The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954 Page: 526

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

sharp (to be euphemistic) financial practices, threats and intimi-
dations, and litigations designed to ruin. Even an intransigent
Texas Railway Commission made its appearance as an obstacle,
authorizing Joe Kemp to run up a hyper-liberal bonded indebted-
ness for his competing road from Henrietta to Wichita Falls, a
road which on completion Kemp promptly turned over to the
more dangerous Katy system for operation.
But somehow Dodge and Evans, their colleagues, and their
successors managed to keep the two lines from falling permanently
in the hands of rapacious rivals, so that by the end of the century,
in Overton's words, the "vision that John Evans and Grenville
Dodge had grasped, each in his own way, had now moved beyond
simple realization; it had been tempered and tested both by the
forces of Nature and by the waywardness of man. So far as any
mortal could see, the railroad was there to stay, at peace with its
own past, confident of the future."
One final word: this excellent book, a model for anyone writing
a company history, is enhanced by the splendid format, photo-
graphs, and most especially the drawings of Reginald Marsh. It is
becoming redundant, if not downright embarrassing, to praise
The University of Texas Press for its high level performances, but
here goes one more public abrazo.
JOE B. FRANTZ
The University of Texas
A History of the Texas Medical Association, 1853-z953. By Pat
Ireland Nixon. Austin (University of Texas Press), 1953-
Pp. xx+476. $6.00.
This is the well-arranged story of a Texas medical society,
objectively and skillfully told on the cultural and economic back-
ground of Texas life. The Texas Medical Association was organ-
ized one hundred years ago "for the purpose of ensuring unity
of design and concert of action in devising and carrying into
execution such measures as may conduce to the general welfare
and improvement of the profession, and the exclusion from its
ranks of unworthy and unqualified persons."
Among its first members were the outstanding personalities
of the day, Ashbel Smith, able clinician, early Texas medical
author, statesman, diplomat, and educator, and J. W. Throck-

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