1880 Introduction
In Fort Worth faced an uncertain future. What had begun as an army fort only thirty-one years earlier had grown to a railroad town of 6,663 on the strength of post-Civil War cattle drives but the decline in that trade beginning in the 1870s left the economy in shambles. The lack of commercial diversity, a serious limitation that had doomed many frontier communities, was aggravated by the local geography. Fort Worth sat in a landlocked area of north central Texas adjacent to the Trinity River, which often ran so shallow as to hardly deserve the nomenclature, existing on the poor side of a clear divide between the East Texas green belt and the arid, brown landscape of West Texas, a huge section where (before irrigation) agriculture became more subsistence than commercial and ranching required such vast acreage that only large operations proved cost effective.1 To the south and southwest substantial cotton production offered hope for commercial development but other railroad towns, not remarkably smaller or less naturally endowed, lay closer to that production than Fort Worth. In 1876, when the first railroad arrived, Fort Worth's population stood at 1,500 while Waco, less than ninety miles south and with rail service since 1874, boasted 6,000.2 Neither enterprise nor natural advantages suggested that Fort Worth would not become just another unremarkable burg of limited population and influence. Many Texas cities, including Jefferson and New Braunfels, declined following the Civil War when the state underwent economic and transportation transformations that shifted the centers of commercial activity.3
2 Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a brighter future lay not within the Fort Worth city limits or to the west or south but thirty miles to the east. Dallas, an older, larger, and richer settlement strategically located in the East Texas greenbelt, enjoyed overwhelming advantages over the western upstart that would ensure its superiority in population and commerce but successful development of two closely-situated urban areas was not unknown. Louisville, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Baltimore, Maryland; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Tulsa, Oklahoma; Minneapolis, Minnesota and St. Paul, Minnesota; as well as Houston, Texas and Galveston, Texas all competed for regional supremacy in what most saw as a zero-sum situation, that success for one would mean failure for the other. In a very important way that competition centered on railroads, especially in North Texas where no viable river route existed. Dallas acquired the Houston and Texas Central in 1872, four years before the Texas and Pacific arrived in Fort Worth, giving the former a large lead in commercial development. In practice, the competition inspired Fort Worthians, suggesting the ironic conclusion that the Dallas' proximity contributed to Fort Worth's eventual success.4 Competition may have driven the city and its citizens, but economic development and transportation improvements represented the critical factors in Fort Worth's transition from a frontier settlement of a few thousand to a nationally ranked urban metropolis. That process would not have happened, or would have been remarkably different, without several key commercial events. Fort Worth's beginnings and its early survival depended on the timely intervention of commercial stimuli, which often arrived
3 just in time to ward off obscurity. Many historians, both professional and amateur, have recognized the link between commerce and Fort Worth's growth.5 Boardman Buckley Paddock was Fort Worth's most enthusiastic promoter and its first historian. Paddock, who left Mississippi looking for a "coming" place to relocate, settled in Fort Worth in 1873 as editor of the Democrat, a local newspaper. As a newspaperman, lawyer, state legislator, mayor, and businessman he worked and sacrificed to advance his adopted home. In a 1911 regional history Paddock pointed to the early 1880s as the period when Fort Worth stopped being a town and became a city, crediting the transition to an economic boom stemming from railway development, a perspective reflecting Paddock's Gilded Age belief in the importance of railroads. That prosperity funded a series of municipal improvements, such as a water works system, street paving, sewers, bridges, schools, and a fire department, that provided the foundations of a modern urban environment. The incipient water works proved particularly important and problematic for a community on the edge of parched West Texas.6 Although Paddock clearly believed in the significance of those improvements he also practiced candor concerning problems, admitting that economic development prior to the twentieth century was periodic, not continuous. In 1884 and 1885 the cattle trade slumped but rebounded sufficiently to justify the establishment, in 1890, of the Fort Worth Dressed Meat and Packing Company, including stock pens and a small packinghouse in what is now the Northside stockyards area (then not a part of Fort Worth). Economic troubles, which Paddock blamed on a decline in West Texas migration, quickly returned and lingered throughout the 1890s, so depressing the
