Edward Cunningham Lasater

Background

Edward Cunningham Lasater was born in Goliad County, Texas. His parents, Albert H. and Sarah Jane (Cunningham) Lasater, moved to Texas from Arkansas in the late fifties.

Education

Edward's education was limited to the meager facilities of the Texas frontier, and an early ambition for law was forgotten in his love of the soil.

Career

Lasater farmed and ranched until the drouths and depression of the early nineties left him without property and heavily involved. About this time, grasping the possibilities of the undeveloped land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, he secured credit for the purchase of a ranch of 380, 000 acres, and in time stocked it with 20, 000 head of beef cattle. In anticipation of the advance of the farming settler into "the brush country, " he encouraged the extension of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railway, founded the town of Falfurrias, and within twenty-five years sold land to more than six hundred farmers.

Lasater was a slight, energetic, aggressive man, whose entire public enterprise was devoted to the problems of the men of the soil. He worked long and hard for clean politics on the Rio Grande, in the face of many threats against his life. In 1912 he was nominated for governor of Texas by the Progressive party. For two years, 1911-1912, he served as president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. In the interests of the producers of agricultural products, he waged a long fight against various practices of the packers, the speculators, the bankers, and pernicious legislative trends.

On July 25, 1917, Herbert Hoover asked Lasater to serve with the Food Administration as chief of the department of live stock and animal food products. Lasater was soon at odds with Hoover's policies. He and Gifford Pinchot fought to remove speculation from the hog market by establishing the value of a hundred pounds of hog in its equivalent in bushels of corn. He attacked the campaign of "eat no lamb, eat no veal" as subversive of the Administration's attempt to stimulate production. Disagreeing with Hoover upon various other questions of fundamental importance to agriculture, he tendered his resignation from the Administration, October 20, 1917.

His published defense, including Facts Affecting the United States Food Administration (1917), Reply to Mr. Hoover, U. S. Food Administrator (1918), and a report to the Market Committee of the American National Live Stock Association, As Showing that the Policies and Practices of Mr. Hoover, as Food Administrator are "Harmful to the Common Welfare" (1918), alleges much floundering on the part of the Administration.

For twelve years more Lasater continued an active authority upon the problems of the range. In 1918 he published a paper on "Live Stock Marketing Conditions" in Proceedings of the American National Live Stock Association, and in 1920 his testimony before the House Committee on Agriculture, under the title, Meat Packer Legislation. He died at Ardmore, Oklahoma, but was buried in Texas.

Achievements

• Lasater was known as one of the leading cattle breeders of Texas. His 2, 500 Jersey cows, ranging a 40, 000-acre dairy pasture, were reputed to be the largest herd of that breed in existence, and his registered stock were among the prize winners in the greatest cattle shows of the world.

Connections

His first wife, Martha Noble Bennett, daughter of John M. Bennett, whom Lasater married December 28, 1892, died August 19, 1900. On October 29, 1902, he married Mary Gardner Miller, daughter of Garland Burleigh Miller, who survived him.

Father:

Albert H. Lasater

Mother:

Sarah Jane (Cunningham) Lasater

Spouse:

Martha Noble Bennett

Spouse:

Mary Gardner Miller

References

• Edward C. Lasater;: A biographical portrait
• Falfurrias: Ed C. Lasater and the Development of South Texas