Abstract

Not So Deep in the Heart of Texas

In Texas, a six-city, five-speech tour the deposed U.N. commander Douglas MacArthur was able to get fewer than 100,000 people to listen to his speeches, despite the biggest crowd-promotion campaign in the history of the state. In Austin, where the General addressed the legislature in a special afternoon session with no admittance fee, about 10,000 Texans gathered on the spacious Capitol lawn, which would have accommodated 100,000. MacArthur's Texas junket was planned before he had returned to the United States. The idea originated when both houses of the Texas legislature adopted a resolution inviting the General to address a joint session. In the attempt to swing the leading Democratic state in the country into the Republican camp MacArthur and his Republican-Dixiecrat backers can chalk up the strenuous Texas tour as wasted effort.