Tom Padgitt Inc.

by Thomas Klinger

Perhaps no other business can claim to have as large and long-lasting a role in Waco as Tom Padgitts and its owners have had over its many decades of business. The business and especially its owners have exerted this influence quietly, diligently and with dignity. They concerned themselves not just with the success of their own business but with the success of Waco itself. Tom Padgitt was the founder and namesake for the business which carries his name to this day and he first arrived in Texas when his family came to Houston from Gallatin, Tennessee. It was in Houston that Tom Badgitt learned the saddlery trade from an uncle and would help make saddles for the Confederate Army during the Civil War. In 1867 Tom Padgitt would start his own saddlery company in Bryan, Texas when he was just 21 years old. He chose Bryan because at the time it was the terminus for the Houston and Central Texas Railroad, Padgitt and the business which bore his name would follow the railroad’s construction as it moved through different towns before finally settling in Waco in 1874 for the rest of his life. The first location of Tom Padgitts Company in Waco would be a small shop on Bridge Street known at the time as Rat Row. The business would not stay there however as Tom Padgitt’s business would grow over the decades into one of the largest saddle companies in America. By 1880 the company had moved into wholesale distribution and in 1883 the company moved from Rat Row to a location on Austin Avenue between Fourth and Fifth Street before finally constructing in 1890 a large building on Franklin Avenue and Fifth Street. In 1922 his operation would occupy two building on four floors and a basement in the Franklin Avenue location. Padgitt’s company would grow so large and recognized for its quality that during World War One the company was chosen by the French and British governments to fill out large orders for their militaries, selling 130,000 dollars worth of leatherwork to the French in 1914 and 50,000 bridles to the British in 1915. Eventually for eighteen months during World War One the Tom Padgitt Company would set aside all private work to fulfill the military orders for the British and American governments.

World War One would also help change the course of the Tom Padgitt Company when Tom Padgitt’s oldest son, Captain Ross Padgitt, died in San Mateo, California in an automobile accident while on duty for the military. With Ross Padgitt’s death Clint Padgitt, as Tom Padgitts second oldest son, would now be heir to the Tom Padgitt company. Though the automobile obviously reduced the need for saddlery, Tom Padgitt’s quality work and business connections ensured that it remained profitable in 1924 employing 110 people in its factory on Franklin Avenue and Fifth Street with a further 8 employees constantly traveling the country as salesmen. The company was not just nationally recognized but did business supplying foreign countries with saddlery especially in Latin America. Padgitts worked with the United Fruit Company supplying bridles and other leatherwork for use on its plantations in Latin America through its operating house in New Orleans.

Tom Padgitt would also participate in helping to develop Waco beyond his business success. He would be the first director of the First National Bank of Waco and its oldest depositor and was succeeded by his son Clint as director. Several blocks of land in Waco that Tom owned would become known as Padgitt’s Park as he opened it to the public for entertainment and civic events. In the 1890s Tom Padgitt would give Padgitts Park to Waco in order that the Texas Cotton Palace, an iconic landmark, could be built on it this included supplying water to the Cotton Palace from Padgitt’s artisanal wells. Padgitt would also in 1890s use the newly discovered artisanal wells to create a natatorium and what is credited as the first indoor pool in Waco. Padgitt would also help create the first fire department in Waco and served as its first assistant chief in 1873, in 1883 Tom would pay for Waco’s first fire alarm system out of his own pocket because of opposition from the town council. The town council would be so pleased with the system though that they reimbursed him less than a year later. Tom Padgitt would also start a tradition for the Padgitt Company owners by being an avid sportsman, having an enthusiasm for racing horse buggies.

