The State Library and Archives of Texas: A History, 1835-1962 [1 ed.] 9780292793019, 9780292722019

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The S TATE LI B R A R Y and A R C H IV E S of TE XA S  A Hi st ory, 18 35 –1 96 2

David B. Gracy II

The State Library and Archives of Texas

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t h e stat e l i b r a r y a n d a rc h i ve s o f t e x a s A History, 1835–1962 david b. gracy ii foreword by peggy d. rudd

university of texas press Austin

Copyright © 2010 by David B. Gracy II All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2010 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gracy, David B. The State Library and Archives of Texas : a history, 1835–1962 / David B. Gracy II ; foreword by Peggy D. Rudd. — 1st ed. p.   cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-292-72201-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Texas State Library and Archives Commission—History.  2. Library commissions—Texas—History.  3. Archives—Texas—History.  I. Title. Z678.4.T4G73  2010 027.509764—dc22 2009039069

Dedicated to all who gave me opportunities, encouragement, and latitude to realize a rewarding professional life, especially Dorman H. Winfrey, who as Texas State Archivist launched my career in archival enterprise in 1959 and as director and librarian, Texas State Library, hired me for his former job as Texas State Archivist in 1977, H. Bailey Carroll, Director, Texas State Historical Association, who recruited me into journal editing in 1963, R. Sylvan Dunn, Director, Southwest Collection, Texas Technological College, who propelled me into a leadership role as Archivist of the Southwest Collection in 1966, William R. Pullen, Librarian, Georgia State University, who presented me the rare opportunity to fashion an archival operation from scratch—the Southern Labor Archives—in 1971, Ronald E. Wyllys, Dean, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the University of Texas at Austin, who invited me to create a full archival education program in 1986, and Brooke E. Sheldon, Dean, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the University of Texas at Austin, who called me to join her in leading the school and bringing the Preservation and Conservation Studies Program to Texas in 1991.

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Co n t e nts

foreword   ix

by Peggy D. Rudd

preface   xiii “Nor Is This All” acknowledgments   xxiii 1. “ to have the texas people see the necessit y for it ”   1 Establishing the Library and Archival Functions of Government, 1835–1909

2. “bricks without straw ”   22

The Winkler, Klaerner, and West Years, 1909–1925

3. “i don’t feel as good as i would if i could”   47 The Rogan and First Wilcox Years, 1925–1932

4 . “ the state library needs space, money and official understanding—and the greatest of these is the l ast ”   63 The Middle Wilcox Years, 1932–1935

5. “a diffusion of interests and objectives”   77 The Final Wilcox Years, 1935–1945

6. “ there are many hurdles to jump before the race is won—if it is won”   100 The Henshaw Years, 1946–1950

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

7. “more grief than at present ”   120 The Connerly and Gibson Years, 1950–1953

8. “if and when the gl ad day comes”   134

The Harwell, Peace, and Beginning Winfrey Years, 1954–1962

conclusion   158 appendix 1   161 Texas Library and Historical Commission: Members, 1909–1962 appendix 2   165

Texas Library and Historical Commission and State Librarians: By Year and Appointment, 1909–1962

notes   175 bibliography   209 index   219

viii

F o rewo rd

F

or one hundred years, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission has stood as a symbol of the state’s commitment to preserving the history of its people and their government, to securing the records of government for public scrutiny, and to extending and improving library service for all its people. In many ways, the history of the commission is the history of the development of libraries in Texas, the evolution of concern and care for the essential evidence of government, and the rise in public expectations for government transparency. On March 19, 1909, Governor Thomas Campbell signed the bill that created the Texas Library and Historical Commission, renamed the Texas State Library and Archives Commission seventy years later. With Governor Campbell’s action, institutional leadership for the establishment and improvement of libraries and for the preservation of Texas archives and history took tenuous hold. The commission’s history is one full of reckless confusion, long neglect, political intrigue, patronage appointments, executive interference, stagnant budgets, interpersonal conflicts, and individual courage and commitment— all the things that make for good drama. The commission’s programs and services have evolved over time in response to demographic, cultural, and political changes. The influence of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission has been far-reaching. From the earliest traveling libraries that began in 1914 to promote the establishment of free public library service, rural areas of the state and small communities have benefited from the commission’s vision. The commission’s work to improve library service can be seen through the deployment of “library organizers,” later called field workers, and regional “institutes,” later termed workshops, designed to strengthen knowledge of the profession and build capacity for public service among library workers.

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

These initiatives led to the creation of regional public library systems in 1969, still supported by the commission today as vital resources that further the development of our state’s network of public libraries. The commission’s achievement of direct state aid in 2002 in the form of the Loan Star Libraries program envisions a strong partnership between local public libraries and the State of Texas to achieve the goal of excellent library service for all. The collection and distribution of state publications to a regional network of depositories beginning in 1963 continues to ensure broad public access to the published documents of all state agencies, documents that constitute the intellectual and informational output of the many arms of Texas government. In addition, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission stands as one of only two complete federal document depositories in the state, a resource that brings the full scope of federal publishing within reach of all Texans. In 2008 the Texas State Library and Archives Commission celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Texas Reading Club, a program that encourages reading over the summer to help children maintain proficiency and even sharpen reading skills when school is not in session. Since its inception in 1958, millions of children and their families have participated in the statewide program. Though local libraries breathe life into the program through story times, puppet shows, and other activities, the commission ensures a highquality experience by securing artistic talent to create materials and printing mass quantities to fill local demand. The Texas State Library and Archives Commission began delivering books with raised lettering to the visually impaired in 1919. Since 1931, TSLAC has partnered with the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in the Library of Congress to serve as a regional library, supplying books and magazines in alternative formats to tens of thousands of Texans who cannot read standard print. Often termed a lifeline by those who depend on the service, one of the commission’s core values is expressed through this program, which seeks to eliminate barriers to the enjoyment of reading for all. Though programs and services have evolved to meet changing needs and expectations, there remains one core function that has been the commission’s responsibility from the beginning—collecting, preserving, and making accessible for research and study the historically significant records of Texas as a colony, a province, a Republic, and a state. As the custodian of much of the permanently valuable documentary evidence of state government, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission promotes the principles of open gov

Foreword

ernment by offering a publicly accessible window on the business of Texas government. The Texas State Archives has been and continues to be a lodestone for researchers and lovers of Texas history. The embodiment of what is uniquely Texas, the archives contain treasures that carry the voices and actions of those who came before down through the years to be heard and seen anew, to undergo fresh interpretations, and to yield new meaning. The commission has embraced a related responsibility, that of leading state and local records management efforts, realizing that a viable archival program rests on the framework of efficient and effective records management that is accountable to the people served. The value the commission places on local archives is embodied in the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center and the network of Regional Historical Resource Depositories around the state. A list of accomplishments, no matter how impressive, is woefully inadequate to express the importance of this century-old state institution. And the value of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission exceeds the mere enumeration of its major historical events. At its essence, the value of the commission may simply be in its very existence. Its history demonstrates that the commission’s evolution has been far from easy. Frequently understaffed and underfunded, the commission has survived benign neglect as well as deliberate attempts to dismember the agency. Dr. David B. Gracy II—the Governor Bill Daniel Professor in Archival Enterprise at the School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, and former Texas state archivist—is a prodigiously talented researcher and writer who has given the commission a wonderful birthday present. His tenure as Texas state archivist was marked by successful efforts to recover Texas documents that were missing from archival collections, to secure grant funding to purchase a large collection of Mirabeau B. Lamar papers, and to inventory, describe, and microfilm the Nacogdoches Archives. Under his stewardship, advocacy and outreach efforts were strengthened, and archival displays were regularly mounted for the public’s viewing. We thank him for this gift and for his significant contribution to our understanding of this unique institution and of the vital role the Texas State Library and Archives Commission plays in preserving our state’s great past for future generations. On a warm spring day in 1909, Governor Thomas Campbell could have no way of knowing the significance of the legacy he was leaving with the stroke of his pen. Dr. Gracy has lovingly rendered the history of an institution that stands proudly on its record of service to Texas. On the eve of its second cenxi

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tury of service, we must be ever mindful of the legacy we will leave to future generations through this venerable institution. Peggy D. Rudd, Director and Librarian Texas State Library and Archives Commission March 2009

xii

P re fac e “Nor Is This All”

A “

re you planning to have any sort of history written of the Texas State Library and Archives on the occasion of the 2009 centennial of the establishment of the commission?” I asked Peggy Rudd, director and librarian of the Texas State Library and Archives, late in 2005 as the anniversary began to loom. Being a historian by education and having worked in the Texas State Archives division of the agency twice—first in 1959 as a go-fer launching my career in archival enterprise and then for nine years, 1977–1986, as its director—I thought that publication of a history of some dimension would be a fitting way to mark the centennial of the agency under the present enabling statute. Signed into law in 1909, the act fundamentally changed the state library by placing the then decades-old library and archival functions under the governance of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, renamed appropriately in 1979 the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. “Yes, and you are going to write it,” Peggy answered. “Not I,” I replied, as I had asked my question with no motive beyond the anticipation of enjoying reading such a history. Over the course of succeeding days, Peggy continued to insist and I to decline, until finally her persistence prevailed, and I agreed to undertake it if we had a publisher. The University of Texas Press liked the project, and the rest, as they say, is history (and the history that follows). If one thing in the history of the Texas State Library and Archives especially beckoned me into this study, it was the perplexity I recalled from my years as state archivist regarding the relationship between the library function and the archives/records/history function. The imbalance was obvious. The office outfitted for the state archivist when the present home for the agency was occupied in 1961, and into which I moved sixteen years later, was lavish by comparison with the offices of the other division directors. Three walls of the office were lined with wooden bookshelves, the floor was carpeted, curtains hung on the windows, and a huge wooden desk bestowed a massive dignity

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

on the room and provided more than ample work surface. The state archivist’s office resembled the nicely appointed quarters of the state librarian and bore no relationship to the plain, bare-walled, and linoleum-floored generic work spaces of the other division directors. Why had this discrepancy been built into the fabric of the agency’s home? Making the contrast all the more curious to me was that it was the library development role of the agency in which the administration and governing commission were invested during my tenure, not the archival operation. If the state archives had been esteemed so highly in 1961 as to be accorded this physical prominence, what had devalued it? More fundamentally, how had the library and archives/records/history functions been weighted throughout the agency’s history—had they ever been in balance? If the building had been designed at another time, I had to wonder, would all of the division director offices have been outfitted to the same level, or would the office of another have been generously furnished and the state archivist relegated to barren walls and linoleum? I worked on the history for only a short time before I saw that I was neither alone nor early in pondering the proper relationship between the library and the archival functions of government joined in the single state agency. Lawmakers, commission members, and, most of all, state librarians since at least 1876 had been haunted by the matter of (or, as some likely would have said, frustrated trying to achieve) balance. None confronted it more directly, boldly, and zealously than Texas state librarian Cadwell Walton Raines a century ago. “What is the Texas State Library’s special field of labor?” Raines asked in his annual report for 1906. What is the special field of labor of an American state library? he was posing as well. More than a question tossed off simply to provide a backdrop for demonstrating the breadth and importance of the work being accomplished in the Texas agency, the issue had challenged librarians and state lawmakers for generations. New York state law librarian Stephen B. Griswold believed in 1876 that he had the answer. In his “Law Libraries” chapter in the massive two-volume compilation of information on libraries in the United States published by the U.S. Office of Education in the nation’s centennial year, he stated flatly that the state library was “a public library, located at the seat of government, maintained at the public charge and primarily for the use of members of the legislature, State officers, the courts and the bar.” Legislative proceedings and statutes of the several states, state and national documents (publications of government departments), and “the ephemera of jurisprudence” constituted the collection he considered appropriate.1 Griswold’s colleague, New York state librarian Henry A. Homes—more xiv

Preface

librarian than lawyer—knew better. After recounting the history and present condition of state-level libraries in his chapter on “State and Territorial Libraries,” a tour de force in the same volume, Homes submitted as the special field of labor every function any state librarian had claimed as appropriate. The litany was breathtaking. Boiled down, the ultimate state library would collect and provide access to statutes, legislative journals, and documents of all the states; works of state, national, and local history, science, and the arts relating to the state, and works written by citizens of the state; archives of state government and of eminent citizens; newspapers of the state; book lists to aid public and school librarians in building their collections; and “not going beyond what we have a right to hope for,” museums of history, natural history, and archaeology. Homes’ state library would serve “not merely in behalf of material ends and legislative necessities, but also for the cultivation and development of the most serious studies and the highest thought on themes of science and of social and political life.” No state library Homes surveyed for his 1876 report accomplished even most of these operations. In fact, precious few were undertaking more than what Homes saw as the barest minimum of services: building collections—of the laws of the state, of manuscripts (by which he meant archives), and of maps. Many were doing less even than this.2 Cadwell Raines thirty years later, in 1906, understood what a reading of Griswold and Homes made clear—no single answer sufficed. To demonstrate the diversity of concrete answers offered in his day, Raines quoted some succinct authoritative opinions. The state librarian of Connecticut, reminiscent of Homes, maintained that “without a doubt the ideal state library is a library located at the capital, owned by the state, and representing every department of knowledge; . . . with a department of archives.” Indiana’s state librarian in contrast promulgated: The essential mission of the state library is to serve the state as an institution, and . . . there is no more reason for the citizen expecting library help from the state library other than as reference than there is for his borrowing money from the treasury when his corn or cotton fails. . . . The chief end of the public library is to serve the people individually; the chief end of the state library is to serve the state as an institution.

As each state is different, Raines concluded, so “there can be no common standard for the state library beyond a few fundamental lines.”3 The truth Raines submitted in those words written at the beginning of the twentieth century, library historians at its end confirmed. Ethel E. Himmel xv

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

knew of no time in which all state libraries were uniform in purpose, service, and structure. In her overview of state libraries in the Encyclopedia of Library History, titled “State Library Agencies in the United States,” she observed, The image of the state library in the United States of America as a collection of materials housed in the state capital to serve the needs of elected officials and government workers, perhaps an accurate picture in earlier times, has been replaced by a less clearly defined multi-purpose state agency. The mix of functions and services provided by each state library agency has reflected the historical development of library services in the given state.

The most prolific of library historians, Wayne A. Wiegand, sidestepped the challenge altogether. In his sweeping survey, “The Historical Development of State Library Agencies,” Wiegand treated three hundred years of state library history without ever affirming what a state library is. After tracing the history of libraries through five millennia to culmination in the American experience, Richard E. Rubin’s masterful chapter “From Past to Present: The Library’s Mission and Its Values” in his Foundations of Library and Information Science (1998), offered not one word on the American state library and its mission. As distinct as different types of libraries—public, academic, school, and special, for example—are in their missions, none of the three authors followed the example of the Indiana state librarian who had delineated his institution by the stratagem of contrasting it against another type of library.4 The difficulty librarians have in defining the American state library no doubt is that the institution in too many instances does not neatly fit the mold of being just a library, as the term is widely understood. The Texas Research League expressed this clearly in its 1956 review of Texas’ state library: “The use of the term ‘library’ when referring to the State Library was much more appropriate at the time it was first founded, because it then consisted of only a small specialized collection of books. While perhaps not entirely inappropriate, the use of the term in reference to the operation today can be misleading.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “library” in this way: “a. A place in which literary and artistic materials, such as books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, prints, records, and tapes, are kept for reading, reference, or lending. b. A collection of such materials, especially when systematically arranged” (emphasis added).5 In contrast, the common standard, to use Raines’ term, that distinguishes the American state library through history is its character as an agency of state government established to manage information. That is it! The primary mission of the state library has been to xvi

Preface

provide an information service to the government (sometimes to but a single department, as when it serves as a law library for the supreme court). Commonly, state libraries have been charged also to assist citizens in accessing information and librarians in extending library service.6 The lines of work performed in state libraries can be grouped into three broad functions: • A library resource function For the librarian, this consists of acquiring information (by collecting it from sources outside of the government and/or by obtaining it through interagency transfer from state agencies), classifying and cataloging it, and maintaining a reference service to facilitate its use. In different states, this reference role has been designed to serve the general public, and/or to meet the needs of lawmakers crafting legislation, and/or to provide works in Braille and audio formats to the blind. When serving state government staff, the library resource function of the state library fulfills an administrative role central to the efficient functioning of the government of which the state library is a part. By contrast, when serving citizens in the manner of a public library, the state library is seen to be fulfilling a cultural/educational role. Those responsible for allocating resources to state libraries frequently consider the cultural/educational role secondary to the central purpose of governing. In times of economic distress, this can render the state library vulnerable to reductions in appropriation proportionally greater than in those functions of government deemed to be essential.7 • An archival/records management/history function For the archivist in 2009, this consists primarily of managing state agency records—all documentation created, received, and gathered in the conduct of state business for the purpose of carrying out state government operations and/or having a documentary record of those operations. The purpose of the archival/records management/history function is twofold: first, to facilitate government workers’ ready accessibility to the records needed in the conduct of their work, and, second, to preserve and make available those records whose content will have continuing use by government workers and citizens after the records have fulfilled the purpose for which they were created. The majority of state archives also hold records of organizations and papers of individuals otherwise unconnected to state government, the study of whose records and papers could contribute to an understanding xvii

The State Library and A rchives of Texas of historical developments in the state. Through the middle of the twentieth century, state archives commonly compiled and published verbatim transcripts of series of documents, thereby discharging a traditional history role of archival repositories. The collecting and publishing of resources requisite to writing history fulfills a cultural/educational role distinct from the administrative role of managing the government’s records. Those responsible for allocating resources to run state government commonly have valued the cultural/educational role no more highly in the archives/records management/history function than in the library resource function.8 Nine state libraries in 2009 were charged with archival responsibilities in whole or in part, down from twenty-two in 1956. • A function supporting the vibrancy of public library service throughout the state Referred to at various times as extension or library development, in the early decades of the century this meant promoting the creation and support of public libraries. In the later decades resource sharing has been added to the function to extend the ability of public libraries to provide their clienteles with the information resources requested. By contrast with the librarian’s and archivist’s duties performed in delivering the library and archival service—spelled out in the law framing and charging the agency—the citizen sees the state library’s functions through a lens that reduces them to two: • Satisfying an altruistic conviction of the value of providing a service appropriate for government in support of a well-ordered society • Meeting the specific needs of individual citizens for information, such as • a veteran using a muster roll to verify service to entitle him or her to a pension • a genealogist gleaning pension applications for information on ancestors • an activist studying legislative committee files to determine intent in the wording of an act • a blind person receiving Braille or talking books for entertainment or edification • a legislator scrutinizing statistics to support or oppose a position xviii

Preface • a historian examining records so as to prepare studies to enrich understanding of the development and meaning of events.

Contributing to the difficulty of stating succinctly what a state library is or should be are the different estimations of the value of the contribution of the library and archival service held by librarians and archivists, citizens, and state policy makers. Since only a minority of state libraries ever have undertaken all three functions, or even all of the services within the library and archival functions, the vision Cadwell Raines had in 1906 of the state library appropriate for Texas was nothing short of grand. Boiled down, but in his words, it was this: • “The Texas State Library should be the treasure house of information relating to Texas and the Southwest.” • “It is to be the armory whence may be drawn, if need be, the weapons with which to defend the truth of history.” • “The State Library, too, should serve the government of which it is a part. . . . This involves the maintenance of a well equipped, up-to-date reference department and careful classification of the documents of the various States.” • “By its relation to the State government the State Library is the office of record for everything issued by the several departments; not only the printed books, pamphlets, maps, etc., but also the manuscript records of historical value after they are no longer necessary to the current duties of said departments.” • “Nor is this all.” • “To furnish to the student these sources the State Library must reach out and collect everything relating to the past as well as conserve the vast output of materials of the present.”9

A clear, encompassing, and inspiring vision such as Raines’ surfaced infrequently in the history of the state library and archives of Texas in its first century and a quarter, from the period of the Revolution and the Republic of Texas, 1835–1846, until it finally and formally occupied its first permanent home in 1962. Both before and after Raines’ tenure, those responsible for fixing a direction for the state library and archival functions—state librarians, heads of the omnibus state department in which the library and archival functions were incorporated 1876–1909, members of the governing commission that was given oversight responsibility in 1909, lawmakers, and governors— xix

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

struggled, sometimes desperately and at odds, to fashion and enunciate a vision. Some declared that the state library and archives of Texas had as few as three services; others counted nine. Often omitted from the list was work the agency actually was performing after 1909, such as service to the blind. Since the principal change in the statutory scope of the agency between 1909 and 1962 was the addition of the records management program in 1947, the variation in number of services resulted not from changes in the law but from different emphases proffered by agency leaders and policy makers pursuing their particular concepts of the purpose of the agency or of the constituency they believed the agency primarily should serve. The history of the state library and archives of Texas is, then, the story, first, of strong-willed people—policy makers, administrators, and patrons— contending with few holds barred to shape the state library and archival operation in the mold they conceived for it, and, second, of a state government service whose necessity no one disputed but whose nature few could agree on for long. It is the story of defining an information service appropriate for state government—the story of a nonpartisan agency, administered for the most part by trained professionals, laboring in a political environment that could erupt at any time. Sometimes legislators overrode the agency’s administration and governing commission to skirt the state’s constitution or to pander to selfsatisfied constituents. Sometimes, to avoid the notice of politicians who were not above using their position to diminish the agency in retribution, the state librarian had to fashion ways out of their view to deliver the agency’s service to citizens—notably, African Americans during Elizabeth Howard West’s term. But in contrast, two governors’ personal interest in the history of Texas and the archives on which it is based occasioned the two periods of spectacular advance in the accomplishment of the agency’s mission. It is a story of insufficient resources of money, space, and staff, thwarting realization of the agency as Raines envisioned it in 1906. Commensurate with the story of insufficient funds is not just a story of insufficient resources, it is also one of a prevailing penny-wise and pound-foolish attitude that libraries and archives are good and needed, just not now and not at this cost. Sounded at the very first mention of a library for Texas government, the sentiment has afflicted the agency throughout its history. It is a story of unfortunate unintended consequences of well-meaning initiatives, most obviously in establishing education in librarianship as the single professional qualification necessary to be state librarian. Written into law in 1919 to stymie any future governor who would try to ape Governor Jim Ferguson’s politicization of the commission and the agency, the requirement sent xx

Preface

commission members thereafter searching for librarians to head the agency or placed the governing board in the uncomfortable position of flouting the law altogether. It justified the increasingly politically active library community in its advocacy of only the library side of the agency. Most fundamentally, it made more difficult the jobs of the state librarian and the commission to administer and support the library and archival functions of the Texas State Library equally. It is the story nevertheless of many dedicated staff members and a handful of strong leaders whose commitment to the service mission of librarians and archivists brought them to work every day. One was Elizabeth Howard West, whose selection in 1918 as the third state librarian also distinguished the Texas State Library as the first agency in Texas state government to place a woman at its head. Another was Raines’ former deputy and the first state librarian under the commission, Ernest William Winkler. He set the tone for the agency in 1909 when, having to operate for the first several months with not one dollar of state money and thus having to fund much of the operation out of his own pocket, he cheerfully wrote in the agency’s first newsletter: “But who could sit down and wait for the assembling of another Legislature to remedy even so important a defect as this . . . when the need for action and the promise of good results are so great?”10 Portions of the story have been told by three writers of academic studies. The strength of Catherine Young’s “History of the Texas State Library,” completed in 1932 for a master’s degree in education, is verbatim transcripts of statutes and other documents along with her account of the agency as of the period in which she wrote. Slightly more than a quarter century later, in 1959, for his master’s degree in education, William Kittrell Peace III authored “A History of the Texas State Library with Emphasis on the Period from 1938 to 1958.” Tracing history so recent, Peace had limited access to the records on which substantial history must be based. But since he worked in the agency during many of the years his history covers, and for the final five of them as the director of the Extension Division, a strength of his thesis is his personal observations. By far the most substantial of the three is Marie Julia Shultz’ doctoral dissertation in library and information science, “The Changing Role of the Texas State Library: Alternative Models for Coordination of Statewide Library Service” (1981). To put the history of the Texas State Library’s role in promoting the establishment of public libraries around the state into the context of both developments in librarianship and in the history of the Texas State Library as an agency, Shultz did substantial research in the agency records. And working in the agency’s Library Development Division, she, like Peace, had intimate knowledge of the matters on which her study xxi

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concentrated. Her 565-page work is a monument to extensive and thorough research. Each of the three began by characterizing the nature of the state library, and all concluded that, in Raines’ words, the Texas State Library’s special field of labor was the library function. Young and Peace considered the agency to be a public library. Shultz, encouraged by Peace, narrowed the special field to extension.11 Not one of these historians saw the agency as more than a collection of functions. Instead, they contributed three more instances to others strewn throughout the history of the Texas State Library asserting that the special work is one or another or a couple of the services of the agency— ­extension or public service or archives or records management or service to the blind. Indeed, the greatest challenge that faced the leaders and supporters of Texas’ state library and archival agency throughout the period covered in this book—and since—a challenge that far too few of them perceived, was appreciating the agency as a single entity by managing all of its several functions and services with similar resolve. In writing the present study of the state library and archives of Texas from the perspective of the agency as a whole as directed and experienced by the state librarian and the governing commission, the interesting histories of individual divisions and particular functions of the agency necessarily have been subordinated. One volume is inadequate to explore intimately the development of library extension throughout the state, for example, or service to specific communities (including the blind and state agencies), establishment of records management throughout state government, or preservation work that at times pioneered on the national level. Studies of these individual administrative units and functions will enrich understanding of, on the one hand, the challenges to and contributions of the role of Texas’ state library and archives in shaping the information life of both citizens and state government and, on the other, the contribution of the Texas model to appreciation of the special form of information agency in the United States that is a state library in full blossom. David B. Gracy II Austin, Texas March 2009

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he history of this book, as any history, is the work of many people. In light of the extended period of this history, the agency’s growing scope of activity during the twentieth century, and the short time available to me in which to produce this study, I have relied on and benefited from much conscientious research carried out by my students. Many conducted their research to write papers in my history courses. Others I hired to gather source material. In both cases, I paid for and in due course received all of the photocopies so as to have the basic archival sources from which to write this history. Though many hands have participated in gathering the source material, the narrative and the lessons I have found in it are my work alone, except as acknowledged in the notes. As a student, I resisted professors utilizing without attribution work I had done under them, and I had no intention of imposing on these students the very action against which I had guarded. For their studies I am grateful to Alex Addison, Alix Banham, Christine James, Lawrence A. Landis, Sarah Quigley, and Laurie Thompson. The studies prepared by Pamela R. Bleisch, Jennifer Cummings, Leslie Shores Waggener, Tami Wibel, and Ashlynn Wicke have been especially helpful. To Clifford Allen, Christy Costlow, Lauren Goodley, Melissa Guy, and Melissa Bailey Torres, I am grateful for the documentation they gathered on a variety of topics. Special thanks go to Jennifer Cummings, Elizabeth Garber, and Sarah Potvin for the extent and thoroughness of their searches for source material. Finally, I thank Ed Sterling of the Texas Press Association for helping fill in my knowledge of aspects of the history and leaders of the Texas Woman’s Press Association. Texas historians Dan Utley and Laura McLemore both generously shared with me documentation they found in the course of their research on Ernest Winkler and Adele Looscan, respectively. Without the thoughtful and active help of staff of the Texas State Library

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

and Archives, the study could not have been completed successfully, especially because during the latter many months of my research, the building housing the agency was undergoing renovation, making access to and copying of needed documentation sometimes difficult. For smoothing my work and that of my many student researchers, I am grateful especially to Chris LaPlante, director of the Archives and Information Services Division. Division staff member John Anderson facilitated my use of photographic evidence of the history of the agency. Staff member Laura Saegert pointed out records and papers I would likely have missed because they had yet to be fully processed. Director Robert L. Schaadt and staff member Darlene Mott of the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center unit of the Archives and Information Services Division located in Liberty, Texas, went above and beyond the call of duty in assisting my research, especially in facilitating use of the records of Governor Price Daniel. At the University of Texas at Austin, several colleagues contributed materially to helping me and the student researchers use and copy important resources. My thanks go to Jeff Newberry of the Collections Deposit Library in which building I then had my office, and Brenda Gunn and her staff of the Center for American History. Other archives whose staffs facilitated my research include the Texas Collection at Baylor University (Ellen Brown), the Archives and Special Collections of Texas Woman’s University housing the records of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs (Dawn Letson), the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University (Patricia Clark, Monte Monroe, and Tai Kreidler), the Houston Metropolitan Research Center (Ron Drees), and the Archives and Special Collections of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin (Dr. Terry Shults). The Summerlee Foundation of Dallas ( John W. Crain, president) underwrote the work of several successive student researchers. The Friends of Libraries and Archives of Texas (Darryl Tocker, president) administered the Summerlee funds. Several individuals earned my special appreciation for the insights they provided in conversations (in person and through email). Heading the list is the oldest living former head of the Texas State Library, former acting state librarian R. Sylvan Dunn, who recalled for me the state of affairs in and operation of the agency in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For their helpful advice and observations, I thank especially Peggy D. Rudd (director and librarian), Edward Seidenberg (assistant state librarian), Raymond Hitt (retired assistant state librarian and director of the Library Development Division), Charles Corkran and John Kinney (my predecessors as state archivist), xxiv

Acknowledgments

Jeanette Larson (former Library Development Division staff member), Patricia Smith (executive director, Texas Library Association, and formerly Library Development Division staff member), and Francis Miksa (my colleague in the School of Information, whose knowledge of classification and library cataloging has enriched both this work and my teaching). Several close colleagues have read and contributed their thoughtful critiques on the manuscript. To Chris LaPlante, John Anderson, Peggy D. Rudd, Patricia Smith, Randolph G. Bias, and my son, Benjamin Baade Gracy, I am grateful. Janelle Dupont (managing editor of Libraries & the Cultural Record and as superb an editor for content and copy quality as I have ever known) and Paul Wilson (valued colleague in archival enterprise from Australia) commented on my text with a thoroughness that merits special admiration and thanks. Gloria Meraz, editor of Texas Library Journal, published a compressed version of chapter 1. University of Texas Press acquisition editor William V. Bishel, editor Victoria A. Davis, and copy editor Rosemary Wetherold have made publishing this book through the University of Texas Press a pleasure. Of all those whom I have acknowledged for the help and encouragement they have given me, I must single out for my warmest thanks for their support above and beyond any reasonable expectation: John Anderson, Jennifer Cummings, Janelle Dupont, Chris LaPlante, Pat Smith, and Paul Wilson.

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Cadwell Walton Raines, state librarian, 1891–1895, 1899–1906. Prints and photographs collection, 1/122-05-Raines. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Ernest William Winkler, state librarian, 1906–1907, 1909–1915. Prints and photographs collection, Winkler, E. W., di_04427. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

Elizabeth Howard West, state librarian, 1918–1925. Prints and photographs collection, 1/103-124-West. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Octavia Fry Rogan, state librarian, 1925–1927. News Notes (October 1933): 2.

Frances Miles (Fannie) Wilcox, acting state librarian, 1927–1932, 1950, and state librarian, 1932–1945. Prints and photographs collection, 1972/049-01-Wilcox. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Francis Harold Henshaw, state librarian, 1946–1950. Prints and photographs collection, 1972/049-02-Henshaw. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Witt B. Harwell, state librarian, 1954–1960. Prints and photographs collection, 1980/219-227-27-Harwell. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Doris Connerly, acting state librarian, 1945–1946, 1950–1951, with Thomas J. Gibson III, state librarian, 1951–1953. Prints and photographs collection, 1980/219-227-11-1-Connerly. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Texas Library and Historical Commission, August 28, 1944. Left to right, John Gould, Laura A. Hobby, Louis W. Kemp, Virginia Gambrell, (Edmund Heinsohn, absent), with state librarian Fannie Wilcox. Prints and photographs collection, 1/104-236-TLHC. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Edwin Sue Goree. News Notes (January 1936): 6.

Dorothy Cotton Journeay. News Notes (April 1937): 8.

State library room, about February 10, 1909, before new shelving was installed (from the middle of the state library half of the room, looking northeast). Prints and photographs collection, 1/103-131 B4-shelving. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

“Photograph Showing Books of the State Library Piled in Basement of Capitol, M[ar]ch 7, 1909.” This likely was one of the images state librarian Winkler sent to Elizabeth West, whom he was recruiting to be state archivist, so that she would be under no illusion regarding the magnitude of the work to be done. Prints and photographs collection, 1/103-128-piles books. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

“State Library’s basement August 31, 1910. Wooden shelves were built to accommodate the books.” Note the lightbulb in the protective cage on the long cord so it could be carried into the aisles for light. Prints and photographs collection, 1/103-129-documents. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Main library, c. 1910 (from the north windows looking southeast). Prints and photographs collection, 1/103-132-patrons. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Archives reading room cage constructed c. 1929. Prints and photographs collection, 1970/144-81-Archives cage. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Selecting talking books for mailing to the blind, in a room in the capitol, c. 1952. Prints and photographs collection, 1980/219-227-21-1-mailing. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Arrival of a bookmobile in Blanco, Texas, greeted by the high school band, February 1958. Prints and photographs collection, 1980/29-2-no#-Bkmbl Blanco. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Marguerite Hester, one foot on the top of a six-foot ladder, the other on a wooden shelf, retrieving newspapers stored in the basement of the capitol. At approximately twenty-eight pounds, the volume weighed nearly onethird as much as Hester. Texas Library and Historical Commission, Biennial Report, 1944–1946, 17.

“Long sought State Comptroller’s records in cowbarn are discovered by state librarian and microfilming supervisor.” Texas State Business and Historical Records, 11. Prints and photographs collection, 1989/29-2-no#Cowbarn window. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

“Business records of the Republic and the State in the State Library are inspected by microfilming supervisor.” Texas State Business and Historical Records, 13. Prints and photographs collection, 1989/29-2-no#-man climbing. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

The Quonset hut housing the state archives at the Highway Department repair facility in north Austin seen over the hood of a Highway Department vehicle. Prints and photographs collection, 1/103-098-quonset. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Records Division Warehouse No. 1 in south Austin. Prints and photographs collection, 1972/173-01-warehouse1. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Governor Price Daniel and his wife, Jean, cutting the ribbon at the dedication of the new state archives and library building. Prints and photographs collection, 1989/29-1 no# ribbon. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

The new state archives and library building. Prints and photographs collection, 1972/172-01 TSLA. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

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one

“To H ave t h e T e x as Pe o pl e S e e th e N e c ess it y f o r It” Establishing the Library and Archival Functions of Government, 1835–1909

A

ll that the members of the twoyear-old Texas State Historical Association asked of the legislature in 1899 was creation of a Texas State Historical Commission. The proposed commission would raise the state library to the status of a separate agency of state government with responsibility for the government’s archives and historical artifacts; for collecting papers and books concerning the history of Texas, and the reminiscences of pioneers; and for accumulating materials particularly useful for reference by legislators conducting the state’s business. All that the members of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, organized the same year as the historical association, and the members of the one-year-old Texas Library Association asked of the legislature in 1903 was creation of a Texas Library Commission to oversee the establishment of a system of free public libraries throughout the state, manage a traveling libraries program, and maintain collections of Texas government publications around the state. Twice more they asked, in 1905 and 1907. Although Texas had had a government library since 1839 during its period as an independent republic and had recognized a responsibility for archives even earlier, neither the library function nor the archival function had been adequately defined, stable within the government structure, or sufficiently funded to provide comprehensive and sustained service to either the government or the people. Situated in their own state agency, the proponents believed, the library and archival functions would receive the government support and professional staff they needed to meet the state’s obligations for these two functions essential to a democratic, literate, and responsible society proud of its history. Unable on their own to obtain passage in four legislative sessions, the historians, clubwomen, and librarians together approached the legislature in 1909 with the substance of the 1899 historical commission bill and the 1907 library commission bill joined into a single measure creating a Texas Library

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

and Historical Commission. On March 19, 1909, Governor Thomas Campbell rewarded their efforts by signing the bill into law.1 With its single commission uniting the yearnings and energies of those interested in libraries and reading on the one hand and in archives and history on the other, Texas followed the lead of other states. But in joining these two as equal partners, proponents and lawmakers created something new and untested. By 1909, under names such as “Traveling Library Commission,” “Public Library Commission,” “Free Library Commission,” “Division of Educational Extension,” and “State Library Commission,” more than half of the forty-six states already had library commissions. The oldest, in Massachusetts, had been in operation almost twenty years; the pacesetter in New York was nearly as old, having been established in 1892 at the initiative of the restless reformer Melvil Dewey himself. The principal goal of them all was to facilitate getting reading material—especially “wholesome” reading material—into the hands of citizens, particularly those on isolated farms and in small rural communities that lacked library service. Kate Sturm McCall Rotan, the first president of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, said it well when in 1898 she told its members that “by concerted action and a trifling expenditure of money, small ‘traveling libraries’ can be established, affording new privileges to every farmer’s wife and daughter, opening to larger life and stimulating to greater effort many minds that are now dulled and disheartened by a ceaseless round of daily tasks.”2 Traveling libraries, as the term was used in Texas, consisted of thirty to one hundred books sent to a community that lacked a brick-and-mortar library. After the books were selected for the recipient community, they were placed on shelves in sturdy wooden boxes, the books for young people in one box, those for adults in another, and dispatched to the community. A volunteer at the destination placed and opened the boxes in a school, store, post office, or other community gathering place, and managed circulation. Traveling libraries remained in a community usually a couple of weeks to a month. Providing wholesome reading material throughout the state in traveling libraries and facilitating the establishment of public libraries became the initial and very public work of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. On the history side, during the previous decade legislatures in southern states from Virginia to Arkansas had created historical commissions and at least one state library board to oversee state departments of archives and history and state libraries. These agencies were responsible for caring for the official archives of the state governments; collecting historical materials of all sorts, especially privately held manuscripts; and publishing historical records 

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

of particular interest in their custody. Creation of these commissions had been stimulated by the action of the American Historical Association in the 1890s in forming first a Historical Manuscripts Commission and then a Public Archives Commission to survey and publish, state by state, the existence and condition of state archives and of papers in private hands or collected by historical societies.3 Whether the Texas initiative of joining firmly and uniting equally the library and historical initiatives would launch a national trend remained to be seen. Without question, it marked a new beginning for the Texas State Library. Initial attempts to establish the library and archival functions of government separately had not begun so positively. In November 1835, a month after the first shot of the Texas Revolution had been fired, Don Carlos Barrett, representing the town of Mina in the Provisional Government to manage the war, asked his colleagues to authorize furnishing a library for the government. A principal architect of the Provisional Government, Barrett not only chaired the General Council’s Committee on the Affairs of State and Judiciary but also shepherded to approval more than four score of the blizzard of proposals he offered. Aside from a few volumes of history and government, the works that attorney Barrett suggested purchasing were law books that would be useful in conducting legislative and judicial business.4 On the third day of the new year, in flowing prose, John McMullen, chair of the Committee of Finance, to which the proposal had been referred, returned its recommendation: We approve of the proposition in part, and do most earnestly recommend to the General Council to accept of the proposition so far as to embrace the list of books or works, affixed to this report, together with such works as the wisdom of your honorable body, may add to said list; for it is impossible for us, for the little time, which more pressing business has allowed us to bestow upon the subject, to recollect every book which may be important, for you to examine and refer to, in the formation of so complicated a system as that of Government. Yet to purchase the number of volumes, which Colonel Barrett set forth in his proposition, would be, in our humble opinion, in the present distracted and impoverished state of the country, unwise, and give just cause of offence to a large majority of our fellow-citizens; they would instantly say, you advance one thousand dollars for a library, containing two thousand volumes; when you have not one cent to give to him who has suffered every privation, and risked every danger in defence of his country. It would not only displease the people, 

The State Library and A rchives of Texas but it would be bad policy, and would be an expenditure of money which is not absolutely required at this time. If our finance were in a flourishing condition, and our state at peace with the world, we would recommend you to purchase double the number of volumes proposed.5

No expenditure was made for books, and though the words were forgotten in the tragedy of the Alamo and the triumph of San Jacinto, where Texas won its independence from Mexico, the basic message that libraries are good and needed, just not at this cost and not now, has echoed throughout the history of the library function of state government in Texas. Though a majority of Texans of the Revolution and Republic periods could read and write, few owned books beyond the Bible, if they owned that. Nevertheless, in January 1839 the poet, historian, and second president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, who envisioned his country as an empire extending from the Sabine River (Texas’ eastern boundary) to the Pacific Ocean, called on Congress to establish a national library. The Third Congress obliged, inspired by President Lamar’s ringing message to Congress in December 1838: “If we desire to establish a Republican Government upon a broad and permanent basis, it will be our duty to adopt a comprehensive and well regulated system of mental and moral culture. . . . It is admitted by all, that [a] cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.”6 With enactment of the president’s grand education system imminent, Congress not only authorized the national library but also appropriated $10,000 to fill it with books. Before Lamar could purchase more than the eighteen-volume set of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, however, the depreciating value of the currency of the Republic forced the government to terminate expenditures to avoid “doing any injury to the more important and pressing interests of the Country.”7 The national library materialized as but a small reference shelf.8 For most of the next thirty-plus years, the library function of Texas’ government bounced between the secretary of state, with whom it was lodged in 1839, and the supreme court. The purpose of the library, whether in support of the legislature or the judiciary, never was firmly established.9 The post–Civil War gubernatorial election of 1866 brought to the office former Confederate general James W. Throckmorton, who, in regard to the library function of government, proved to be the most progressive since Lamar. In October 1866, Throckmorton and the legislature created the office of state librarian under the secretary of state, to have charge of a collection that would serve as both a public and a legislative library in the state capitol. More than simply authorizing the purchase of books, the act provided for a checkout privilege and, 

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

for those slothful in returning books, required the state librarian to publish in the newspaper for six weeks prior to any legislative session both the names and addresses of those who had failed to return books. As a legacy from the previous six years under the Board of Commissioners of Public Grounds and Buildings, the state librarian was given charge of the building, grounds, and furniture of the capitol and, in 1874, even the state cemetery. Though the legislature neglected to appropriate the $1,000 annual salary, Robert Josselyn took the state librarian job anyway. In eight months he cataloged 5,427 volumes of the collection of “choice and standard works.” More important to General Philip Sheridan, commander of the U.S. military district that included Texas, than Josselyn’s bibliographic accomplishment was that Throckmorton and his government—including the state librarian, who had been the private secretary to Confederate president Jefferson Davis—were unwilling to accept the changes brought by the demise of the Confederacy. In July 1867, Sheridan removed Throckmorton and Josselyn with him as impediments to Reconstruction, ending what an early historian of the Texas State Library called “the most progressive step made in library development in Texas during the nineteenth century.” Within five years the library had wasted to the point that the state librarian in 1872 characterized it as a dirty, scattered “wreck of grandeur.”10 The condition of the government archives was no better. In December 1836, eight months and one day after the Battle of San Jacinto, the Congress of the Republic had directed land commissioner John P. Borden to gather, as he spelled it, “the archecheves or Land Papers.” But woefully disregarding the magnitude of the task, Congress appropriated not one dollar to hire wagons and teams, to pay workers, or even to provide an office in which to operate and house the records Borden obtained. Borden continued the work nonetheless but, with nowhere else to put the records he rounded up, parceled them out to the homes of friends for storage. After the Congress in 1839, at President Lamar’s urging, designated Austin as the new capital of the Republic of Texas, the land office records were united in the home of land commissioner Thomas W. Ward. Whereas Lamar envisioned Austin as the seat of a Texian empire, his successor as president, Sam Houston, loathed the place and looked for an excuse to return the government to the coastal city named for him, from which Lamar had removed it. Houston’s opportunity came in 1842, after invading Mexican armies in March and again in September temporarily occupied San Antonio, eighty miles southwest of the defenseless capital. When President Houston ordered Congress into emergency session in the city of Houston in June, Austinites saw the writing on the wall. They could not prevent officers of government 

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

from deserting the young capital, but anticipating that departure of the government’s land, military, and diplomatic records would forever end Austin’s position as the nation’s capital, the citizens warned that they would resist any effort to remove the archives. Twice unable to obtain congressional backing, a frustrated but determined Houston took matters into his executive hands in December 1842 and ordered two officers of the Texan military to raise a company, go in secret to Austin, and, assisted by Commissioner Ward, seize the archives. The force of two dozen men had nearly finished loading the documents into three wagons early on December 30 when boardinghouse keeper Angelina Eberly spotted the activity and sounded the alarm. “Blow the old house to pieces,” someone shouted, after which a charge of grapeshot, blasted from the six-pounder cannon kept for Indian defense, rattled off the land office wall and focused the conspirators on urging the wagons’ oxen out of town. When the conspirators awoke the next morning in their camp eighteen miles northeast of Austin, they found themselves surrounded, outnumbered, and staring down the muzzle of the six-pounder cannon. Ordered by President Houston to avoid bloodshed, they returned the archives to Austin, where the boxes were stacked in Eberly’s boardinghouse before being buried to prevent another attempt on them. The real conclusion of what became known as the Texan Archive War occurred in 1845, when the government of the Republic returned to Austin and was reunited with the archives.11 Seven years after a fire on September 9, 1845, consumed treasury records left unattended in the treasurer’s home, the legislature seemed to become concerned about the fate of the archives. In 1852 the lawmakers required that “the entire archives” of the Republic and past state legislatures be carefully arranged, housed “in a safe and convenient receptacle,” and deposited in the General Land Office (not the state library). The legislature this time appropriated the necessary funds. But for management of the journals and archives that would be created henceforth, it made no provision, leaving it to subsequent legislatures and departments of government to devise their own solutions from scratch.12 In 1855 the next shocking fire sent the records of the adjutant general’s office up in smoke, destroying documentation of both the army and the navy of the Revolution and Republic periods. As bad as the loss was, it was made worse because government leaders had been warned of the danger. A special committee of the House reported on January 16, 1852, that it was “compelled to notice the want of sufficient means or conveniences to protect and preserve the papers and books in that office.” Recognizing “the great importance to the country” of these archives, the committee recommended an appropria

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

tion that the precious records “should be effectually preserved.” Pointing to the significance of the records to both the present and the future, the committee continued: We deem it almost unnecessary to remind this honorable body of the absolute necessity and importance of preserving the muster rolls, not only on account of the pecuniary interests involved [payments for service], but also as a proud memorial of the patriotism and self-sacrificing spirit of those who were ever ready to rally around the Lone Star, and to yield, if necessary, their lives in defence of Texian independence, and Texian soil. . . . Shall we, governed by a selfish spirit of economy, permit the only record of that “Spartan Band” to be lost . . .?13

With ground to be broken in two months to erect a substantial and spacious capitol building at a cost of $200,000, appeal to neither financial considerations nor patriotic spirit motivated action, and three years later the adjutant general’s building and all the records stored within it were lost. “So much for the economy that refused you a proper office,” one Ben Edwards fumed to the adjutant general when nothing was left but ashes.14 Following the fire, Governor Elisha Marshall Pease asked the legislature to provide fireproof buildings “for the security of the remaining archives of our government.” The lawmakers appropriated $40,000 to erect a structure for the General Land Office and its records (which building still stands on the capitol grounds). The remaining early government records were consigned to the basement of the three-year-old capitol.15 On the face of it the Constitution of 1876, which ended Reconstruction and ushered in an era of limited and frugal government, offered more hope for elevation of the archival function of state government than for the library function. The word “library” appeared nowhere in the lengthy document. But with some seven thousand books filling the walls of a large room on the third floor of the capitol, covering three walls of the supreme court room on the second floor, and packed in fifteen large boxes for the want of any other place to put them, the state library had to be provided for. That the constitution was drafted on the fortieth anniversary of Texas’ independence (and the one-hundredth of the United States) was not lost on its authors. Nor was the fact that if they did not encourage the government to attend to documentation of the stirring history of Texas, much useful information likely would be irretrievably lost. Consequently, the authors inserted not one but three sections in Article XVI, General Provisions, empowering the legislature (1) “to provide for collecting, arranging and safely keeping such records, rolls, 

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

correspondence, and other documents, civil and military, relating to the history of Texas, as may be now in the possession of parties willing to confide them to the care and preservation of the State”; (2) to “make appropriations for preserving and perpetuating memorials of the history of Texas,” including paintings and documents of historical value; and (3) “at such time as the public interest may require,” to create a department of insurance, statistics, and history to accomplish the work.16 Six months after adoption of the new constitution, still in 1876, the legislature created the new Department of Insurance, Statistics and History and, taking its cue from the constitution’s framers, gave the first direction to management of archives. For the first time, the policy makers in the government of Texas countenanced the importance of providing for history, or, as the wording went, for the future needs of historians. In its language, the substance and some of the wording of which would be repeated in the 1909 statute creating the Texas Library and Historical Commission, legislators gave the commissioner the power and obligation to demand and receive from the Secretary of State, the comptroller of Public Accounts, the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and from such other departments or officers as may have them in charge, all books, maps, papers, documents, memoranda and data, not connected with or necessary to the current duties of said departments or officers, as relate to the history of Texas as a Province, Colony, Republic and State, and carefully to classify, catalogue, number and preserve the same.

Not stopping with records created in the conduct of the public’s business and languishing on shelves and in basement storage rooms of the departments, the legislature further authorized the commissioner to correspond with persons well informed in the early history of Texas, and to solicit and invite by printed circular, or otherwise, any reliable information, in the form of narrative or otherwise, respecting the incidents of the early history and settlement of the different portions of the State of Texas [as well as] receive and preserve all historical relics, mementoes, antiquities and works of art connected with and relating to the history of Texas.

Recognizing that all of the history of Texas was not confined between the Sabine, Red, and Rio Grande rivers, the legislature also directed the commissioner to 

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions endeavor to procure from Mexico the original archives which have been removed from Texas, and relate to the history and settlement thereof; and in case he cannot procure the originals, he shall endeavor to secure authenticated copies thereof; also any and all papers in Mexico, or elsewhere, relating to the early history of Texas.17

Not content with simply authorizing this new and expansive acquisition program, the legislature in the statute even instructed the commissioner on how he should manage all the “reliable information” he received as a result of his solicitations across the state: The Commissioner shall revise and digest such information in proper form as near as practicable in chronological order, and shall record said revised and digested information in a properly bound book with indexes, and he shall carefully number and file the original documents in his office. He shall also keep a book in which he shall enter the names of persons furnishing information of incidents of early history with a condensed statement of the contents of each narrative or communication.18

For its time and with no precedent in Texas, the vision set out in 1876, first in the constitution and then developed in the enabling statute of the Department of Insurance, Statistics and History, was remarkable in its purpose and breadth. Beyond merely what the statute required, this law was the first recognition that records created in the conduct of the people’s business had a value beyond completion of that business and that the legislature had a forward-looking responsibility for oversight of them. After the lengthy sections defining the commissioner’s history function, the 1876 statute gave him “in addition to his other duties . . . charge and control of the State Library.” To fulfill this duty, he was to maintain a complete set of the laws of the United States and other states. Acquiring the laws of the several states had been an important function of some colonial and state governments since before the American Revolution and had been written into the requirements of the first formally established state library, Pennsylvania’s in 1816. For future historians, the commissioner was directed to preserve runs of between six and ten leading Texas newspapers. Any other regulations he deemed proper concerning the management or use of the public library— beyond allowing none of the material in his charge, except bound books, to be circulated—he was to clear with the governor.19 The appointment of Valentine Overton King, a forty-three-year-old medi

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

cal doctor turned attorney, as the first commissioner suggested that the state library and the history function would take their place behind insurance and statistics in the work of the department. King’s Texas roots were but two years old, and he had gained his appointment apparently through the influence of his legislator son-in-law. On the other hand, having served as superintendent of the New Orleans Board of Education, King shared his son-in-law’s abiding interest in education. That was enough. King kept the state librarian job for himself and set about fulfilling the mandate of the law as fully as he could.20 King threw himself into his new work by establishing order in the state library room in the capitol and by assessing the holdings relating to Texas. “Upon assuming charge,” he wrote at the end of his first year in office, “I found the books in such a state of reckless confusion that neither their number nor condition could be ascertained without a thorough inventory. The evidences of a long neglect were everywhere apparent, and a large number of incomplete and broken sets still reveal the inroads that have been made. Many of the volumes were found dilapidated and disfigured, among which were a few works of singular value and rarity.” These he had rebound and returned to the shelves. His accomplishment of restoring order and improving the condition of the collection was short-lived. In 1879 the legislature commandeered the library room for its engrossing and enrolling committee to prepare bills. Out from under his watchful eye, volumes suffered damage or disappeared altogether. During what King called the “second occupation,” caused by a special session of the legislature, the library suffered less, thanks to the legislative staff whom King enlisted to protect the books on the shelves.21 From his inventory, King was startled to discover that the state library contained only a pitiful three books related to Texas. Visitors noticed, too, and remarked to him on “this poverty in a department of the Public Library that should be richer than all others in its peculiar lore.”22 With unprecedented ardor, King undertook to fulfill the mandate of the constitution and enabling statute to collect Texas history. From the secretary of state, he secured the Nacogdoches Archives (records of nearly one hundred years of Spanish administration of northeastern Texas). From their families he obtained the personal papers of Sam Houston’s private secretary, W. D. Miller, and of historian Henderson Yoakum. By the time King left office in January 1880, he had acquired some 5,124 items for the state.23 More than that, he activated the state library’s new mission of providing both a library function and, for the first time, an archival function. The fire that engulfed the capitol on November 9, 1881, destroyed much 10

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

of the library—thousands of pamphlets, maps, newspapers, and books, including its first, treasured acquisition—the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. Though the records housed in basement vaults survived, for the next decade what remained of the library, as one historian characterized it, “was without a habitation and almost without a name.”24 Indeed, when the grand new capitol opened in 1888, the books of the supreme court occupied the spacious chamber designated on the plans and etched in the transom as being for the state library; within the quarters of the Department of Insurance, Statistics and History, the state library was allotted no room.25 When the commissioner of insurance, statistics, and history (whose duties were expanded in 1887 by the addition of agriculture to his portfolio) failed to attend to the work of the state library, then encouragement became the responsibility of the man to whom each commissioner owed his appointment—the governor. The forty-year-old, first native-born governor of Texas, James Stephen Hogg, all 250 pounds of him, came to the office in 1891 as “the People’s Governor” on a record of fighting to regulate railroads and large corporate interests on behalf of the common people and to provide for the state’s public institutions and schools. Well-read and dogged in pursuit of his interests, Hogg took preservation of the history of Texas as one of his missions, and he knew just the man for the job—the university-educated and history-minded former Van Zandt County judge Cadwell Walton Raines. Raines and Hogg had become friends after Hogg, then a newly elected district attorney, moved to Mineola, where Raines owned and edited the local newspaper.26 Although the salary of the position of state librarian had been $1,000 per annum, Hogg, by simply inserting what he wanted into the biennial appropriation bill, established the position of historical clerk and funded it at half again more. As historical clerk (and state librarian ex officio, the title having been dropped), Raines took up the work with relish. So much needed to be done. Surveying the state library located in a room on the capitol’s main floor, he saw primarily the published government documents that had been received on exchange from the federal and other state governments. Barely 100 volumes of any other character could he find. Fewer than 40 of those concerned Texas. Equally appalled, Governor Hogg suggested that Raines make of the library a Texana collection supplemented by reference works of history and literature.27 Embracing the goal completely, in his first two years Raines increased the book collection to 812 volumes, 407 of them on Texas; amassed an extensive collection of newspapers of the Republic and early statehood; and secured diplomatic documents of the Republic. The treaty with Great Britain bearing the signature of Queen Victoria became an instant attraction. Yet more 11

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

highly prized was the original of Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis’ stirring letter of February 24, 1836, written from the Alamo, addressed, “To the People of Texas & all Americans in the world,” and signed, “Victory or Death.” Traveling widely, even advertising in newspapers, in two years Raines built the state library into the largest and richest Texas collection in existence.28 Looking back a decade later, Raines reveled not only in the superlative collection he had assembled in the capitol but also in the new funding that underwrote his travel and permitted purchases such as that of the Travis letter. Travis’ great-grandson John G. Davidson wanted $250 for the letter in March 1893. Since that amount represented the lion’s share of the appropriation for acquiring historical material, negotiations ensued that resulted in the state’s buying the precious document two months later for a mere $85. Enjoying Raines’ acquisitions during his frequent visits to the library, Governor Hogg more than tripled the acquisition budget, from $300 in his first biennium to $1,000 in his second. “It is a matter for keen regret,” Raines observed a decade later, “that subsequent administrations have not seen fit to continue this liberal policy.”29 Starting with so little and endowed with the largest budget in the state library’s history, Judge Raines built both the book collection and the holdings of historical manuscripts impressively. The library room became increasingly crowded, as books and documents jammed shelves on the walls and began to pile up on the floor. As pleasing as the acquisitions were to the governor, consummate politician Raines worked his opportunities and used every stratagem to justify to the legislature the funding for his work. He used comparison: “Nevada, with no greater population and wealth than the city of San Antonio, can boast of the 1470 books in her miscellaneous collection. The evidence points to the fact that our small collection [of 358 volumes] . . . is certainly the smallest State Library in the Union.” He appealed to patriotism: “Texas takes a just pride in her magnificent capitol, the grandest State building in the Union, and her State Library should at least rank as respectable.” And he reminded the lawmakers of the judgment of their constituents and history: “In making these small appropriations for the better collection of historical materials, and the building up of a State Library, the Legislature would be acting only in harmony with the sentiment of all patriotic citizens who desire that Texas in her hard struggle for material development should not forget to be true to herself in that which concerns her fame in history and her intellectual greatness.”30 Moreover, he turned the state library into an inviting and interesting place to visit. In addition to the British treaty, he displayed the Travis letter, photographs, pistols, and swords. He knew his collection thoroughly and enjoyed talking about it, especially with those of his 12

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

generation. Nevertheless, when Raines asked for the installation of a gallery with alcoves and shelves, he was denied.31 When Hogg left office in 1895 after the customary maximum of two terms, political appointee Raines departed with him, replaced by lawyer and scholar Eugene Digges. In a climate of economizing, Hogg’s successor reduced the salary of Raines’ successor by a quarter and eliminated the acquisition budget. Confined by inadequate space and a $200 appropriation that Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History commissioner Archibald Johnson Rose in his first annual report—for 1894—branded as “an absurdly insignificant amount” for acquiring either books or manuscripts, Digges accomplished little before he died in 1899. Raines was returned to his old job, but at Digges’ salary. With no support from the governor and faced with the same lack of space and budget that hobbled Digges, Raines, too, made little headway. His frustration erupted early when he ascribed to “inadvertence on the part of our legislators that Texas, the first State of the Union in size, the third in miles of railroad operated, and practically the fifth in population,” ranked thirty-fifth among the forty-four state libraries in forty-five states. “Perhaps the day is not far distant,” he opined in his 1899 annual report, “when it will be realized that the true grandeur of a State consists not so much in extent of territory, wealth and population as in beneficent institutions.”32 Pride in and enjoyment of Texas history, coupled with exasperation at the termination of active collecting for the state library, likely drove Eugene Digges, two years before his death, Commissioner Rose, and Cadwell Raines to the capitol at 8:30 on the evening of Texas Independence Day 1897 to participate in organizing a Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). More than mere observers, Digges and Raines participated so actively in creating the association that both were elected to its governing council. The purpose of the new organization would be the promotion of historical studies, the letter of invitation said, particularly through “the discovery, collection, preservation, and publication of historical material, especially such as relates to Texas.” The breadth of this scope could not help but cause Raines and Digges to contemplate the relationship between the new history organization and the duties of the historical clerk. The association intended to create its own library and museum, so any collecting activity of the association, whose affairs would be managed by history faculty at the University of Texas about ten blocks north of the capitol, would be conducted in direct competition with the state library. But the competition could be managed. Concerning records, the organizers drew a distinction between documentation created and used by the government in the conduct of the people’s business and the papers of private individuals. Private papers, the organizers urged, “are of quite as 13

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

much value in recovering the history of Texas as are state papers and public documents.”33 As for books, Professor George P. Garrison, the principal in organizing the association who that same year inaugurated at the University of Texas the first graduate course in Texas history, “ha[d] in view the most judicious expenditure of the book fund of the two institutions . . . so that the same authorities on the same historical subjects are not likely to be found in both libraries.”34 The most hopeful solution to the conflict in the minds of the historians would be strengthening the historical focus of state government by removing it from the omnibus Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History and creating a Texas State Historical Commission dominated by association members but including the commissioner who had been responsible for the state library for nearly a quarter century. On February 19, 1899, not two years after the gathering at the capitol resulted in the formation of the TSHA, House Bill 502 was introduced in the Twenty-sixth Legislature to create the Texas State Historical Commission. The bill placed the state library under the new commission, provided for a librarian at Digges’ salary of $1,200 per year, and focused the work of the state library on all the historical duties established in the Department of Insurance, Statistics and History in 1876: acquiring state records not being used in current business, preserving relics and mementoes, seeking originals or copies of archives in Mexico relating to Texas, collecting personal narratives, and cataloging the collections to facilitate their use. To these duties, already the responsibility of the historical clerk, the bill added procuring information relative to Indian tribes and publishing reports of the commission, documents of Texas history, and proceedings of the Texas State Historical Association. Likely to appease any legislators who might object to orienting the work of the state library so strongly toward history, the bill’s framers included a legislative reference function for the state library. Subsequently introduced in the Senate by its powerful president pro tem, R. N. Stafford, the bill moved successfully through the upper chamber in two weeks. But it died in the House, not for objection to it but “because it was not looked after by those who had it in hand,” state librarian Winkler wrote matter-of-factly a dozen years later.35 Two months after the historians organized their Texas State Historical Association in 1897, the increasingly numerous and active clubwomen of Texas—largely middle- and upper-class white homemakers, teachers, and professional women—united the eighteen clubs in eighteen towns and cities into the Texas Federation of Literary Clubs, and subsequently in 1899 into the broader Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. Motivated initially by a desire for self-education, the women, like clubwomen and progressive reformers 14

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

across the nation during the economically comfortable period from the turn of the twentieth century until World War I, soon turned to improving education for children, then child welfare, juvenile justice, and other social reforms. Their energetic spirit of reform, fueled partly by the leisure time increasingly available to the urban middle and upper classes, was directed at raising society’s moral consciousness in nearly every aspect of public life. Proud of themselves at first simply for “their own daring” in holding and traveling by themselves to the statewide organizing meeting in Waco in 1897, the Texas clubwomen shortly began to muster their political strength, although they would not be allowed to vote in Texas for another two decades. In their second annual meeting in 1899, setting their sights on influencing legislative action, but still tentative because many Texans considered the political arena no place for a proper woman, they decided “to eschew even the appearance of meddling in matters political”; that is, they agreed to engage in no direct lobbying of legislators. But, the first historian of the Texas federation observed wryly, “when one considered that the husbands, fathers, brothers and sweethearts of clubwomen were men of influence in affairs of state, it was conclusive that the clubwomen were not without ways and means of influencing legislation.” Indeed, she continued, “thus was created a great, silent force for the enactment and enforcement of good laws.” The force did not remain silent for long.36 The matter most on the women’s minds was education. “This Federation stands for mutual help and mutual advancement,” first president Kate Rotan reminded her sisters. “The keynote of this work is education, not merely that which lies in books, but the higher and nobler sort that elevates and improves every human faculty—that inspires everywhere a love for the good, the true, the beautiful.”37 Inspired by such words, the clubwomen flexed their political muscle to secure by legislative passage and gubernatorial signature in 1901 the establishment of the Girls’ Industrial College in Denton (now Texas Woman’s University). For adults past and children not yet of college age, books provided education and inspiration. Reading to expand knowledge or simply for pleasure and relief, the progressive clubwomen perceived, would uplift their lives and equip them to become better educators of their children and more informed citizens and activists. In predominantly rural Texas, the effect of reading stood to be the greatest in alleviating the drudgery of countless women’s daily lives and expanding the minds of their children. Since the most accessible books were those in libraries, on April 29, 1898, in their first annual meeting the clubwomen of Texas, joining the tide propelled by clubwomen in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Georgia, adopted unanimously the motion of former teacher and federation vice 15

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

president Mary Terrell: “That the establishment of Public Free Libraries in Texas be adopted as the work of the Federation.”38 Politically wise, the women called on the president of the University of Texas and the state superintendent of public instruction to serve on an advisory board for this campaign. With the goal confirmed, Terrell recalled a few years later, the women set about to arouse “a library sentiment, which in time would call for a state system of public libraries. Each local effort would be an active center, from which would radiate interest until the state would be permeated with a desire for public libraries.”39 These women, more than other Texans, could see just how poor Texas was in the provision of libraries for its people. Those who looked only at numbers missed it. By library count, Texas compared favorably to other Western states with rural populations similarly spread over considerable distances. Rather Texas was deficient in providing its people with the useful information and leisure available from books they could afford only through the establishment of library services. Initially Texas appeared to be progressive. In 1874 the legislature authorized any incorporated city to establish a free library, funded by the city. Galveston acted, but as of 1897 it was the only city to have done so. When the federation organized that year, only six library associations— club or subscription libraries—existed. Almost any way libraries were categorized before the federation took the creation of libraries as its mission, the total could be counted using no more than the fingers of both hands. After 1897, numbers shot up dramatically. By 1901 the number of libraries had increased to nearly fifty, of which ten were free public libraries, twenty-six were subscription circulating libraries, and five were club libraries. Beyond that, traveling libraries were being circulated by seven women’s clubs. To staff the libraries with professional librarians, the clubwomen had even persuaded the State University, as it was called, to institute a curriculum in library economy to prepare librarians. Six students took their seats when the program opened in 1901.40 As effective as the clubwomen had been in creating libraries, even in providing traveling libraries, they knew that making their establishment and professional support a function of state government would provide an institutional energy and longevity they could not. They knew, too, that adding to their voice that of a membership organization open to anyone interested in libraries would increase their chances of success. In May 1902 federation president Anna Pennybacker, with University of Texas librarian Benjamin Wyche and state librarian Raines, circulated an invitation to a meeting to form a Texas Library Association (TLA). The gathering that occurred in early June on the university campus not only established the organization but also 16

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

adopted immediate goals: creation of a state library commission, establishment of a system of free traveling libraries, the enlargement and “proper recognition” of the state library, and the gathering and distribution of library information—goals in full harmony with those of the federation. University of Texas president William Lambdin Prather, a member of the federation’s library initiative advisory board, accepted the presidency of the new organization. Austin attorney Alexander P. Wooldridge—a banker active in politics, a former secretary of the board of regents of the University of Texas, and the new chair of the board of regents of the Girls’ Industrial College—took chair of the legislative committee. The stage was set to ask the legislature to create a state library commission. Thorough in laying the groundwork for their measure, the supporters asked heads of other state libraries for information on their library laws. When questioned, Texas attorney general C. K. Bell replied that he saw no reason the legislature would be prevented from establishing both traveling libraries and a board to manage them, “if it could be imagined that the legislature would favor such an enactment.”41 The bill that Wooldridge drafted called for a state library commission to assist in organizing and running free public libraries, publish lists of books “suitable for the use of libraries and individuals,” and collect Texas government publications for use at convenient points around the state. Without mentioning the state library by name, it called for the new agency to take responsibility for the library’s collections of “books, curios, and public documents.” Before the bill was introduced, the wording connecting the state library commission with the state library was stripped out, so that, as submitted, the measure created only a program for library extension—that is, circulation of library materials around the state. Whether or not that narrowed scope was the cause, the bill introduced in the Twenty-eighth Legislature in 1903 suffered nearly the same fate as that of the Texas State Historical Commission bill four years earlier. Senator Stafford, who had successfully moved the historical commission bill through the Senate, pushed the state library commission bill through his chamber as well. But despite a committee recommendation to pass, the bill died on the Speaker’s table in the House.42 Connecting the proposed library commission with the state library probably would have given the bill no better chance of passage. The value of records “to the State not being easily recognized in dollars and cents,” Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History commissioner W. J. Clay wrote in his annual report for 1903, “it has been too lightly esteemed in the past.” His appeal for substantial support emanating from a renewed interest in historical documentation went unsatisfied.43 17

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

Undaunted, the supporters of the library commission bill, led by the Texas Library Association, returned for the 1905 regular session. This time they offered Wooldridge’s draft in full, which transferred the state library, with its books, curios, and public documents, to the jurisdiction of the new commission. Though recommending passage, the House Committee on State Affairs in its comment on the bill may well have scuttled the measure. The committee warned its colleagues, the majority of whom represented the four-fifths of the state’s population who lived in rural constituencies and were uneasy about the economy, that beyond creating a system of free traveling libraries, adoption would lead to establishing “a gigantic State library.” Whatever the cause, the bill died without consideration by the full legislature.44 Supporters returned in 1907 for their third attempt at obtaining a state library commission. Though the heart of the bill remained the same, the measure included three significant differences. First, unlike the predecessors that left the selection of all appointees to the commission in the governor’s hands, the 1907 version enlarged the commission by including the state superintendent of public instruction and the president of the University of Texas, positions represented on the federation’s library initiative advisory board. By adding positions focused on public and higher education, the framers clearly intended to emphasize an educational role for the agency. Second, the longest section of the new bill established a legislative reference function. This would be more than a simple reference library, the model established by Melvil Dewey in New York in 1890 that apparently served as the example for the similar section of the historians’ bill in 1899. Drawing upon the design initiated by Charles McCarthy in Wisconsin in 1901 and being adopted in other capitols, the Texas librarians’ 1907 proposal charged the state library to conduct research on the application of specific laws in other states. Adding a bill-writing service pioneered in progressive Wisconsin, the bill also added an assistant librarian competent to provide the reference and research and the bill-drafting services. Third, the eight duties spelled out for the state librarian repeated the wording from the 1876 statute, highlighting the work of the state librarian as historical clerk. This bill died as its predecessors had—reported out of committee favorably but failing to pass because other business consumed the remaining days of the session.45 Whether the library supporters approached the history supporters or vice versa, or whether the two, many of whose leaders played prominent roles in both groups,46 mutually concluded that joining forces was the only way to achieve their separate but not unrelated goals of state commissions, they united in pursuit of a single state commission to institutionalize the work each wanted done. Throwing in together was no sign of weakness. Indeed, 18

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

after losing for the third time, the clubwomen expanded their campaign. At the federation’s annual meeting late in 1907, members talked of exerting yet greater efforts “to have the Texas people see the necessity for it—the great good accruing from it.”47 As Ella Dibrell, the federation president and wife of former state senator Joseph B. Dibrell, well knew from observing her husband’s experience, people sufficiently motivated could obtain legislative action. Judging by the experience in other states, the library and reading function and the archives and history function had no record of being treated as equals. One or the other predominated. In Alabama, for example—prominent in the South for having established in 1901 its Department of Archives and History, whose lead several states followed—the library function was subordinated. A state library service—actually only a library extension function—was created in 1907 as a division within the six-year-old department. Though the department’s director, Thomas McA. Owen, had helped form the Alabama Library Association in 1904 and served as its president until his death in 1920, he did not hesitate to bluntly point out librarians’ weaknesses. “How many librarians are fit to cope with musty archives?” he asked. “How many are equipped to edit your historical publications?” And for providing the important legislative reference service, “How many are able to respond to calls for detailed historical or statistical information?” he posed further, no doubt fully aware that McCarthy in Wisconsin was a history PhD, not a librarian.48 Clearly for Owen the archival and historical work was the more important. Nevertheless, allying the two functions in Texas was made easy when the 1909 bill repeated the sections of the 1907 measure that provided for the functions of the state library desired by each group. The three changes made in the bill presented to the Thirty-first Legislature, supporters believed, would secure the necessary votes without compromising the work the groups wanted the commission to do. They changed the name of the new agency to accommodate both interests—the Texas Library and Historical Commission—and, for the makeup of the commission, they returned the number of commissioners to five (by eliminating two appointed positions) and substituted in place of the university’s president a professor of history at the school. If the changes increased the likelihood of passage, they did not smooth the bill’s transit through either chamber. Wrangling on the floor of the House and the Senate nearly killed the measure in each chamber. In February the “historical part” saved the bill, TLA president Wyche thought. On Saturday, March 6, university librarian and former TLA secretary Phineas L. Windsor agonized to Mary Terrell that opposition centered on “fear of the expense.” 19

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

This objection “is beyond my comprehension,” he continued, “for the amount of the appropriation . . . will be decided bi-annually by the Appropriations Committee of the Legislature, so that the legislature will have the matter of expenses in their own hands entirely.”49 Before the legislature convened again on Tuesday, March 9, passage was agreed upon, influenced likely in no small measure by Ella Dibrell, who, seeing that “the crisis required drastic measures,” undertook what she called “flank movements” of her own, apparently agreeing to eliminate the provisions for traveling libraries and exchanges with other libraries.50 Thereafter, events occurred in rapid succession: on March 9 the House accepted the Senate amendments; on March 12 both the House and the Senate passed the bill; on March 19 the governor signed the measure into law; not six days later he had appointed the three citizen commissioners; and on March 29—less than three weeks after the chambers reached accord—the new commissioners convened in the office of the superintendent of public instruction to bring the Texas Library and Historical Commission to life.51 Some seventy-four years after Don Carlos Barrett first proposed that the government of Texas provide itself with a library, and more than a quarter century after the archives and history function had been written into law, the legislature and the governor pulled the two out of the omnibus department of disparate missions in which they had been subordinated and established them in their own agency—the Texas Library and Historical Commission— with a mandate commensurate with the size of Texas. Though Texas was not the first state to join the two in a single agency, uniting them each on a par with the other set the Texas combination apart from the others. Those interested in libraries and reading and those interested in archives and history were jubilant that the state at last would support and encourage the work each considered vital. As they anticipated the future, if the thoughtful among them recalled the history of these functions in Texas government, they could have observed four striking realities—one to try to overcome, one to try to cultivate, one to try to avoid repeating, and one from which to draw encouragement. The greatest obstacle they had to overcome was the lip service the state’s leaders gave to libraries and archives—professing how important they were to the state, just not now and not at the cost. With few exceptions, this persistent posture of penury, never more eloquently phrased than in response to the first proposal for a government library in 1835, fettered and frustrated those striving to discharge the library and archival functions. It resulted in the dramatic, sad, and hurtful losses of treasury and adjutant general department records, among others. The supporters of the library and archival services 20

Establishing the L ibrary and Archival Functions

could expect to have to continually confront this ever-present rationale of indigence, a rationale deaf to both social benefits and the need for government efficiency in the present, and blind to the future. The close observer could hardly fail to notice that history and the archival function appealed to political leaders more than education, moral uplift, and reading. Enthusiasm for the history of Texas motivated state leaders after Reconstruction to write into the statutes words that continue to guide the agency in 2009, and it motivated Governor Hogg to provide the state library with significant new funding. Indeed, the most substantial appropriations the state library enjoyed in its first three-quarters of a century came specifically because the state’s chief executive expressed a genuine, personal interest in Texas history. Cultivating the state’s leadership at the highest level appeared to be not just good politics but essential work for providing the archival and library services. During the state library’s seventy-four years, virtually every new librarian had found the collection in disarray—raided and its order lost. Almost every one had to start from scratch—take inventory, rebuild the collection, catalog it to establish the content for potential visitors, and put the books in order on the shelves so as to provide the expected circulation service. The smaller the resources and the staff, the longer the work took. The experience was plain: eliminate the state librarian position, and the collection, far from going into a limbo, instead lost its integrity as its order was destroyed and books belonging to the state disappeared. Time after time after time, false economy squandered investment in labor and assets as work had to be repeated. This was to be avoided. Having found no instance in any other state in which the broad history and archival function and the variegated library and reading function were joined equally in one agency, proponents of the state library in Texas at the beginning of the twentieth century were pioneering. Harmonizing and balancing these two related yet disparate functions, to which they were adding the functions, new to Texas, of providing a legislative reference service and encouraging the creation of public libraries statewide, would be no small task and would require the most careful tending. The scope of the work was magnified by the absence of any examples from which to profit. In the right hands, the stimulation of launching and directing a new venture such as this would ignite encouragement.52 Those interested in libraries and reading and in history and archives persevered through five legislatures to obtain the state’s commitment to the activities they considered vital to their fellow citizens. How they would mix historical experience and uncharted pioneering would be their unique challenge. 21

t wo

“Bri c ks w it h o ut S t r aw” The Winkler, Klaerner, and West Years, 1909–1925

A

nswering the governor’s call, four of the five members of the first Texas Library and Historical Commission assembled promptly at ten o’clock on Monday morning, March 29, 1909, in the capitol office of Texas superintendent of public instruction and ex officio commission member Robert Bartow Cousins to inaugurate their work. The commissioners had to know that the job before them was both to create a new agency and to continue the work of a state library that had been functioning off and on, to one purpose or another, for almost three-quarters of a century. What they would quickly discover was the extent of the challenges on both sides of their charge. On the motion of wealthy cattleman and banker George W. Littlefield, who was a political friend of the governor’s, the group placed at its head University of Texas history professor and ex officio member George P. Garrison, for whom creation of a Texas historical commission, and subsequently a library and historical commission, had been the dedicated work of more than a decade. Superintendent Cousins led the group to elect as vice-chair Mary Terrell, whose energy guiding the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs in support of libraries in Texas and particularly in pursuing the creation of the state library commission had earned her the sobriquet “the Mother of Texas Libraries.” Their organization perfected, the commissioners took up the perennial problem of the state library—funding.1 The commission had been established without an appropriation. In the turmoil over passage of the commission bill, no one had included in the measure a provision to transfer to the new agency the money appropriated to the state library in its former home, by that time changed to the Department of Insurance and Banking. Asked on that same March 29 whether the state library under the commission could use the money appropriated to it under the department, Acting Attorney General William E. Hawkins the next morning ruled not. On its second afternoon, commissioners met

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

with the governor to request the funds needed to maintain the state library for the remaining five months of the fiscal year. In the legislature the request became part of the contentious state budget for the coming biennium. Though $20,000 was appropriated to purchase the papers of Republic president Lamar and of Confederate postmaster general and Texas Railroad Commission chair John H. Reagan, for more than two months the state library had to function on the promise of money, the state librarian paying various expenses out of his pocket. Only on May 28, at the conclusion of a second called session, was the appropriation bill passed, resolving the crisis.2 The other principal matter of business on the morning of March 29 was the election of a state librarian. A man would be best. No woman ever had headed a state agency in Texas, and those close to the governor knew that, despite all the work that leaders of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs had done to realize the library and historical commission, he purposely minimized the participation of women on the commission, allocating only one seat for a woman. Nevertheless, the commissioners’ choice was as good as it was easy—the current state librarian, Ernest William Winkler. A native of Bell County, thirty-four years old, and holding a master’s degree in history from the University of Texas, Winkler had joined the state library staff six years earlier to work with the archives. He thrived in bringing order to and describing the documents, then writing papers from them. Recognizing his contribution to Texas history, the Texas State Historical Association in 1904 elected him an association Fellow. Increasingly concerned for preservation of the precious papers in the state library, Winkler queried the Library of Congress about its procedures until, with the governor’s approval, he went to Washington to study them. Following state librarian Raines’ death in 1906, Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History commissioner W. J. Clay asked Winkler to take the job. Although he fretted over giving up his archivist’s work, Winkler accepted the post and worked industriously, as a colleague observed, “to realize his idea of making the State library ‘the treasure house of information relating to Texas and the Southwest’ and to ‘permit nothing relating to Texas to escape.’”3 Within a year, he was lured away to a higherpaying clerkship in the new Department of Agriculture. But when the opportunity came in January 1909 to resume his former job, Winkler jumped at it, even though returning to the state library meant taking a 20 percent cut in pay. Beyond his dedication to the task of state librarian, Winkler was known for the amount and quality of his work. Watch Winkler, a colleague warned one of the new commissioners, for “quite likely . . . he will try to do too much work himself personally.”4 After establishing rules for operation of the library and tending to other 23

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

administrative matters, the commission adjourned, leaving Winkler to carry on. “The most crying need,” declared University of Texas librarian Phineas Windsor, speaking for a library community undoubtedly conscious that the State of Connecticut that very year was laying the cornerstone for a fine structure designed and built specifically to accommodate its state library, “is connected with the state library itself,” the shelving and equipment being totally inadequate in both quantity and quality. Winkler knew that only too well. For its principal quarters as an independent agency of government, the state library was assigned half of the space the supreme court library previously had occupied alone on the second floor of the north wing of the capitol in the room identified in the etched glass over the doorway as the “State Library.” Why, when the capitol was occupied in 1888, the state library had been excluded from the space designated for it, Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History commissioner Rose eight years later could not ascertain. But calling attention to the matter in his 1895 annual report brought neither answer nor invitation into the space. Since only a small portion of the collection in 1909 could be shelved in the half room, Winkler, in order to retrieve a book, first had to determine in which of six rooms on three separate floors it was located. Though a reference library, the place had only two tables and a half dozen chairs to accommodate visitors. To conduct his own work, he had “not the semblance of an office nor the aids or devices that go to equip an office.”5 Winkler could not begin to convert from unsatisfactory wood to modern steel shelving and improve the furniture until he had an appropriation. When finally it came, it had been reduced to $3,000, less than one-third the amount the commission had requested. Although the shelving he could buy did not provide for expansion (particularly to accommodate material to be transferred to the library from other departments of government), at least it permitted the state librarian to get all the books off the floor for the first time in years.6 The cataloging done over the past three years, Windsor continued, was three-quarters wasted, since the cataloger was a political appointee, not a professional librarian. About that, Winkler could do little, for the commission continued the cataloger’s employment for the remainder of the fiscal year.7 Winkler turned his attention to the new charge to the state library under the commission—conducting library extension work. Section three of the statute directed the commission to “give advice to such persons as contemplate the establishment of public libraries in regard to such matters as the maintenance of public libraries, selection of books, cataloguing, and library management. The commission shall have conducted library institutes, and encourage library associations. The State Librarian shall ascertain the 24

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condition of all public libraries in this State and report the results to the commission.”8 To Winkler, as to the library community, these words did more than lay out duties; they sanctioned a mission. “It is a crime against society to confine the citizens, especially those who have a hard struggle for bread, to the use of such books only as they can afford to buy” themselves, recipients of the state library’s first newsletter read later that year in an article titled “The Logic of the Library Movement.” In a city without a library, the article declared, “poverty in ideas and morals and comfort would soon be so conspicuous that it would be shunned as an undesirable place in which to live.”9 Simply put: libraries held information; information served education; education uplifted individuals, and through them, society; and thus, without libraries, individuals and society stagnated. While Texans understood public education to be the business of the State, “that the free public library is an essential factor of the educational machinery is not so generally recognized,” Winkler wrote, “but equally true.” And because barely 11/2 percent of schools in Texas had a library, public libraries had to play an important role in the education of both adults and children. Anyone knowledgeable of libraries in Texas realized what Winkler put into words: “There are some cities in Texas where the authorities seem to entertain the idea that the public library can subsist on charity and still do valiant service in the cause of education.” The heart of the mission, then, more than carrying out the specific duties, was that “such cities need to be waked up.”10 With $50 (equivalent to approximately $1,230 in 2008) appropriated for the remainder of the fiscal year for traveling expenses and another $50 for collecting and disseminating information about public libraries, Winkler’s options for fulfilling the mission were limited. But “when the need for action and the promise of good results are so great,” the messianic state librarian wrote, “who could sit down and wait for the assembling of another Legislature to remedy even so important a defect as this?” At least he had some money to pursue the work. The Georgia legislature took twenty-one years to fund the library commission it created in 1897. Confined largely to Austin, Winkler could correspond by mail and publish a newsletter. Corresponding was the easier. Lacking money earmarked for a newsletter, he had to prevail on the State Printing Board to publish, at its expense, Texas Libraries, the first issue of which appeared in November 1909 and which he intended to bring out quarterly.11 Winkler’s industry in gathering, standardizing, and disseminating information on libraries in Texas through correspondence, the newsletter, and the few trips he was able to take became legendary. Missing no opportunity 25

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to promote libraries, his own in particular, in 1911 he published a series of articles on the state library in the major Texas dailies in Galveston and Dallas, and an extended report in the Texas State Historical Association’s quarterly. Applauding Winkler’s unbounded industry in behalf of libraries, the Texas Library Association in 1910 elected him to its presidential succession, the only state librarian yet so honored, and kept him in the top office for three years, 1911–1914, the longest term of any TLA president as of 2009.12 In 1910, Winkler was able to relieve himself of the political-appointee cataloger and, by hiring in her place John Boynton Kaiser, a Phi Beta Kappa librarian from the respected New York State Library, to inaugurate a professionally run legislative reference service that was “highly desirable in view of the vast increase of materials relating to the subjects to be dealt with by legislation.” According to commission chair Garrison, legislative reference work required a man, because of the frequent night hours of legislative sessions and “the vast amount of heavy work to be done.” In other words, “the work he will have to do will in fact be such as it would not be proper to ask a woman to undertake.”13 As engaging and important as was the library side of the job, Winkler the historian had work to do with the archives too, especially since he had no one conducting the archival duties he had enjoyed during his first years in the state library. “Amidst the multifarious duties of the library,” he reported in 1910, in his first biennial report to the commission, “time was found now and then” to copy and edit for publication as an appendix to that initial report the Secret Journals of the Senate of the Republic of Texas. “They are offered,” he advised readers, “as a sample of the manner in which the historical archives should be published under the title of Texas Archives.” Always the promoter, Winkler instructed commissioners, and through them the governor and lawmakers, that “nothing will do more to foster, encourage and make intelligent this interest [in the state’s remarkable history] than the publication of the sources [from] which it springs.”14 More than simple publication of sources, important was the audience for the work. Winkler was right that appended to the biennial report, the Republic Senate secret journals would reach the elected leaders of Texas government. Published in limited numbers, however, the interesting documents would reach few beyond the state’s leaders and the small community of historians. But thinking as a historian who could hardly conceive how anyone could fail to be interested in even the minutiae of history, rather than as a politically alert agency head attentive to the constituency he wanted to reach, Winkler, in selecting a document from Texas’ national period, seems to have missed the community whose support had been largely responsible for the formalization 26

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of strong state archival functions in most southern states—Confederate veterans and those nostalgic about the Lost Cause. Perhaps he took his lead from the supporters who had fought so doggedly to secure the Texas Library and Historical Commission. Nostalgia for the Confederate past had motivated neither the historians nor the clubwomen and librarians. They neither asked for nor courted support from the historically conscious and politically prominent Confederate veteran and lineage societies. Curious in a state sensible of its Southern heritage, this was all the more notable in that Senator Stafford, who acted so prominently in behalf of the historical and library commission bills, counseled the United Daughters of the Confederacy in their commemoration and fundraising efforts. Perhaps had the historians, clubwomen, and librarians been more inclusive in building support for their cause, their efforts to secure the new commission would have been rewarded sooner and more generously than they were. As it was, absent the elitist character of the leadership and direction of counterpart agencies in southern states such as Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the Texas initiative possessed an inclusive for-all-the-people character distinctive for the period.15 Given a position for a state archivist, Winkler recruited thirty-eight-yearold Elizabeth Howard West to begin on September 25, 1911. Possessed of an inquiring, retentive, and active mind, after only two years of study she earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in history from the University of Texas in 1901. No stranger to the state library, having frequented its room as a student, West evidently never expressed any interest in working there until one day in 1905: After passing the time of day with [state librarian] Judge Raines, I asked, without a thought of being taken seriously, “Judge Raines, have you a job for me?” To my surprise he replied that the Legislature had made an appropriation for a cataloguer, effective September 1, 1905, and that he hoped he could put me into the place. He gave me a copy of Cutter’s Rules for a Dictionary Catalog and suggested that I might talk with Mr. Windsor, then Librarian of the University of Texas.16

Though the appointment went to another, West did complete Windsor’s library training program and began her career working in libraries and archives. Two years Winkler’s senior, with five years’ experience in the cataloging and manuscripts divisions of the Library of Congress, West brought to the job more academic training than the state librarian had and only slightly fewer years of work experience. Moreover, she was a published student of Texas history, having contributed to the Quarterly of the Texas State Histori27

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cal Association, during her student days in 1904 and 1905, translations of two important Spanish documents. So that she would appreciate the magnitude of the job he was offering, Winkler sent West pictures of the jumbled and piled books that had been accumulating since 1895 in the state library’s capitol basement rooms. As shocking as the images might be, the “disgraceful condition” represented opportunity too, Winkler told her. The extensive records of the comptroller lay in similar disarray, and the governor had vetoed an appropriation to the comptroller to straighten out the mess. “An excellent opportunity for the State Library to come to the rescue,” Winkler continued, “it would be doing what we are authorized by law to do, but no one has ever looked for help along this line in this quarter.”17 West shared Winkler’s vision, accepted his offer, and threw herself into her new work with remarkable vigor. She managed the transfer of 1,149 boxes containing 100,000 documents from the comptroller’s basement. With more comptroller records remaining to be transferred, West begged for space. Pursuing a somewhat new strategy, Winkler endorsed West’s request by encouraging an appropriation that would allow the adjutant general’s department to move to Camp Mabry, thereby vacating rooms in the capitol for which the state librarian appealed. Having compiled calendars at the Library of Congress, West prepared one of the newly acquired Lamar Papers, which Winkler published with the second biennial report.18 (Not lessening his own labor in history, Winkler edited and published the journal of the Secession Convention.)19 A few months after the 1911 regular session of the legislature charged the state library to appoint a librarian trained in legislative reference work, Winkler lost Kaiser, the only man Winkler had found to take the job at the salary offered. Kaiser went on to enjoy a distinguished career. Among other accomplishments, he wrote a manual on legislative reference and other libraries titled Law, Legislative, and Municipal Libraries (1914) and served as president of both the Pacific Northwest and New Jersey library associations.20 Without funding to attract a suitable candidate but required by law to provide the service, the commission on March 27, 1912, turned to the University of Texas. Since students from several departments used the legislative reference resources, faculty agreed to participate in providing the service. While the legislative reference service required little space in which to function, the operation needed funds for acquiring publications of all sorts treating topics of legislative interest, for timely binding and indexing of bills, and for exchanging bills and state publications with other state libraries. In asking for the first time in 1913 for an appropriation specifically for legislative reference, 28

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Winkler told readers of the Texas Library and Historical Commission biennial report, first, that purchasing, classifying, cataloging, and making available the purchases was year-round work; second, that since the principal work was compiling research in answer to questions, publishing bulletins of the findings was essential; third, that the clientele of legislative reference included any citizen of Texas, not just legislators and heads of state departments; and, finally, that answering the host of inquiries, which required skill and time, was “a function of library work which the uninformed often underestimate as to its importance and quantity.”21 When not from legislative action, the penury of the state library resulted from gubernatorial veto. Beyond reviewing its budget, governors had paid little attention to the agency. The third governor to come to office after the creation of the Texas Library and Historical Commission—James Edward Ferguson—would be different. The Temple banker and lawyer signaled so in his campaign when he sidestepped the prominent prohibition issue of the mainstream politicians to speak directly to tenant farmers, declaring that the rents they paid were too high. “Farmer Jim’s” constituency responded, and Ferguson won easily. A few weeks before the January 1915 inauguration day, rumors began to spread that the incoming governor had his eye on personnel more than on the budget. Ferguson had supporters to reward. Positions on oversight bodies he could fill directly by appointment; tenure in budgeted positions he could affect by his appointments to the oversight bodies. Ferguson’s predecessor had often disregarded requests for appointment—one specifically to be state librarian, for which the person offered two qualifications: being a supporter and being an accomplished journalist.22 But Ferguson believed that election by the people endowed the governor with the right and the power to run all state agencies and institutions as he saw fit.23 The rumors disturbed Eugene Campbell Barker. Following George Garrison’s death in 1910, Barker had replaced his colleague as head of the Department of History and ex officio on the commission. Then after Mary Terrell, who followed Garrison as chair, departed at the expiration of her term, Barker was elected to lead the Texas Library and Historical Commission. Though Barker had no relish for politics, on behalf of historical work in Texas and of his close professional and personal friend, Winkler, he felt compelled to state to the incoming administration the overriding importance of professional, nonpolitical qualifications as the criteria for selecting the state librarian. As luck would have it, Barker happened to know the incoming governor’s brother, and to A. M. Ferguson he addressed a letter laying out Winkler’s qualifications. “From the point of view of efficiency it would be a real ca29

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

lamity to remove Winkler,” Barker concluded, underlining the sentence to ensure that no one missed it. Learning of no reply from the governor-elect, Ella Dibrell, as the lone gubernatorial appointee attending the commission meeting on December 10, 1914, moved, and the other two members agreed, that Barker write again, this time to the governor-elect on behalf of the commission. The next day, Barker dispatched, according to one biographer, “a classic description of the proper function of the state library and the ideal qualifications of its librarian.” Barker got right to the point: “I am not speaking recklessly in saying that the position, when properly filled, requires a more specialized and expert training than that of any other department head in the capitol, with the possible exception of the Attorney General.” Knowing that perhaps the single most important supporter of the governor-elect was none other than former commission member George Littlefield (with whom Barker had worked to achieve creation of the Littlefield Fund for Southern History at the university24), Barker noted that Littlefield “once remarked to me that Winkler was the most efficient man in the state for the place.” Then repeating the statement in his first letter, Barker stressed that Winkler’s loss would be “a calamity.”25 Still with no reply, after the January 1915 inauguration Barker, Dibrell, and state superintendent of public instruction Walter Francis Doughty called on the governor. Granting that Winkler was managing the state library effectively, Ferguson told them he wanted Winkler removed because Winkler belonged to Austin’s University Methodist Church, whose minister had criticized Ferguson unmercifully. (Winkler consciously avoided participation in political activity, and his was guilt by association. In fact, Winkler so detested the minister that he had stopped attending church a year and a half earlier.) To Winkler’s face the next day, Ferguson said, Mr. Winkler, you are the son of a farmer; you know what it costs to obtain an education; it was through the sacrifices of your father that you obtained an education. Now that you have an education and have occupied an important position, you have turned away from the teaching of your father and have gone off with the University Church crowd and . . . proclaimed that a man without a college education is not fit to hold office.

Apparently speechless at the governor’s unfounded accusation that corruption by education rendered him unfit to be state librarian and hearing groundless rumors that he had fallen out with his family and was ashamed of his German heritage, Winkler answered to commission member Hugh N. 30

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

Fitzgerald simply that “the first part of this [the governor’s] statement is true as the Gospel. The second part is just as false as the first is true.”26 In Winkler’s place, the new governor wanted to put campaign supporter Reverend A. F. Cunningham, who, he told Barker, Dibrell, and Doughty, “is an educated man and is therefore fitted for the position.”27 Still, Ferguson left the selection to the commission. Not long afterward, a friend in Ferguson’s hometown suggested that if Barker could not dissuade the governor from forcing into the office a person with no background in libraries or archives, Barker should write Cunningham to educate him to the requirements of the position. With Governor Ferguson’s approval, Barker wrote on February 19. Getting right to the point again, Barker told Cunningham frankly that he was writing “in the hope of dissuading you from accepting the position.” After describing the work, Barker pointed out that the law (adopted in 1911) required appointment of “an experienced librarian.” If Cunningham did not meet that qualification, Barker added, “it would be a violation of the law for the Commission to elect you.” When Ferguson read the letter, a copy of which Barker sent him, the governor was furious. By exceeding a simple statement of qualifications, Barker had insulted both Cunningham and the governor, Ferguson fumed to Barker in a letter the next day, adding, “As you have entered into a long discussion of politics in the letter, I hope that you will not hereafter complain if your wishes are not carried out.”28 Likely with the governor’s response at hand, the four remaining members of the commission met that same afternoon of February 20. Newspaperman and manager of the successful gubernatorial campaigns of governors Charles A. Culberson and Oscar Branch Colquitt, Hugh Fitzgerald had resigned a few days earlier. He chose not to employ his journalism in behalf of the short-staffed agency, saying that “a library that had neither a stenographer nor a porter was [not] worth fighting over.”29 After hearing the normal activity reports, the four excused their secretary—Winkler—to take up election of a state librarian. Ferguson’s first commission appointee, Buena Day McKay, the wife of Ferguson’s campaign manager and then secretary of state, nominated Cunningham. Barker countered with Winkler, restating the duties and legal requirements of the position. Admitting that she did not know whether Cunningham met the requirements of the law, McKay stated plainly that all that mattered to the Ferguson administration was their gratitude for his service. Dibrell took the middle road, willing to elect Cunningham and to leave to his conscience whether, knowing the law, he could take the oath of office in good faith. In so doing, Dibrell struggled to satisfy the governor, who had reappointed her after securing her 31

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pledge to support his candidate; her husband, who had urged her to accept the governor’s favor as he hoped to be appointed to the supreme court; and her own conscience, which favored retaining her friend Winkler in the job. Positions stated, but being divided and short one member, the commission adjourned awaiting the final gubernatorial appointment and, at the request of ex officio members Doughty and Chairman Barker, “more definite information” regarding Cunningham’s qualifications for the position. When the commission reconvened at full strength, McKay presented what Cunningham had written the governor regarding his fitness for appointment as the state’s librarian. As Winkler reported it to Mary Terrell, Cunningham offered that “he had a library of 1,000 volumes, which he had catalogued and indexed; . . . he had visited libraries on his travels and had used them; . . . [and] he didn’t think much of special training for library work anyhow.” That suited the three Ferguson appointees. With the minutes of the March 3 meeting showing, on Dibrell’s motion, that he was the governor’s choice, the three elected Cunningham on a three-to-two vote, and Barker resigned as chair. Likely to the surprise of all, Cunningham declined to accept, citing the split vote and the unpleasant working environment he anticipated, no doubt on account of Barker remaining on the commission. Ferguson next approached Judge Rudolph Kleberg Jr., who told him that Winkler should be left in the job. Were he—Kleberg—to be appointed nevertheless, “he should demand the right to appoint his subordinates,” Kleberg told the governor, after which he “heard no more about his appointment.” When the commission met for a third time to elect a librarian, Barker again nominated Winkler, but the group elected the governor’s next choice, Christian Klaerner. “Things are in a fair way to go pretty much to smash down there,” Barker concluded prophetically.30 If Governor Ferguson had a mission for the Texas State Library beyond using positions to reward loyalty, state librarian Klaerner presented it to Texas librarians a year later when, below a prominent banner headline in the July 1916 issue of Texas Libraries, he quoted the governor as saying: “Country education is the foundation of civilization. It is the bedrock upon which this government must stand. When it is destroyed this government will be destroyed. It makes no difference what it costs, we are going to have it.” That suited the new state librarian—fifty-four-year-old, Bavarian-born Klaerner, whose past seven years of service as school superintendent of Washington County had capped his thirty-four years of teaching school and directing singing clubs in Texas. The contribution the state library could make to rural education, Klaerner wrote, was in sending traveling libraries. Whether or not 32

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traveling libraries had been of particular interest to Klaerner before becoming state librarian, after he read in the April 1915 issue of Texas Libraries that under his leadership “much is to be expected in the development of a State system of traveling libraries,” they became his interest.31 “A library remaining within the four walls and waiting for the customer will not be much of a factor of education for community or county,” he replied in the July issue. Though the legislature first had eliminated traveling libraries from the 1909 statute and had followed in 1912 by eliminating funding for library extension altogether, the clubwomen, the librarians, state librarian Winkler, and the commission all continued to work for both. Traveling school libraries, the commission told the governor in the 1911–1912 biennial report, are “the most desirable, as well as the most economical, form of State aid” because “a better quality of books is insured, and the object lesson afforded will stimulate many schools to provide their own libraries.” Not until 1914, however, did traveling libraries become a focus of the state library. Beginning with publication of the April 1914 issue of Texas Libraries, Winkler devoted almost the entire content of four successive issues to traveling libraries and library extension. And at the annual meeting of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs in April 1914, clubwomen heard the state librarian ask for the donation of ten thousand volumes to outfit traveling libraries the state would circulate along with the traveling libraries the federation had already donated. With little funding available to support circulation of approximately two hundred new traveling libraries—several times more than the state library already had in circulation—close observers must have wondered how the enlarged traveling library system Winkler envisioned could function. Then came the overhaul of the leadership of the agency in 1915. As wrenching as it was for longtime supporters of the state library, to the entrepreneurial the change presented an unanticipated opportunity. With an educator as state librarian and the majority of the commission members tied so closely to the popular governor, assistant state librarian Octavia Fry Rogan, who likely wrote the April 1915 piece that oriented Klaerner to traveling libraries, sought to capitalize on what appeared to be a golden opportunity to secure for the agency’s statewide service the resources for which the librarians had been calling for biennia.32 Six years out of the University of Texas with her baccalaureate degree, Rogan at age twenty-five had been elected assistant librarian and cataloger in the same meeting in 1911 in which Elizabeth West had been chosen as archivist. Rogan knew cataloging, having studied it at the University of Illinois with Phineas Windsor, who had played such a strong role in securing passage of the Texas Library and Historical Commission bill.33 The assistant librarian duty came in name only as a result of legislative parsimony combining into 33

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one position the request for two—assistant librarian for legislative reference and cataloger. With the departure of both Winkler and West and the arrival of Klaerner, who, commission member Emma K. Burleson wrote later, “knew nothing of a Librarian’s duties,” the library work of the Texas State Library fell squarely on Rogan’s shoulders, and the commission voted in its March 1916 meeting that Rogan “be regarded as Assistant Librarian” with an increase in salary.34 Rogan, who shortly ascended to the presidency of the Texas Library Association, seized her opportunities to guide the state library and to try to influence the public’s thinking on the importance of libraries. “The State Library is a source of information in the broadest sense, a source that is expected to flow profusely and continuously, an inexhaustible fountain,” the biennial report issued the following fall trumpeted in words librarians and archivists echoed throughout the following century. In asking for money for books and traveling libraries, the report declared that the state library “gives information about the past, assists in the work of the present, and helps to prepare for the future.” “Information” for librarians of her generation, especially those in government, often meant inspiration. “The portraits, more than anything else in the Capitol, reflect the spirit and character of Texas,” the report told the state’s policy makers. And since “even the smallest matter [should not be overlooked] that may help to create a correct impression of our high esteem for these men,” the report also asked for funds to repair the frames. Perhaps because of the opportunity the assistant job offered to influence the direction of the state library’s affairs, the position proved to be uncomfortable. Klaerner, if the matters he took to the commission are any indication, lost interest in traveling libraries and stewed instead over Carnegie Commission unhappiness with the number of Texas libraries that failed to fulfill the agreement they had made to obtain Carnegie money to construct library buildings. As disturbing as it was that communities had reneged, the state librarian had no authority in the matter beyond cajoling the recalcitrants. Rogan and the other two department heads applied themselves to matters concerning the different departments of the state library. For her part, Rogan stated forthrightly in answer to the common question of why the state library did not advertise its services, “We can not meet the demand with our present supply of books and the extremely small staff.” And, frustration rising, she continued without mincing words: “We have tried to demonstrate our ability to serve; we have tried to show the demand for our service; we now ask for the tools with which to work, without which ability and demand are but mockeries.” Legislative reference librarian Joseph F. Marron echoed that “many users of the library, both department officials and citizens, have not 34

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

been able in many instances to secure information which was actually in the document collection because of the inadequacy of arrangement due to the lack of help.” State archivist Sinclair Moreland reported collecting documents in hopes that the legislature would provide purchase money.35 Whether because of their bluntness or for other reasons, state librarian Klaerner and his small staff evidently found it increasingly difficult to work together. To curb them, Klaerner obtained formal approval from the commission in March 1917 to dismiss employees who mailed or even delivered correspondence or documents from the state library without his consent. The strain worsened. Six months later Klaerner shifted Rogan to legislative reference librarian and replaced her as assistant librarian with twenty-eight-yearold Georgetown, Texas, native Frances (Fannie) Miles Wilcox, a Southwest Texas Normal School graduate and a former schoolteacher.36 More pointedly, he secured a commission warning that it could dismiss any employee for incompetence or neglect of duty.37 As dramatically as it began, the Ferguson/Klaerner period ended. In 1917, Ferguson’s efforts to control all state affairs centered on the State University. After he vetoed the biennial appropriation for the school because the regents would not fire and hire the faculty members and administrators he wanted, Ferguson found himself in a battle simply to retain his office. He lost. On September 24, 1917, he resigned the governorship shortly before the Senate convicted him on articles of impeachment centered on misappropriation of funds.38 Five months later, on February 9, 1918, the Texas Library and Historical Commission convened to take up the nine-day-old report of the legislative committee formed in the wake of the change of administration to investigate irregularities of practice and dereliction of duty in the operation of state departments. Confronted with the fact that he lacked library experience three years ago (underlined in the Commission minutes recording the confrontation), Christian Klaerner resigned, though he did not actually leave office for another six months. State archivist Moreland, whose questioning of the German-born Klaerner’s American loyalty during the First World War and whose accusations of Klaerner’s incompetence as state librarian were a focus of the legislative committee’s investigation, met with the commission next. Told both that his preparation for archival work was “inadequate” (because, as those familiar with him knew, his qualification for the job consisted simply of being the son-in-law of Ella Dibrell) and that his performance did not exceed his preparation, he too resigned.39 For the third time in nine years, the Texas Library and Historical Commission had to select a state librarian. But this time the commission itself was on trial. It had neglected its duty. Commission members had taken very little 35

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

interest in the state library, the legislative committee report stated, and worse, when they did take their appointment seriously, they made poor choices of employees and then gave them insufficient direction. The most obvious example of this was the state librarian, whose “demeanor and appearance are not those of a representative Texan.” Bluntly, the committee warned in the short, three-page report, “We doubt the wisdom of filling such position, especially at this time, with any other kind of a man.”40 Would Winkler return for a third term? former commission member Mary Terrell inquired. No. Following the script of former governor Ferguson, who had appointed her to the commission, Emma Kyle Burleson, the sister of U.S. postmaster general Albert Sidney Burleson, delayed consideration of the appointment of a new state librarian to ascertain the new governor’s pleasure. When on May 24 she reported that Governor William P. Hobby left the matter entirely in the commission’s hands, the recently subservient commission acted boldly. With no obvious male applicant, it elected Elizabeth Howard West to head the state library. West had left her state archivist position in March 1915 (a month before Winkler departed), having seen the writing on the wall and wanting no part of the Ferguson administration. As director, she led the San Antonio Public Library with distinction, among other ways, in providing library service to Hispanic and Negro citizens. Moreover, as president of the Texas Library Association for two terms following Winkler, she had given strong leadership in behalf of extending library service in Texas. Repudiating its recent past, the commission this time elected as state librarian a person of impeccable qualifications for the job who had demonstrated herself fully capable of handling the responsibility being entrusted to her. In fact, impeccable qualifications were only the half of it. In a state proud of its Southern heritage, West was the daughter of a Confederate officer, and she had a better-thanaverage education. Finally, more than Klaerner, West presented a commanding presence.41 If exceptional merit, capability, and presence brought West to the job, when Texas Library and Historical Commission Executive Committee members Burleson and Doughty installed her, West made state history beyond simply entering the succession of state librarians. On August 31, 1918, Elizabeth Howard West became the first woman given charge of a state agency in Texas.42 Likely this distinction was the farthest consideration from West’s mind in deciding to accept the job. But West had been thinking about what was needed to position the state library in what she called “its natural and proper place as the leader in library work throughout the state.” In November 1917, 36

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

apparently responding to a request from Senate Investigating Committee chair George M. Hopkins, West had pointed to what she considered to be the most important single factor impeding the library—imperious and preemptory political influence on appointments.43 First, all employees must be selected on merit only, period, she counseled Hopkins. And second, the number of appointments a single governor could make to the commission must be circumscribed.44 Given what one writer has called West’s “abiding loathing for political interference in library business,” among the conditions West stipulated before accepting the job most certainly was commission support for codifying these personnel changes in the law. In the reform-minded era in Texas following the Ferguson administration, the legislature in 1919 concurred. By enacting Senate Bill 86, the lawmakers staggered the six-year commission terms to reduce the influence of any one chief executive and established substantial requirements for all the professional positions. The state librarian henceforth would be required to have one year of technical training in a library school and three years’ administrative experience as head or assistant of high rank. One year each of technical training and library experience would be required of department heads. Even library assistants would be required to have one year of technical training. With no school preparing students for archival work, the state archivist would have to have one year of college-level study of southwestern history and be fluent in both Spanish and French.45 Whether or not the commission fully understood what West envisioned when she spoke of the state library’s “natural and proper place as the leader in library work throughout the state,” Elizabeth West knew. With a capable professional staff, the new state librarian meant to grow her agency “away from an historical agency primarily, to an institution primarily for library service.” Though some, as Raines and Winkler, had balanced the history and library functions well, others had not, and the history emphasis had been of long standing, as Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History commissioner Jefferson Johnson noted in his 1901 annual report: “Since the loss by fire of the old State capitol in 1881, the materials for Texas history have had the right of way.” Fostering the development of public library service in Texas in West’s view was the most pressing business of the state library in 1918. As she pointed out shortly after taking office, whereas two-fifths of Americans had access to free public libraries, in Texas the number was by liberal estimate less than half that—only 16 percent. She intended to position the state library to be “to public libraries throughout the state what the State Department of Education is to the public schools of the state.”46 The library service most needed around the state, in West’s view, was, as 37

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

she phrased it, promotion of local library development, which the state library in the 1909 statute had been charged to foster but never had been funded adequately to deliver. Only a handful of states, Texas not among them, had enacted any legislation providing for county libraries until California created the first system in 1911. Then, in successive sessions in 1913, 1915, and 1917, the Texas legislature passed bills intended to enable the service in the Lone Star State. None proved practical. In her capacities as director of the public library in the largest city in Texas and president of the Texas Library Association, West worked closely in both shaping and lobbying for the bills with Gainesville city librarian Lillian Gunter, the principal strategist, exponent, and publicist for the county library law, and with the dogged Mary Terrell, who never let the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs stray from its support of libraries. On the fourth try, in 1919, the librarians and library supporters finally secured a workable county library system with, following California’s lead, the state librarian at its head with two duties: to chair a new State Board of Library Examiners that would ensure that persons wishing to serve as county librarians possessed professional qualifications and to oversee county libraries and advise county commissioners on their operation. West told anyone who would listen that “the development of a strong system of county libraries would be one of the greatest forward movements Texas has ever taken” for strengthening the education of children and adults alike, and that “for Texas, the county library is by far the most economical and effective type of free public library.”47 Traveling often at her own expense, West spoke at conventions of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs (even becoming chair of its Library Extension Committee), the Council of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, and the Texas State Teachers Association; met with county officials and local librarians; and visited libraries in Central Texas and the Panhandle. By 1921 four county libraries had been organized, and by 1922 nearly a dozen more were in the works. Receiving more requests for aid than could be serviced without a library organizer in the field (the state library’s request for which, despite the strong support of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, the legislature eliminated as regularly as it was made), West, as Winkler before her, inaugurated a program of publications. How to Secure a County Library (1924) began the series of bulletins, followed shortly by Texas Library Manual. The works circulated widely, but even the staff was amazed when an order came from a book dealer in London on behalf of a library in Moscow, Russia. So solidly conceived was the county library system that it functioned until the Board of Library Examiners no longer was needed to assure that professional librarians were hired to manage local libraries and was abolished in 1981. For her part, West proved to be so effective and ar38

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

ticulate in this work that the American Library Association called on her to extend her efforts throughout the southwest region. With a leave of absence from the commission and spending as necessary from her own meager salary, she traveled widely, most notably to Louisiana, where she played a pivotal role in securing passage of a state library commission bill.48 Beyond pursuing legislation that encouraged the creation and operation of libraries, West studiously avoided even the appearance of engaging in partisan politics because, as she told a reporter in 1921, “the library is the rightful home for all, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, Christian and infidel, learned and ignorant.”49 To the list, she could have added the blind and Negroes. Elizabeth West began library service to the blind in Texas in 1916 when, for the San Antonio Public Library, she secured a loan of books for the blind from the Library of Congress. The national library had inaugurated service to the blind in the United States in 1897. A precious few city libraries, like those of New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Columbus, Ohio, had been serving blind patrons for well over a decade before West began the service in San Antonio. Impressed with how avidly blind clientele in San Antonio “read out” the small collection and noting that “learning to read . . . often opens the way for other activities which put the blind person back into normal, happy relations with life,” West included in her first appropriation request $1,000 to purchase books in New York Point (a writing system composed of dots, similar to braille). In contrast to the only existing state appropriation for the blind, which went to the residential state school in Austin, the state library proposal would extend service to blind citizens in their homes throughout the state. Nevertheless, when the state library request reached the House Appropriations Committee, members more interested in cutting spending than in considering their constituencies’ need for services disapproved of the proposals for a library organizer and for the purchase of books for the blind. As luck would have it, committee chair Charles Thomas knew firsthand the trials of the blind, as his small daughter was sightless. After he announced his gratitude for anyone who offered help to her, the appropriation was secure, and Thomas later even received credit for authoring it. On the other side of the capitol, the chaplain of the Senate took such interest in work with the unsighted that he became “the first Texan who learned the Moon type [a system of embossed writing based on the Roman alphabet] with the aid of the Library.”50 By contrast, the request for the library organizer, having no advocate in the legislature, again was rejected. If understanding by the legislature and the governor of the purpose, service, and value of an agency to the state were what was required to secure a meaningful appropriation, then the state librarian should be ever ready to 39

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

explain the role and contribution of the state library and its several functions. On one occasion when West became unusually apprehensive for the budget with which the state library would be left after slashing by the legislature, she went to the governor and asked him to see that it remained intact. “Miss West, what do you do that you need such a large appropriation?” the governor asked. Apparently taken by surprise, all she could think to answer was, “Governor, if someone should come and ask you what you did, what would you say?” Her reply apparently stunned the governor in turn. West left the office and, according to her sister, “went away and wept bitter tears, thinking she had made a very poor defense.” When the appropriation bill the governor signed into law allocated the state library all that it requested, “someone made the remark that, instead of her not being a politician, she was a most astute politician!”51 With her appropriation with which to serve the blind, West bought approximately one hundred volumes and inaugurated statewide service to the blind in September 1919. More than for reading alone, the service became a force for education. West’s inspiration to promote the books as the foundation of a home teaching service led the alumni association of the state school for the blind to organize a volunteer service named in her honor, the Elizabeth H. West Home Teaching Circle. The activity in Texas caught the notice of the Library of Congress so favorably that, the commission told the governor, the national library hoped the Texas service would function as a nucleus for circulation of reading material to the blind throughout the Southwest.52 Negro citizens, no less than the blind, in West’s view, deserved service from government libraries. “I feel very strongly the necessity of doing justice in performing human service where it is sorely needed,” she wrote the commission shortly before Christmas 1921, mindful that most early public libraries in Texas and throughout the South were closed to African Americans. In San Antonio, despite foot-dragging by the library board, she had placed books in Negro schools. After she took charge in Austin, local black schools became the “chief borrowers” from the state library. But service to the physically handicapped was one thing, and service to Negroes whom whites considered inferior and excluded from white establishments was quite another. Although Negroes officially could not be barred from coming into the state library to take out books, many people in the capitol heartily disapproved. Wedged between her progressive principles on the one hand and her desire on the other to avoid a political confrontation she and the commission could not win, West employed the compromise of asking the schools to call 40

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

ahead with their requests. She would have the books pulled and ready to go so as to minimize the time the Negro borrower would be seen in the library. Further, she made no secret that she personally would refuse service to no one. Having established a procedure, she then asked commission approval. Recognizing “that human nature must be taken as it is and not as one would like it to be,” would the commission endorse her action? she asked in the preChristmas letter. As in San Antonio, the commission in due course approved her approach.53 State librarian West could afford to concentrate on library service because less of the work of what had begun to be called the Division of Archives and History revolved around academic research and more had become routine documentation of government service. For the 1920–1922 biennium, pension research consumed much of the archivist’s time. Along with records transferred from the adjutant general had come the duty of helping men document their state service, primarily in Ranger and volunteer units from the Indian Wars. The two sides of this work, the volume of which tripled over the succeeding three years, increasingly vexed Kathleen Elliott, who had followed Moreland as state archivist. Certainly, helping the men find proof of their enlistments satisfied the service mission of the archivist. But, concerned for long-term preservation of the records, she agonized that “the present way of keeping the manuscripts folded in packages is harmful to the documents themselves, for, aside from the danger of destruction by fire, the manuscripts tend to become worn and mutilated wherever they are creased.” Elliott then added her voice to the appeals for space that seemed biennially to fall on deaf ears. The documents had to endure the extra handling because the state archives had nowhere else to house its increasingly crowded files. Accomplishing this preservation mission, unique to the state archives, required adequate, clean, and protected space. Terming the problem “safe custody,” Texas State Historical Association president Adele Looscan pointedly asked her fellow historians in 1918, on the eighty-second anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto: Can we not do something to impress upon the State authorities the importance of the documents and papers stored in the Capitol, without order and inaccessible, subject to the savages of insects and death dealing dampness? The general public is indifferent about such things, but the State authorities should be impressed with the importance of securing safe custody for these precious relics of their history. Glaring misstatements of careless writers on history remind us every day of the need for authentic original documents to set the record straight. 41

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

If she overestimated what the historians were of a mind to try to accomplish, Looscan underestimated the public’s interest, or at least its curiosity. Six years later, on the morning after Texas Independence Day, the Austin Statesman thrilled readers with the news that “buried treasures in the basement of the capitol have been discovered”: “Following months of labor, 1149 file boxes, containing state papers and important documents, besides loose sheets and manuscript volumes covering the period of Texas history from 1835 to 1875 were brought to the surface,” the reporter wrote, choosing vivid verbs, “swaddled in cobwebs and coated with dirt . . . and in utmost confusion and in bad condition from dampness.” The “discovery” had occurred not because the documents had been genuinely lost but rather because long years of neglect by departments had kept them in inadequate space so that, with no other alternative, “department porters . . . shoveled it [the records] out of the way.”54 Safe custody in itself could correct careless misstatements only if the writers of history were able to examine the documents. At that time few individuals ordered copies of specific documents, because the best technology of the day was the slow, costly, wet-process Photostat. Therefore, to expand access to archival resources, publishing carefully edited editions of important bodies of documents continued to be basic work of the archivist. Elliott echoed the sentiments Raines and Garrison (and Thomas Jefferson a century before them) had expressed in pursuing establishment of a Texas State Historical Commission—that “there is no better way of preserving records for all time than by putting them into print.” Considering preparation of documentary publications to be her most important work, the historian in Elliott deplored that calendaring, indexing, and publishing documents, specifically completing publication of the Lamar Papers that West had begun, had been pushed “into the background.” Elliott barely mentioned that one apparently frequent call on her time was preparing Spanish-English translations for state offices, particularly the governor and attorney general. In the end, her skill in and enjoyment of that facet of her work, combined with her frustration in the state archivist job, led her to leave the state library to accept a position with the American embassy in Spain.55 Were the departure of this one of Elizabeth West’s three reliable department heads not bad news enough, commission members, in an unusual called meeting on April 28, 1925, next received West’s own letter of resignation. West’s decision came as a shock. Two and a half months earlier, at the regular commission meeting, she had given no hint of resigning. No wonder, compelling her decision was one line regarding personnel inserted in the appro42

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

priation bill funding the state library for the 1926–1927 biennium. The same day that the bill passed—April 4, 1925—West wrote the letter she delivered to the commission members three weeks later.56 For years, West had endured legislative interference with state library staffing. In 1917, answering the request of the state library for a document librarian position, the legislature not only provided the position but also specified the occupant. Anne Throckmorton Shirley, the daughter of former governor James Webb Throckmorton, was the only name listed in the state library’s 1917 appropriation. This was not the first time that a position in the state library had been used to provide a place for a legislator’s constituent or, for that matter, that West had had to accommodate herself to it. Political arrangement had robbed her of the cataloger job state librarian Raines mentioned to her in 1905. With the position, as he subsequently discovered, came Laura Grinnan, who, despite her unsatisfactory work, remained on the payroll for five years. “The retention of Mrs. Anne T. Shirley was agreed upon regardless of personal legislation,” new state librarian Elizabeth Howard West scrawled in the commission minutes for January 18, 1919, registering her abhorrence of this legislative usurpation of her—West’s—responsibility for staffing the agency. Unfit for the work, as West remarked later, “by temperament and training,” Shirley and her appropriation remained a thorn in West’s side for more than five years until Shirley resigned in 1922. Protected by the 1919 law stipulating requirements for holding positions in the Texas State Library, West at last had the fully professional staff she had called on Senator Hopkins and the commission to ensure.57 In the biennial appropriation request West drew up in the spring of 1925, she once again included money for raises—$1,200 to bring library staff salaries at least to a par with those of other departments. The raises were sorely needed. Stenographers with a high school diploma commonly received 20 percent more than librarians with a college degree and a year of study of library science. Furthermore, the problem was one of long standing. West had called attention in her first biennial report seven years earlier to the disparity that while the cost of living had risen by 121 percent over the preceding six years, salaries of library staff had remained “practically at a standstill.” For its part, the commission in 1925 requested that $1,000 be added to the $2,000 salary of the state librarian to return the spending power of the salary approximately to its 1914 level, when it was last raised. With the legislative session under way, the commission registered its support for increased salaries by directing West to meet with influential members of the House and the Senate. When the best response West received was a 43

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

noncommittal reply from the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Library and Historical Commission chair Emma Burleson took up the matter herself. Though she succeeded in securing a sponsor for the increased appropriation, the commitment was hardly stronger than the noncommittal reply West had heard. Burleson’s Senate sponsor told her that he would carry the increase only in a special session and only if the governor would recommend it.58 As if disappointment in the status quo in salaries was not disheartening enough, in January 1925 a Ferguson had come to the governor’s office again. Former Governor Jim Ferguson’s wife, Miriam, had won on a platform of two governors for the price of one. As she had in 1915, West began prospecting for a position outside of state government. But the final blow, as West phrased it, that drove her to resign precipitously was the legislature’s eleventh-hour manipulation of the state library appropriation. The legislature awarded West the $1,200 she had sought. But rather than spreading it among all of the positions in the library as she had requested, the legislature attached it to a new state library position: collector of historical documents. Worse, on that line of the appropriation it wrote the name of Antoinette Power Houston Bringhurst. “The appropriation was made for your support as a daughter of Sam Houston,” John Davis, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote Bringhurst and copied the state librarian almost two months later. “It was not the intention of the Legislature that you should actually be in Austin or perform any services for the State.”59 Worse yet, West learned of the appropriation from her assistant, who had read it in the Dallas paper. As West saw it, the legislature had shown its contempt for the professionalism she stood for, and it could not be counted on to abide by laws that it had enacted and that remained in force. In April 1925, Elizabeth Howard West resigned to create a library befitting the newest state institution of higher education, that of Texas Technological College in Lubbock.60 Despite all that beset Ernest Winkler, Christian Klaerner, and Elizabeth West—inadequate space, insufficient staff, deficient salaries, indifference, and sometimes even direct interference from the leaders of state government—the Winkler-West years in particular constituted a dynamic period in the history of the Texas State Library. These two state librarians articulated a strong vision of, as Winkler phrased it in his second biennial report, “a business institution with a missionary spirit.” Harmonious with the spirit of the library movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they saw the state library as “a place for information” and believed that their 44

The Winkler, Kl aerner, and West Years, 1 909 – 1 925

job was, in Winkler’s words again, “to extend the benefits of great and well classified collections of books to the greatest number of people and to encourage them to take advantage of the knowledge thus to be obtained.”61 Not letting the lack of resources dim their vision, they created an agency varied in its services and constituencies and intent on providing leadership to the archival and especially library communities, as the statutes charged the state librarian to do. Under their leadership, county libraries sprang up in small towns particularly, traveling libraries brought books to remote areas of the state, and the fledgling library profession benefited from the state librarian’s leadership and support. Many of Texas’ blind citizens were introduced to the world of books, and Negro schoolchildren had access to public library books for the first time. West and Winkler established the state library on a firm professional footing while building the general circulation collection, the collection of publications essential for the legislative reference service, and the store of valuable historical papers. Despite Winkler’s and West’s shared vision and herculean efforts to fulfill it, heavy-handed gubernatorial and legislative interference with their work, unmindful of the professional character and service purpose of the state library, brought the tenures of both to abrupt ends. Legislative reference librarian Octavia Rogan was the first to sign a staff resolution deploring West’s departure but wishing her well. West, the resolution read and the staff knew well, truly had “made bricks without straw.” Rogan, having worked under all three state librarians, in every area but archives, for fourteen of the sixteen years of the agency under the commission, had the longest tenure in the state library. Having seen the fate of the first three state librarians, and having served as Winkler and West before her as president of the Texas Library Association, Rogan more than any other member of the staff would have been right to wonder what the next state librarian could accomplish equal to the achievements of West and Winkler.62 With no more notice of West’s departure than the commission received, Rogan found that she had to formulate the answer. At West’s recommendation, during the same meeting in which West resigned, the commission elected Rogan to be the fourth state librarian of Texas. Coupling her experience in the state library with the bachelor of library science degree she had taken leave in 1923–1924 to complete at the University of Illinois thirteen years after she began her study, Rogan fully met the new legal qualifications for appointment as state librarian. She took office on the first day of the new fiscal year, September 1, 1925, when, as she described it, she “slipped away from the State Library,” made her way up the circular iron 45

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

stairs connecting the supreme court library half of the state library room with the office of supreme court clerk Fred Connerly on the floor above, and took the oath of office as state librarian, swearing, among other things, that she had never fought a duel with deadly weapons. If the question occasioned a chuckle, the job before her, she well knew, would be no laughing matter.63

46

three

“I Do n’t F e el as G o o d as I Wo uld If I Co u ld” The Rogan and First Wilcox Years, 1925–1932

S

oon after she arrived for work on the Monday after Easter of 1926, state librarian Octavia Fry Rogan discovered that sometime after the library closed late on Saturday afternoon, someone had broken the lock on a library vault in the capitol basement and thrown more than twenty-two large boxes of the library’s newspapers and periodicals into a pile in the corridor outside. Whoever did it then barred the door to the corridor from the inside so as to prevent their return. When early that same Monday morning, the fire marshal noticed the heap of paper cluttering the hallway, he ordered a porter “to sweep out the basement.” Rogan reacted by securing a capitol police officer to guard the boxes day and night. Then she asked the chair of the Board of Control, the agency responsible for management of state property, to use his authority to return the library’s property to a secure place (preferably the vault from which it had been evicted). Periodically throughout the day, while awaiting a reply, Rogan dispatched library staff to the basement to ensure that the material was not further disturbed, though any molestation, she well knew, would come from vandals, not from those who had broken into the vault.1 Rogan was quite sure she knew who had ordered the burglary, as she called it, and why. The vault, which had belonged to the state library at least since 1911, was located in a room that, two years earlier, the state library had relinquished to the insurance department, which subsequently turned it over to the banking department. Though state librarian West specifically had retained the vault for library storage, banking commissioner Charles O. Austin wanted it and soon showed that he would stop at nothing to get it. About four months before the burglary, a member of the Board of Control appeared in her office, as Rogan carefully recounted to her Texas Library and Historical Commission: “[He] asked me where the space in the basement was that I had promised Mr. Blank of the Banking Department. (I think his

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

name was Greer.) I told him I had never heard of Mr. Blank and that I had promised no one any space and that no one had even spoken of such a matter to me.” She heard nothing more of it until a month before the burglary, when deputy banking commissioner Greer confronted Rogan, stating “that the Board of Control had ordered me to move our property out of a certain vault in the basement, that a month had passed since the order was given, and he wanted to know why I had not moved out.” Rogan shot back that Greer’s pronouncement was the first she had heard of the matter, whereupon Greer, too, retreated. Frustrated by the failure of his two attempts to bully the librarian into vacating the space, Commissioner Austin saw only one thing left to do—physically dispossess the library. In the quiet of Easter Sunday, his banking staff emptied the vault and secured the door behind them.2 As important to Rogan as were the piled-up newspapers and periodicals for both historical documentation and contemporary particulars was how the situation created by the burglary would be resolved.3 The librarian refused to be browbeaten into giving up space. She was willing to accommodate other agencies by trading space, but not at the expense of setting a precedent that the space needs of other departments were more important to the functioning of state government than the state library’s need for housing its ever-growing legislative reference collection of pamphlets and documents, books for the blind, general reference works, and unique archival holdings. If Rogan was the first state librarian to face being dispossessed and locked out of her own space, she was not the first to realize that finding space was the one problem that grew regularly more pressing. As the state library received transfers of archives and acquired new monographs, documents, newspapers, periodicals, and other items to meet reference demands, especially of legislators researching proposed bills, the need for shelves on which to situate and secure the items, or even floor space for boxes of newspapers and periodicals, increased accordingly. Equally troubling was that, lacking places in which to shelter archival records, the library had had to stop pursuing acquisition of some records that clearly belonged in the state archives. Rogan fretted that this placed the state library in the awkward position of failing to fulfill its obligation, spelled out in the 1909 statute, to receive from departments and officers all documents not necessary to their current duties that related to the history of Texas. No one who read the biennial reports of Rogan’s predecessors should have been surprised that the space problem had become so acute. At the beginning of her first biennial report in 1920, Elizabeth West minced no words. “The story of the internal housekeeping of the Library during the biennium just closed is the story of an up-hill struggle to accomplish results in the face of 48

The Rogan and First Wilcox Years, 1 925 – 1 9 32

too small a staff, too little money, too little space; and that little space about as ill-arranged for effective work as the architect’s lack of imagination could compass.” More than with an architect, the problem lay in the often ad hoc fashion of addressing space needs with whatever room might be scrounged when a need became acute. Beyond that, the space available commonly presented its own problems. The floor of the library’s public service room on the second floor, which the state library still shared with the library of the supreme court, could not support the metal shelving the library needed to accommodate its growing collection and to have at hand material it needed to expedite reference service. Having the library room open to the floor above— thanks to a large rectangular gallery outside the third-floor supreme court room—admitted what West called “foreign dirt.” The combination of this source of dirt, the crowded conditions, and neglected maintenance resulted in the “extreme difficulty of keeping the present quarters clean.” So extensive was the work needed to maintain tidiness that it should occupy one man full-time, she asserted. But the porter on the library’s payroll had to handle mailing, perform messenger work, and accomplish numberless other duties as well. For all that, “he is paid the munificent sum of $60 per month,” West groused, departing from her focus on space. “Is it any wonder that there have been seven men in this position in the course of the present biennium?” Then there were unbearable extremes resulting from the heating and cooling system in the thirty-year-old building: In the southeastern part of the stack, which is enclosed in grating for the storage of manuscripts, and which is used partly for offices, the heat is so intense in cold weather, when the steam is on full head, that frequently an electric fan is necessary, while in the main library room the temperature is so low as to be not only uncomfortable, but unhealthful. Indeed, two serious cases of illness among the staff last winter were directly traceable to the poor heating of this room.

In the library’s basement rooms, West reported, inadequate ventilation aggravated dankness caused by moisture in the walls resulting from wetterthan-usual weather. Mold had begun to grow. Left unchecked, she warned, it would soon begin ruining the paper over which it was spreading. Plaster crumbling from the damp walls in the stale, humid rooms was providing even more inviting conditions for the building’s mice and rats, “constitut[ing] another source of danger to the State’s property, as well as a menace to the health of the staff.”4 For a while the library tried to manage its space problem by having wooden 49

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shelves constructed wherever they could be fitted, and then pressing packing crates into use. With 4.3 miles of shelving covering every available square foot to hold its 68,000 books, 35,000 pamphlets, and 75,000 manuscripts, the library had no choice but to begin eliminating some of its holdings to make room for needed additions. The commission thought of tranquilizing the untenable situation by having the university designated as a depository for public records, but decided against it. What the library could give up was the museum collection of battle flags and other relics, and, with legislative approval, in 1926 almost all of them were transferred to the custody of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. “Now aint that ‘cute’!” Lena Williams Goodman remarked to her colleagues in the Texas Woman’s Press Association. “A State as big and as rich as Texas having to farm-out its rarest possessions! Out West we’d call those farmed-out relics ‘poor little dogies’—for they really do seem orphaned.”5 This gained little room and merely postponed confronting the only real solution. To provide adequate space for the state library’s unique holdings of archives (both records of government agencies and collected papers of prominent Texans), books, pamphlets, paintings, and the like, some occupants of the capitol building had to leave—either state officials or the state library. Since state officials liked to office in the grand capitol and since new space could be designed to meet the state library’s needs, moving the state library out appealed to those closely connected with the agency. Historian Adele Looscan contributed a historical rationale. In 1917 she had suggested moving the state library with its archives into the recently vacated and oldest state office building—the crenellated sixty-one-year-old General Land Office Building on the southeast corner of the capitol grounds. But the increasing rancor of Governor Ferguson’s final months in office drowned out her proposal. Six years passed before commission members talked on record about moving out of the capitol. In August 1923 they asked their most eloquent and influential member, attorney and former legislator Richard F. Burges of El Paso, to draft a bill to fund both a building and the purchase of property on which to erect it. After the effort came to nothing, a frustrated Burges wrote Rogan: “I trust that in time the Legislature will come to realize both the value and the needs of the State Library, and will give us adequate housing and a real library.”6 Trust was not enough. Burges knew that full well, and Rogan made it plain to all the commission members in mid-August 1926 when she wrote that banking commissioner Austin was continuing his campaign to rid the capitol of the state library. Rogan apparently had assumed that the agreement signed by Austin and approved by the commission to settle the dispute over 50

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the vault by exchanging some latticed hall space of the banking department for the state library’s vault amounted to a pledge by Austin to covet no more state library space. She was wrong. Word had reached Rogan through the summer that Austin was buttonholing legislators, telling them that the library did not need the basement space it occupied, because, he said, the material it had there was worthless paper. He was having an effect, for she heard that one senator was preparing to call for moving the vast majority of the state library’s holdings into “a warehouse somewhere.” Articulate and always ready to advocate for her agency, Rogan gathered information on library buildings in other states and drew up a bulleted list of reasons the state library needed its own building, or more room in the capitol, or space in a proposed new state office building. Inadequate security for its holdings because the state library shared quarters with the supreme court library headed her list. The scattered and distant locations of the state library’s holdings, which both slowed responses to inquiries and caused more work just keeping up with changing locations, accounted for two of her points. Two others addressed the crowded and uncomfortable working conditions. “Though the space occupied at present was set aside in the building plans for the State Library and the name ‘State Library’ was blown into the glass transom over the door, not one feature,” she fumed, “was included to make it a suitable place for a library.”7 Lobby your senators, Rogan urged commission members. They needed little urging. Only three months earlier during their May 1926 meeting, on the motion of two-year member Decca Lamar West (no relation to former state librarian West), the commissioners had voted to pursue a separate building and had met with the Board of Control to seek its support in budgeting the money.8 Half a million dollars would provide a nice state library building, Rogan thought. Then news that an architect had asked how much square footage the state library would want in a new state office building animated correspondence between and among Rogan and commission members throughout the fall and into the first month of the 1927 session of the legislature. During their February 1927 meeting, commission members learned (doubtless with little surprise) that obtaining a new building depended on the availability of new revenue. After a bill to that effect had been defeated, their hopes were quashed further when those close to the budgeting process added that even were money available, it would not be spent on a structure just to house the state library.9 Decca West blamed loss of the bill primarily on commission chair Emma Burleson. While West threw herself wholeheartedly into advocating the building bill by publicizing the necessity for and the work of the state library and secured the active support of the Texas Woman’s Press Association of 51

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which six days later she would be elected vice president for the second time, Burleson dragged her feet. Burleson never brought herself to appoint a commission building committee. “There seemed to be no outside financial encouragement for such a building at this time,” she reported to the commission meeting in February 1927. No wonder. Incoming governor Dan Moody, “as all of them had always done,” West recalled later in disgust, “had pledged an ‘economy’ program.” And as she always had done, Burleson deferred to the governor. She would not advocate for the agency for which she was the ultimate authority and spokesperson if, in so doing, she would even appear to contradict the chief executive. The 1927 legislature adjourned having had no state library building bill to consider. At the moment the commission had at last gained support positioning it to confront one of its most pressing needs, its chair lacked the resolve to seize the opportunity.10 In all the talk of space, as important as it was, commission member Kate Hunter, conscious that theirs was a library and historical commission, told her colleagues they had lost their attention to history. Why not acknowledge their responsibility by encouraging local librarians to record the reminiscences of the oldest citizens of their communities? Whether the others agreed with her regarding how well they were meeting their obligation, they did not embrace the action she proposed. It would not answer the commission’s charge to serve history through management of archives. Consequently, they appointed Hunter as a committee of one to draft a plan “at her convenience” and continued tending to issues immediate to the state library.11 Even were her proposal good, Hunter’s timing in the February 15, 1927, meeting was not. Commission members already were disturbed by a matter that Rogan had brought up in her state librarian’s report. “Various points on which action was asked in the report were taken up later,” the single sentence in the minutes reads.12 Those points concerned the state librarian’s relationship with her staff, and commission members hoped that whatever unrecorded advice they gave Rogan would resolve things so that they would have to deal with them no further. Since its organization in 1909, the Texas Library and Historical Commission had reserved to itself the power of decision on matters concerning the staff. Rogan’s commission began slowly to invest greater authority for staff matters in the state librarian. In its meeting the previous May, the commission had voted to permit the state librarian to arrange vacations and other details of internal library administration.13 Whether or not “other details of library administration” specifically approved Rogan’s principal initiative to shape her staff, clearly Octavia Rogan had taken initiative in at least one matter that she considered to be within the 52

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prerogative of her office—educating her staff to better perform their duties. Almost on the day she took office, Rogan instituted two series of meetings for two levels of staff. On alternate Mondays, “certain members of the regular staff meet for a study of federal documents,” she wrote a colleague. “On the other Mondays practically the entire staff meets, and I have topics presented that all of them will be interested in.” Staff heard about and discussed archival holdings and library resources of the Texas State Library; bookbinding; county libraries; and how to use the supreme court library when, being in the same room, they were called on to assist users in the absence of supreme court library staff. Rogan brought in prominent librarians, including Julia Ideson, Lillian Gunter, and Texas Library Association immediate past president Maud Sullivan to talk about both library work in general and issues important to professional librarians in Texas. Through the sessions, Rogan intended to weld a staff knowledgeable of the full range of work in the state library and the contribution to that work of each of the nine regular staff and six part-time student employees. Where Ernest Winkler and Elizabeth West had sought to build interest in libraries throughout the state by providing and encouraging library service to individuals and communities, Rogan took the approach of beginning with her staff, especially the student workers. Appreciating that the young people—“our flunkeys today”—were apt to be community leaders in the future, Rogan confessed to commission member Decca West, “I am trying to instill the library idea into them without letting them know my real purpose. There is a great deal of variety in the topics presented, and they cannot help but know a good deal about what libraries are trying to do after attending these meetings a year or so.”14 The freedom Rogan enjoyed in internal management did not extend to appointments. When a vacancy occurred, commission chair and Ferguson appointee Emma Burleson sought the governor’s advice before that of her state librarian. So essential did Burleson consider this “courtesy” that, fearing Rogan would fail to contact the governor despite Burleson’s request that she do so, Burleson went to the chief executive herself. “Please try to understand my position,” she begged commission member Burges. That Burleson had been reared in the old school of political patronage explained not only her deference to the governor but also her use of her office to secure positions for her friends. Just the summer before, she prevailed on Rogan to find a position for a woman who, Burleson said, had three library certificates (which Rogan later concluded, if they existed at all, had come from no recognized library school). Though giving her new employee what Rogan considered easy work, especially for a person with her reputed credentials, Rogan found her to be simply a “lovely elderly lady” who was slow to grasp instructions and then un53

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able to remember them. Consequently, in 1927 upon the death of document librarian Edna Rouser, Rogan sought commission member Burges’ support (writing the letter by hand herself, rather than having her secretary type it) in being allowed to fill the vacancy as she saw fit with as professionally prepared and capable a person as she could find. Burges replied, as Rogan hoped he would, that in his opinion the choice was hers, for which she was accountable to the commission.15 Perhaps Burges’ affirmation emboldened Rogan, for she replied that a matter had come up regarding her staff that made it highly desirable that the commission meet soon. As commission members learned when they convened three weeks later on February 15, 1927, the matter was Rogan’s long-standing and deep dissatisfaction with the work of assistant cataloger Mabel Brooks. The commission tried to induce Rogan to work with Brooks and then attempted to bury the unpleasantness in the single sentence in the minutes. It did no good. Brooks continued complaining about her working conditions, as she had done for most of the more than five years she had worked in the state library. The only reason she had remained in the state library all that time, thought Elizabeth West, who had employed her, was to be in Austin to care for her mother. Whereas West suffered the woman, Rogan found it increasingly difficult to tolerate her work, which, West too had recognized, was inferior. As bad as the dispute was, the rancor sucked in others. Archivist Harriet Smither, whom Rogan had hired the previous summer and praised highly only two months before, chose to support Brooks, her long-standing friend. At the end of her rope, on May 13 Rogan informed commission members that she wanted both women fired.16 Rogan’s message included an unprecedented preemptory ultimatum that Rogan would interpret the failure of a member to reply within two weeks of the date of her letter as approval of the dismissals. Commission member Decca West responded firmly that if the commission elected staff members, then it held the final authority in their dismissal. Burges confirmed to the state librarian that under the law she lacked dismissal authority. Privately to Elizabeth West, Burges agonized that if the matter came to the commission for a vote, he was at a loss whom to support, having “not sufficient of the wisdom of Solomon to know who is to blame.” Decca West sympathized with Rogan. If the state librarian were to bring charges of flagrant insubordination, the commission doubtless would follow her recommendation, West thought. But neither knew Burleson’s feeling.17 Emma Burleson recoiled when on May 19 she learned from Decca West the contents of Rogan’s letter. Burleson blamed Rogan for neither including 54

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her, the commission chair, in the special delivery mailing nor mentioning it during any of their several recent conversations. Discovering that Rogan wished to dismiss not one, as Burleson had understood, but two staff members shocked the commissioner as much as learning of the letter. The animosity that had been festering in Burleson since Rogan’s “defiant appearance before the Commission” in February boiled to the surface. Burleson recalled her resentment of Rogan’s attitude toward the woman Burleson had asked her to hire the previous summer and surmised that Rogan bore responsibility for the legislature’s cutting the salary of the night librarian (Burleson’s longtime dressmaker) hired by Elizabeth West on Burleson’s recommendation. Far from being inclined to support the state librarian, Burleson announced her readiness to vote for her dismissal. “I do not want to take it to the Governor,” she wrote Decca West, seeking the member’s support as she—Burleson— wrestled with the deference she could never subdue. “I feel that it is for us to settle, don’t you think so?”18 West, Rogan, and even Burleson worried over the ill effect that publicity of the discord would have. They were right to worry. A month after Rogan wrote her letter, Burges received an abrasive communication from House Appropriations Committee member Adrian Pool of El Paso. “I have no interest in the Library or anybody in it except Miss Smithers,” Pool wrote, misspelling her name but appreciative of the work Smither did for state officials. If what he had heard was true, “then I expect to go into the scrap and use every possible honorable means to discredit Miss Rogan.” To ensure there be no doubt that he meant it, Representative Pool added gratuitously, “I have no grief for Miss Rogan—of course she is personally very repulsive in her manner and she has my sympathy.”19 Through June and July 1927 the situation remained unresolved. In light of Pool’s promise to protest Smither’s dismissal, Burges told his colleagues and Rogan that, though they had hoped to avoid it, the commission would have to meet in special session to deal formally with Rogan’s charges of insubordination if she continued to press them. Rogan responded by asking the commission members whether one of them had leaked the discord to Representative Pool and suggested to Burges an interpretation of the law she hoped he would agree would permit the state librarian to effect the dismissals without action of the commission. In mid-July, Rogan terminated the legislative reference librarian’s stenographer and a student assistant, which this time aroused a senator. On Friday, August 5, Rogan finished her day by preparing for mailing books that had accumulated partly because the legislative reference librarian had neglected them—in retaliation, Rogan thought. If 55

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she had not recognized it earlier, Rogan admitted to herself that she had lost control of her staff, having “bitterly antagonized even the members of the staff who had been most friendly to her.”20 Then, evidently remaining in the state library alone, Rogan typed out her resignation and left.21 Over sixteen years, Octavia Rogan had served the Texas State Library well, staunchly defending its importance to the people of Texas. As assistant state librarian and in the top position, she had promoted and circulated traveling libraries to schools and communities in remote areas of the state. Well educated in library science, she had used her short tenure to train her staff in a wide range of library work, thereby raising the level of professionalism at the state library. As she looked back thirty-five years after she left the state library, Rogan remembered her years there as the most productive of her career. Extending library service through the state by supervising the traveling library system and working with Lillian Gunter to obtain the county library law, along with serving as legislative reference librarian and editing the third Handbook of Texas Libraries, she recalled with the greatest pride.22 Upon receiving her resignation, commission members heaved a collective sigh of relief, especially Burges, who said that handling the dispute had been “about the most disagreeable task that I have ever faced in my life.”23 But if he thought that the resignation would lessen the burden he shouldered for the state library, he quickly learned otherwise. Within twenty-four hours of receiving Rogan’s resignation, both commission member R. L. Irving and chair Burleson wrote him for guidance on the commission’s next steps. When two years earlier the commission had had to select a state librarian to replace Elizabeth West, the agency had been running smoothly. This time it was in total disarray. Worse, the state librarian’s pitiful $2,000 salary (unchanged since Winkler occupied the office a decade earlier) compromised the prospects for attracting any suitable pool of candidates for the job. The fully qualified Rogan had been willing to work for pay one-third lower than the national average, lower than the salaries of head librarians of state-funded universities and colleges in Texas, and lower even than salaries paid by cities such as Burges’ El Paso to their head librarians. Endorsing a request for a healthy budget increase but sounding resigned to the likely response of the legislature, Burges summed up the mood when he compared his feeling to that of “the little girl recovering from the mumps, who was asked by a neighbor how she felt, and replied, ‘Well, I don’t feel as good as I would if I could.’”24 For guidance, Burges turned again to Elizabeth West. Conflicted because she believed herself to be somewhat responsible for the situation on account of her recommendation that Rogan succeed her, West not only offered advice but also, feeling an obligation to return, opened the door to the possibility. 56

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Burges and his colleagues basked in anticipation until cold calculation caused West to admit to herself that she could not afford to accept the reduction in salary. That left Fannie Wilcox, the assistant state librarian for the past ten years and the senior staff member in years of service, as the natural choice. Wilcox was levelheaded and exercised good judgment, West told Burges, and the reason West had not recommended her two years earlier was that Wilcox was so terribly shy. But even if Wilcox could overcome that trait, as West thought possible, she could not escape her other handicap—that she lacked the year of training in a library school that the law required. Thus, unable to appoint Wilcox to the top job, the commission named her the acting state librarian and continued looking for a replacement for Rogan.25 Politicians seeking the position for friends, fathers seeking it for daughters, and women seeking it for themselves besieged commission members. “Maybe some old maid Phi Beta Kappa could be State Librarian better than I in some respects,” Helen L. Clutter wrote Burges from the Houston Public Library. But, she added, pointing to the political savvy she had gained while spending a year in the Governor’s Mansion a decade and a half earlier, “I might have more luck with the Legislature!”26 When the commission met on October 1, 1927, not quite two months after Rogan’s departure, the five members, desirous of appointing a new state librarian, found themselves tangled in a web of four conflicting interests: their appreciation of Fannie Wilcox both for her long service and for the peace she had brought in her brief tenure at the helm; the library training requirement of the position that Wilcox lacked; recognition that selecting a person known favorably in political circles stood to improve the favor in which the legislature viewed the state library; and the belief that leaving the position open raised their chances of convincing the legislature in those generally prosperous times of the crying need to increase the salary. After accepting Rogan’s resignation, commending the publicity she had given the department through the years, and then declining all the other staff resignations, the commission decided to postpone a decision on filling the state librarian position until January. Nothing having changed in three months, the commission in January deferred selection of a new state librarian indefinitely in order to concentrate on raising the salary. Fannie Wilcox would have to run the agency for the foreseeable future.27 Whether or not the prospect of continuing as acting state librarian for at least one and likely several years pleased her, Wilcox must have left the January 1928 commission meeting excited. In the last action of the day, the commission hired the Texas State Library’s first library organizer. For all of 57

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the ten years Wilcox had been with the state library—indeed, longer—in Texas Libraries, in newspaper articles, and in presentations before women’s clubs, reading clubs, school groups, and legislative budget committees, the state library had been calling for the funding of a library organizer to provide assistance to communities in establishing public libraries. Both Elizabeth West and Octavia Rogan considered it a top priority. “The urgent need for a library organizer to promote the establishment and development of libraries in Texas and an adequate traveling expense fund for an organizer cannot be too strongly stated,” Rogan had declared as her first recommendation in her first biennial report, the one most recently before the governor and the legislature. State librarians felt the need keenly because they had been doing all they could to create library service in and for communities by sending out traveling libraries, by publishing and distributing both Texas Libraries and small publications on establishing libraries, and by providing personal advice whenever the state librarian could afford to travel.28 As the good news—the turning point, TLA called it—spread, calls from around the state flooded Helen Clutter as she began her new duties on March 1, 1928. Though severely constrained by the governor’s veto of a generous travel allowance provided by the legislature, Clutter threw herself into her work. In five months she had visited twenty-four counties at her own expense, some multiple times. While but seven county libraries had been organized during the previous nine years, three were formed in her first three months, along with several small community libraries. In her initial biennial report, covering the two years ending August 31, 1928, Wilcox glowed that the successes in library organization, though they spanned but one-quarter of the biennium, nevertheless ranked as the most outstanding accomplishment of the agency for the period.29 Clutter’s achievement in Hale County, the first example in her report, seemed especially impressive. Before she had been on the job twelve days, Clutter had traveled to Plainview and, with the backing of the board of the local subscription library, women’s clubs, and public-spirited citizens, had secured a commitment from the county commissioners court to establish the Hale County Library on the first day of the new year. When Clutter visited in November after the general election and talked with county officials about the requirement that they hire a professional librarian, she found them willing to afford the expense and, as in the other two counties, expecting her to provide the librarian. Though she seemed to sense trouble when she noted that none of the newly elected members of the commissioners court attended the meeting, she nevertheless secured for the county a top-notch librarian— the first assistant from the Houston Public Library. No sooner had the first 58

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assistant resigned in Houston and her position been filled than Clutter was summoned to Plainview to meet with the commissioners court. The newly installed county judge “said that he had always been opposed to the County Library—that the Club Women had not voted for him and that the rural people had elected him because he was opposed to the library.”30 Clutter replied that since 70 percent of the voters lived in Plainview, the county library could not have been the principal issue in the election, and she showed him the state law that prescribed that after a library had been voted in, it could be disestablished only by popular petition. Unwilling to accept that the library had been established, the county judge studied the matter after Clutter left until he discovered that the previous commissioners court had erred in providing for funding the library, rendering its action illegal. The library had not been and would not be established. Texas Library Association president Lucy Fuller of Beaumont wrote Texas Library and Historical Commission chair Burleson that TLA held the commission responsible for placing the Houston librarian who was caught in the middle, and Fuller wanted a legal investigation of Hale County. Unable to create a position in the state library, all Clutter and Wilcox could do was attempt to find a satisfactory job for the displaced librarian, who declined a low-paying position Winkler offered at the university. When it convened in mid-February 1929 for its regular meeting, the commission found no fault in Clutter’s actions and asked the meticulously and elegantly articulate Burges to convey this to the TLA president. In reply, Fuller concurred with the commission and Clutter that “this state organization work be placed on a better business basis,”31 though what more could be done than scrutinize decisions of commissioners courts no one said.32 In Austin, Wilcox took her turn arguing for more space for the Texas State Library. In her first biennial report she listed adequate room in which to function as the greatest need of the agency. With talk in the capitol building of new construction, she suggested a state library building or at least a floor in a state office building. Since she knew that biennial statistics of the library work of cataloging and circulating books (during the 1926–1928 biennium, for example, the 55 traveling libraries circulated 143 times to 112 places, serving at least 7,150 users; some 10,875 items were cataloged;33 and 116 blind readers received braille books) swelled precious little emotion in legislative halls, she grounded her case for space on the priceless, precious, irreplaceable documents of Texas’ singular, heroic history—specifically the threat to them. “The most serious condition arising from overcrowding is in the Archives Department,” she submitted in the 1926–1928 biennial report. As assertively as she likely dared, she continued, 59

The State Library and A rchives of Texas This priceless collection should be housed in a fireproof building, but instead of this, it is in no way protected from fire. Much of it is, from necessity, kept on open shelves. An effort is being made to store as much of it as possible in steel filing cabinets to protect it from rats, injurious insects, and dust to which it has been exposed, but the Archives space is too small to accommodate sufficient filing cabinets to do this entirely. The proper housing of this department alone would justify a new library building.34

Where Wilcox called it the Archives Department, Smither styled it the Division of Archives and History, perhaps to emphasize that the bulk of her work dealt with history, not management of archives. Assisting potential pensioners in documenting their Confederate and Ranger service, editing volumes of the Lamar Papers and journals of the Congresses of the Republic, and assisting lawyers in cases of disputed identity and heirship occupied her days. For lack of any nook in which to store any more documents, for the 1926–1928 biennium she reported accessioning but one small item—the second auditor’s account book for 1843.35 As so often was the case regarding space, the state library could not help but send mixed signals. On the one hand, truly it had long since passed the capacity of its space to contain its archival holdings, its general and legislative collections, and its books for blind readers. Yet, when it absolutely had to find space, it did. In the biennial report for 1928–1930, the two years after the archives could accession only a single item, Wilcox beamed that 1,022 running feet of shelving had been added in the basement for newspapers. Moreover, the bulk of the state library’s Texas collection and all the items from the general collection bearing on Texas had been crowded into the archives room on the second floor for protection. Not only that, but special cabinets had been procured for storage of oversized documents, as maps, and a reading room enclosed within metal netting had been fashioned for archives on the second floor.36 For all the attention it paid to space, the commission—no doubt largely for lack of a meeting room in the state library—in twenty-two years never had formally toured the library’s rooms, nooks, and crannies to acquaint members intimately with the problems they discussed. Nor, for that matter, had they ever invited department heads to meet with them so that members “might better understand the work in the Library” for which they were responsible. With prospects for additional room dim and the likelihood of securing an increase in the state librarian’s salary as poor as ever, commission chair Emma Burleson opened the 1931 annual meeting on a different note by inviting presentations from the department heads. Whether they heard it in 60

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so many words or simply noted it as they listened, members learned in particular that Wilcox had restructured the library. While archives, legislative reference, and library extension remained distinct, cataloging had disappeared as a department in favor of statewide lending. As organization reflected mission, with half of its departments working on service to the populace at large throughout the state, this had become the most important work of the Texas State Library. Wilcox minced no words about it. “The chief function of the Commission,” she wrote a colleague bluntly a year earlier, “is extension work.”37 If Burleson reflected on the restructuring, she must have been astonished by just how large an impact her shy, acting state librarian with no library training had had on the agency. Being the one member of the commission who had heard Elizabeth West talk at the beginning of her term more than a decade earlier of turning the agency “away from an historical agency primarily, to an institution primarily for library service,” only Burleson could fully grasp the magnitude of the shift Wilcox, following the direction set by West, had effected. From its orientation under Winkler—the accomplished historian and equally experienced librarian—as an agency conscious to serve as fully as possible each of its library and history/archives missions, the agency under Wilcox not twenty years later had arrived at the pursuit of its library purpose as primary. Burleson, and her fellow commission members too if they were observant, had had every reason to have seen it coming, as Rogan in one of her last press releases had called her agency “the Texas Library and Historical Commission, State Library.” If she reflected on the matter further, Burleson should have been struck by just how momentous had been West’s decision in advocating the requirement of professional credentials for the agency head—how significant in affecting the agency’s future direction had been the decision to specify training in librarianship only and not also in archives and history work (though with the first course in archival administration still a few years in the future, the education considered appropriate for a career in archival work was study of history). Whether or not consistently enforced, the requirement, having been written into law, had and would continue to shape the mission of the Texas State Library as strongly as had the 1909 statute itself.38 In her four-plus years, Wilcox had laid out a specific direction for the agency, had revamped the state library’s organization to carry it out, and had settled the staff into a smooth working group—all in putting the administration of the state library back on an even keel. Moreover, she and the single commission member from Austin, Burleson, worked well together. Indeed, within a year Burleson had become “so much interested in her success 61

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that she [would] back her up in appropriation matters,” and, Elizabeth West added, “you know that Miss Burleson has a great deal of influence.”39 Having had no success in raising the state librarian’s salary or in finding suitable external candidates for the position,40 and recognizing the strong executive ability their acting librarian brought to the job, the commissioners put the last few troubled years behind them and confirmed the agency’s positive new direction when on January 28, 1932, they elected Fannie Miles Wilcox as the fifth state librarian of Texas.

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four

“The Stat e L i b r a r y N e e d s Spac e , M o n ey a n d Of f i c i a l U nd e rsta n d i n g —a n d t h e Greate st o f T h es e Is t h e L ast” The Middle Wilcox Years, 1932–1935

​W

hen she accepted election as the state librarian of Texas at the beginning of 1932, Fannie Miles Wilcox had reason to be apprehensive of the future. Texas had begun to feel the effects of the more than two-year-old Great Depression in full measure. The prices of cotton, cattle, corn, and oil had plummeted by more than half; cotton brought five cents a pound, and oil five cents a barrel. Nearly a quarter of the population of the state’s largest city—Houston—was out of work. Of the approximately 400,000 unemployed statewide, some 25 percent had exhausted all of their resources and relied on the stingy state and federal relief to get by. The optimism of the past three years that the Depression was primarily a problem of the rest of the country or, as Governor Ross Sterling said, just a loss of confidence in the economy had evaporated, and likely few subscribed to the opinion of the Amarillo newspaperman who editorialized that year under the headline “I Like the Depression.”1 The state library staff member whose work the Depression most had impaired, and who stood to like the Depression the least, was Helen Clutter’s successor as library organizer, Edwin Sue Goree. Forty-seven years old, Goree was widely experienced, having headed a public library (in Santa Fe, New Mexico) for seven years, established five hospital libraries, and managed the University of Texas Extension Loan Library for two years. A woman whose joys ran from first editions to scribbling, Eddie, as her friends called her, fully understood the job she had to do and the uphill struggle she faced as she sat down at her desk on the first workday of January 1931. The depth of it she saw firsthand while tending the state library exhibit at the state fair later that year. “Nineteen out of twenty passed on. One out of twenty paused to look; one out of thirty stayed to question. The eyes of Texas are not upon books and libraries,” she reported.2 While her counterparts in the South worked to minimize the number of public libraries being closed because of the effects of the Depression on local government revenues, Goree in Texas had differ-

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

ent work to do to both upgrade current library service and energize a library sentiment around the state. Knowledgeable librarians outside of Texas knew what she was up against too. The executive director of the American Library Association, congratulating her on taking the job, warned her, “Remember— that state needs six organizers. Don’t try to be but one of them!”3 Though she called on librarians throughout the state to join her in the work, Goree labored as though she were all six. Lacking travel money, she hit on the idea of using a scoring sheet as a tool for raising the standards of local libraries. But analysis of the replies she received from the one she distributed to fifty “outstanding libraries” and to all tax-supported libraries with fewer than 25,000 volumes told her that without visiting each library, she could not even classify libraries by levels of standards. Frustrated, she agonized in her section of the 1930–1932 biennial report: Club women and communities are trying to build libraries by the standards and methods of 1857. . . . If a skilled publicity writer could be added to the staff; if the State, or some wealthy citizen, could supply a book auto for demonstration purposes; and if more small “demonstration” book collections could be loaned for a year in various bookless deserts over the state, the returns would be far greater than the money invested.4

Likely, few Texans saw Goree’s plea, and none were in a mood to spend money. On the contrary, the legislature soon reflected the pinch the citizens of the state felt in their pocketbooks. Observers of state government already knew that austerity was coming. In May 1931 the governor had approved House Concurrent Resolution No. 58, creating the Joint Legislative Committee on Organization and Economy. The duty of the committee, Wilcox read in committee chair Harry N. Graves’ letter of May 16, 1932, to heads of state agencies, “is . . . to make ‘a thorough investigation of all State institutions and State departments of any and all kinds . . . with a view to ascertaining if such institutions or departments may be, or can be operated at a greater efficiency and a lesser expense to the taxpayers of this State.’” Considering the paltry appropriations the legislature had provided the state library through the years, finding ways to operate at lesser expense was worrisome enough. But Graves’ letter masked blunt phrases of the resolution, such as “undoubted duplication of work, employment and expense” and especially “many unnecessary departments.” Curiously, the resolution’s bluster concluded anemically that the “duplication both of expense and labor could be done away with, if the Legislature knew how” (emphasis added). Taking charge of the committee, Representative Graves meant to show how. With the committee, he meant 64

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to do nothing less than “lay the foundation for a more simple organization structure, a more effective administrative and financial control, and a sounder basis for determining the desirability and usefulness of State expenditures and controlling such expenditures closely and intelligently.”5 In other words, he meant to reorganize state government completely. The silver lining Fannie Wilcox saw in the letter was the weight Graves indicated his committee would place on the advice of department heads. Though the letter clearly stated that the cost of government must be cut, still it suggested that the committee would give a thorough hearing to “every item of expenditure . . . [allowing the department head] to say what is, and what is not absolutely essential, in the hope that by this means recommendations to the Legislature providing for substantial economies without lowering the standard of vital services can be formulated.” The state library still needed the cap on the state librarian’s salary raised to bring it to a level comparable to those of the librarians of all the principal state universities and colleges and to permit the salaries of subordinates to rise. Tempering what it wanted against the difficult economic times, in its biennial report issued in September 1932 the Texas Library and Historical Commission asked only for assistants for the cataloger and for the archivist. More than staff, the greater need was space. With absolutely no place to put them, the state library had been forced to stop acquiring new books to circulate to blind readers. Nor could it accept the transfer of historically valuable records no longer used by agencies. Concluding its few recommendations, the commission asked for an appropriation to repair historic paintings and flags. Just to fulfill the minimum of its charge, Wilcox and the commission were bold to say, the state library had needs rather than excesses. To buttress their position, Wilcox could present observations of several state librarians she had contacted, many in states whose legislatures similarly were pursuing the streamlining of government organization to reduce spending.6 On January 10, 1933—a year and a half after the committee had been created and two and a half weeks shy of Fannie Wilcox’s first anniversary as state librarian—the Joint Legislative Committee on Organization and Economy issued its report in thirteen parts so voluminous that a person could hardly hold them all in one hand. The overhaul of state government recommended by the committee was breathtaking. The report called for reducing the 131 “more or less separate and uncoordinated existing units of organization” into just 19 units. No doubt to their relief, proponents of the Texas State Library read that “the State Library has a definite place in the State Government and should be continued.” Seemingly reaffirming what the clubwomen, historians, librarians of the state, and the commission and state librarians all had 65

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argued since creation of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, in page after page the committee recited the inadequacies, insufficiencies, and lacks that state librarians had repeated over and over again in the biennial reports and budget requests. It even quoted Wilcox’s judgment that “the greatest waste in the State Library is that of time and energy brought about by the crowded and inconvenient conditions of the library.” The committee had acknowledged the problems about which the state librarian and commission had been complaining for twenty-plus years.7 There the agreement between state library proponents and the legislative committee ended. How the committee proposed to remedy the problems could not have been further from what the state librarian and the commission had in mind. The committee understood the most important work of the state library to be “the care, preservation, and purchasing of historical data of Texas, and the providing of a legislative reference service.” What it found in contrast was that “a considerable part of the modest budget . . . is devoted to other activities,” specifically library loan services and organizing public libraries around the state. This dissonance and dissipation of resources, the report concluded, resulted in none of the activities being performed well. More fundamentally, in the committee’s eyes the commission was not meeting its responsibility. As the committee read it, the law charged the commission to serve a “largely administrative” function. By delegating the running of the agency to the state librarian and confining itself to appointing the state librarian and seeking appropriations, the commission showed itself to be superfluous. If neither the state library nor the commission were doing what the law called for them to do, the remedy was obvious. The commission and the state library along with it “should be abolished and all of its material and data, except that suitable for the Legislative Reference Service, should be transferred to The University of Texas library.”8 To the legislative committee looking to reduce direct expenditures on state government, the solution was elegant. The cost of the library function to government would be lessened to only that for the single Legislative Reference Service (though both the budget and responsibilities of legislative reference would be increased). The library and archival functions of the state library could be performed by the university library, the committee asserted, “with very little additional expense.” Moreover, the transfer resolved the space problem, as the university was building a new library that could accommodate the state’s books and archives. Finally, service to the blind and the library organization work (including service to schools, about which the committee was silent) would be eliminated altogether. While commending achievements in raising the standards of public libraries around the state, the underfunded 66

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library organization service “should be adequately supported or not engaged in at all,” the committee declared piously. With no intention of providing that support, the committee recommended that the work be discontinued until, in words heard so many times already, “the state is in a better financial condition.”9 When the state library commission met two weeks later, in January 1933, consideration of the report topped its agenda. Heartily opposing the recommendations, knowing they needed help in having their objections heard, and certain that the library community would join them in fighting the proposals, the members decided to ask the Texas Library Association to plan a campaign on their behalf. Consideration of the space problem came next. Recognizing that wherever the library went when it moved out of the capitol stood to be the location in which it would remain for the foreseeable future, they favored continuing their pursuit of a building designed for the agency. In that light, they decided that their best strategy for the moment was to remain in the capitol, where the state library’s overcrowded situation cried out for attention.10 As the commission expected, when the librarians of Texas learned of the proposal that the Texas State Library, minus the Legislative Reference Service, become a branch of the University of Texas library, they gasped. No such combination had ever been tried, and for good reason. Serving faculty and students with class readings and research materials was a function totally different from organizing public libraries and providing circulation services for extended periods to communities, to blind readers, and to schools. The committee and especially the company it hired to study state government considered a library to be nothing more than a mere “storehouse of a commodity known as Books,” one provoked librarian barked to her colleagues. “Of the force and comfort of books in our lives; of books as the sources of ideas which make people and communities, and nations, this company . . . has no understanding.” Indeed, it grouped libraries with cultural and recreational facilities such as museums, parks, and game preserves, rather than, as she thought proper, with what the committee called “such practical advantages as good roads, good water supply, and good schools.” In regard to support of public libraries, she concluded with optimism unwarranted by history that “the waste of supporting an educational system to stimulate mental activity and then shutting off the facilities for satisfying it—especially when carried over into adult life—should be apparent to any representative of the people of Texas.”11 In the fact sheet that Fannie Wilcox prepared to explain the reasons that supporters of the Texas State Library considered the proposal to be, in her word, “disastrous,” she summed up the desolation the 67

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librarians felt when she wrote simply, “Such a recommendation is an experiment in library history.”12 In mid-February 1933, Representative Graves introduced both the massive executive department reorganization bill and HB 499 to create the Legislative Reference Service under the legislature. The struggle for the existence of the Texas State Library had begun. “The papers reveal that tumult exists there as much as here,” commission member and Presbyterian pastor R. L. Irving, in El Paso, replied to Wilcox’s telegram and letter reporting that the bills had been placed in the hopper. Perceiving that stopping the legislative reference measure was the key to saving the state library as a government agency, supporters mobilized. “Instead of planning in the mistaken interest of economy to abolish the State Library and set Texas apart from every state in the Union as the one state with a great history which has abolished its State Library,” the trustees of the Fort Worth Carnegie Library stated that the legislature should “follow the splendid example of Indiana, which is now engaged at an outlay of nine hundred and forty thousand dollars ($940,000) in providing its State Library with a splendid new building adjacent to the capitol . . . [and] with adequate income for its work.”13 In addition to passing its own resolution, the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs exploited its advantage of having well-placed members. The wife of the clerk of the Senate, who had chaired the federation’s legislative committee, and the current legislative committee chair, the wife of the lieutenant governor, who arguably held the most powerful position in state government, both began lobbying their husbands.14 Throughout March 1933, as Wilcox and the Texas Library Association marshaled the library’s supporters, advocates of other departments affected by the proposed reorganization similarly expressed their opposition such that by the end of March when the various bills came up for their hearings, sentiment in the legislature had begun to swing against the legislation. Representative Graves listened to the state library constituency until he “was willing for us to have an amendment offered on the floor of the House eliminating the State Library [proposals] from the bill.” Satisfied that he knew better, Senate bill coauthor H. Grady Woodruff refused to follow Graves’ lead. To a reasoned letter opposing consolidation from Jennie S. Scheuber, the Fort Worth city librarian, former president of the Texas Library Association, and the longestserving librarian in Texas, Woodruff replied caustically: “You probably do not know that the University Library serves an even wider range of activity than does the State Library itself. I see no good reason why the administrative service of the two might not be consolidated in the interest and augmented service of the public at less cost.”15 Clearly library organizer Goree was right when in the April 1933 issue of the Texas Library Association’s News Notes 68

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she wrote that what the state library needed was “space, money and official understanding—and the greatest of these is the last!”16 Archivist Harriet Smither knew it too. “The State Library is in worse plight than ever before,” she wrote to Brownsville attorney, Texas State Historical Association vice president, and frequent patron of the state archives Harbert Davenport on San Jacinto Day 1933, after learning that in its consideration of the biennial appropriation bill, the Senate had slashed the state library budget by 20 percent. If that were the worst of it, the state library would be fortunate, as the House sought reduction by one-third.17 Specifically, some $1,600 for gathering historical data and for editing and printing Texas archives had been eliminated. “Apparently the House Committee did not understand the very great practical importance of this work,” Davenport wrote his senator. In the Texas Ranger and Confederate muster rolls, “almost every Texan has a direct interest . . . and almost every lawyer in Texas is apt to have to look to them at any time to obtain proof in connection with land titles and other such information.” Most of the funding was restored.18 As it became clear that Senator Woodruff would fail in his effort to override the opposition to consolidating the state library with the University of Texas library, those interested in the state library began to relax. Believing that the state library would escape legislative action beyond reductions in the agency’s appropriation, none of them spotted the introduction on March 27 of HB 847 to cover some Highway Department expenses. Consequently, no one noticed on May 12 as the bill sailed through the House that someone had attached an amendment to allocate Highway Department monies for the Board of Control to fund staff and equipment for a “record bureau” charged with transferring, filing, and indexing valuable papers and records, which would be housed in the basement of the new Highway Department Building across Eleventh Street from the capitol.19 Two weeks later, apparently on Friday, May 26, former commission member Richard Burges met with the Board of Control to propose moving the archives and the rest of the state library into the basement of the new building. When he walked into the meeting, all that Burges knew regarding space for valuable papers and records was that even though Senator George Purl had reiterated to Wilcox the legislature’s adamant opposition to moving the state library out of the capitol, Wilcox and the commission had come to think that the State Highway Building was not that far away. “We hardly dare think of the possibility of more room,” Wilcox, who had eyed the basement five months earlier, confessed to Burges, “but are hopeful nevertheless” that Burges could convince both the senator and the Board of Control that the best resolution of the state library’s space problem was moving to quarters 69

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larger, more contiguous, and only a block distant in the Highway Department Building.20 Burges may have been aware that as recently as the previous session, the legislature, in directing an agency head to deliver records to the state librarian, had reaffirmed the state library as the repository for valuable records. What Burges did not know, and no one on the Board of Control with whom he met that Friday told him, was that the Senate was passing the amended HB 847 that very day. Not just passing it, the legislature even in those economically strained times allocated a handsome salary for the Bureau of Records custodian—$380 more than the state archivist and $200 more than the state librarian.21 Wilcox learned of the legislature’s action the next day, after House Appropriations Committee staff member Witt B. Harwell walked into the library and told not her but legislative reference librarian Doris Connerly “that he was going to be in charge of the records to be moved to the Highway basement.” What records? Was this the good news Wilcox had not let herself believe she would hear that session? Wilcox nearly flew to the office of the Board of Control, where she received only the unsatisfying answer that no one had been appointed to the position Harwell claimed he would hold heading the records bureau. Back in the state library she searched bill files until she found, to her complete surprise, “provision for a Bureau of Records having a Custodian of files.”22 “From this, I judge there will be little hope of our getting space in the basement of the Highway Building,” Wilcox wrote Burges. But, as important as space was, she knew it was not the real issue. “The important points are . . . that these non-current documents of other departments must not go from under the control of the State Library when they are moved from the respective departments. To turn these records over to the Board of Control,” an indignant Wilcox wrote Burges and commission chair Emma Burleson, “would be disastrous to the future of the archives of Texas” as it would amount “to establishing another archive bureau under the Board of Control.” Indeed, the records that the new bureau targeted were those stashed away by the departments—the very same sorts of records the previous legislature had directed to the state librarian. The only difference Wilcox perceived between the service projected for the Bureau of Records and what the state archives already provided was that, under the bureau storage plan, agencies maintained ownership and control of their records. Without question, creation of the Bureau of Records threatened the integrity of the Texas State Library and its commission almost as much as the proposal to make it a division of the university library. “I know,” Wilcox fumed defiantly, “it will be far better for the State if it [the Bureau] never comes into existence than to be as it is now 70

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planned . . . [under] political appointees with no qualifications, no experience for the positions.” But by the time she learned of the Bureau of Records, it already existed. The governor had signed its appropriation, and Witt Harwell was to begin work the next week.23 Clearly angry about what he saw as an uncalled-for new bureau and about the silence surrounding its creation, Burges wrote the Board of Control bluntly in June 1933: “I feel sure that if you gentlemen will discuss this matter with the State Librarian and with Miss Smither, you will each and all of you feel deeply sensible of the wisdom of leaving these records where the law reposes them, in the State Library and the present Archivist, Miss Smither.” Firmly, he concluded: “While I hope this question can be amicably settled, I sincerely hope that the State Library and Historical Commission will resist, if it be necessary, any interference with their jurisdiction, which I think is clearly conferred by statute.”24 Burges’ letter evidently shook the members of the Board of Control. Neither competition nor a fight had motivated them to request creation of the Bureau of Records. Though the well-connected legislative reference librarian Doris Connerly later said she understood that the Bureau had been “created mainly to provide a place for some one,” whom she did not specify, the Board professed publicly that fire prevention impelled them. Taking out mountains of paper would lessen the potential for fire in the capitol by removing as much combustible paper as possible from the basement and would save the records from any conflagration that might ignite. Meeting with Wilcox and her staff within days of receiving Burges’ letter, the board agreed to notify the state library of every transfer, to let the state archivist have any records she wanted for the archives, and to give the state library storage space that became available in the capitol after records were transferred to the bureau. The board even asked the state library to administer the bureau. “I do not know just what the supervision requested means,” archivist Smither puzzled, “nor do I see how the State Library could assume such supervision—unless the records of the bureau are considered as a part of its archives—without aiding in its own destruction.”25 Wilcox agreed and declined. She would not endorse the duplicative bureau either by administering it for the board or by accepting the offer of space in its rooms in the Highway Building basement.26 As insightful as she was in seeing the value of working with but maintaining her administrative distance from the bureau, Wilcox misjudged how state agencies would respond to the storage opportunity. Not two years after the bureau’s creation in 1933, custodian Harwell reported that he had received more than 310,000 reports and documents from eight departments and offices. Far from being only those records the departments consulted 71

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regularly, quantities dated from the nineteenth century, the oldest from Governor Pease’s administration predating the Civil War. However attentive the board said its Bureau of Records would be in cooperating with the state archives in transferring archival records sent to the bureau for storage, Harwell well knew he was receiving and housing historically valuable documents. He trumpeted it, proclaiming in April 1935 that in his bureau “the permanent records of the State are being properly and safely filed.” Although he and Wilcox would disagree on the bureau’s role in managing the state’s archives, indeed all state records, few could disagree with Harwell’s boastful assessment that “it is almost impossible to estimate just what this department has accomplished.”27 One accomplishment that even the most casual of observers could not have missed was the demonstration of just how truly serious the records problem of state government was and how blind the Joint Committee and Senator Woodruff had been to the need for a department to attend to it. Before the Bureau of Records had completed its first year of activity, Harwell reported his astonishment that at the rate the bureau was receiving records, it could continue for no more than three or four more years. Initially reluctant to transfer their records, department heads, he said, shortly “realized how much more efficient it would make their Offices.” Beyond just relieving crowded storage space, the bureau’s indexing and systematic filing of records, along with its “better facilities [than those of the state archives?] for the examination of the various records,” improved the service the agencies provided their publics. The work of the bureau, Harwell exulted, “has emphasized the benefit to be derived from a permanent Bureau of Records both to the various State departments involved and to the public at large.”28 He was right. Without intending to, the Board of Control in framing the Bureau of Records had created the first component of a records management service for Texas state government and one of the very first in the country.29 Initially neither Wilcox nor Smither appreciated how the work the bureau was doing differed from that being done in the state archives. Whereas archivists worked with the information in the records, bureau staff worked with records as objects. Archivists were historians by disposition and education. They studied the information in records, learned it, indexed it, edited and published it, and answered (Texas history) questions from it. More than once Smither had included examples of these questions in her biennial report to show the breadth of knowledge the state archivist had to have and how knowledge from the archives contributed to an informed populace. Bureau of Records staff were office workers whose job was to list the files sent for storage, to store them neatly, and to pull them for department use when 72

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requested. All they needed to know was the name of the file, the department from which it came, and the shelf on which they stored it. Though Wilcox angrily asserted that bureau staff had no qualifications for their positions, in fact theirs was work new in state government, appropriate qualifications for which would become apparent only as the records management function developed. For the government departments, the bureau’s service was a godsend. By simply sending seldom-consulted records to the bureau, the departments gained use formerly compromised by shunting and piling files in closets and out-of-the-way niches. Most significant of all, the state regained the value of information that had been created by and for it but had been effectively lost to it. If Wilcox did not see the difference between the work of the bureau and that of her state archives, she perceived clearly that the two functions belonged in the same agency. Recognizing it too, the commission in 1935 directed its chair to talk with Senator John W. Hornsby about legislation to effect the change. When nothing came of that, the next year the commission called for a meeting with the Board of Control. Nothing came of that either.30 As records moved out of the capitol to the building across the street, basement rooms became vacant. Then, as Smither marked records that had been sent to the bureau to be accessioned into the state archives and thus carted back to the capitol, the state library needed first one, then another, then yet another of those rooms in which to store them. Walls painted and wooden shelves constructed, these basement rooms became the new home for the Archives Division. Wilcox put the best face on it, telling commission members during their annual meeting at the end of February 1934 that while they naturally might think that moving the archives from the state library room on the second floor to the often dank and moldy basement was undesirable, “the location is light, and roomier and much more convenient and comfortable than where it [the archives] was.” Moreover, the move allowed most of the books for the blind to be consolidated from three separate locations, and it opened some space for expansion of the operation in the state library room.31 While quick to profess recognition of the importance of the state library to the efficient and effective functioning of government, state leaders almost to a person and at almost every turn had neglected what their state library and historical commission repeatedly told them were the agency’s needs—space sufficient and designed for the purpose, and a budget commensurate with the requirements of its enabling statute. “The State Library has a definite place in the State Government and should be continued,” the Joint Committee had stated in 1933, for example, before recommending dissolution of the agency in all but its name. The scene repeated in the next legislature, in 1935, even down 73

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to Representative Graves promising to amend the measure so as to leave the library intact.32 More ominous in 1935 was a measure to water down the certification requirement for county librarians by eliminating the authority of the State Board of Library Examiners to require a librarian to retake the examination to maintain certification to work as a county librarian. The bill passed the House by the overwhelming margin of 115 to 14.33 Under its provisions, once a librarian had passed the test, the certification would be valid for life. The library community would have no means to compel a librarian to keep knowledge of best practice current. On top of that, the bill’s author, by tucking an amendment into the general appropriation bill, moved also to purge from the state library the position of library organizer. Library organization already was the stepchild of the state library, the librarians learned in the newest edition of TLA’s Handbook of Texas Libraries, spending on it being less than for either the archives/historical research function or the legislative reference service. Adoption of the appropriation bill—the one requirement of the legislative session—with that stipulation would spurn the mission of the clubwomen, deny the calling of the librarians, and severely cripple one of the three principal functions prescribed to the Texas State Library. “If this position is lost,” Wilcox asserted, “it will be a tremendous blow to library work in Texas[,] and this State already ranks low in this field.”34 Representative Albert G. Walker of Wilbarger County in North Texas had introduced the two controversial measures after he heard from his county library board that the library organizer of the Texas State Library tried to remove the county librarian in order to install her own person. Library organizer Goree had tried to do it, Walker understood, first by writing unflattering reports in 1931 and 1932 in which she called the library “the most untidy . . . I ever saw” and the librarian “apathetic.”35 Then, on the basis of those reports, the State Board of Library Examiners withheld the Wilbarger County librarian’s certificate until she retook the examination. Though Goree had indeed written the reports critical of the job the librarian was doing, it was not true that she had the power to install any librarian in any county. Moreover, she had no connection with the Board of Library Examiners, which was independent of, though associated with, the state library.36 Walker not only failed to investigate this himself but also refused to meet with Wilcox and Goree to learn the facts of it. Rather than considering whether library service could be improved in Wilbarger and every other county, he took the tack of serving his constituent by eliminating the state’s reporting function and watering down the standards of library practice statewide so that no other Texas county librarian would suffer similar humiliation. 74

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Wilcox was devastated. Goree was all that a library organizer should be. Not just librarians but also members of the commission told her so. Commission member Laura Hobby had rhapsodized to Wilcox after watching Goree in action. At the district library meeting Goree organized in San Angelo in 1934, Hobby had “come into a full understanding of what Miss Goree means to [the] State Library”: “She is fired with the cause, presents it well, and [I] am sure the extension work will go gloriously on in her hands.”37 Stunned at Representative Walker’s attack, Goree saw only one course of action appropriate for her. “[While] I think that I should have an opportunity to hear these objections,” she wrote in the letter of resignation she handed Wilcox the day after she learned of the threat to her position and before the librarians could mount any protest, “I am not willing to stand in the way of the important library work of the State.”38 Reversing the change in the certification requirement fared no better. Determined at first to resist, the librarians upon further thought decided not to fight it. Even with it, the board still retained full authority to write an examination based on the highest standards. More importantly, the librarians feared they would compromise their ability to raise standards in the future if they “stirred up” the matter.39 Eliminating extension, changing the power of the library examiners, and abolishing their agency were only three of the matters that stirred up the commission members during the 1935 legislative session. In their annual meeting on February 20, 1935, in addition to these issues, they discussed topics as critical as gaining control through legislative action of the Bureau of Records and as routine as the need to ask the legislature for more money just to have the state library adequately swept and dusted. As they reached the end of the meeting they seemed to feel an impotence in being unable to support the Texas State Library as fully as they wanted to. They seemed to recognize and admit as never before that, as important as it was for the commission to have an effect, by itself it could not successfully penetrate lawmakers’ attitudes, which ranged from indifference to spite. While they could handle routine matters satisfactorily, they seemed to sense that they did not know how to strengthen the state library to be the institution they wanted it, and understood that the law charged it, to be. The impotence was easy enough to see. The biennial appropriation laid it out in dollars and cents. Despite every word commissioners said in budget hearings and in private to state leaders justifying raising the state librarian’s annual salary above the $2,000 level established eighteen years earlier for the first state librarian, the appropriation bill of 1933 reduced the amount by 20 percent to $1,600 per year. The state librarian’s salary did not regain the 75

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1915 level until 1938 (when the salary actually rose above the 1915 figure). The creation of the Bureau of Records documented the commission’s impotence too. The bureau had been conceived and established without so much as one word being breathed to the Texas Library and Historical Commission beforehand. When the commission enjoyed a victory, commonly it was a defensive one, thwarting something undesirable. In 1935, with TLA’s support, for a second time the commission escaped the virtual elimination of the state library proposed in Representative Graves’ reorganization bill. Cooler heads in the legislature scuttled Representative Walker’s everyone’s-baby-out-with-hisbathwater approach to solving a local deficiency. Not only was the library organizer position saved, but since Fannie Wilcox refused to accept the resignation, Goree continued with her inspired work. As the February meeting ended, perhaps commission members just felt frustrated after years of struggling against their own legislature. Five-year member Laura Hobby—Texas historian and sister of Governor Hobby, who, in the wake of the corrosive Ferguson administration, had signed into law Elizabeth West’s professional credentials for the state librarian—took the floor to make an unusually bold suggestion: that they seek outside help. In the last significant action on February 20, 1935, the commission voted to invite the American Library Association to send a representative “to help the Commission plan for the future.” Future or present, the plan they required was one that would give them a way to meet the Texas State Library’s greatest need. Succinctly, dramatically, and publicly not two years earlier Edwin Sue Goree had put her finger on what that need was—official understanding.

