ustxtxb_obs_1961_10_20_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

in five northern cities, the civil rights commission reported. Only 6.95 percent of the federal employees in that area are Negroes. g o o0 Claiming the legislature did not intend to put the sales tax on small purchases, the Texas Merchandise Vending Machine Association, Inc., announced it would pay the tax under protest and is contemplating a court test on the levy. The Vendors must pay the tax although they are prohibited by the same law from collecting the levy. frof Land Commissioner Jerry Sadler is fighting back against charges made by high labor officials that his opposition to making Padre Island a national park was based on his desire “to allow promoters to milk fat profits from the development and sale of the best portions of the island.” The charge was made by Hank Brown, president of the state AFL-CIO, and the orgariiiation’s secretary-treasurer, Roy Evans. Sadler replied: “I fail to understand why the taxpayers of the United States should be called upon to pay untold millions of dollars to perpetuate a wilderness that already exists, when the state of Texas without cost to anyone can provide for the development of a park that all can enjoy, not just those wealthy enough to own yachts.” g o olr The 10-member United States Study Commission Texas handed Gov. Price Daniel its completed 50-year plan for keeping an adequate water supply available to Texas at least until the year 2010. To do the job proposed by the commission, government at some level will have to spend an estimated $4 billion and build 83 major reservoirs and other watercontrol depositories. v ir As expected, the dedicated reserve gas tax is being challenged by oil companies. Previous efforts to tax gas in interstate pipelines were held unconstitutional in 1954 and 1958, and this time Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co., and Michigan Wisconsin Pipe Line Co. hope to prove the tax passed by the last legislature to be also unconstitutional. frog State Sen. Preston Smith of Lubbock, who ran third behind Ben Ramsey a decade ago when Ramsey took his first lien on the lieutenant governor’s chair, became the first Democrat to announce his candidacy to fill Old Ben’s vacancy. ‘Other Democrats pondering the race are House Speaker James Turman, State Sens. Robert Baker of Houston, Crawford Martin of Hillsboro and A. M. Atkin of Paris. Houston Liberal Don Yarborough, who polled Subscribe to The Observer CLASSIFIED HOUSTON READERS ORDER YOUR PERSONALIZED CHRIST-MAS CARDS NOW WIDE SELECTION WIDE PRICE RANGE. SHIRLEY JAY MO 5-5266 evenings. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM 111111111111111111111O UNION LABEL CHRISTMAS CARDS American Artists Group Now On Display at FUTURA PRESS, INC. 1714 So. Congress Austin Red Chinese Bomb Belittled A Panel Talk with Teller Smith Announces; Tower Asks Probe AUSTIN Dr. Edward Teller, probably the nation’s most vociferous lobbyist for continued nuclear testing, came to the University of Texas to deliver a series of scientific lectures, but spent much of his time attempting to convince non-scientific laymen that “smog is more dangerous than fallout” radioactivity’s chief damage to date is in the creation of worry ulcers a nuclear war “need not be worse than” other kinds of wa r “people will be more realistic about war when they are properly sheltered.” Three UT executives, all scientists, joined him on a five-man television panel show. Teller and his UT allies obviously preferred to talk about the “exciting peacetime uses” of nuclear science. But Dr. Blake Smith, a well-known Baptist minister and the fifth member of the panel, kept bringing the discussion back to the problem of nuclear fallout from testing and human fallout from nuclear war. The reaction to Smith’s questions was sometimes strong. Dean William Hagerty of the college of engineering toward the end of the show remarked on his “repugnance” to people “who roll over and play dead just because somebody drops a few bombs.” UT Vice-President Norman Hackerman, who worked on the atomic Manhattan Project when Teller did, said he objected to the panel moderator’s introducing Smith as the one concerned with the humanistic point of view and the moral question of nuclear warfare. Hackerman complained that that sounded like the scientists weren’t interested in those things. Teller himself added, turning to Smith, “I hope you have found that all of us have strong moral standards.” Dr. John McKetta, chairman of the chemical engineering department, said the danger from radioactive fallout has been distorted, primarily by newspaper ballyhoo. “Suppose at the present time we had just discovered natural gas or coal and found, by burning these in the laboratory, that they gave off a great deal of carbon dioxide,” said McKetta, smiling at Teller, “would we have lots of newspaper articles saying we shouldn’t use them because they expelled millions of tons of carbon dioxide every day?” Teller liked the analogy, adding, “Carbon dioxide and many other things we create, smog, these things are more dangerous than the fallout. . . . World-wide fallout does cause a small number of mutations, but 1,000 times less than in nature’s plan. . . . Without mutations we would not be human, we could not adapt ourselves. Most mutations are harmful, but there are some useful mutations, Ramsey Scorched grow as it could and should have grown during Ramsey’s “long reign as premier of the Texas Senate,” tax revenue would have been high enough from that and other sources to avoid throwing the burden on the people in general. Texans “have been hung with this tax so that powerful eastern oil and gas interests could escape natural resource taxation,” he said, adding that he would spread this word throughout Texas during his campaign. Wheatley narrowly lost in his race against Leon Thurman of Anson for the legislature last year. for that is how the development of the whole living world has come about.” War Is ‘Thinkable’ When Smith suggested that nuclear war is “really unthinkable,” Teller put in quickly, “It is not unthinkablewe must think about .it. Smith came’ back, “What I’m concerned about is that the people of the earthof Americacould pull the moral rug out from under the whole business of nuclear war. War is horrendousour enemy is not Russia, nor are we hers, but the enemy is war. Eisenhower said nobody wins in a war of this kind. . .” A Teller: I don’t understand. Nuclear war will be different from other war in one way. Nuclear war comes