and '32 were much less drama-​filled than had been the three pre­ced­ing ones. The first action Ed Couch took as coun­ty judge was to hire the rep­utable firm of Ernst and Ernst to audit the coun­ty records. The depres­sion was in full swing, and the offi­cials were attempt­ing to cope with the $19,000,000 debt that they had inher­ited from the pre­ced­ing admin­is­tra­tion and also to keep the county's econ­o­my afloat in the ris­ing tide of unem­ploy­ment and bankrupt­cies.

Early in 1932, the League decided to field a com­plete tick­et in the Novem­ber elec­tion. Dave Kirgan's slo­gan was “Let's fin­ish the job.”⁽¹⁾

A pecu­liar sit­u­a­tion devel­oped in Hidal­go Coun­ty dur­ing 1932. Although it was not large in pop­u­la­tion, since 1929 it was the sec­ond coun­ty in the state in the num­ber of cases filed in the state dis­trict courts. Many of these were the results of the taxpayers' league suing the for­mer coun­ty offi­cials and the con­struc­tion com­pa­nies asso­ci­ated with them. In 1932, 2,012 cases were filed.

Because of the case load, there were two state dis­trict courts whol­ly with­in the coun­ty. The judges in both courts had resigned, so two new dis­trict judges were to be elected in Novem­ber. It was almost 1928 all over again but on a lim­ited scale. Brice Fer­gu­son was the League's can­di­date for judge of the ninety-​second dis­trict court and Fred Ben­nett was the can­di­date for the ninety-​third. Homer Leonard was run­ning for re-​election as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive. The bound­aries of his dis­trict were also whol­ly with­in Hidal­go Coun­ty.

The Demo­crats had taken the cases to court to keep these three men's names off the bal­lot because they were dis­trict offi­cers rather than coun­ty ones. The Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Demo­crats, declar­ing that a party that had no statewide slate of can­di­dates could not run can­di­dates at a dis­trict level, even if the dis­trict con­sisted of only one coun­ty.⁽²⁾

Once again the Good Gov­ern­ment League ral­lied its forces. It held a meet­ing in Mer­cedes of 3,000 peo­ple. Gor­don Grif­fin presided, and Sid Hardin and Joe Alamia were the prin­ci­pal speak­ers. Again the mem­bers set up schools to teach vot­ers how to write in the names of their three can­di­dates. Har­bert Dav­en­port of Brownsville and Ocie Speer of Austin were the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the League in its unsuc­cess­ful attempt to get these names on the bal­lot.

There was some reshuf­fling of alli­ances dur­ing the year of 1932. John Bales, who had been a deputy sher­iff under Baker for years and had run for sher­iff in the Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry, switched to the Good Gov­ern­ment League. D. C. Earnest, elected as tax asses­sor in 1930, switched to the Demo­crats as did San­ti­a­go Guz­man, Coun­ty Trea­sur­er. Earnest received the Demo­crat­ic nom­i­na­tion in the pri­ma­ry, but was defeated by Frank Free­land in the Novem­ber elec­tion. Guz­man lost the Demo­crat­ic nom­i­na­tion in the pri­ma­ry and changed back to sup­port­ing the League in Novem­ber.

Just from news­pa­per accounts, it would be hard to under­stand why Guz­man, who had sup­port­ed the Cit­izens Repub­li­cans from the begin­ning, wanted to go back to the Demo­crats. After com­ing back to the League in Novem­ber, 1932, he appar­ent­ly changed his alle­giance once again. By this time, he must have lost cred­i­bil­i­ty from both sides and, final­ly, in 1934, was arrested by Tom Gill, Sher­iff, a for­mer League asso­ciate, for a dis­tur­bance in the court­house.

