This Week in Texas Methodist History July 11

 

Olin Nail Calls for Defeat of Free Textbook Constitutional Amendment, July 1935

 

 

Olin Nail (1890-1971)was the most prominent Texas Methodist historian of the middle third of the

20^th Century.  He was a pastor in the West Texas/Southwest Texas (now Rio Texas Conference) and in addition to serving as a pastor in San Antonio, Austin, Smiley, Carrizo Springs, Falfurrias, and serving as Conference Secretary for 12 years, he served on all the  committees celebrating historical milestones.  He edited the Texas Methodist Centennial Yearbook, wrote a history of his own conference, and edited a volume on the history of Texas Methodist in the first half of the 20^th Century.    

 

In July 1935 he wrote an editorial for the Southwestern Christian Advocate in which he urged readers to vote against the proposed constitutional amendment calling for the distribution of free textbooks in Texas schools.  His opposition was rooted in one of the more unpleasant aspects of our past that we should acknowledge, anti-Catholicism. 

 

The wording of the proposed amendment to be considered by voters on August 24 was to provide free textbooks to “every child attending any school in the state of Texas.”

 

School children, even in the primary grades, were supposed to supply their own textbooks, usually from a list supplied by the County Superintendent of Schools (an elected official whose main responsibility was supervising the one-room school houses that predominated in rural Texas.  Families kept textbooks and teachers could not expect all their students to have the same book.  As the Depression strained family resources a free textbook movement arose, most famously in Louisiana where Huey Long made it a part of his populist agenda. 

 

Nail’s objection was that parochial schools would be included in the free textbook program if the constitutional amendment passed.   Nail readily acknowledged he didn’t care about the few Lutheran and Episcopal schools in Texas.  All he cared about was the Roman Catholic parochial schools.  He decried the “vicious” law already on the book that prohibited school officials from asking the religious affiliation of job applicants for teaching positions.  That question was routinely used to deny employment to Roman Catholics. 

 

This aspect of anti-Catholicism strikes embarrassingly close to home.  In 1920 my grandfather was serving the six-point Keltys Circuit.  The public school teacher quit, and my grandfather was approached to fill the vacancy.  The deciding factor in his taking the job was that the other candidate for the position was Roman Catholic.  Although the roots of anti-Catholic bias are complex, one should remember that the main issue for Methodists of the era was Prohibition, and Roman Catholics were seen as the main opposition to enacting prohibition laws.     The same Aug. 24 election also had repeal of Prohibition on the ballot.  National Prohibition ended in 1933, but Texas enacted state prohibition laws. Also on the ballot was a proposal for the state to provide old age pensions. 

 

The repeal of prohibition and old age pension questions both passed, but the free textbooks to parochial schools failed.  Governor Allred called a special session of the Legislature almost immediately after the votes were counted.  It was in that special session that the laws concerning sale of alcohol----local option----were passed. 

 

As conservative churches began creating segregation academies, their opposition to Roman Catholicism diminished.  They were not both on the same side of trying to get tax funding for their private schools. 

 

A series of Supreme Court decisions formulated the “child benefit theory.”   That is, if the state aid was a benefit to the student and not the school, it was permissible.  The first such aid was transportation via public school buses to private schools, but soon expanded to textbooks, so that today private schools routinely receive public funds including textbooks for secular subjects. 

 

 

There is another aspect of Olin Nail’s anti-Catholicism.   As the most prolific Texas Methodist historian of the middle third of the 20^th century, he wrote about the origins of Texas Methodism in the Mexican period.   It is well known that embracing Roman Catholicism was a prerequisite for receiving a land grant.  My own research shows that the requirement was loosely enforced and widely evaded.  Nail and I have reached different conclusions about role of religion in Mexican Texas.