4 livestock market that in 1898 the packinghouse closed temporarily. The poor economy stunted Fort Worth's growth to the extent that its population increased from 23,076 in 1890 to 26,668 in 1900, a difference of only 3,592 or sixteen percent.7 Paddock admitted that population growth had waned in the 1890s but argued that a more convincing standard of municipal greatness lay in the aggregate amount of material and civic resources, that Fort Worth had developed an array of commercial and industrial enterprises that justified its standing as one the Southwest's great cities--a clear example of enthusiasm overcoming reality. In a more logical moment, he admitted that it was not until Armour and Swift formed the cornerstone of greatness in 1903 that Fort Worth experienced the conservative material growth and development necessary for a city of diversified resources. That admission revealed Paddock's understanding of Fort Worth's limited commercial development prior to 1903.8 Oliver Knight, to whom all local historians owe a large debt, took up Paddock's perspective, arguing that "1883, with its era of public improvement, caused a revolution in social affairs."9 Knight saw the manifestations of that change in more attractive homes, the appearance of landscaping and sidewalks, and the growth of churches, all signs that "the roughness of frontier life was passing away," and that "[a] frontier town had blossomed into a cosmopolitan city."10 He also cited the successful drive to establish a library as a sign that "(s)ix-shooter culture had come to an end."11 Knight drew his remarks primarily from an 1887 Fort Worth Gazette special issue that trumpeted the prosperity of 1883 for doubling the population and funding civic private improvements."12 However, like Paddock, Knight realized that the economic structure of the 1880s remained critically weak, that the lack of commercial diversification had left
5 Fort Worth vulnerable to vagaries in the cattle trade and transportation commerce. He noted limited development that included ice plants, cigar factories, and assorted machine shops, but lamented that the only sizable businesses added were the Texas Brewing Company, established in 1890, and flour milling. Knight's study, the only general discussion of Fort Worth in the twentieth-century, suffers from attempting too much in too few pages. Outpost on the Trinity spans the founding of the original United States Army fort in 1849 to the post-World War II era, covering over a century in only 223 pages with approximately half devoted to the seventy years between 1880 and 1950.13 Others have also contributed to the debate. In 1956 Robert H. Talbert, a sociologist, offered a solid academic treatment that touched on most issues, including economic development. Talbert emphasizes the importance of citizen involvement in municipal growth, arguing that local leadership formed a significant variable for community development. Julia K. Garrett's Fort Worth: A Frontier Triumph studies the period from the arrival of Spanish conquistadors to 1872, agreeing with Talbert about the impact of Fort Worth's elites while crediting post-Civil War cattle drives for revitalizing Fort Worth after it came very close to withering away. Fort Worth, the last settled community between North Texas and the Kansas cattle towns, developed an impressive commercial foundation supplying the drovers' material needs and an infamous vice district meeting their other needs. Hell's Half Acre, Fort Worth's red-light district of saloons, casinos, and prostitution houses, arose south of Ninth Street and east of Main Street. The twin developments quickly developed a nexus that endured for decades. In 1879 some 300 citizens attended public meetings and many wrote to the newspaper complaining that police raids had become so onerous that trail hands remained camped
6 outside of town, reducing the trade of not only the Acre's vice purveyors but also legitimate downtown merchants. Acceptance of that linkage helped the Acre survive until well into the twentieth century.14 Garrett was not the first to recognize the importance of post-Civil War cattle drives. Clarence Thompson's 1933 thesis identified the trail trade as the area's first economic stimulus but recognized that the effect was evanescent, that cattle drives passing Fort Worth peaked in 1871 then declined dramatically, in part due to the opening of the Western Trail through Fort Griffin, Texas, that provided a route with fewer farmland crossing (see Table Introduction-1).15 In 1968 Sandra Myres wrote that Fort Worth faced a dire situation in the late 1860s, that its population declined so dramatically that Indian raids drew much closer, including an 1869 incident in which a man died at Marine Creek, just two miles north of town.16
Table 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876
Introduction-1
Number of Cattle Driven Past Fort Worth, 1866 to 1876
260,000 35,000 75,000 350,000 350,000 600,000 350,000 404,000 166,000 151,618 204,438
Source: Clarence Arnold Thompson, "Some Factors Relating to the Growth of Fort Worth" (Master of Arts thesis, Texas Christian University, 1933), pp. 56-68, 71-76.
