Oleander Odyssey: The Kempners of Galveston, Texas, 1854-1980s.

Oleander Odyssey: The Kempners of Galveston, Texas, 1854-1980s. By Harold M. Hyman * College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1990. xxii + 486 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95.

Although this is not an authorized work, Oleander Odyssey was obviously prepared with the encouragement and cooperation of the members of the Kempner family. Harold Hyman, in addition to using several hundred boxes of manuscript materials, also interviewed, and had research assistants interview, numerous members of the clan. The combination of sources, together with the narrative and analytical skills of the author, has resulted in an exemplary history of one of the premier families of Galveston, Texas, and its numerous business interests.

The story of the Kempner family of Galveston began with the settlement there of Harris Kempner, who epitomized the proverbial American rags-to-riches saga. He arrived in this country as a 17-year-old Jewish immigrant in 1854 and died a millionaire forty years later. Along the way he peddled, became a storekeeper, expanded into cotton factoring, and then into a wide variety of other businesses. When he died in 1894, he left a widow, eight children, and a number of pecuniary interests that his eldest son, Isaac Herbert ("Ike") Kempner, developed into one of Texas's largest conglomerates long before that word became fashionable. As Hyman puts it, the Kempners and their enterprises were "prominent in almost every significant civic, cultural, charitable, and business development in Galveston and far beyond, from the 1870s to the present" (p. xviii).

Hyman provides an excellent analysis of the complexities of cotton factoring and merchandising, off production, sugar refining, real estate development and management, banking, and numerous other business interests that involved the Kempners. In one chapter, on the problems of collecting international debts, he shows how the company pursued one case from the 1920s through the 1950s, unsuccessfully trying to obtain what they believed was justifiably theirs. In retrospect, both the Kempners and Hyman questioned whether the prolonged endeavor was worth the effort.

It is unlikely that the Kempners could have had a more sympathetic analyst. Hyman shows how involved they were with community development and stresses their humanitarian and civic interests. Although their enterprises employed convict labor, the author explains not only that such a policy was customary but also that the Kempners treated prisoners humanely. In discussing the building of company housing, Hyman notes that white laborers" dwellings included indoor plumbing whereas the facilities for blacks and Hispanics did not; nonetheless, he asserts that the homes for the minorities exceeded customarily accepted standards. After ...