Sam Rayburn

==Texas State Legislature==
In 1906, at the age of 24, Rayburn won by a narrow 163 vote margin an election to the 34th district of the [[Texas House of Representatives]]. While serving in the legislature, he studied at the [[University of Texas School of Law]], and he was admitted to the bar in 1908.[[File:WahrenbergerHouseAustinTX.JPG|thumb|left|Rayburn lived at the [[Wahrenberger House]] from 1907 to 1908 when he served as a Texas Representative for the 34th district and studied at the University of Texas School of Law.]] As a representative, Rayburn helped pass laws that made textbooks more widely available to Texas schoolchildren, established the State Board of Health alongside the [[Texas Department of State Health Services|Texas State Department of Health]], and created the [[Texas Department of Agriculture]]. Due to his power of persuasion when he was a very young legislator for four years on January 10, 1911, at 29 years of age, Rayburn became the youngest [[Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives]] in history. He defeated Clarence E. Gilmore 70 to 63 in the speaker election. Texas speakers from the beginning of statehood until Rayburn's tenure were mostly ceremonial and powerless, similar to the [[President pro tempore of the United States Senate|president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate]]. Under Texas state law the office actually had immense powers but the previous speakers never exercised them due to deference to party bosses. Upon election as Speaker, Rayburn requested the appointment of a special committee to determine "the duties and rights of the speaker". This became the first ever codification of the speaker's power. He helped pass numerous legislation as Speaker such as shorter working hours for women, child labor laws, and appropriations for a Confederate widows home and a tuberculosis sanitarium. Many decades later Rayburn rated his service as Texas House Speaker as the most enjoyable period in his long political career. He said, "that job had real power—that's what a man wants—but power's no good unless you have the guts to use it."<ref name="Library 1961">{{cite web | last=Library | first=Texas Legislative Reference | title=Legislators and Leaders - Member profile | website=Legislative Reference Library | date=November 16, 1961 | url=https://lrl.texas.gov/legeleaders/members/memberDisplay.cfm?memberID=3037 | access-date=August 9, 2019}}</ref><ref name="CoxPhillips2010">{{cite book|first1=Patrick L.|last1=Cox|first2=Michael|last2=Phillips|title=The House Will Come To Order: How the Texas Speaker Became a Power in State and National Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KjrPDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA27|date=March 1, 2010|publisher=University of Texas Press|isbn=978-0-292-72205-7|page=27}}</ref>