very much more suddenly. I think in other respects it need not be worse than other wars. America has been lucky because war has been far away. Our boys were involved, but the country itself was away from the main points of disturbance. The population was safe. War has become now such a widespread possibility that the next time the people will suffer. Apart from this, there is no change. . . “As far as the Russians not being our enemies, I don’t know what that statement means. . . . They have said repeatedly and clearly that they want to conquer the world. . . . As long as the Russians want to impose their system. . . . Smith: “I’m not saying that they are not our enemies in this way. . . . Teller: “. . but unless we are prepared for a war, to recover from the blow, and unless we are also prepared to strike back if necessarywe are just going to cease to exist.” Thrusts at Pauling Referring to the arguments of such scientists as Linus Pauling and Harrison Brown of Cal Tech, both of whom contend that fallout from nuclear tests already carried out have threatened the health of thousands of people around the world, Teller said that “in fact, danger hardly exists at all” from controlled nuclear experiments. He said that the strength of natural radiation varies from place to place, being rather heavy in Denver, compared to San Francisco, for example. “Those who preach about fallout don’t tell you this,” he said. “Should we warn people to leave Denver?” He smiled and waved away the idea of fallout danger. A few days before the television show, Teller had got in another thrust at his arch foe Pauling. At a press conference called at UT, Teller told newsmen, “Pauling is always right when he talks about chemistry. In other fields he is not always right.” This was in reply to a newsman who had said Pauling estimated it would cost $100 billion for even minimum shelter protection from nuclear fallout, and that it is uncertain what good even that costly program would do. On the contrary, said Teller, full protection could be achieved for any about $18 billion “and full protection is not needed everywhere. A decent, well-balanced program of civil defense, even including stockpiling machinery and food in a safe place, would cost no more than $40-$50 billion; I don’t know. We shouldn’t try to do it in a year. But even if we had to spend $100 billion, and even if we had to spend it in a yearto argue against doing it is defeatism.” Might Prefer Shelter Teller used the press conference also to tout the benefits of community shelters. He said he does not have a home shelter and he doubts their value in congested urban areas. Shelters for at least 1,000 people, the shelters being built within a five or 10 minute walk of that many people, are ideal, he said. He said such shelters would be relatively cheap, costing about $100 a head. \(This would be a layout of $2 million for a city the size of Austin, at least $10 million for Houston, at least $6.5 million gested using part of the defense budget for building the shelters. And how long would we have to stay in them? “Maybe half an hour. Maybe when the fallout is heavy, two weeks, but not all the time during those two weeks.” Anyway, added Teller, “After an attack, our cities will be destroyed. There will be no place to stay. Maybe people will want to stay in the shelters.” What if the bombs dropped on us were designed for maximum fallout, with cobalt jackets? “I don’t know, but I think we could survive even maximum fallout. What the attacker wants is not to destroy life but to break military power, so his reliance will be on blast and fire. “Bacteriological warfare ? This has been a possibility for years. Not even Hitler used it, because it served no military purpose. I think no one will wage war except for military power.” China Just Nuisance Asked if he had any information about Red China’s progress with nuclear research, Teller said he did not have, but even if China gets the bomb it will be of no immediately great importance. “It will increase their nuisance value,” he said. “It will change their power position only if they can produce bombs in mass and vehicles to carry them in mass. Probably for years to come, China will be tunable to do this. It is a distant worry compared to Russia’s immediate threat.” It was at the press conference that he got off his joke about fallout, a joke widely quoted in the daily press: There are two medical hazards from fallout: the ulcer gotten from worrying about fallout, and the ulcer developed from worrying about people who worry about fallout. He smiled and the press corps laughed politely. Here as elsewhere under questioning, Teller was optimistic about war: “We can survive a war,” he said, “and can even win a war in the sense that after the war our way of life will be secure.” One newsman asked how a layman could judge between the experts: Teller and Dr. Willard Libby, a Nobel chemist, claiming that the danger from fallout has been overemphasized; Pauling and Brown claiming it cannot be overemphasized. “If you pressed them \(Pauling would admit we are ‘basically not too far apart.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 Oct. 20, 1961 1,00 Newsweek magazine has pushed former Gov. Allan Shivers’ name back into politics. “No one knows which party brand he’ll wear,” the magazine said, but predicted Shivers will oppose senior Senator Ralph Yarborough in 1964 either as a conservative Democrat, if no other conservative Democrat steps forward, or as a Republican. ISam Wood, in his “Capitol A” column, says a good rea son Price Daniel will go for a fourth term is that it would put him ahead of Shivers. Shivers served three elective terms and part of a fourth as the successor to Beauford Jester. A fourth elec tive term would give Daniel the all-time championship. He would be the first Texan to serve as House speaker, senator, attorney general and governorfour times. Political Intelligence ior A person close to Will Wil son described the attorney general’s visit before the state Democratic executive committee as “dropping the stink bomb at the ladies aid.” Wilson challenged Daniel to announce his political intentions. Sources close to Wilson say he believes Don Yarborough will seek the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and that he believes he must have Daniel in the race to gain a spot in the runoff. poor Ed Pooley in the El Paso Herald-Post says Daniel run for a fourth term. “No Texan, including such great men as Sam Houston and Jim Hogg, had ever accepted a third term.” He said