On Novem­ber 9, 1932, the League made a clean sweep of all the offices, includ­ing the write-​in can­di­dates. Those elected were: Coun­ty Judge, Ed Couch; Coun­ty Attor­ney, Sid Hardin; Coun­ty Clerk, F. W. Lem­burg; Sher­iff, Tom Gill; Tax Asses­sor, Frank Free­land; Tax Col­lec­tor, H. Tarp­ley; Coun­ty Trea­sur­er, C. H. Pease; Sur­vey­or, W. Boyn­ton; Super­in­ten­dent of Schools, Mrs. Fred Wright; Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Homer Leonard; and the two State Dis­trict Judges, Brice Fer­gu­son and Fred Ben­nett. Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers, R. F. Rivers, E. L. Cal­houn, Willard Fer­gu­son, and W. H. Atwood were elected also.

This elec­tion of 1932 was only the sec­ond time since 1852 that any party other than the Demo­crats had taken office in Hidal­go Coun­ty. The politi­cal war­fare, smoul­der­ing since 1926, burst into full flame in 1928. Now, since 1930, the “out­siders” had become the “insid­ers.”

In Novem­ber, 1932, John Nance Gar­ner had been elected to the office of Vice Pres­i­dent of the United States. “Cac­tus Jack,” a drink­ing, swear­ing Con­gress­man from South Texas for twenty-​eight years, was cho­sen by Fran­klin Roo­sevelt to bal­ance the Demo­crat­ic tick­et. Garner's con­gres­sion­al dis­trict not only included Uvalde, his home, but also all of the other south Texas coun­ties. He had been sup­port­ed by most of the Val­ley Demo­crats. In fact, in the 1928 elec­tion, Gor­don Grif­fin had been his Hidal­go Coun­ty cam­paign man­ag­er, even though Grif­fin had been involved with his own cam­paign for judge. Garner's most reli­able con­stituen­cy, how­ev­er, came from those coun­ties dom­i­nated by politi­cal “jefes.” Since Gar­ner had run for both Congress and Vice Pres­i­dent (an action no longer per­mit­ted), when he was elected Vice Pres­i­dent, he had to resign his con­gres­sion­al seat.

Gor­don Grif­fin still had a strong fol­low­ing from the Good Gov­ern­ment League. He was still spokesman for much of Hidal­go Coun­ty and was often quoted in the Val­ley news­pa­pers. In August, 1931, he wrote let­ters to Con­gress­man Gar­ner and Sen­a­tors Tom Con­nal­ly and Mor­ris Shep­pard, sug­gest­ing a mora­to­ri­um be declared by Congress to be in effect in the United States on cer­tain class­es of debts, par­tic­u­lar­ly against homes and farms. He declared that unless such action were taken, seventy-​five per­cent of the peo­ple in his local­i­ty would be in dan­ger of los­ing their homes under fore­clo­sures, and many others would have defi­cien­cy judg­ments lodged against them. While wheat was the low­est it had been since 1852, and cot­ton cheap­er than any­time since 1900, the loan com­pa­nies who owned mort­gages and liens against the farms and homes had not reduced their loans or inter­est rates one iota. Grif­fin wrote that Pres­i­dent Hoover had declared a twelve month mora­to­ri­um for Ger­many to help our for­eign neigh­bors, “but had paid lit­tle atten­tion to his own peo­ple in his own coun­try.”⁽³⁾ Grif­fin asked why there could not be a two year mora­to­ri­um declared on real estate mort­gages and liens on obli­ga­tions owed by coun­ties and munic­i­pal­i­ties. Many of the ideas Grif­fin used in his con­gres­sion­al race in 1933 were incor­po­rated into the New Deal's plan for long term, low inter­est rates for farm­ers and home­own­ers.

“Who then, could bet­ter rep­re­sent south Texas to fill the vacan­cy left by Gar­ner than Gor­don Grif­fin?”, asked his sup­port­ers.

“Any­one would be bet­ter,” answered the Archie Parr orga­ni­za­tion and the rem­nants of the Baker Ring. They wanted no part of that “Ring Buster” as the news­pa­pers were call­ing Grif­fin. The admin­is­tra­tion Demo­crats accused him of being dis­loy­al to the party, although he had been the coun­ty chair­man for the Roosevelt-​Garner tick­et in 1932.

