Jim Hogg - Governor

Governor

With the support of farmers, ranchers, and small merchants, Hogg won the election for Governor of Texas in 1890. At the same time, voters approved the constitutional amendment allowing for a Railroad Commission by a wide margin. On April 3, 1891, the legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill to create the Railroad Commission. Hogg appointed the three members, with U.S. Senator John H. Reagan, creator of the Interstate Commerce Act, as chairman. Hogg also named his old friend, Captain Bill McDonald, to succeed Samuel A. McMurry as the captain of Texas Rangers Company B, Frontier Battalion, a position that he retained until 1907.

Hogg campaigned for a second term in 1892 on five principles: to uphold the state constitution, to support the Railroad Commission, to stop the railroads from issuing watered stocks, to regulate the issuance of county and municipal bonds, and to regulate alien land ownership. When his opponent for the Democratic nomination, George Clark, realized that Hogg would likely win the nomination, Clark's supporters left the Democratic convention and went to a new location. There they formed a new party, the Jeffersonian Democrats, and nominated Clark for governor. Hogg was easily nominated as the Democratic candidate by the remaining delegates.

The Republican Party endorsed Clark, and the Populist Party also nominated a candidate. Hogg won a plurality of the votes to gain a second term as governor, but it was the first time in state history that the winning Democratic candidate did not receive a majority of the votes.

During his second term, Hogg endorsed three constitutional amendments. Voters defeated the proposals to charter state banks and to provide a pension for indigent Confederate veterans, but approved the amendment to allow for public election of the railroad commissioners. At his urging, the legislature passed a law allowing the Railroad Commission to fix rates based on fair valuation and to stop many of the practices the railroad companies had used to manipulate stocks. When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the commission in Reagan v. Farmers Loan and Trust in 1894, this law helped them to be fully equipped to fight the power of the railroads.

In April 1893, the legislature passed a law requiring that communities which issued bonds should also have a plan to collect sufficient taxes to pay the interest. Hogg's final campaign promise was fulfilled when the legislature passed the Perpetuities and Corporation Land Law, which required private corporations to sell all land they had held for speculative purposes within 15 years The law was full of loopholes and did not have the effect that Hogg wanted.

In 1894, Texas filed a lawsuit against John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company and its Texas subsidiary, the Waters-Pierce Oil Company of Missouri. Hogg and his attorney general argued that the companies were engaged in rebates, price fixing, consolidation, and other tactics prohibited by the state's 1889 antitrust act. The investigation resulted in a number of indictments, including one for Rockefeller. Hogg requested that Rockefeller be extradited from New York, but the New York governor refused, as Rockefeller had not fled from Texas. Rockefeller was never tried, but other employees of the company were found guilty.