Bluebonnet Boldness (See front cover)
The breezes that blow year in, year out across the vast grassy plain that is Texas, have for 13 years been murmuring to the bones of Texas' dead heroes that when this great state, a land of great men who will ever do great things, should become 100 years old, the nation would be treated to a memorial celebration that it would not soon forget. True to that promise, up and down the nation for weeks, with a white horse called Texas and his son Jim Boy, 6, the present Governor of Texas, "Jaunty Jimmy" Allred has been traveling as advance agent of the Texas Centennial which is to be, he declares, "bold enough to please the still hearts of Austin, Travis and Houston, and big enough to mirror the accomplishments of Texas to the sons and daughters of the Earth."
Genesis— Not the winds of Texas, nor Jaunty Jim Allred was the author of Texas Centennial. In 1923 the editor of a Manhattan financial weekly addressed the Advertising Clubs of Texas on "What Texas Has To Advertise and How To Advertise It." History and heroism were Texas' greatest assets, he said. Let Texas celebrate her glorious escape from the yoke of Mexico. The idea spread like fire in the tinder of Texas' best advertising minds. . Governor Pat Neff issued a proclamation calling a Centennial meeting. Some 2,000 Texans came, a Centennial Board was set up. That advertising idea had played into unusual good luck. The original head of the Centennial Board, Cato Sells (Woodrow Wilson's Indian Commissioner) was succeeded by a gentleman named Jesse Jones. An election in 1932 made Jesse Jones and another Texan. John Nance Garner, men of importance in Washington. Therefore the U. S. dipped into its Treasury for $3,000,000, a larger amount than it had ever contributed for a similar occasion, to match Texas' equal appropriation.
No one city in Texas had sole claim to celebrate her Centennial. San Antonio, Goliad, Washington-on-the-Brazos, Houston, all had claims, as sites of critical events in the year 1836 (see p. 13). So the Centennial arrangers granted every city and village a right to its own celebration, raised practically every local rodeo, county fair, flower show, milk festival, fiddlers' reunion to the rank of a Centennial observance.
Dividing the $3,000,000 velvet from the Federal Government was another matter. Houston, as Texas' biggest city (292,000), got $400,000 for memorializing the battlefield of San Jacinto. San Antonio as third largest (232,000) got $440,000 for repairing the Alamo. Austin, the state capital, is relatively small, but has the University of Texas which claimed $300,000. Fort Worth, the fourth city (163,000) had a potent pull in the person of the New Deal's Amon G. Carter and wangled $250,000. Texas' second biggest city, Dallas (260,- 000) ran off with the plum. Not for historical background but because she is Texas' financial capital and offered to put up the most money of her own, she was awarded the right to hold the big show, the Texas Centennial Exposition, and given $1,200,000 of the Federal contribution.