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  • The Texas Railroad Commission: Understanding Regulation in America to the Mid-Twentieth Century
  • Eric John Abrahamson
William R. Childs . The Texas Railroad Commission: Understanding Regulation in America to the Mid-Twentieth Century. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. x + 323 pp. ISBN 1-58544-452-9, $35.00.

In his new book, The Texas Railroad Commission: Understanding Regulation in America to the Mid-Twentieth Century, historian William Childs explores the history of regulation in the context of one of the most interesting state commissions in the United States. He provides a counterpoint to many economists' narrow analysis of regulation on the basis of efficiency. Regulation, he says, has to be understood as a social, cultural, and political phenomena operating within the federalist framework of American law.

The Texas Railroad Commission is organized in two parts. The first focuses on the genesis and evolution of the Commission from the end of the nineteenth century to 1920. As Childs shows, Texas came late to the establishment of a railroad commission. When it finally did in 1891, the Commission blended a progressive emphasis on professional expertise with a pragmatic approach to problem solving. In this "dual management" (pp. 7–8) system, government officials sought to promote and to regulate industry, and the Commission often acted as a mediator between contending economic interests solving problems informally whenever possible.

In the railroad era, and in cooperation with other states, Texas developed the system of shared regulatory authority between state and federal officials that Childs dubs "pragmatic federalism" (pp. 5–6). An organic and evolutionary system rooted in the idea of states' rights, pragmatic federalism balanced the desire for local control with the need to develop national policies that promoted efficiency in large-scale industries with systems that crossed state lines. [End Page 639]

The second part of the book traces the history of the Commission after its mandate expanded to include the regulation of petroleum production, natural gas, and motor carriers. With this expanded scope, the staff of the Commission grew substantially, became more bureaucratic, and was increasingly divided by internal politics over patronage and policy. After passage of the Federal Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, the Commission's processes became more legalistic and the options for informal mediation declined.

Childs makes it clear that political concerns often trumped efficiency arguments. With its regulation of stripper wells in the East Texas oil fields, for example, the Texas Railroad Commission compromised efficiency to pacify the independent operators in the state. These political choices fed cultural exigencies as well as the wildcatter joined the cowboy, the Indian fighter, and the volunteer citizen-soldier of the Alamo as symbols of Texan independence.

Throughout The Texas Railroad Commission, Childs provides the thick description that makes this book a cultural study as well as an investigation into an important economic institution. He sets the history of the Texas Railroad Commission in the context of at least three cultural systems: agency culture, regulatory culture, and the regional culture of Texas. At the agency level, he underscores the significance of the day-to-day activities of the employees of the Commission and their relationships with commissioners and constituents. In the regulatory culture, he highlights the evolving relationship between the Texas agency, the national association of state commissioners (NARUC), and federal officials. But it is in his exploration of the influence of regional culture on regulatory administration that he offers some of his most interesting insights.

The Texas Railroad Commission was often given credit for setting the world price for oil. Childs says that was an exaggeration, but the gap between the popular image of the Commission's economic power and the reality fed cultural needs. The rhetoric of Commissioner E. O. Thompson, 'Mr. Petroleum' (who served for more than thirty years until 1965), reflected "the civil religion of Texas oil" that "furnished a therapeutic medium" for Texan nationalism in the Depression era (p. 225). That civil religion was rooted in the historic vision of Texan independence in the era of the Republic, the states rights values of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, and the federalist principles of American democracy. It had nothing to do with efficiency...

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