Review of \u3ci\u3eTexas Oil, American Dreams: A Study of the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association.\u3c/i\u3e By Lawrence Goodwyn

This is a history of the independent oilmen of Texas, whose money financed the book. The great oil discoveries in Texas-Anthony Lucas\u27s at Spindletop, 1901, and C. M. Dad Joiner\u27s in the East Texas field, 1930, among others-were made and developed by small operators because the major companies did not believe the oil was there. Many farmers\u27 lands remained unleased until oil had already been discovered nearby. Thus oil production and royalties, especially in Texas, the author asserts, were massively democratized. Eventually the small operators organized the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, whose policies sometimes deviated from those of the giant companies. TIPRO was perhaps most effective in the 1970s in persuading Congress to keep the oil depletion allowance for the independents while the majors were losing it. Goodwyn labels TIPRO leaders-Jack Porter and George Mitchell, for example-as mere citizens and links TIPRO\u27s mass membership of independent producers and royalty owners with Jefferson\u27s yeoman farmers resisting monied corporations. Yet all the TIPRO leaders have been millionaires. Certainly most operators and royalty owners have not been that rich; but despite the impression of mass democratization the author gives, they have never been more than a minuscule percentage of the Texas populatio