ustxtxb_obs_1955_10_26_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Bartlett Appears Exelsesively in The Texas Observer The Pied Piper Tvats Mbsgrurr It is time, clear friends, to call a spade a spadefoot toad. Already the engineers of the Ramsey conspiracy against a modern Texas have sent out reports that it’s all settled and to struggle is futile. Already the big four of the old, old harmony game, Johnson, Shivers, Ramsey, and Rayburn, are emitting wounded bellows at the commoners who hold out for the ancient principle that honorable men should express their honorable differences. It is a storythrice told, a story of multiple political bossism among strange bedfellows, a story that we are sick of, and want to hear no more. The Ramsey conspiracy, hatched by Johnson, Shivers, Ramsey, and Rayburn, reads like this: Get the liberals to go along with Ramsey as national committeeman, using his technical loyalty to the Democratic Party to camouflage his yeoman work for the special interests in Austin. If they accept Ramsey, they accept Shivers, even if they Then send to the national. Democratic convention a “moderate” delegation, led by Shivers and Ramsey, pledged to a favorite son or uninstructed, with the aim of stopping Adlai Stevenson. This will demoralize the Texas liberals and give Shivers and Ramsey such a prominent role at the national convention, they will find it much easier next summer to maintain the control of Austin by the big interests for which they are shepherdsoil, gas, sulphur, Brown and Root. The Democratic Advisory Council meeting November 4th in Waco is now the focal point of this conspiracy. Brought together there will be the tough liberals of many decades of political struggle in Texas. If they can be persuaded to accept Ramsey, anybody can ; if they give in, the war is over. Let it be said now in all candor that a real fight is shaping up for November 4th. If the D.A.C., appointed largely with the approval of the Democratic bosses of Texas, but still essentially independent, still idealistic, goes along with Ramsey, and thereby with Shivers ; abdicates its responsibility to organize the precinct conventions for liberal policies in Texas; meekly hands over to Johnson, Shivers, Ramsey, and Rayburn their right to democratic audience at the national conventionthen D. A.C. is dead, and the fight only becomes deadlier. It is a tragedy that Texas leaders, so long in service, so honored by October 26, 1955 Incorporating The State Observer, combined with The East Texas Democrat Ronnie Dugger, Editor and General Manager Bill Brammer, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager 4 Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request Extra copies 10c each. Quantity orders available. Entered as second-claps `matter April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the act of March 3, 1879. We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy; we will take , orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the-interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. their countrymen, should think that by this sorry maneuver they can blind the people to the continuing corporate control of Austin wifich is the secret fact behind the long Texas struggle. It is good to honor the high and the great only until they forget they are chosen by the people and bcome the high and the mighty; then it is time for a renewal of democracy. . One could go back into the history of Democratic politics in Texas to find other weaving of this same basic pattern of bossism. Not since 1950 has a really top-flight Northern or Eastern Democrat been permitted to speak in the State of Texas under. Democratic Party sponsorship; other efforts to establish real political organization for liberalism in Texas came to a thudding end at Salado in December, 1953, when the Democratic Organizing Committee was scuttledyes, by many who now know the error. The new, nationallyappointed Democratic Advisory Council unanimously voted that Adlai . Stevenson be invited to speak at a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in the fall of 1954, but for some reason, he did not come. Why ? It takes no clairvoyance to guess. Lately, however, the D.A.C. has been acting a bit too independent. It has been passing resolutions against Allan Shivers \(which, for some mysterious reason, do not get publicized and do not get distributed to ing. “It’s time to show them where the power is,” the bosses must have decided ; ergo, appoint Ramsey \(an incredible thing, true, but it can be done by this strange political leadership which so easily plays on both Now the question is : will the D. A.C. submit to this