ustxtxb_obs_1955_11_16_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

AH1N1 SURPRISED THAT A COUPLE OF OL’ i-TOSS TRADERS LIKE you WOULD Buy TWAT ONE w, AH WOULDN’T GIT BEHIND RIM FOR NOTHINV .By Etta Mame for The Texas Observer, CHALLENGE TO THE VALLEY .LORDS A James Opponent Texas at Large Don ,Kennard, state representative from Fort Worth, is talking about running against State Treasurer Jesse James. Kennard is doing some research. .. Kennard and Rep. Jamie Clements of Crockett were hosts’to a buffet luncheon honoring James P. Hart Saturday at the Driskill Hotel. Hotel Roosevelt was “lousy with resolutions” during the Waco D.A.C. Meeting Nov.. 4. One Would have Challenged, the authority of the State Democratic Executive Committee to nominate a national committeeman from Texas ; another would have blasted Sam Rayburn for accepting Ben Ramsey as committeeman ; another would have blasted Creekmore Fath . of Austin for his resolution to refuse to approve Ramsey. In the end, however, Fath pushed his resolution and the compromise was adopted which mildly slapped Ramsey and praised Rayburn. . Sam Kinth, writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, reported: “It has been rumored, without demade some agreement to help Shivers get seated at the convention next year If he wins control of the state convention and promises to support the national nominees. “Senator Johnson also is said to be involved in the agreement, probably as a favorite son candidate of the Texas delegation.” …. Speaker ‘Rayburn spent a few days in San Antonio last week consulting with South Texas Democrats. …. Rayburn was asked by an Observer reporter at a press conference if he believed that a favorite son delegation from Texas should be bound to support the eventual nominees if the favorite son candidacy did not prevail. “Certainly,” replied Rayburn. On another favorite son question, he replied, “I don’t care what kind of a son he is .. I even had one fellow N ask me to be a favorite son, yes, sir .. I’m really coming up in the world.” Some interpreted this as coolness toward a favorite son candidacy for Senator Lyndon Johnson, whose -name, however, was not mentioned at the conference. The Observer took a picture of Rayburn as he was reading the compromise resolution on Ramsey and he snapped : “Now look here young fellow, I want to look pretty in my photographs.”The reporter said he wrottler not print it. Jack Bell, crack AP reporter in Washington, joined the chorus of national writers who say Lyndon Johnson is planning a “moderate” coalition against the nomination of any “extremist” for the national Democratic convention. In his Nov. 7 article, Bell writes that “. .. Stevenson supporters are wondering also whether a compromise between Johnant Governor Ramsey as the new Texas national committeeman might signify a working agreement between the two Rayburn acquiesced in the choice of Ramsey.” …. Raymond Brooks of the Austin American and Allen Duckworth of the Dallas News both wrote last week that Price Daniel has liberals as well as conservatives backing him for goverrier. The word is out that Daniel’s latesunmier hesitation about running for governor has turned into a warm receptivity, …. Wright Morrow, ousted national Democratic committeeman, says he did not authorize a new conservative south-wide group to list him as one of its Texas advisors. The Federation for Constitutional Government announced it is for states’ rights and individual liberties, against “leftist candidates,” and ‘socialistic platforms.” Its Texas advisers as listed in a press release include Coke Stevenson, former Governor of ‘Texas, Dr. B. E. Masters, Kilgore state organizer for the Citizens’ Councils, and Morrow. Morrow said he has had nothing to do with the group. AUSTIN Of the many parts of our great state, perhaps the strangest, and by far the most insular, is the Valley of our toe, stretching from the saitling Leftist ,CaterOvauling To the Editor: The following does not necessarily represent the opinion of my employer. Normally your yellow sheet is given no more than a cursory glance and filed in the wastebasket, for I am a tolerant man, given to letting LeftWingers like you bellow and caterwaul to your heart’s content in the press. But lately your attacks on Governor , Shivers, at least two other fine past governors of the state \(one now deceased , . . . you knew he couldn’t ple of this state and nation who . . . happen to be Republicans have been particularly vicious. So vicious that I have been compelled to reply. Did It ever occur to you, sir, that the reason Governor Shivers is now serving his third term and the reason . that we now have a Republican Administration is simply because a majority of voters wanted it that way? Did it ever occur to you that thinking men and women of Texas in everincreasing numbers are becoming aware of the depths of despicability to which the National Democratic Party has dropped ? That term “liberal” doesn’t fool many. They know that it is only a polite name for socialism . . founded by the great dictator franklin d. roosevelt and hewed to with robot-like tenacity by that misplaced county judge, Harry Truman. And that two-bit machine politician Add-a-lie Stevenson would have carried it even further, except s for the fact that voters woke up and realized that the road of the Democratic Party led to pure and unadulterated socialism. … . I have never voted a straight Democratic ticket and I never will as long as it harbors radicals like Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson, Estes Kefauver, Averell Harriman, and .. . ignoramuses like liarry Truman. . I am proud to say further that I supported Governor Shivers in the last election. I am not one of your so-called “vested interests.” I am an ordinary working man, but however, I do know -the difference between an efficient, business-like administration and one that does nothing but tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend. . I