At the age of 79, in 1926, Tom Padgitt would pass away after being ill for some months and the business would pass on to his son Clint Padgitt. Clint Padgitt would immediately expand his fathers business by adding luggage, sporting goods and other toys for sale, and by 1937 the majority of business would be from his wholesale and retail trade in these items though the company still offered leather goods and saddlery. The business would thrive and become recognized throughout Central Texas for its products and service. Perhaps one of the reasons Clint Padgitt decided to go into the sporting goods business was his own great love of sports. Clint would generously fund and support not just the Baylor football program but also many local tennis, golf and bowling events. Clint’s support for the Baylor football program would help it win its first Southwestern Conference Title in 1922 and again in 1924 when he came to head an association in 1920 to help boost the football program. Clint Padgitt’s generosity would extend beyond sports as he would give money and support for the improvement and development of parks and civic buildings in Waco and support for his alma maters Waco High School and Baylor University. Clint Padgitt would also help preserve the history of Waco by donating valuable items to the Baylor Texas Collection.

In 1945 Clint Padgitt would pass away at the age of 61. Tom Padgitts Company would pass on to his widow Mrs. Camilla Padgitt and Wilton Lanning Senior who ran the business as co-owners with Wilton Lanning Sr. as active manager. In 1948 Camilla Padgitt would fall sick and remain in hospital until her death in 1954 and ownership passed fully to Wilton Lanning. Wilton Lanning Sr. was a banker at the First National Bank of Waco and like Clint Padgitt a sporting enthusiast, which perhaps explains his interest in running Tom Padgitts. Wilton Lanning, Sr would bring in his son Wilton Lanning, Jr to work both in Tom Padgitts and at various banks around Waco. Both Wilton Lannings were graduates of Waco High School and Baylor University. It was under the leadership of the Lannings and especially Wilton Lanning Junior that Tom Padgitts would move into becoming a wholesale and retail photography and audio-visual business dropping entirely saddlery, sporting goods and luggage.

In 1953 a catastrophic tornado would rip through downtown Waco and destroy many historic buildings and businesses. One of the buildings destroyed would be Old Tom Padgitts on Franklin Avenue and Fifth Street. Tom Padgitts as a company would survive this catastrophic event for Waco because Wilton Lanning Sr had moved operations to a new location on 9^th and Austin Avenue around 1950. The business under Wilton Lanning Jr. experienced success and would expand to become the largest audio-visual center in Central Texas, expanding its store on South 13^th Street several times as well as opening up a branch store at 101 Lake Air East in 1973 with the two stores combined employing 30 people.

Wilton Lanning Jr. would continue the tradition of civic engagement that the owners of Tom Padgitts had always shown. Wilton Lanning Jr. would serve in leading roles on a variety of business and community associations over his life such as the Rotary Club, YMCA, Texas Audio-Visual Dealers Association, Central Texas Professional Photographers Association, Waco Convention and Tourism Advisory Board, and the Waco Chamber of Commerce. Wilton Lanning Jr. would also become president of the Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute and is seen as the man responsible for its creation helping to raise the money from the Waco Motel and Hotel Association and the Dr. Pepper Corporation itself. This effort was done not just to raise money from tourist attractions but also because of Wilton Lanning’s love of history and Dr. Pepper, Wilton having had a large collection of Dr. Pepper memorabilia which was displayed on CNN in 1985. Lanning Jr would also help Baylor Texas Collection and Waco Heritage and History collect rare historical photos from Central Texans in 1984. Lanning and Tom Padgitt’s Inc. would also help in designing classroom and lecture halls including the Baylor Science Building. In 2005 Wilton Lanning would sell Tom Padgitts and it still operates today on 5054 Franklin Avenue. Wilton Lanning Jr. passed away in Janurary of 2018.

Tom Padgitts and its owners were extremely active in creating and renewing Waco over its decades of operation not just by creating and transforming their businesses over the years to remain successful and profitable but by participating and driving forward projects that would help Waco as a community. Though lured by the profits promised from a railroad once Tom Padgitts put down roots in Waco it stayed there through sometimes difficult circumstances surviving wars, depression, and changing economic landscapes.

