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Financing and comments. I a-i satisfied the financing can be handled. I have had such experience all my life.
'e must, of course, build the work in a way to excite public interest and to command confidence. (This Digest is for assiatence in getting the foundations right.)
The present headquarters. if made permamsnt, will be excellent. It has good location....ample space for Round Table conferences....handy to the public library for them that will use it for a workshop....space and light for files, indexes, desks etc....plenty of wall map display surface.
It can be ?rade a place of distinction, and the day will come, if 1 can go thru with toy >lans, when this headquarters will extend hospitality to histary-minded people from all the Sr anil ah Borderlands. I have contacted such associations more than is realised• 'any are interested in cooperating with tims good leadership. ■"here are a number of "studies" and "books" and "travel aids" close to publication.
And when the time come3 (and much ha3 been done toward this) I will get sevoral hundred patrons from Florida to California, persons not adapted to research and writing but competent to subscribe funds, who will pledge '-500 each over a five-year period ('75,000 to "100,000) to carry on the research and to issue the needed publications to make the Old Spanish Trail '.merica's noted trnvelway.
T>e Texas financing and work will corns first, but we can work all this out right if we move right. I wonId have had it all under way if the depression had not put skids under everything.
"any research workers and writers have good material, but unfinished. Forking alone, their handicaps are too heavy.
And they jealously guard what they have, to protect the recognition and -even the compensation to which they are entitled. These difficulties can only be overcome by sympathetic and financed cooperation. ' e have talked and planned many things along this line.
ihe present name seems all right because the emphasis must be placed on research and study for some time yet.
At a mature stage the name can be changed. If desired.
A Hoard of '-onagers will come; preferably slowly and wisely <j>; e present three trusteos are the nucleus for the larger board.
1956 is the Texas Centennial year, and the year for the