felt very strongly about the matter when a man of the mediocrity of Ralph Yarborough, the–self-admitted rubber stamp of the-Democratic Party, challenged a fine and great man like Governor Shivers, who has the guts to say and act as he thinks…. Should Adlai Stevenson again be the Democratic presidential nominee and should Ralph Yarborough or any other soc . . . pardon me . . “liberal” be a candidate for Governor, I shall again do all in “my power to see that they are not elected, . . After due consideration I would Characterize the National Democratic Party as having, in the last generation, been taken over by left-wingers, radicals, and malcontents, who, lacking the intelligence and ability to rise to the heights that a few of our neighbors have in matters of wealth, social position and power, wish,’ by governmental regulation, to pull everyone else down to their level. . . . I. J. WALDON, JR. Huntsville \(MI*, Waldon is night news editor The Texas Observer Page 3 Nov. 16, 1955 sand of the Padre Beach and the snug little shrimping skiffs of Port Isabel, across the fertile alluvial plains of the Rio Grande, down to the riverbank, muddy and weeded, up to the ranchland of rocks and mesquite. Here dwell a Babbitty crew of merchants and radio announcers ;` farmers strangely domesticated, mostly from the north and the western states ; and Mexicans. The Mexicans are of many kinds. There is the nativo, born in Texas, angry when this is not ackmowledged; there is the naturalizado, who knows of his homeland but forsook it for permanence here ; there is the legal extranjero, ever ready to flee back to Mexico, to Monterrey and the fleshpots, to his shack and his family; there is the bracer, the legal farm worker, trucked from the south to this strange and fertile land, lined with palm trees that, strangely, do not grow in the straight lines beside the road further south; and, even yet, there is the ‘mojado, the river-swimmer,. lurker in the mesquite clutch, frequenter of the dirt trails, worker for a while, hunted, now, by helicopter and bloodhounds, jeep and short wave, now caught, flown to Monterrey, shipped by boat to ‘Vera Cruz, tossed back into the jungle of hunger he knows as his land. In a pool hall in Weslaco, I met many Mexicans, two who came from across the street in the laundry where they worked, others who drifted in from somewhere in the town. These are a sad people. You feel in their long-lost selves a kind of music from Mexico, the . slow, easy, faithful life of the village, but this is bruised by the values of our Republic. The thin little Mexican who is about thirty and who works in the laundry across the street said to me one night, after he had beaten me on the pool table, how tired he was of working, for his wife wanted so many things, and he could not buy them all. They are caught betwixt and between, at home in a pool hall. THERE are, in the Valley, a few liberals, expatriates, really, timorous voices in a place with no microphones for their message. ,They meet sometimes for supper and wry talk, for the sharing of their books and sic and beautiful things from Mexico; but there is not much politics to talk, as the Valley is quiet, quiet. Why they hold on I don’t know. Some, in fact, do not ; one I know is in New York now, looking for something that is not there, and another swore once that he was leaving, but now they are having a baby, and they will not. There is a country club in Harlingen, and there’s Padre Island. \(Causeways are tied on now, swiftly the people move in, where has gone that place you know once was=a place of mys tery, pirates; silence, waves, and sand.4 dunes ; wind, weeds, carving patterns Matamoras with its clubs and Boys’. Town, cheap liquor and jalapenos., They tell me that in old Reynosa the Valley men have houses where they, keep their gentle modes of release from the wedge of their Valley lives. There is no privacy in the Valley. : Whep a man says a word in disrespect of the lords in Mission, it is known at Brownsville before the sun sinks behind the palm trees, and if a girl is seen too happy of a night, she is hauled back to the level of the common misery by the Rainbow Girls at lunch. Seldom do the lords of grapefruit and oranges and sweating Mexicans make a mistake. Seldom do they misapply the pressure they have so totally engathreed. The Valley is a stable culture now, all the relationships neatly defined. Most towns are split down the middleby the highway, or a railroad track, or a street. Farmers manage and Mexicans do the work; Anglos hose the gas into the car and Latins wipe the windows ; housewives watch the children and Mexicans wash the dishes. In short, a Mexican is a Mexican and damn well better know it. B UT NOW the lords are challenged, by the radical doctrine that the majority should rule. Some Latin-American war veterans have joined with organized labor in a serious poll tax drive. What happens if of a sudden the Valley Mexicans have the three-to-one voting majority their numbers entitle them to? Who knows whom they -. might install in the chambers of government? Who knows what might happen to the wage structure, to the expendi-: ture of tax funds, to the farm laborers? 9 In an eight-column headline about the New Fact, the Valley Evening Monitor of McAllen summed up the fears democracy evokes in the Valley’s ruling class : “Move Begun to Unionize Valley?” My friends there who are liberals must have mixed feelings. One never forgets certain kinds of conversations, even if all he remembers is that they, did happen in a given place with a kind of person he also remembers. I remember when one of the liberal couples there were saying, well, you know, we talk about how terrible it is, the ratty way the Mexicans have to live, but when you think about it, we only pay Juanita $20 a week, and she has five kids. What do you say ? Perhaps nothing. But the Mexicans are talking now, and the Good Lord knows it’s their turn.