Under an Austin byline dated Jan­uary 7, 1933, and pub­lished in the Brownsville Her­ald appeared this story:

Maury Hugh­es, demo­crat­ic state chair­man, alarmed over the can­di­da­cy of Gor­don Grif­fin, Good Gov­ern­ment League can­di­date of Hidal­go Coun­ty, was to meet with the can­di­dates. Sen­a­tor Archie Parr of Duval Coun­ty and others will be here Mon­day to con­sid­er a way out of the con­fu­si­on.

Anoth­er story from the Austin Amer­i­can States­man of Jan­uary 25, stated:

Furor raised in the leg­is­la­ture about amend­ing elec­tion laws to per­mit demo­crat­ic pri­maries “so John Garner's suc­ces­sor will be a demo­crat” is not due to fear of the demo­crat­ic lead­ers that a repub­li­can will be elected but that the “wrong demo­crat” will get in.

Repub­li­can can­di­dates are just a side issue in the politi­cal affairs of the dis­trict. The real enemy aimed at by the demo­crat­ic lead­ers is a “good gov­ern­ment” can­di­date.

Gor­don Grif­fin of M^cAllen is the spe­cif­ic can­di­date. He was declared defeated for dis­trict judge four years ago when the Hidal­go Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers Court rejected the entire vote from the Wes­la­co box.

Then the Grif­fin fac­tion orga­nized a good gov­ern­ment party for Hidal­go Coun­ty. Last Novem­ber they named all coun­ty offi­cers and by a write-​in cam­paign, elected two dis­trict judges and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Homer Leonard, M^cAllen Edi­tor.

Now Grif­fin is an announced can­di­date for Congress. Leonard, who is a close friend of Grif­fin, says Grif­fin will enter the demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry. “He has always voted the demo­crat­ic tick­et except for the coun­ty races the past four years. He is a demo­crat. He was born in Ten­nessee, is the son of a Con­feder­ate sol­dier and assis­tant judge advo­cate of the Sons of the Con­feder­a­cy.”

There are many inter­est­ing angles to the pre­lim­i­nar­ies for the race. Leonard is chair­man of the house com­mit­tee on elec­tions. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mil­ton West of Brownsville, who pre­sented a bill to the com­mit­tee to speed an elec­tion and per­mit a double pri­ma­ry in the dis­trict, is a can­di­date to suc­ceed Gar­ner. Many believe the run-​off will be between West and Grif­fin.

The Texas laws did not pro­vide for pri­ma­ry or party elec­tions for spe­cial elec­tions such as this one to replace a con­gress­man. This is the rea­son why in 1933, the leg­is­la­ture had to pass a spe­cial law. It quick­ly went through the Texas House and Sen­ate under the watch­ful eyes of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive West and Sen­a­tor Archie Parr. The first pri­ma­ry was Febru­ary 25, the run-​off pri­ma­ry, March 15, and the gen­er­al elec­tion on April 22. This would be a very expen­sive pro­cess. Pri­ma­ry elec­tions were paid for par­tial­ly by the can­di­dates. The fil­ing fee for these pri­maries would be exces­sive. Then there would be cam­paign expens­es for three elec­tions.

An excerpt from a long story in the Austin Amer­i­can States­man on Febru­ary 13 with a byline of A. H. Lyon explained the maneu­ver­ing that went on in the Texas leg­is­la­ture:

… Parr con­trols the biggest sin­gle block of votes in the dis­trict. His orga­ni­za­tion has its orders. With Parr for West, other reg­u­lar orga­ni­za­tions had no recourse. To back some­body else was sim­ply to split the reg­u­lar vote and so aid Grif­fin. So one after anoth­er they fell in line and orders have gone from Austin down home to line up for West.

