-
The Second Texas Revolution: From Cotton to Genetics and the Information Age
- University of North Texas Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
417 AT THE DAWN OF the twentieth century Texas science and technology offered poor prospects indeed. Higher education had made only the most modest progress since the foundation of the two main state colleges less than thirty years before. Texas could boast of very little manufacturing, very little electrification, very little mechanization or mass transit, and only a tiny professional class possessing the skills and credentials to make change more than a wish. While growing, the population necessary to support growth was barely over three million and was overwhelmingly poor and rural . The urban base was practically nonexistent. Yet, by the close of the twentieth century, Texas had experienced remarkable scientific, medical, and technological progress, putting it alongside states like California, Florida, Massachusetts, and North Carolina at the forefront of the American economy. Several developments help explain this transformation. The development of an infrastructure of higher education proved vital to these changes. By the 1990s the state claimed no fewer than nine major medical schools with multiple campuses and research facilities . Texas universities ranked among the best in the nation, with Texas A&M exhibiting phenomenal growth both in size and reThe Second Texas Revolution From Cotton to Genetics and the Information Age Kenneth E. Hendrickson and Glenn M. Sanford ★ 20centtxtext.indd 417 20centtxtext.indd 417 1/18/08 1:50:16 PM 1/18/08 1:50:16 PM 418 TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXAS search capacity. The University of Texas system oversaw the largest and the best of the state’s medical training facilities, while hosting several Nobel laureates among its faculty in other programs. Alongside education, and in tandem with constant population growth and urbanization, federally sponsored programs and indigenous industry also transformed the economy. By 2006 the Texas population stood at over 23 million. Only in the decade of the Great Depression had the state failed to achieve at least 15 percent growth. The expanded workforce, increased economic diversity, and investment generated by this general growth all contributed to a profoundly new economic environment by the latter 1960s and the 1970s. Additionally, technological innovation spurred increasing change. After invention of the integrated circuit, Texas electronics rivaled the traditional hegemony of California’s Silicon Valley. From the 1960s Houston served as a major center of operations for NASA. Throughout the century Texas agriculture and agricultural science ranked among the most productive in the United States. Finally , the vital petrochemical industry, from its explosive start in the 1920s, continued to dominate both the economics and the politics of the state through the year 2000. None of these changes would have been readily apparent even to the keenest forecaster surveying the Texas economy circa 1900.1 Periodizing the development of Texas over the course of the century is a difficult and tendentious task. Nonetheless, some thematic trends and their chronologies stand out clearly. This essay adopts a tripartite approach to the state’s advancement, highlighting the most significant developmental impulses of the era and linking them to internal state events. First, technological development constantly responded to the changing role of agriculture. Some of the first notable scientific progress in the state stemmed from the basic need to rationalize and commercialize the state’s main economic function in the era after the Civil War. This was the mandate for the founding of Texas A&M in 1876. Around the turn of 20centtxtext.indd 418 20centtxtext.indd 418 1/18/08 1:50:17 PM 1/18/08 1:50:17 PM [35.169.107.177] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:41 GMT) THE SECOND TEXAS REVOLUTION 419 the century the Texas economy was essentially agricultural, but not well diversified. Cotton completely outclassed all other agricultural pursuits, and revenues from that crop dwarfed all others, including beef. Not until 1921 did Texas exports and values from manufacturing surpass that of cotton and other agricultural crops. This basic change proved to be a necessary prerequisite for the development of medicine and higher science in later decades.2 Because of the rapid and surprising growth of the state’s petroleum industry, the early 1920s also work well as a period marker. Despite the famous Spindletop gusher of 1901, the real wealth and potential of Texas petroleum did not become fully apparent until after World War I. While industrial science and applied technologies do not constitute the main thrust of this chapter, the wealth and investment generated by the Texas oil boom played a vital role in the expansion of higher education and Texas industry, including the company that became...