Rodeo

A passenger train on the Santa Fe railroad rumbled smoothly through the night over the plains of Texas. A proud train crew was in charge; proud because back in one of the Pullmans slept a handsome, motherly middle-aged woman, no less a personage than Mrs. Miriam A. ("Ma") Ferguson, Governess of the whole huge state.

Some one had left a switch open. The train leaped up a siding and buried its snorting nose in a freight train. The flier's engineer was killed, his mates injured painfully. Back in the sleeper, the motherly woman awoke, thought she had heard a thunder clap, dropped off again. She was fatigued after her previous day's campaigning for renomination by the Democrats. When she heard what had happened, she proceeded to her home townlet of Temple right nearby, telephoned the executive mansion at Austin to say she was all right, and, when the sun shone once more, went on making political hay by calling in friends and appearing no whit shaken up by her experience.

As a matter of fact, it would have made little difference to the outcome of her campaign had Governess Ferguson been brought to bed by the wreck. Practically speaking, it was not her campaign at all but another campaign by her vigorous, fire-eating husband Jim against two other candidates: red-headed Attorney General Dan Moody, aged 32, and a politically inconsequential wight named Lynch Davidson.

Jim's Past. In 1916 during his second term as governor, Jim Ferguson was careless enough to get impeached by letting it seem as though he may have used state funds and a "loan" from brewers to save a bank of his from collapsing. Though deprived of civic eligibility, he thumbed his nose and ran again in 1918 anyway. He even ran for President in 1920, getting 100,000 votes. Two years ago he conceived and executed his brilliant scheme of having his wife elected Governess on an Anti-Klan plank. An amnesty bill was ram med through the legislature to make him thoroughly respectable once more; and all might have been serene except that, as he sat at the executive desk helping his wife out, he was careless again and let some highway contracts get by, which necessitated the resignation of two highway commissioners and the return to the state of $600,000 in excess profits from one contracting company alone.

Jim's Talk. The essence of Fergusonism is good, vigorous home-and-family blather, the kind of thing a contented Americano is supposed to shout in at the wife while he is shaving in the bathroom and she is trying to sneak in another snooze. Jim can talk to Fundamentalists or Evolutionists with equal equanimity in his hearty, informal way.

Thus, to Fundamentalists: "These Evolutionists are monkey-faced Baptists and they are worse than an archists or the Ku Klux Klan." (Antiphony: "Amen, Brother Jim!")

To Evolutionists: "Oh, forget it! The Ferguson family can't settle it, anyhow. Ma said to leave it in the books 'cause it didn't make any difference. And I said: 'Well, if it don't make any difference let's yank her out.' And there you are." (See p. 17.)

Jim's Issues. Young Dan Moody, Jim pointed out, had no overseas record. His girl changed her mind after the War and married a returned hero. That showed you what a slacker Dan Moody was. And now (last April) Dan had married some one else. What the voters of Texas ought to know was just what part this new Mrs. Moody was going to play in the state if Dan were elected. Would it be a "Jiggs and Maggie" proposition? Jim made that sound like a question almost as serious as the Ku Kluxers, fondness for whom he ascribed to Dan Moody despite the latter's consistent disavowals, and his record of having sent five sheeted knights to the penitentiary.

Jim found another issue in "this Bureau of Maternal Hygiene"--an innovation by some precocious Texans who had been reading books. "It is supposed to teach Texas mothers how to have babies," bawled Jim, "in spite of the fact that the mothers of this state have made a success of having babies for over 100 years."

What Texas mother, past, present or expectant, would not vote for the wife of a man who said a thing like that?

Jim's Prediction. Besides colorful invective and simple talk for simple people, Jim Ferguson, onetime cowhand and horse-wrangler, possesses a splendid flair for bluffing. At a judicious moment last week he released an article called "The Result," in which, with a column of figures that would have impressed the average farmer whether he could read or not, it was told that "Ma" Ferguson would receive exactly 453,884 votes; Dan Moody exactly 307,887; and Lynch Davidson about 63,000. Moody men guffawed. Lynch Davidson growled about "political liars." Jim Ferguson hitched up his pants and hustled on to wind up his free-and-easy wife-boosting rodeo.

Ma's Bet. Between "Ma" Ferguson and Sunday-school-teaching Dan Moody stood a bet as primary day approached. They had wagered their present state offices on the outcome: Ma to resign if he beat her by a single vote; Dan to resign if she beat him by 25,000 Perhaps that seems a casual bandying of high public trust, but they like things casual in Texas. The candiates' gamble added local color to the campaign which was last week rushing to a climax.