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“A D i f f us i o n o f I n t e rests a n d O b j e ct i ve s” The Final Wilcox Years, 1935–1945

T

he year 1935 began a period of planning in order to bring change. Governments and organizations went to work studying resources and ways to manage them so as to extract the country, their organizations, and their people from the effects of the Depression. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress in the second round of agencies designed to take America out of its economic doldrums, encouraged the creation of local planning boards. The WPA put people to work too. Some $6 million allocated to Texas put librarians, historians, and archivists—two thousand at the peak—to work surveying and publishing guides to the public records of Texas’ counties, organizing records in archives, and working in local libraries. The industrious WPA workers doubled the number of county libraries in Texas from fourteen in 1935 to thirty in 1940. They opened 289 new libraries, primarily in schools. Supporting Roosevelt’s initiatives, Governor James V. Allred and the legislature in 1935 created the Texas Planning Board to advise on the best use of the state’s economic resources and to coordinate their utilization with the relief activity of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.1 Libraries were a valuable resource, and Texas’ library leaders embraced the occasion to demonstrate that. At the prompting of the American Library Association, in 1934 the Texas Library Association had set up a Texas Planning Committee chaired by library organizer and TLA first vice president Edwin Sue Goree, with state librarian Fannie Wilcox as secretary and an advisory board of librarians and laypersons. The committee’s Texas Library Plan was in near-final form, awaiting discussion and adoption during the upcoming TLA annual meeting in April, when the Texas Library and Historical Commission met on February 20, 1935. Regarding the state library and the commission, the Texas Library Plan called for the provision of a budget “materially increasing the meager expenditures of the present biennium” and for “expansion of

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the . . . Commission to provide for all phases of its work, archives, legislative reference, direct book service, and organization and supervision of regional units similar to [the] system of Deputy State Superintendents under [the] Department of Education.” With Governor Allred’s Texas Planning Board interested to receive the library plan, it appeared that librarians and the state library at long last stood to receive serious attention.2 In this expectant environment, the commission embraced Laura Hobby’s suggestion that it inquire “how A. L. A. might assist the Texas Library and Historical Commission in planning for the future and . . . give the Commission advice on ways of improving the library,” or, as commission chair Emma Burleson put it, on “handling of its problems.”3 But without money to pay an ALA adviser, there the matter lay for five years. Without sufficient wherewithal to do other than continue what it had been doing, the commission would have to wait to benefit from an outside assessment of its effectiveness and advice for shaping its future. During the 1937 and 1939 legislative sessions, TLA continued to pursue legislative appropriation of state aid for libraries in an amount dwarfing anything ever allocated to the state library. The commission supported the requests, having highlighted the need for state aid in more than a negligible pittance by pointing out in a January 1936 resolution that Texas ranked thirtyninth of the forty-eight states with respect to library facilities; 60 percent of its 254 counties had no library within their borders; and 65 percent of its citizens (more than 3.5 million) lacked access to any public library. Though the commission did not say so, the librarians knew that even with the modest increases given in the latter 1930s, the legislature still devoted two and a half times more to the cigarette enforcement fund than to the state library and aid to libraries combined. Including the sixteen county libraries that had sprung up under the WPA Statewide Library Project, Texas (ranked eleventh in wealth in 1939) had risen to only thirty-seventh in library service. It lagged behind even the southern states of Arkansas (which not a decade earlier had been one of only seven states that invested less in its libraries than Texas) and Louisiana, both of which had appropriated $100,000 for state aid. Whereas ALA standards called for expenditure of $1 per capita on libraries and books, and the national average was only one-third that, the amount that TLA called for in 1937, if appropriated in full, would raise the state expenditure to but $0.1625 per capita, less than half the national average. Texas “tosses the equivalent of two 5¢ ice cream cones per citizen into the begging cups of its public libraries,” the Dallas Morning News summarized.4 It could have added as an aside that Texas spent less on its state library than every other state but one—South Carolina—and that increases in appropriations to other admin78

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istrative departments of Texas government during the past twenty years had outstripped those of the state library by nearly three times.5 To administer the $375,000 in state aid it sought, TLA wanted a new division—the Public Libraries Division—written into the state library law. And since the new division would manage a budget fourteen times larger than that of the rest of the library, clearly its director needed to have greater experience and a salary larger—more than one-third larger—than other division directors were receiving, even $600 more than the compensation of the state librarian. Not stopping there, TLA’s 1937 draft statute called for commissioners courts to tax in order to fund county libraries. Finally, the measure would increase the membership of the commission from five to six. Despite TLA’s efforts, neither chamber of the legislature considered the state aid measure, and only the House adopted revisions to the library laws.6 When the Texas Library Association retained a member of the Democratic Party Executive Committee to watch after its bills in the 1937 legislative session and thus added lobbying to its activity, the relationship between TLA and the Texas Library and Historical Commission changed substantively. More clearly than before, the two bodies were developing different agendas for different constituencies: TLA for librarians and especially those interested in library service in their communities throughout the state, and the commission for a government agency with a mandate that included archival and history functions, as well as the provision of a variety of services to the government. Henceforth in approaching the legislature, the two would have to develop a new reciprocity. Beginning on the first working day of 1937, Edwin Sue Goree, in the position of part-time executive secretary—TLA’s first paid staff position—took charge of TLA’s lobbying effort. In six years at the state library, Goree had become deeply frustrated by “the lack of executive and legislative support of Texas libraries and specifically the State Library.” The two legislative efforts to eliminate her job left her particularly bitter. Compounding her frustration was the working environment in which “as you know, state employees are expected to be seen and not heard.” (Once she had been scolded by state librarian Wilcox for merely talking with the president of TLA about individuals who might fill a vacancy on the commission.) With the 1937 legislative session starting as she took up her new duties, Goree began at once to spearhead a movement to obtain legislation that would make the library function, and specifically the establishment and support of public libraries throughout Texas, the core work of the Texas State Library. “Unless we are able to reach absolute agreement in the library body,” she wrote a year later, casting matters in black-and-white terms, “the State Library and the Commission may 79

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be lost to us [librarians of Texas] entirely.”7 Goree intended to right a wrong she—oblivious to history—evidently believed to have been perpetrated by the history forces having their way over the library forces in shaping the 1909 statute.8 Goree meant to do nothing less than change the character of the agency she had just left. For Fannie Wilcox, the relationship was uncomfortable. Through both the 1937 and 1939 legislative sessions, she was in the middle between Goree and the librarians on the one hand and commission members on the other. While TLA wanted commission support of specific proposals, commission members, more cautious than ever to avoid violating the legislative provision against their lobbying, found it difficult to take firm positions. And on some matters, notably the commission’s continuing dogged pursuit of a separate building, the legislative priorities of the two groups failed to coincide. “If the Legislative Committee [of TLA] has been uncertain as to where the Commission and the State Library staff stood on the bill,” Wilcox wrote the TLA executive board in late 1938, “the state librarian has been uncertain as to where the Legislative Committee wished the Commission and the State Library to stand. My feeling has been that the Legislative Committee wanted them to stand far in the background.” As unpleasant as was miscommunication, worse was misinformation from which Wilcox had to defend her agency. “The suggestion of Mrs. Marek [chair of the Citizens’ Advisory Committee of the People’s Library Movement] that citizens are unaware of the neglect of the Library side of the T.L.H.C. is true, but let me make it a little broader and say the citizens are unaware of the neglect of the entire library,” Wilcox continued in her long message to TLA’s leaders. “It seems to be the opinion of some librarians that the archives and legislative reference are far better supported than the extension work. This is not the case,” Wilcox pointed out, supporting her case with figures in the memo: field work received $5,925, archives $4,650, and legislative reference $4,150, and all three division heads were paid identical $1,800 salaries.9 Perhaps the belief that library work was not given its due stemmed less from misinformation than from TLA’s effort toward “putting first things first,” specifically emphasizing the state library’s “function as a library commission agency.”10 Nevertheless, the mistaken opinion was so firmly held that, not only did it continue to surface, but one particularly well-informed librarian soon to be elected president of TLA repeated it almost thirty years later when she told an interviewer that “a passive Library and Historical Commission concerned itself primarily with archival and historical matters.”11 As they had been since Wilcox had taken office, indeed since Ernest Winkler had become state librarian in 1909, inadequate space and insuffi80

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cient budget—particularly salaries—continued to be the chief deficiencies on which state librarian Wilcox worked. Every time an office in the capitol became vacant, she requested it for the library. But since moves in the capitol never amounted to more than temporary solutions, the state library administration and commission held tenaciously to their dream of obtaining space adequate for and designed to facilitate the work of all the divisions of the state library. The 1936 centennial of the Texas Revolution and independence from Mexico seemed to offer a golden opportunity. Since appreciation of the history of Texas would be central to the celebration, appreciation of the largest single holding of both public records and private papers documenting the growth and development of the state just might be the catalyst for the state library to secure the building that supporters had long sought. As early as December 1931, Wilcox had informed anyone who read the San Antonio Express that Illinois had used the occasion of its centennial to erect a $2 million building to house its state library, its state historical library, its state museum, and other groups. Wisconsin, Iowa, North Carolina, Kentucky, and most recently Oklahoma all had provided structures for their library and historical agencies.12 Though the times continued to be strained economically, supporters knew from statistics gathered by the state librarian for the 1932–1934 biennial report and by the Texas Library Association for its 1935 Handbook of Texas Libraries that even in the teeth of the Depression, spending on library buildings in Texas had been robust—totaling around $3 million in both public and private money. About one-third of that the legislature had allocated for just one library—the first unit of the new structure the University of Texas library occupied in 1934. The hope for a state library building was short-lived. The Centennial Commission, with Anna Pennybacker among its members, acknowledged the need of it, but perhaps taking its cue from the legislature, which already had eliminated the proposed appropriation, the commission declined to add the building to its agenda.13 Three years and two legislative sessions later, the historians of the Texas State Historical Association came forward in 1937, offering a building. Though the historians in the association had been responsible for the commission’s having a historical charge, they had shown no interest in the state library or even the condition of state records essential to their own work since even before their direct stake in the operation of the state library and archives had been extinguished in 1919, when revision of commission terms wrote into law Eugene Barker’s recommendation that the historian’s seat on the commission (ex officio for the chair of the university history department) be eliminated. Seated at the University of Texas, the association proposed using the building the university library had vacated three years earlier. Not only 81

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did the commission decline the offer to, in effect, dismember the agency, but the legislature, which happened to be in called session, also reinforced the commission’s decision by resolving “that under no circumstances shall said archives and records be removed . . . from the Capitol grounds and close proximity.”14 Seizing on the 1939 centennial of the Texas State Library (dating from the congressional appropriation establishing a national library for the Republic of Texas), the Texas Woman’s Press Association (TWPA), several of whose members were active in the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, rallied to the cause of a building. “We, the women of the Texas Press Association, remembering that our Texas Library and Historical Commission is the storehouse that has garnered up the wisdom of the ages past, and realizing, too, its future value to culture and to Democracy, must be wise enough, and patriotic enough to remain aggressively dissatisfied until our sacred ‘storehouse’ is safely and adequately sheltered,” Lena Williams Goodman—second vice president, wife of state representative James Howard Goodman, and soonto-be chair of the TWPA Legislation Committee—told her colleagues during their convention in May 1938. While the women saw their contribution as being to “interpret the need for a new home” (emphasis theirs), to the campaign they brought much more. First was their timing in uniting related interests. “Apply the rule of timeliness, mobilize and push our campaign for a State Library Building while our people are awake to the value of preserving Texas’ historical data and relics,”15 Goodman urged the press women, conscious that the city of Austin was planning to observe its centennial both as a city and as the capital of Texas that same year. For another, they brought sustained, crisp publicity like none the state library had enjoyed before. Their publicity, along with behind-the-scenes lobbying by oil company engineer and commission member Louis “Lou” Wiltz Kemp, moved mountains. With no precedent for this concerted action, the Senate and the House in June 1939 each endorsed consummation of a $1 million fund to erect a State Library and Texas Historical Center. While the press women cleared what previously had been an insurmountable hurdle, they failed to convince the one man without whose support the project would founder—Lieutenant Governor Coke R. Stevenson. “The library does not need a separate building,” he replied to Midland librarian Marguerite Hester, who had sparked the TWPA’s initiative. It needed fireproof housing, which Stevenson’s long-running crusade to fireproof the capitol would provide. “If the capitol building should be made strictly fire proof[,] enough space could be found in it for the library for years to come,” Stevenson boasted, incongruously ignoring history, the increasingly overcrowded capitol, and the preference of elected officials to office in 82

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the grand center of Texas’ political life. Though the women continued their advocacy for years more, in the hands of the president of the Senate the initiative expired, not to be resurrected even in 1941 after he became governor and a Joint Committee Investigating Capitol Fire Hazards, empowered by the legislature meeting that year, strongly condemned the dangerous condition in which the priceless archives were held.16 Whether it started with the campaign of the press women, the proposal of the state historical association, or simply what commission chair Burleson called “criticism from citizens over the state,” the deteriorating condition of the basement location of the state archives by 1939 had become an embarrassment the commission had to resolve. One staff member told of the archives “besieged by rats, roaches and a visiting ’possum family.” Being in the untenable position of having no place in the capitol to move, yet having been directed by the legislature not to leave, the commission was desperate. Within only months it had quietly reversed its rejection of the idea of moving out of the capitol, ignored the legislature’s direction not to move, and explored, unsuccessfully, locating the archives division in the new Austin Public Library building. In 1939 the commission was left with no alternative but to pursue moving the archives back to the second floor and begging the legislature for $3,000 for the purpose.17 Though the lawmakers did provide funding, the move proved to be anything but simple. The second floor could not support the additional weight of the archives, which meant that space had to be found in the basement to house the number of books from the second floor equal in weight to the records to be brought to the second floor. Despite the pleading of the beleaguered commission for expeditious action, the Board of Control, seeing no gain in moving large quantities of books and records simply to change places, delayed for more than six months before grudgingly agreeing to carry out the switch.18 “I believe you and I are going to live to see the State archives moved from the basement,” Burleson wrote in exultant relief to Laura Hobby, the longest-serving commission member behind Burleson. The move required four months to complete and sent five staff members to workstations in the basement.19 As the volume of records grew relentlessly, the second floor could not house it all. Whether for lack of room in the capitol basement or out of the conviction that any other place would be better for storing the archives, Wilcox secured accommodation for the overflow first in the attic of the old General Land Office Building on the capitol grounds, then in the Confederate Men’s Home in far west Austin, and when ordered out of there, at the headquarters complex of the Texas National Guard at Camp Mabry in 83

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northwest Austin. She explored relief further by trying to give all the bulky braille and talking books to the state’s Commission for the Blind—along with the work of circulating them. Though small, one victory materialized for her when the legislature and governor granted the agency authority to dispose of material.20 By 1940, when TLA resurrected the idea of engaging ALA to study and issue a report on the state library, TLA—no longer under Goree’s leadership—seemed to have no agenda beyond hoping that the undertaking would elaborate “a constructive program of action” and suggest legislation that would “strengthen” the agency.21 As a body, the commission narrowed its focus particularly to legislation.22 Individual commission members, by contrast, expressed a range of interests, the common theme being study of the holdings. Commission chair Burleson wanted an inventory of duplicate holdings that would permit disposal and thus ease the crowding. She hoped too that applying recommendations from a study of the book selection process would result in closing gaps in the collection that had become embarrassingly noticeable.23 Commission member Kemp, a fifty-six-year-old avid Texas historian who counted among his proudest accomplishments his efforts to move the remains of Texas historical figures to the state cemetery from neglected graves, saw a survey of the holdings as a tool for securing more robust appropriations. (His thinking went: publicize the rich and deep Texas holdings of the agency exposed by the survey, then citizens appreciative of this state property would demand better provision for it, then legislators would serve their constituents by increasing the state library budget. Kemp held his hope even though, being on the commission, he was in a position to know that during TLA’s 1939 legislative campaign “a journalist’s poll showed that legislators received more letters about the library bills than any subject except truck load limitation.” Despite this outpouring, only one of the two library bills even passed out of committee.24) By the end of May 1940 the commission and ALA had agreed on a plan for an outside review. Two visitors—Clarence B. Lester, secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission who had experience in two other state libraries, and Paul A. T. Noon, head of the Ohio State Library and, like Lester, noted for his advocacy of government aid in support of public libraries—would conduct a study. They would evaluate their findings (1) against the ALA Library Extension Board’s four-year-old statement, The State Library Agency: Its Functions and Organization, which listed and described the elements of a librarian’s model state library, and (2) in light of the needs in Texas.25 If he recalled it, Noon had some little knowledge of the Texas State Library, having replied to an inquiry from Wilcox six years earlier regarding the proposal to 84

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consolidate Texas’ state and state university libraries.26 Fortunately, as ALA’s Julia Merrill joked with Burleson, they “do not seem to fear the summer heat.”27 As the final plans were being laid for the survey, Lou Kemp shocked everyone by tendering his resignation after only a year and a half on the commission. “On July 3 I tried an experiment that worked even better than I had expected,” he wrote Burleson. In hopes of facilitating the appointment to the commission of an Austin resident who would be more available to the state library than Kemp could be in Houston, he resigned, giving the governor two vacancies to fill. When he learned that the governor had filled both with Austin residents, Kemp congratulated himself on his strategy.28 Fannie Wilcox no doubt heaved a quiet sigh of relief that both new appointees were men and the commission remained majority male. Everyone knew what Wilcox admitted privately: “With all due respect to women, a man can be of more assistance with the Legislature than a woman.” Consequently, when the agency’s budget hearing happened to coincide with the commission meeting in 1939, chair Emma Burleson told the group that “it was better for the men on the Commission to present the budget as the Legislature paid more attention to men than women” and asked John Gould to do it.29 When the state library’s turn came in the 1939 budget hearing, the House Appropriations Committee chair called on Wilcox. “My first impulse was to ask him to call upon you,” Wilcox wrote Gould shortly afterward, “but as the Chairman had always called upon me first in the past I thought perhaps it was my place to present the main points in the regular budget.” For her indiscretion, Wilcox suffered Burleson’s reprimand. “I see my mistake now,” Wilcox apologized meekly, adding, “I can only say that I am sorry.”30 Finally, on November 2, 1940, nearly four months after the ALA visitors had been in Austin observing the state library staff at work and interviewing commission members, staff, and leaders of organizations interested in the state library, the long-awaited report of the two investigators arrived. Using as their yardstick the American Library Association’s ideal of a library serving state government, the two men began with the assumptions that the Texas Library and Historical Commission’s agency was first and foremost a library whose fundamental mission was education. For whatever one or combination of reasons—because the Texas situation was so deplorable; because TLA, which funded their work, had an ax to grind;31 because the opportunity of the review afforded them an irresistible platform upon which to further assert their credentials as authorities on the American state library; or for another reason—they gave negligible attention to the history that had brought the 85

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Texas agency to its present condition. Instead, they crafted a study addressed not just to the commission that had contracted for it but to a broad audience of “responsible state library officials and library leaders as a help to them in organizing their own conduct of accepted and authorized [?] library policies.” Grounded on these premises and developed within these contexts, the LesterNoon report in point after point after point blistered the Texas State Library and everyone connected with it. Summed up in one sentence: “The Texas State Library can justly be called ineffective because of lack of leadership, absence of long term planning, low morale of the staff, defeatist attitude on the part of both Commission and staff, and the failure of the entire organization to take advantage of opportunities to improve, better, and inaugurate adequate library service for the entire state.”32 The commission needed overhaul of its membership, of its view of the state library, and of its operation the report declared. Shocked to find commission members who had no idea why they had been appointed, Lester and Noon called for “interest in the State Library and the library movement in Texas” as a prerequisite for appointment. They denounced the result of Kemp’s clever resignation strategy and called for appointments drawn from and representing “the entire state and not just one locality.” They reported that commission members shirked their responsibilities by not treating all of the agency’s functions as meriting equal attention. Specifically they charged that commission members had neglected the library function in favor of a Texas history interest. “Lack of balance in the emphasis of Commission policy appears to have been a factor in the loss of interest or withdrawal of public-spirited citizens who might have contributed much to the work of the Commission.” Finally, the researchers criticized the commission for having no rules under which it conducted its business.33 The state librarian should be replaced by “a capable administrator, a person of vision and enthusiasm, of broad professional experience” and “one whose educational qualifications meet the legal requirements for the position.” Acknowledging that “serious handicaps and disheartening conditions under which the work of the State Library has long been conducted” inevitably “deadened enthusiasm and obscured vision,” the visitors found no program or plan for long-term expansion. They blamed the “utter lack of effective functional organization” of the library’s work for what they considered excessive attention devoted by the commission chair to administrative details. According to the report, the state librarian did not even keep her employees informed of the work of their agency. The next state librarian must hold regular staff meetings (an issue the commission had raised with Wilcox in 1934, but never mentioned again). Further, not only was the state librarian failing to 86

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exercise supervision over the Works Progress Administration project, which was funded by $330,000, but also she was losing an opportunity to use WPA employees to upgrade the service of the library.34 The head of the Extension Division, Dorothy Cotton Journeay, should be supplanted, the report continued, because of her “lack of full understanding and background study and experience in library field work.”35 English by birth, Journeay had spent most of her life in the United States, had taken courses in library science at the University of Texas, and had worked as a children’s librarian in San Antonio and Houston before marrying and leaving the field for nine years. Like Goree, Journeay took leadership roles in TLA, including chairing the Librarians Advisory Committee of the People’s Library Movement, sponsored by TLA “to bring together in one organization all the citizens of Texas who are interested in the orderly development of free public libraries in the State.” When she returned as head of the Extension Division, Elizabeth Howard West praised her highly, writing in TLA’s News Notes in 1937 that “it is gratifying to know that Edwin Sue Goree’s mantle has fallen upon the shoulders of so capable a successor.”36 In Lester’s and Noon’s eyes three years later, however, Journeay’s accomplishments had not justified West’s confidence. The Extension Division’s performance, they wrote, “is so limited that it can only be called almost negligible.” Lester and Noon did not mention that a year after Journeay took office, and eighteen years after it had ceased publication, Texas Libraries had been revived within the Extension Division as the “library newspaper of Texas” or that during her first year, owing to her work, to better economic conditions, and to what Wilcox called “increased courage among the people of the State,” six counties and a city had established new public library service. As rising tensions in Europe evaporated that courage, Journeay in the 1938–1940 biennium had turned her attention to revising Texas law so that the importance of public libraries would be defined “in the same terms as public school education and pauper relief.” Instead, Lester and Noon reported hearing “considerable criticism of the ineffectiveness of . . . [her] work and even the charge that some part of the responsibility for the failure of recent progressive legislation for libraries in Texas and for the failure of campaigns for county library establishment in certain counties should be placed upon [the head of ] this division.”37 The investigators believed the entire staff, not just Journeay, was inadequate and ineffective and needed to be replaced, though they recommended accomplishing this by attrition, rather than firing. The surveyors called for “gradual rebuilding” by hiring “trained librarians of proved skill” and “pensioning of superannuated employees.”38 .

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Complementing the deficient staff, Lester and Noon charged, was the “utter lack of effective functional organization” of the state library. A Readers’ Division should be created to bring together traveling libraries, lending to individuals, reference, service to the blind, and management of the collection and the stacks. To right the balance of functions, extension work, under a new head, must be allocated additional staff and funding. The library needed a main catalog containing all of the agency’s holdings. And the library must inaugurate a publicity activity (for which Goree had called in 1932) to provide information about its services and to stir interest statewide in the establishment and maintenance of public libraries.39 The library laws of Texas required revision as well, Lester and Noon determined. On this, the commission and TLA already agreed in general. Perhaps that was the reason the visitors failed to offer the kinds of concrete suggestions for which Burleson, for one, hoped.40 As the authority on which to base a recommendation concerning the history (archives) half of the Texas Library and Historical Commission’s work, Lester and Noon stuck with the ALA guidelines in The State Library Agency and ignored the “Proposed Uniform State Public Records Act” developed only the year before by the Society of American Archivists. “Historical material” appeared in the ALA guidelines as but a minor component of a subordinate element of the function that read: “To provide a direct service of books, pamphlets and clippings, and visual material, and guidance in their use, to individuals, groups and schools.”41 Consequently the investigators called simply for “development” of the Archives Division. If by the recommendation they meant more was needed than housing the division in a single location, transferring the Records Bureau function to it, and providing some additional funding so that the division director did not have to do almost all of the work herself, all of which the commission already had been pursuing, the visitors did not say.42 Finding, as anyone who looked at the ALA guidelines for a model state library had to have recognized, that the Texas State Library did not perform all of the model’s functions, Lester and Noon called for the agency to round out its operation by creating and maintaining a union catalog of the holdings of libraries in Texas, initiating service to state institutions, developing a placement service for librarians in Texas, and, employing the Wisconsin model so familiar to Lester, adding a bill-drafting service in legislative reference. In fact, the Extension Division had hosted a placement service since at least June 1938,43 and the legislature never had looked to the state library for a bill-drafting service in legislative reference in any of the thirty years since Winkler proposed it in the 1911–1912 biennial report. 88

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New funding would be required not only to cover the operation of these services but also to expand the extension work, permit larger purchases of books and periodicals, allow delivery of state library service to the unserved areas of the state, and provide substantial state aid for public libraries throughout Texas. Finally, they pinpointed the defect that underlay all the others in thwarting “a vigorous growth”: the compromise that created the Texas Library and Historical Commission in the first place, or “the diffusion of interests and objectives,” as the report put it. More specifically, as the visitors read it, “the act gives the impression that the library extension functions are submerged by the historical ones.”44 When she read the report, Fannie Wilcox, with whom the surveyors had spoken on only the most cursory level, recognized neither the state librarian nor the director of extension described in the report. Several facts in the document did not correspond to facts as she knew them, and worse, few conclusions were buttressed with any statement more concrete than that the investigators had heard it. Having publicly welcomed the survey, when at TLA’s meeting she seconded the motion committing the association to fund it, within a week of receiving it she was urging the commission and TLA to destroy it. They agreed to withhold distribution until the two organizations could meet on January 15, 1941, to discuss it. Speaking first, University of Texas librarian and TLA Executive Committee chair Donald Coney said that the Texas Library Association approved the report’s recommendations in principle. On the most sensitive topic—the performance and tenure of state librarian Fannie Wilcox—he continued that “while they considered Miss Wilcox . . . a very capable and conscientious employee,” they agreed with Lester and Noon that she lacked “the administrative qualifications to carry out the expanded program” envisioned by the addition of the various services of a model state library. After he finished and the moment arrived for commission members to come to the defense of their state librarian of nine years, none did. If the silence of the minutes is accurate, as the account of one participant indicates, not one of them said more than that they thought parts of the report were unduly harsh. Not one introduced any of the observations Wilcox made in the five-page letter she had delivered to them four days earlier, pointing out the inadequacy of and inaccuracies in the report. Not even Emma Burleson defended the state librarian. (Maybe her silence was not commentary. Her “color, pained expression and general discomfort all told the tale” of failing health that sapped her former energy. She died five months later.45) Aware of the group’s mood, when Wilcox joined the meeting, she knew that any changes would begin with her—the head. 89

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Since the commission had named her the state librarian in part because she was the only person who would accept the job for the salary, she said she was willing to return to her old position of assistant state librarian whenever the legislature increased the state librarian’s pay so as to attract “a capable and qualified administrator.” No sooner had she finished speaking than the commission voted unanimously to request $4,000 to increase by two-thirds the state librarian’s salary, which had been raised to $2,400 in 1939. “Why on earth didn’t you all [TLA] simply go to the Commission and say: ‘Please, Commissioners, the library welfare of this state deserves a firstclass State Librarian’?” Virginia Gambrell asked some TLA members when she joined the commission in 1944. “We thought if we got an objective, authoritative outside body, like the American Library Association to study the situation, their report of how bad conditions were could not fail to bring action from the Commission,” the librarians replied. “It is quite a commentary on the intensity of the librarians’ belief that something had to be done,” Gambrell remarked, “that they raised $1500 to pay for the survey. This is a lot of money to an underpaid profession.”46 With the most sensitive part of the meeting behind them, the commission and the TLA committee turned to the rest of the report, which called for fixes to the nearly innumerable failures its authors pointed out. Little needed to be said regarding changes in legislation because, as Wilcox should not have had to note for the commission, the report recommended nothing beyond pursuing the changes on which the two groups already were at work. Failures internal to the agency, such as those related to staff, the commission alone had to handle. All the rest—reorganizing the agency and adding every function the ALA model identified as appropriate to a comprehensive state library—they could discuss only in principle. On the one hand, as Wilcox had written in her five-page letter, “The comparison made by the investigators to the service which is being rendered by the Texas State Library to the people of this State and the idealism evolved by the American Library Association is, under the conditions which the Commission and the Library staff are required to work, academic and of little present value.”47 She was right. The state’s political leaders, in the 102 years since the Congress voted to create a national library for the Republic, never had aspired to treat their constituents to the benefits of a leading government library; the not-now-and-not-at-this-cost mentality of appropriations had sunk Texas to the bottom one-third of states in support of the state library for as long as statistics had been kept. To think that the state library’s failure to deliver additional services resulted primarily from a failure of forward-looking leadership—more than from resources so consistently strangled that the agency’s poverty smothered vision—simply ignored 90

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the handicaps under which the state library labored. On the other hand, making these changes lay beyond the capability of the commission and TLA together to achieve. They required new funding—substantial new funding. Though TLA offered to help however it could, the commission apparently retreated into the defeatist attitude of which Lester and Noon had written, and shrank. No member moved to approach the Board of Control (which vetted all agency requests) and through it the legislature and governor for more than the $4,000 of salary. The meeting then closed with a discussion of how to present the report to state library staff and the library community.48 Happily, the legislature boosted the commission’s budget, but rather than permitting it to enhance the state librarian’s salary, Wilcox distributed it among her underpaid staff members. Librarians in TLA were flabbergasted. What happened, librarians knowledgeable of the history later recounted, was that “‘we had spent $1500 to get Miss Wilcox’s salary raised.’ They feel that Miss Wilcox’s agreeing in advance [to step aside as state librarian] and then fighting the recommendations with the Commission wasn’t quite cricket.”49 No one outside of the library community knew of the devastating picture painted by Lester and Noon. Publicity of the report was minimal, positive, and totally silent on problems of the agency and its governing body. “The Survey recommended an expanded program for the library which would primarily depend upon an increased library budget” was all that the commission’s biennial report told readers. Those who turned to TLA president Julia Grothaus’ description in TLA’s April News Notes found a longer but substantively similar description. All that she added, and then only in her very last sentence, was that the commission was seeking “the services of a state library director or librarian qualified to carry out the planned expanded State Library program.”50 Gauged by the changes that did not happen—by Lester and Noon’s recommendations ignored—these two accounts predicted the foreseeable future. The Texas State Library continued to run much as it had been. Neither Wilcox nor Journeay were relieved of their duties; the agency was not reorganized to add a Readers’ Division or in any other significant manner; the extension director continued to work with virtually no staff and to wear out her own automobile as she traveled in considerable measure at her own expense; no sweeping new legislation was passed; no rules were established to govern the functioning of the commission; truly new services were not added, since new money was not appropriated to the agency; and state aid was not provided sufficient to change Texas’ ranking relative to other states. Spending priorities, changed by the outbreak of World War II, accounted 91

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in part for the difficulty Wilcox and the commission faced in 1943 when attempting to secure an adequate budget. In 1943, Wilcox did hit briefly on a new approach when she noted how, by using federal documents held by the state library, the state comptroller and the attorney general had recovered $97,589.78 in delinquent taxes (two and a half times the library’s annual budget) and increased annual state revenue by $41,000 ($3,000 more than the library’s annual budget) for the foreseeable future. Money spent on the state library thus realized a measurable return. Moreover, citizens personally appreciated the state library’s service, a fact she emphasized (especially after the Lester-Noon survey) by loading the agency’s biennial report with quotations from letters of appreciation. The single success she had with salaries came that year when the legislature restored one Depression-shriveled salary to its 1933 level.51 Along with affecting the budget, supporting the war changed the nature of state library activities for the duration of the conflict. Wilcox assumed direction of the Victory Book Campaign for Texas and served as state director of ALA’s Institutes on War and Postwar Issues to help Americans realize “what libraries can do to encourage and assist the American people to read and think about” matters of public importance.52 But clearly, if lasting material change were to occur, it would have to come from the commission. The shift began on February 9, 1942, when the governing body elected a new chair—the first in twenty-one years. Lawyerturned-pastor Edmund Heinsohn of Austin succeeded Emma Kyle Burleson, who had died in June 1941. Heinsohn’s election ended a continuity of leadership that had extended over two-thirds of the commission’s life. Because of the demands of his ministry to Austin’s substantial University Methodist Church congregation, Heinsohn’s selection also ended the chair’s mother-hen management of the agency. For two years, until Heinsohn relinquished the chair to John Gould, the change seems to have given Wilcox a freer hand in directing the affairs of the agency than she ever had enjoyed. When forty-four-year-old Wichita Falls newspaper columnist John Gould accepted a seat on the commission in 1937, his was one of those appointments Lester and Noon had censured because the appointee had no idea why he had been selected. To Wilcox’s first letter to him, Gould replied: “I appreciate your letter, even though it still leaves me in the dark as to why I was chosen, and what is expected of me.” The only rationale he could imagine was that “I have always been a book-lover and as such have been interested in libraries.” Librarians who knew him expected him to take a particular interest in the Extension Division. More than for support of one activity alone, Gould quickly 92

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became invaluable as an articulate spokesman for the commission and the state library.53 In seconding Gould’s nomination as chair on August 28, 1944—the first action of her first meeting—new member Virginia Leddy Gambrell signaled that she meant to participate fully in commission affairs. Her friend in Texas history circles, Lou Kemp, evidently expected it, as he moved for her (successful) election as secretary. Reappointed to the commission three years earlier by his friend Governor Coke Stevenson, Kemp had secured Gambrell’s appointment as well. Gambrell wasted no time establishing herself, often in tandem with Kemp, at the center of commission activity. The two secured agreement of their colleagues to meet quarterly and to adopt by-laws, the drafting of which commission chair Gould assigned to her. At thirty-four years of age, Gambrell was the youngest member of the commission, but judging by her letters, buttressed by her distinction as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate, she also was easily the most meticulous, thorough, and resolute. In preparation for her first meeting, she had done her homework— she had studied the Lester-Noon report and had talked with librarians about conditions in the state library. To the commission she brought “experience as an archivist, interest in libraries, and willingness to work for better service to the people of Texas,” TLA’s News Notes told the state’s librarians. It could have added that her library experience had been management while in graduate school six years earlier of the periodical collection at Southern Methodist University. What it should have said was that her experience and erudition exceeded that ordinary of board appointees. As the first archivist of the Dallas Historical Society, she had been responsible for the state’s most prized documents of the Revolution and Republic periods sent from the state archives to the Hall of State in Dallas for exhibit during the state’s centennial celebration in 1936. More than that, she and director Herbert P. Gambrell, whom she subsequently married, had raised the Dallas Historical Society from a file of manuscripts to a civic institution of vital influence. At the time of her appointment to the commission, Gambrell was serving on the councils of both the American Association for State and Local History and the Society of American Archivists. For the latter she chaired the Committee on Filing Equipment. Finally, Gambrell liked to write. Stories and poetry of hers had appeared in the widely circulated Saturday Evening Post. To the commission, a body worn down by lack of resources and thus long used to doing little more than going along to get along, Virginia Gambrell brought a new precision and resolve to deliver the service required of it.54 When the commission took up the budget, Gambrell and Kemp led their 93

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colleagues in taking only their second real action to effect the recommendations of the Lester-Noon report. Arguing, as she later wrote, that the Texas State Library “is one of the sorriest institutions of its kind in the country,”55 the tandem moved to eliminate the position of director of extension, effective January 1, 1945. The action killed two birds with one stone. First, it severed Journeay from the state library, as Lester and Noon had recommended. Second, by combining the director’s salary with that of the state librarian, the commission could, without recourse to the legislature, realize a single salary sufficient to attract a strong administrator. Nothing that occurred during her first commission meeting disabused Gambrell of her opinion that Lester and Noon were right in their assessment of Fannie Wilcox as state librarian. Gambrell held Wilcox in such low esteem that it was to legislative reference librarian Doris Connerly—not Wilcox— she turned for readings and insight into “what really happens in legislative matters.” Wilcox’s proposal to retain outgoing extension director Journeay by transferring her into the assistant librarian and cataloger position did not help. Two days after Wilcox wrote proposing the move, Gambrell shot back that she disapproved of keeping Journeay in any capacity. Finding the commission split, Wilcox approached the uncommitted Kemp. Though four years earlier she personally had urged him to seek reappointment, he sided with Gambrell and voted against Journeay’s hiring. Recognizing that she had lost the confidence of the commission, Wilcox resigned as state librarian, effective December 31, 1944.56 Gambrell rejoiced. Being able to fill the top two positions with individuals who could set high standards for the staff would upgrade the library faster than she had dared hope possible. Her euphoria was brief, as Wilcox shortly rescinded her resignation. Then, no sooner had it been arranged for Wilcox to become assistant librarian than she qualified the condition under which she would stay on. Though Gambrell had been warned of this pattern of “agreement followed by every effort to block the move,” Wilcox had her way. Two days before Christmas 1944, to end the matter so that the commission could get on to other business, Gambrell joined the majority in retaining Wilcox as state librarian. Despite the glaring fact that Wilcox lacked the education required for the position, Gambrell and the commission simply had no alternative. That would be the last time, if Gambrell had her way. “I do not intend ever again,” she vowed to her colleagues, “to be found in a position where I have no practical alternative to propose in a situation of this sort.”57 Fannie Wilcox changing her position about resigning was only the half of it. While that festered, Gambrell was jolted to read the final recommendation in Wilcox’s draft of the 1942–1944 biennial report: 94

The Final Wilcox Years, 1 9 35 – 1 94 5 The position of Director of Extension was abolished by the Texas Library and Historical Commission. . . . Now, when the library movement throughout the United States is toward strengthening the state library agencies, it is indeed a backward step for the state agency of Texas, the Texas State Library, to be weakened by having the position of Director of Extension eliminated. The State Librarian recommends that the Legislature makes provision for the Director of Extension in the budget for the next biennium.58

At best, the state librarian had failed to understand the reason for the commission’s action in abolishing the position; at worst, this was rank insubordination. By law the commission, not the state librarian, Gambrell reminded Wilcox and commission members, was charged with formulating the recommendations. Wilcox replied that for all the biennia she had held the job the commission had approved presenting recommendations as she had done it. Be that as it may, the commission followed Gambrell: changes were made and the report was filed without the rebellious request to the legislature to fund the position.59 Because of what Gambrell called “a disposition to misguide the Commission, . . . [which] puts an unnecessary burden on us to determine accurate facts when we ought to be able to count on the staff to give us accurate and unbiased information,”60 the commission’s relationship with Wilcox continued to deteriorate. Wilcox’s trip to Dallas at the end of December in a desperate bid to persuade Gambrell to reverse her opposition to keeping Journeay on the staff not only failed but backfired as a result of Gambrell’s sharing her reaction with her colleagues. Then, in April, the commission interrupted an otherwise tranquil meeting to discuss Wilcox’s appearance before the Senate Finance Committee without her having informed the commission beforehand, much less obtaining its authorization.61 At the end of May 1945 the commission received the good news for which it had been asking. Under the careful and timely tending of Lou Kemp, the legislature had increased the state librarian’s salary to $5,000. And to the members’ complete surprise, the legislature overlooked the commission’s action to eliminate the extension director position and continued it at $2,000. Though Gould grumbled, thinking Wilcox “has been meddling in the matter,” the commission shortly realized that the legislature had done them a favor in giving the state library both the enhanced state librarian’s salary and the position it had tried to eliminate only in order to cannibalize its salary.62 The commission at last had the full salary it needed to recruit a man—a 95

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man—distinguished and tested to lead the agency. Gambrell was relieved. “We have not looked into the possibilities of qualified women librarians in Texas,” she had observed a few months earlier while pondering how the commission might proceed if the legislature did not appropriate the larger salary, “because we wanted something more ambitious for the Library.” To her mind in that case, “it would be a very desirable arrangement if we could find a woman who would be interested in accepting the position of Acting State Librarian with the understanding that the Commission intended to continue its efforts to get $4000 and that if and when this effort was successful, she would be agreeable to becoming Assistant Librarian.”63 With the commission able to recruit actively, events began to move with deliberate speed. During its July 1945 meeting, the commission accepted Fannie Wilcox’s resignation as state librarian and returned her to the assistant librarian position she held eighteen years earlier before becoming acting state librarian. Wilcox had guided the state library for nearly two decades, overseeing the work of the new library organizer, successfully battling attempts to dismantle the library, holding her ground against the new Bureau of Records, and directing ALA wartime efforts in Texas. She had outlasted the controversy surrounding her in the aftermath of the Lester-Noon report. But ultimately, her inadequate qualifications caught up with her. With Gambrell campaigning against her, Wilcox finally yielded to the need for a better-paid, better-trained administrator. Before the end of August the commission announced the five finalists it would interview for the position of state librarian. If the members thought that few outside the library community cared whom they selected, they learned otherwise when they received Austin attorney Worth Ray’s letter of protest. None of the finalists were Texans. He could see “[no] necessity of going outside the State of Texas to find an ordinary Librarian to take charge.” An outsider steeped only in library education made it worse. “I have been a regular patron of the State Library for FORTY YEARS and I think it is all ‘poppycock’ to assume that any person familiar with literature and books, as thousands of people are nowadays, can not successfully handle this business. . . . PLEASE get somebody with less training and more genteel manners and courtesy of the Texas type,” he ranted.64 By the end of September, the commission had made its choice. The sixth state librarian of Texas would be Francis Harold Henshaw. A native of Indiana and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Occidental College, Henshaw had begun his library career as an assistant in the Los Angeles Public Library before earning his master’s degree from the Columbia University’s School of Library Service, the nation’s oldest library school.65 Introducing Henshaw to 96

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the librarians of Texas, John Gould wrote in News Notes: “The fact that he has accepted a job so difficult attests his possession of the quality known in polite circles as intestinal fortitude.” More specifically, Gould summarized the new man’s qualifications as “experience, considerable; aggressiveness, plenty; gumption, abundant; habits, pretty good; looks, strictly low middling to middling.” Humor aside, Gould expected that Henshaw would “in due time challenge library-minded Texans to make Texas library facilities one more thing for Texas to brag about instead of something to change the subject from.”66 Gould and his colleagues on the commission likely recognized that securing the active support of library-minded Texans was but one, and not even the most critical, component of the work that lay before the best-educated professional librarian to head the agency in twenty years, since Elizabeth West. That critical component was managing in a government environment all four of the obviously related but clearly distinct functions of the state library: • A circulating library for agencies of state government and for particular constituencies such as the blind • A legislative reference service for the public and especially legislators, offering both resources and research on matters of public interest in Texas and other jurisdictions • Archival management of the priceless and increasingly rapidly growing body of historically valuable records, the duties of which included the specialized history work of documentary editing and publishing • An extension library service providing information, consultation, and direct aid in support of public libraries

None of Henshaw’s background—neither his most recent job at the Berkshire Athenaeum, the public library of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, nor his experience teaching in the library school from which he had graduated—prepared him for this challenge. The challenge came primarily from outside the agency, and particularly from the very supporters Gould expected Henshaw to mobilize. These were the librarians who increasingly considered archives and legislative reference as competitors for both the commission’s attention and the agency’s scarce dollars. Ignited by the 1933 proposal to absorb the state library into the University of Texas library and, most startling, to exterminate the library extension work altogether, the library community recognized the importance of influencing legislation—from the state library’s budget to laws affecting the creation and 97

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support of public libraries around the state. The librarians of TLA four years later, in 1937, avowed the importance of investing in both a paid staff and a lobbyist to organize and advance their interests in regard to state government. The value of seeking to place appointees on the commission sympathetic to their interests did not escape them either. And appreciating the importance of numbers, the librarians originated the People’s Library Movement to give private individuals an organization through which to amplify their call for state contributions to library service in their communities. Francis Henshaw would have the increasingly muscular support of the library community of Texas to propel his initiatives. With the principal interest of the librarians being the extension library function of his agency, he would need to manage and channel this support to prevent it from distorting the attention he gave to all of his agency’s missions under the law. In light of the history of the commission in calling on TLA to stand up for it in opposing or supporting legislation, and TLA starting to realize the need to perform a publicity function for the agency—even to publicizing Henshaw’s arrival67— his challenge was real. With the historians and archivists, the challenge was exactly the opposite. This group had no broad goals and no motivation comparable to those of the librarians. When they took any interest at all, they expressed it for the Archives Division alone, and not for the agency as a whole. One reason was that the number of archives and thus of archivists could be counted on a single person’s fingers and toes, and they were concentrated on a few university campuses, not in multiple communities across the state. In contrast to the American Library Association of sixty-nine years, the archival community had organized on the national level in 1936, only nine years before Henshaw’s appointment. No state association of archivists existed (or does yet in 2009). The principal reason, though, was that the archival energy of Eugene Barker and his fellow historians—professional and avocational—dating from the turn of the century had been snuffed out by the odious political despotism of the Ferguson years. When they considered even only the state archives component of the state library, the historians thought just in terms of the resources there for their use. Whereas the librarians were galvanized by the threat of elimination in the 1933 proposal, the historians, with no past concern over legislation, had no real motivation to oppose the bill. If enacted, it would bring the archival resources of the state and the university into physical proximity, which for the historians was a clear benefit. Unquestionably, the one time they collectively took an interest in the state archives as a function of the state library, in 1937, the historians offered not to advocate for larger and appropriate space for the state library but only to move the archives and its 98

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archivist to a location more convenient to them—to the university, in effect achieving the move proposed in 1933. Simply put, the historians left the archival function of state government with no advocacy group comparable to that of the librarians for the extension function. This development could seem strange given that commission member Lou Kemp, state librarian Fannie Wilcox, and regular user of the archives Harbert Davenport all were active in the history community by serving on the governing council of the Texas State Historical Association, Davenport and Kemp even serving as president. But unlike the librarians, Davenport and Kemp, among others of the historians, were well connected personally with state leaders, a circumstance that probably led them to see no need for organizational lobbying.68 Even so, history, as any historian of the Texas State Library could have observed, could be a powerful force in Texas to rally both the powers that be and the rank-and-file citizens. Numbers were not the measure of the weight of the historian and archival community. Henshaw would discover this to his regret if he treated the community cavalierly. The new librarian’s challenge came, too, from political leaders who, from failing to inform themselves of existing law, or in pursuit of their pet projects, or for spite, were not above trying to take the state library apart as suited their needs. They had demonstrated this once in proposing to dismember the state library by splitting off legislative reference to become a function of the legislature and combining the remainder with the university library. They had demonstrated it again in passing the measure that created the Bureau of Records in the Board of Control, which, as Richard Burges plainly pointed out, flatly contradicted laws long on the books. They had demonstrated it two other times in pushing to eliminate the extension library function altogether. Even consultants Clarence Lester and Paul Noon referred to the challenge of heading the Texas State Library in their none-too-subtle suggestion that the agency’s problems lay in the enabling statute that combined the library and history functions of government in a single agency. Finally, the challenge could come even from within—from commission members who flexed whatever strength they perceived to have brought them to their seat at the table.69 In developing “the expanded program” that both the commission and the librarians of TLA had been speaking about for five years and that he had been selected as the “capable administrator” and “person of vision and enthusiasm” to establish, Francis Henshaw would need all of the intestinal fortitude, aggressiveness, gumption, and vision that commission chair John Gould and the other commission members saw in him. 99

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“Th e re A re Ma n y H u rdl e s to J u mp b e f o re t h e R ac e Is Wo n — If It Is Wo n” The Henshaw Years, 1946–1950

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onday, February 18, 1946, was the kind of day the Texas Library and Historical Commission and the personnel of the Texas State Library that it governed had known just twice before. Only in its first meeting thirty-seven years earlier had the commission convened in an air of expectation equal to the anticipation that electrified the atmosphere on that February morning when it met for the first time with its new state librarian, Francis H. Henshaw. During the interview process, the commission had impressed on Henshaw that, with its three main divisions of general state library service (including extension work), archives and history, and legislative reference, the Texas State Library served a broader mandate than most other state libraries. Henshaw had impressed the commission in return with his forceful and enthusiastic response that he “saw the position as a challenge.” This Monday the commission would find out how he envisioned meeting that challenge. Only when Elizabeth West had voiced her plan for the Texas State Library twenty-eight years earlier had a state librarian laid before the commission any long-term blueprint for the agency’s future. But exceeding West’s, the program Henshaw sketched delineated steps by which he intended to meet the obligation of the commission to provide “a State Library more nearly commensurate with the prestige and dignity of a great State.” Henshaw laid down four broad goals on which he intended to work not just in 1946, or even throughout the present biennium, but into 1949. First, he would formulate and work to secure from his first legislative session a year hence a budget appropriate for the agency to fulfill the requirements of its statutes. Adding staff would be a significant part of it. Additional personnel in legislative reference, for example, would permit the division to offer the bill-drafting service “as may be asked” (but never had been) in the 1909 statute. The cost of the increase, he pointed out in so many words, would be less than the $20,000 the legislature wasted in the previous biennium by mistakenly scheduling

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two statewide elections within two days. Though his budget for the agency in the growing economic boom following World War II would far more than double the present appropriation of $38,750, for political purposes he would keep it to only five figures. Second, in the wake of a job analysis and time study conducted with the assistance of the state auditor, he would carry out a thorough reorganization of the agency’s divisional structure, procedures, and premises. No aspect of the agency’s operation—neither forms for expediting work nor telephone and buzzer systems nor lock arrangements—was too small for his notice. Third, in cooperation with TLA, he would initiate a study of the library laws of Texas with the goal of achieving their complete revision in 1949 in his second legislative session. Knowing that he could accomplish these three only with vigorous assistance from individuals and organizations around the state, the final point of his plan called for building a statewide base of support for the agency. To launch the work, in his first year he would employ a director of extension, and he would revive Texas Libraries, suspended a year earlier, to report news of the state library’s extension work and otherwise rival TLA’s News Notes in offering news of Texas libraries and librarians. He planned to reestablish the placement clearinghouse and to request a sum from the governor with which to begin right away his own newspaper microfilming program. And for the first time in the commission’s history, he would send the members monthly reports.1 Henshaw won over the commission again. Virginia Gambrell, who had moved to hire him, could hardly praise highly enough the plan of the state librarian of but two weeks. Concluding the day’s meeting, she led the commission in expressing “its appreciation and commendation of the intelligent, creative, and progressive program for reorganization.”2 When Henshaw sent the commission his five-figure operating budget of $99,960 in July, the members approved but counseled their state librarian in the fine points of the budget procedure in Texas. Significant barriers lay ahead, Lou Kemp had told him in front of the expectant librarians assembled for TLA’s annual meeting in April. First, the Board of Control could be counted on to slash the request submitted by the agency. Privately, commission chair Gould warned that presenting a budget in which every dollar was essential “would be bucking practice and precedent,” and he proposed submitting an increased figure that would give the board $30,000—basically one-quarter of the larger total—to cut. Henshaw resisted. Obtaining the proposed amount was possible, he responded, pointing out that in the current biennium the state auditor had been given the large increase he had requested. And if the inflated amount were appropriated, the state library would lack the staff to 101

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spend it properly, he added. After the Board of Control, Kemp explained, came the legislature’s appropriation committees. They “‘save money for the state’ by additional pruning,” the diplomatic Kemp allowed himself to comment sarcastically. Finally, though the present governor had smiled on the agency, the next one might not. All should know, Kemp summed up ominously, that “there are many hurdles to jump before the race is won—if it is won.” Kemp’s last four words likely were missed by most in the librarian audience on that happy occasion of meeting the new state librarian, but those who noted them may have pondered how they portended the future.3 From their first meeting with Henshaw, the librarians responded warmly. His proposal that groups wanting to establish library service in the sparsely settled Trans-Pecos region of West Texas work together to fashion a cooperative program struck such a responsive chord that county judges, ministers, school superintendents, and representatives of service clubs among others came to presentations he made in August. With authority to appoint an acting head of extension, he persuaded Bexar County librarian and TLA leader Juanima Wells to take a leave of absence and a cut in pay to spend a month visiting the far West Texas region to develop a plan for creating the regional association. Henshaw was delighted. Beyond providing library service where none had existed, the project would serve as a model. Rusk County librarian Mary Louise Giraud and Nueces County librarian and TLA president Katherine Ard volunteered to conduct similar work in Northeast and South Texas, respectively. Pleased all the more, Henshaw confided to the commission that he hoped to find among the three a head for the Extension Division. By no means did Henshaw leave all the extension work to others. Interested in a proposed national Library Demonstration Bill, he worked on the Texas Committee advising ALA’s new National Relations Office, established to monitor legislation concerning libraries. For commission chair Gould, Henshaw sketched a plan to develop the Rotary Club library in Gould’s hometown of Wichita Falls to appeal to boys and girls. During the summer and early fall, the new state librarian traveled to North, East, and SouthCentral Texas. By the end of the year, any observer could see that Henshaw was succeeding in developing the solid network of support he had envisioned. The amicable relations reached a pinnacle in April 1947, when TLA enacted Elizabeth West’s proposal to add the Texas state librarian ex officio to the group’s Executive Committee, and TLA’s president appointed him to the standing committee on legislation.4 If, as Henshaw declared to the commission, the greatest difficulty in his job was “the pressures of the Urgent and the Important which complicate 102

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the task of preventing absorption with the Urgent from corralling the time and energies that should be devoted to the Important,” he was balancing the two well. Even before Henshaw met with the commission for the first time as state librarian, he had begun work on the revolution he conceived he was bringing to Texas libraries in general and to the Texas State Library in particular—the use of microfilm to resolve long-standing and previously insoluble problems. Since microfilm began to be used in libraries in the 1930s to reduce the volume of long runs of newspapers, Henshaw had been interested in it. With microfilm, he knew authoritatively, the state library could rid itself of “the horrible mass of newspapers now clogging our storage areas.” Could the state library spend on microfilming newspapers money appropriated for binding? he asked the attorney general in early spring, hoping to realize a sum with which to begin his microfilm work right away. No, the attorney general replied in April 1946—the word “binding” in the 1909 statute meant physical binding. “A typical horse-and-buggy decision,” Henshaw grumbled to a colleague, as he protested fruitlessly to the attorney general that since “microfilming is superior to binding as a means of preservation the intent of the Legislature will be carried out by microfilming.”5 Though frustrated, Henshaw was not about to let this ruling on thirtyseven-year-old wording detour or slow him from proceeding to secure the centerpiece of his microfilm program—a microfilm laboratory in the state library. The technology of microfilming, young in library and archival applications, offered multiple advantages, he said. Preservation was one. By bringing together and filming complete runs of newspapers (more complete than any one library held), the state library could enlarge its resources. Moreover, any library then could acquire the complete run, which would have been impossible otherwise. J. S. Ibbotson, the director of Galveston’s public Rosenberg Library and TLA past president, approved and encouraged Henshaw to establish a cooperative arrangement among the state’s libraries to microfilm Texas newspapers.6 What microfilming could do for newspapers, it could do for records too, Henshaw reasoned. Once secured on film, voluminous runs of physical records could be destroyed. Henshaw broadened his goal to include obtaining legislative authority for all government agencies to use microfilm to manage their records. The first two agencies to receive that legislative authority had obtained it the year before, 1945. If the agency-by-agency trend continued and if the agencies used the authority not just to film but also to destroy records on their own initiative, then the state archives would be crippled. Henshaw meant to thwart that objectionable prospect by centralizing the work in the state library. The Board of Control and the state auditor encour103

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aged him. Buoyed, he wrote Ibbotson in mid-April that bringing his idea into reality “should not be too difficult to achieve.”7 Archivist Virginia Gambrell applauded using microfilm to create more complete runs and to reduce the space occupied by newspapers. She endorsed it for the combined benefit of preservation of information of continuing value in repetitive kinds of records (such as forms on which only the contributed information changed) and space saving resulting from destroying those originals after filming. Centralizing the microfilming activity in the state library, she wrote Henshaw and Kemp, offered the added benefit of putting their agency in the elegant position of being able to demonstrate that it was saving storage costs for state government broadly. “I started this letter yesterday and meant to make it lots longer and include no less than 20,000 arguments in favor of [the] proposition of the State Library being the general state agency for record preservation by micro-film,” Gambrell ended the missive playfully, “but want to make today’s mail[,] so you all just argue with yourselves for me.”8 On July 23, 1946, state librarian Henshaw unveiled his handiwork when to each commission member individually, rather than in a routine memorandum to all, he sent the draft of the microfilming bill on which he had been laboring almost from the day he occupied the state librarian’s chair. It was not what they expected. Rather than a microfilming laboratory in the state library as discussed in February, the proposed measure would create a State Records Board composed of the chair of the Board of Control, the attorney general, and the state librarian to provide for making photographic reproductions of departmental records in a laboratory established at the discretion of the Board of Control. Records on film could be designated as originals and introduced as evidence. The original hard-copy records could then be transferred to another agency (the state library, he intended) or destroyed as the agency head saw fit. The measure was needed, the preamble affirmed, because the volume of agency records had exceeded agency storage space, because filming would save records from destruction by improper agency housing, and because spending $100,000 establishing a filming program, which the bill authorized, would eliminate the need to spend ten times that for a records storage building. The bill concluded with the standard language that laws in conflict would be repealed.9 This was no hastily drawn measure, Henshaw told commission members. He had developed it in consultation with the state auditor, the Board of Control, the state comptroller, and the Department of Education. He had had legislative reference librarian Doris Connerly draft it in proper bill form to 104

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assure its legal correctness. All four departments had approved the Connerly draft. The good news did not stop there. Board of Control chair Hall Logan was so pleased with the measure that he had spoken to the governor about placing the bill on the agenda of the special legislative session due to convene in September 1946. Henshaw reminded commission members that while he could have designed something to meet the specific needs of the state library alone, he had thought it advisable “to seek a program which would meet the needs of all departments.” Still better, “you will note that the State Library will have its microfilming done by the State Records Board without cost to the Library, thus releasing for other uses funds in our proposed appropriation.” “I trust that this proposed action meets with your approval and that you will give it your earnest support if and when it comes before the Legislature,” he concluded sanguinely while dutifully asking for suggestions they might have.10 When Gambrell read the bill, far from being impressed by Henshaw’s industry in developing it, she was appalled. The bill as she saw it created a separate and competing state archives. It replaced the state librarian’s right of what she called “custodial demand”—the right in the law to demand and receive records—with a board of which the state librarian was but a single member. It allowed agency heads to decide the disposition of records they filmed, and it permitted the new State Records Board or any agency of government to take custody of the records of another, rather than requiring them to go to the state archives.11 Gambrell was uncompromising in her belief that the “State Archives should be the record custodial agency of a State, that . . . any encroachment into the proper sphere of the State Archives should be combated” (emphasis hers).12 Henshaw’s bill thrust the management of agency records before they reached the archival stage of their life—before they had served the purpose for which they were created—not just onto, but to the top of, the agenda of the Texas Library and Historical Commission. Archives and records were archivist Gambrell’s domain. To improve the handling of agency records and the position of the state archives for securing that portion of government records that belonged in it was the reason she had wanted to be on the commission. Consequently, Henshaw’s bill, in particular the proposed new board, provoked what to her was “the most important issue with which the Commission has ever been confronted.” She rose to lead commission action on it. She had to, because the new state librarian, in her opinion, had wandered from the application of microfilm, the technical procedures of which he had considerable knowledge, into trying “to write legislation for . . . a field that he doesn’t know beans about.” What he saw as a microfilm problem, she rec105

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ognized as a records management problem. In that light, what Henshaw’s bill actually established was merely some components—but not a complete program—of records management for Texas government. In a nutshell, “his idea of the solution to Texas record problems is to subject all existent records to a microfilm blitz and discard the originals.” For that she would not stand.13 Records management, or records administration as it was also called, was an endeavor so nascent in 1946 that practitioners had yet to settle on the name for it. It was so new that the National Archives of the United States, which pioneered in developing the techniques and procedures of records management, had set up the very first records management program only five years earlier in 1941. The field had emerged from the struggle of the eleven-year-old National Archives to gain control over the several million cubic feet of central government records that had been accumulating since before the American Revolution. Records management had developed out of the need to establish procedures for the disposition of those records that either (a) lacked enduring value and did not belong in the archives or (b) contained valuable information but were too bulky to keep economically in their original paper form. Microfilming and subsequent destruction of the paper permitted preserving the information in far less space. As Gambrell instructed Henshaw, microphotography was an important element, but only one element, of records management, the three components being (1) disposal without microfilming, (2) preservation of certain classes of records in original form without microfilming, and (3) microfilming and subsequent destruction of certain other classes of records. In that third component, the microfilming work actually was the least intellectually demanding element. Capturing a disordered condition on film merely froze “a remediable condition into an unremediable form.”14 Organization of records before filming and then creation of finding aids sufficiently broad and meticulously accurate were the more important functions of records management. Worse than being incomplete as a records management bill, the proposed measure did not lodge its functions within the state library. “With the best of intentions and a logical mind, he has set up a program which inadvertently has the effect of transferring to another agency responsibilities now legally, if inoperatively [i.e., not being exercised], vested in the Commission and giving the agency other responsibilities which do not now legally vest in our Archives but which no state should set up in any place other than its Archival Agency,” Gambrell told her colleagues on the commission.15 That Henshaw had engaged so many state leaders before consulting his own commission deepened Gambrell’s distress. It was bad enough that without even a hint to the commission he had developed something so differ106

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ent from what he had talked about in February. But the contacts with state leaders meant that the commission must “handle things so as not to damage their [the state officials’] opinion that they are dealing with an ‘expert’, which they are, when he is in the Library field.”16 Gambrell blamed herself. She had been enthusiastic about the state library’s being designated the microphotographic agency of the state. But it never entered her mind “that any plan which set up a new bureau would be considered, nor that it would be contemplated that micro-photography become the exclusive method of record preservation, accompanied by the dangerous empowerment of state officials to destroy original records.”17 To Henshaw, the new board would solve practical problems and, in so doing, strengthen the state library’s position in the management of agency records. Under the current law, any dispute between the state librarian and an agency head over custody of records would be resolved by the attorney general. The board would take that authority from the single state official and give the state librarian a hand in the decision. Endowing it with “opportunity to review and pass upon the disposition [of ] all records of all state departments,” his State Records Board would wrest control from the Bureau of Records of agency records that the state library had not yet been able to absorb. It would replace the present system of diplomatic negotiation for records, which thwarted the law by permitting agency heads to exercise the final decision whether to send records to the state archives. In so doing, it would fully empower the state archives to secure records of enduring value. In practical terms, the bill centralized control of records by stopping the establishment of any more agency microfilm programs. In determining the feasibility of stopping these and accomplishing centralization, Henshaw had had to talk with selected state leaders. And the conversations already had borne fruit: the state comptroller had shelved plans to begin using microfilm to reduce the volume of stored records. The records Henshaw thought appropriate to be preserved on film were all those on paper that would deteriorate from its acidic chemistry—that is, which would become too brittle to handle—the growing bulk of twentieth-century records. In the final analysis, in Henshaw’s view, the bill “merely sets up an administrative procedure whereby the policies of the Commission may be more adequately carried out.”18 When the commission met on September 9, 1946, the members favored Henshaw’s structure on the one hand and Gambrell’s insistence on the other that any structure be administered under the state library. After his proposal for bringing the two together failed to win approval in the commission’s December meeting, Henshaw gave in.19 In short order, he modified his original plan into the creation of a Records Management Division within the state 107

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library to provide microfilming, thus centralizing the filing and maintenance of agency records. With the start of the legislative session nearing and commission members conscious of Henshaw’s admonition that if the state library did not stake its position with regard to agency microfilming programs, the number of them likely would grow beyond the possibility of the state library ever to centralize them under its control, the commission approved the new plan.20 The commission and its state librarian had high hopes in the spring of 1947 that the legislature would encourage their efforts through both authorizations and appropriations. They had used the 1944–1946 biennial report to lay the foundation. The commission’s introduction told readers that “a happy chance had assembled a very knotty problem [—‘that the Texas State Library is one of the poorest State Libraries in the country’—] and a man who had the capacity to cope with it.”21 Henshaw demonstrated that capacity in the state librarian’s report that followed, which Virginia Gambrell, a stickler for dotting every i and crossing every t, called “splendidly thought out.”22 He printed it on slick paper, presenting a more polished appearance than that of any of its predecessors, and he included pictures illustrating, as all the words through all the years could not, the cramped quarters and difficult working conditions. One startling image showed a slight Marguerite Hester with one foot planted on the very top of a six-foot ladder and the other on the edge of a wooden shelf, using both hands to haul down a bound volume of newspapers weighing nearly a third as much as she herself. He quoted the reports of division directors whose names, unlike his, were familiar around the capitol, describing what they had accomplished; what for lack of funding, staff, and space they had been unable to accomplish; and why their services bettered the state. In wording such as “the greatest waste in the State Library is that of time and energy brought about by the crowded and inconvenient conditions” (which, whether or not he knew it, repeated verbatim Fannie Wilcox’s statement to the legislative investigating committee in 1932), he continued the incessant cry of the state library. At the same time, under subtitles such as “Heritage of Texas,” “Books and Information for Texans,” and “Libraries for Texans,” and in crisp, numbered points, Henshaw’s report conveyed a sense of urgency and of the contribution of the agency in service to the state. He closed by listing the steps of his three-year plan adopted by the commission in February.23 The commission wanted four things from the legislature beyond the operating budget (which, as commission chair Gould had so accurately warned, the Board of Control had whittled down by slightly more than one-quarter, eliminating Henshaw’s prized library demonstration unit): $206,000 to reno108

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vate and reorganize the library’s quarters and to establish the microfilm program, authorization to establish a Records Management Division, space at least for the state archives in a new state courts and office building, and a $200,000 appropriation recommended by the governor to fund extension work. Early progress cheered Henshaw. The legislature’s pre-session Budget Committee had approved (by an uncomfortably narrow 7–6 vote) a budget nearly four times that ever awarded the agency. By keeping contact with legislative sponsors during the session and obeying the warning of the committee hearing the extension request “to keep librarians, as such, much in the background,” Henshaw in the estimation of commission chair Kemp, seconded by the library community, “did a remarkable promotion job and accomplished far more than I thought possible.” But in late April, Henshaw saw ominously that “the Legislature’s discovery that it probably has made appropriations far beyond estimated revenue, and the seeming reluctance of the Governor and the Senate to levy needed taxes, may endanger our entire program.” Not just endangering, the situation killed appropriations for the state library beyond desperately needed professional personnel and some renovation. Eliminated even was the appropriation to fund the Records Management Division, the creation of which Lieutenant Governor Allan Shivers had maneuvered to passage at the end of the session.24 As unhappy as the results were, Gambrell complimented Henshaw on his resilient spirit and plans: I remember, when the Commission first met you, asking you what you would do if we tried for something and did not get it, and what you said “Try again in another way”—a comment which really warmed my heart because I did not believe that you (or any rational being), could conceive of the terrific inertia and frustration of the Texas situation, . . . and I was afraid that the very enthusiasm of your dynamic approach to things would disconcert you after you became enmeshed in the formless Texas situation.