7 Others have echoed the emphasis on the 1880s, sometimes with amplification and expansion. Caleb Pirtle narrowed the critical period to 1881 when Fort Worth hovered on the edge of uncertainty as to whether or not it would become a city or remain an overgrown village while the favorable resolution of that dilemma at the end of the year made Fort Worth Texas' most prosperous town. Pirtle, like Knight, identified the manifestations of that transition in internal improvements, but also suggested that the process was not complete, that elements of Mexico and New York remained closely mixed, that "Broadway and ranch brush against one another."17 Janet Schmelzer also noted a duality, seeing refinement in the business center where permanent residents congregated and roughness in Hell's Half Acre where transients and others satisfied carnal appetites.18 Leonard Sanders argued that the Gazette's observations in 1887 had proven astute but too shortsighted, that the effect continued past 1883 into the 1890s, a point first suggested by Knight.19 J'Nell Pate, who studied the cattle industry so important to Fort Worth, agreed that a significant transition occurred in the 1880s but tempered that acceptance with a realistic appraisal of the problems of the 1890s. According to Pate, the vision of city leaders in the 1880s "had changed Fort Worth from a frontier village to a city" but the depression of the 1890s brought challenges that destroyed the hopes of many businessmen.20 Studying and writing about the livestock trade, Pate chronicled hard times following the Panic of 1893 when the stockyards struggled to survive. From that critical period sprang the impetus that brought the Swift and Armour packinghouses in 1903, which "completely fulfilled" civic ambitions and propelled Fort Worth to industrial greatness.21 The importance of the packinghouses remains indisputable.
8 Richard Selcer, though not advancing his own theory, disagreed that the early 1880s marked a significant departure. Selcer questioned the description of 1880s Fort Worth as "a town of gentility and decorum," charging that Knight's statement did not bear up to examination because the Acre "was still wide open" and that "[a]part from growing larger, the town had not changed much in ten years."22 Selcer also charged that Knight had overestimated reform efforts when he concluded that city government had been able to "clean up the Acre between 1887 and 1889," suggesting that newspaper and court records showed that the same activities were practiced with the same zest, a point that touched on another meaningful issue.23 Selcer's work not only suggested that municipal accoutrements remained incomplete after the 1880s but also that the longevity of a large red-light district spoke volumes about the lack of civic progress. The Acre, from its beginnings after the Civil War, always enjoyed the support of many otherwise solid citizens who believed its presence drew trade downtown. That commercial link enabled the Acre to survive numerous clean-up campaigns, making it a living anachronism reflecting an enduring frontier mentality. Although Selcer recognized the existence of that relationship and its implications, he mistakenly believed that the Acre suffered from a change of fortunes around 1901, struggling to last rites in 1919. In fact, no permanent change prior to 1918 affected the existing arrangement. If anything changed at all it was that the relationship between tawdry and respectable became more pronounced as the Acre remained vibrant right up to its abrupt end during World War I.24 Some recent scholarship has refocused on railroads as the critical element behind development. In 1996 Jill Jackson credited the boosterism that brought a vast rail service
9 for pushing Fort Worth from outpost to thriving metropolis, a view closely seconded by Leta Scheon's position that citizen involvement had been the key to attracting railroads, which she termed the most important economic stimulus prior to World War II that transformed a landlocked town from a mere stop on a cattle drive to a multi-faceted urban center. The evidence suggests that Jackson and Schoen gave too much credit to the transformative effect of railroads, that Fort Worth suffered from an obvious lack of industrial diversity until the late 1910s.25 The scholarship to date has developed two broad historical themes into consensus. First, scholars agree that a handful of individuals drove development, recognizing that local boosters provided a salient force distinguishing Fort Worth from other cities. The contribution was multi-faceted but to a very large extent involved financial backing. The best estimates of citizen-funded support to railroads run as high as $3,000,000, half in cash and half in land. Historian Daniel J. Boorstin used the term "Go-Getters" to describe community leaders whose efforts transformed their towns, finding that a disproportionate number of their ranks were lawyers, a trait shared by Fort Worth's great men such as Paddock, John Peter Smith, and James J. Jarvis.26 Second, scholars acknowledge the importance of several events for Fort Worth's successful development: the establishment of the military outpost in 1849, the influx of Confederate veterans after the end of the Civil War, the advent of trail drives of the late 1860s, the arrival of the railroad in 1876, the railroad boom of the early 1880s, the building of the Armour and Swift packinghouses in 1903, the Texas oil boom that began around 1917, and the construction of the massive Consolidated aircraft plant in 1942.27
