In 1894, Texas filed a lawsuit against John D. Rockefeller`s Standard Oil Company and its Texas subsidiary, the Waters-Pierce Oil Company of Missouri. Hogg and his attorney general argued that the companies were involved in rebates, price fixing, consolidations, and other tactics prohibited by the state antitrust law of 1889. The investigation led to a number of accusations, including one for Rockefeller. Hogg asked to extradite Rockefeller from New York, but the governor of New York refused because Rockefeller had not fled Texas. Rockefeller was never brought to justice, but other employees of the company were convicted. As governor from 1891 to 1895, Hogg did much to increase public respect for law enforcement, championed Texas` claim to Greer County, and lobbied for five important laws.[11] The „Hogg Acts“ included (1) the Railway Board Act; (2) the Act respecting railway stocks and bonds, which reduces irrigated stocks; (3) the Act requiring land companies to sell their property within fifteen years; (4) the Foreign Lands Act, which reviewed new subsidies to foreign companies to put land in settler hands; and (5) legislation limiting the amount of debt through bond issues that county and municipal groups could legally make. To encourage investment in Texas, he traveled to New York, Boston, and Philadelphia to explain the laws and benefits of the state to businessmen and chambers of commerce. He has always been concerned about the well-being of public schools, the University of Texas and Texas A&M. It also paid particular attention to normalities and appointments to teacher training grants.
Always interested in Texas history, he managed to secure financial support for a Department of the State Archives and hire C. W. Raines to oversee the collection and preservation of historical records. The Republican Party backed Clark and the Populist Party nominated lawyer Thomas Lewis Nugent. [8] Hogg won a majority of votes for a second term as governor, but this was the first time in the state`s history that the winning Democratic candidate did not receive a majority of the vote. While helping the sheriff in Quitman, Hogg attracted the hostility of a group of outlaws who lured him across the county border, ambushed him, and shot him in the back.[7] He recovered and returned to newspaper work in Tyler, after which he ran his own newspapers in Longview and Quitman from 1871 to 1873, fighting railroad subsidies, Ulysses S. Grant administration corruption, and local lawlessness. From 1873 to 1875 he was a justice of the peace in Quitman. He studied law and was admitted last year.
In the meantime he had married Sallie Stinson; Four children were born to them. Hogg suffered his only defeat in a public office race in 1876, when he ran against John S. Griffith for a seat in the Texas legislature. He was elected district attorney of Wood County in 1878 and served as district attorney for the former Seventh District from 1880 to 1884, where he became known as the state`s most aggressive and successful district attorney. During the 1884 national election campaign, he managed to win enough black Republican votes to make Smith County a Democratic stronghold. Despite a popular decision by Hogg to enter Congress, he refused to run for public office in 1884 and began working at Tyler, where he worked first with John M. Duncan and later with Henry Marsh. In 1886 his friends urged him to run for attorney general. His father`s relationships with older political leaders facilitated Hogg`s acceptance into their councils, and he received the Democratic nomination and was elected.
As attorney general, Hogg encouraged new laws to protect the public realm intended for school and institutional funds, and he filed lawsuits that eventually returned more than one and a half million acres to the state. He tried to enforce laws requiring railroads and land companies to sell their property to settlers within a certain time frame, and he succeeded in dismantling the Texas Traffic Association, formed by roads to concentrate traffic, set fares, and control competing lines, which was against the law. He forced „wild“ insurance companies out of the state and generally supported legitimate businesses. He helped draft the nation`s second state antitrust law and defended the Texas Drummer tax law in the U.S. Supreme Court, but lost. He managed to regain control of the East Line and the Red River Railroad, despite Jay Gould`s delaying efforts using federal receivers. Hogg forced the restoration of Texas headquarters and railroad companies, after which depots and road aids were repaired or rebuilt, and he gradually forced railroads to comply with Texas laws. Finally, he advocated the creation of the Board of Railway Commissioners and was elected governor on this platform in 1890. Hogg was elected attorney general in 1886. [1] At the time, the state had the power to regulate the transportation industry, but existing laws were unenforced or inadequate. Through „various legal manoeuvres,“ Hogg forced the non-state companies that operated the railways to establish operating offices in the state. He also ended the consolidation of railroads and proposed to the legislature that a constitutional amendment be proposed to create the Texas Railroad Commission.[4] In 1888, Hogg sued the railways to, among other things, try to create a monopoly.[4] .
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