The “joinder of you and the tough Texas situation strikes me as the meeting of the irresistible force and immovable object,” she concluded. “My bets are on you.”25 Given Henshaw’s astute analysis of the laws old and new affecting records management, it was a good bet. The various measures governing the state library’s role in both management and preservation of public records “should tie up the supervision of the microfilming, destruction of original records, care and preservation of those which should not be destroyed, the eventual development of a state-wide indexing and finding list of important State 109

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and County records, etc., etc. in a rather neat package under the control of the State Library,” he judged. This stood to undergird “a state-wide Records Management Program second to none.”26 The Achilles’ heel of a records program, as Henshaw, the commission, and anyone who thought seriously about records knew, was space in which to house the documents for as long as they were needed—in the conduct of current agency business, to validate citizens’ eligibility for services, and for historical study. Not only were new records created daily, but as government grew, so did the number of agencies producing records to conduct state business. Left to its discretion, the Board of Control through the Bureau of Records long ago would have started controlling this growing volume by discarding or selling as waste paper what it called “out-of-date records.” But it lacked legislative authority to do so. Relief came in 1947 when the legislature passed the problem to the state library by placing responsibility for all state records in the new, but unfunded, Records Management Division. On November 26, 1947, the Board of Control conveyed to state librarian Henshaw charge of records held by the Bureau of Records in the Highway Department Building basement, records stored in the Tribune Building in downtown Austin, and the keys to the cow barn. On the grounds of the Austin State Hospital—known then as the lunatic asylum—the cow barn consisted of four walls, a roof, and a dirt floor, period. It was the only space the board could obtain to dump out-of-date records that had already been evicted from three other locations. Into the cow barn went multiple thousands of cubic feet of bundled and bound records, some on shelves, many stacked and piled in a heap higher than the windows, eight to ten feet across, and apparently the length of the building. “We regret that H. B. No. 250 [the Records Management Division bill] did not provide the State Library with sufficient [i.e., any] space or funds to properly take care of these records,” the chagrined Board of Control members wrote, “but there is nothing that we can do about it.” Actually there was one thing. While the legislature failed to fund staff to operate the Records Management Division, similarly it failed to eliminate the appropriation for the Bureau of Records. The board placed the bureau’s two staff members at the state library’s disposal.27 Thanks to the microfilming interest of Henshaw and the records management concerns of Gambrell, dealing with the records of state government had become the principal matter before the commission and the state librarian. The commission devoted most of its April 1948 meeting to developing a strategy to secure funding for the Records Management Division, even adopting Gambrell’s wording for an emergency funding bill.28 The good news Henshaw sent the commission as the summer progressed 110

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was that the Board of Control assured him it would actively support the state library’s funding request. So would TLA. The librarians devoted the summer and fall to preparing “an all-out legislative campaign” in behalf of the agency’s full budget request, but particularly the money sought for extension work. To advocate for it, for the second time in its history TLA hired a lobbyist— “pardon me, a Legislative Consultant,” Henshaw wrote as both state librarian and TLA Legislative Committee member in urging the hiring. Even more encouraging than the TLA campaign was that Governor Beauford H. Jester committed to championing the state library. This was no aberration. Henshaw and Governor Jester had gotten along better than any state librarian and governor since Raines and Hogg. Jester’s initiatives, such as his Good Neighbor Commission created to strengthen relations with Texas’ Latin American neighbors, Henshaw seized as opportunities to call the governor’s attention to the state library. When, for example, Henshaw could not contribute examples Jester requested of “good neighborliness,” he responded that with an extension budget, the state library could serve Texas’ Latin American citizens. “You and your staff are doing an excellent work with the funds and facilities at your command,” the governor replied. Henshaw was pleased when Jester came out in favor of obtaining funding to build an “archives” building, as he called it, and asked Henshaw to submit a statement describing present conditions and space requirements. More pleasing was the governor’s request for information he should use in asking the legislature to allot funds for the library extension work. As the convening of the legislature in 1949 approached, Henshaw and the commission were as optimistic for favorable treatment of their interests as they had been in 1947. The Board of Control had approved the state library’s full request to inaugurate the Records Management Division and most of what it sought for general operations. When it recommended nothing for the library extension work, an angry Governor Jester “reminded the Board that he recommended the sum to the last Legislature, stated it was one of his objectives in his re-election campaign [that fall of 1948], and [was] planning to recommend it to the 51st Legislature.”29 Doggedly throughout the session the librarians pursued the funding for library extension to provide a demonstration librarian and staff in Austin, to fund five regional libraries each with a librarian, a library assistant, and a bookmobile “that will go under all the railroad bridges in Texas,” and to aid county libraries.30 Mimeographed letters on letterhead titled “An Important Message For You” and urging passage of the $200,000 extension request followed one after another into legislators’ mailboxes beginning on February 10. “Texas ranks last in the number of people with free library service!” the first letter opened. “You Legislators have the answer for half the citizens 111

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of Texas, many of whom are in your own districts,” stated the second. “Will you invest 3¢ per capita per annum in a state-wide library development program? . . . Please make this your number one consideration,” read the third. They got newspapers across the state to editorialize in favor of it, for example, “Another Texas ‘First’: The Roll of Bookless Citizens” (San Antonio Express) and “Peanuts and Libraries” (Galveston News).31 Rather than paying attention to the librarians, the legislators listened to the governor when he said he wanted no new taxes and to House Speaker Durwood Manford, who insisted on upgrading rural roads. “It was said,” according to historian George Green, “that Manford was willing to let the rural population grow up as ignoramuses just as long as they could drive to town on paved roads.” Though the lawmakers passed the Gilmer-Aiken Act, which overhauled the public school system, they never passed the library extension funding. Legislators had not seen the connection between schools and public libraries, or if they had, they had ranked libraries nowhere near their number one priority. Indeed, as the session closed, the librarians were astonished to learn that not only had the request gone unfunded but through a “clerical error” the legislature had inadvertently eliminated the extension director position. After recovering from the distress, Henshaw saw the silver lining. Loss of the position stirred the librarians to redouble their efforts. “So long as the job remained and we could get no additional funds for extension, the folks out in the state would feel disappointed. But with [Director Lucille B.] Wilson being kicked out, they seem to be getting mad,” Henshaw wrote TLA president Arthur M. Sampley. If the two of them could “channel this anguish and transpose it into genuine battle fervor,” perhaps the long-sought funding could be won at last. In a special session in February 1950, the position was restored.32 When he reflected on the outcome of the 1949 regular session, Henshaw was “both gloomy and glad.” “Gloomy” characterized his feeling about the loss of the extension director position. Yet he could not help but be glad about having the state library’s budget increased—93 percent, he said—to $167,258. While the average rise for agencies was 25 percent on account of across-theboard salary increases, the library received both the across-the-board money and $48,050 of new money for books, microfilming, and the renovation and reorganization of the library’s quarters. “Miss Connerly calls our outcome a miracle,” he told the commission, adding that “I wouldn’t know, never having met a miracle face to face. If it was, however, it was sure a tough thing to pass.”33 The $48,050 appropriation was the most Henshaw would have for Records Management Division work. Funding that he had thought would be easy 112

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to obtain once the Records Management Division had been authorized was proving to be anything but. It had not come even with the governor’s appeal for it in a special message (which Henshaw wrote) at the opening of the session. As Fred Williams reported in the Austin American, A group of state officials, headed by State Librarian Francis Henshaw, went before the 51st Legislature with a plea for saving priceless and irreplaceable records of Texas’ proud history. This was done on the theory that Texans are the proudest people in the world of their history. But these officials found that the pride extended only to the point when expenditures of money came in, then it stopped.34

Despite the disappointment, when the commission met on August 8, 1949, it took unusually bold action. After prescribing specific guidelines for operating the service the records division could provide, it directed the state librarian to undertake the considerable work of surveying “the complete records situation and needs of all state departments desiring to cooperate in the project,” the data from which “should make it possible for the Records Administration Division to develop a records program which will benefit every state department and agency.” While those sounded like Gambrell’s words, Henshaw seemed to have his way when the commission added that new records could be accommodated only after “additional space has been obtained by microfilming or other means.”35 Henshaw devoted himself to the survey. If he could conduct it and publish the results in five months—in time for distribution at the opening of the special legislative session scheduled for February 1950—he would take advantage of perfect timing for demonstrating and documenting to what he believed to be his most important audience the value of microfilm as the solution to the state’s records problems. In the three months of October through December 1949, one state library crew visited about half of all state agencies, gathering data on the volume of records, while another microfilmed records containing information whose value might outlast the paper on which it was recorded. In January 1950, Henshaw published Texas State Business and Historical Records: Solution to Space and Preservation Problems, Texas State Library Record Administration Division; A Preliminary Survey, the cover of which set the tone. It showed a young woman looking up at 187 huge volumes of Treasurer’s Office warrants stacked perhaps twelve feet high and requiring eighty-six square feet of shelving; at her feet were ninety-eight microfilm reels that reduced the storage requirement for the same records to but three square feet. The image and the statistics were impressive. Some forty-five thousand square feet of 113

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floor space could be freed for office use, another ten thousand for storage. Converting to microfilm could return filing cabinets worth $252,000 to use for highly active records. Beyond the measurable benefits of microfilming, agency personnel “were enthusiastic over the probability of its being used on State records,” the publication reported. And for those who just skimmed the pamphlet, pictures told the story—from photographs of records piled in the cow barn and of banks of filing cabinets in the Tribune Building to images of state officials, including the lieutenant governor, who clearly approved of the space saving accomplished with microfilm.36 Virginia Gambrell, who had been elected chair of the commission the previous December, was not pleased. In trying, as Henshaw explained to her, “to steer certain phases of operations [microfilming] to insure a hearing of the subject as a whole,” Henshaw in Gambrell’s view had ignored commission directives regarding the records management function the state library could and should offer. “The records situation has now attained a posture so difficult and embarrassing to the Commission that I believe the Commission will be willing to authorize me to obtain the professional guidance on policy making which I have been insisting we needed for the last four years,” she wrote Philip C. Brooks on February 16, 1950. This was not mere grumbling to a friend. She was inviting Brooks to be the consultant to give “sound experienced advice which would enable the commission to make the wisest solution possible, in terms of its limited resources, of the problems which confront it.”37 Brooks had impeccable credentials for the job. A member of the staff that founded the National Archives, he had participated in formulating the concepts and procedures of records management. On assignment from the National Archives, he had worked as the records manager for the National Security Resources Board. He had written about records management—his Public Records Management having just been published by the Public Administration Service—and he chaired the Records Administration Committee of the Society of American Archivists, the professional organization of archivists and records managers. Indeed, he had recently been elected the society’s president.38 “Through the years, the Commissioners have been [word(s) missing: witnesses to?] an unhappy tug-of-war between Mr. Henshaw and me,” Gambrell continued, explaining to Brooks both the nature of the situation and just how desperately Texas needed him. “The Commission’s failure to get adequate guidance earlier has, I think, been due to an over-confidence in mine and Mr. Henshaw’s knowledge. They have believed that, if they listened to us wrangle long enough, some solution would be produced.” If he did not 114

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appreciate the gravity of the situation from that description, Brooks could not have missed it when Gambrell added that one of the five commission members ( John Gould) had concluded that “all of our problems with the Library grow out of records administration” and wanted the commission to wash its hands of records management altogether. She knew she did not have to argue to Brooks the folly of separating work with active and semi-active records from work with archives. The object of the work of both was the same record, just at different points in its life.39 Wanting to strike while the iron was hot and before consultant Brooks could arrive, Henshaw asked the commission on May 8, 1950, to authorize a large microfilming project for the politically important Texas Railroad Commission. Rather than burden the state library’s staff or its budget, the Railroad Commission would provide both personnel and funds. The library’s contribution would be recommendations regarding disposition of the microfilmed records. “Imagine the possibilities of subsequent embarrassment to the State Library and the Commission,” an infuriated Gambrell wrote, “if the Railroad Commission destroys its originals and there are later difficulties on the multi-million important oil and gas lease records, which come from having followed self-designated expert records counseling by Mr. Henshaw and [microfilm operator] Mr. [Varde W.] Smith.” On her recommendation, the commission deferred authorization pending receipt of the study Brooks agreed to undertake.40 On July 17, after a week’s study, Brooks stood before the commission and the state librarian and delivered the substance of his findings and recommendations. The records administration function of government belonged in the state library, where it was, he said, but lacking the leadership of a competent records administration staff member, “the records problems have not been solved, the plans developed have lacked vital elements, the program of the entire Library has been thrown out of balance, and the relations of the Library to other agencies of Government have been seriously compromised.” Applying only library terminology and thinking to the records situation had resulted in the flawed 1947 statute that created the state library’s Records Management Division. The law had given the state library responsibilities that belonged with the respective agencies and responsibilities it was incapable of fulfilling. Imprecise and mistaken definitions of words as basic as “records” compromised what the law intended to accomplish. The emphasis on microfilm as the solution to the records volume problem was “unbalanced.” Filming 60 to 75 percent of records to permit their destruction was a figure unrealistically high. The optimism of such large numbers exposed a misunderstanding of the different purposes of microfilm in library and records applications. Brooks’ 115

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investigation documented further that in concentrating on microfilm, the state library’s records program had neglected such essential components of a well-rounded records operation as scheduling (determining the length of time that records were needed in the office or for audit purposes, after which, if they had no continuing value, they could and should be destroyed without filming). In practice, the state librarian had been authorizing destruction of records series described so imprecisely that the content of the records could not be known with any accuracy. Careful to confine his recommendations to the realm of his competence, but familiar with the Lester-Noon report, Brooks even called attention to overlapping functions in the state library concerned with records, or what was mistakenly called records (such as newspapers), that in ten years had yet to be resolved.41 Expressing approval of the substance of the report (but endorsing no recommendations before members could study them), the commission, including John Gould, approved retaining records administration as a function of the Texas State Library, voted to consolidate the state archives from its various locations in the capitol into the Highway Department Building basement, and agreed to contract with Brooks to advise the commission on specific lines it should pursue.42 On July 24, Gambrell laid out in five full pages for the commission and Henshaw the matters that required the commission’s prompt attention in light of the Brooks report. As important as all the matters in the letter were, Henshaw likely paid little attention to them. More likely he was thinking about how long he should continue as state librarian. In hand he had commission chair Gambrell’s request, authorized in a final action of the July 17 commission meeting, that he resign. Henshaw could not have been surprised. In the May meeting, whether or not he had intended to, he had forced Gambrell’s hand. After being rebuffed in his request to accept staff and funds from the Railroad Commission to accomplish the microfilming and records disposal plan he and state library microfilm manager Smith had devised, Henshaw proposed the reverse— loaning Smith to the Railroad Commission to do the work. Approval would endorse the plan just as surely as would accepting the staff and funds. Either action spurned the commission’s January 23 directive “ruling out all services to the departments in the field of records management except simple access to their files in our custody.” With the state librarian pursuing his own agenda contrary to commission dictate, Gambrell had to act. After informing the Railroad Commission “that we did not consider the State Librarian qualified to give advice in the field of records management,” she telephoned Henshaw. As Gambrell later recounted, she told him forthrightly “that his continued action in a direction I considered counter to clear Commission policies had 116

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convinced me that there was an irresolvable conflict between his view and the Commission’s, and that speaking only for my one vote on the Commission and not as Chairman, I would be pleased to see him seek employment elsewhere.”43 On August 1, 1950, the commission accepted Francis Harold Henshaw’s resignation.44 Commission members congratulated Virginia Gambrell on her “victory.” Two called Henshaw’s departure good riddance. One told her, “Some men fire themselves.” Worn down by the four-year conflict over microfilm and records management, Gambrell took no pleasure in Henshaw’s departure or solace in the words of her colleagues. To Brooks she grieved: I think it a tragedy of coincidence that his life should bring him in touch with a person whose background was ill-starred for him. I am a lawyer’s child. I was brought up to feel the reverence for accurate statement of fact that people reared by old maid aunts feel toward morality. Factual accuracy to me is basic; my greatest sense of sin comes from the times I catch myself rationalizing; the way my mind works, I think you have to make an accurate statement of facts to yourself and to the world to be decent. . . . To such rigid judgment came a man who is basically a salesman, whose internal convictions are that whatever you have to say to make it go is o.k.45

That personal mismatch in other circumstances likely would have simply dissolved into acrimony. In the context of the growing records problem of Texas state government and in the hands of a person as informed, articulate, and ever conscious of the finite extent of her knowledge as Virginia Gambrell, the result was an ongoing, thorough discussion of the nature, applications, and ramifications of records management fundamental to developing a solid program. It was a discussion uncharacteristic of the Texas Library and Historical Commission so often composed, as Lou Kemp had observed, of members who accepted appointment for reasons other than an investment in the matters central to a state library charged with so many different functions. The mismatch rested in large part on the differences in purpose and function between library work and archival/records work. “The diffusion of interests and objectives” was the way Lester and Noon had expressed it when they suggested that the agency had suffered from it since 1909. Reduced to its simplest elements, library work as librarians in the 1940s considered it had at its heart promoting reading, expressed primarily in building and circulating collections of books for education in the broadest sense. In the state library, this was centered in circulation of talking books to the blind. The users of this 117

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service were so few and their requirements so specialized that blind readers never factored when librarians discussed promotion of reading. The Extension Division, which promoted libraries and reading around the state, was the component of the state library most librarians considered vitally important. Beginning with dropping its traveling library service in 1945, the division’s emphasis increasingly shifted from being a library service of government to being a service of government to libraries. The library service to government was legislative reference, which was a research function and was not about general reading. The librarians who commented on it considered legislative reference to be library work only tangentially. Building a Texana collection could be considered a library function of government. In Texas it came to be lodged under the archives function and had history, not promotion of reading, at its core. Archival/records work centered on determining value for long-term preservation, on authenticity of the record in relation to the matter in the conduct of which it was created, and, in the 1940s, on history and the emerging activity of records management. What library work and archival/ records work had in common was the written word—building collections (library) and holdings (archives) of it, organizing it, and helping people locate that component of it they wanted or needed for their particular purposes. Commission members who were appointed for reasons unassociated with either libraries or archives, or because of association with only one of them, had little basis for appreciating the differences. Meeting as infrequently as they did until the mid-1940s, they had little motivation to develop a genuine understanding of the professional issues in each field comparable to the understanding of archival and records issues that archivist Virginia Gambrell brought to the group. Francis Henshaw had been recruited as the accomplished and dynamic librarian needed to correct the problems exposed by the Lester-Noon report. That was a document prepared by two librarians measuring the Texas State Library against guidelines formulated for a library, not for an agency that had as one of its fundamental functions the management of the state’s archives. Even had the guidelines encompassed archives, they would have been insufficient. Written in 1936, the guidelines had been formulated before the functions of records management had even begun to emerge. With the differences between the library and archival functions mouthed but not broadly understood by commission members interviewing Henshaw, and with the Lester-Noon report setting the commission’s agenda for its state librarian, Henshaw’s lack of experience with records weighed negligibly in his hiring. But it was the records problem that engaged Henshaw, perhaps because it was fresh and different and presented a truly new challenge as compared with 118

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what for him were the easily grasped issues of the library side of the agency. Even something as important as revision of the state’s library laws lost its interest for him and, after its initial mention, was not heard of again in commission discussions or referred to in either state library or TLA publications. Legislative reference librarian Doris Connerly, who saw it all, said he simply “was not himself interested in the library functions.”46 Perhaps Henshaw perceived that seemingly ready solutions to the records problem were to be found in the emerging technology of microfilm, the mechanics and library applications of which he knew thoroughly. Whatever the reason, Henshaw threw himself enthusiastically against the records problem by giving, Connerly added, “practically all his attention to his microfilming project, a phase of records administration.”47 It came at the one time that the commission had a member not only knowledgeable enough of records matters to be able to challenge the state librarian but also articulate, determined, and strong enough to contest his improvident solutions at every turn. “I have never doubted his intelligence,” Gambrell told Brooks. “His lacks are just training and experience in the things he wanted to handle. . . . He could learn the problems here in Texas where they existed; he couldn’t learn the solutions here in an environment where nobody knew the answer.” In that light, Gambrell concluded, “my final judgment is that he had at the first a wrong solution for problems he didn’t understand; that he had at the last a wrong solution for problems he did understand.”48 In 1947, Virginia Gambrell had used the analogy of Henshaw as the irresistible force pushing against the Texas records situation as the immovable object. Texas won that contest, but she complimented him on his effort. By 1950 she had become the immovable object. And again, after all was said and done, the immovable object remained.49

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oe is me,” wrote William L. McGill, Governor Allan Shivers’ executive secretary, on September 7, 1950, after hanging up from a thirty-seven-minute long-distance telephone call from Texas Library and Historical Commission chairman Virginia Gambrell. What Gambrell hoped would pass without notice in the press in fact appeared in two of the most important papers for state and state government coverage when departing state librarian Francis Henshaw took his leaving public. “Henshaw said his resignation followed a long period of conflict charging that Mrs. Gambrell had attempted to substitute board administration instead of operation of the department by its executive,” the Austin American quoted him on the day the commission accepted his resignation. In but four and a half months, Henshaw continued, the chair spent $211 of state money, a sum exceeding the expenditures of all commission members during the previous many years, on long-distance telephone calls micromanaging the agency. As unpleasant, and in some cases inaccurate, as Henshaw’s charges were, Gambrell responded directly to Henshaw about his statements. What prompted her call to McGill was not matters relating to the former state librarian but rather a piece published in the Austin paper a month later under the headline “Library May Be Parcelled among State Agencies.”1 The commentary alleged that “authorities were discussing a reorganization plan by which each of the five loosely related functions of the Library Commission would be absorbed by appropriate agencies and departments,” leaving the Texas Library and Historical Commission to “disappear.”2 (Along with legislative reference, extension, loan and general reference, and records and archives, which would be absorbed by different departments, the commentary’s listing of state library functions included the Texana collection of books and pamphlets.) Despite McGill’s assurance that no such discussion was being held, Gambrell implored and cajoled him to encourage the governor to take the highly unusual step of inserting a plank in the 1950 state Democratic

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Party platform “wishing good things for the Library and Historical Commission, the records administration, etc.”3 McGill’s comment on Gambrell’s call probably expressed her temperament more acutely than it did his own. She felt the weight of leading the commission, which had reelected her as chair in the meeting in which it accepted Henshaw’s resignation. The burden did not stop there. The aftermath of Henshaw’s removal continued to plague her throughout the fall as she engaged the highest political and department heads in Texas government in a long and ultimately successful struggle to secure retraction of the erroneous dismemberment story, spread nationally in Library Journal. Finally, she accepted that virtually to her alone fell the work of undoing the damage done by passage of the inadequate and unfunded 1947 records bill and of providing Texas a sound records management program. The stress of it all was oppressive and unrelenting. She could end it in only one way, but it had to be on her terms. “I am going to resign from the Commission as soon as I get things leveled off and am not in a position of being under fire,” she told Philip Brooks two weeks after the commission accepted Henshaw’s resignation.4 The temper in the Texas State Library reflected Gambrell’s grim state of mind. In August 1950 no air of optimism infused the agency. All of the infectious energy generated in 1946 by the arrival of the top-flight librarian recruited to put the agency on a firm footing and to lead it in a positive direction had evaporated. After Henshaw’s departure, for ten days Fannie Wilcox served as acting state librarian one last time. Then twenty-two-year veteran Doris Connerly accepted the role for her second time, having served six months between Wilcox’s return to the position of assistant state librarian and Henshaw’s arrival. But she exuded little enthusiasm at the prospect of filling two jobs at once—administering the state library and conducting during a regular legislative session the efficient and authoritative legislative reference service she loved and for which she was highly respected. Connerly gave the commission one year to find a new state librarian.5 The agency’s biennial report for 1948–1950 published in the fall of 1950 expressed no air of momentum either. Anyone reading it to take stock of the Texas State Library at midcentury would have been hard-pressed to say what real progress had been made during the previous two, four, or even more years. Though she had been on the staff throughout the period, Connerly provided no state librarian’s report giving her sum of the accomplishments. Consequently the 1948–1950 biennial report, as its predecessor, contained only reports of the divisions. Of those, Harriet Smither’s of the Division of Archives and History, as she continued to call it, alone expressed any tone beyond just struggling to do the basic work. Even so, her brevity suggested little of real note 121

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having been achieved during the biennium. Legislative reference had experienced “continued high pressure . . . placing a very heavy load on the Division staff,” resulting from unusually long legislative sessions. The Loan and General Reference Division had circulated 70,720 books in addition to providing its service to the blind. (Measuring its workload in both the number and weight of books, the blind section selected and circulated for 858 readers some 3,619 talking books averaging eighteen phonograph records per book and weighing about twelve pounds each. With the average blind reader borrowing a talking book every third week, the staff received and mailed 1,392 pounds [fifty-eight] of talking books day in and day out.) Having been stripped of its director for one quarter of the biennium by that “clerical error” in the 1949 legislative session, the Extension Division felt the load perhaps more than the other divisions. Texas Libraries had been suspended for the third time in its life, and during the period a limited amount of the work was carried on, almost aimlessly it sounded, by the state librarian “or some member of the Library staff.” The “needs remain great . . .” and “The Director needs . . .” opened the last two paragraphs of the report. The Processing Division—created by Henshaw and working in the capitol basement in poorly ventilated space so inadequate that “books, periodicals and other material must be stacked on tables, chairs, or any inch of available space on the floor”—struggled to maintain a complete and up-to-date collection of Texas and U.S. documents (government publications). The importance of this work, essential to every user, became clear when readers saw that the attorney general had drawn on the federal documents extensively in pursuing what Texans named as the state’s most critical public issue in 1949—ownership of the oil-rich offshore tidelands. The workload of the division had apparently increased dramatically as soon as Henshaw left when the division, evidently bowing to public pressure, discontinued discarding state newspapers after microfilming.6 As the 1950–1952 biennium began on September 1, 1950, the Texas State Library seemed to be doing little more than it had been doing for far too many of its forty-one years—fulfilling its charge as best it could with inadequate staff, insufficient space, and meager funding. What it did have, for better or worse, was two strong, professionally self-confident women leading it. Interim head Connerly, who valued her integrity more than her job, believed her responsibility under the commission was to keep all the divisions functioning as fully and effectively as resources allowed until a new state librarian established a direction for the agency. Commission chair Virginia Gambrell, simultaneously conscientious and obdurate, saw as her dual mission directing (Henshaw would have said micromanaging) the state library 122

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operation through scrutiny of expenditures and securing passage of legislation establishing a records management program worthy of the state. Throughout the fall Gambrell and Philip Brooks corresponded about the contents of the bill Brooks had drafted to establish a model records management program: To accommodate it to the organization and operation of Texas government, should the records administrator be subordinate to the state librarian? Yes. Should the qualifications of the state librarian be changed to require knowledge of records management? No. To reconcile the library and records management functions of the agency and to emphasize the importance of records work, should the records head replace the librarian director of processing as assistant librarian? Yes. Striving, as was her nature, to establish every detail before moving forward, Gambrell watched and waited as the session opened. She worried that were the records bill enacted without funding, she would have accomplished nothing more than changing the wording in the 1947 law, already an unfunded mandate on the state library. With funding for the records work contained in the state library budget proposal, she watched for the House Appropriations Committee hearing. While she bided her time, Senator George M. Parkhouse, representing her own Dallas district, but without informing her in her capacity as chair of the state agency responsible for both records management and archives, introduced a bill to empower “destruction of public records on the judgment of any state official having them in his custody.” Confronted with the unexpected added burden of a bill to contest, Gambrell began writing the long and tedious letters for which she was noted. “We have found to our sorrow in our unhappy experience under the 1947 act that State officials are not records men and have inadequate judgment as to whether the microfilm copy of the records proposed for destruction adequately preserves the integrity of the original,” she protested to the bill’s House sponsor. “Preservation of the integrity of the original record involves elements like findability on the film,” as well as achieving particular technical specifications. Ensuring integrity of microfilm to meet requirements for admissibility in federal court must be the duty and responsibility of the records department head, she instructed him, not of agency heads.7 Cheered by a favorable Appropriations Committee hearing some weeks after the session opened, Gambrell on February 22, 1951, initiated what she expected to be a simple process of securing enactment of the records legislation she believed everyone would see as obviously good and needed. Enclosing the draft bill, she wrote to the commission (with a copy to Connerly): “I favor our effort to get it enacted as soon as Miss Connerly has made any 123

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necessary changes from the point of view of Texas legal procedures, and as soon as it meets the approval of such State officials as the Board of Control.”8 Though all knew that she and consultant Brooks had been working on the bill, this was the first the commission and acting state librarian Connerly learned that Gambrell was going to pursue enactment this session. After obligingly devoting her weekend to dressing the bill to suit Texas legislative style, Connerly distributed it, applauding the contents but volunteering that “1953 would be a better time” to introduce it. This was a sweeping measure, and she expected that lawmakers would not run through it without study. Matters as basic as definitions of terms needed attention only lawmakers could give. The word “disposal,” for example, employed in the records bill to mean “destruction,” would have to be introduced into Texas law. At that time, it denoted only “sale” or “gift.” With the deadline for filing bills looming the following week, and Gambrell neither having nor seeming to recognize that she needed to have at least one sponsor to introduce the measure, time was not on their side. “Let the legislature fund positions under the 1947 statute, and the persons employed gain experience on the basis of which [future] amendments [i.e., the proposed Brooks bill] could be sought,” Connerly advised. “If we do not get this Records staff now, the new legislation may cause more grief than at present,” she warned, echoing Gambrell’s thinking regarding the unfunded mandate.9 Connerly’s was not advice Gambrell expected—nor wanted, nor accepted. Gambrell simply could not conceive of “any sensible State official’s objecting to a thoughtfully drawn draft by an objective expert.” Having made up her mind to go ahead, Gambrell added that in light of the commission’s having spent $200 to obtain the draft from Brooks, “whether it is controversial or not, we would be very derelict in our duty in not trying to get what is right attended to.”10 In fact, the problem as Gambrell saw it was not the draft bill but Connerly’s new wording. “In my opinion,” Gambrell wrote on February 28, “your changes in the act consequently constitute, not the technical improvements which were requested if you deemed them necessary, but a substitution of your personal judgment of the intent and content of the act which the act itself does not bear out.” Connerly’s wording (mirroring the 1947 statute) did mistakenly place in the commission the management and control of all state records, rather than just inactive ones. “Your substitution of controversial statements for Brooks’s objective summation of content certainly presents a draft which would indeed be controversial, as you say. It also presents a draft which no sensible legislature could consider,” Gambrell reprimanded the seasoned veteran of eleven legislative sessions.11 When Connerly reported the good news that the Parkhouse bill to give state officials the power 124

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to destroy records was simply the generic act drafted by the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which she thought, and events confirmed, could be amended easily to apply to business and not government records, Gambrell disputed her on the basis of what proved to be misinformation from Brooks.12 Clearly, Brooks and not Connerly was Gambrell’s authority. Through the extended professional and personal correspondence Gambrell kept up with Brooks, he could see what was coming and tried to stop it. “What particularly worries me,” he counseled Gambrell, “is the prospect of your getting into the same sort of situation with Miss Connerly that you were with your ol’ pal Henshaw. She’s a very different sort—competent, respected, even tempered, judicious, and so far as I could tell disposed to cooperate with you and the Commission. I hate to see you in dispute with her about the bill, classing her with others down there as being stubborn and noncooperative.”13 Connerly the professional continued to work on the bill, suggesting changes in regard to the panel of heads of departments given responsibility for approving destruction requests, which Brooks approved.14 But Brooks’ admonition arrived too late to save the working relationship between the two women. “In view of your reflection on my integrity,” Connerly replied to Gambrell’s February 28 letter, “you might wish me to have nothing further to do with [the bill].”15 Gambrell’s reprimand continued to fester. Later that day on plain paper, Connerly typed out: “One such affront is all that I shall accept, leaving only one question to be decided—what date do you wish my resignation to take effect?” Still boiling when she finished typing, Connerly wrote toward the bottom of the page in her bold, disciplined hand: “Consider this a resignation, if you wish.” To ensure no misunderstanding of the finality of her words, Connerly clarified, “You understand, of course, that this resignation will sever all connections between the Commission and myself.”16 This was no idle threat. If Connerly left abruptly in the middle of a legislative session, news of it would spread throughout the capitol like wildfire. In four days, the situation had gone from Connerly volunteering her considered judgment to submitting her resignation. Gambrell had become her own worst enemy. She could not accept that Connerly could favor the bill and at the same time recommend not proceeding with it in this session. Gambrell’s apology—“it is certainly not your integrity, but your judgment in regard to records legislation, which I question”—did little to heal the wound.17 Entertaining no thought of accepting Connerly’s resignation, Gambrell, in Dallas, continued to rely on the acting state librarian so strategically located in the capitol. Gambrell still left it to Connerly to find a sponsor to intro125

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duce the bill, which Connerly accomplished three days before the deadline. With the Speaker helping, the bill encountered no opposition in the House.18 Gambrell’s estimation of its reception by lawmakers seemed to be more accurate than Connerly’s. Consequently, while observers, especially Connerly, watched in disbelief, Gambrell convinced her colleagues during the commission meeting at the end of April that their position should be all or nothing, and the commission dutifully voted “that if House Bill 546 (records bill) should not pass, then the Commission should decline to accept the appropriation for records administration.” As Gambrell explained it to Connerly, “The point to the Commission’s action is this: public records involve more than the administrative cost of their handling; they involve important legal rights of the State and its citizens, and the Commission’s concern is with the protection of these rights in the safeguard of public records. . . . We cannot prevent the endangerment which will result if H. B. 546 fails.”19 At session’s end, the budget with funding for the records division had passed both houses to become law, and the records bill had been approved by the House and the State Affairs Committee of the Senate. But on the Senate floor it died. Gambrell ran out of time to explain to a single senator who held the bill off the Local and Uncontested Calendar that its microfilming provisions did not change the rules of evidence regarding records.20 Despite all her efforts, Gambrell had lost more than she had gained in the Fifty-second Legislature. She lost the records bill. By her stand on refusing to accept appropriations for both the records division and purchase of books for the Loan and General Reference Division, she lost the confidence of those around her in her leadership. For the state library, she nearly lost the entire Legislative Reference Division when, as Connerly told the commission later, “the antagonisms aroused . . . in connection with the pressure for passage of HB 546 by the Senate . . . aroused fresh interest in some quarters in the advisability of detaching the Leg. Ref. Div. from the State Library.”21 Led by the acting state librarian who “decline[d] to have any dealings” with the commission chair, the state library had deteriorated into enclaves of divisions, or even individuals, shunning contact with counterparts. “The entire operation up there has practically stopped,” McGill informed the governor in July. It was all the governor’s aide could do to persuade Connerly “to hang on until August.”22 When the commission met on July 21, 1951, Connerly, McGill, and the commission found out that no one had to wait until August. The commission deserted Gambrell. It rescinded its April actions refusing the appropriations for records staff and for books and voted to reverse itself and release the year-old Brooks report on records administration. Henshaw had charged 126

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that Gambrell would edit it to her own ends. Explaining her reluctance to release the report, Gambrell had written him that, having in mind the report’s mentions of unsatisfactory records work in other state agencies, her concern was “simply a desire to keep our Commission’s business from inadvertently getting into another Commission’s business.” Nevertheless, withholding it had given the appearance he was right. In reporting the release, the Dallas Morning News quoted commission member and newspaperman John Gould as saying that if a paper published “as much as ten lines on the report, I’ll eat it.” The Dallas paper spent seventy-one lines on the report, and at least two other papers gave extended coverage—all approving its recommendations and showing Gambrell’s concerns to have been unfounded.23 Gambrell could not have been surprised at the commission’s reversals. She had submitted her resignation effective at the conclusion of the July meeting. “The failure of six years of effort” was how Gambrell summed up her service on the commission, as she fell into “inevitable depression.” Unable to, if not compromise, at least bend, and unable to communicate with colleagues in a way that did not ignite their hostility, she drove herself into the ground. From her first meeting, Virginia Gambrell had been a force on the commission, and as its chair, she dominated the group as only Emma Burleson had done before her. But, her dreams unrealized and her health broken, Gambrell left.24 As Doris Connerly had long and ever more insistently requested, the commission relieved her of the duties of agency head so she could devote herself to legislative reference. On Gambrell’s recommendation they selected as acting state librarian, neither former state librarian Fannie Wilcox nor another division head, but four-year assistant archivist Roy Sylvan Dunn. The thirtyyear-old Dunn had joined the state archives staff thanks to the influence of his wife’s uncle and had come to Virginia Gambrell’s attention particularly, he recalled, after a paper he presented at the Texas State Historical Association meeting in 1950 caught her husband’s notice. Gambrell encouraged Dunn by making him coordinator of renovation and reorganization, the principal work of which was moving the state archives in December 1950 from the capitol to the basement of the Highway Department Building (which also required moving the Records Division records in the Highway Department Building basement into vacant space in the capitol), and by sending him to the Modern Archives Institute at the National Archives.25 Dunn had the title, but Connerly had the institutional memory and prestige, and it was to her the commission turned for a state-of-the-state-library report in August 1951. “The Commission in recent years has been so concerned with the historical and records functions of the Library,” she told them, “that the important library work has not had the attention it deserves.” 127

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Should the Loan and General Reference Division be like a public library circulating all manner of reading material, including fiction, or should it be a library for state government? That, Connerly informed them, was the hottest of the questions they needed to answer. Some Texas Library Association leaders advocated the public library role. Though Gambrell had attended TLA meetings and joined the state’s librarians in asking for a Texas Legislative Council study of statewide extension, she had opposed turning the state library into another public library. “On the basis of the general picture of library service in Texas, I consider that continued expenditure by the Commission of public funds for book purchases of the type you discuss [general reading] is equivalent to buying an aspirin for a patient who is suffering an acute attack of appendicitis. One alleviates by palliation a painful symptom; one by consequence postpones real remedy for the actual condition—and one wastes the taxpayers’ dollar by the aspirin purchase,” Gambrell replied to a library trustee, explaining why she led the commission in April to refuse to buy books for general circulation. The commission in July rescinded its moratorium on purchases, but the next year reaffirmed its prohibition on buying fiction, juvenile, and “family service” works.26 Since a commission chair had driven the state library into its disturbed condition, a commission chair had to be the one to lead it out. Weldon Hart in the governor’s office congratulated his boss, Allan Shivers, on the appointment of John P. Morgan to replace Gambrell. “He is probably the only man in Texas with the patience to unravel that mess. This may turn out to be one of your better appointments,” Hart rhapsodized. A founder of the Friends of the Dallas Public Library, Morgan was a collector of rare Texana, an attorney and tax commissioner for Sun Oil Company, and a man known to the library community, having had his presentation to the 1948 TLA meeting published in Texas Library Journal. Connerly approved too, having advocated the appointment of an attorney. The commission not only approved but elected Morgan chair in his first meeting with the group on August 24, 1951.27 The most important business before the commission that fall was the selection of a new state librarian. TLA appeared to want someone who would give the state library more of a public library posture. If the state library would emphasize books, periodicals, supplies, equipment, and skilled personnel, TLA Legislative Committee chair and state library space consultant Joseph S. Ibbotson had suggested, “it is possible that the Commission may be better able to secure a competent state librarian.”28 Kemp felt differently. He had come around to his attorney friend Worth Ray’s thinking and advised the governor privately: “What the library needs more than anything else is a 128

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native born State Librarian of executive ability. The law should be changed and the qualifications for holding that office should permit a man, or woman, to become State Librarian who has never even been inside of a library. A person of sound judgment and executive ability is needed.”29 After a slow start in the search for a state librarian, in December 1951 the commission focused on Thomas Jefferson Gibson III. With his library school education, he qualified for the job. With his law degree, he pleased Doris Connerly. But a seasoned administrator he was not. Of acting state librarian Dunn’s generation, Gibson was holding only his first professional position—assistant and reference librarian of the University of Texas Law Library. Gibson wrote out his application on December 8 and was hired nine days later.30 For T. J. Gibson, who had never had the responsibility of a library, who had never worked in the environment of state government, who had no experience with some of the functions of the complex Texas State Library—most glaringly with regard to records, which had been the downfall of his predecessor—the first year in office could not help but center on learning about the operation of his agency and agencies like his, and of becoming familiar with the issues inside and outside the capitol with which he would have to grapple. Before Gibson had completed his first week in the state librarian’s chair, a copy of Fort Worth city librarian Ibbotson’s long and thoughtful letter to TLA Legislative Committee chair and former state library Extension Division director Katherine Ard landed on his desk. For that reason, if for no other, the situation of libraries in Texas came to Gibson’s attention first. Written for Gibson at least as much as for Ard, Ibbotson’s letter identified what he considered to be the principal challenges facing the state library and affecting the relationship between the state library and the librarians of Texas. He listed records first, not because public librarians had any interest in the state library’s responsibility for government records or for archives collected from around the state, but because balancing that function with the agency’s library work, as Lester and Noon had observed in 1940, provided as thorny an issue as Gibson could expect to face. “It must be obvious that the State library has a special function which goes beyond that of preserving State records,” Ibbotson wrote. “This archival function alone would probably require most of its present income merely to catch up for much time lost and to reorganize for the future needs of the State.” Lest there be any misunderstanding of what librarians considered to be library service offered by the Texas State Library, Ibbotson clarified that “legislative reference service, service to the blind, and other ‘services’ of the State Library are matters of concern primarily to the Library’s governing body and administrative officials, not to the librarians 129

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in the State as a whole.” Only two functions of the Texas State Library mattered to the state’s librarians, and both affected TLA’s constituency of public librarians. One was direct encouragement of public libraries, whereby the state library would serve as “a central source of supply, and . . . act as a clearing house for the libraries which serve in a public capacity.” Not even a library leader as well informed as Ibbotson knew whether the state library could fulfill that purpose. Were it beyond what the commission wanted the agency to do or what the agency actually could do, then “T.L. A. will have to permit a diversified system” (whatever he meant by “permit”) with perhaps the university shouldering the bibliographic and public library distribution work. The other state library function of concern to librarians was circulating reading material to areas of the state lacking public library service. “The University of Texas Extension Loan Library is one of the most efficient services of its kind in the United States,” Ibbotson observed. “A very inefficient loan service is that operated by the State Library to individuals in localities where no public library exists[;] yet it seems quite apparent that this kind of service belongs more nearly in the State Library than in the University.” Ibbotson’s letter should have been food for thought to the man suddenly catapulted from obscurity on the state scene into leadership of the single most important state agency for library and archival service both inside and outside state government.31 If the agency’s relationship with the state’s librarians reached him first, it was not the most important matter on state librarian Gibson’s desk. Records were. “The most pressing problem facing the Library after the appointment of a librarian was the activation of the Records Division which was without a director and assistant director,” Gibson himself stated in the agency biennial report published in late 1952. Hiring staff proved to be easy. Witt Harwell, the same who had created the Bureau of Records and subsequently worked for the state auditor, accepted direction of the Records Division. The commission readily recognized that Harwell knew more than anyone else in Texas about management of state government records in the period of their life between active use in offices and either archival preservation or destruction.32 Activating the division meant, in Gibson’s word, “housecleaning.” Order had to be brought to the records storage chaos in the infamous cow barn. After every idea for reorganization and utilization of the rat-infested structure proved unworkable, the commission rented a fireproof warehouse in south Austin, and within six months the five staff members became “intimately acquainted with every piece of lumber and every box of records in the building,” after transferring sixty thousand cubic feet of records out of the cow barn and other holding locations onto wooden shelving they themselves 130

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constructed in the warehouse. Some thirty thousand cubic feet more were stacked on the floor awaiting surplus lumber from the Comptroller’s Office with which to erect additional shelves. A year, Harwell estimated, would be required to “segregate and properly index these old records as they were in such bad condition.” Seeing the improvement of the warehouse over the cow barn, agencies besieged the state library to accept transfer of records. While boasting of the saving to be achieved through this work of the Records Division, Gibson simultaneously had to request rental of an additional warehouse. Microfilming, he and Harwell recommended, should be postponed until the storage problem had been brought under control. With records, as with the state library operation generally, Gibson quickly grasped the bare fact known to all of his predecessors that “when we begin to operate as we should, we will have to have more money and more space.” As he was still learning his way, though, he believed that this “should wait until we are sure about what we want to do.”33 If a good way to determine a course was to consider the situation of the Texas State Library relative to that of other state library and archival agencies, then Gibson needed to become familiar with practices in the federal government and states with leading programs. In late summer the commission sent him on a three-week trip to Washington, D.C., and six states from New England to the Midwest.34 As the year 1952 progressed and the new state librarian became engaged in the work of state government, he discovered how central to the functioning of state agencies the state library was. Serving on a subcommittee of the Advisory Group on Statistics of the Legislative Council, he saw how important the availability of a comprehensive and well-organized collection of state documents was, not just to his group but to the agencies as well for conducting their own business. From the contacts he established, the state library received a stronger flow of agency publications and praise for the thoroughness of its management of them. “I had no idea that the Library would figure so prominently in the plans of this group,” he confessed in a memo to the commission. And since state documents were simultaneously state records, Gibson’s involvement benefited the records program as well.35 For all that he learned of his and comparable agencies elsewhere, as the end of his first year approached, Gibson was little closer to developing a vision for the state library than he had been when he took the job. He concluded the state librarian’s statement in the agency biennial report that fall by proposing lamely that the state library “concentrate on rendering better the services it now performs and developing more fully its resources,” in particular by studying five programs from microfilming records to developing a 131

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system of depositories. He did not call attention to the Extension Division report—the longest and most upbeat of them all. “Much progress has been noted in public libraries in Texas” were words that never before had appeared in an Extension Division report. He did not echo extension director Lucille Wilson’s call for, among other things, an additional field work librarian or “a survey of libraries and library-connected factors in the counties near Austin, as a demonstration of what can be done in other parts of the State,” though these stood to render better the services librarians around the state most wanted to realize from the state library.36 If an encompassing vision eluded him, pressure to put his stamp on the internal priorities of the agency faced him when he learned that the agency could improve the likelihood of obtaining its requested budget if it reduced the number of persons receiving top salaries. After contemplating ways to consolidate departments, he recalled a lesson he learned on his trip—“that good departments like libraries are those who have forceful personalities behind them.” He would put the Loan and General Reference Division directly under the state librarian, he told himself. But he shrank from making the final decision. “Whether that is what should be sought at all is a question I would like to leave in your hands,” he deferred meekly to commission chair John Morgan. Nor did he see a role for himself in advocating for his agency with the Board of Control. After learning that principals of the board “seem to have an idea that Extension is an unnecessary part of the Library, . . . that there is still not an awareness of the need of better libraries in the State,” he could only “hope that TLA can do some constructive work in the next few years in bringing the realization to people on the local level of the need of better libraries everywhere.” To TLA Library Development Committee chair William S. Dix he offered only some strategies useful in pursuing a legislative drive for the library community. “Let’s hope we know what we want” from the legislature was the best he could do in suggesting goals for the drive.37 Gibson’s weak leadership left his agency to drift and internal problems to magnify well into 1953. One division printed its own letterhead, envelopes, and worksheets, giving the impression that it was a separate agency until he provided appropriately printed sheets. He discovered in another that employees often answered questions with a simple “no,” rather than searching for a substantive answer. “A certain amount of intolerance must be exercised” to stop the practice, he realized, and evidently did bring himself to exercise it. All in all, he informed Morgan, “life is not a bed of roses.”38 Nearly a year and a half into Gibson’s tenure as state librarian, his speeches to library audiences sounded the same as they had in his early months. Gibson continued simply to recount the history and describe the different functions 132

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of the agency. No goal had he yet set before the agency or those it served. Nor within his agency had he made it his business to become more than broadly familiar with the work of each of the divisions. When asked to talk briefly about state archives for his colleagues in the National Association of State Libraries, he declined, explaining that “we are far behind here in many of the technical and procedural refinements in this field.” While admitting that “it would be an excellent thing for me to find out about the new developments,” he had not kept abreast of all that he had learned and reported in writing to the commission from his trip the year previous and would not prepare the requested talk.39 However he came to the decision, on December 9, 1953, T. J. Gibson offered his resignation, effective the following February, to return to an assistant position in the university law library from which he had come. Was the position of Texas State Librarian an appointment no one could fulfill? Had the nature of the job changed so greatly since the early years of Winkler and West that no one person could bring steady, purposeful leadership to the agency composed of so many and varied components set within state government? The second person in a row to come to the job satisfying the library education requirement had been unable to bring any direction to the agency. Of course, Gibson lacked experience managing any library, much less an agency as variegated as the Texas State Library. Maybe lack of direction, which, in avoiding contention, at least brought calm, was better than the single-minded leadership his administratively experienced predecessor provided, which created a conflict so fundamental and demoralizing that it reverberated to the highest levels of state government and affected the agency for years. Octavia Rogan, the one other state librarian qualified for the job by library education, set and pursued a goal with a devotion matching that of Francis Henshaw, but she too left the agency in conflict and disarray. Two of the three with library education (Rogan and Gibson) and one other (Wilcox) qualified as Texans, which seemed to make no difference in their degree of success. The most recent two were men, which made no difference either. Perhaps Lou Kemp was right that at midcentury the job just needed an administrator “of sound judgment and executive ability”—period.