Nine men announced in the Demo­crat­ic Pri­ma­ry and one in the Repub­li­can. Oscar Dancy, an attor­ney from Brownsville, who had made the same kind of rep­u­ta­tion in Cameron Coun­ty as oppos­ing machine pol­i­tics as Grif­fin had in Hidal­go, had announced his can­di­da­cy but with­drew early in the race, say­ing that he felt he was play­ing against a “stacked deck of cards,” and that the finan­cial strain of “two pri­maries which have been wished on the vot­ers” were only set up so that “Sen­a­tor Archie Parr would be in con­trol of the con­gres­sion­al seat of this dis­trict.”⁽⁴⁾

Griffin's sup­port­ers in the League went into action on his behalf. They formed a coun­ty com­mit­tee to work for him. Each town had a sep­a­rate com­mit­tee to work on his cam­paign. In some of the other coun­ties, those who had attempted to defeat boss con­trolled admin­is­tra­tion orga­nized. Both the Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent and the M^cAllen Mon­i­tor strong­ly endorsed him. The Inde­pen­dent gave him cred­it for lead­er­ship in the “long fight for clean gov­ern­ment and tax reduc­tion that has made pos­sible the present reforms exist­ing in and enjoyed by Hidal­go Coun­ty.”⁽⁵⁾ The Mon­i­tor was equal­ly enthu­si­as­tic in praise describ­ing him as “a can­di­date who is in every way qual­i­fied,” and assured the vot­ers that Grif­fin was backed by no politi­cal ring. “There will be no pow­er­ful, self­ish, group of politi­cal manip­u­la­tors who will be able to tell him what to do.”⁽⁶⁾

Sup­port came from a vari­ety of sources. Mr. Pease, with the bless­ings of his paper, resigned as edi­tor in order to have more time to cam­paign for Grif­fin. A Val­ley orga­ni­za­tion of min­is­ters endorsed him, prais­ing his politi­cal and moral stan­dards. After a paid politi­cal adver­tise­ment for West appeared in news­pa­pers through­out the Val­ley, stat­ing he was endorsed by Parr and the Kle­bergs, a vet­eran orga­ni­za­tion endorsed any­one but West, and a Taxpayers' League in Cameron Coun­ty “unen­dorsed” West after hav­ing ear­li­er pledged him its sup­port.

As pre­dicted, Mil­ton West and Gor­don Grif­fin came in first and sec­ond in the Febru­ary pri­ma­ry and advanced to the sec­ond elec­tion in March. All seven of the anti-​Parr can­di­dates endorsed Grif­fin and pledged to work for him.

At this point, Maury Hugh­es, Chair­man of the State Demo­crat­ic Com­mit­tee, issued a story from Dal­las, that instruc­tions to sup­port West had been for­warded to all Demo­crat­ic dis­trict, coun­ty, and precinct orga­ni­za­tion heads “order­ing them to sup­port West.”⁽⁷⁾

In Wes­la­co a large group from all over the Val­ley met to protest the state chairman's inter­fer­ence in the pri­ma­ry elec­tion pro­cess. Joe Canales of Brownsville, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, expressed great indig­na­tion, and said he and others would oppose West and Parr to the end.

In the March 15, 1933, pri­ma­ry elec­tion, Mil­ton West defeated Gor­don Grif­fin for Congress by 14,193 votes to 10,832. Hidal­go Coun­ty gave Grif­fin 4,134 votes to West's 2,327. The coun­ties con­sid­ered part of the “Parr block” voted as much as ten to one for West. Duval Coun­ty, the home of Archie Parr, was the last coun­ty to report. The vote there was twelve for Grif­fin and an even 1,800 for West.

Even though Mil­ton West had all the sup­port of the bor­der boss­es, he proved to be a com­pe­tent con­gress­man who effec­tive­ly rep­re­sented his dis­trict. He was re-​elected for sev­er­al terms with the sup­port of many of those who had at first opposed him.

The politi­cal year of 1934 opened on Jan­uary 12 in the M^cAllen Daily Press. On that date, Tom Gill announced that he would run again for sher­iff but this time as a Demo­crat. Soon two more for­mer League mem­bers announced for coun­ty judge. Ed Couch, true to his cam­paign promise to seek office only for two terms, had announced he would not run again for the office. Early in April, J. C. Lemens and Homer Leonard both announced as Demo­crats. On April 8, the Press declared edi­to­ri­al­ly that, “For the first time in four years politi­cal peace is def­i­nite­ly back in Hidal­go Coun­ty.” Nine incum­bent Good Gov­ern­ment League mem­bers would be on the bal­lot in the Demo­crat­ic Party pri­ma­ry.