Sources:

Waco Tribune Herald 11 July 1937 pg 22, pg 23

Waco Tribune Herald 28 june 1936

Waco News Tribune 10 March 1927 pg 6

Waco News Tribune 25 May 1924 pg 1, pg 53, pg 29

Waco News Tribune 5 May 1924

Waco News Tribune 21 Dec 1924

The Eagle (Bryan Texas) 20 Oct 1926 pg1

Waco News Tribune 29 Jan 1922

Waco News Tribune 25 March 1923 pg 23

The Austin American 31 Oct 1914 pg 3

The Houston Post 14 August 1918 pg 3

The Miami News 12 July 1915 pg4

Waco News Tribune 19 Feb 1947 pg 9

Waco News Tribune 5 Feb 1954 pg 27

Corsicanan Daily Sun 14 August 1963 pg 13

The Waco Citizen 27 Feb 1969 pg 30

The Waco Citizen 13 Nov 1984 pg 4

Waco Tribune Herald 3 Nov 1969 pg 14

The Waco Citizen 22 April 1986 pg 2

Waco Tribune Herald 12 Dec 1973 pg 10.

The Waco Citizen 4 Dec 1969 pg 14.

Waco News Tribune 1 March 1973 pg 22.

The Waco Citizen 15 Dec 1989 pg 3.

The Waco Citizen 17 Jan 1989 pg 3.

The Waco Citizen 10 May 1985 pg 1.

The Waco Citizen 14 March 1986 pg 1.

Ibid 15 April 1983 pg 2.

Ibid 1 March 1988 pg. 15

Ibid 19 Dec 1980 pg 14

Ibid 17 Nov 1989 pg 1.

Ibid 9 September 1988 pg 31

Waco Tribune Herald 5 July 1953 pg 41.

Waco Morning News 26 April 1894 pg 4

https://www.wacotrib.com/obituaries/lanning-jr-wilton/article_5f50c63a-3289-5bbc-9106-656484c61164.html

1st sound clip: Interviewer Sielaff, Steven, Title: Oral Memoirs of Wilton Lanning Jr, (Series 3) Interview date: August 12th 2012 in Waco Texas

2nd sound clip: Interviewer Stingley, Jim, Title: Oral Memoirs of Wilton Lanning Jr. (Series 4) Interview date April 11, 2014 in Waco Texas

 

When the US paid off the entire national debt.

Thomas Klinger

In recent America history citizens are so used to a massive national debt that we no longer even think about the possibility of paying it off or even slowing down its growth and we worry about the effect this massive debt will have on future generations who must service it. In this episode of NPR’s Planet Money podcast the hosts examine several interesting episodes in the history of US national debt such as when we had none at all and why we have such a such a massive debt now. American national debt began when after its revolution the government made a conscious choice to assume the debts accrued fighting the war, largely due to the urging of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton wished to take on the debts of the individual states in order that the new national government would have a large debt, in order to create trust in the issuance of future US debt. If the debt from the US was trusted by the world at large to be serviced trade and industry would benefit from the spending the US could make off of the borrowed money. This policy largely worked for the first decades of American government, trade and industry flourished as US debt became one of the safest investments in the world. However this would all change with the of Andrew Jackson. Jackson had a personal dislike of debt, having had a bad experience when he held an investment in debt, and wanted to see the national debt paid completely off. The national debt went through cycles where in bad times it increased and in good times it was paid down, but it had never been paid completely off before. Indeed when America paid off its national debt completely it was the first country up until then to do so. The debt at the time of Andrew Jackson’s presidency was 58 million dollars but he benefited from a land bubble at the time in paying it off. Using the inflated land values the government sold off property in the West and used the proceeds to pay off the debt, Jackson also ruthlessly vetoed government spending. Together these land sales and fiscal prudence eventually paid off the debt completely. However there then came the problem of what to do with all the surplus money the government now was making, the government had never had a surplus before and did not know what to do with the money. There was no mechanism at this time to give it directly to the citizens so Jackson instead gave it to individual states proportionally off of their population. The situation was good for about a year but the state’s banks went crazy printing paper money out of their surplus and then the land bubble popped leading to the longest depression up to that time. This is a great example of unintended consequences and unacknowledged assumptions as paying off the national debt would seem to make some sense and having a government surplus should be great. As shown by Jackson paying off the debt the assumption that paying off the national debt would be a benefit was not true and the unintended consequences with the government surplus created disruptions in the economy. After this experiment in being debt free the US benefited from having a national debt which helped pay for the Civil War and cushioned various economic downturns. The podcast continues the story of our national debt by explaining one of the reasons we have such a massive debt currently. Up till World War One Congress approved individually every item of debt and the details of that debt down to detailed discussions for purchasing horseshoes for a government department. In World War One the debt needed to finance the war became too complex for Congress who wanted to concentrate on thoughtful big policy discussions, so Congress gave the Treasury Department the job of determining what debt and how much was needed for government spending. However Congress did not give the Executive branch a blank check, instead handing them a debt ceiling which they were not supposed to go over. This debt ceiling is not actually a legal limit on debt as it would be unconstitutional to limit the money spent by Congress and so this debt ceiling has not contained the growth of our national debt. The debt since 50 years ago now no longer follows a cycle of growing during bad times and being paid down in good times but has grown and grown during bad or good economic times. This is another good example of unintended consequences as well as complexity, the legislative branch gave up one of its biggest powers because of how complex the task was becoming and even though it has helped with streamlining and making cheaper acquiring new debt it has also allowed our national debt to break free from a normal cycle where we could pay it down. The podcast speaks well to a host of our unacknowledged assumptions about the national debt as well as the complexity of how the national debt affects the economy and government but perhaps because of this complexity and unacknowledged assumptions leaves unanswered what the consequences might be from our massive current debt.Early in the podcast the hosts played a clip paraphrasing Hamilton’s arguments as “The bigger the debt the better” and from Jackson it would seem that to have no debt is indeed not a good thing and perhaps having a large debt should not cause as much worry as it does but we do seem to have entered uncharted waters with the rate at which our debt has been increasing and when we might reach a point where a bigger debt will end up hurting the American economy.

