STORY OF THE SHAMROCK - 1954

Amarillo: Shamrock Oil and Gas Corporation, [1954].. 78pp. including in-text portraits, graphs, and tables. Original printed green wrappers tied with leather thong. Spine lightly sunned, otherwise near fine in lightly faded and rubbed slipcase. First edition, one of an unknown number of copies specially bound (with the thong and extended wrapper edges) and slipcase. Signed by Haley at the time of publication, and with his slightly later (1958) inscription to his fellow historian and bookman, Jeff Dykes: "My first venture into industrial history for J.C. Dykes who knows better than to get into this field...." Evetts Haley (1901-1995), himself an active rancher, was among the preeminent 20th century historians of the Texas-Oklahoma cattle trade, chief among his works THE XIT RANCH OF TEXAS ... (1929) and CHARLES GOODNIGHT: COMAN AND PLAINSMAN (1936). His association with the Shamrock Oil and Gas Company (founded in 1929) included contributions to its trade periodical and to its promotional material (including maps distributed via its chain of gas stations), and in the form of this capsule company history. A fiscal and social conservative and proto-libertarian, Haley strongly opposed the policies of the Roosevelt Administration and in 1936, he joined in the founding of the Constitutional Democrats of Texas, a progenitor of the National Jeffersonian Democrats. In 1956, he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Governor of Texas and his bestselling, highly controversial attack on Lyndon Johnson, A TEXAN LOOKS AT LYNDON (1964), occasionally bordered on conspiratorial polemic. His political activism often placed him in respectful conflict or disagreement with several of his contemporary historians and bibliographers with opposed stands on matters dealing with textbook censorship, segregation and academic/intellectual freedom. Counted among them were J. Frank Dobie and, to some extent, the recipient of this inscription who, in his pre-bookselling career, worked in programs that were the legacy of the New Deal. Thus, in this context, an excellent association copy. ROBINSON (2nd ed) 26b.