Cases con­tin­ued to be tried in the courts, both state and feder­al, against the for­mer offi­cials and their asso­ciates. Some were dis­missed while others were won by the tax­pay­ers. Sev­er­al of the for­mer offi­cials were tried in feder­al courts on income tax eva­sion. Most, but not all, were found guilty and fined.

The His­pan­ic orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ued to func­tion by hold­ing meet­ings. The lead­ers con­tin­u­ous­ly urged its mem­bers to pay their poll taxes and vote as indi­vid­u­als, not as blocks of votes. The Repub­li­cans in the coun­ty began to orga­nize, encour­ag­ing Repub­li­cans to announce for local and state offices and urg­ing them to break with the Crea­ger machines. Dr. Osborn's name appeared in the papers once again, this time urg­ing Repub­li­cans to attend their precinct con­ven­tions.

In 1934 the only real politi­cal excite­ment was sur­round­ing the re-​election of Archie Parr as state sen­a­tor. Parr, from Bena­vides in Duval Coun­ty, had served as a sen­a­tor from the south Texas coun­ties for twen­ty years with lit­tle or no oppo­si­tion. This year was dif­fer­ent. Because of the suc­cess­ful efforts of the League against the Baker admin­is­tra­tion, sev­er­al strong con­tenders dared to run against him.

On Memo­ri­al Day in Rio Grande City in Starr Coun­ty, a politi­cal riot occurred. The anti-​administration forces of Starr held a large rally oppos­ing the re-​election of Parr and the Guer­ra fac­tion. J. T. Canales of Brownsville and Gor­don Grif­fin of M^cAllen were both asked to join the local speak­ers on the porch of the down­town hotel. As Canales was address­ing the crowd, shots rang out. Seven men were injured and two were killed. Just who was shoot­ing at whom was debat­able since the Press reported con­flict­ing accounts, one from Sher­iff Gus Guer­ra, and one from Attor­ney J. T. Canales. The sher­iff reported it was Canales' fault since he was “attempt­ing to stir up trouble in Starr Coun­ty.”⁽⁸⁾ Canales said that Dis­trict Clerk Julio Guer­ra, had threat­ened him before the rally and promised him that the meet­ing would never take place, since it was in oppo­si­tion to the Guer­ras and Parr. Accord­ing to the Press: “The ral­ley was the first in 28 years in oppo­si­tion to the Guer­ra fac­tion.”

Canales fin­ished his speech, and Gor­don Grif­fin was intro­duced. The two dead men, one a ranch­er and one a deputy sher­iff, still lay on the ground, guarded by armed deputies who refused to allow the bod­ies to be moved. Grif­fin reported later that he knew he said some­thing but he had no idea what, with two dead men lying only a few feet from where he was stand­ing.

In the sec­ond Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry elec­tion in August, Jim Neal, a Webb Coun­ty ranch­man, defeated Archie Parr in the race for Texas State Sen­a­tor. Archie Parr's state­ment to the press was: “I want to thank all of my friends in the 27th Sen­a­to­ri­al Dis­trict and over the state for their sup­port; and as for my ene­mies, each and every one of them, can go to hell.”⁽⁹⁾

Three of the orig­i­nal aims of the reform­ers in Hidal­go Coun­ty were to increase democ­ra­cy by mak­ing it pos­sible for more than a few hand-​picked can­di­dates to be elected, to cut down on the graft-​riddled expens­es of coun­ty gov­ern­ment and thus reduce exhor­bi­tant taxes, and to abol­ish ille­gal vot­ing. They were suc­cess­ful on all counts.

In the first Demo­crat­ic pri­ma­ry elec­tion there were 227 names on the bal­lot. Many names were of those who had left the party, local­ly, for the three pre­vi­ous elec­tions. Some were those who had not. That no longer seemed to be the test. Many Good Gov­ern­ment can­di­dates were run­ning against each other. The Repub­li­cans also had a slate of can­di­dates. Cer­tain­ly democ­ra­cy had been extended. Some money had been returned to the coun­ty through court cases. The coun­ty records had been audited, and the finan­cial affairs were out in the open. As the depres­sion deep­ened the coun­ty offi­cials took a cut in salary to help con­trol the coun­ty debt.