Worst. Tariffs. Ever

Thomas Klinger

In the Planet Money podcast titled Worst. Tariffs. Ever the show starts off with the news of Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum before discussing an important historical event in the history of tariffs in America, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Though the podcast says this might be boring for some, mentioning the amusing scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off of the boring teacher using the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in his lesson, it is also a great lesson in unintended consequences. The impetus for Smoot-Hawley came in the late 1920s at a time of great economic growth for America with new industries creating new jobs, however the farming sector was being left behind in this growth. In an otherwise good economic climate politicians looking for an issue to campaign on seized on the idea of protecting American farmers from foreign competition. In the 1928 election Hoover and the Republicans won and went about enacting their promises to protect farmers by raising tariffs and the two representatives in charge of tariff policy lent their names to the bill, Smoot and Hawley. The bill was originally only meant to protect the two industries most threatened by foreign competition which were sugar and wool. However since the bill was being passed through Congress other representatives in a process known as log-rolling refuses to vote for the bill until other industries important to their state or district also got their own tariffs. This process got out of hand with thousands of industries getting their own tariffs put into the bill even industries which probably did not even need them such as goldfish farms.

Tariffs have always had unintended consequences associated with them such as the downstream effect by which tariffs enacted to protect one industry hurt other industries and consumers related to the initial industry being protected and with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff these unintended consequences were as large and far reaching as the bill itself. An example of these unintended consequences is found in the example of the American egg industry which also got a protective tariff raise on foreign eggs from eight to ten cents, in response Canada raised their tariff on American eggs from 3 cent to ten cents to match it. This was disastrous for the American egg industry which had been making a lot of money off of its exports and the amount exported to Canada fell from a million dozen to 13 thousand dozens after the new tariff rates. Other countries also enacted counter-tariffs specifically targeted against America to punish it and even formed trading blocs to better organize their actions against America. The legislators of Smoot-Hawley had not even considered that this would happen regarding Smoot-Hawley to be mere domestic legislation which would not have international consequences even though they had been warned by a thousand economists in a public letter about the potential downfalls of tariffs. During this time the world was also going through the Great Depression which while Smoot-Hawley did not cause the Great Depression it certainly did not help. After World War Two America spent decades undoing the effects caused by the Act having to negotiate to lower tariffs and resulting counter-tariffs and the Act itself had become a cautionary tale against politicians who argued against free trade such as Ross Perot debating Al Gore over NAFTA. However finally winding back to the start of the story and how Trump can raise these tariffs without the approval of Congress ties back into the unintended consequences from Smoot-Hawley. Congress having seen the bad effects from Smoot-Hawley and how their log-rolling contributed to it decided to give up their tariff powers to the executive branch to stop this from happening in future. Economists however still hold the view that even relatively narrow tariffs will still hurt downstream industries and invite counter-tariffs which will hurt trade.