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“If a n d Wh e n t h e Gl a d D ay Co m es” The Harwell, Peace, and Beginning Winfrey Years, 1954–1962

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hen the Texas Library and Historical Commission met in January 1954 to select the third acting state librarian and fourth person to head the agency in three years, the members had no trouble making their choice. Elevating Witt B. Harwell was easy, and not just because he already was the assistant state librarian and records chief. They agreed with outgoing state librarian T. J. Gibson that “his remarkable progress in the Records Division, his success with setting up a system of bookkeeping for the library, his visits to out-of-state libraries as well as to many over Texas, his participation in the library movement and the Extension activities of the State Library, [and] his thorough knowledge of state government” made him the clear choice. Harwell gave full evidence that he wanted the job. After a state-funded trip in 1952 to the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Lexington, Kentucky, he, at his own expense to broaden his knowledge of state library and archival operations, visited state libraries in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois. And if that were not enough, he was from Texas—from Eddy, near the state’s geographical center—which had to have pleased Lou Kemp, who in the meeting said again that the position needed a Texan (though not necessarily native-born). What Harwell did not have was the library education required for election as state librarian. For the minutes, summing up the sentiment of his colleagues, new member Walter Long, director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce and a fine amateur historian, “asked that it be clearly understood that Mr. Harwell would fill the position . . . only until a person who could fully qualify for the position of permanent librarian could be found.”1 Whatever the future might hold, Harwell was the right man to fill the interim. “Freewheeling,” the Texas Observer described him. He brought a thoroughgoing, informed, dynamic leadership the agency had not experienced since Henshaw’s early months and since Elizabeth West occupied the

The H arwell, Peace, and Beginning Winfrey Years

seat before him. The commission saw evidence of his leadership when, in its next meeting, two months later in March 1954, Harwell reported on the Archives Division contract to publish Republic-era papers, spoke on the capitol paintings for which the commission was responsible, presented an itinerary for the extension director that would have her spend more time working in rural areas and with small communities, and said he was moving the service for the blind from the capitol to the south Austin warehouse. For the first time since beginning thirty-four years earlier, the operation would have space and a location suited to housing, selecting, and mailing the braille and talking books—for the first time in thirty-four years, the staff would be able to do their work efficiently and economically. As he listened, Kemp must have smiled to himself. Here was the kind of person he wanted leading the agency—and, to top it all off, Harwell had been inside a library.2 Harwell took charge of the agency at a propitious moment, just after two pillars of the agency left. In September and October 1953, Fannie Wilcox and Harriet Smither retired after thirty-six and twenty-eight years, respectively. Along with them, Lucille Wilson, the face of the state library for many librarians around the state, left after seven years heading the Extension Division. A younger generation replaced them. Up-and-coming Texas historian, editor, archivist, and recent doctoral graduate Seymour Vaughan Connor anchored the state archives. Vernon Porterfield, who had come to the agency with Harwell in the Records Division, took over the Extension Division. When Porterfield was promoted to acting assistant librarian and records chief, William K. Peace left the Records Division to take over extension. In them, the state library had individuals at the beginning of their careers who wanted to make names for themselves, which meant doing more than just continuing to do what had always been done. The commission followed suit. To inform themselves more fully of the agency’s operation and to provide more insightful direction, for the first time the members took responsibility for specific divisions.3 By the end of the biennium, seven months after Harwell began directing the agency, the change in the Texas State Library was evident. The agency’s 1952–1954 biennial report told the perceptive reader that the leadership once again was setting the agency’s agenda, rather than being driven along seemingly helplessly by the work. The Records Division, for example, was the victim of its own success. Agencies valued its services of storage, retrieval, and destruction so highly that staff anticipated reaching the capacity of their warehouse before the next biennium had been completed. Use of the state archives doubled in the second year of the biennium over 135

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the first. State archivist Connor set a goal of correcting a “serious tragedy”— the lack of any guide (annotated listing) to the groups of state records and “collections” of personal papers in the state archives. He and his staff exposed a vast wealth of archival documentation theretofore unknown because, as he found, all too much of the approximately twenty-five thousand cubic feet of bundles, boxes, and record books had been inaccurately labeled or not labeled at all.4 Fulfilling the statutory requirement to “diffuse knowledge in regard to the history of Texas,” Connor not only continued the long-established work on documentary publications but also wrote history pieces featuring holdings of the state archives. In Texas Libraries, which Gibson had revived in October 1952 and for which Connor wrote his vignettes, the Extension Division published more directories and bibliographies for local libraries than ever before. Extension head Bill Peace reported that the small model reference collection circulated to demonstrate the usefulness of a workable reference shelf had been so popular that gifts of some of the books had been made to some community libraries even before the model was returned. Thanks to Wilson’s, Porterfield’s, and Peace’s work, the number of Texas’ 254 counties void of library service had shrunk to its lowest ever—only 53. But much remained to be done to mature the physical presence of a library into the provision of full library service. The Loan and General Reference Division circulated almost 80,000 volumes, the largest number yet, to individuals and to local public libraries. Managing 64,052 braille and talking books for 1,300 readers, the blind service in the second year of the biennium sent 3 more books per day to a readership numbering 426 more individuals than in the previous biennium. Doris Connerly’s report of activity in legislative reference to legislators and the general public echoed its predecessors, except that the work of collecting, listing, and exchanging publications of state agencies finally had become so heavy that a new documents librarian position had been created in September 1953. Only the Processing Division reported stagnation. Failure to hire a cataloger to replace Wilcox and having to drop its work when the Loan and General Reference Division needed help on the reference desk perpetuated the cataloging backlog.5 About the time Gibson left the state library, commission chair John Morgan accepted an invitation to participate in TLA’s annual meeting in Mineral Wells at the end of March 1954. When the program concluded early, the audience “wanted to hear something about the State Library.” Morgan talked about the functions and workload of all seven divisions but concentrated of 136

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course on extension. Speaking extemporaneously, he surprised himself at how much he knew of the division’s work. By contrast, the questions and comments of the librarians then and a week later in his meeting with members of TLA’s library development committee, in his word, “amazed” him for how little they knew of the work of the Extension Division specifically and of the agency in general.6 “The lack of a clearly defined extension function in the library laws, the indifference or lack of understanding of the Commission, and the generally low financial support given to the State Library as a whole” led TLA immediate past president C. Lamar Wallis to “hold the Commission partially responsible . . . for the lack of popular support in the Legislature . . . and . . . lack of appropriations” for library work in Texas. Perhaps the fault lay with the governors for their commission appointments. Wallis received news of the 1953 selection of Guy Bryan Harrison Jr., professor of history at Baylor University, “with a mixture of resignation and something bordering on bitterness.” For too long the interests of historians and Texana collectors such as Harrison had dominated the commission. “Some earnest, hardworking rural man or woman,” Wallis opined, “might bring a real enthusiasm for libraries in the unserved areas.”7 Harrison was no newcomer to libraries, archives, or politics. In nineteen years he had built the Texas Collection at Baylor, in which his wife served as the librarian, into the second most important library and archives of Texas history in the state behind those at the university in Austin. He was a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and had served as an alderman in Waco’s city government.8 Centering his unhappiness on inadequate state aid to libraries, Pan American College librarian William Holman wanted the Texas Library and Historical Commission to run a small demonstration program, which his experience showed “is needed to assure the organization of vigorous local library programs, especially in those areas which are sparsely populated.”9 Others joined in calling on the commission to partner with TLA in seeking state funding for an extensive survey of library conditions in the state. So strongly did both Wallis and Holman feel about the importance of state aid through a demonstration library and state funding for a survey that, to ensure Morgan did not think they were currying his favor, both withdrew their applications to become state librarian.10 Believing as fervently as Wallis and Holman in the importance of local library service, Morgan disagreed with them equally sharply on the nature of the state’s role in accomplishing it. Morgan flatly dismissed the notion that higher levels of government should provide aid for what people could 137

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and should do in and for their own communities. His belief in states’ rights coupled with his rejection of interference from higher levels of government in the affairs of lower ones (through strings attached to direct aid) underpinned the position Morgan held, confident he shared it with the governor who appointed him. Consequently, “T.L. A. should start back where each librarian lives and create a good, strong library movement in this State, which they can do if they would put out the effort,” Morgan told the library development group. Readers of the revived Texas Libraries should have anticipated that response. In the first pages of the first new issue in October 1952 he told librarians they were living in an age of use: “By that I mean that our civilization and society today seem to be on a high up-swing of the cultural and social pendulum. The keynote of all our thinking and activity seems to be utility, maximum performance, practical application.” To fulfill its potential, “the library should be thoroughly institutionalized in each community as a center of community learning and culture, and in doing this, we are going to have to make some changes in library operation.” What those changes were, the librarians, who knew library service best, had to formulate. More than obligation and responsibility, what Morgan saw for librarians was opportunity— the opportunity to achieve for their communities what those communities needed and then, through their communities collectively, the opportunity to lead the state in encouraging the library service that brought the librarians to work every day.11 The state library’s job in the development of public libraries was giving advice, Morgan believed. In that work, it could hardly be too active. During the commission’s May 1954 meeting Morgan reported “that the Extension Division had held meetings and given advice on how to start a public library in over 100 towns in the last eight months.” His satisfaction in this statistic became evident when he added that “this figure represented more accomplished in eight months than in the two years prior to September 1, 1953.” The real news for the librarians, though, was that following his meeting with TLA leaders, including Wallis, Holman, and president Fred Folmer, Morgan had modified his thinking regarding the survey. He recommended, and the commission voted to approve, an invitation to the Texas Research League to conduct a study of public libraries in Texas. The commission then pleased the librarians further by endorsing the changes TLA advocated in the law governing county libraries and the Board of Library Examiners.12 In the commission’s mid-September 1954 meeting Morgan said that, in light of the shortage of librarians around the state, the commission should develop a strong relation with the six-year-old Graduate School of Library Science at the University of Texas. State librarian Harwell then reported adjusting the 138

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agency’s proposed budget “in such a way as to encourage graduates to accept State Library positions by paying better salaries.” Finally, Morgan invited both faculty and students of the library school and members of TLA to attend commission meetings as they pleased.13 With the communication he had been instrumental in developing between the commission and TLA following that exchange in Mineral Wells six months earlier, with the commission advocating TLA positions on the survey and changes in the law, and with the commission taking a strong interest in jobs for librarians, John Morgan had good reason to believe that he had mitigated the complaints and concerns of the leaders of the library community. And so he had until they learned of the last action the commission took on Monday, September 19, 1955. Ignoring what they had agreed to only six meetings and less than two years earlier, the commission elected Witt Harwell to be state librarian.14 Perhaps no other candidates as strong as Wallis and Holman had applied, but no one had seen an invitation from the commission for applications. Perhaps the commission was so pleased with Harwell’s direction of the state library and efforts to inform himself as fully on library matters as he was on records issues that it felt no need to look further. Perhaps the sentiment Senator George Moffett had expressed to Kemp influenced the members. A supporter of the state library on whom the commission had called many times for guidance in legislative matters, Moffett told the commission he did not want to see in the job “some young librarian [of the Henshaw type] or perhaps some archivist from the university.” The state library, he reminded Kemp and his colleagues rightly, “is a different type of library from most others. It has different problems.” To his mind, then, “if at all possible those who had grown up within it and have had the experience with its problems should continue to operate it.” Harwell alone fit that description.15 As soon as they learned of the appointment, the librarians began to seethe. TLA president Margaret Hoyal telephoned Morgan the very day of the decision, protesting that Harwell lacked the one year of library education required by law. Unable to persuade the chairman to reverse the commission’s decision, she addressed a long open letter to him three weeks later, with the collaboration of her executive board. From their exchange, it was obvious that the librarians and the commission saw the Texas State Library very differently. Simply put, for TLA the agency was a public library; for the commission it was not. For TLA “any important public library no larger than the State Library” needed a college-educated librarian in charge, because only a librarian could structure, run, and evaluate the quality of the library operation or communicate effectively with professional colleagues and the public. 139

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“A car-salesman must know cars, and the man who sells books and libraries to the citizens of a state must know books and libraries,” she wrote. For the commission, only one of the functions the law charged it to carry out was running a library. And as Morgan told Hoyal, the records function of the agency was the one that at that time occupied the state librarian primarily. Since no staff member of the state library possessed library schooling, TLA had expected the state librarian to be recruited from outside the agency. As Kemp and the commission saw it and Senator Moffett expressed it, after the experience with Henshaw, an administrator proven from working in the state library brought the qualities the agency needed.16 For librarian Bill Holman, and no doubt others, this crisis could become a defining moment for TLA.17 Would the organization fight the commission to force it to abide by the law requiring the head of the agency to have library training, or would TLA simply say the right thing and then let events take their course? If indeed this became a defining moment, it would not be because of any remaking of events that TLA, powerless over commission decisions, accomplished. In fact, TLA president Hoyal was eloquent in defining the functions of a library and the characteristics of a librarian professionally prepared to lead it. But the library TLA leaders described was not, and never had been, the Texas State Library. The commission took its action for the agency that was. The education requirement aside, TLA objected in favor of the library that TLA leaders since 1903 had wanted. While the controversy over Harwell’s appointment swirled, the Texas Research League worked on completing arrangements for the survey it had agreed to conduct for the commission and TLA together. Rather than the comprehensive study of libraries throughout Texas initially proposed, the project focused on the services of the Texas State Library. Unlike earlier studies of the agency purported to be comprehensive and balanced, this one truly was. Conducted by a group of professional researchers, the study was guided by Roger McDonough, who had been the New Jersey state librarian for eight years and had responsibilities in and ties to the library, archival, legislative, and public administration communities. Delivered in August 1956, the report captured the situation of the Texas State Library in state government in its two direct opening sentences. “Judged by the amount of funds it expends or by the number of persons it employs, the Texas State Library would not be considered a state agency of major importance. But in terms of its actual and potential services to the Legislature and to other state offices and to the general public as well, its useful role in Texas government deserves careful attention.” Then, characterizing the agency, the document stated: “The use of the term ‘library’ when referring to the State Library was much more appro140

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priate at the time it was first founded because it then consisted of only a small specialized collection of books. While perhaps not entirely inappropriate, the use of the term in reference to the operation today can be misleading.”18 The Research League concluded that five functions (legislative reference, records management, state archives, loan and general reference, and the blind service) of the six performed by the Texas State Library were operating well. (In a separate memorandum to the commission regarding the organization of the agency, the Research League staff listed the main programs as four: legislative reference, archives, records administration, and extension. Missing for the first time was loan and general reference, which included the blind service.19) More employees and more and better space were what the agency needed—conclusions expected by anyone remotely familiar with the state library. Supporting Morgan’s observation to Hoyal regarding the centrality of records management in the work of the state librarian, the report stated that “the best opportunity for rapid development of a program so obviously worthwhile that it would attract immediate and favorable legislative support lies in the field of records management.” And in planning for the future, the time had come to put the Gambrell-Henshaw period behind the agency. The researchers recommended that the records management operation be redesigned to incorporate all of the ripening functions of records management, from scheduling through storage and retrieval, to disposal, and including microfilming as appropriate. With elements of these already active, the real need, besides a salary to attract the individual, was for a chief skilled not just in managing the technical aspects of records management but also in talking with heads of state departments so as to incorporate the records management function throughout state government for—something the legislature should appreciate—“effecting large savings of state funds.”20 The one underperforming unit of the agency was library extension, for which the survey found “no real program has even been formulated.” Confirming what the librarians had been saying—that the commission of recent years had slighted the operation—the study pinned the problem, manifested in having four heads in the last three years, on the shortage of librarians generally, the low salary, and the travel required. Since extension was a service to Texans, the researchers asked: Were Texans “sufficiently interested in the development of public library services to justify continuance” of the operation? The answer was yes. Would it function better in another agency? No. Needed, then, were a salary adequate to attract a qualified librarian to manage the program and an advisory committee of librarians and citizens “to devise a sound and comprehensive extension program.”21 Judged by this report, the Texas State Library under Witt Harwell had 141

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regained its composure in all respects but one. Money and space, as always, were what restrained the agency from serving the state—government, librarians, and the general public—as the law specified. The agency’s biennial report for 1954–1956—unlike that of six biennia earlier, which barely mentioned the Lester-Noon recommendations—published verbatim the Research League’s summary of findings and its recommendations. For Harwell and the commission, the highlight of what otherwise was a prosaic, tedious biennial accounting clearly was the Research League report that validated their work.22 Interesting facts in the report characterizing the agency just past midcentury were these: Genealogical inquiries accounted for half of the use in archives and had become notable in the Loan and General Reference Division. In traveling eighteen thousand miles to eighty-seven towns in sixty-six counties in support of public libraries around the state, the Extension Division had assisted in the establishment of seventeen municipal libraries, five county libraries, and one city-county library and had conducted three workshops on cataloging, book selection and local history, and reference. Though the commission four years earlier had stopped buying works common for a public library, extension director Peace complained nevertheless that the shortage of children’s books hampered service, especially during the summer. Clearly, the purpose of the Extension Division was not yet firm. For all that it included, the biennial report did not mention the two occurrences of the last three months of the period that would affect the Texas State Library as fundamentally as had enactment of the 1909 statute creating the commission. First, in June 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower rewarded the American Library Association’s twelve-year campaign to secure federal aid to libraries by signing the Library Services Act (LSA). Providing money with which to hire staff and “promote adequate library service in rural areas,” the LSA would invigorate library development to a level unknown in Texas.23 And Texas needed it. The percentage of rural population in Texas was exceeded in only one other state (Pennsylvania), and Texas spent less per capita for local library service than only one other state (West Virginia).24 Second, in July, only days after the Board of Control told the state librarian to remove the U.S. documents collection from the capitol basement to make way for air-conditioning units, the Highway Department served notice that it was evicting the state archives from its basement to install a mainframe computer with which to manage the millions of federal dollars it was receiving for highway construction. Almost from the moment news of the LSA reached Texas and news of the eviction spread across the state, anyone concerned in any way with the purpose and work of the Texas State Library—the commission and state librarian, lawmakers, librarians, and citizens who never before had 142

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spoken out about the state library—perceived the importance of one or the other, or both, of the events for the future of the agency and its service to the state. As significant as each was, one stood to excite, the other to raise ire. History showed indignation, sufficiently kindled, to be the stronger force. New commission chair Guy Harrison would demonstrate in the months to come that he was a historian with a flair for the dramatic. The best option into which the commission could settle the archives on short notice was a Quonset hut at the Highway Department’s Camp Hubbard equipment shop in north Austin—the same building, newspapers noted, in which fire destroyed Highway Department records two years earlier. In September 1956, no more than two months after she learned her division would have to move and as the Highway Department was spending heavily to improve the structure for its new purpose, Connor’s replacement as state archivist, Virginia H. Taylor, supervised the transfer. “Everything is in as good shape as it could be considering the time we had,” she appraised the completed undertaking in early October. But well she knew that nothing about the state archives was in good shape. Despite everyone’s best efforts, locating material was difficult because to keep records and books off the floor, they had to be shelved as they arrived; consequently they were out of order. They had to be off the floor because until the huge sliding door at the back of the stacks area was sealed, rain came in at the top and bottom. While the door had been open during the move, three mice came in too. Insecticide eliminated the infestation of ants, but the mice had to be trapped, which took some weeks. Previously crowded in the Highway Building basement, the records were crowded more severely in the Quonset hut. The division lost storage space to the curved walls and could not stack records on the top shelves, because pounding from the eight daily trains on the nearby Missouri Pacific mainline caused stacks of any height to topple. Though housing the documents in a stable, air-conditioned environment had been one reason for moving the archives from the capitol to the Highway Department Building, only the combined office and search room in the Quonset hut was airconditioned. In the stacks, the documents would be heated unmercifully during the summer and warmed only slightly and unevenly in the winter from a few open-flame heaters. Service was crippled, because mailing, cataloging, photostat duplication, and restoration work continued to be located in the capitol, four miles away.25 “Archives Unsafely Housed,” “Texas Historical Records Shunted to Quonset Hut,” and “End of the Trail for Texas Historical Documents?” blared headlines in Dallas and San Antonio. Long unable to do more on its own to 143

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secure adequate space than wring its collective hands, and having failed to enlist the Texas Research League to call for a building to relieve the crowding, for the commission those were just the headlines it wanted. In accepting the Quonset hut, commission chair Harrison and colleagues Walter Long and Edmund Heinsohn, along with Senators Moffett and Dorsey Hardeman, schemed that the real value in moving to the unsatisfactory location was not that it could shelter the archives for however long they had to stay there, but the notice it would receive. This could create a storm of protest so great that neither legislator nor governor would dare scuttle an appropriation to fund the long-sought state archives and library building. “If we do this, we’re going to have the most spacious building that we’ve ever had,” Harrison recalled saying to his confederates. Collect the reactions, he directed archivist Taylor on October 9, and gather information on state archive buildings around the country so that “we can have our plans ready if and when the glad day comes.”26 The sting of the headlines drove the State Building Commission to action faster than Harrison could have anticipated. If he did not know it on October 9, Harrison soon learned he had reason to do more than “hope that all this attention will bear the fruit we pray for.” State Building Commission director Ralph R. Wolf was quoted in the newspapers on October 12 as saying that his commission would propose to the upcoming legislative session in January the construction of an archives and records building at a cost of $2.85 million, almost double the $1.5 million Harwell had heard mentioned. Either way, “sometimes adversities turn out to be assets,” Harwell wrote Laura Hobby, his colleague on the library and historical commission, in obvious satisfaction.27 Lacking Harwell’s confidence, Texas State Historical Association president Paul Adams of San Antonio, supported by TSHA director H. Bailey Carroll, on October 16 launched what folklorist-historian J. Frank Dobie styled “the Second Archives War” (alluding to the success of the citizens of Austin a century earlier in thwarting Republic president Sam Houston’s effort to take the government records from Austin against the will of the capitol’s citizens). Adams began with the San Antonio newspaper. Pulling from his files a December 21, 1902, Houston Post article headed “Many Valuable Volumes and Priceless Relics Going to Decay in a Moldy Basement Room” that buttressed his argument that proper housing was long overdue, he urged the San Antonio Express to continue editorializing in behalf of extricating the archives from its current site to a building constructed for the agency. (If Austin could not properly house the archives, Adams and the paper offered San Antonio, the Spanish and Mexican capital of Texas.) At the same time, Adams wrote 144

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the members of the historical association and of patriotic, lineage, historical, and genealogical groups throughout the state, appealing to them to join the call for a proper building. Within two months, not just individual letters, but petitions from more than five thousand schoolchildren and adults began pouring into Austin from throughout the state.28 Historical association member Price Daniel, for whom “Texas history has been my hobby,” was “shocked to know that our Archives have been so badly neglected.” Elected governor the day after he replied to Adams, Daniel went to work. Finding the state’s building fund inadequate, not wanting to let the agitation subside unfulfilled, and locating a surplus in the Department of Public Safety’s Motor Vehicle Inspection Fund, he announced in the budget message he delivered only days after his inauguration that the Department of Public Safety would release the money. Shortly afterward, Adams’ state representative, Raymond B. Russell Jr. of Bexar County, introduced a bill to transfer $2.5 million to construct an archives and library building. With the appropriation process under way, Governor Daniel sent his aide Jimmy Banks, a veteran of the Shivers administration, to determine how many square feet of office, storage, reading room, and museum space the state library needed to accommodate the archives, library operations, and records center. Some 100,000 square feet would be sufficient, Banks concluded. Even the tens of thousands of cubic feet of records in the records center could be accommodated, he thought. Microfilm, then incinerate the originals (which would mean adding an incinerator to the equipment for the building), he suggested, unaware that the first proposal for wholesale microfilming had cost the job of a state librarian.29 Events seemed to be moving quickly and well until Margaret Barclay Megarity, president of the powerful Daughters of the Republic of Texas and executive secretary of the corresponding Sons’ organization, dropped her support. From state archivist Virginia Taylor she had learned, to her revulsion, that the Senate version of Russell’s bill provided for the General Land Office to occupy what up to then had been a building for the archives and library solely. The arrangement under which the Republic of Texas entered the United States provided for the new state to retain responsibility for settling the debt of the Republic it replaced. For this purpose, the state retained title to its public lands. Established under the Republic, the General Land Office continued to administer this public property for the state. The link with the state library was simply that the General Land Office administered its own archives, which included all of the land records gathered by land commissioner John P. Borden in the 1830s. 145

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Upon inquiry, Megarity discovered not only that the Texas Library and Historical Commission was unaware of the Senate bill but also that state librarian Harwell, without the knowledge of the commission, had written the governor supporting it, then professed no knowledge of it until confronted with a copy of the letter he had signed with the commissioner of the General Land Office advocating it. Harwell’s advocacy of “the combined building as if speaking for his entire commission . . . put all of the rest of us behind the 8-ball [and] . . . has ruined the entire deal,” Megarity wrote angrily.30 Whether or not individual commission members personally favored having the land office in the building, they agreed to it after learning that the governor and Senate supporters of the state library and archives favored the combination, which would have the benefit of housing in the same building the archives of both agencies. Despite Megarity’s defection, the legislature approved and Governor Daniel signed into law on May 22, 1957, House Bill 62, which funded a building to house not just the state library and archives but also the land office and a museum. The Texas State Library for the first time in its long life would have a structure designed and built for it. For her campaign to rid the building of the land office, which had included visits to the governor, Representative Russell, and the land office, state archivist Taylor was reprimanded. Her dismissal the next month resulted, the papers reported, from what Harwell termed a housecleaning of archives staff for disrupting the division’s work by their incessant feuding.31 During its next five meetings from July 1957 until it came together on May 13, 1959, for the ceremonial groundbreaking to begin construction, the commission devoted the majority of its sessions to the building. First was the design. Opening the discussion in July 1957, John Morgan called for something “in keeping with Texas history.” His colleagues concurred, emphasizing “definitely not modern architecture” in exterior appearance. Hobby recommended a structure that resembled the current capitol, even down to the granite walls. Austin promoter and local historian Walter Long, who, since his appointment to the commission in 1953, had devoted himself to pursuing a building for the agency, could not have scripted the meeting better. Soon after Hobby finished, he read a paper he had prepared for the occasion recapping the history of Texas and offering pictures of its capitol buildings, all to stress that the edifice should be a “Center Piece” for state history. Rather than looking to the present capitol for inspiration, he and John Morgan recommended a design the central feature of which would be modeled on the limestone, cupola-topped, first permanent capitol—“colonial capitol,” they called it, accentuating its classical southern colonial lines—which had burned in 1881. Though members embraced the design proposal, they wanted their 146

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building to be constructed of granite to complement the present capitol, the east side of which it would flank.32 When the commission next met in January 1958, Long turned attention to the interior. Five business floors were proposed to accommodate all state library components except the Legislative Reference Division, which would remain in the state library room in the capitol for the convenience of its clientele, and the Records Division, whose bulk warehouse storage in south Austin provided a more cost-effective management of the records sent to it than microfilming and incineration. Seven stack floors projecting from the back of but running less than half the 257-foot length of the building were to accommodate all publications of state agencies, all federal documents, all talking and braille books for circulation to the blind, the steady accumulation of the twenty-six daily newspapers to which the library subscribed, all the books for genealogical research and general circulation, all the books circulating from Extension, all the Texana book collection (expanding at 75 linear feet per year), and the archives. The space, Long said, was insufficient. First, though he did not say it directly and may not have known at that moment how much of the building would be lost to the General Land Office, the state library and archives would not have use of all of the structure’s 100,000 square feet, which they had projected needing. In fact, the land office would occupy 34,000 square feet—more than one-third. Second, of the six stack floors assigned to the agency, state archives would have only two. That was adequate for the archives in hand and the volume created in a state of 8 million people. With the population forecast to mushroom during the next quarter century by between two and one-half and four times, to between 20 million and 30 million people, the two floors would not be able to accommodate the volume of records created in conducting the necessarily increased state services.33 Third, since commission members all knew that a height restriction to avoid interfering with the view of the capitol from the east prevented them from adding floors, Long told them that the commission should acquire property next to its half block. Moreover, he knew that an adjacent half block was available for $250,000, which they could afford by using Austin limestone rather than granite for the walls. “Let us not continue to be blatent [sic] Texans about how BIG we are, how great everything is we have, and yet so chincy [sic] in our vision and money that there is no future for expansion of any enterprise whether it is for libraries or business,” Long urged his colleagues. Heinsohn concurred in Long’s call to acquire the tract but took exception to what he called “fightin’ words” about being chintzy. Calling them “the truest statement I have made,” Long stood his ground. George Moffett, chair of the Senate State Affairs Committee, agreed. As he left the meeting, Moffett 147

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commended the commission’s foresightedness. “The State has been lacking in vision in nearly everything it does when it comes to land and room,” he said in recommending they buy the land.34 The commission could make all the decisions it wanted, but final approval of important matters rested with the governor as chair of the Texas State Building Commission and for whom this building was a very personal work. In thanking Harwell for sending minutes of the January meeting, Governor Daniel replied that “of course your organization will be consulted in connection with final plans for the Archives Building.” By the July 1958 meeting of the Library and Historical Commission, it had been decided that no land would be acquired for expansion. This forced the Adams and Adams architectural firm of San Antonio to replace Long’s colonial capitol design with a simple rectangular structure presenting a semiclassical facade of ten massive square granite columns flanked by windowless walls bearing quotations from Texas’ Declaration of Independence and its Constitution of 1845. The Texas history motif of the building continued in the theme of seals and flags, recognizing the six nations that had been sovereign over the land of Texas (Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and the State of Texas). In addition to a stand of flags in front of the building, the theme would appear in terra-cotta, mosaic, and bronze shields on the east and west walls and the bronze exterior doors, respectively. A historical bronze screen at the back of the foyer completed the motif in fifteen panels depicting aspects of the animals, peoples, events, and economic progress of Texas.35 “When this building is finished, properly equipped, and occupied by us,” Chairman Harrison wrote Cauthorn, pleased but judicious, “it will be only the beginning of the fulfillment of our needs.”36 As the state archives were being moved to the Quonset hut, Harwell and assistant state librarian (and former Extension Division head) Bill Peace traveled to Dallas to meet on September 14, 1956, with TLA’s Library Development Committee. They established a partnership that developed a five-year state plan, which called for both regional library service demonstrations and multicounty bookmobile demonstrations. Approving the plan under the new Library Services Act, the U.S. Department of Education sent $40,000 (considerably more than was spent on extension in 195637) to hire staff (including a public relations person to create publicity), fund travel for field work, and buy equipment and library materials to inaugurate the Texas Rural Library Service.38 In May 1957, in anticipation of all that could be accomplished with a projected budget of nearly $200,000, the new state library division under Bess Ann Motley, former Dallas County librarian with experience directing a system of fifteen libraries, began work on the most ambitious library develop148

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ment program Texas had seen. Texans, she proclaimed, were going to be able “to observe at fairly close range the operation of a regional library system and the advantages offered by larger library units in securing better library service through existing libraries, newly established libraries, bookmobile service, centralized process and services, and inter-library loan privileges.”39 Librarians were excited. Nearly every issue of Texas Libraries and many issues of TLA’s Texas Library Journal carried news of the new division’s work. The most visible manifestation of the plan—bright red and cream white air-conditioned bookmobiles that could carry up to two thousand volumes each—arrived in Austin on November 20, 1957, to suitable newspaper and television coverage. The first of them began operation in counties in the Central Texas district just northwest of Austin early in January 1958. In June the program initiated a summer reading club for children and teenagers in the counties with LSA demonstrations that the founders claimed to be the first attempt in the country to organize young people in reading on so large a scale. Likely it was the first reading club born of LSA work. As month followed month, TLA leaders waxed eloquent about the program’s possibilities for instilling the importance of library service.40 As much as the program truly was accomplishing, as 1957 ended, director Motley discovered she could not carry the full plan into effect. One multicounty bookmobile demonstration each year in only three of the five demonstration regions was all the division could afford. The promised budget had not materialized. To obtain all of the federal money for which Texas was eligible, the state had to spend an amount calculated on the percentage of rural inhabitants in the state in relation to the percentage nationally. Harwell hoped to satisfy Texas’ obligation using state dollars devoted to extension work in rural areas. But it was not enough. Rather than ask the legislature to increase state funding, he hit on the idea of counting expenditures of local libraries participating in the program. “Clever,” the Texas Observer later called it. And though federal LSA program officers permitted the stratagem, the Texas contribution still fell short. Unwilling to use the LSA program as intended by Congress as leverage to increase state funding for libraries, Harwell’s “Texas Program” of funding shortchanged his new division and the promotion of libraries in Texas in three years by $111,710, the equivalent of funding for nearly six months of field work.41 Jerry Cauthorn, who joined the Texas Library and Historical Commission about the time the effect of the shortfall became evident, did not like what she saw. The wife of former House member Albert R. Cauthorn, active with libraries in Del Rio and Val Verde County, and a new member of the Texas Library Association, she “had the same idea that I did about the function of 149

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the library,” Guy Harrison reminisced years later. “It was to be more than just a purely custodian institution. It was to be an active state library which would be a model for all the libraries of the state and actually look after all the public libraries of the state and found new libraries.” Looking after and founding new libraries was precisely the purpose of the Library Services Act. But whereas Harrison the historian took interest in the state archives too, Cauthorn did not. She had come to the commission not to understand and work in behalf of the agency in all its breadth but to advance library interests—even to the detriment of the agency as a whole. “I believe that, great as is the sentiment attached to the Archives, or huge as are the potential savings to the State in a fully developed Control of Records program, or as strong as is legislative support of some other Divisions, that the real basis for firm, continuing and growing support and development of the State Library rests completely on a Library approach,” she wrote Harrison flatly. Cauthorn maintained her view even though—as Harrison wrote her, as was patently obvious at the time even to TLA, and recognition of which has remained undiminished by historical investigation—without sentiment for the archival component of the agency, her cherished library function would have had to continue to operate in inadequate quarters. “It was the Archives Division that made possible the enjoyment of a new building by the other TSL [Texas State Library] divisions,” Texas State Library historian Marie Shultz confirmed, “for it is highly doubtful that a building would ever have been secured for the other functions of TSL had the Archives not elicited the strong support necessary to pass such legislation.”42 Cauthorn stands as the most egregious example of a state library leader who saw her mission as supporting a single function of the agency, rather than the Texas State Library as a whole. Because Harrison alone could support her single-interest advocacy, Cauthorn considered him “the only Commission member who shows a full awareness of Library needs.”43 Though her confidence in her position needed no validation, she found confirmation nonetheless during the American Library Association annual meeting in the summer of 1958 when she “learned that [the] Texas State Library is regarded by the profession, in and out of the State, as a hot potato.”44 Whatever else she and the profession meant by “hot potato,” the issues of having professional staff without courses in librarianship and a state librarian who did not meet the library education qualification for the job were paramount. By the end of the year, Cauthorn and Harrison were corresponding about not just the necessity of library education but also a potential replacement for Witt Harwell. At Cauthorn’s suggestion, Harrison urged Dorman H. Winfrey, who had replaced Virginia Taylor as state archivist, to 150

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attend library classes and workshops to improve his archival efficiency. Winfrey resisted. “It does appear that today the trend is not to train archivists in library science,” he wrote in a note to Harwell. Pointedly, he penned his note on a document quoting the director of the highly respected North Carolina State Department of Archives and History saying that “archives and libraries are so different that library training in many ways is not only of no advantage to an archivist, but may be a definite handicap.”45 By early 1960, Cauthorn, who would be honored by TLA in the summer as the trustee of the year, had turned so completely against Harwell that she pleased herself by drawing up a list of discrepancies she had detected just in the latter half of 1959 between his words and his deeds. Cauthorn’s list, together with personal financial difficulties of the state librarian that were affecting the Rural Library Service staff, led commission chair Harrison that spring to encourage Harwell not to wait until his announced December retirement to leave.46 Though Cauthorn and Harrison were the only commission members who agreed on encouraging the state librarian’s departure, the strength of their conviction, coupled with the power of Harrison’s position as chair, propelled them to continue to work to oust Harwell. By July 1960, matters seemed to be coming to a head. And though the choice of the next state librarian lay with the commission, Governor Price Daniel was watching. “You remember the Governor asked us to ‘give him some names to consider,’” Cauthorn reminded Harrison on July 8. Harrison remembered, but Daniel’s purpose puzzled and troubled him. Since the governor had no vote in the selection, Harrison was “afraid if he tries to influence us too much we may have a greater mess than ever.” On the other side of the coin, though, “we are certainly dependent upon him in the budget, the building, and,” Harrison added, “especially in the matter of the $12,000 salary of the state librarian,” the total to which Cauthorn and Harrison hoped to raise it. Harrison’s concern was valid, because, as both he and Cauthorn knew, the governor had a man in mind. If the governor did pressure the commission to install state archivist Winfrey, with whom he shared a deep enjoyment in Texas history, Harrison and Cauthorn concurred that the governor’s confidence in Winfrey was well placed.47 After state librarian Harwell threatened in midsummer to resign at any time and Harrison retorted that “we might beat him to the draw,” the commission on August 6 accepted the resignation, effective September 30, 1960. Prepared, the commission listened to several letters of application, then interviewed Winfrey and offered him the job, subject to an attorney general’s opinion regarding his eligibility without the required library studies. Wishing to avoid controversy and having the offer of a genuine opportunity, Winfrey 151

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resigned the next week as state archivist to become the archivist of the University of Texas. After TLA’s executive board learned of the commission’s action, which flouted the legal requirement for the second state librarian in a row, it passed the obligatory resolution. On the motion of one of the candidates passed over, but in a tone far less confrontational than that of former president Hoyal five years earlier, the board requested once more that the job be offered only to a person “well qualified by training and experience” and that the salary be raised to attract a “person of high caliber, fitted to fulfill this position of leadership in library matters of Texas.”48 In its first meeting of the new biennium, on September 24, 1960, the Texas Library and Historical Commission elevated assistant state librarian William K. Peace to acting head of the agency and charged him with a job singularly difficult and unpleasant—making “a time-study of the percentage of time spent by each employee working in the Rural Services Program and the State [Extension] program and said time sheets to be adjusted accordingly.” What those words meant was that Peace was to give his immediate attention to “replacing unqualified personnel presently holding professional librarians positions in the Texas State Library.” In concert, newly appointed acting assistant state librarian Rosalyne Shamblin was directed to continue her study of the Rural Library Service program. In short, Peace and Shamblin were to dismiss staff holding professional positions at libraries around the state but lacking requisite library education, to reduce the salaries of those who remained from the higher federal to the lower state level, and to end the wasteful and demoralizing competition that had grown up between the two state library units that had essentially the same mission—Rural Library Service and the Extension Division.49 A month after he was installed as acting state librarian, thirty-four-yearold Peace in mid-October wrote the commission chair and subsequently the full commission that he had taken what he called “the first step” in fulfilling his charge by terminating five staff members as of the end of the year. Including the directors of the Rural Library Service and the Extension Division in that number would permit unification of their units by consolidation of their positions. “Do not finally employ any important personnel until you have thoroughly checked them in every way,” Harrison cautioned Peace in reply, directing him to “then take it up with me for we do not want to make mistakes this time.” Harrison well knew that “the library can not take too many drastic reorganizations in short order.”50 Once news of the firings got out, the commission, legislators, and the governor began hearing from librarians and county officials who protested elimination of the Rural Library Service program and staff. Harrison replied 152

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to the orchestrated protests, saying, first, that librarians around the state and federal authorities both had told him that creating two competing units had been a mistake, and second, that far from abolishing the federal program, the commission planned to expand it. Consequently, with Peace, Harrison, Cauthorn, and Shamblin thinking that Peace and Shamblin had done all and exactly what had been asked of them in September, commission members convened for a regular meeting on December 3, 1960.51 The group heard reports on expanding the Rural Library Service, on several matters related to the new building, and on paintings in the capitol before turning to the budget proposal for the coming biennium, particularly that for reorganization of the Rural Library Service. After discussion, Cauthorn and Heinsohn moved acceptance. On what Harrison expected to pass readily, members Long and Banks voted no. After Harrison broke the tie in the affirmative, Long and Banks protested that they had not had time to consider the matter thoroughly, whereupon Heinsohn moved to rescind the approval and joined Long and Banks in reversing the earlier vote. Harrison’s heart pounded. As he saw it, Long, Banks, and, for that matter, Heinsohn in September had given him the authority to proceed and had had three months to consider developments and inform themselves of the proposed budget. Now, without warning or explanation, they were in effect calling for reconsideration of everything connected with the Rural Library Service. Outraged and disgusted that at the last moment these members were willing to consider undoing “the work of seven years toward making the State Library an efficient, professionally staffed organization of which Texas could be proud,” and fearing that in dealing with the upsetting situation further he might suffer a heart attack, Harrison abruptly resigned the chair. A month later, under his doctor’s order to reduce his workload to protect his heart and without attending another meeting, Guy Harrison left the commission.52 Under a new chair, San Antonio attorney, former House member, and historian C. Stanley Banks, the commission convened a week later and adopted the budget Harrison had advocated to expand the rural library program, emphasizing bookmobile service, consultant visits, and workshops under the reorganized Extension Division. But when the new staff arrived for work in January 1961, they found they had to start from scratch—literally. The terminated personnel had taken all of the rural program’s records. State security officers never recovered them.53 When the commission next met, almost five months later at the end of April 1961, construction of the new building had advanced so far that the members talked about plans for moving in and the name to be chiseled into the facade over the columns. Cauthorn, who, Harwell grumbled, “seems to 153

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know more about how it should be done than the architects themselves,” insisted on “State Library and Archives Building.” Though “Library” appeared first in several places in HB 62, the name specified in the bill plainly read “State Archives and Library Building.” The attorney general, to whom the matter was appealed, ruled that the commission must abide by the law, but he could not force the commission to act. For whatever reason, no name was chiseled into the granite until years later.54 Throughout the process, Governor Daniel kept his thumb on the pulse of developments. His concern, he told those attending a meeting of the state building commission in his office on December 19, 1958, extended only to the exterior and possibly the first floor. In fact, recalled Dorman Winfrey, who saw it all as state archivist and then as a consultant from his position as archivist of the University of Texas, “Daniel practically designed the building.” No matter was too large or too small for his attention. The six-flags motif had been his idea. He wanted the exterior walls of the stacks, visible from San Jacinto Street, faced in polished granite more expensive than the unpolished texture specified for all but the front wall behind the columns. He disapproved of the commission’s first choice of furniture for the reading room. He disapproved of the plans for the dioramas proposed for the display windows in the lobby. Documents would be substituted. After the committee that had been convened to plan the exhibition of documents made its report, he wanted the cases redesigned, objecting to the themes of the displays, the presentation of several documents, the places to which books were opened, and even the manner in which Republic and Confederate currency overlapped.55 No commission discussion of the building was more important, however, than that of April 30, 1960, when in considering its budget proposal for the coming biennium, the commission realized for the first time on record that it could not operate the new building with the staff it had. Specifically, the state archivist and his two full-time assistants were too few to retrieve and refile records in the stacks, work in office areas preparing records for use, and still supervise the large search room to assist users and protect the records from damaging handling and even theft. In searching the country for examples, the commission was startled by its findings and not hesitant to share them with the governor’s and legislature’s budget staffs: Texas, with one of the largest [holdings of ] Archives in the United States, ranks right at the bottom in the nation in the appropriations to conduct its State Archives. . . . Among the Southern States, Texas is also at the bottom of the list in legislative appropriations for and number of persons 154

The H arwell, Peace, and Beginning Winfrey Years engaged in archives employment. Archival agencies in five of the twelve Southern States receive more than twice as much appropriation as does the Texas State Archives.

Mississippi’s allocation of $43,910, for example, more than doubled Texas’ $19,160. Remaining in the capitol, the Legislative Reference Division would need additional staff, since no longer could it call on librarians in the agency’s Main Division to help. Though the Records Division would continue to work from the rented warehouses, the enlarged budget request seemed to offer a good opportunity to request the three additional staff it needed to operate its three facilities, manage the four thousand more cubic-foot boxes per year it was receiving than it had five years earlier, and serve the tripled number of monthly agency requests for records.56 At last, on July 24, 1961, the long-awaited move began. The archives having been fumigated to minimize ferrying vermin into the new building, two trucks accompanied by state troopers started transporting the precious records from the Quonset hut. But “the storied old Texas State Library” was moving “into a beautiful $2,500,000 inadequacy,” Austin’s principal newspaper reported. “There is no room behind its gleaming facade for the day to day records of state government—described by perturbed Acting State Librarian William K. Peace as ‘our archives of the future.’” Though proud of the building that would house the state’s most valuable historical documents, Peace added nevertheless that “we are not treating the records right.” When Price Daniel, who considered the building to be one of the crowning achievements of his three-term administration, read Peace’s words, he was livid. “Needless to say,” he addressed Peace, “your interviews about the size of the State Archives and Library Building, even before moving into it, have grieved me very much. I do not believe it will serve the purpose of attracting people to leave their collections and important archival material with us if they are told there is no room.” The building never had been intended to accommodate the holdings of the Records Division, Daniel added. “If you cannot say something good about the new building,” he closed, “simply withhold comment until you have given further study to what the State Library Commission asked that we provide in the way of space.”57 Peace explained that the article represented the effort of the reporter to create a story and distorted Peace’s sentiment: The reporter was primarily interested in whether or not the new building would bring all parts of the library under one roof. In other words, the 155

The State Library and A rchives of Texas general impression has been that the new building would house all units of the State Library as was erroneously stated in a previous editorial of the Austin American and this interview was only one of numerous inquiries on this point. My effort was directed toward explaining the difference between the housing of the Archives Division and the continued rented housing of the Records Division. There certainly can be no question of the adequacy of space provided in the State Archives and Library Building for historical archives.58

Though he oversaw the successful completion of the three-month move into the new building, if Bill Peace nourished the notion that he might be named the next state librarian, the displeasures he had given Governor Daniel, the most recent being how he was quoted in the newspaper, extinguished it.59 But thanks in no small part to Peace simply doing the unpleasant job he, as acting head, was asked by the commission to do in consolidating the Rural Library Service and Extension divisions, he smoothed the way for Daniel’s choice in due course to be installed. The next state librarian of Texas would not have to have the library qualification that for so long had been a bone of contention between the Texas Library Association and the commission. In the audience at the commission’s contentious December 3, 1960, meeting on the reorganization of the Rural Library Service program sat Representative-elect Ronald Roberts of Hillsboro, who represented what he called a “very active group of library women” who in turn supported Bess Motley and her rural program. George Christian of Governor Daniel’s staff reported to Daniel that Roberts was unmoved by the arguments for reorganization: “He thought the best thing to do is to ‘clean them all out from Bill Peace on down’ and start over. He talks of introducing legislation to reorganize the State Library.” Following through, in mid-February 1961, Roberts introduced HB 524 “to provide the State Librarian shall be the executive and administrative officer of the Texas Library and Historical Commission.” As amended in the Senate under Governor Daniel’s watchful eye and favoring the commission’s call to change the title of “State Librarian” to “Director,” signifying the administrative character of the job, the bill joined the two into “Director and Librarian” and listed the qualifications as “at least two years’ training in library science or the equivalent thereof in library, teaching or research experience and . . . at least two years of administrative experience in library, research or related fields.” Evidently considering the bill to be an attack on the library community, Peace did what he could to derail the measure, but his warnings to TLA leaders fell on deaf ears.60 Roberts’ bill became law on June 17, 1961, and opened the door for the 156

The H arwell, Peace, and Beginning Winfrey Years

commission to complete the effort to name a new agency head that had begun the year before. In the first meeting after the move into the new building and at only its second meeting in its own quarters, the commission on December 11, 1961, unanimously elected thirty-seven-year-old Dorman H. Winfrey to be the Texas State Library’s ninth head and first director and librarian. In addition to his unquestioned administrative experience, most of it gained in the state library itself, Winfrey satisfied the two years of professional experience with the completion of his doctorate in history.61 Winfrey accepted and prepared to begin his new work on the first day of the new year. More than a new year, 1962 brought a new era for the Texas Library and Historical Commission and the Texas State Library. Winfrey told the commission the day it elected him that he recognized “he has to work with people and that the Commission is interested in a fine job with little dissension.” No one wanted a repeat of the end of the Harwell years, the end of the Henshaw years, or for those who remembered them, the end of the Wilcox or the Rogan years. He was right, and the commission saw a fresh atmosphere emerge so quickly under its new director and librarian that it gave him its thanks in its very next meeting. On April 10, 1962, with the appointments of the new building completed, Governor Daniel dedicated the first structure built specifically to accommodate the Texas State Library and the Texas State Archives. “This building and its contents will be a constant inspiration to those who study and visit here,” he told the crowd assembled on that sunny morning. “This is the measure of its real importance to our State and to our people.”62

157

Co n clus i o n

S

ome 127 years after Texas’ revolutionary government leader Don Carlos Barrett broached the idea of a library for Texas government, 126 years after the Congress of the Republic of Texas ordered the assembling of archives, 86 years after the legislature under the Constitution of 1876 joined the state’s library and archival functions in one agency, and 53 years after the undaunted stalwarts of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, the resolute souls of the Texas Library Association, and the steadfast members of the Texas State Historical Association secured creation of the Texas Library and Historical Commission and established the Texas State Library as a separate and independent unit of state government, the agency and its governing board in 1962 received the final two keystones to complete the framework for a state library and archives of the size and scope adequate to serve the people and government of Texas. They had a structure designed for them to facilitate their work, and they had recognition in law of the breadth of professional expertise appropriate to organize and lead this state library and archives. Though little-noticed outside of the library community and though done by the legislature for the wrong reason—to “clean them all out”—broadening in law the qualifications required to direct the state library and archives of Texas nevertheless acknowledged the multipurpose agency that long had been developing. It was an agency in 1962 of multiple functions—library resource, archives/records management/history, and promotion of public libraries throughout the state—and varied services within these three designed to meet the needs of specific groups, particularly lawmakers and the blind, rendered by professionals in distinct but clearly related fields. The change opened the search for leadership so that the commission never again would be confined by specification of qualifications that failed to admit the broad range of professional knowledge needed to fulfill the agency’s many mandates. Never again would the commission have to repeat the action it had

Conclusion

taken so recently with Harwell of honoring the law in the breach in order to install in the position the professional best qualified to direct the agency at a particular time. Commensurate in magnitude with the change in the law was the building. If Governor Daniel was right when he said that constant inspiration would be the building’s measure, this first structure erected to accommodate the state library and archives of Texas would draw Texans’ attention to the mission of the agency housed within it. For all that it cost in dollars and the decades-long struggle to obtain it, the purpose-built home represented a triumph of mission over the sentiment that libraries and archives are good and needed, just not at this cost and not now—a sentiment that cowered in a forlorn present and shrank from providing for an optimistic future, a sentiment that had relentlessly dogged and depressed the agency since the national library of the Republic took form with the purchase of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia in 1839. Lena Williams Goodman had anticipated that this turn to mission would result when the agency was accorded adequate, purpose-designed quarters. “Remembering that our Texas Library and Historical Commission is the storehouse that has garnered up the wisdom of the ages past, and realizing, too, its future value to culture and to Democracy, [we] must be wise enough,” she challenged her colleagues in the Texas Woman’s Press Association in May 1938, “and patriotic enough to remain aggressively dissatisfied until our sacred ‘storehouse’ is safely and adequately sheltered.” “Value to culture and to democracy” captured in six words the purpose and role of the state library and archives of Texas as it had been maturing. In a new building, under new leadership, and supported by a strong governor, the agency came into a golden opportunity for clarifying, amplifying, and focusing its role in the information life of Texas. In the cultural sense, this was information that both enriched the life of the mind through reading and tied individuals more intimately to Texas through genealogical and historical study in documentary sources from Texas’ past. In the democratic sense, this was information managed to the ends of streamlining government operations, facilitating engagement with contemporary issues, and serving the fundamental accountability of government to its citizens. The formidable state librarian Cadwell Raines would have rejoiced at the role the state library had matured to play. Sixty-three years after finance committee chair John McMullen revered economy in the moment over knowledge to advance the present and the future, and scuttled the first attempt to provide a library for government, Raines in 1899 could only hope that “perhaps the day is not far distant when it will be realized that the true grandeur of a State consists not so much in extent of territory, wealth and population as 159

The State Library and A rchives of Texas

in beneficent institutions.” Rather than hope, Lena Goodman in 1938 urged aggressive discontent over the unsatisfactory conditions of the library collections and archival holdings of the state library so as to realize the day Raines envisioned. In 1962—sixty-three years after Raines voiced his hope—Governor Price Daniel dedicated the solid structure that aggressive discontent, over treatment of the state’s priceless archives, built. In his dedication, Daniel vindicated Raines’ dream of the day Texas would treasure its state library and archives for the inspired uses to which the resources within it would be put to incubate knowledge to the benefit of Texas and Texans. Serving Texas and Texans as an institution adding value to culture and to democracy had become the clear and full mission of the state library and archives of Texas—a mission essential to society that the Texas Library and Historical Commission and its successor, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, alone could fulfill.

160

appendix 1

Texa s L i b r a r y a n d Hi sto ri c al Co m m iss i o n Members, 1909–1962

Name

Life Dates

Commission Dates [Chair in Bold]

ANDERSON, William Madison, Jr.

1889–1935

1919–1922

Presbyterian pastor

Dallas

BANKS, Clinton Stanley, Sr.

1892–1990

1956– 1961–

Attorney, former state House member

San Antonio

BARKER, Eugene Campbell

1874–1956

1910–1918 1911–1912

History professor

Austin

BENEDICT, Ada Stone [Mrs. Harry Yandell]

1874–1961

1941–1944

Widow of University of Texas president

Austin

BRALLEY, Francis Marion

1867–1924

1910–1913

Superintendent of public instruction

Austin

1940–1941

Banker and insurer

Austin

BULL, Asa Claud, Sr.

Position

Residence

BURGES, Richard Fenner

1873–1941

1919–1929

Attorney and former state House member

El Paso

BURLESON, Emma Kyle

1869–1941

1916–1941 1919–1941

Granddaughter of Republic vice president, sister of former U.S. senator, DRT member

Austin

1957–

Wife of former state House member, active with local library

Del Rio

1909

Superintendent of public instruction

Austin

CAUTHORN, Jerry [Mrs. Albert R.] COUSINS, Robert Bartow

1861–1932

Appendix 1

Name

Life Dates

DIBRELL, Ella Peyton Dancy [Mrs. Joseph Burton]

1836–1920

DOUGHTY, Walter Francis

Commission Dates [Chair in Bold]

Position

Residence

1911–1918 1913

TFWC president, 1909, wife of former state senator

Seguin

1873–1931

1914–1918 1914–1918

Superintendent of public instruction

Austin

FITZGERALD, Hugh Nugent

c. 1857–1936

1912–1914

Newspaperman and campaign manager for former governors Culberson and Colquitt

Dallas

GAMBRELL, Virginia Leddy [Mrs. Herbert P.]

1910–1978

1944–1951 1949–1951

Archivist, wife of director of Hall of State, TSHA member

Dallas

GARRISON, George Pierce

1853–1910

1909–1910 1909–1910

History professor, TSHA founding member

Austin

GORDON, Abe

1934–1935

Houston

GOULD, John

1893–1953

1937–1953 1944–1946 1948–1949

Newspaperman

Wichita Falls

HARRISON, Guy Bryan, Jr.

1899–1988

1953–1961 1954–1960

History professor, TSHA Fellow

Waco

HEINSOHN, Edmund

1888–1989

1940–1948 1952–1965 1941–1943

Methodist pastor

Austin

HOBBY, Laura Aline

1875–1972

1931–1957

Sister of former governor Hobby, Texas historian

Dallas

1928–1933

San Antonio Public Library board of trustees member

San Antonio

1919–1928

Suffragist and library supporter

Palestine

HOUSTON, Elizabeth R. HUNTER, Mary Kate

1866–1945

162

Members, 1 909 – 1 962

Name

Life Dates

Commission Dates [Chair in Bold]

IRVING, Robert L.

1865–1937

1924–1936

Presbyterian pastor

Fort Davis

JACOBSEN, Emmanuel Jake

1919–2003

1961–1962

Attorney, executive assistant to Governor Daniel

Austin

KEMP, Louis Wiltz

1881–1956

1938–1939 1941–1956 1946–1947

Texas Company engineer, TSHA president

Houston

KIRVEN, Oliver Carter

b. 1849

1915–1916

Freestone county judge

Austin

LITTLEFIELD, George Washington

1842–1920

1909–1910

Cattleman, banker

Austin

LONG, Walter Ewing

1886–1973

1953– 1964–

Manager of Austin Chamber of Commerce

Austin

1909–1910

Attorney

Corsicana

MAYS, Richard W.

Position

Residence

McKAY, Buena Day [Mrs. John G.]

1875–1916

1915–1916

Wife of Governor Ferguson’s secretary of state

Belton

MORGAN, John P.

1902–1968

1951–1958 1951–1954

Oil executive, Dallas Public Library Friends founder, Texana collector

Dallas

PAYNE, John H.

1884–1975

1940

Newspaper publisher

Austin

PERRY, Hally Bryan [Mrs. Emmett Lee]

1868–1955

1919–1923

DRT founder, TSHA member

Freeport

SAYERS, Orline Walton [Mrs. Joseph Draper]

1851–1943

1911–1914

Wife of former governor Sayers

Austin

SCOTT, Ella Dickinson [Mrs. G. R.]

1855–1949

1917–1918

TFWC activist

Corpus Christi

SEARS, George D.

1888–1959

1936–1939

Attorney, oil company executive

Houston

163

Appendix 1

Name

Life Dates

Commission Dates [Chair in Bold]

SHELLEY, George Elgin

1873–1955

1930–1938

Attorney

Austin

TERRELL, Mary Peters [Mrs. Joseph Christopher]

1846–1920

1909–1910

TFWC founder, “Mother of Texas Libraries,” TLA charter member

Fort Worth

TIPS, Walter

1841–1911

1911

Businessman, former state senator

Austin

WEST, Decca Lamar

1866–1942

1924–1930

TFWC leader, Texas Woman’s Press Association officer

Waco

Abbreviations DRT TFWC TLA TSHA

Daughters of the Republic of Texas Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs Texas Library Association Texas State Historical Association

164

Position

Residence

Appendix 2

Texa s L i b r a r y a n d Hi sto ri c al Co m m issi o n a n d stat e l i b r a ri a ns By Year and Appointment, 1909–1962

Bold—commission chair Italics—state librarian

Year

Commission Member

Appointment

1909

George P. Garrison Mary Terrell (Mrs. J. C.) Robert B. Cousins [resigned in December] George W. Littlefield Richard Mays Ernest W. Winkler

Ex officio Campbell Ex officio Campbell Campbell

1910

George P. Garrison [died in July] /Mary Terrell (Mrs. J. C.)

Ex officio/   Campbell Ex officio Campbell Campbell

Francis M. Bralley George W. Littlefield Richard Mays Ernest W. Winkler 1911

Eugene C. Barker Francis M. Bralley Orline Sayers (Mrs. J. D.) Walter Tips [died in April] /Hugh N. Fitzgerald Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Ernest W. Winkler

Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt Colquitt Colquitt

1912

Eugene C. Barker Francis M. Bralley Orline Sayers (Mrs. J. D.) Hugh N. Fitzgerald Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Ernest W. Winkler

Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt Colquitt Colquitt

Appendix 2 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

1913

Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Francis M. Bralley Eugene C. Barker Orline Sayers (Mrs. J. D.) Hugh N. Fitzgerald Ernest W. Winkler

Colquitt Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt Colquitt

1914

Walter F. Doughty Eugene C. Barker Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Orline Sayers (Mrs. J. D.) Hugh N. Fitzgerald Ernest W. Winkler

Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt Colquitt Colquitt

1915

Walter F. Doughty Eugene C. Barker Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Buena D. McKay (Mrs. J. G.) Oliver C. Kirven Ernest W. Winkler/Christian Klaerner

Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt J. Ferguson J. Ferguson

1916

Walter F. Doughty Eugene C. Barker Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Buena D. McKay (Mrs. J. G.) [died in February]/Emma K. Burleson Oliver C. Kirven Christian Klaerner

Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt J. Ferguson

1917

Walter F. Doughty Eugene C. Barker Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Emma K. Burleson Ella Scott (Mrs. G. R.) Christian Klaerner

Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt J. Ferguson J. Ferguson

1918

Walter F. Doughty Eugene C. Barker Ella Dibrell (Mrs. J. B.) Emma K. Burleson Ella Scott (Mrs. G. R.) Christian Klaerner/Elizabeth H. West

Ex officio Ex officio Colquitt J. Ferguson J. Ferguson

166

J. Ferguson

By Year and Appointment, 1 909 – 1 962 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

1919

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Hally Bryan Perry (Mrs. E. L.) William M. Anderson Jr. Elizabeth H. West

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Hobby Hobby

1920

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Hally Bryan Perry (Mrs. E. L.) William M. Anderson Jr. Elizabeth H. West

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Hobby Hobby

1921

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Hally Bryan Perry (Mrs. E. L.) William M. Anderson Jr. Elizabeth H. West

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Hobby Hobby

1922

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Hally Bryan Perry (Mrs. E. L.) William M. Anderson Jr. Elizabeth H. West

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Hobby Hobby

1923

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Hally Bryan Perry (Mrs. E. L.) Elizabeth H. West

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Hobby

1924

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Decca L. West Robert L. Irving Elizabeth H. West

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Neff Neff

1925

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter

J. Ferguson Hobby

167

Appendix 2 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

Richard F. Burges Decca L. West Robert L. Irving Elizabeth H. West/Octavia F. Rogan

Hobby Neff Neff

1926

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Decca L. West Robert L. Irving Octavia F. Rogan

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Neff Neff

1927

Emma K. Burleson Mary Kate Hunter Richard F. Burges Decca L. West Robert L. Irving Octavia F. Rogan/Frances M. (Fannie) Wilcox (acting )

J. Ferguson Hobby Hobby Neff Neff

1928

Emma K. Burleson Richard F. Burges Decca L. West Robert L. Irving Mary Kate Hunter [term expired in October] /Elizabeth R. Houston Fannie M. Wilcox (acting )

J. Ferguson Hobby Neff Neff Moody

1929

Emma K. Burleson Decca L. West Robert L. Irving Richard F. Burges [resigned in June] /George E. Shelley Elizabeth R. Houston Fannie M. Wilcox (acting )

J. Ferguson Neff Neff Moody Moody

1930

Emma K. Burleson Robert L. Irving Decca L. West [term expired in March] /Laura A. Hobby Elizabeth R. Houston George E. Shelley Fannie M. Wilcox (acting )

J. Ferguson Neff Moody Moody Moody

1931

Emma K. Burleson Robert L. Irving Elizabeth R. Houston

J. Ferguson Neff Moody

168

By Year and Appointment, 1 909 – 1 962 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

George E. Shelley Laura A. Hobby Fannie M. Wilcox (acting )

Moody Moody

1932

Emma K. Burleson Robert L. Irving Elizabeth R. Houston George E. Shelley Laura A. Hobby Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Neff Moody Moody Moody

1933

Emma K. Burleson Robert L. Irving Elizabeth R. Houston George E. Shelley Laura A. Hobby Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Neff Moody Moody Moody

1934

Emma K. Burleson Robert L. Irving George E. Shelley Laura A. Hobby Abe Gordon Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Neff Moody Moody M. Ferguson

1935

Emma K. Burleson Robert L. Irving Laura A. Hobby George E. Shelley Abe Gordon [term expired in November; seat vacant until 1936] Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Neff Moody Moody M. Ferguson

1936

Emma K. Burleson Robert L. Irving Laura A. Hobby George E. Shelley George D. Sears Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Neff Moody Moody Allred

1937

Emma K. Burleson Laura A. Hobby George E. Shelley George D. Sears

J. Ferguson Moody Moody Allred

169

Appendix 2 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

John Gould [appointed in September] Fannie M. Wilcox

Allred

1938

Emma K. Burleson Laura A. Hobby George E. Shelley [resigned in fall] /Louis W. Kemp George D. Sears John Gould Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Moody Allred Allred Allred

1939

Emma K. Burleson Laura A. Hobby John Gould George D. Sears [resigned in April] /John H. Payne Louis W. Kemp [resigned in July] /Edmund Heinsohn Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Moody Allred O’Daniel O’Daniel

1940

Emma K. Burleson Laura A. Hobby John Gould Edmund Heinsohn John H. Payne/Asa C. Bull [appointed in November] Fannie M. Wilcox

J. Ferguson Moody Allred O’Daniel O’Daniel

1941

Emma K. Burleson [died] /Edmund Heinsohn Laura A. Hobby John Gould Ada Benedict (Mrs. H. Y.) [appointed in June] Asa C. Bull/Louis W. Kemp Fannie M. Wilcox

O’Daniel Moody Allred O’Daniel Stevenson

1942

Edmund Heinsohn Laura A. Hobby John Gould Ada Benedict (Mrs. H. Y.) Louis W. Kemp Fannie M. Wilcox

O’Daniel Moody Allred O’Daniel Stevenson

1943

Edmund Heinsohn Laura A. Hobby John Gould Ada Benedict (Mrs. H. Y.) Louis W. Kemp Fannie M. Wilcox

O’Daniel Moody Allred O’Daniel Stevenson

170

By Year and Appointment, 1 909 – 1 962 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

1944

John Gould Laura A. Hobby Edmund Heinsohn Louis W. Kemp Ada Benedict (Mrs. H. Y.) [resigned in February]/Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.) [appointed in April] Fannie M. Wilcox

Allred Moody O’Daniel Stevenson Stevenson

1945

John Gould Laura A. Hobby Edmund Heinsohn Louis W. Kemp Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.) Doris H. Connerly (acting )

Allred Moody O’Daniel Stevenson Stevenson

1946

John Gould/Louis W. Kemp

Allred/   Stevenson Moody O’Daniel Stevenson

Laura A. Hobby Edmund Heinsohn Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.) Francis H. Henshaw 1947

Louis W. Kemp Laura A. Hobby John Gould Edmund Heinsohn Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.) Francis H. Henshaw

Stevenson Moody Allred O’Daniel Stevenson

1948

John Gould Laura A. Hobby Edmund Heinsohn Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.) Louis W. Kemp Francis H. Henshaw

Allred Moody O’Daniel Stevenson Stevenson

1949

John Gould/Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.) [elected in December] Laura A. Hobby Louis W. Kemp Francis H. Henshaw

Allred/   Stevenson Moody Stevenson

1950

Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.) Laura A. Hobby

Stevenson Moody

171

Appendix 2 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

John Gould Louis W. Kemp Francis H. Henshaw/Doris H. Connerly (acting )

Allred Stevenson

1951

Virginia Gambrell (Mrs. H. P.)/John P. Morgan [elected in July] Laura A. Hobby John Gould Louis W. Kemp Doris H. Connerly (acting )/Roy Sylvan Dunn (acting )

Stevenson/   Jester Moody Allred Stevenson

1952

John P. Morgan Laura A. Hobby John Gould Louis W. Kemp Edmund Heinsohn [appointed in March?] Roy Sylvan Dunn (acting )/Thomas J. Gibson III

Jester Moody Allred Stevenson Shivers

1953

John P. Morgan Laura A. Hobby John Gould [died] Louis W. Kemp Edmund Heinsohn Guy B. Harrison Jr. Walter E. Long Thomas J. Gibson III

Jester Moody Allred Stevenson Shivers Shivers Shivers

1954

Guy B. Harrison Jr. John P. Morgan Laura A. Hobby Louis W. Kemp Edmund Heinsohn Walter E. Long Thomas J. Gibson III/Witt B. Harwell (acting )

Shivers Jester Moody Stevenson Shivers Shivers

1955

Guy B. Harrison Jr. John P. Morgan Laura A. Hobby Louis W. Kemp Edmund Heinsohn Walter E. Long Witt B. Harwell (acting )

Shivers Jester Moody Stevenson Shivers Shivers

172

By Year and Appointment, 1 909 – 1 962 Year

Commission Member

Appointment

1956

Guy B. Harrison Jr. John P. Morgan Laura A. Hobby Louis W. Kemp [died in November] Edmund Heinsohn Walter E. Long C. Stanley Banks [appointed in December] Witt B. Harwell

Shivers Jester Moody Stevenson Shivers Shivers Shivers

1957

Guy B. Harrison Jr. Laura A. Hobby John P. Morgan Edmund Heinsohn Walter E. Long C. Stanley Banks Jerry Cauthorn (Mrs. Albert R.) Witt B. Harwell

Shivers Moody Jester Shivers Shivers Shivers Daniel

1958

Guy B. Harrison Jr. John P. Morgan Edmund Heinsohn Walter E. Long C. Stanley Banks Jerry Cauthorn (Mrs. Albert R.) Witt B. Harwell

Shivers Jester Shivers Shivers Shivers Daniel

1959

Guy B. Harrison Jr. Edmund Heinsohn Walter E. Long C. Stanley Banks Jerry Cauthorn (Mrs. Albert R.) Witt B. Harwell

Shivers Shivers Shivers Shivers Daniel

1960

Guy B. Harrison Jr. Edmund Heinsohn Walter E. Long C. Stanley Banks Jerry Cauthorn (Mrs. Albert R.) Witt B. Harwell/William K. Peace III (acting )

Shivers Shivers Shivers Shivers Daniel

1961

C. Stanley Banks Walter E. Long Edmund Heinsohn

Shivers Shivers Shivers

173

Appendix 2 Year

1962

Commission Member

Appointment

Jerry Cauthorn (Mrs. Albert R.) Guy B. Harrison Jr. [resigned in January] /E. Jake Jacobsen William K. Peace III (acting )

Daniel Daniel

C. Stanley Banks Walter E. Long Edmund Heinsohn Jerry Cauthorn (Mrs. Albert R.) E. Jake Jacobsen Dorman H. Winfrey

Shivers Shivers Shivers Daniel Daniel

Note: Not all terms can be determined with precision. Neither the minutes nor the biennial reports, which list the commission members at the close of the biennium, consistently indicated changes in membership between meetings and during the biennium. Few governors transferred their appointments files to the state archives.