Ille­gal vot­ing had almost dis­ap­peared. If poll taxes were still being paid for illit­er­ate vot­ers, it was being done very qui­et­ly, and His­pan­ic cit­izens were inform­ing them­selves on the vot­ing laws and resent­ing those who tried to manip­u­late them. There had been no rep­e­ti­tion of the 1928 elec­tion fraud.

One of the most amaz­ing out­comes was that friend­ships were quick­ly restored between mem­bers of the once-​warring fac­tions. Hidal­go Coun­ty was once again ready to take a lead­ing role in the growth and progress of the Magic Val­ley.

FOOT­NOTES

Chap­ter One

1. John William Grif­fin, “Sto­ries Told by John Clos­ner,” M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, May 16, 1929.

2. Frank H. Dugan, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up,” Offi­cial His­to­ri­cal Pro­gram, Hidal­go Coun­ty Cen­ten­ni­al, 1852–1952, p. 10.

3. Edin­burg Bicen­ten­ni­al Her­itage Com­mit­tee, Edin­burg – A Story of a Town (Edin­burg, Texas, Pri­vate­ly Printed, 1976), pp. 27, 28.

4. Frank H. Dugan, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up,” p. 10.

5. J. Lee Stam­baugh and Lil­lian J. Stam­baugh, The Lower Rio Grande Val­ley of Texas (San Anto­nio, Texas: The Nay­lor Com­pa­ny, 1956), pp. 95, 96.

6. Frank H. Dugan, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up ,” pp. 11, 12.

7. John William Grif­fin, “Sto­ries Told by John Clos­ner.”

8. Frank H. Dugan, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up,” p. 12.

9. J. Lee Stam­baugh and Lil­lian J. Stam­baugh, The Lower Rio Grande Val­ley of Texas, p. 206.

10. Anna Kelsey, Through the Years (San Anto­nio, Texas: The Nay­lor Com­pa­ny, 1952), p. 206.

Chap­ter Two

1. Frank H. Dugan, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up,” pp. 12–14.

2. Evan Anders, Boss Rule in South Texas: The Pro­gres­sive Era (Austin, Texas: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Free Press, 1982) p. 239.

3. Frank H. Dugan, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up,” p. 14.

4. Vir­ginia Arm­strong, “Mov­ing of Court­house Was Stir­ring Chap­ter in Hidal­go Coun­ty His­tory,” Val­ley Evening Mon­i­tor, Novem­ber 27, 1949.

5. Ann Magee, Edin­burg Daily Review, Octo­ber 12, 1955.

6. Tom May­field to Gor­don Grif­fin, Septem­ber 21, 1961, G. Grif­fin Files.

Chap­ter Three

1. J. Lee Stam­baugh and Lil­lian J. Stam­baugh, The Lower Rio Grande Val­ley of Texas, pp. 208–10.

2. Ibid., 217–19.

3. C. H. Pease, news­pa­per clip­ping found in “Ruth Clark's Scrap­book” (n.p., n.d., n.pag.).

4. J. Lee Stam­baugh and Lil­lian J. Stam­baugh, The Lower Rio Grande Val­ley of Texas, pp. 222–24.

5. Ibid., 228, 229.

Chap­ter Four

1. John R. Peavy, Echoes from the Rio Grande (Brownsville, Texas: Spring­man King Com­pa­ny, 1963), pp. 46–52.

2. Evan Anders, Boss Rule In South Texas, p. 134.

3. J. Lee Stam­baugh and Lil­lian J. Stam­baugh, The Lower Rio Grande Val­ley of Texas, pp. 158, 159.

4. Julian Sarno­ra, Joe Bernal, Albert Pena, Gun­pow­der Jus­tice (Notre Dame, Indi­ana: Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame Press, 1976) pp. 58, 59. 5. J. Lee Stam­baugh and Lil­lian J. Stam­baugh, The Lower Rio Grande Val­ley of Texas, pp. 212, 13.

