“For the Exclusive Benefit of Fort Worth”: Amon G. Carter, the Great Depression, and the New Deal

Fort Worth newspaper publisher Amon Carter.

Photo courtesy of the author.

On November 1, 1935, Jesse Jones, the head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), wired Fort Worth Star-Telegram publisher Amon Carter the simple statement: “Your cowshed has been approved.” Cryptic as it may appear, this telegram verified that the Texas publisher’s influence reached beyond the wide borders of his home state. At the height of the New Deal, Carter found ways to acquire government money for Fort Worth though he held no elected office and was an entrepreneur of the same class that often clashed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt over certain parts of the New Deal. Vice President John Nance Garner, a close friend of Carter, wryly commented that “[Carter] wants the whole Government of the United States to be run for the exclusive benefit of Fort Worth and to the detriment of Dallas.” While something of an exaggeration, Garner’s comment reflected the attitude many in the Roosevelt administration had regarding Carter’s approach to the New Deal. Simultaneously, Carter opposed the leftward tendencies of the latter part of the New Deal, though he always found a way to reconcile his political disagreements with his loyalty to the national Democratic Party. Clearly, his fickle relationship with the New Deal reflected his business progressive roots as a New South urban booster.¹

By the time of the Great Depression, Carter had become a major figure in the newspaper publishing industry and a nationally known civic booster. Yet surprisingly little scholarly work has been done to investigate the nature of his interaction with Roosevelt and his administration, his approach to the New Deal, or the results of his efforts. His only published biographer to date, Jerry Flemmons, produced two accounts, Amon: The Life of Amon G. Carter Sr. of Texas, and Amon: The Texan Who Played Cowboy for America. Unfortunately, these books, which are not footnoted or sourced in any way, provide little in the way of analysis that places Carter in the proper historical context. More successfully, Patrick Cox’s The First Texas News Barons argues that his general support of the New Deal, especially in its earlier phase, was part of a larger trend among Texas publishers who generally believed that the New Deal provided “a means of coping with nagging problems that had long tormented Texans and other southerners.” In addition, as a result of the Progressive movement, many Texas publishers realized that “[p]olitical contacts in Washington became as essential as those in the local courthouse and the state capitol. This support continued in the critical years of the New Deal.” Of course, Carter is not the central figure in Cox’s book, so there is much analysis left to be done. And while broader histories of Fort Worth are often replete with Carter anecdotes, he emerges as little more than a provincial media magnate, not the exceptionally well-connected power broker that he was in reality. Carter’s activities during the Great Depression illustrate how one business progressive from the South interacted with the New Deal, revealing a complex set of attitudes about the federal government’s role in economic recovery.²

Born into a poor rural family in 1879 in Crafton, Texas, in northwestern Wise County, Carter strove early in life to develop an economic foundation for success. Despite the obvious shortcomings of his background, he successfully maneuvered his way through life, beginning first as a “chicken and bread boy” selling sandwiches to train passengers in his hometown of Bowie, Texas. After spending his late teens and early twenties as a traveling salesman selling oversized pictures (and the frames that fit them), he settled briefly in San Francisco to work in advertising. Despite a promising future in San Francisco, Carter moved to Fort Worth, where, in 1906, he connected with investors looking to start their own newspaper. By 1909, this newspaper had become the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Much of Carter’s...