174

N ot es

Preface 1. Stephen B. Griswold, “Law Libraries,” in Public Libraries in the United States of America: Their History, Condition, and Management, 1:164–166 (quotations, 164, 165). 2. Henry A. Homes, “State and Territorial Libraries,” in Public Libraries in the United States of America: Their History, Condition, and Management, 1:292–311 (quotations, 306, 308). 3. “Report of the State Librarian,” in Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Thirty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner, for the Year Ending August 31, 1906, 8 (first quotation), 9 (second and third quotations). 4. Ethel E. Himmel, “State Library Agencies in the United States,” in Wayne A. Wiegand and Donald G. Davis Jr., eds., Encyclopedia of Library History, 602; Wayne A. Wiegand, “The Historical Development of State Library Agencies,” in Charles R. McClure, ed., State Library Services and Issues: Facing Future Challenges, 1–16; Richard E. Rubin, “From Past to Present: The Library’s Mission and Its Values,” in Rubin, Foundations of Library and Information Science, 207–264. 5. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. (2000), s.v. “library,” http://www.bartleby.com/61/12/L0151200.html, 6. J. I. Wyer Jr. of the New York State Library saw this commonality when, in 1915 in The State Library, 1–2, he wrote: “By state library is here meant only that one library in each state which is thus specifically termed; which is located in the capital city, usually in the capitol building, and which serves the government, the people, and the library interests of the state as distinguished from any lesser or more restricted constituency.” 7. Himmel, “State Library Agencies,” 602. 8. Ibid., 603; appendix in David B. Gracy II, “State Archives.” 9. “Report of the State Librarian” (1906), 10. 10. Texas Libraries (November 1909): 1. 11. Catherine Young, “The History of the Texas State Library,” v; William Kittrell Peace III, “A History of the Texas State Library with Emphasis on the Period from 1938 to 1958,” v; Marie Julia Shultz, “The Changing Role of the Texas State Library: Alternative Models for Coordination of Statewide Library Service,” 1–6.

Notes to pages 2 – 6

Chapter 1 Archival documents are cited as follows: document, date, records series, fonds. (A fonds is the body of records and papers [including letters, diaries, financial accounts, legal documents, photographs, newspaper clippings, and so on, whatever their media] that comes into existence as an organization or individual conducts the business and handles the affairs and matters of life. Created primarily to facilitate the activity and thinking of the organization or individual, the fonds of papers and records subsequently becomes the archives that documents them.) See, for example, this chapter’s note 41 (C. B. Galbreath to B. Wyche, December 19, 1902, Library [records series], Texas Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History Records [fonds]) and note 50 (Windsor to Mrs. J. C. Terrell, March 11, 1909, TLHC Correspondence [records series]). The Texas State Library and Archives Commission fonds is cited as TSLAC. 1. Texas Libraries (November 1909): 1; Handbook of Texas Libraries (1904): 78–83; Handbook of Texas Libraries (1908): 38; E. W. Winkler, “Some Historical Activities of the Texas Library and Historical Commission,” Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 14 (April 1911): 294–295 (cited hereafter as SHQ); “Notes and Fragments,” SHQ 13 ( July 1909): 81–82. 2. Robert A. Calvert, Arnoldo De Leon, and Gregg Cantrell, The History of Texas, 243; Stella L. Christian, ed. and comp., The History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 23–25 (quotation, 25). For histories of the traveling library movement in the West, see Joanne E. Passet, Cultural Crusaders: Women Librarians in the American West, 1900–1917, 79–95; and Ray E. Held, The Rise of the Public Library in California, 105–107. 3. Ernst Posner, American State Archives, 18–21, 279. 4. Eugene C. Barker, “Don Carlos Barrett,” SHQ 20 (October 1916): 139–145; Paul D. Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835–1836, 44–53; Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 1–2. 5. H. P. N. Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1:727–728. 6. William Ransom Hogan, The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History, 138. 7. David G. Burnet to W. H. Jack, November 11, 1839, Secretary of State Letterbook, quoted in Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 58. 8. Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 4–7, 56–58; Hogan, Texas Republic, 251–252, 186–189; A. E. Skinner, “Books and Libraries in Early Texas,” Texas Libraries (Winter 1975): 169–176. 9. Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 8–11, 59–61. 10. Ibid., 11–17 (first quotation, 16), 61–65; Texas Libraries ( July 1946): 1 (second quotation); Calvert et al., History of Texas, 152–153, 158. 11. Dorman H. Winfrey, “The Texan Archive War of 1842,” SHQ 64 (October 1960): 171–184; “The Archives War,” online exhibit of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/republic/archwar/archwar.html. 12. T. L. Miller, The Public Lands of Texas, 1519–1970, 216; E. W. Winkler, “Destruction

176

Notes to pages 7 – 1 1 of Historical Archives of Texas,” SHQ 15 (October 1911): 148–151; Gammel, Laws of Texas, 1:1276–1284 and 3:1003–1004. 13. House Journal, 4th Legislature, 566–567, quoted in Winkler, “Destruction of Historical Archives of Texas,” 152–153. 14. Ben E. Edwards to Major James Gillett, October 15, 1855, Departmental Correspondence, Texas Adjutant General’s Department Records, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission; Progress Report for an Archives and Library Building for Texas, October–November 1957, 4, Building, TSLAC. In light of the lost records, the legislature concluded that the Adjutant General’s office could be eliminated and dropped funding for further operation, after which the governor suspended the agency altogether (Winkler, “Destruction of Historical Archives of Texas,” 154). 15. Winkler, “Destruction of Historical Archives of Texas,” 154; Seymour V. Connor, A Preliminary Guide to the Archives of Texas, 7. 16. Constitution of the State of Texas (1876), Article XVI, http://tarlton.law.utexas .edu/constitutions/text/IART16.html; Texas Almanac, 1867, 188; Calvert et al., History of Texas, 169–172. 17. This provision was reminiscent of the efforts of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and New York especially among the thirteen states with colonial pasts to document their former history. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, they sent historians to European capitals, particularly London, to copy records documenting the states’ colonial past (see Charles H. Lesser, The Palmetto State’s Memory: A History of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1905–1960, 2; Posner, American State Archives, 11–12). 18. “An Act to Create the Department of Insurance, Statistics and History,” Gammel, Laws of Texas, 8:1061–1062. 19. Ibid. (quotation, 1061); Homes, “State and Territorial Libraries,” 292–293. 20. Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 65; Valentine Overton King’s Index to Books about Texas before 1889: A Facsimile of the Original in the Collection of the Texas State Library, v; “James Harvey McLeary,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline .org/handbook/online/articles/MM/fmc87.html; “Valentine Overton King,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/KK/fki21.html. 21. Valentine Overton King’s Index, v (first quotation), vi (second quotation). 22. Llerena Friend, “E. W. Winkler and the Texas State Library,” Texas Libraries (May– June 1962): 91. 23. Valentine Overton King’s Index, vi. 24. Harriet Smither, “The Archives of Texas,” American Archivist 3 ( July 1940): 188; Handbook of Texas Libraries (1904): 11; Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 19. 25. Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 21; Clara Carpenter Christie, “Cadwell Walton Raines: State Librarian,” Texas Libraries (Winter 1972): 194. Although King did secure the Nacogdoches Archives and packed them in tin boxes for safekeeping (which indeed saved them), their storage in a vault made them inaccessible for use before and

177

Notes to pages 1 1– 16 after the fire (Charles W. Ramsdell, “The Preservation of Texas History,” North Carolina Historical Review 6 [January 1929]: 3). 26. Robert C. Cotner, James Stephen Hogg: A Biography, 5, 83; Calvert et al., History of Texas, 234–236; Alwyn Barr, Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876–1906, 117–118; Christie, “Raines: State Librarian,” 191–203; Laura Lyons McLemore, Inventing Texas: Early Historians of the Lone Star State, 86. 27. “Notes and Fragments,” SHQ 9 (April 1906): 282–283. 28. Christie, “Raines: State Librarian,” 192–193; Clara Carpenter Christie, “Cadwell Walton Raines, 1839–1906: Historian and Librarian,” 49. 29. “Notes and Fragments,” SHQ 9 (April 1906): 283; Michael R. Green, “To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World,” SHQ 91 (April 1988): 506–507. 30. Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Seventeenth Annual Report of the Commissioner, 1891, 61–63, quoted in Christie, “Raines, 1839–1906,” 45–46. 31. Christie, “Raines, 1839–1906,” 51–54. 32. Quoted in Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 93; Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Twentieth Annual Report of the Commissioner, for the Year 1894, 15; Christie, “Raines, 1839–1906,” 54–60; Ramsdell, “Preservation of Texas History,” 3–4; “Archibald Johnson Rose,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/hand book/online/articles/RR/fro70.html. 33. “Organization and Objects of the Texas State Historical Association,” SHQ 1, no. 1 (1898): 71–74. 34. Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, 1897, quoted in Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 92. For an account of the founding, see Richard B. McCaslin, At the Heart of Texas: One Hundred Years of the Texas State Historical Association, 1897–1997, 1–31. 35. Winkler, “Some Historical Activities,” 294; House Journal and Senate Journal, 26th Legislature. 36. Rebecca Richmond, A Woman of Texas: Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker, 85–89 (first quotation, 85); Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 44 (second quotation), 45 (third and fourth quotations), 86–87; Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, 341–342; Calvert et al., History of Texas, 281, 305; “Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/ handbook/online/articles/TT/vnt1.html. 37. Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 33. 38. Ibid., 30; Velta Pardue Toler, “Educational Activities of Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs—1897–1937,” 13, 15–17, 135. 39. Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 36, 30; Paula D. Watson, “Founding Mothers: The Contribution of Women’s Organizations to Public Library Development in the United States,” Library Quarterly 64 ( July 1994): 238–245. 40. Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 47, 73–74, 85–86; Public Libraries in the United States of America: Their History, Condition, and Management, 1:455; Handbook of Texas Libraries (1904): 14; Donald G. Davis Jr., “The Rise of the Public Library in Texas: 1876–1920,” in Milestones to the Present: Papers from Library History Semi-

178

Notes to pages 1 7 – 2 1 nar V, 166–170; Toler, “Educational Activities of Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs,” 19–20; Passet, Cultural Crusaders, 7; Held, Rise of the Public Library in California, 32. 41. C. K. Bell to Benjamin Wyche, June 4, 1902, F. A. Hutchins to Elizabeth H. Potter, November 8, 1902, C. B. Galbreath to B. Wyche, December 19, 1902, Library, Texas Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History Records. 42. Handbook of Texas Libraries (1904), 4–9, 81–83; SB 243 and HB 384, Bill Files, 28th Legislature; Winkler, “Some Historical Activities,” 294; “Alexander Penn Wooldridge,” Online Handbook of Texas, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/WW/ fwo19.html; Ruth Ann Overbeck, Alexander Penn Wooldridge, 11–39. 43. Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner, for the Year 1903, x. 44. HB 169, Bill Files, House Journal, 29th Legislature; Winkler, “Some Historical Activities,” 295; Calvert et al., History of Texas, 260; Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 85–87, 97, 120. 45. Amended HB 38, Bill Files, 30th Legislature; [Windsor?] to Albert S. Wilson, March 25, 1909, Texas Library and Historical Commission Correspondence (cited hereafter as TLHC Correspondence); Winkler, “Some Historical Activities,” 295; Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 162–163; Marion Casey, Charles McCarthy: Librarianship and Reform, 25–45; Michael J. Keane, The Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau: A Century of Service, 2–4. 46. For example, federation president Anna Pennybacker authored a widely popular school history of Texas and was a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. Adele Looscan, who later served as president of the TSHA longer than any other individual, was an early officer of the federation. Federation president Mary Terrell was one of the first two vice presidents of the Texas Library Association. Of course, TSHA General Council member Cadwell Raines had joined Pennybacker in calling the organizational meeting of the TLA. 47. Mrs. Cone Johnson, quoted in Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 182. 48. Thomas McAdory Owen Sr., quoted in Posner, American State Archives, 20; Kenneth R. Johnson, “The Early Library Movement in Alabama,” Journal of Library History 5 (April 1971): 122, 125–127; Alabama Library Association, Circular 4, February 22, 1906, Library, Texas Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History Records; Casey, Charles McCarthy, 20–21, 29–30. 49. Windsor to Terrell, March 6, 1909, TLHC Correspondence. 50. Ella Dancy Dibrell to Windsor, March 20, 1909, Jennie S. Scheuber to Windsor, March 16, 1909, Windsor to Mrs. J. C. Terrell, March 11, 1909, TLHC Correspondence. 51. House Journal and Senate Journal, 31st Legislature; Benjamin Wyche to Phineas Windsor, February 15, 1909, TLHC Correspondence; Winkler, “Some Historical Activities,” 295; “Notes and Fragments,” SHQ 13 (1910): 81–83; Christian, History of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 197, 222. 52. The source for this last observation is Peace, “History of the Texas State Library,” 25.

179

Notes to pages 22 – 26

Chapter 2 Inclusive dates have been supplied for records series only when the date of the document being cited is unclear. In such instances, the date following the records series identifies the folder in which the document is housed. 1. Texas Library and Historical Commission, Minutes (cited hereafter as Minutes), March 29–31, 1909; “Richard W. Mays,” Texas Bar Journal 9 (March 1946): 126. 2. Minutes, March 29–31, 1909; George P. Garrison to Senator John G. Willacy and Representative W. D. Crockett, April 10, 1909, Ernest W. Winkler to R. V. Davidson, May 29, 1909, TLHC Correspondence; Gammel, Laws of Texas, 14:463–464. 3. Ramsdell, “Preservation of Texas History,” 6. 4. [Windsor?] to Mrs. Terrell, March 25, 1909, [Windsor?] to Wyche, March 20, 1909, TLHC Correspondence; Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 89–101. 5. Winkler to Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker, April 8, 1909, TLHC Correspondence. 6. [Windsor?] to Mrs. Scheuber, March 25, 1909, TLHC Correspondence; Texas Library and Historical Commission, Biennial Report, 1909–1910 (cited hereafter as Bi­ ennial Report, with date), 14; Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Twenty-first Annual Report, for the Year 1895, 29; Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Connecticut State Library and Supreme Court Building at Hartford, May 25, 1909, 7–9, 27– 39; Handbook of Texas Libraries (1904): 84; Elizabeth Howard West, “Texas Libraries,” in Ellis A. Davis and Edwin H. Grobe, eds., The Encyclopedia of Texas, 1:14. 7. [Windsor?] to Mrs. Scheuber, March 25, 1909; Biennial Report, 1909–1910, 6, 16; Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Thirty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner, for the Year Ending August 31, 1906, 2:5. 8. Gammel, Laws of Texas, 14:123, http://texashistory.unt.edu/permalink/meta-pth9392:133. 9. “The Logic of the Library Movement,” Texas Libraries (November 1909): 2. 10. Biennial Report, 1909–1910, 21 (first quotation), 24 (second quotation). 11. Texas Libraries (November 1909): 1; Watson, “Founding Mothers,” 245. Texas Libraries appeared in November 1909 and October 1910, more or less quarterly in 1914– 1917, and more sporadically into 1920, when publication ceased, to be resumed eighteen years later, in 1938. 12. [Windsor?] to Scheuber, March 25, 1909, Winkler to Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker, April 8, 1909, Winkler to [addressees unspecified], circular, July 20, 1909, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, March 30, June 15, 1909; Texas Libraries (November 1909): 1; Biennial Report, 1909–1910, 25; Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 102–104. See also TLHC Correspondence, August–December 1909. 13. Garrison to Mrs. Grinnan, February 23, 1910, TLHC Correspondence, Bohdan S. Wynar, Dictionary of American Library Biography, 280, 282. To inform historians of the archives’ holdings, he wrote pieces on historical sources for the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, on which he served as associate editor under his former history classmate, Eugene C. Barker.

180

Notes to pages 26 – 29 14. Biennial Report, 1909–1910, 19–20. 15. Kelly McMichael, “‘Memories Are Short but Monuments Lengthen Remembrances’: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Power of Civil War Memory,” in Gregg Cantrell and Elizabeth Hayes Turner, eds., Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas, 101–102; Patricia Galloway, “Archives, Power, and History: Dunbar Rowland and the Beginning of the State Archives of Mississippi (1902–1936),” American Archivist 69 (Spring–Summer 2006), 82–95; Lesser, The Palmetto State’s Memory, 7; Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, 325, 329. When in 1914 George Littlefield, by then a University of Texas regent, and Eugene C. Barker, successor to Garrison on the commission ex officio as head of the university’s history department, discussed what Confederate veteran Littlefield saw as bias in American history texts written by northern scholars, Barker explained that good history required archival sources for its foundation. Change in the approach of textbooks would occur only after archives had been accumulated from which historians could broaden their knowledge and thus understanding of events. Littlefield understood. That year he established a $25,000 endowment (the Littlefield Fund for Southern History) at the university to support the collecting Barker advised. The principal amounted to nearly two and one-half times the entire state library budget for the 1913–1914 fiscal year. In subsequent gifts in the remaining six years of his life, Littlefield contributed sums the total of which exceeded his initial donation by more than five times (David B. Gracy II, “Business and Books,” Texas Libraries, 87; Minutes, November 26, 1912). 16. Goldia Ann Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West: Texas Librarian,” 1, 73–75. 17. Winkler to Elizabeth Howard West, September 9, 1911, TLHC Correspondence; “Elizabeth Howard West,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/ handbook/online/articles/WW/fwe32.html; Pamela Bleisch, “Spoilsmen and Confederate Daughters: Political Interference in the Texas State Library during the Time of Elizabeth Howard West, 1911–1925,” MS in possession of the author; Biennial Report, 1910–1911, 14–15, 17–18; Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner, 1895, 26; “Bonilla’s Brief Compendium of the History of Texas, 1772,” SHQ 8 ( July 1904): 3–78; and “De León’s Expedition of 1689,” SHQ 8 ( January 1905): 199–224. 18. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, before photocopying revolutionized the way researchers acquired historical source material, archivists and historians compiled and published calendars. Their content consisted of full transcripts or summaries of documents (of either a records series within a fonds or documents taken from several series but concerning a particular matter), often enriched by identifications and explanations of people, places, and events mentioned in the documents. Because the document texts in a calendar were organized in chronological, or “calendar,” order, these publications came to be known as calendars. They were intended to provide enough of the text of a document to be able to fulfill the researcher’s need to see the original. 19. Biennial Report, 1910–1911, 17, 19. 20. Wynar, Dictionary of American Library Biography, 281–282. 21. Ibid., 22, 8, 10–11, 20–24; Minutes, March 27, 1912.

181

Notes to pages 29 – 35 22. George G. Staples to O. B. Colquitt, January 24, 1911, TLHC Correspondence. 23. Lewis L. Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era, 126–132; Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, 350. 24. See note 15. 25. Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 107–108 (first quotation), 108 (second quotation), 109 (third quotation); William C. Pool, Eugene C. Barker: Historian, 68–73; Minutes, December 14, 1914. 26. Winkler to Hugh N. Fitzgerald, February 10, 1915, Texas State Library Materials and Miscellaneous, Ernest William Winkler Papers. 27. Eugene C. Barker, Testimony before Central Investigating Subcommittee No. 5, Central Investigating Committee of the House and Senate Records, 1917–1918. 28. Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 109 (first quotation); Pool, Eugene C. Barker, 72 (second quotation), 71–72; Texas Libraries ( January 1914): 3; Winkler to Fitzgerald, February 10, 1915, Winkler to George W. Littlefield, February 4, 1915, Texas State Library Materials and Miscellaneous, Winkler Papers; Barker, Testimony before Central Investigating Committee No. 5. In testifying to the committee, Barker said that Ferguson told him, “He hoped I would not feel bad—but my wishes were no longer regarded,” to which Barker added, “I hadn’t noticed that they had ever been regarded before.” 29. Octavia F. Rogan to Richard F. Burges, November 23, 1925, TLHC Correspondence. 30. Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 110–112, 112 (fourth quotation); Winkler to Mrs. J. C. Terrell, March 3, 1915, Texas State Library Materials and Miscellaneous, Winkler Papers (first and second quotations); Barker, Testimony before Central Investigating Committee No. 5 (third quotation); Pool, Eugene C. Barker, 73; Minutes, February 20, March 3, April 8, 1915. 31. “Christian Klaerner,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/ handbook/online/articles/KK/fkl1.html. 32. Biennial Report, 1911–1912, 11–12 (quotation), 25; Texas Libraries (April 1914): 1, 9, (October 1914): 1–2; “Octavia Fry Rogan,” Online Handbook of Texas, http://www.tsha online.org/handbook/online/articles/RR/fro95.html. The Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs delivered some seven hundred volumes in 1916 ( Jane Rogers, “The Texas State Library, 1918–1928,” Texas Libraries [Spring 1975]: 33). 33. Windsor had left the University of Texas in 1909 to take a teaching position in Illinois. Rogan’s biographer thought her to be only the second or third Texan to travel out of state to earn a degree in library science. “Phineas Lawrence Windsor,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/WW/fwi76.html; Kalani Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan,” 19 n. 1, 24; “Octavia Rogan Retires,” Texas Library Journal 39 (December 1954): 210. 34. Minutes, March 15, 1916; Emma K. Burleson to R. F. Burges, September 20, 1920, Richard Fenner Burges Papers; Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan,” 54–55. 35. Biennial Report, 1914–1916, 25 (first quotation), 28 (second quotation), 40 (third quotation), 45 (fourth quotation). Whether she gave Moreland any assistance in his endeavors, his mother-in-law, commission member Dibrell, took some interest in collecting,

182

Notes to pages 35 – 3 9 as she acquired for the state archives correspondence and a portrait of Juan Seguin (Minutes, March 15, September 15, 1917). For Moreland, see also Texas Libraries ( July 1915): 10. Regarding Carnegie Commission grants in Texas, see Robert Sidney Martin, ed., Carnegie Denied: Communities Rejecting Carnegie Library Construction Grants, 1898–1925. 36. For a description of the legislative reference function under Rogan, see Kalani Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan, Texas Librarian,” 56–62. 37. Ibid., 19–20, 43–44, 47; Biennial Report, 1909–1910, 9; Minutes, March 16, November 21, 1916, March 15, September 15, 1917; Frances Miles Wilcox Obituary, Vertical Files, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission; Texas Libraries (September 1953): n.p. 38. Campbell, Gone to Texas, 351–352; Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists, 187–218. 39. Minutes, February 9, 1918; Reports of Subcommittees of the Central Investigating Committee of the House and Senate, Third Called Session of the Thirty-fifth Legislature of Texas, 840; Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists, 229; Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 113; Dan Utley to Pamela Bleisch, email, May 22, 2008, copy in possession of the author. 40. Reports of Subcommittees of the Central Investigating Committee, 839, 838. 41. Goldia Ann Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 78 (first quotation), 78–79 (second quotation); John E. Goodwin to West, April 7, 1915, cited in Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 14; Mary Jimperieff, “Our State Departments and Those Who Conduct Them,” Austin Statesman, October 9, 1921; Bleisch, “Spoilsmen and Confederate Daughters,” 4. 42. Minutes, May 24, August 31, 1918; Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 107, 113; Rogers, “Texas State Library,” 25; “Emma Kyle Burleson,” Online Handbook of Texas, http:// www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/fbu73.html. 43. See especially the entries for December 20, 1906, and January 3, 15, 1907, in which Winkler confided to his diary his uncertainty whether the incoming Campbell administration would retain him or he would be “turned out.” Winkler, Diary, Winkler Papers. “I know from hearing Mrs. Dibrell, and from having talked to many others,” Barker told the Investigating Committee, “that the main idea in the framing of this law was to keep the library out of politics” (Barker, Testimony before Central Investigating Committee No. 5). 44. West to George M. Hopkins, November 15, 1917, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 45. Bleisch, “Spoilsmen and Confederate Daughters,” 8 (quotations); Gammel, Laws of Texas, 19:151–152; Texas Libraries ( January 1920); West, “Texas Libraries,” 1:15. 46. West to Burges, January 17, 1919, Burges Papers; Elizabeth Howard West, “The Texas State Library,” Christian Science Monitor, May 21, 1924 (first quotation); Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the Commissioner, for the Year 1901, 8 (second quotation); Jimperieff, “Our State Departments” (third quotation); Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 16–19. 47. Biennial Report, 1918–1920, 14. 48. Ibid., 10, 14–15, 34–35; Biennial Report, 1920–1922, 10, 12; Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 125–126; Toler, “Educational Activities of Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs,” 29. The story of the 1919 statute and its prime mover, Lillian Gunter, is

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Notes to pages 3 9 – 4 4 told in Irby C. Nichols and Margaret I. Nichols, “Lillian Gunter: Texas County Legislation, 1914–1919,” Journal of Library History, Philosophy, and Comparative Librarianship 8, no. 1 ( January 1973): 11–17. The pages of Texas Libraries from 1915 through 1919 are filled with articles on rural library service, many written by Gunter. See also Gammel, Laws of Texas, 19:219–220; “Texas Almanac: City Population History from 1850–2000,” http:// www.texasalmanac.com/population/population-city-history.pdf; and Rogers, “Texas State Library,” 29–32. 49. Jimperieff, “Our State Departments.” The story of the county library system in California that Gunter studied as her model is found in Held, Rise of the Public Library in California, 130–147. 50. Biennial Report, 1920–1922, 14 (first quotation), 13 (second quotation); Biennial Report, 1918–1920, 15–16; “Charles Graham Thomas,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www .tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/fth46.html; Rogers, “Texas State Library,” 34; “Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/kct25.html; Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 19, 27; That All May Read: Library Service for Blind and Physically Handicapped People, 65–66, 74; Held, Rise of the Public Library in California, 109–110. 51. Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 21. From the budgets printed in the state library’s biennial reports, the year this incident occurred cannot be determined. Because the sixty days of the regular session in which the appropriation bill was introduced gave the legislature minimal time in which to complete the appropriation process, often final passage occurred in a subsequent special session. This gave plenty of opportunity for anxiety over the final biennial budget. Either Governor William P. Hobby or Pat Morris Neff could have asked the question, as both believed state government was too large and both sought to reduce its spending ( James A. Clark, The Tactful Texan: A Biography of Governor Will Hobby, 79, 92, 116, 147; Dorothy Blodgett, Terrell Blodgett, and David L. Scott, The Land, the Law, and the Lord: The Life of Pat Neff, 101, 107). 52. Biennial Report, 1918–1920, 15; Biennial Report, 1920–1922, 13. Facilitating the service, the United States in 1917 adopted a new and single embossed code, in which all books would be printed thereafter (That All May Read, 68). 53. Minutes, December 23, 1921, February 11, 1922. 54. Adele Looscan to Officers and Members of the Texas State Historical Association, April 21, 1918, Eugene Campbell Barker Papers (first quotation); Austin Statesman, March 3, 1924 (second quotation). 55. Biennial Report, 1920–1922, 29–36 (first quotation, 35; second quotation, 36); Bi­ ennial Report, 1918–1920, 14, 27–32; Biennial Report, 1924–1926, 4; Minutes, January 18, 1919; Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 15; Rogers, “Texas State Library,” 36. 56. Gammel, Laws of Texas, 22:538; West to Members of the Texas Library Commission, April 4, 1925, Burges Papers. 57. Gammel, Laws of Texas, 18:211. Mrs. Shirley remained on the payroll by legislative action until she resigned to marry on January 1, 1924 (Bleisch, “Spoilsmen and Confederate Daughters,” 11–12). 58. Minutes, February 10, 1925; Biennial Report, 1918–1920, 36.

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Notes to pages 4 4 – 5 1 59. John Davis to Mrs. Bringhurst, May 21, 1925, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 60. West to Burges, August 22, September 7, 1927, Burges Papers; Octavia Rogan to Miss Hunter, May 13, 1926, TLHC Correspondence, TSLAC; Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 35. To the commission, West explained her resignation in terms of the better salary—the $3,000 the legislature denied the state librarian—and the opportunity she had to create a library from scratch in a new college (West to Members of the Texas Library Commission, April 4, 1925, Burges Papers). To a colleague, she added more personal reasons: “The necessity of doing at my own expense some things that the State should have done, business reverses, expenses growing out of ill health have combined to put my personal finance into a rather precarious condition. The outlook for increase in salary here is all but hopeless. . . . [Having] been able to accomplish enough to make me feel that I can turn loose now without injuring [the] cause; it therefore seems right to think now primarily of my own welfare” (West to Lillian Gunter, May 11, 1925, quoted in Hester, “Elizabeth Howard West,” 22). 61. Biennial Report, 1911–1912, 13. 62. West to Members of the Texas Library Commission, April 4, 1925, Burges Papers; Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan,” 80. No subsequent state librarian had served as TLA president. 63. Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan,” 24–27, 63–64.

Chapter 3 1. Octavia Rogan to State Board of Control, April 6, 1926, Rogan to Burges, April 7, 1926, TLHC Correspondence; Some Reasons for a State Library Building, in Rogan to Texas Library and Historical Commission, May 10, 1926, Burges Papers. The threat of theft was real, as only five years earlier the state library had “suffered several rather serious losses by theft” (West to Burges, January 21, 1921, Burges Papers). 2. Rogan to Members of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, undated, TLHC Correspondence. 3. Rogan to Burges, April 7, 1926. 4. Biennial Report, 1918–1920, 11–13. In 1921, after considering all the possibilities she could imagine and still having heavily used newspaper files she could not accommodate, West despaired that she could “think of nothing further to do except put grating and shelving in the rotunda” (West to Burges, January 21, 1921). 5. Lena Williams Goodman, “Let’s House Our State Library,” talk, May 2, 1938, Texas Woman’s Press Association, TSLAC; Biennial Report, 1920–1922, 9; Minutes, December 21, 1921, February 11, 1922, April 28, 1925, May 5, 1926, and attachments; press release, September 20, 1925, Clippings, TSLAC. 6. Burges to Rogan, November 27, 1925, Burges Papers; Laura Lyons McLemore, “A Decade of Leadership: Adele Lubbock Briscoe Looscan, First Woman President of Texas State Historical Association,” 6; Minutes, August 31, 1923. 7. Rogan to Burges, May 10, 1926, Rogan to R. L. Irving, August 19, 1926, Burges

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Notes to pages 5 1– 5 6 Papers; Rogan to Decca West, August 19, 1926, TLHC Correspondence; Biennial Report, 1924–1926, 36. 8. Minutes, May 26, 1926. West supported it further by securing the backing of the Texas Woman’s Press Association. She supported the state library fully, having begun a decade earlier to initiate preservation of archives of the press women in the state library (Fannie M. B. Hughs, History of the Texas Woman’s Press Association, 13, 18). 9. Rogan to Decca West, October 20, 1926, January 6, 1927, Rogan to Burges, January 20, 1927, Burges to Rogan, January 29, 1927, Building Space Estimates Memorandum for the Library and Historical Commission, undated, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, May 5, 1926, February 15, 1927. 10. Minutes, February 15, 1927 (first quotation); Decca West to Fannie Miles Wilcox, November 11, 1933, Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, TSLAC (second quotation); Hughs, History of the Texas Woman’s Press Association, 12–18. 11. Minutes, February 15, 1927, January 10, 1928. 12. Ibid., February 15, 1927. 13. Ibid., May 26, 1926. 14. Rogan to Decca West, December 2, 1925, TLHC Correspondence; Biennial Report, 1924–1926, 33; News Notes (October 1926): 4. 15. Rogan to Burges, January 16, 1927, Burges to Rogan, January 19, 1927, Burleson to Burges, January 27, 1927, Elizabeth West to Burges, August 22, 1927, Burges Papers. 16. Rogan to Texas Library and Historical Commission, May 13, 1927, West to Burges, May 18, 1927, Rogan to Burges, January 24, 1927, Decca West to Burges, [May 17, 1927], Burleson to Decca West, May 19, 1927, R. L. Irving to Burges, June 6, 1927, Rogan to Out-of-Town Members of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, June 21, 1927, Rogan Statement, [August 1926?], Burges Papers. 17. Decca West to Rogan, May 17, 1927, enclosure, in Decca West to Burges, [May 17, 1927], Burges Papers. 18. Burleson to Decca West, May 19, 1927, and Rogan to Out-of-Town Members of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, June 21, 1927, Burges Papers. 19. Adrian Pool to Burges, June 13, 1927, Decca West to Burges, [May 17, 1927], Burleson to Decca West, May 19, 1927, Rogan to Burges, May 28, 1927, Burges Papers. 20. Burges to Elizabeth West, August 16, 1927, Burges Papers. 21. Rogan to Burges, June 16, 1927, Burges to Rogan, June 17, 1927, Rogan to Out-ofTown Members of the TLHC, June 21, August 5, 1927, Richard L. Mullins to Burleson, July 2, 1927, Burleson to Burges, July 3, 1927, Charlotte Ryan to Burleson, Burges, and Irving, July 14, 1927, Mullins to Burges, July 21, 1927, Rogan to the TLHC, July 21, 1927, Tomas G. Pollard to Rogan, July 22, 1927, Burges Papers. “Conflicts with the Chairman of the Library Commission about the budget request for a Library Organizer and about patronage and staff appointments in general,” Rogan told a historian later, prompted her to resign (Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan,” 72). 22. Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan,” 114. 23. Burges to R. L. Batts, June 23, 1927, Burges Papers. Rogers, “Texas State Library,” 42, suggests that the root of Rogan’s problem was “a staff overbalanced with friends of

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Notes to pages 5 6 – 5 9 Miss Burleson.” Unable to fire the friends, Rogan fired the friends’ friends, who, it turned out, had friends of their own in the legislature, which made the matter more public and contentious than anyone wanted. Clearly there was more to it than that. 24. Burges to Burleson, June 25, 1928, Burges Papers. 25. West to Burges, April 8, 1925, August 22, September 7, 1927, Burges to Elizabeth West, August 16, 27, 1927, Burleson to Burges, August 7, 1927, Irving to Burges, August 7, 1927, Burges to Burleson, August 16, 1927, Wilcox to Burges, September 2, 1927, Burges to Irving, August 27, October 17, 1927, Burges Papers; Statistics Compiled May 1928, Salaries in State Libraries and Library Commissions, Legislative Files, TSLAC; Wilcox to Members of the TLHC, May 30, 1928, TLHC Correspondence; Biennial Report, 1928–1930, 32. Wilcox never did overcome her shyness. Twelve years later in a short biographical sketch TLA’s News Notes ( January 1939, p. 8) ran of Wilcox, Texas librarians read that “judging from the silence which she habitually maintains in library meetings, she has never conquered what amounts almost to physical agony at the thought of speaking in public.” Yet they read too that her “quiet dignity of voice and of manner is her most obvious characteristic.” 26. Helen L. Clutter to Burges, December 10, 1927, Nettie Houston Bringhurst to Burges, September 26, 1927, Ed R. Kone to Burges, September 13, 1927, F. J. Maier to Burges, January 17, 1928, Burges Papers. 27. Burleson to Mrs. Sullivan, December 9, 1927, Maud Durlin Sullivan to Burges, December 11, 1927, Burges to Clutter, December 16, 1927, Burges Papers; Minutes, October 1, 1927, January 10, 1928. 28. Rogan to Julia Ideson, June 12, 1926, TLHC Correspondence; Biennial Report, 1924–1926, 12, 34. Creating county libraries had been the theme of Texas Libraries under Rogan’s editorship during the Klaerner administration (see Texas Libraries [October 1916], [January 1917], [July 1917]; and Banks, “Octavia F. Rogan,” 51). 29. Biennial Report, 1926–1928, 24–28; Minutes, February 19, 1929; News Notes (April 1928): 5. 30. Clutter to Burges, February 8, 1929, Burges Papers. 31. Lucy T. Fuller to Burges, March 4, 1929, Clutter to Burges, February 8, 1929, Burges to Fuller, February 25, 1929, Burges Papers; Biennial Report, 1926–1928, 25; Minutes, February 19, 1929. 32. Doris Pearl Wood shortly was hired at the Tom Green County Library in San Angelo, where she remained for sixteen years before ending her career back in Houston. In 1938–1939 she served as first vice president of TLA. In the biographical questionnaire in which she listed the essentials of her career, she answered as though her career began in Tom Green County (“Doris Pearl Wood Hoffman” in Ellen Vail Buel Todd, “Directory of Texas Librarians, 1920–1939”: 46; News Notes [April 1929]: 7 and [October 29]: 6). 33. Had Wilcox explained the work of the cataloger that she knew so well, having held the job for a decade, biennial report readers could have appreciated just how much careful work catalogers did so that those who came to use items in the library could, first, determine whether the library held an item that met their needs and then have it delivered to them as expeditiously as a reference librarian could retrieve it. Catalogers earned their pay. Having to do “original cataloging,” that is, to describe each item herself starting from

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Notes to pages 60 – 64 scratch, the cataloger had to study the work sufficiently to determine the author, title, publication data, and principal subject of the item. Then she had to represent that principal subject on the one hand in the form of subject headings, using a controlled vocabulary that standardized terms, and on the other with a number from the Dewey Decimal Classification system. These two systems provided for locating and retrieving the item in both the catalog and the shelf arrangement of the library. (Of course, the controlled vocabulary itself required maintenance—revision from time to time as new subjects occurred.) That done, the cataloger typed individual main entry and added-entry cards for each of the author, title, and subject access points that she had determined. For pamphlets and informally published items, common in both legislative reference and the printed section of the archives, the authorship of which often was unclear and titles poorly descriptive of the content, the cataloger had to supply the missing information as best as possible. Finally, the cards had to be alphabetized, tentatively filed in proper sequence in the drawers of catalog cards, checked to ensure accurate alphabetizing, and finally “dropped” into the catalog. Accuracy was a premium. Inaccurate subject selection or flawed alphabetizing would result in items being “lost” until the staff stopped other work to inventory the shelves to match the cards against the works actually present (and also to identify missing items that needed to be replaced). 34. Biennial Report, 1926–1928, 32, 19–21, 28–29; Biennial Report, 1928–1930, 13. 35. Biennial Report, 1926–1928, 22–24 36. Biennial Report, 1928–1930, 9. 37. Wilcox to Mrs. W. R. Potter, January 24, 1928, Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, TSLAC. 38. Biennial Report, 1926–1938, 9; Biennial Report, 1930–1932, 7, 9–12; Minutes, January 31, 1931; Wilcox to Mrs. W. R. Potter, January 24, 1928, Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, TSLAC. 39. Elizabeth West to Burges, July 13, 1928, Burleson to Burges, June 11, 1928, Burges Papers; Biennial Report, 1926–1928, 30. 40. Minutes, January 22, 1930, February 19, 1929.

Chapter 4 1. Campbell, Gone to Texas, 377–381; Calvert et al., History of Texas, 322. 2. Edwin Sue Goree, “The Outlook for Library Organization in Texas,” News Notes ( January 1932): 4. 3. Margaret Louise Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree: A Biography,” 37; News Notes ( January 1936): 6; James Vinson Carmichael Jr., “Tommie Dora Barker and Southern Librarianship,” 251. 4. Biennial Report, 1930–1932, 28–30, quotation on pp. 29–30; Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree,” 33–46; “New Library Organizer for Texas,” Texas Library Association (cited hereafter as TLA), TSLAC; News Notes ( January 1937): 19–20.

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Notes to pages 65 – 69 5. H. N. Graves to Wilcox, May 16, 1932, Joint Legislative Committee on Organization and Economy, TSLAC (first quotation); [Joint Committee on Organization and Economy], The Government of the State of Texas, Part I—Organization and General Administration, iv (second, third, and fourth quotations), v (fifth quotation). 6. Wilcox to Burges, March 6, 1931, R. K. Goree to Wilcox, June 15, 1931, Legislative Files, TSLAC. For an example of the letters to state librarians, see Wilcox to Dorothy Annabel, October 18, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC; Biennial Report, 1930–1932, 15, 30–33. The recommendations at the conclusion of the Biennial Report are presumed to have varied little from those presented to the committee. 7. Government of the State of Texas, Part I, 3 (first quotation), Part XII—Education: The University of Texas and Its Branches; the College of Industrial Arts, the Texas College of Arts and Industries, and the Texas Technological College, 58 (second quotation), 57 (third quotation). 8. Government of the State of Texas, Part XIII—Education; the Board of Education, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Other Agencies of General Control, and Libraries, 51 (first two quotations), 58 (third quotation), 59 (fourth quotation). 9. Ibid., 60 (first quotation), 54 (second and third quotations). 10. Minutes, January 25, 1933; Wilcox to Texas Library and Historical Commission, December 20, 1932, Wilcox to Elizabeth R. Houston, January 7, 1933, and Advance Draft enclosure, Elizabeth Houston to Wilcox, January 9, 1933, TLHC Correspondence; Wilcox to Joseph S. Myers, February 19, 1933; E. S. Goree, “The Texas State Library and the Joint Legislative Committee,” News Notes (April 1933): 5. 11. Goree, “Texas State Library and the Joint Legislative Committee,” 5 (first and third quotations); Goree, “The Field in Texas,” Handbook of Texas Libraries (1935): 46 (second quotation). 12. Untitled fact sheet enclosed in Wilcox to Dorothy Annabel, January 6, 1934, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 13. Burleson to Burges, February 18, 1933, Burges Papers; Wilcox to Librarians of Texas, February 27, 1933, I. H. Burney to Chairman and Members of the Committee on State Affairs . . ., March 3, 1933, Mrs. Charles Scheuber to S. D. Shannon, March 1, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 14. Ethel Simmons to Wilcox, March 6, 1933, Mrs. Charles Scheuber to Wilcox, March 3, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 15. H. Grady Woodruff to Mrs. Charles Scheuber, April 18, 1933, Wilcox to Ideson, March 28, 1935, Wilcox to Dear Librarian, April 13, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC; News Notes (April 1932): 2. 16. Goree, “Texas State Library and the Joint Legislative Committee,” 5. 17. Harriet Smither to Harbert Davenport, April 21, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC; T. J. Holbrook to State Library, February 13, 1933, TLHC Correspondence. 18. Davenport to A. Parr, April 22, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 19. HB 847, 43rd Legislature, Bill Files, Texas Legislature, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

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Notes to pages 70 – 74 20. Wilcox to Burges, May 23, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 21. HB 847, 43rd Legislature; Preservation of Historic Records in Basement of State Capitol, Gammel, Laws of Texas, 28:102, http://texashistory.unt.edu/permalink/meta-pth17293:110; Wilcox to Texas Library and Historical Commission, December 20, 1932. 22. Wilcox to Burges, May 30, 1933, Smither to Davenport, June 7, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 23. Wilcox to Burges, May 30, 1933. 24. Burges to State Board of Control, June 1, 1933, Smither to Davenport, June 7, 1933, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 25. Smither to Davenport, June 7, 1933. 26. Wilcox to Burges, June 10, 1933, Wilcox to R. L. Irving, July 10, 1933, Doris Connerly to Virginia Gambrell, September 21, 1944, TLHC Correspondence; Smither to Davenport, June 7, 1933; Claude D. Teer to General Henry Hutchings, June 6, 1933, Bureau of Records, Claude Teer’s Topical File, Board of Control Records; Claude D. Teer to Wilcox, June 7, Wilcox to Teer, June 9, 1933, Board of Control, TSLAC. 27. Reports of the Bureau of Records, April 12, 1935 (first quotation), Bureau of Records, undated report (second quotation), and Monthly Report of the Bureau of Records, May 1, 1934, Claude Teer’s Topical File, Board of Control Records; Wilcox to R. L. Irving, July 10, 1933, TLHC Correspondence. 28. Report of the Bureau of Records for May and June [1934] (first quotation), Report of the Bureau of Records of the State Board of Control, November 28, 1934 (second and third quotations), and (Monthly Report) of the Bureau of Records, May 1, 1934, Claude Teer’s Topical File, Board of Control Records. 29. Posner, American State Archives, 26–27, 32–34, 312; Donald R. McCoy, The National Archives: America’s Ministry of Documents, 1934–1968, 5, 51, 64, 99, 104–164. Illinois, progressive in establishing its archival program, was ten years behind Texas in creating a State Records Commission to oversee, in its case, just disposition of useless records (Posner, American State Archives, 98–99). 30. Librarian’s Report to Texas Library and Historical Commission, February 23, 1934, Wilcox to Burges, September 17, 1934, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, February 20, 1935, January 17, 1936. 31. Librarian’s Report to Texas Library and Historical Commission, February 23, 1934; Wilcox to Decca West, November 10, 1933, Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, TSLAC. 32. Minutes, February 20, 1935. 33. Mrs. Charles Scheuber to Wilcox, January 29, 1935, Wilcox to Scheuber, February 2, 1935, Wilcox to Ideson, January 30, 1935, Clarence E. Farmer to Scheuber, January 30, 1935, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 34. Wilcox to Mrs. Volney Taylor, March 20, 1935, Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, TSLAC; Handbook of Texas Libraries (1935): 39; Toler, “Educational Activities of Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs,” 36–37. 35. Goree’s reports of visits to the Wilbarger County Library, April 1931, and November 21–22, 1932, [Goree], untitled statement, 1935, Wilcox to Albert G. Walker, January 18,

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Notes to pages 74 – 80 1935, Wilcox and Goree to Librarians and Friends of Libraries, January 22, 1935, Lucia F. Powell to Wilcox, March 27, 29, 1935, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 36. Handbook of Texas Libraries (1935): 34. 37. Laura Hobby to Wilcox, April 22, 1934, TLHC Correspondence; Goree to Members of Executive Board, TLA, [September 1938], Legislative Files, TSLAC; Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree,” 43–44. 38. Goree to Wilcox, March 23, 1935, TLHC Correspondence. 39. Wilcox and Goree to Librarians and Friends of Libraries, January 22, 1935, Wilcox to Ideson, January 30, 1935, Legislative Files, TSLAC.

Chapter 5 1. Campbell, Gone to Texas, 388–390; Calvert et al., History of Texas, 332–333, 339–340; Jennifer Cummings, “‘How Can We Fail?’ The Texas State Library’s Traveling Libraries and Bookmobiles, 1916–1966,” 307–308; Jane Rogers, “The WPA Statewide Library Project in Texas,” Texas Libraries (Winter 1972): 209–211; “Texas Planning Board,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/mdt22.html. 2. “Texas Committee on Library Planning,” Handbook of Texas Libraries (1935): 10–11 (quotation); LeNoir Dimmit, “Libraries and the Texas Planning Board,” News Notes (April 1936): 1; Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree,” 51–55; State Planning for Texas Libraries, undated, TLA, TSLAC; Conference of Southern Leaders, [1933?], and Program for Library Progress in Texas, undated, both in ALA—Texas Library Planning Committee, TSLAC; “Texas Planning Board,” Handbook of Texas Online. 3. Minutes, February 20, 1935; Burleson to Carl M. Milam, April 30, 1935, Correspondence, TLHC. 4. Dallas Morning News, February 5, 1939; Minutes, January 17, 1936; News Notes (October 1938): 2; Texas Libraries (March 1938); Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 53. 5. Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 140. 6. “The State Aid Plan for Texas Libraries” (December 1938), State Aid (document); Providing for the Extension and Development of Free Public Library Service in the State [draft act], Legislative Files, TSLAC; Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree,” 56–63, 70–71. 7. Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree,” 55 (first quotation), 56 (second quotation); Wilcox to Goree, June 19, 1933, TLHC Correspondence; Meeting of T.L.A. Executive Board and P.L.M. Advisory Committees in Austin, November 12, 1938, Legislative Files, TSLAC; News Notes ( January 1937), 1, 5, 13, 19–20; Donald Ryan Drummond, “Julia Grothaus, San Antonio Librarian,” 75–76. 8. Edwin Sue Goree, “What the State Library Might Be,” Texas Observer, 4 (April 1956): 8, quoted in Drummond, “Julia Grothaus,” 77–78. 9. Wilcox to TLA Executive Board, Citizens’ Advisory Committee, and Librarians Advisory Committee, December 2, 1938 (quotations), Goree, Meeting to Discuss Library

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Notes to pages 80 – 84 Legislation, [November 1938], Wilcox to Goree, January 7, 1939, Goree to Wilcox, January 10, 1939, Legislative Files, TSLAC. 10. News Notes (December 1938): 18. 11. Julia Grothaus to Porter, May 23, 1964, quoted in Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree,” 35–36. 12. Cited in Young, “History of the Texas State Library,” 53–54. 13. Wilcox to Members of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, October 20, 1934, Will H. Mayes to Wilcox, December 12, 1934, and untitled document, c. 1932, concerning the need for a building, TLHC Correspondence; Wilcox to H. H. Ochs, September 20, 1934, TLHC to Senator George C. Purl, October 29, 1934, Wilcox to Cullen F. Thomas, November 26, 1934, Texas Centennial Commission, TSLAC; Handbook of Texas Libraries (1935): 45, 60. For examples of the importance of space and a building to the commission, see Minutes, January 28, 1932, January 25, 1933, February 23, 1934, February 20, 1935, February 19, 1938; Toler, “Educational Activities of Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs,” 132. 14. Minutes, June 17, 1937; Wilcox to Smither, June 26, 1937, and enclosure; Friend, “E. W. Winkler,” 113. 15. Marguerite L. Hester to Pearl Ward, July 23, 1937, Goodman, “Let’s House Our State Library”; Texas Press Messenger ( January 1939): 26, ( June 1940): 24. 16. “Interpreting the Texas State Library Project,” undated, Texas Woman’s Press Association, TSLAC (first quotation); Coke R. Stevenson to M. L. Hester, May 29, 1939, Legislative Files, TSLAC; Texas Libraries (December 1939): 2; Kerrville Times, June 15, 1939; Austin Daily Tribune, November 26, 1939; House Journal, 46th Legislature, Regular Session, 1723, 4005; Senate Journal, 46th Legislature, Regular Session, 2032; Minutes, January 28, 1932; Goree, Meeting to Discuss Library Legislation, [November 1938], Legislative Files, TSLAC; Texas State Library—Building Needs: General Statement, [June 30, 1948], Building, TSLAC; Austin American, November 20, 1938; “Louis Wiltz Kemp,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/KK/fke15.html. 17. Minutes, March 31, 1939 (first quotation), June 17, 1937, February 19, 1938; Austin American-Statesman, August 12, 1965 (second quotation). 18. Wilcox to Texas Library and Historical Commission, September 15, 1939, Wilcox to General Harry Knox, March 8, 1940, Wilcox to L. W. Kemp, April 1, 1940, J. R. Ham to Wilcox, April 5, 1940, Wilcox to Laura Hobby, April 17, 1940, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, January 22, 1940. 19. Burleson to Hobby, May 9, 1940, J. S. Ibbotson to Wilcox, January 24, 1940, TLHC Correspondence; Biennial Report, 1938–1940, 9. 20. Wilcox to Weaver H. Baker, March 27, 1942, Sidney Latham to All State Departments, [received April 1, 1943], James W. Markham to Wilcox, August 25, 1943, Order of Business, February 1, 1944, HB 534 [March–April 1943], TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, February 23, August 24, 1943, February 1, 1944; Biennial Report, 1936–1938, 28. 21. Ibbotson to Wilcox, January 17, 25, 1940, Ibbotson to L. W. Kemp, April 9, 1940, Burleson to Milam, April 10, 1940, TLHC Correspondence; Porter, “Edwin Sue Goree,” vii; News Notes (April 1940): 4; Texas Libraries (March 1940): 8.

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Notes to pages 84 – 88 22. Minutes, January 22, 1940; Ibbotson to Wilcox, January 17, 1940. 23. Burleson to Julia Wright Merrill, April 25, 1940, TLHC Correspondence. 24. Kemp to Ibbotson, April 10, 1940, TLHC Correspondence; News Notes (October 1939): 7; McCaslin, At the Heart of Texas, 91. 25. In addition to its description of the ideal state library agency, the ALA publication included a brief description of the characteristics of each state library. While the edition available to me was the one next published after the date of the Lester-Noon report, only the information on the state libraries had changed from the edition current at the time of the report, not the characteristics of the ideal state library. American Library Association, Library Extension Board, The State Library Agency: Its Functions and Organization, 2–9. 26. Paul A. T. Noon to Wilcox, September 28, 1934, TLHC Correspondence. 27. Merrill to Burleson, May 21, 1940, and enclosure, Plan for an A.L. A. Survey for the Texas Library and Historical Commission, Correspondence, TSLAC; Redmond Kathleen Molz, National Planning for Library Service, 1935–1975, 31–35; Drummond, “Julia Grothaus,” 65–66. Drummond considered the involvement of Grothaus with the LesterNoon survey as among her three most significant contributions to librarianship in Texas. 28. Kemp to Burleson, July 11, 1940, TLHC Correspondence. 29. Wilcox to Cleora Clanton, June 19, 1933 (first quotation), Wilcox to John Gould, March 23, 1939 (second quotation), TLHC Correspondence. 30. Wilcox to Gould, March 23, 1939, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, March 21, 1939. 31. See below, p. 90. 32. Clarence B. Lester and Paul A. T. Noon, “Report of a Survey of the Texas State Library for the Texas Library and Historical Commission, July, 1940,” 2 (first quotation), 33 (second quotation). 33. Ibid., 4 (first and second quotations), 16 (third quotation). 34. Lester and Noon, “Report,” 4 (first and second quotations), 16 (third quotation), 17 (fourth quotation), 41; Minutes, February 23, 1934. As the sponsor of the WPA project, the state library provided space for receiving, cataloging, processing, temporary storage, and shipment of books (Rogers, “WPA Statewide Library Project in Texas”: 213). 35. Lester and Noon, “Report,” 22. 36. News Notes (April 1937): 8 (first quotation), (December 1938): 18 (second quotation), 19; Wilcox to Gould, November 22, 1937, TLHC Correspondence; Texas Libraries (March 1938): 1–2. 37. Lester and Noon, “Report,” 22 (first and fifth quotations); Texas Libraries (March 1938): 1 (second quotation); Biennial Report, 1936–1938, 27 (third quotation); Biennial Report, 1938–1940, 24 (fourth quotation). 38. Lester and Noon, “Report,” 34. 39. Ibid., 4, 17 (quotation), 35, 38. 40. Ibid., 42. 41. American Library Association, Library Extension Board, The State Library Agency: Its Functions and Organization, 4. 42. Lester and Noon, “Report,” 4, 20; Posner, American State Archives, 31.

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Notes to pages 88 – 94 43. Lester and Noon, “Report,” 39–40, 42; Texas Libraries ( June 1938): 3, and ( June 1940). 44. Lester and Noon, “Report,” 37 (first and second quotations), 6 (third quotation). 45. Laura Hobby to Wilcox, June 19, 1941, TLHC Correspondence. 46. Gambrell to Members of the Commission, December 23, 1944, TLHC Correspondence. 47. Wilcox to Members of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, January 11, 1941, TLHC Correspondence. 48. Minutes, January 15, 1941; Merrill to Burleson, November 1, 1940, Wilcox to Members of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, January 11, 1941, TLHC Order of Business, January 15, 1941, Burleson and Donald Coney to Merrill, January 27, 1941, TLHC Correspondence; Wilcox to Burleson, November 14, 1940, Burleson to Grothaus, December 6, 1940, Survey of Texas State Library, Lester and Noon, TSLAC; Gould to E. Netter, January 12, 1946, Emilie Netter Correspondence, President File, TLA, TSLAC; News Notes ( July 1940): 9. 49. Gambrell to Members, December 23, 1944. 50. Julia Grothaus, “The Survey of the Texas State Library,” News Notes (April 1941): 1, 3; Biennial Report, 1940–1942, 7. Not one word ever appeared in Texas Libraries. 51. Wilcox to Texas Library and Historical Commission, May 26, 1942, May 19, 1943, Wilcox to Fred Mauritz, February 15, 1943, Self-Survey of the Texas State Library, February 23, 1943, To State Board of Control, Reasons for Budget Increases for Biennium 1943–1945, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, July 27, 1942, August 24, 1943; The National Defense Program and Our State Library, People’s Library Movement, 1940–1944, TSLAC; Biennial Report, 1940–1942, 10–13. 52. “Local Institutes for Texas,” October 1943, War and Postwar Issues Institutes, 1943, TSLAC; Wilcox to Hobby, January 13, 1942, Hobby to Wilcox, January 16, 1942, TLHC Correspondence; Report on the Victory Book Campaign in Texas, April 24, 1942, Victory Book Campaign, 1941–1942, TSLAC; Wilcox to Carl H. Milam, January 18, 1943, War and Postwar Issues, TSLAC. 53. Gould to Wilcox, October 11, 1937 (quotation), TLHC Correspondence; News Notes ( January 1938): 7. 54. News Notes (October 1944): 4; “Virginia Leddy Gambrell,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/fga50.html; Texas Libraries (December 1941): 6, (August 1946): 3; Gambrell to Connerly, September 11, 1944, TLHC Correspondence; Gambrell to Philip Brooks, February 22, August 13, 1950, Brooks, Mrs. Herbert Gambrell Papers. News Notes could have added that though she was not a member of TLA, she had appeared on the organization’s program in 1939 (Netter to Gambrell, February 7, 1946, Emilie Netter, President File, TLA, TSLAC). 55. Gambrell to Members, November 30, 1944, TLHC Correspondence. 56. Kemp to Gould, Edmund Heinsohn, Hobby, and Gambrell, October 24, 1944, Mary E. Goff to Wilcox, October 5, 1944, Wilcox to Members, October 5, 1944, Gambrell to Wilcox, October 7, 1944, Wilcox to Gould, October 29, 1944, Gambrell to Connerly, September 11, 1944, Stevenson to Latham, April 10, 1944, Connerly to Gambrell, Septem-

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Notes to pages 94 – 102 ber 9, 1944, TLHC Correspondence; Wilcox to [Governor Coke R.] Stevenson, September 17, 1941, Governor’s Office, TSLAC; Kemp to Stevenson, September 24, 1941, General Files—Library and Historical Commission—L. W. Kemp, Governor Stevenson Records. 57. Gambrell to Members, December 23, 1944, TLHC Correspondence. 58. Draft Biennial Report in Wilcox to Members, November 28, 1944, TLHC Correspondence. 59. Report of the State Librarian (draft), September 1, 1944, 10, in Wilcox to Members, November 28, 1944, Gambrell to Wilcox, November 30, 1944, Gambrell to Members, November 30, December 9, 1944, Wilcox to Gambrell, December 4, 1944, TLHC Correspondence. 60. Gambrell to Gould, Hobby, Heinsohn, and Kemp, December 30, 1944, TLHC Correspondence. Not all librarians shared Gambrell’s negative view of Journeay. See Ethel Simmons to Wilcox, January 6, 1945, Evangel T. Horsfull to Wilcox, January 3, 1945, TLHC Correspondence. 61. Minutes, April 27, 1945. 62. Gould to Members, May 28, 1945 (first quotation), Kemp to Members, May 30, 1945, Gambrell to Gould, May 30, 1945, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, July 27, 1945. 63. Gambrell to Members, December 23, 1944, Gambrell to Gould, Hobby, Heinsohn, and Kemp, November 14, 1944, TLHC Correspondence. 64. Minutes, July 27, 1945; Gould, [Statement of Commission Action], August 15, 1945, Worth S. Ray to Kemp, August 29, 1945, TLHC Correspondence. 65. News Notes ( July 1946): 6; Who’s Who in Library Science, 215; Jennifer Cummings, “Francis Harold Henshaw.” 66. John Gould, “Presenting Mr. Henshaw,” News Notes (April 1946): 1, 12; Kemp to Stevenson, September 25, 1945, TLHC Correspondence. 67. Executive Board Minutes, February 15, 1946, Emilie Netter Minutes and Agendas, 1945–1946, President File, Texas Library Association Records. 68. “Affairs of the Association,” SHQ 37 ( July 1933): 75–76; McCaslin, At the Heart of Texas, 72–75, 79, 90–91; Kemp to Smither, March 15, 1940, Kemp to Wilcox, April 12, 1940, TLHC Correspondence. 69. L. W. Kemp, “Extracts from the Introduction,” News Notes ( July 1946): 5.

