Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall, 1992 Page: 37
40 p. ; 26 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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dimensional information about the city's past from
the tattered typescript pages of this document at the
Dallas Public Library, information that can be found
in such depth nowhere else in a single reference
work. Now the work is readily available to the
public in an edition prepared through the cooperative
effort of the Dallas Public Library and the
University of North Texas Press.
Editors Gerald D. Saxon and Maxine Holmes
took care not to interfere with the original text,
editing only for grammatical and typographical errors.
All of the original product is there, then,
sometimes in maddening detail. (If you must know,
the Bonehead Club meets each Friday noon at the
Baker Hotel; the fare on the interurban line from
Dallas to Denison is $1.50; and a room may be had
at the Southland Hotel for as little as $1.50 a nightat
least, all that was true in 1940, which was the
book's intended publication date.)
In the introduction and preface, the editors
step back and place this Dallas Guide in its proper
and intriguing historical context. We learn how it
happened that the manuscript for Dallas never got
published when so many others of the familiar
American Guide series did. (Most readers know that
this series was prepared for many of the nation's
cities and for every one of the states during the latter
part of the Depression and through 1942 as a relief
program for out-of-work journalists and educators.)
On re-reading this work, one is reminded
once again that its introductory narrative history of
the city from its founding to 1940, taking up the first
seventy-seven pages of this edition, is truly superb.
Beyond that fine opening, the richness of this resource
is indicated by major sections devoted more
specifically to the city's economic, cultural, and
social development. Explored in individual chapters
are the histories of such topics as Trinity River
navigation, architecture, newspapers, radio stations,
literature, music, Deep Ellum, Little Mexico, labor,
insurance, and many others.
A work whose contents were prepared more
than fifty years ago, of course, will have limitations.
One will not find, for instance, an analysis of how
the city's power structure had organized to control
the city through such organizations as the Citizens
Association, Citizens Charter Association, and Citizens
Council. There are also errors in fact. One
reads that Andrew Moore, the town marshal whokilled Alexander Cockrell in 1858, was himself shot
to death in that incident. In fact, he was not even
injured.
We might wish that some of the more obvious
errors existing in the original manuscript could have
been flagged and corrected in footnotes, but with
such a wealth of detail-much of it minutiae and
long since outdated-perhaps this would be asking
too much. More realistically, we could wish that the
original authors themselves had provided footnotes
or at least hints of their sources for some of their
more provocative information.
As a practical "guide" to the city, of course,
this volume long ago lost any possibility of being
effective. Even so, the now-outdated guide aspects
of the book provide an intriguing picture of Dallas
during the Depression. And as to its historical
purpose, this remains an invaluable work that any
person holding a serious interest in Dallas will want
to possess.
Editors Saxon and Holmes, the Dallas Public
Library, and the University of North Texas Press
deserve high commendations for making this work
available to the public.
-Darwin Payne
Southern Methodist University
37
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Dallas Historical Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall, 1992, periodical, 1992; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35117/m1/39/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.