This Week in Texas Methodist History December 26, 2021 Texas State Council of Methodist Women Consider Prison Reform , December 1948 One of the expression of progressive Christianity was the Texas State Council of Methodist Women. The TSCMW was organized to lobby legislators on progressive causes. During its heyday of the 1930s and 1940s, it championed such issues as free textbooks, anti-lynching, improved conditions for Mexican migrant workers, prenatal and infant health and so on. Representatives from each of annual conferences constituted the leadership and therefore provided a statewide rather than a regional voice. Right before Christmas in 1948, which was also right before the opening of the new session of the Texas Legislature, the TSCMW met in Dallas to prepare their lobbying effort for the new Legislature. The first issue they considered was the proliferation of slot machines in otherwise legal businesses. Although such devices were illegal, merchants often flouted the law with slot machines, pinball machines, and a lower tech marble game, all of which offered prizes to the lucky winners. The main focus of the meeting, though, was on prison reform. Although the grossest abuses of prisons such as the convict leasing system for convicts to work in cane fields and turpentine operations had been discontinued, plenty of abuses continued. O. B. Ellis, General Manager of the prison system spoke to the women. He asked them to help him secure a $4.2 million dollar appropriation from the Legislature. He wanted to use the funds to turn the agricultural operations of the system more to educating the inmates in modern farming practices rather than merely producing the food and fiber for both prison consumption and sale to civilian markets. His plan also included upgrading the quality of the prison system’s cattle herd by buying animals with better genetics. Although the state was moving toward mechanized agriculture, the prisons still had a surplus of labor and therefore less incentive to mechanize. Ellis wanted to train convicts for the new agricultural regime. Some readers will recognize the name Ellis because one of the units of the current prison system in named in his honor.