Chap­ter Five

1. Frank H. Dugan, “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up,” pp. 16, 17.

2. Fran Isbell, “Wes­la­co City Hall Appli­ca­tion for Texas His­to­ri­cal Mark­er,” 1978.

Chap­ter Six

1. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, “Report on Cam­paign Expen­di­tures,” Con­gres­sion­al Record, Cal­en­dar num­ber 720, Jan­uary 2, 1929, pp. 101–06.

Chap­ter Seven

1. M^cAllen Daily Press, Septem­ber 28, 1928.

2. Ibid., Octo­ber 28,1928.

Chap­ter Eight

1. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, Octo­ber 12, 1928.

2. Free­land Files.

3. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, “Report on Cam­paign Expen­di­tures,” Con­gres­sion­al Record, Cal­en­dar num­ber 720, Jan­uary 2, 1929, pp. 5–7.

Chap­ter Nine

1. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, “Report on Cam­paign Expen­di­tures,” Con­gres­sion­al Record, Cal­en­dar num­ber 720, Jan­uary 2, 1929, pp. 7–9.

2. Ibid., pp. 32–34.

3. Ibid., pp. 32–34.

4. Ibid., pp. 12, 13.

5. Ibid., pp. 13–17.

6. Ibid., pp. 17–27.

7. Ibid., pp. 107–120.

8. Ibid., pp. 145–151.

9. Ibid., pp. 46, 47.

10. Owen P. White, “High Handed and Hell Bent,” Collier's, June 22, 1929, p. 48.

Chap­ter Ten

1. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, Febru­ary 15, 1929.

2. M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, Febru­ary 8, 1929.

3. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, Febru­ary 8, 1929.

4. Hous­ton Chron­i­cle, April 3, 1929.

Chap­ter Eleven.

1. C. F. Wood to R. G. Spence, August 17, 1961.

2. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, August 23, 1929.

3. Brownsville Her­ald, June 2, 1929.

4. Ibid., June 3, 1929.

5. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, Novem­ber 3, 1933.

6. Ver­non Hill to R. G. Spence, May 18, 1962.

Chap­ter Twelve

1. Evan Anders, Boss Rule in South Texas, pp. 168–70.

2. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, Jan­uary 10,1930.

3. Judg­ment on Suit num­ber B-9617, Edin­burg Con­sol­i­dated Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict v. Mrs. Lena S. Baker, 93rd Judi­cial Dis­trict Court, July 13, 1933.

Chap­ter Thir­teen

1. R. B. Crea­ger v. P. F. Col­lier and Sons Dis­tribut­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and the Crow­ell Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny, Plead­ings.

2. M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, June 6, 1930.

3. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, August 24, 1930.

Chap­ter Four­teen

1. Brownsville Her­ald, Jan­uary 30, 1932.

2. Ibid., Octo­ber 9, 1932.

3. G. Grif­fin Files.

4. Brownsville Her­ald, Febru­ary 14, 1933.

5. Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, Jan­uary 19,1933.

6. M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, Febru­ary 1, 1933.

7. Brownsville Her­ald, March 1, 1933.

8. M^cAllen Daily Press, May 1, 1934.

9. M^cAllen Daily Press, August 29, 1934.

BIB­LI­OG­RA­PHY

Books

Anders, Evan. Boss Rule in South Texas: The Pro­gres­sive Era. Austin: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Press, 1982.

Edin­burg Bicen­ten­ni­al Her­itage Com­mit­tee. Edin­burg: A Story of a Town. Edin­burg: Pri­vate­ly Printed, 1952.

Kelsey, Anna Mari­et­ta. Through the Years: Rem­i­nis­cences of Pio­neer Years of the Bor­der. San Anto­nio: The Nay­lor Co., 1954.

Peavy, John R. Echoes from the Rio Grande: From the Thorny Hills of Duval to the Sleepy Rio Grande. Brownsville: Spring­man King Co., 1963.

Samo­ra, Julian, Bernal, Joe, Pena, Albert. Gun­pow­der Jus­tice. Notre Dame: Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame Press, 1976.