10 Those traditional interpretations, all carrying strong arguments and deserving of recognition, suffer from an important failing. They suggest that the only significant economic events between the end of the 1880s and 1918 concerned the arrival of packinghouses in 1903 and the Ranger oil fields of 1917. That view can not be sustained, not because Armour and Swift and oil were unimportant, but because it is myopic. After 1903 Fort Worth strengthened its existing railroad economy, added commercial and ethnic diversification, achieved substantial population increases, developed military bases, and ended the reign of vice in Hell's Half Acre. Many of those events took shape after the mid-1910s when World War I spurred a sustained period of economic progress that was intensified by major army training facilities at Camp Bowie and three army airfields. The war effect was pervasive, offering not only economic, but also social ramifications in that military pressure proved instrumental in closing the Acre, ending a semi-official relationship between city and vice that had endured since the late 1860s. Those impacts represented a major departure from the city's frontier heritage and a giant step towards its future that have been too long ignored. Susie Pritchett, archivist for the Tarrant County Archives, recognized as much in her conclusion that "the building of Camp Bowie and three air fields pulled us into the 20th century like no other event and changed us from provincial to worldly in outlook."28 Walter Buenger adopted a similar thesis in his study of eleven northeast Texas counties from 1887 to 1930. Buenger attacked the prevailing historical interpretation that the significant transformation of the South (including Texas) into mainstream American prosperity occurred during federal intervention in the New Deal and World War II. He argued that thesis underestimated the importance of changes occurring prior to 1930,
11 particularly economic developments that separated Texas from the rest of the South. Buenger found that as late as the 1890s nothing of significance distinguished Texas from the rest of the South, but by 1930 differences between Texas and other Southern states became manifest, suggesting that the significant transition had occurred before and not after 1930. The beginning of that transformation lay in improved economic conditions that removed northeast Texas from the retrograde cotton economy of the South. That process was facilitated by a dynamic political landscape and cultural fluidity but the crux of the change was economic development, that Texas became less Southern because it enjoyed greater general prosperity.29 Most of the development of northeast Texas occurred after 1914 when a broad middle class began exerting considerable political muscle just as World War I brought unparalleled prosperity, giving impetus to cultural changes that effected a major paradigm shift. The effect Buenger described is closely related to what happened in Fort Worth during the same period, a transition to a modern city with a more diversified economy but a less diversified moral code.30 A perspective that stresses the formative period during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also allows a discussion of Fort Worth's place in the broader historiography of urbanization of the American West, a field that has defined several major themes relevant to local development. Richard Wade's The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis deals with a period of urbanization predating Fort Worth but it still remains significant. Wade contends that the early pattern of Western urban development represented not a bold and fresh approach, but a concerted effort to transplant well-known institutions, a pattern that succeeded so well that travelers often commented on the similarities of Western and
12 Eastern towns.31 In addition, Wade noted that the new towns of the West struggled among themselves for regional economic supremacy. 32 In 1968 Robert Dykstra in The Cattle Towns studied five Kansas towns involved in the cattle drives of the late 1860s to mid-1880s: Dodge City, Wichita, Ellsworth, Abilene, and Caldwell. Dykstra's provoking analysis agreed with Wade that Western towns struggled among themselves for regional supremacy but expanded the discussion by adding that the competition reflected human ambitions and that the human factor was the prime determinate of success. Don H. Doyle presented a similar perspective in his 1990 study on Southern urbanization, New Men, New Cities, New South: Atlanta, Nashville, Charleston, and Mobile, 1860. Dykstra saw boosterism as quite effective in obtaining settlers, transportation facilities (railroad terminals), capital investments, and commerce and noted that the battle for a piece of the cattle business was particularly energetic as the towns used advertising, economic incentives, and lax enforcement of vice laws to lure the cow herds.33 Dykstra used the appendix to challenge the work of Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick. In "A Meaning for Turner's Frontier," appearing in the Political Science Quarterly, Elkins and McKitrick adopted a Turnerian view of the frontier's effect on democratic structures in Western urbanization, arguing that democracy had evolved in towns as it had in throughout the non-urban West. Dykstra did not contest that point, but disputed their view that democratic institutions developed most fully in towns with homogeneous populations who resolved issues through cooperation.34 Dykstra suggested that the most important format for democratic growth was conflict rather than cooperation and that liberal structures arose out of controversy and opposition. The
