The belief that “a political system created in a much simpler economic era still affords the people effective control through their votes over the co… - Robert A. Caro

The belief that “a political system created in a much simpler economic era still affords the people effective control through their votes over the complex industrial state which has come into being” is a popular delusion.

The city’s West Side was a gigantic slum, containing perhaps 60,000 residents, who were paid, Gunther says, “probably the lowest wages in the United States” — for pecan shellers (San Antonio was the “Pecan Capital of the World”) an average of $1.75 per week.

Frederick Law Olmsted had found the same situation — houses at which there was “no other water-closet than the back of a bush or the broad prairies” — on his journey through the Hill Country in 1857. He had been shocked then, because the America he knew had advanced beyond such primitive conditions. Now it was 1937; four more generations had been living in the Hill Country — with no significant advance in the conditions of their life. Many of the people of Lyndon Johnson’s congressional district were still living in the same type of dwelling in which the area’s people had been living in 1857: in rude “dog-run” shelters one board thick, through which the wind howled in the winter. They were still squatting behind a bush to defecate. Because of their poverty, they were still utterly bereft not only of tractors and feed grinders, but of modern medical assistance — and were farming by methods centuries out of date.

Quietly, dispassionately, Russell would make sure the senator understood not only the reasons why he should take the same position on the bill that Russell was taking, but the reasons why he should take an opposing position.