Cotton supplied the Native Americans with clothing fibers before the Spanish ever entered Texas. It drew Southern settlers fleeing U.S. antislavery trends during the Mexican Republic in the 1820s. By the early 1930s, cotton was produced in 223 of the 254 counties in Texas and was a central element in the Texas economy. The Great Depression created a major disruption that threatened to destabilize the entire Lone Star State. In this book, Keith J. Volanto relates the story of the New Deal's efforts to aid Texas cotton farmers, specifically with the production-control policies introduced by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). He explores the reasons the AAA cotton programs in Texas were instituted, the implementation problems the AAA encountered and how they were resolved, and the results of the programs. He draws conclusions concerning how well Texans benefited from the AAA cotton programs and about those who were actually harmed by them. In addition, he also examines the role of Texas politicians and bureaucrats in formulating the policies in Washington and the importance of Texas to New Deal cotton policy broadly. Volanto's study of the AAA cotton programs in Texas is a study not only of agriculture policy but also of the New Deal itself. The AAA provides an example of how the New Deal attempted to solve a natural problem in a largely experimental fashion. The experience of the AAA the political, economic, and legal constraints it faced provides new insight into the (Back Flap) nature of New Deal commodity programs. It also demonstrates how the New Deal's typical broker state priorities tended to address the concerns of organized groups, often to the detriment of unaffiliated individuals. From the initial farm subsidy programs and their impact on Texas during the 1930s to the AAA's cotton programs that were implemented at the state level, very little has previously been written on this important period in Texas history. Texas, Cotton, and the New Deal fills this void.

In the early 1930s, cotton was produced in 223 of the 254 countries in Texas and was a central element in the state's economy. The Great Depression created a major distruption that threatened to destabilize the entire Lone Star State. Keith J. Volanto relates the story of the New Deal's efforts to aid Texas cotton farmers, specifically with the production-control policies introduced by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). He explores the reasons the AAA cotton programs in Texas were instituted, the implementation problems the AAA encountered and how they were resolved, and the results of the programs. He draws conclusions concerning how well Texans benefited from the AAA cotton programs and about those who were actually harmed by them. In addition, Volanto also examines the role of Texas politicians and bureaucrats in formulating the policies in Washington and the importance of Texas to New Deal cotton policy broadly. Volanto's account of the AAA cotton programs in Texas is a study not only of agriculture policy but also of the New Deal itself. The experience of the AAA - the political, economic, and legal constraints it faced - provides new insight into the nature of New Deal commodity programs. Very little has previously been written on farm subsidy programs and their impact on Texas during the 1930s and the AAA's cotton programs that were implemented at the state level. Texas, Cotton, and the New Deal fills this void.

In "The Texas Right: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism," some of our most accomplished and readable historians push the origins of present-day Texas conservatism back to the decade preceding the twentieth century. They illuminate the initial factors that began moving Texas to the far right, even before the arrival of the New Deal.
By demonstrating that Texas politics foreshadowed the partisan realignment of the erstwhile Solid South, the studies in this book challenge the traditional narrative that emphasizes the right-wing critique of modern America voiced by, among others, radical conservatives of the state's Democratic Party, beginning in the 1930s. As the contributors show, it is impossible to understand the Jeffersonian Democrats of 1936, the Texas Regular movement of 1944, the Dixiecrat Party of 1948, the Shivercrats of the 1950s, state members of the John Birch Society, Texas members of Young Americans for Freedom, Reagan Democrats, and most recently, even, the Tea Party movement without first understanding the underlying impulses that produced their formation.