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CHAPTER 3. JOHN NANCE GARNER
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H istory has not treated John Nance Garner favorably. He is best remembered as Franklin Roosevelt’s two-term vice president who rebelled against Roosevelt’s left-leaning tendencies and challenged Roosevelt’s decision to seek a third term. Historian Joe Frantz questioned whether Garner “brought any affirmative qualities to either the speakership or the Vice Presidency except a certain wiliness and the ability to keep his mouth shut,” and John L. Lewis described Garner as “a labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man.” Still, Garner’s remarkable career in the House of Representatives spanned the first third of the twentieth century, from 1902 until he became vice president in 1933. During his House career, Garner rose to the Speakership in 1931 and left a strong legacy, helping to build the Austin-Boston alliance that would dominate the House long after he left. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee and Democratic leader, he sponsored Sam Rayburn’s budding career; even as vice president, Garner pushed Rayburn’s candidacy for majority leader. Garner’s relationships with Rayburn and Massachusetts Democrat John McCormack facilitated the Austin-Boston alliance in the 1936 majority leader’s race, an arrangement solidified when Rayburn became Speaker and McCormack his majority leader in 1940. The Garner Style Born in 1868 in a log cabin in Blossom Prairie, Texas, not far from the Red River in Northeast Texas, John Nance Garner came from a farming family. His father, a Confederate veteran, was illiterate, but he became prosperous by East Texas standards, giving his son greater opportunities than most farm boys in post–Civil War Texas. After an unsuccessful stint at Vanderbilt University, John Nance came home to study law in Clarksville, Texas. By 1893, Garner contracted tuberculosis and sought, as the cure for his disease, the drier climate of Uvalde, Texas, four hundred miles to the CHAPTER 3 JOHN NANCE GARNER ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ 48 C H A P T E R 3 southwest. Deep in South Texas, Uvalde had a “wild west” tradition where many people still carried side arms when Garner arrived. In that world of ranches, cattle, and cowboys, under heavy Hispanic influence, an amiable man who could hold his liquor and play a good game of poker could succeed . Garner fit right in. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., described Garner as having a “bright, ruddy face, short-cropped white hair, cold blue eyes, and a tight small mouth,” presenting the appearance of “an infinitely experienced sage and of a newborn baby.” Prominently displayed above his blue eyes were bushy eyebrows , which one reporter claimed were two and one-half inches long, curly and turned up. He was often disheveled, frequently unshaven, and sometimes compared with Speaker Joe Cannon for his somewhat seedy appearance. His speaking manner in House debate also resembled Cannon’s. When Garner spoke in the well of the House, he stood almost up against the first Republican row of seats. His face would get progressively redder as he would throw out both arms from his head. He would extend his arms full length with the palms facing one another; then raise and lower his body from the knees in violent contortions in a “camp-meeting” style. Garner amassed wealth with holdings that included two banks, numerous mortgages on homes in Uvalde, significant coffin company stock, and large amounts of South Texas farmland, ranchland, and pecan orchards, including a 23,000-acre ranch with the largest goat herd in the world. Yet Garner was notoriously thrifty, a characteristic that became a running joke among his companions. Garner’s close friend John McDuffie recalled, for example, commenting to one of Garner’s fishing partners that Garner had 90 cents out of every dollar he made. The reply? “You are wrong. . . . Because he has 99 cents out of every dollar he ever made.” For years John Nance and Ettie Garner lived in the Washington Hotel where admirers would bring them food such as venison, bear meat, and beef because of Garner’s well-known love of hunting and the outdoors. Much of the food spoiled in the hotel iceboxes because the Garners could not bear to give it away. A newspaperman once observed Ettie in Garner ’s office sorting a crate of pecans one by one into three piles. A friend had shipped Garner a crate of pecans to be shared with Sam Rayburn and Speaker Bankhead, and Ettie did not want to miss a pecan...