Twentieth Century Texas: An Economic and Social History. By
Ralph W. Steen.

Austin: The Steck Company, Publishers, 1942. Pp. 370. $3.00.

Really, has it been forty-two years since the Galveston flood?
Can it be true that Texas winds have stirred the dust and Texas
rivers have rolled to the sea for forty-two seasons since the
opening of this century? Yes, in respect to time we are further
from the turn of the century than the printing of Henderson
Yoakum's History of Texas was from Jean Lafitte or Austin's
Old Three Hundred. A great deal has taken place in Texas
during these forty-two years. In 1900 Fort Worth had 26,688
inhabitants, a smaller number than Abilene had in 1940. We
have seen the automobile come into popular use, the airplane
become the most destructive implement of war, and stream-
lining applied to everything from vacuum cleaners to skyscrapers.
Since 1900 high-necked cotton nightgowns have been supplanted
by pajamas, the celluloid collar has passed into disuse, and the
lipstick has become respectable. If Yoakum had touched Texas
history after 1815 as lightly as most Texas historians have
touched the events of the twentieth century he would not have
needed a second volume.

In his Twentieth Century Texas, Professor Steen has under-
taken a stupendous task. To say that his book constitutes a
substantial contribution to the history of the state is an under-
statement. His work makes available to the reading public
for the first time a comprehensive and scholarly study on this
period; there is no competing work. The publication is the
product of nearly two decades of research. The author began
his study of the twentieth century by writing a master's thesis
on the gubernatorial administration of James E. Ferguson. This
work was followed by a doctoral dissertation on Twentieth
Century Texas. Five years ago Steen published a comprehen-
sive study of the political history of Texas in the twentieth
century in Volume I of Texas Democracy (4 volumes, Austin,
1937), edited by F. C. Adams. Now Twentieth Century Texas
completes his history of the state since 1900. In fairness to the
author it should be stated that these publications have been reno-
vated and have lost the thesis odor. Steen is unusually talented
with the ability to select and present details interestingly.
Whether he writes about trusts or taxes, prohibition or peniten-
tiaries, horseshoe pitching or "yo-yo," he is never tedious.

Twentieth Century Texas contains twelve chapters. In "The
Land and the People" the author deals with the population
and such basic forces as religion, prisons, and disasters. There
is a chapter each on farm and ranch, industry, and transpor-
tation. A chapter is devoted to education, another to the wards
of the state, another to amusements, and still another to gov-
ernmental development. Prohibition is discussed in one chap-
ter, and the two twentieth century wars are sketched in another.
Styles of dress, women's organizations, woman suffrage, and
women in the legislature are the topics of the chapter on women
in Texas. In the opinion of the reviewer, the Federal farm
program and social security under the New Deal as applied to
Texas do not receive the space in the book that their impor-
tance warrants; also, under industry, meat packing and lumber
are neglected.

The author has on the whole developed thoroughly the various
topics he has undertaken to discuss; he has used to maximum
advantage a wide range of sources. Reading this book is like
turning the leaves of the family album or looking through the
stereoscope at old familiar scenes. It is more than history; it
is a sketch of our way of life. It will be read with greatest in-
terest by the people of this generation, but more effectively than
any book that has yet appeared it will convey to posterity an
account of Texas as it was when the twentieth century was
young.

Hardin-Simmons University.

Rupert N. Richardson.

How to cite:
"Twentieth Century Texas", Volume 46, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v046/n2/review_DIVL2533.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 17:02:08 CST 2009]