13 disagreement seemed a tempest in a teapot in that both sides admitted the presence of both cooperation and conflict in the formative period of municipal development, simply disagreeing on the relative weight of each to the result.35 Lawrence Larsen's The Urban West at the End of the Frontier avoided the case study approach traditionally used by urban historians in favor of a comparative analysis relying heavily on data from the 1880 Census, local histories, and secondary sources. Larsen compared several older communities to twenty-four Western towns (five in Texas) with a population of 8,000 or more in 1880. He agreed with Wade that little was unique or new about the West's young cities, calling them carbon copies that mirrored the emerging social, economic, and political values of the Gilded Age in the truest tradition of American urbanization, but for Larsen the effect extended even further to mold Western architecture and design.36 Larsen opened a fresh perspective for studies of frontier urbanization. Using extensive statistics on population trends he proposed that the cities of the West represented an expression not of democracy but of capitalism, that economics drove exploration and settlement.37 He suggested that city building was neither a proving ground for democracy nor a response to geographic or climatic conditions, but the creation of the capitalist spirit. Therefore, Western urbanization was nothing more than a process of uncontrolled commerce practiced by entrepreneurs who established societies mirroring earlier forms, regardless of the unique characteristics the of area.38 In Cities of the American West: A History of Frontier Urban Planning, published in 1979, John Reps, a political scientist, established that the earliest Western towns were planned communities, allowing that planned did not mean well designed. He accepted
14 the argument of Wade and Larsen that town plans followed common styles, adding that they usually featured a gridiron street system with rectangular blocks and lots. Those communities also closely resembled towns east of the Great Plains in the manner of services provided and in their ties to the region's economy. Reps explained the commonalities as the result of vigorous men from Eastern cities who became the major forces behind Western urbanization, transplanting their traditions along with their ambition. Reps offered one of the more complete dismissals of Turner's frontier thesis. Turner viewed the closing of the frontier as the turning point of the nation's history, suggesting that it had serious implications for the character of American life but Reps argued that Turner failed to grasp that by 1890 a significant part of the West's population resided in towns and that those urban dwellers dominated culture and civilization, creating the West's distinctive characteristics.39 Reps followed in 1981 with a related study, The Forgotten Frontier: Urban Planning in the American West Before 1890, that continued his argument that Western urbanization in the nineteenth century shaped the region's future. Reps noted of thirtyone Western cities with a 1970 population of 200,000 or more, all but one had been founded prior to 1890. He also repeated his earlier points, that Western towns differed little from their Eastern counterparts, that urban residents dominated Western culture, that promoters or speculators founded many towns, and that Western towns began as a planned development, not as spontaneous, random events. Reps supplied early maps, drawings, plans, and plats to support the existence of early urban planning and continued his anti-Turner agenda by adopting Larsen's idea that preoccupation with the frontier
15 thesis had led historians to miss the importance of city building, that they had minimized the roles towns played in the process of Western expansion.40 In 1979 Ronald L. F. Davis made the rather remarkable leap from agreeing with Wade and Larsen to arguing that the urban history of the American West was largely a set of urban biographies without an analytic framework or a broad synthesis. Davis's article, "Western Urban Development: A Critical Analysis," in The American West, suggested that few historians had attempted to extend their understanding of the frontier as a process in the analysis of urbanization, leaving those studies to social scientists. However, he then accepted Wade's argument that towns preceded farming and were the spearheads of settlement, but contended that the discussion about which came first was interesting, but revealed little about the urbanization process. Davis suggested that the answer was a perspective of urbanization as a process of private enterprise in a capitalist mode of production, the basic premise of Larsen's work. He also agreed with Larsen that cities in the West, like those in the East, were part of a process of exploitation for private gain and that cities west and east of the Mississippi arose as a means to exploit wealth. Davis agreed that the overall urbanization pattern remained remarkably constant, but insisted that variations in local resources often resulted in slightly different forms.41 . In 1987 Patricia Limerick Nelson offered her influential work The Legacy of
Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. Nelson remained aloof from the mainstream of Western urbanization debates, preferring to focus on Turner's theme of discontinuity. She attacked Turner's idea that the frontier's closing in 1890 marked a clear historical divide, arguing that federal involvement created a clear continuity of dependency.42 The idea that settlers entered the West tied to government apron strings hit
16 at the prevailing idea of hardy, independent types civilizing the West and spawning democratic institutions in the process.43 Limerick suggested that conceiving the West as a place rather than a process allowed a view of the region as a meeting ground for diverse cultures tied together by the working of conquest, a faint echo of Larsen's and Davis's theory emphasizing Western urbanization as a struggle for property, profit, and cultural dominance.44 In 1990 Char Miller and Heywood T. Sanders, editors of Urban Texas Politics and Development, suggested that historians had overemphasized the importance of the state's frontier and rural areas to the neglect of its urban centers. Each of the nine essays examined the urbanization process in a single Texas city in the grand perspective of chronological periods: the first period, 1836-1880s, when cities were isolated and operated independently; the second, from the 1890s to the Great Depression, when cities competed for regional supremacy, reshuffling the urban hierarchy; and the third, the years following the depression, when Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio successfully extended their resource base.45 River Towns in the Great West: The Structure of Provincial Urbanization in the American Midwest, 1820-1870 by Timothy R. Mahoney chronicled the rise and fall of a regional urban economic system across the upper Mississippi and Ohio river valleys during the middle of the nineteenth century, focusing on explaining the economicgeographic dynamics which created and transformed the regional urban system. Mahoney concentrated on the spatial dimension of the rise of a market economy in the West through a social scientific analysis of the area from unsettled frontier to a regional urban system. From that data he asserted the need to understand local history in a
17 regional context by examining how various cities adapted or failed to adapt to change, incorporating Larsen's and Davis's theme that settlers and entrepreneurs transferred the forces of capitalism across the West in a manner that reordered economic arrangements and stimulated urban development. That process existed clearly in the development of St. Louis as a market center for a dynamic system of river towns structured around the interaction of settlers, entrepreneurs, steamboats, regional topography, and the environment. In the 1850s railroads penetrated the system, overcoming transportation inefficiencies that had stymied economic development and triggering a rapid centralization of market and industrial activity at Chicago and, to a lesser and later extent, St. Louis. By 1860 the rise of those cities, along with westward expansion and development, undermined and restructured the regional urban system of the Great West. This structuralist approach of intertwined forces fit well with local histories that integrated diverse systems, allowing a broader view.46 Mahoney also agreed with Wade and Larsen that Easterners moved West hoping to recreate the lives they had known. Pioneers settled towns and forged their way through intense local competition to expand into the regional market, securing their own and their town's success. However, he disagreed with Dykstra, insisting that the contributions of individuals was limited, that many critical decisions were made outside their control. Towns followed a general pattern of development but each area's potential was different and its regional system dictated economic interaction and compromise, doing much to determine each town's place in the regional order.47 Mahoney's Provincial Lives: Middle-class Experience in the Antebellum Middle West, published in 1999, strove to provide a framework for the integration of local,
18 regional, and national studies as they moved from the East, through the Midwest, and into the West. Mahoney used the perspective of selected individuals to track the shifting patterns of social change and the interplay between individual experience and social change. He believed that each community was "layered" by the arrival of different groups but that locals contoured social development through resistance, acceptance, or accommodation to those newcomers. Therefore, the various histories interacted with and explained each other, allowing historians to fuse any narrative into a regional social history.48 For Mahoney the emergence of a distinctive regional middle class was the critical center of Western society. Early pioneers who considered themselves part of "good society" laid the foundation and they, along with later arriving merchants and professionals, intertwined good