One of the Big Ideas from the course that comes into play is that of unintended consequences and unacknowledged assumptions. The politicians who voted for Smoot-Hawley assumed that the bill was simply an internal political decisions which would pass by unnoticed by the world at large. With the bill however many former trading partners started to punish American trade hurting the industries the Act meant to protect and when in reaction to these negatives effects Congress gave up its powers to the executive branch they might have unintentionally given power for a new Smoot-Hawley type trade war being started by the move which sought to prevent another one.

In the Planet Money podcast Big Government Cheese I was reminded of stories my dad told me of eating government cheese growing up poor in Georgia. So it was interesting to listen to an in depth program examining how this program came to exist. Like many bad things this idea came from the desire to support American farmers financially. Jimmy Carter was interested in supporting American farmers and as a campaign pledge wanted to raise the price of milk as a way of giving farmers more money. To increase the price of a product in such a way the government had two options lowering the supply or increasing the demand. Canada is an example of a country that maintains the price of milk by lowering the supply, after a certain quota of milk is produced the farmers are ordered to stop producing. America chooses not to take this route and instead tries to increase the demand. The easiest way for the government to do this is by buying the product and storing it, it had done this before with corn and other grains. However the properties of milk make this impossible milk spoils quickly and is harder to store. It is here that cheese comes into the picture, USDA looks at what dairy products can be storeable one of the best of these dairy products for storage was cheddar cheese. So the government decided to buy as much cheese as the cheese producers would sell them at a fixed price. By buying as much cheese at an artificially high price as the cheese makers could make, the cheese makers would buy more milk thus increasing the price of milk and accomplishing the goal of the Carter administration. This artificial demand would raise the price of milk but the government would have to keep buying all the cheese the makers were willing to sell to keep milk prices at the level they wanted. Buying this large amount of cheese created a storage problem, eventually the government had to resort to renting out large cave spaces in Kansas to store the cheese. It was this silly situation that brought attention to the massive amounts of money that the government was spending on buying cheese only for it to have to be stored and rot. So the government started looking for ways to get rid of the cheese without harming the very market they wanted to support. If the government sold the cheese on the open market there would have been commercial displacement destroying the cheese market and thus milk market with a flood of cheap cheese. Instead the government decides to give the cheese away to consumers who would not have otherwise bought the cheese. The cheese was processed and made into 2 and 5 pound bricks and given away as food aid to the poor of America. It was this spectacle of millions of pounds of expensive cheese being processed and given away that created a popular cultural icon and an example of bad government spending. The government eventually tired of being involved in this business and eventually extracted itself from buying cheese slowly by increasing milk ads and giving farmers direct subsidies instead.

There are a lot of “Big Ideas” to discuss in this podcast but the obvious one is one which the podcast points out itself, the problem of unintended consequence. The goal of the government was to support American farmers by price controls but this led to the government buying billions of dollars of cheese every year that they had to inspect, store and eventually give away. Another would be how business, state and society interact the various pressures and values that guided the way government cheese came about, For instance unlike Canada we did not impose a production limit on milk largely because that seemed un-American to have limits on production. The way the farmers as an interest group gets the government to engage in the market also reminded me of the case of Nixon subsidizing corn production and increasing the use of high fructose corn syrup as a way to lower the cost of food to the average household for political gain. I don’t think these unintended consequences will ever go away and we live with some greater and more unknown than government cheese.