Chapter 6 1. John Gould, “It’s No Button-Pushing Job, Mr. Henshaw!” Library Journal 71 ( January 15, 1946), 105 (first quotation); Biennial Report, 1946–1948, 27 (second quotation); Proposed Program for Reorganization of Texas State Library, February 18, 1946, Henshaw to Members, March 8, 1946, Texas State Library, Budget Request, 1947–1949, General Statement, TLHC Correspondence; Texas Libraries (March 1946): 1; Campbell, Gone to Texas, 407–410. 2. Minutes, February 18, 1946, September 21, 1945. 3. Gould to Henshaw, March 11, 1946 (first quotation), Gambrell to Henshaw, March

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Notes to pages 102 – 10 7 13, 1946, Henshaw to Members, March 14, 1946, TLHC Correspondence; Kemp, “Extracts from the Introduction,” 5 (second quotation). 4. San Antonio Express, March 15, 1946; Henshaw, Report on June Activities, July 1, 1946, Henshaw, Report on July Activities, undated, Henshaw, Report . . . on West Texas Trip, August 13, 1946, Henshaw, Report on September Activities, October 1, 1946, Henshaw, Report on November Activities, December 2, 1946, Gould to Henshaw, October 9, 1946, Henshaw to Gould, October 15, 1946, TLHC Correspondence; News Notes ( July 1946): 28, ( July 1947): 108, 126; Texas Libraries (March 1946): 3. 5. Henshaw, Report on September Activities (first quotation), TLHC Correspondence; Henshaw to Ibbotson, April 19 (second quotation), 29 (third quotation), 1946, Newspapers—Microfilming, TSLAC. 6. Henshaw to Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 14, 1946, J. S. Ibbotson to Henshaw, April 18, 1946, Henshaw to Ibbotson, April 29, 1946, Newspapers—Microfilming, TSLAC; Henshaw, Report of June Activities. 7. Henshaw to Ibbotson, April 19, 1946, Newspapers—Microfilming, TSLAC; Gambrell to Members, September 5, 1946, TLHC Correspondence. 8. Gambrell to Kemp and Henshaw, February 23, 1946, and enclosure from American Archivist, Records Division, TSLAC. 9. Draft Act to Create the State Records Board, undated, Records Division, February–July 1946, TSLAC. 10. Henshaw to Dear ——, July 23, 1946, TLHC Correspondence. 11. Gambrell to Henshaw, August 6, 1946, Records Division, TSLAC; Gambrell to Brooks, February 16, 1950, Dr. Philip C. Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 12. Gambrell to Henshaw, November 18, 1946 (not mailed), Francis H. Henshaw, 1945–1946, Gambrell Papers. 13. Gambrell to Brooks, February 16, 1950 (third quotation), Dr. Philip C. Brooks, Gambrell Papers; Gambrell to Henshaw, January 9, 1947, September 5, 1946 (first and second quotations), Records Division, TLHC Correspondence. 14. Gambrell to Henshaw, January 9, 1947. 15. Gambrell to Members, September 5, 1946 (quotation), and Gambrell to Henshaw, September 5, 1946, TLHC Correspondence. 16. Gambrell to Members, September 5, 1946. 17. Gambrell to Henshaw, August 1, 1946, Records Division, TSLAC. 18. Henshaw to Gambrell, July 25, August 2, 7, 1946, Comments on Microfilming Proposal, September 9, 1946, Records Division, TSLAC. 19. Minutes of this meeting are missing, leaving no trace of how the discussion proceeded. Minutes from February 1945 to July 1950 are incomplete. Prior to 1945, the minutes “were pretty messy.” Written by hand, they were mailed to commission members for signature, after which they were pasted into a book. Gambrell in February 1945 moved the commission to adopt a policy of keeping only action minutes documenting decisions and little more. Henshaw took charge of having these minutes typed and bound. Five months before Henshaw resigned, Gambrell discovered “that the Library file consisted of a jumbled folder in his desk drawer.” Moreover, “Miss Connerly later told me that it

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Notes to pages 10 8 – 1 1 2 would take a great deal of work for the staff to get them straightened out and checked.” By then it was too late. Pages are missing still (Gambrell to Roy Sylvan Dunn, October 20, 1951 [both quotations], General Files—Library, Governor Shivers Records; Minutes, February 14, 1945; Thomas J. Gibson, Note Prefacing Minutes, January 5, 1954). 20. Proposed Microfilming Program, January 16, 1947, Gambrell to Members, January 2, 1947, Henshaw to Gambrell, January 3, 1947, Henshaw to Kemp, January 3, 6, 1947, Gambrell to Kemp, January 5, 1947, Gambrell to Henshaw, January 9, 1947, Henshaw to Heads of State Departments and Institutions, January 29, 1947, Records Division, TSLAC; Minutes, January 16, 1947; Henshaw to William McGill, June 18, 1947, TLHC Correspondence. 21. Biennial Report, 1944–1946, 5 (first quotation), 6. 22. Gambrell to Henshaw, September 24, 1946, Virginia Gambrell, TSLAC. 23. Biennial Report, 1944–1946, 5–27, quotation on p. 25; Henshaw, Report of August Activity, August 31, 1948, TLHC Correspondence. 24. Henshaw to Members, February 12, 1947 (first quotation), Kemp to Members, May 19, 1947 (second quotation), Henshaw to Members, April 24, 1947 (third quotation), Henshaw to Gambrell, May 19, 1947, Henshaw to McGill, June 18, 1947, TLHC Correspondence; Gould to Governor Beauford H. Jester, January 28, 1947, Jester to Gould, March 11, 1947, Library Development Legislation, Governor Jester Records; Gambrell to Allan Shivers, June 13, 1947, Library Legislation, Personal Files, Governor Shivers Records; Texas Libraries ( January 1947): 1, (February 1947): 1, ( June 1947): 1–2; News Notes (April 1947): 30. 25. Gambrell to Henshaw, June 19, 1947, TLHC Correspondence. 26. Henshaw to Gambrell, June 25, 1947, TLHC Correspondence. 27. Board of Control to Henshaw, November 26, 1947, untitled statement, July 8, 1948, Records Division, TSLAC; Texas State Business and Historical Records: Solution to Space and Preservation Problems, Texas State Library Record Administration Division: A Preliminary Survey, 7, 12; David B. Gracy II, This Best But Last Chance: Representative Bill Daniel’s Fight for a State Courts and Office Buildings in Texas, 1949–1954, 9. 28. Minutes, April 29, 1948; Henshaw to James E. Taylor, August 12, 1948, Records Division, TSLAC; Henshaw, Report of May Activity, June 1, 1948, TLHC Correspondence. 29. Henshaw, May Report of Activity, June 1, 1948, June Report of Activity, June 30, 1948, August Report of Activity, August 31, 1948, September Report of Activity, October 4, 1948, October Report of Activity, November 3, 1948, November Report of Activity, December 2, 1948, Henshaw to Members, December 21, 1948 (third quotation), TLHC Correspondence; Beauford H. Jester to Henshaw, August 26, 1948 (second quotation), Henshaw to Jester, August 13, 1948, Governor’s Office, TSLAC; Henshaw to Arless Nixon, July 20, 1948 (first quotation), Arless B. Nixon, President File, Texas Library Association Records. 30. Minutes, January 31, March 1, 1949; Message from Governor Beauford H. Jester to the 51st Legislature, January 31, 1949, Governor’s Office, TSLAC. 31. Mrs. E. H. Marek and Mrs. Malcolm T. Swann to Allan Shivers, February 10 (first quotation), 21 (second quotation), March 19 (third quotation), 1949, Library Legislation,

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Notes to pages 1 1 2 – 1 16 General Files, Governor Shivers Records; “For Your Information: The Texas Library Association Submits Opinions from the Texas Press Showing the Need for an Expanded State Library Extension Program,” broadside, Library Science Collection. Library Development Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. 32. Nixon to Shivers, telegram, June 28, 1949, Library Legislation, General Files, Governor Shivers Records; Henshaw to Arthur M. Sampley, July 7, 1949 (second quotation), Arthur M. Sampley Correspondence, President File, Texas Library Association Records; Biennial Report, 1948–1950, 8; Francis Henshaw, “Library Extension in Texas,” News Notes ( July 1949): 111–112; George Norris Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics: The Primitive Years, 1938–1957, 117 (first quotation), 117–118; Henshaw to Members, July 7, 1949 (quotation), TLHC Correspondence. 33. Henshaw to Members, July 7, 1949 (quotation), TLHC Correspondence; Henshaw to Sampley, July 7, 1949, Sampley Correspondence, President File, Texas Library Association Records; Biennial Report, 1948–1950, 25–32. 34. Austin American, November 5, 1949. 35. Minutes, August 8, 1949, including “Records Administration Division of the Texas State Library,” August 8, 1949, policy statement. 36. Texas State Business and Historical Records; Philip C. Brooks, “Records Administration and the Texas State Library,” Brooks Report, TSLAC, 9–10. For those who did not see the pamphlet at all, Henshaw got the Austin paper in February to run two pictures of the contents of the cow barn and records going into the annex next to it (Austin Statesman, February 2, 1950). 37. Henshaw to Gambrell, February 16, 1950 (first quotation), Correspondence Cited in Footnotes to Philip C. Brooks, “Records Administration and the Texas State Library: Report of Philip C. Brooks, Consultant, to the Texas Library and Historical Commission, August, 1950,” Brooks Report, TSLAC; Gambrell to Brooks, February 10, 16 (second and third quotations), May 10, 1950, Dr. Philip C. Brooks, Gambrell Papers. Henshaw considered Gambrell was two-faced in objecting to the publication. Not only had he incorporated into it the changes she had suggested, but no commission member, including her, had rejected publication (Notes on Brooks’ $1,200 Survey in Henshaw to William McGill, August 29, 1950, General Files—State Library, 1950, Governor Shivers Records). 38. Brooks to Gambrell, [mid-February 1950], Dr. Philip C. Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 39. Gambrell to Brooks, February 16 (first quotation), May 10, 1950 (second quotation), Dr. Philip C. Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 40. Gambrell to Brooks, February 16, May 10, July 11, 1950 (quotation), Dr. Philip C. Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 41. “Records Administration and the Texas State Library,” Points of Oral Presentation, July 17, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers; Brooks, “Records Administration and the Texas State Library,” 1–23 (quotation, 3), Brooks Report, TSLAC; Doris H. Connerly, “Texas State Library: Some Problems in Connection with Its Work and Functions,” August 31, 1951, TLHC Correspondence.

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Notes to pages 1 16 – 1 2 1 42. Minutes, July 17, 1950; Gambrell to R. C. Lanning, June 28, 1950, General Files—Deficiency Appropriations, Library and Historical Commission, Governor Shivers Records. 43. Gambrell to Brooks, August 30, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 44. Minutes, July 17, August 1, 1950; Gambrell to Members, July 24, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers; Gambrell to Members, July 25, 1950, TLHC Correspondence. 45. Gambrell to Brooks, August 13, 1950 (all quotations), Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 46. Connerly, “Texas State Library.” Looking at the agency from the perspective of extension, Texas State Library historian Marie Shultz considered that while “suffering severely” at the hands of Gambrell and Kemp, Henshaw “undoubtedly improved” the state library (meaning the library side of the agency). Events, buttressed by Connerly’s contemporary comment, do not substantiate her view (Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 172. See also Witt B. Harwell to John P. Morgan, October 24, 1955, TLHC Correspondence). 47. Connerly, “Texas State Library.” 48. Gambrell to Brooks, August 13, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers. The estimation in which Henshaw’s work was held did not improve with the passage of time. See Texas Research League, The Texas State Library: An Evaluation of Its Services, 14. 49. Upon leaving the Texas State Library, Henshaw joined the cataloging staff of the Library of Congress. But the Brooks report haunted him. To William L. McGill on Governor Allan Shivers’ staff he charged that Brooks wrote the report Gambrell wanted and pointed out eight of what he called major misstatements. In 1952, Henshaw’s unhappiness boiled over. Henshaw wrote the archivist of the United States and officials in the General Services Administration (GSA), the parent agency of the National Archives, “alleging that Brooks’s report caused him to get fired and that since Brooks was a National Archives employee, the National Archives was responsible for the report.” GSA lawyers replied that the charges had no foundation. To Kemp, Gambrell observed: “Isn’t it the darndest thing that the man who claimed so loudly in the Austin American that Brooks’s report supported him against the Commission now charges to Federal officials that the Brooks report caused him to get fired! The only consistent thing about these opposite statements is that both are untrue” (Henshaw to McGill, letter and enclosures, August 29, 1950, General Files—State Library, 1950, Governor Shivers Records; Gambrell to Heinsohn, January 23, 1952 (first quotation), Gambrell to Kemp, January 23, 1952 (second quotation), Brooks, P.C., Brooks to Gambrell, February 29, 1952, Henshaw-Brooks, 1952, both files in Gambrell Papers).

Chapter 7 1. Dallas Morning News, July 30, 1950; Austin Statesman, September 3, 1950. 2. Austin Statesman, September 3, 1950. 3. William L. McGill to Mr. Hart, September 7, 1950, General Files—Library, Governor Shivers Records.

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Notes to pages 1 2 1– 1 26 4. Gambrell to Brooks, August 13, 1950, Gambrell to Frederick G. Melcher, November 30, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers; Gambrell to Frederick G. Melcher, November 21, 1950, TLHC Correspondence; Gambrell to Charles E. Green, January 5, copy of Library Journal blurb, January 1, 1951, 2, in TLHC Correspondence. 5. Minutes, August 1, 15, 1950; Gambrell to Brooks, November 14, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers; Connerly, “Texas State Library”; Biennial Report, 1950–1952, 5; Texas Libraries (September 1953): 12. 6. Biennial Report, 1948–1950, 5–12, 6 (first quotation), 8 (second quotation), 10 (third quotation); Biennial Report, 1946–1948, 9 (fourth quotation); “Tidelands Controversy,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/ mgt2.html; “Proposed Substitute for the Legislative Budget Board for the Texas State Library,” [January 1951], TLA Legislative Committee Correspondence, 1950–1951, Texas Library Association Records. 7. Gambrell to Judge William Hawley Atwell, February 22, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC; Brooks to Gambrell, October 16, November 8, 1950, Gambrell to Brooks, November 14, 1950, March 7, 1951, Brooks, Gambrell Papers. In addition to corresponding with Gambrell through the fall, Brooks advised assistant archivist Sylvan Dunn on forms appropriate for approving disposal of agency records and, as necessary, coordinating the disposal with microfilming (Brooks to Sylvan Dunn, October 2, 1950, Supplemental Statement, Revised October 2, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers). 8. Gambrell to Members, February 22, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC. 9. Connerly to Gambrell, February 24, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC. 10. Gambrell to Connerly, February 27, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC. 11. Gambrell to Connerly, February 28, 1951, Brooks to Gambrell, March 2, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC. 12. Connerly to Gambrell, February 26, 1951 (two letters), Records Division, TSLAC. 13. Brooks to Gambrell, March 2 (quotation), August 16, 1951, Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 14. Connerly to Brooks, March 5, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC; Brooks to Connerly, March 8, 1951, Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 15. Connerly to Gambrell, February 28, March 1 (quotation), 1951, Records Division, TSLAC. 16. Connerly to Gambrell, March 1 (second letter), 1951, Records Division, TSLAC. 17. Gambrell to Doris, March 2, 1951, Connerly to My dear Virginia, March 5, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC; Gambrell to Brooks, March 7, 1951, Brooks, Gambrell Papers. 18. Connerly to Gambrell, March 6, 1951, Connerly to Brooks, March 10, Records Division, TSLAC. 19. Minutes, April 28, 1951 (first quotation), Gambrell to Connerly, May 11, 1951 (second quotation), Connerly, “Texas State Library,” TLHC Correspondence. 20. Connerly to Gambrell, May 3, 1951, Gambrell to A. M. Aikin Jr., May 4, 1951, Records Division, TSLAC; Connerly, “Texas State Library”; Minutes, July 21, 1951; Gam-

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Notes to pages 1 26 – 1 31 brell to Brooks, General Files—Texas Library and Historical Commission, Governor Shivers Records. 21. Minutes, July 21, 1951; Connerly, “Texas State Library.” 22. McGill to Governor Shivers, June 22, 1951, General Files—Texas Library and Historical Commission, Governor Shivers Records; R. Sylvan Dunn, interview by David B. Gracy II, April 10, 2007, San Antonio, Tex. 23. Gambrell to Brooks, September 2, 1950, Brooks, Gambrell Papers; Gambrell to Henshaw, August 26, 1950, TLHC Correspondence; Dallas Morning News, July 22, 1951, Waco Tribune-Herald, August 19, 1951, unidentified clipping, State Archives Clippings, TSLAC. 24. Gambrell to Shivers, June 11, 1951 (quotation), Kemp to McGill, July 23, 1951, General Files—Texas Library and Historical Commission, and Laura Aline Hobby to Governor Shivers, September 8, 1951, General Files—State Library, 1951, both in Governor Shivers Records. 25. Gambrell to Brooks, March 8, 1951, Brooks, Gambrell Papers; Minutes, July 21, 1951; McGill to Governor Shivers, memorandum, July 12, 1951, General Files—Texas Library and Historical Commission, Governor Shivers Records; Dunn interview; Bi­ennial Report, 1950–1952, 9. Months passed before steel was received to build shelves to get the records off the floor (Connerly, “Texas State Library”). 26. Gambrell to Mrs. A. J. Frazier, July 27, 1951, General Files—Texas Library and Historical Commission, Governor Shivers Records; Minutes, March 4, 1952. The cost of the family service—a public library circulation service for Texas residents without a nearby public library—exceeded what the agency could justify in comparison with the cost of core services in greater demand (Texas Research League, Texas State Library, 19). 27. Weldon Hart to Governor Shivers, memorandum, November 21, 1951, General Files—State Library, 1951 (quotation), and press memorandum, August 6, 1951, Library and Historical Commission, both in Governor Shivers Records; Minutes, October 18, 1951; John P. Morgan, “A Layman’s Viewpoint on Libraries,” Texas Library Journal 24, no. 3 ( July 1948): 51–53. 28. Ibbotson to Gambrell, October 9, 1950, Legislative Committee Correspondence, 1950–1951, TLA, TSLAC. 29. Kemp to McGill, July 23, 1961, General Files—Texas Library and Historical Commission, Governor Shivers Records. 30. Connerly, “Texas State Library”; Ibbotson to Morgan, November 26, 1951, Thomas J. Gibson III to Morgan, December 8, 1951, Gibson, vita [December, 1951], TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, December 17, 1951; Morgan to Flora Reeves et al., November 13, 1951, Flora Reeves Correspondence, TLA, TSLAC. 31. Ibbotson to Katherine Ard, December 18, 1951, TLA, TSLAC. Connecting Gibson’s name with the state librarian vacancy had occurred no earlier than in mid-November (Robert R. Douglass to Morgan, December 6, 1951, enclosure in Morgan to Heinsohn et al., December 10, 1951, TLHC Correspondence). 32. Biennial Report, 1950–1952, 5; Minutes, March 4, 1952. 33. Biennial Report, 1950–1952, 6 (first quotation), 8–9 (third quotation, 9), Gibson to

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Notes to pages 1 31– 1 3 7 Morgan, June 19, 1952, John Morgan, TSLAC; [Harwell, Records Division Report, September 1952 (?)], TLHC Correspondence, July–November, 1952; Minutes, May 16, 1952; Texas Libraries (May 1953): 28 (second quotation). 34. [Gibson, Report of a Trip, undated], TLHC Correspondence, July–November, 1952, TSLAC. 35. Gibson to Members, July 9, 1952, TLHC Correspondence. 36. Biennial Report, 1950–1952, 7 (first quotation), 12–15 (second quotation, 15); Minutes, January 19, 1953. 37. Gibson to Morgan, October 11, 1952, John Morgan (first quotation), and Gibson to William S. Dix, September 29, 1952, TLA (second quotation), both in TSLAC; Biennial Report, 1950–1952. Consisting of a description of the functions and history of the state library and an invitation to visit, Gibson’s plenary presentation to the Texas Library Association in April had offered no vision for either the state library or libraries in Texas (Thomas J. Gibson III, “The Texas State Library,” Texas Library Journal 28 [September 1952]: 84–91; see also Thomas J. Gibson III, “The State Library and College Libraries,” Texas Library Journal 29 [September 1953]: 75–79). 38. Gibson to Morgan, April 6, 1953, John Morgan, TSLAC. 39. Gibson to Paxton P. Price, May 6, 1953, National Association of State Libraries, 1953, TSLAC.

Chapter 8 1. Gibson to Morgan, December 9, 1953, TLHC Correspondence (first quotation); Minutes, January 14, 1954 (second quotation); report of Mr. Harwell in Minutes, November 10, 1952. 2. Minutes, March 5, 1954; Morgan to Members, memorandum, April 13, 1954, TLHC Correspondence; Texas Observer, December 16, 1960. 3. Minutes, August 3, November 18, 1953, January 18, May 14, 1954, January 7, 1955; Texas Libraries (September 1953): 19, ( January 1954): 15. 4. “A Preliminary Guide to the Archives of Texas” was published in SHQ 59 ( January 1956): 255–334, and reprinted by the state library later that year as a booklet. 5. Biennial Report, 1952–1954, 5–24 (first quotation, 6; second quotation, 15; third quotation, 23); Texas Libraries (December 1954): inside front cover. 6. Morgan to Members, memorandum, April 13, 1954. 7. C. Lamar Wallis to Gibson, September 9, 1953 (first quotation), Wallis to Gibson, September 14, 1953 (second and third quotations), enclosed in Morgan to Members, memorandum, April 13, 1954. Morgan attached copies of these letters to his report of the exchanges to commission members so that they could have the librarians’ sentiments in the librarians’ own words. 8. Waco Times-Herald, August 29, 1969; “In Memoriam: Guy Bryan Harrison, Jr.” and “Guy B. Harrison,” undated clippings, Guy Bryan Harrison Papers. 9. Bill Holman to Morgan, April 10, 1954, John Morgan, TSLAC.

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Notes to pages 1 3 7 – 1 4 1 10. Wallis to Morgan, April 5, 1954, Holman to Morgan, April 10, 1954, John Morgan, TSLAC. 11. Morgan to Members, Memorandum, April 13, 1954 (first quotation), Connerly to Morgan, October 28, 1953, and enclosure, TLHC Correspondence; Minutes, October 18, 1951; Morgan to Gibson, October 3, 1952, in Texas Libraries (October 1952): 1 (second quotation), 2 (third quotation); Morgan to Lon Alsup, November 7, 1951, Morgan to Governor Shivers, November 8, 1951, Governor Shivers to John P. Morgan, November 26, 1951, General Files—State Library, 1951, Governor Shivers Records. 12. Minutes, May 14, 1954. 13. Minutes, September 11, 1954; Fred Folmer to Executive Board Member, May 14, 1954, Margaret Hoyal, and Fred Folmer, A Progress Report on the Request Made of the Texas Research League, September 25, 1954, Eleanora Alexander, both in President File, TLA, TSLAC. 14. Minutes, September 19, 1955. 15. George Moffett to Kemp, April 15, 1954 (quotation), John Morgan, TSLAC; Bill Holman to Margaret Hoyal, October 3, 1955, Margaret Hoyal, President File, TLA, TSLAC. 16. Carolyn Leigh Harris to Morgan, October 21, 1955, TLHC Correspondence; Mary Lyle Vincent to Morgan, January 6, 1956, John Morgan, TSLAC; Robert M. Trent to Willis Tate, November 2, 1955, Hoyal, President File, TLA, TSLAC; “President’s Page,” Texas Library Journal 31 (December 1955): 127; “Letter to Chairman Texas Library and Historical Commission, October 12, 1955,” Texas Library Journal 31 (December 1955): 128–132 (first quotation, 129; second quotation, 130); Peace, “History of the Texas State Library,” 69–70. “That there is a noticeable lack of familiarity with the State Library’s services,” the Texas Research League documented (Texas Research League, Texas State Library, 29). 17. Holman to Hoyal, October 3, 1955. 18. Texas Research League, Texas State Library, v–x (first quotation, v; second quotation, 7); James W. McGrew, “Comments on Scope of Texas Research League Study of Library Services,” speech, September 16, 1955, Hoyal, President File, TLA, TSLAC; “Roger McDonough Dies at 92,” LibraryJournal.com, http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/ CA191631.html; Howard Blomquist, “The State Library Study,” Texas Libraries (March 1956): 48–49. 19. Research Staff, Texas Research League, to TLHC, undated, enclosure in Alvin A. Burger to Harrison, August 22, 1956, TLHC Correspondence. 20. Texas Research League, Texas State Library, 22–23 (first quotation, 23), vii (second quotation), 43; Research Staff to TLHC, undated memorandum, in Burger to Harrison, August 22, 1956. The commission asked the Research League to emphasize the need for proper storage for records. And recognizing that no one knew how permanent the medium of film was, the commission recorded its objection to the destruction of original records after microfilming (Minutes, April 25, 1956). 21. Texas Research League, Texas State Library, 34 (first quotation), ix (second quotation), x (third quotation).

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Notes to pages 1 4 2 – 1 4 7 22. Biennial Report, 1954–1956, 5–25; Harrison to Mrs. Albert R. Cauthorn, February 11, 1958, Harrison Papers; Harwell to Heinsohn, December 31, 1957, Heinsohn, TSLAC. 23. Biennial Report, 1956–1958, 4 (quotation). 24. Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 260. 25. Harwell to Morgan, July 27, 1986, John Morgan, TSLAC; Virginia H. Taylor to Dolores C. Renze, October 16, 1956, Taylor to Harrison, October 8 (quotation), November 1, 1956, Taylor to Walter Prescott Webb, October 30, 1956, Archives Division, TSLAC; San Antonio Express, September 21, October 7, 1956; Austin Statesman, October 28, 1956; Price Daniel, Budget Message, 10, Building, TSLAC; Highway, September 1956, 5. 26. Dallas Morning News, October 1, 1956 (first quotation); San Antonio Express, September 21 (second quotation), October 7, 1956 (third quotation), Harrison to Taylor, October 9, 1956 (fifth quotation), Archives Division; “Oral Memoirs of Guy B. Harrison Jr., June 28, 1972–June 28, 1974” (fourth quotation), Minutes, March 5, 1954. 27. Harrison to Taylor, October 9, 1956 (first quotation), Archives Division, Harwell to Hobby, October 11, 1956 (second quotation), Laura Aline Hobby, TSLAC; Minutes, September 19, 1955, April 25, November 17, 1956; San Antonio Evening News, October 12, 1956. 28. Numerous letters and clippings, October 1956–June 1957, especially Adams to Editor, San Antonio Express, October 16, 1956, Adams to Members, Texas State Historical Association, October 16, 1956, March 22, 1957, J. M. Patterson Jr. to Adams, November 15, 1956, Raymond R. Russell Jr. to Dear Friend, February 13, 1957, in Paul Adams Collection; letters and petitions in Archives, Archives Building, TSLAC, Governor Daniel Records; Austin Statesman, February 10, 1957; Dallas Morning News, November 2, 1960. 29. Price Daniel to Paul Adams, November 5, 1956, Paul Adams Collection; Daniel, Budget Message, 10, Jimmy Banks to Governor Daniel, February 14, 1957, Building, TSLAC; Russell to Dear Friend, February 13, 1957; Dan Murph, Texas Giant: The Life of Price Daniel, 174. 30. Margaret Barclay Megarity to Taylor, April 18, 1957, Archives Division, TSLAC; Harwell to Harrison, May 10, 1957, Harrison Papers. 31. Minutes, January 26, April 13, 1957; Earl Rudder and W. B. Harwell to Governor Daniel, March 11, 1957, Earl Rudder to Harrison, April 3, 1957, Harrison Papers; Dedication of Texas Archives and Library Building, Austin, April 10, 1962, Dedication Program, Building, TSLAC; HB 62, 55th Legislature, Legislative Reference Library of Texas, http:// www.las.lrl.state.tx.us/LASDOCS/55R/HB62/HB62_55R.pdf; Peace, “History of the Texas State Library,” 76–77; Austin American, August 9, 1958; Austin American-Statesman, August 10, 1958. 32. Minutes, July 27, 1957, and January 21, 1958; Harwell to Long, November 20, 1957, Building, TSLAC. 33. Minutes, January 31, 1958; Archives Data enclosure in John A. DeBois to Peace, October 19, 1961, James M. Day to Commission, [August–October, 1961], Building, TSLAC. Texas’ population was increasing steadily. From 7.7 million in 1950, it would reach 9.5 million in 1960, an increase of some 23 percent. The 16.9 million people in the state in 1990 fell short of Long’s projection but nevertheless amounted to a doubling of the

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Notes to pages 1 4 8 – 150 state’s population and resulting demand for services (United States and Texas Populations, 1850–2008, http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/census.html). 34. Minutes, January 31, 1958, Building, TSLAC. Long wanted his declaration to rise above “chincy” included verbatim in the minutes, but it was not (untitled statement of Long’s expression of opinion, January 31, 1958, Building, TSLAC). 35. Minutes, July 26, 1957, January 31, June 28, August 1, October 10, 1958, June 28, 1960; Daniel to Harwell, February 12, 1958, Subcommittee on Archives Building to Architectural Advisory Committee to State Building Commission, May 5, 1958, Dedication of Texas Archives and Library Building, Austin, April 10, 1962, Dedication Program, Progress Report for an Archives and Library Building for Texas, [October–November 1957], 2–3, Building, TSLAC; San Antonio News, March 4, 1958. 36. Harrison to Cauthorn, February 11, 1958, Harrison Papers. 37. In the 1956 budget, extension under assistant state librarian Peace was submerged in Main Division, which included the library administration, supplies, and the blind operation. Only the director and assistant director of Extension are identifiable as extension positions. While the total allocation for Extension is impossible to determine, clearly it came nowhere close to $40,000. The 1956 budget showed four divisions: Main, Archives, Legislative Reference, and Records Administration (Biennial Report, 1954–1956, 26–31). For Peace’s summary account of the planning and activity of the Rural Library Service operation, see his “History of the Texas State Library,” 72–76. 38. In neither internal nor external documents and statements did the commission and administration of the Texas State Library ever settle on whether the last word in the name of this library component was “Service” or “Services.” Even at the component’s conclusion in the minutes of September 24, 1960, both words are employed. For convenience, I have used “Service” throughout. 39. Bess Ann Motley, “Texas Rural Library Service Program,” Correspondence— Federal Aid, TSLAC; Library Development Committee, Minutes, September 14, 1956, Robert M. Trent, President File, Texas Library Association Records; Texas Libraries (October 1956): 171; Witt B. Harwell, “The Texas Rural Library Service Program,” Texas Libraries ( June 1957): 113–116; Bess Ann Motley, “Texas Rural Library Services Program: A Progress Report,” Texas Libraries (September 1957): 137–144; Bess Ann Motley, “Multi-County Bookmobile Demonstrations,” Texas Libraries (December 1957): 207–209; “Texas Rural Library Services Program,” Texas Library Journal 33 ( June 1957): 26–27; Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 263. 40. Minutes, January 31, 1958; Dorothy Schiwetz, “Burnet-Llano-Blanco Multi-County Bookmobile Demonstration,” Texas Libraries ( January 1958): 14–16; “Implementing the Library Services Act,” Texas Library Journal 33 (March 1957): 17–20; Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 267–269. 41. “Texas Rural Library Service Program,” Texas Libraries (May–June 1960): 85–86; “Multi-County Bookmobile Demonstrations in Texas,” Texas Library Journal 34 (March 1958): 11–12; Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 266–267; Texas Observer, December 16, 1960; Biennial Report, 1956–1958, 4. 42. Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 259; Harrison to Cauthorn,

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Notes to pages 150 – 15 4 February 11, 1958, Harrison Papers; “Archives Building Called For by H.B. 429,” Texas Library Journal 33 (March 1957): 24. 43. Jerry Cauthorn to Harrison, September 7, 1958 (both quotations), Harrison to Cauthorn, October 6, 1958, Harrison Papers; “Oral Memoirs of Guy B. Harrison, Jr.,” 296. 44. Cauthorn to Harrison, September 7, 1958. Measured by the year she joined the Texas Library Association, Cauthorn’s interest in library affairs statewide had begun only the year before her appointment (“TLA Membership Directory, 1955,” Texas Library Journal 31 [September 1955]: 112; “Membership Directory, 1956,” Texas Library Journal 32 [September 1956]: 81). 45. Harrison to Cauthorn, October 6, November 25, 1958, Winfrey to Harwell, undated, Harrison Papers. 46. Cauthorn to Harrison, November 5, 1958, February 10, March 7 (quotation), March 13, May 15, 1960, Harrison Papers; “Texas Library Trustee of the Year,” Texas Library Journal 36 ( June 1960): 32. 47. Cauthorn to Harrison, July 8, 1960 (first and third quotations), Harrison to Cauthorn, July 18, 1960 (second quotation), Harrison Papers; Ruth Carolyn Winfrey, interview by David B. Gracy II, April 28, 2009, Austin, Tex.; Dan Murph, Texas Giant: The Life of Price Daniel, 189. 48. Minutes, August 6, 13, 1960; Harrison to Cauthorn, July 18, 1960 (quotation), Harrison Papers; TLA Executive Board Minutes, September 10, 1960, in Texas Library Journal 36 (December 1960): 121–122 (second quotation). 49. Minutes, September 30, 1960; Peace to Shultz, interview, quoted in Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 271. 50. Peace to Harrison, October 19, 1960 (first quotation), Harrison to Peace, October 25, 1960 (second and third quotations), Guy Harrison, TSLAC. 51. Texas Observer, December 9, 1960; A. G. Scott to Daniel, November 18, 1960, Harrison to Scott, November 23, 1960, Harrison Papers; Austin Statesman, July 30, 1961. 52. Minutes, December 3, 1960; Harrison to Katherine Ard, December 19, 1960, Harrison to Heinsohn, December 19,1960, Harrison to Governor Daniel, January 11, 1961, Harrison Papers; George Christian to Governor Daniel, December 7, 1960, Governor Daniel Records. 53. Minutes, December 10, 1960; “The Library Program for Texas Rural Areas—A Forward Look,” Texas Libraries ( January–February 1961): 2–4; Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 277–278; Peace to Shultz, interview, 273. 54. Minutes, August 1, 1958, May 13, 1959, April 30, June 28, 1960; Harwell to Morgan, June 23, 1960 (quotation), John Morgan, TSLAC; Cauthorn to Harrison, February 12, 1960, Harrison Papers. 55. Austin American-Statesman, September 4, 1988 (quotation), quoted in Murph, Texas Giant, 189; Minutes, August 1, 1958; San Antonio Light, July 16, 1961; “State Library Design Approved by Governor,” Houston Chronicle, June 29, 1958; Harrison to Peace, October 25, 1960, Guy Harrison, State Building Commission, Minutes, December 19, 1958, James M. Day, Report on Display Area in Archives and Library Building, December

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Notes to pages 155 – 15 7 11, 1961, and Day, Report to the Texas Library and Historical Commission on the Display Area in the New Archives and Library Building, February 23, 1962, Building, TSLAC. 56. Minutes, April 30, 1960. 57. James M. Day, Plan for Moving the Archives Division of the Texas State Library, 1961, Governor Daniel Records; William Kittrell Peace, “State Archives and Library Building: A New Home for the Texas State Library,” Texas Libraries (September–October 1961): 92; Austin American-Statesman, July 30, 1961 (first quotation); Daniel to Peace, August 18, 1961 (second quotation), TLHC Correspondence; Peace to Banks, June 24, 1961, Building, TSLAC. 58. Peace to Daniel, August 22, 1961, TLHC Correspondence. 59. See, for example, Daniel to All Members of the State Library and Historical Commission, June 17, 1961, TLHC Correspondence. 60. Dallas Morning News, December 4, 1960 (first quotation); George Christian to Governor Daniel, December 7, 1960 (second quotation), Banks to Daniel, May 25, 1961, Governor Daniel Records; HB 524, Bill Files, 57th Legislature, Regular Session (third quotation); Senate Amendment to HB 524, 57th Legislature, undated (fourth quotation); Peace to Rosita H. Holler, July 7, 1961, Legislation, TSLAC; Minutes, September 15, 1955. 61. Minutes, December 11, 1961. 62. Shultz, “Changing Role of the Texas State Library,” 279–281; “State Library Building Dedicated,” Texas Libraries (May–June, 1962), 65–67 (quotation, 66); Minutes, February 23, 1962.

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B i bl i o g r aph y

Primary Sources Archival Fonds and Documents Adams, Paul, Collection. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Barker, Eugene Campbell, Papers, 1785–1959. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Burges, Richard Fenner, Papers, 1897–1940. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Gambrell, Mrs. Herbert, Papers, 1939–1953. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Harrison, Guy Bryan, Papers. Texas Collection, Baylor University. Library Science Collection, Library Development Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Texas Adjutant General’s Department Records (Departmental Correspondence). Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Texas Board of Control Records. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Texas Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History Records. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Texas Governor Allan Shivers Records, 1946–1964. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Texas Governor Beauford H. Jester Records, 1937–1949. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Texas Governor Coke R. Stevenson Records, 1941–1948. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Texas Governor Price Daniel Records, 1944–1962. Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Liberty. Texas Legislature, Bill Files. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

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The State Library and A rchives of Texas of the State of Texas. Part I—Organization and General Administration. Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1933. ———. The Government of the State of Texas. Part XII—Education; the University of Texas and Its Branches; the College of Industrial Arts, the Texas College of Arts and Industries, and the Texas Technological College. Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1933. ———. The Government of the State of Texas. Part XIII—Education: The Board of Education, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Other Agencies of General Control, and Libraries. Austin: A. C. Baldwin and Sons, 1933. Texas Library and Historical Commission. First Biennial Report of the Texas Library and Historical Commission, for the Period from March 29, 1909, to August 31, 1910. Austin: Texas Library and Historical Commission, 1911. The title of the biennial report varied through the years. For consistency, all biennial reports are cited as Biennial Report, with date. Texas Research League. The Texas State Library: An Evaluation of Its Services. Austin: Texas Research League, 1956. Texas State Business and Historical Records: Solution to Space and Preservation Problems, Texas State Library Record Administration Division: A Preliminary Survey. Austin: Texas State Library, 1950. Valentine Overton King’s Index to Books about Texas before 1889: A Facsimile of the Original in the Collection of the Texas State Library. Austin: Texas State Library, 1976. West, Elizabeth Howard. “The Texas State Library.” Christian Science Monitor, May 21, 1924. Wilcox, Fannie M. “The Texas Library and Historical Commission; State Library.” In Handbook of Texas Libraries (1935): 135–138. Windsor, Phineas L. “The Library Situation in Texas.” ALA Bulletin 1 (1907): 767–778. Winkler, E. W. “Some Historical Activities of the Texas Library and Historical Commission.” Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 14 (April 1911): 294–304.

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index

The word “building” unmodified represents the dream of a building to house the state library and archives of Texas. When the physical State Archives and Library Building (now the Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives and Library Building) is meant, it is designed as “state archives and library building.” Entries consisting of a state name capture references to state library functions performed in that state. These state references are consolidated under: “state libraries, compared” and “Texas State Library: compared with others.” The names of most agencies, offices, and organizations are indexed in direct order— thus American Library Association, Texas State Library, and State Records Board. The names of agencies and offices that begin with “Bureau” or “Department” are alphabetized under the name that designates the area of responsibility—thus “Records, Bureau of,” not Bureau of Records. The exception is the Board of Control alphabetized under Board. The letters “p.s.” designate a related image in the photograph section. A number in parenthesis after designates the number of images. Adams and Adams (architects), 148 Adams, Paul: and state archives and library building, 144–145 Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics, and History, Department of: Texas State Library and, 13–14, 17, 37 Alabama, 19 Allred, James V., 77 American Library Association, 39, 76, 78, 84, 88, 90, 92, 98, 142, 150 Anderson, William Madison, Jr., 161, 167 Archive War, 5–6. See also Second Archives War archives function, xvii–xviii, 105; and history function, 72; and library function, 117–118, 151; and records management

function, 72–73, 115. See also Texas State Library: functions, balance of Archives of Texas. See Texas archives Ard, Katherine, 102, 129 Arkansas, 78 Austin, Charles O.: and Texas State Library space, 47–48, 50–51 Banks, Clinton Stanley, Sr., 153, 161, 173, 174 Banks, Jimmy, 145 Barker, Eugene Campbell, 161, 166, 180n13, 180n15; and historians’ interest in Texas State Library, 98; and state librarian appointment, 29–32 Barrett, Don Carlos, 3

The State Library and A rchives of Texas Benedict, Ada Stone, 161, 170–171 blind. See Texas State Library: blind, service to Board of Control, 47, 51, 83, 103–105, 110, 142; and budget process, 101–102; and Records Bureau, 69–72 Borden, John P., 5 Bralley, Francis Marion, 161, 165–166 Bringhurst, Antoinette Power Houston, 44 Brooks, Mabel, 54 Brooks, Philip C.: records management bill, 123–125; records management report, 114–117 Bull, Asa Claud, Sr., 161, 170 Burges, Richard Fenner, 50, 59, 161, 167– 168; and Records Bureau, 69–71; and Rogan staff conflict, 54–56 Burleson, Emma Kyle, 56, 59–60, 78, 83–85, 127, 161, 166–170; on Klaerner, 34; and political patronage, 36, 44, 53–54; and Rogan staff conflict, 54–55; on Texas State Library space, 51–52; and Texas State Library staff, 186n23; on Wilcox, 61–62, 89; on women and the legislature, 85 California, 38 Carroll, H. Bailey, 144 cataloging: work of, 187–188n33 Cauthorn, Jerry, 153, 161, 173–174; and building, 153–154; on Harwell, 151; on Texas State Library balance of functions, 150 Clay, W. J., 17, 23 Clutter, Helen, 57; library organizer, 57–59 Comptroller of Public Accounts: records, 28, 107 Coney, Donald, 89 Confederate veterans: and Texas State Library, 26–27 Connecticut, xv, 24 Connerly, Doris H., 70, 112, 171–172,

p.s.; acting state librarian, 121–127; on balance of functions, 127–128; legislative reference librarian, 71, 104–105, 119, 129, 136 Connerly, Fred, 46 Connor, Seymour Vaughn: state archivist, 135–136 Constitution of 1876, 7–9 County libraries, 77, 136. See also Library Examiners, Board of; Texas State Library: library organizer County library law, 38 Cousins, Robert Bartow, 22, 161, 165 cow barn, 110, 130 Cunningham, A. F., 31–32 Daniel, Jean, p.s. Daniel, Price: state archives and library building, 145–146, 148, 154–155, 157, 160, p.s.; state librarian appointment, 151 Davenport, Harbert, 69, 99 Davis, John, 44 Depression, 1930s: Texas State Library and, 63–69, 77–78 Dibrell, Ella Peyton Dancy, 35, 162, 165– 166, 182–183n35, 183n43; Governor Ferguson and, 30–31; and Texas Library and Historical Commission founding, 19–20 Digges, Eugene: state librarian, 13 Dix, William S., 132 Dobie, J. Frank, 144 documentary editing, 42; Connor and, 135; West and, 28; Winkler and, 26 Doughty, Walter Francis, 30, 32, 36, 162, 166 Dunn, Roy Sylvan, 172: acting state librarian, 127 Elliott, Kathleen: state archivist, 41–42 extension. See Texas State Library: extension

220

Index Ferguson, A. M., 29 Ferguson, James Edward, 29–32, 35; effect on Texas State Library, 37, 98 fire and fire protection, 6–7, 10–11, 41, 60, 71, 82–83, 143 Fitzgerald, Hugh Nugent, 30–31, 162, 165–166 Folmer, Fred, 138 Fuller, Lucy, 59 functions of state libraries, xvii–xviii. See also Texas State Library: functions, balance of funding. See Texas Archives: funding; Texas State Library: funding Gambrell, Virginia Leddy, 90, 114–117, 162, 171–172, p.s.; accomplishments, 127; biography, 93, 94; on extension, 128; and Henshaw, 101, 109, 116–117, 119, 120–121; on Henshaw and Brooks Report, 199n49; on microfilm, 104; 1951 records management bill, 122– 126; on State Records Board, 105–107; on women as state librarians, 95–96 Garrison, George Pierce, 14, 26, 29, 162, 165; Texas Library and Historical Commission chairman, 22 General Land Office: records, 6–7; and state archives and library building, 145–147 Georgia, 25 Gibson, Thomas Jefferson III, 134, 172, p.s.; state librarian, 129–133 Giraud, Mary Louise, 102 Goodman, Lena Williams, 82; and building, 159; on Texas State Library space, 50 Gordon, Abe, 162, 169 Goree, Edwin Sue, 68–69, 77, 88, p.s.; library organizer, 63–64, 76; and Texas State Library functions, 79–80; Walker attack, 74–75 Gould, John, 85, 92–93, 95, 115–116, 127,

162, 170–172, p.s.; on budget process, 101–102, 108; on Henshaw, 96–97 Graves, Harry N.: Texas government reorganization, 64–69, 73–74 Grinnan, Laura, 43 Griswold, Stephen B., xiv Grothaus, Julia, 91, 193n27 Gunter, Lillian, 38, 53, 56, 184n48 Hale County: and library organizer, 58–59 Handbook of Texas Libraries, 56 Hardeman, Dorsey: and state archives and library building, 144 Harrison, Guy Bryan, Jr., 137, 162, 172– 174; final commission meeting, 153; on Harwell, 151; and state archives and library building, 143–144, 148 Hart, Weldon, 128 Harwell, Witt B., 172–173, p.s.; acting state librarian, 134–139; and funding Texas Rural Library Service, 149; and Records Bureau, 70–72; Records Management Division director, 130–131; state librarian, 139–151 Hawkins, William E., 22 Heinsohn, Edmund, 153, 162, 170–174; and state archives and library building, 144, 147; Texas Library and Historical Commission chair, 92 Henshaw, Francis Harold, 133, 140, 171–172, p.s. (2); and Brooks Report, 199n49; challenges before, 96–99; and extension, 102; on Gambrell, 120–121, 198n37; and Governor Jester, 111; Shultz estimation of, 199n46; state librarian, 96–119; and Texas Library and Historical Commission minutes, 196–197n19 Hester, Marguerite, 82; pictured, 108, p.s. Highway Department Building: and Texas State Library, 69–70, 110, 116, 127, 142

221

The State Library and A rchives of Texas history: ignored, 80, 82–83, 85, 90, 145; importance of in Texas, reference to, 7, 41, 113; and state archives and library building motif, 148 history commissions, 2–3 history function, xvii–xviii; and archives function, 72. See also Texas State Library: functions, balance of Hobby, Laura Aline, 83, 162, 168–173, p.s.; on Goree, 75; proposes seeking American Library Association help, 76, 78; on state archives and library building, 146 Hobby, William P., 36 Hogg, James Stephen, 11–13, 21 Holman, William, 137–140 Hopkins, George M., 37 Hornsby, John W., 73 Houston, Elizabeth R., 162, 168–169 Houston, Sam: and Archive War, 5–6 Hoyal, Margaret: on Harwell appointment, 139–140 Hunter, Mary Kate, 162, 167–168; and history function, 52 Ibbotson, Joseph S., 103–104, 128; on state library challenges, 129–130 Ideson, Julia, 53 Illinois, 190n29 Indiana, xv Iowa, 81 Irving, Robert L., 56, 68, 163, 167–168 Jacobsen, Emmanuel Jake, 163, 174 Jester, Beauford H.; and Henshaw, 111 Johnson, Jefferson, 37 Josselyn, Robert: state librarian, 5 Journeay, Dorothy Cotton, p.s.; exten‑ sion director, 87, 91; Gambrell on, 94–95 Kaiser, John Boynton, 26, 28 Kemp, Louis Wiltz, 84, 94–95, 99, 117,

133–134, 163, 170–173, p.s.; on budget process, 101–102; and Gambrell appointment, 93; on Harwell, 82; on Henshaw, 109; resignation of, 85– 86; on state librarian requirements, 128–129 Kentucky, 81 King, Valentine Overton: state librarian, 9–10 Kirven, Oliver Carter, 163, 166 Klaerner, Christian, 166; state librarian, 32–35 Kleberg, Rudolph, Jr., 32 Lamar, Mirabeau Buonaparte, 4 legislative reference. Alabama, 19; Wisconsin, 18. See also Texas State Library: legislative reference legislature. See Texas Legislature Lester, Clarence B., 84 Lester-Noon Report, 84–89, 94, 116–117; reaction to, 89–91 library commissions, 2 library development. See Texas State Library: extension Library Examiners, Board of, 38, 74–75 library organizer. See Texas State Library: library organizer library resource function, xvi; and archives/records function, 117–118, 151. See also Texas State Library: functions, balance of Library Services Act, 142, 148–150 Littlefield, George Washington, 22, 30, 163, 165, 181n15 Logan, Hall, 105 Long, Walter Ewing, 134, 153, 163, 172– 174; and state archives and library building, 144, 146–148 Looscan, Adele, 179n46; on importance of archives, 41–42; on Texas State Library space, 50 Louisiana, 78

222

Index Marron, Joseph F., 34 Massachusetts, 2 Mays, Richard, 163, 165 McDonough, Roger, 140 McGill, William L., 120–121 McKay, Buena Day, 31–32, 163, 166 McMullen, John, 3–4 Megarity, Margaret Barclay: and state archives and library building, 145–146 Microfilm and microfilming, 131, 145; discontinuing, 122; Henshaw and, 103– 107; uncertain permanence of, 203n20 Moffett, George: and state archives and library building, 144, 147; on state librarian, 139 Moody, Dan, 52 Moreland, Sinclair: state archivist, 35 Morgan, John P., 128, 132, 138–140, 163, 172–173; on local libraries, 137–138; on state archives and library building, 146; Texas Library Association meeting, 136–137 Motley, Bess Ann, 148–149, 156

173–174; accomplishments, 156; acting state librarian, 152–156; and extension, 135–136, 142, 148; on state archives and library building, 155–156 Pease, Elisa Marshall, 7 Pennybacker, Anna, 16, 81, 179n46 People’s Library Movement, 80 Perry, Hally Bryan, 163, 167 Political influence on Texas State Library, 24, 37, 43–45 Pool, Adrian, 55 Porterfield, Vernon, 135–136 Prather, William Lambdin, 17 Purl, George, 69 Quonset hut: state archives in, 143–145, 155

National Archives of the United States, 114; pioneering records management, 106 National Association of State Libraries, 133 Negroes: Texas State Library service to, 40–41 New York, 2, 18 Noon, Paul A. T., 84 North Carolina, 81 Oklahoma, 81 Organization and Economy, Joint Legislative Committee on; Texas government reorganization, 64–69, 73–74 Parkhouse, George M., 123–124 Payne, John H., 163, 170 Peace, William Kittrell III, xxi–xxii,

Raines, Cadwell Walton, 16, 27, 179n46, p.s.; state librarian, 11–13; on state library functions, xiv; vision for Texas State Library, xix, 159–160 Ray, Worth: on state librarian, 96, 128 Records, Bureau of, 107, 110; and Texas State Library, 69–72 Records management function, xvii–xviii, 106; and archives function, 72–73, 115; and library function, 117–118; in Texas government, 106–117 Roberts, Ronald, 156 Rogan, Octavia Fry, 133, 168, p.s.; accom‑ plishments of, 56; early years in Texas State Library, 33–35; resignation, 186n21; and staff, 52–56, 186–187n23; state librarian, 45–56; Texas Libraries editor, 187n28 Rose, Archibald Johnson, 13, 24 Rotan, Kate Sturm McCall, 2, 15 Rouser, Edna, 54 Russell, Raymond B., Jr., 145–146 Sampley, Arthur M., 112 Sayers, Orline Walton, 163, 165–166

223

The State Library and A rchives of Texas Scheuber, Jennie S., 68 Scott, Ella Dickinson, 163, 166 Sears, George D., 163, 169–170 Second Archives War, 144 Shamblin, Rosalyne: acting assistant state librarian, 152–153 Shelley, George Elgin, 164, 168–170 Shirley, Anne Throckmorton, 43 Shivers, Allan, 109, 128 Shultz, Marie Julia, xxi–xxii; on Henshaw, 199n46; on state archives and library building, 150 Smith, Varde W., 115–116, p.s. Smither, Harriet: on Texas State Library condition, 69; state archivist, 54–55, 71–73, 121, 135 Society of American Archivists, 88, 93, 114 South Carolina, 78 Space. See Texas State Library: space Stafford, R. N., 14, 17, 27 state aid for libraries, 78–79, 91, 137 State Auditor, 101, 103 State Building Commission, 144, 148, 154 state libraries: compared, 2 (see also Texas State Library: compared with others); defined, xiv–xxii; functions of, xiv–xx State Records Board, 104–107 Stevenson, Coke R., 93; and Texas State Library space, 82–83 Sullivan, Maud, 53 Summer Reading Club, 149 Taylor, Virginia: and state archives and library building, 145–146; state archivist, 143, 150 Terrell, Mary Peters, 16, 19, 29, 36, 38, 164–165, 179n46; Texas Library and Historical Commission vice-chair, 22 Texas: library service in, 16, 25, 37–38, 64, 78–79, 111–112; library service funding, 78–79, 81 Texas archives, 5–7: compared with Southern states, 154–155; funding of,

6–7, 17; Gambrell on, 105; housing of, 59–60, 73, 83–84, 116, 143–145, p.s. (2); Looscan on importance of, 41–42; work of, 41–42, 121–122 Texas Centennial: and Texas State Library, 81–82 Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 38, 68; and Texas Library and Historical Commission founding, 1–2, 14–20, 33; and Texas Library Commission, 1 Texas Legislature: budget process, 101– 102; on librarians, 109; sessions: (1852), 6, (1876), 8–9, (1899), 14, (1903), 17; (1905), 18, (1907), 18, (1909), 19–20, (1912), 33, (1919), 37–39, (1925), 43–44, (1933), 68–70, (1935), 73–75, (1937), 78–80, (1939), 78–80, 82, 84–85, (1947), 108–110, (1949), 111–112, (1951), 123–126, (1961), 156 Texas Libraries, 25, 58, 87, 101, 122, 136, 187n28 Texas Library and Historical Commission: duties, 8–9; feeling of impotence, 75–76; first meeting, 22–24; founding, 1–2, 14–20; and Lester-Noon Report, 84–91; members, 23, 85, 86, 117–118 (see also members by name); on proposed reorganization, 65–67; and records management, 105, 110, 113; and staff appointments, 52; on state librarian job, 57; and Texas Library Association, 1–2, 17–20, 34, 36, 58–59, 67–68, 79–80 Texas Library Association, 87, 97–98, 130; and extension funding, 1949, 111–112; founding, 16–17; on Harwell appointment, 139–140; and Lester-Noon Report, 84–85, 89–91; and Morgan, 136– 137; state aid for libraries, 78–79; on state librarian requirements, 128–129; State Librarian Winkler as president, 26; and Texas Library Commission, 1–2; and Texas Library and Histori-

224

Index cal Commission, 1–2, 18–20, 34, 36, 58–59, 67–68, 79–80; on Texas Rural Library Service Program, 149 Texas Library Commission, 1, 17 Texas Planning Board, 77–78 Texas Railroad Commission: microfilming records of, 115–116 Texas Research League, 138: state library study, 140–142 Texas Rural Library Service Program, 148–149; concluded, 152–153 Texas state archivist. See Texas State Library: state archivist Texas State Business and Historical Records, 113–114 Texas State Historical Association, 23, 41– 42, 137; lack of interest in Texas State Library, 81, 98–99; organized, 13–14; and space for Texas State Library, 81–82; and state library and archives building, 144; and Texas Library and Historical Commission founding, 1–2, 14 Texas State Historical Commission, 1, 14 Texas state librarian: assessed, 133; importance of, 21; office created, 4; requirements for, xx–xxi, 37, 61, 96, 128–129, 133, 139–140, 152, 156–157, 158–159, 183n43; salary, 56, 65, 75–76, 90, 95, 152, 185n60; views of women as, 85, 95–96; West as first Texas agency ­female head, 36 Texas state librarians, specific: Connerly, 121–127; Digges, 13; Dunn, acting state librarian, 127; Gibson, 129–133; Harwell, 134–151; Henshaw, 96–119; Josselyn, 5; King, 9–10; Klaerner, 32–35; Peace, 152–156; Raines, 11–13; Rogan, 45–56; West, 36–45; Wilcox, 57–96; Winfrey, 157; Winkler, 23–32 Texas State Library, 126; acquisitions, 10–12, 23, 28, 182n35; and blind, service to, 39–40, 59, 66, 84, 117–118,

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121, 136, p.s.; compared with others, xiv–xv, 12–13, 18–20, 24–25, 38, 90; conditions of, 5, 10, 28, 41, 48–49, 110–111, 113, p.s. (4); and Confederate veterans, 26–27; and Depression, 1930s, 63–69; dissolution proposed, 64–69, 73–74; early proposals for government library, 3–4; extension, 24–26, 33, 66, 87, 102, 128, 137–138, 141–142, p.s. (see also Texas Rural Library Service Program; Texas State Library: library organizer); fire and fire protection, 10–11, 71, 82–83; functions, balance of, xiii–xiv, 26, 37, 52, 61, 79–80, 116–118, 127–128, 129–130, 141, 150 (see also Texas State Library: nature and functions of ); funding of, 3–4, 12, 22–25, 28–29, 38–39, 52, 69, 90–91, 92, 100–101, 110–112, 154–155; governors and, 39–40, (Campbell), 2, (Daniel), 145–146, 148, (Ferguson), 29–35, (Hobby), 36, (Hogg), 11–12, ( Jester), 111, (Lamar, President), 4, (Pease), 7, (Shivers), 120–121, 126, 128, (Stevenson), 93, (Throckmorton), 4–5; and Highway Department Building, 69–70, 110, 116, 127, 142; legislative reference, 26, 28, 34–35; Legislative Reference Division, 122, 126, 136; Lester-Noon Report on, 84–89; library organizer, 39, 57–59, 63–64, 74–75 (see also Texas State Library, extension); lip service paid to, 20; Loan and General Reference Division, 122, 128, 132, 136; nature and functions of, xiv, xix, 1, 7–9, 14, 16–19, 28–29, 36–39, 61, 85, 89, 96–99, 139–141, 159–160; Negroes, service to, 40–41, 45; organization and reorganization, 61, 64–69, 73–74, 141–142; Processing Division, 122, 136; publications, 26, 28, 38, 113 (see also Texas Libraries); and Records Bureau, 69–72, 107, 110; Records Management

The State Library and A rchives of Texas Texas State Library (continued ) Division, 107–117, 121, 122–126, 130– 131, 135, p.s.; salaries, 28, 43–44, 49, 91 (see also Texas state librarian: salary); space, 24, 28, 47–48, 50–52, 59, 60, 65, 69–70, 73, 81, 122, 131, p.s. (3) (see also Texas State Library, building for); staff, 23, 24, 37, 43–45, 154–155 (see also Texas state librarian, specific); state archivists, (Connor), 135–136, 143, (Elliott), 41–42, (Moreland), 35, (Smither), 54–55, 71–73, 121, 135, (Taylor), 143, 146, (West), 27–28, (Winfrey), 150–152, (Winkler), 23; state government, 131–132 (see also Texas State Library: nature and functions of ); Texas Research League report on, 140–142; and University of Texas (see University of Texas); and World War II, 91–92. See also Texas Library and Historical Commission Texas State Library, building for, 51, 59– 60, 81, 111; archives and, 150, 154–155; importance of, 159; state archives and library building, xiii–xiv, 144–148, 153– 157, p.s. See also Texas State Library: space Texas Woman’s Press Association, 50–51, 82, 159 Thomas, Charles, 39 Throckmorton, James W., 4–5 Tips, Walter, 164, 165 traveling libraries in Texas, 2, 16, 17, 33, 59 University of Texas: and Texas State Library, 13–14, 18–19, 28, 66–68, 81–82, 130, 138 Walker, Albert G.: proposal to eliminate library organizer, 74–75 Wallis, C. Lamar, 137–139 Ward, Thomas W., 5–6 Wells, Juanima, 102

West, Decca Lamar, 54–55, 164, 167, 168; on Texas State Library space, 51–52 West, Elizabeth Howard, 34, 87, 100, 166–168, p.s.; accomplishments of, 44–45; and blind, service to, 39–40; first female head of a Texas agency, 36; and Negroes, service to, 40–41; and Rogan staff conflict, 54–55; state archivist, 27–28, 33; state librarian, 36–45; and Texas Library Association, 36, 38, 102 Wilbarger County, 74–75 Wilcox, Frances Miles (Fannie), 99, 108, 133, 168–171, p.s. (2); accomplishments, 61–62, 96; acting state librarian, 57–62, 121; assessment of, 86–87, 89–90; Burleson on, 61–62; Gambrell on, 94–95; and Lester-Noon Report, 86, 89–91; retires, 135; shyness, 187n25; state librarian, 62–96; Texas State Library, 61, 65, 67–68, 87–88 Wilson, Lucille B., 112, 132, 135–136 Windsor, Phineas L., 19, 24, 27, 33 Winfrey, Dorman Hayward, 154, 174; state archivist, 150–152; state librarian, 157 Winkler, Ernest William, 14, 36, 59, 165–166, 183n43, p.s.; accomplishments of, 44–45; documentary editing, 26; Governor Ferguson and, 29–32; state librarian, 23–32 Wisconsin, 18–19, 81, 88 Wolf, Ralph R., 144 women: attitudes toward and Texas State Library, 23, 26, 85, 95–96 Wood, Doris Pearl, 187n32 Woodruff, H. Grady, 68–69, 72 Wooldridge, Alexander P., 17–18 Works Progress Administration, 87 Wyche, Benjamin, 16, 19 Young, Catherine, xxi–xxii

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