Pope, Doro.thy Lee. The Rain­bow Era on the Rio Grande. Brownsville: Spring­man King Co., 1971.

Stam­baugh, J. Lee and Lil­lian J. The Lower Rio Grande Val­ley of Texas. San Anto­nio: The Nay­lor Co., 1954.

Val­ley By Lin­ers, The Rio Grande Round Up. Mis­sion: Bor­der King­dom Press, 1980.

Val­ley By Lin­ers, Roots by the River. Canyon: Staked Plains Press, 1978.

Doc­u­ments, pam­phlets, signed mag­a­zine and news­pa­per arti­cles

Arm­strong, Vir­ginia. “Mov­ing of Court­house was Stir­ring Chap­ter in Hidal­go Coun­ty His­tory.” Val­ley Evening Mon­i­tor, Novem­ber 27, 1949.

Card, E. M., Unpub­lished Mono­graphl no date.

Crea­ger, R. B. v. P. F. Col­lier and Sons Dis­tribut­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and the Crow­ell Pub­lish­ing Co. Plead­ing in U.S. Dis­trict Court for South Texas of Brownsville.

Dugan, Frank H. “Hidal­go Coun­ty Grows Up.” Offi­cial His­to­ri­cal Pro­gram: Hidal­go Coun­ty Cen­ten­ni­al, 1852–1952. Pri­vate­ly Printed, 1952.

Edin­burg Con­sol­i­dated Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict v. Mrs. Lena S. Baker. “Judg­ment on Suit No. B-9617.” 93rd Judi­cial Dis­trict Court, July 13, 1933.

Free­land, Frank. Files.

Grif­fin, Gor­don. Files.

Grif­fin, John William. “Sto­ries Told by John Clos­ner.” M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, May 16, 1929.

Hidal­go Coun­ty. Min­utes of the Hidal­go Coun­ty Commissioner's Court. Vol. C, Septem­ber and Octo­ber, 1908.

Hill, Ver­non. Let­ters. R. G. Spence Files, May 18, 1962.

House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives: Cal­en­dar No.720. “Report on Cam­paign Expen­di­tures.” Con­gres­sion­al Record. Wash­ing­ton: Gov­ern­ment Print­ing Office, Jan­uary 2, 1929.

Isbell, Fran. “Wes­la­co City Hall Appli­ca­tion for Texas His­to­ri­cal Mark­er,” 1978.

Lyons, A. H., Austin Amer­i­can States­man, Febru­ary 13, 1934.

Magee, Ann, Edin­burg Daily Review, Octo­ber 12, 1955.

May­field, Tom. Let­ter. G. Grif­fin Files.

M^cAllen His­to­ri­cal Soci­ety, “M^cAllen – 70th Anniver­sary 1911–1981.” Pri­vate­ly Pub­lished, 1981. .

Pease, C. H. “The Plan of San Diego.” Ruth Clark's Scrap­book. n.p., n.d., n.pag. [in M^cAllen Memo­ri­al Library]

Scott, O. R. “The His­tory of Hidal­go Coun­ty.” Mas­ters The­sis, Texas Chris­tian Uni­ver­si­ty. Unpub­lished, 1927.

Shep­herd, William G. “A Job for Jack.” Collier's. June 15, 1929.

“Wes­la­co 1919–1969: 50th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion.” Offi­cial His­to­ri­cal Pro­gram. Wes­la­co: Pri­vate­ly printed, 1969.

White, Owen P. “High Handed and Hell Bent.” Collier's, June 22, 1929.

Wood, C. F. Inter­view, August 17, 1961.

News­pa­pers

Brownsville Her­ald, 1928–1930, 1932, Jan­uary 1, 1933 – March 16, 1933.

Hidal­go Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent, July 1928 – Decem­ber 1928, 1930, Jan­uary 1933 – May 1933.

Hous­ton Chron­i­cle, April 3, 1929.

M^cAllen Daily Press, 1928–1930, 1934.

M^cAllen Mon­i­tor, 1928–1930.