Speeches delivered by Pat M. Neff, Governor of Texas, discussing certain phases of contemplated legislation Page: 33 of 61
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-33more
prosperous than we are by manufacturing our output, it goes
without argument that if we ourselves will do our own manufacturing,
Texas, by leaps and bounds, will quickly mount to the pinnacle
of wealth and power. In just a few years we would become the
wealthiest country in the world. Manufacturing industries, therefore,
of all kinds, should be established here in Texas, where natural resources
abound. Let the whir of wheels and the click of factories,
as they consume our raw material, join in the glad song of our national
prosperity. Let the sky that bends at night above our farms and
ranches be lit from the blaze of our factories' furnaces. Let rich
argosies of commerce drop anchor along our Texas shores from Port
Arthur to Point Isabel, to be loaded with the finished fabrics of our
fields and forests. Let these ships of trade laden with Texas products
make of the Gulf of Mexico the Mediterranean of the New World.
Let Texas be known in all countries, not only as a leading producer of
the products of the soil, but as an empire, as she has a right to be,
in the manufacturing world.
One of the important factors in making Texas such a land is to
turn the great economic loss that we have been suffering so many
years, into a great profit, by the building of factories alongside the
cotton fields, the cattle and sheep ranches, and by the natural homes
of the vast and varied products of this wonderful country of ours. No
State ever grew to greatness by merely producing raw material.
WE FIGHT A LOSING BATTLE FOR BREAD.
The laborer in Texas fights an unfair battle for bread. He is aroused
at an early morning hour by a New England alarm clock, puts on his
overalls made in New York, pulls on his boots bearing a St. Louis
name, washes his face with Massachusetts soap in an Ohio bowl, sits
down to his breakfast on a chair and at a table made in Wisconsin and
eats Kansas bacon, Missouri biscuit, Michigan potatoes and corn flakes
put up at Battle Creek when as a matter of fact the raw materials of
all these commodities are produced in Texas as nowhere else in the
world. This same citizen sleeps at night on an iron bed, cooks his
meals on an iron stove, plows his fields with an iron plow, travels over
iron rails by means of an iron engine, all made in Pennsylvania, notwithstanding
Texas has enough iron ore to supply all our wants for a
hundred years to come. If this citizen happens to be a cotton grower,
he plants his cotton with a cotton planter made out of the State, hoes
it with a hoe made out of the State, plows it with a cultivator made out
of the State, picks it and puts it into a cotton sack made out of the State,
loads it on a wagon made out of the State, gins it on machinery made out
of the State, exchanges it for cotton goods made out of the State, sleeps
at night on a cotton mattress and under a cotton sheet made out of
the State and at last he is buried in a lonely Texas grave, wrapped in
a cotton shroud fashioned and formed by foreign hands. We have lost
all our wisdom if we continue the policy of permitting our labor and
raw material to enrich the people of other lands.
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Neff, Pat M. Speeches delivered by Pat M. Neff, Governor of Texas, discussing certain phases of contemplated legislation, book, 1923; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth5835/m1/33/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .