Before former Texas Governor Ross Sterling became the Lone Star State’s leader during the Great Depression, he was an oilman. He started Humble Oil and sold his shares in 1925 after amassing an estimated $50 million ($1 billion in today’s dollars). Standard Oil of New Jersey acquired Humble Oil, and it became Exxon. So when Sterling was sworn in as Governor in 1931, he was very wealthy.
1931 in America was basically defined by extreme mass unemployment, widespread homelessness, and severe hunger. During the Great Depression, men like Governor Ross Sterling and President Herbert Hoover, whose estimated net worth was $75 million during his presidency, did not share the same experience as most Americans.
Now, add Texas oil into the mix.
On October 3, 1930, a 71-year-old, flat-broke wildcatter named Columbus “Dad” Joiner brought in the Daisy Bradford #3 near Henderson. It was the largest oil field anyone had ever found. By the summer of 1931, East Texas was pumping so much crude that the price fell to six cents a barrel. It cost about 80 cents to produce one. One operator complained that a barrel of his oil now sold for less than a bowl of chili.
So the oilmen had a problem. And our Governor at the time was an oilman. In Texas, an oilman’s problem becomes the state’s emergency.
The Railroad Commission tried to limit production. A federal judge struck the limits down. On August 14, 1931, about 1,200 producers met in Tyler and voted unanimously to ask Governor Sterling for martial law.
Two days later, Sterling signed a proclamation declaring Gregg, Rusk, Smith, and Upshur counties in “a state of insurrection, tumult, riot, and a breach of the peace.” He sent in the Texas Rangers and more than a thousand National Guardsmen. Two days after that, every well in East Texas was shut down.
He put Brigadier General Jacob Wolters in charge, the general counsel for the Texas Company, now known as Texaco.
It worked, if you were in the oil business. Within weeks, crude jumped from two cents to 85 cents a barrel.
Then a federal court blocked the Railroad Commission’s new limits. Sterling had Wolters enforce the same limits by military order instead, and he issued Special Order 48, which let the state try violators in military court. By then the original Guardsmen had gone home. Their replacements were inexperienced men recruited from the unemployment lines. A state that couldn’t feed its jobless found them rifles and an oil field to guard.
Funny thing. There was never an insurrection. They made that up.
When the case reached federal court, the judges found that “at no time has there been any actual uprising in the territory.” The US Supreme Court agreed in December 1932. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote that if Sterling got his way, “the fiat of a state Governor, and not the Constitution of the United States, would be the supreme law of the land.”
The court also pointed out that the Texas’ own Bill of Rights says the military “shall at all times be subordinate to the civil authority.” Men who had lived under martial law during Reconstruction wrote that into the 1876 Constitution so it would never happen again.
Now look at what the rest of Texas got in 1931.
Private charities carried the poor until the money ran out. Then Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin staged plays and musicals to pay for soup kitchens. Black Texans got hit hardest. In Austin, they made up 18.5% of the population and 35.6% of the unemployed. Sterling’s one big idea for struggling farmers, a law to cut cotton acreage, was ruled unconstitutional before it ever took effect.
By 1932, Texas got more than half its income from petroleum taxes. Protecting oil meant protecting the treasury.
Sterling lost his reelection bid in 1932 by fewer than 4,000 votes. The Depression took his fortune, too. Within a few years, he’d built another one in oil. Nobody in Austin’s unemployment lines got a second fortune.
Ninety-five years later, Texas is swimming in oil money again. This time, a war in Iran is pushing crude to an average of $84 a barrel. The state’s Rainy Day Fund, built on oil and gas taxes, already blew past its legal cap for the first time in history. More than 150,000 Texans are waiting on food assistance. And last Sunday in Austin, DPS troopers fired pepper balls at protesters.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, the man who was shot by ICE in Austin, is in detention with the bullet still in him. Austin police asked to interview the agent who pulled the trigger. The federal government hasn’t let them, and it hasn’t shared its evidence either.
Tuesday, Trump stood before the United Nations and wondered aloud whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic.” The War Zone estimates the US has lost or damaged 65 aircraft, at more than $4 billion in losses and repairs. Back home, 30-year mortgage rates topped 7%.
West Texas crude averaged $65 a barrel in 2025. Through August of this year, it averaged $84. Drillers in the Permian’s Midland Basin break even at $69.
The EIA expects the Permian to pump 6.8 million barrels a day this year, up 3%. Texas added 41 drilling rigs in the past year. Oil companies in West Texas are booking wartime profits, and ExxonMobil hit record Permian production in the second quarter.
ExxonMobil, you’ll remember, used to be called Humble Oil.
Ross Sterling’s old company is doing fine.
So is the state treasury. Texas taxes every barrel that comes out of the ground, and a big share of that severance tax goes into the Rainy Day Fund. The comptroller expects the fund to hit $27.4 billion for the first time in history. Once the fund is full, the overflow stays in general revenue for lawmakers to spend.
In 1931, cheap oil was an emergency. In 2026, expensive oil is a jackpot. Either way, the oilmen win, and the state gets paid.
On October 1, Washington hands Texas a bill.
For decades, the federal government and the states split the cost of running SNAP 50/50. Starting October 1, under the One Big Bullshit Bill, Texas pays 75%. That’s $117 million a year the state now owes.
In January, Texas had about 3,700 SNAP applications stuck in its backlog. By August, it had more than 150,000. Medicaid went from about 1,600 to more than 210,000. Texas used to process more than 90% of Medicaid applications within the 45-day federal deadline. Now it’s 62%.
Roughly 6,000 eligibility workers push it all through a computer system finished in 2012. HHSC’s fix is to ask lawmakers to make 640 temporary workers permanent. Lawmakers don’t meet until January.
Starting October 1, 2027, Texas has to pay part of the food benefits too, and the share depends on how often the state gets people’s benefits wrong. Texas’s error rate was 9% in 2025. That puts the state on the hook for $709 million a year. Cross 10%, and it’s $1.06 billion.
Most of those errors are overworked people making mistakes. Understaffing causes errors, and errors trigger the penalty. Skimping on $117 million now could cost Texas up to a billion dollars a year later. Worth noting:
In 1931, oil producers asked for help on a Friday. By Tuesday, the state had troops in the field.
In 2026, hungry Texans ask for help and wait past the federal deadline.
Texas Republicans would rather spend state money on culture wars and cruelty.
Since 2021, the state has spent nearly $18 billion on border security. That includes $6.5 billion in the current budget, passed while border arrests had dwindled to a trickle.
And when Operation Lone Star ran short in 2022, Abbott moved $500 million from other agencies, including nearly $210 million from the Health and Human Services Commission. That’s the same agency now begging lawmakers for 640 caseworkers.
Now it’s an election year, and the Governor has had a few conversions.
Last week, TxDOT stopped issuing permits for new plate readers on state roads. The pause doesn’t touch the cameras already up. That includes more than 900 run by DPS.
On Monday, Abbott ordered TCEQ to halt all permits for data center projects until the state finishes auditing their power and water use. ERCOT said it could only stop the big ones, and centers with their own power plants weren’t covered.
The Governor discovered privacy and water rights the same summer voters did.
He hasn’t discovered the SNAP backlog.
Earlier this month, Trump went to Dallas and told Republicans to pretend he’s on the ballot.
Voters took him up on it.
In the new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, 45% of voters say their vote for Congress is a vote against Trump. Democrats lead the generic ballot 53 to 41. Among independents, it’s 57 to 32.
Abbott has noticed. That’s why he spent September discovering privacy rights and water tables. He still hasn’t discovered the 150,000 Texans waiting to eat.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Gina Hinojosa wants to send almost two-thirds of the Rainy Day Fund back to Texas households. Vikki Goodwin wants to use the Rainy Day Fund to finally give Texans healthcare. The $117 million Texas owes on October 1 is less than half of one percent of it.
In 1931, Texas had the oil, the money, and the soldiers. What it didn’t have was any interest in the people standing in the soup line.
In 1932, those people voted. Ross Sterling lost by fewer than 4,000 votes.
The deadline to register in Texas is October 5. Check your registration at VoteTexas.gov. Check your registration. Check your spouse’s. Check your kids’. Check your neighbors’.
That’s American exceptionalism. Texas can always find the money. It just has to decide you’re the emergency.
40 days until the November election!
Last Day to Register to Vote: October 5, 2026
First Day of Early Voting: October 19, 2026
Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail: October 23, 2026
Last Day of Early Voting: October 30, 2026
Election Day: November 3, 2026
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40 days can’t come fast enough. I am exhausted.
Great piece. Never knew that Texas has a bill of rights. Section 3a says "equality under the law shall not be denied because of sex.."