society with boosterism in the 1830s and 1840s. Those groups merged with later arrivals from Eastern towns and cities and, at each stage of assimilation, the new groups grafted some of their values to the work-in-progress, developing a regional definition of gentility and establishing class lines. Local town boosters fused collective action to self-interest to construct community while gentility provided a style and code of behavior that clarified group identity.49 The distinctively urban middle class subculture that developed served as the framework for society formation for Western immigrants. Through the cultural system of gentility, those who rose up in local society developed a larger network of relationships in "trans-local communities" that went beyond local concerns. Mahoney suggested that those regional groups set the framework for a more integrated regional social-economic processes which dramatically rearranged power and intra-regional relationship among
19 towns through competition, harking back to Larsen and Davis. That process not only defined Western urbanization, but also gave the middle class broader power and enabled it to control the mainstream of American society.50 Mahoney suggested that railroads rearranged the structure of the regional system and the power focus of regional development. The arrival of train service shifted the urban network of settlement away from rivers and to the interior while allowing large firms to control vast markets, triggering centralization and metropolitan development. The rise of large metropolitan areas reordered and integrated social power, elevating the metropolitan society to the arbitrator of regional life and local societies. While centralization and integration established social control and homogenization they also contributed to the unraveling of the cohesive worlds of community life. Local society as a reflection of the larger society eroded, leaving in its wake scores of fractured communities without identities. The result was that the first "Great West" in the antebellum Middle West was multi-centered, loosely defined social network undermined by diversity, racked by internal tensions and so weakened that it was vulnerable to new forces of organization.51 From the literature several broad categories emerge that relate to Fort Worth. Wade, Larsen, Reps, and Mahoney stress the degree to which Western urbanization recreated that of the East, an idea congruent with Fort Worth practice of sending representatives to assess services and facilities in older cities before embarking on new projects, the water works being a prime but not sole example. Mahoney also cited the importance of railroads in providing regional development opportunities for interior
20 communities removed from viable river routes, a set of circumstances directly applicable to Fort Worth. Many scholars focus on the role of individuals in urbanization. Dykstra, Limerick, Larsen, Davis, and Miller and Sanders see Western urbanization as defined, at least in part, by struggles for regional supremacy. The earliest records reveal a stark competition between Fort Worth and Dallas, a rivalry that carried over well into the twentieth century and which became a major force behind exaggerated boosterism. It would be hard to think of a better example of urban competition than that between the twin cities on the Trinity River. That condition necessitated human involvement since cities cannot be competitive, only their populations may. Dysktra, identified the business community as the dominant force in cattle towns, arguing that their involvement became the prime factor in developing the commerce and investment necessary for a city to thrive. Dykstra's stress on boosterism rings true for Fort Worth. From the first railroad in 1876 to the military camps of World War I Fort Worth has always depended on the kindness of its citizens. Some have questioned the worth of individuals. Mahoney argued the limited nature of their contributions, that many critical decisions were made outside of local control. However, he admits that the emergence of a distinctive middle class was critical, that the Western bourgeois laid the foundations of good society and boosterism. Larsen, Davis, and Mahoney contend that capitalism, not individuals, shaped Western cities, that urbanization was a process of exploiting regional wealth and the frontier thesis stopped at the city limits where private enterprise took over while Limerick argues the same for the West in general, not a contradictory position. The discussion between the two groups
21 remains more academic than real. Both seek to explain development, one stressing individual initiative and the other an economic system, but both eventually rely on human involvement, making the difference moot. The existing Fort Worth scholarship has some very large holes. The city's early period through the arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1876 and its aftermath has been well documented, leaving little justification for further study without the development of significant new resources. In contrast, the years after 1880 have received so little attention as to be left begging for scholarly analysis. Selcer and Pate dealt with issues within the period and Knight presented a cursory treatment, but no study of depth documents the incredible developments of the four decades bet...