political indignity? Will they accept a’man who sits in his San Augustine law office and mutters about “the niggers,” who even the Austin American admits runs the Senate of Texas with “an iron hand,” who fights all industry taxes and approves all sales taxes on the people, who stacks all the Senate committees against the right of workers to organize unionswfio is, in sum, a Reactionary with a capital R ? It is a basic challenge to the integrity and independence of the Democratic Advisory Council. Its meeting on November -4th will settle whether it can be trusted with the tasks of a progressive democracy. If it cannot, there are other forms and there are other means. Staff Correspondents : Bob Bray, Galveston; Anne Chambers, Corpus Christi; Ramon Garces, Laredo ; Clyde Johnson, Corsicana ; Mike Mistovich, Bryan; Jack Morgan, Port Arthur; and reporters in Dallas; Houston, Beaumont, El Paso, Crystal City, and Big Spring. Staff Contributors: Leonard Burress, Deep East Texas ; Minnie Fisher Cunningham, New Waverley, Bruce Cutler, Austin : Edwin Sue Gores, Burnet; John Igo, San Antonib; Franklin Jones, Marshall ; George Jones, Washington, D.C.: J. Henry Martindale, Lockhart ; Dan Strawn, Kenedy; Jack Summerfield, Austin ; and others. Staff, cartoonist: Don Bartlett, Austin. Cartoonists : Neil Caldwell, Austin ; Bob Eckhardt, Houston ; Etta Hulme, Austin. MAILING ADDRESSt Drawer P. Capitol Station, Austin, Texas. EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: 2501 Crawford St Houston, Texas \(Mrs. R. D. Randolph, director, subAUSTIN The new line of the Texas conservatives is to send a “centrist,” or, if you prefer, a “centerist” Texas delegation to the national Democratic convention in Chicago next year. Allen Duckworth puts it rather unceremoniously in the Dallas News : “There is talk of ‘moderates’ in the an attempt to control the Texas delegation to the next national convention. Extremists on both sidesthe far left wingers and the ultraconservatives would be dumped.” The daily press has taken up this thorns. With a harmonious alacrity. “Centrist” 7 is Raymond Brooks’s word; “centerist” is Leslie Carpenter’s ; “moderate” is Harry Provence’s Carpenter, however, let his fiddle slip in the Sunday Houston Post. Wrote he: will lead Texas Democrats who don’t like for their party to go off into either extreme of political views.” -I am not very good at nursery pe rhynitleler. week then, neither is Les Car Last eek the chairman of the Rayburn Day in Port Worth festivities invited one Allan Shivers to be cohonoree with Rayburn at a reception Thursday before the dinner for Rayburn. Whatever else may be said about the Governor, there are some -public displays which are beneath his dignity ; he refused.. What does this campaign against “the extremists” mean? For one thing, the followers of Wright Morrow are already lost to the conservatives in Texas. It is safe to talk with impunity about dumping deck hands who jumped ship three ports back. For another, the liberal Democrats . of Texas are not knuckling under like good little Democrats should to Ben Ramsey as national committeeman. Who are these “far left-wingers?” Well, members of labor unions, and Negroes, and Latin-Americans, and Fair Dealers, and ADA’ersesPecially “ADA-CIO-P-A-R-R.” Together they constitute 40 or 50 percent of the Texas electorate. Or 50 or 60 percent, Who knows or cares ? They are left-wingers, and why tolerate ’em? They want slum clearance and equal rights and better wages and more state services, just like Roosevelt and Truman did ! Dump ’em, man! A strange refrain, this, coming from the political leaders of a people who voted for Roosevelt and Truman five times. R.D. The Hatch Act By Countryside and Town NEW WAVERLY One W. B. Prendergast, associate professor pf government of the United Stales Naval Academy, is so interested in the case of Curtis C. Wil, son and his ‘Judas Goat’ letter to the Washington Post that he has written nearly three columns about it. Gentle Reader, you will remember this Mr. Wilson is a TeXan who for 29 years has served Uncle Sam as a railway mail clerk in the Post Office Department. You may also remember that in the heart of the campaign last year he did write this letter likening our handsome young Governor to a ‘Judas Goat.’ That is the critter who leads his kind to slaughter but steps aside himself and lets his followers go on to their fate. It seems that Wilson saw a likeness there because the governor led some people who trusted him right into the Republican trap.while he tried to stepaside and call himself a Democrat. He also said, “No one respects a renegade. Let’s send Allan Shivers Home.” A mild enough statement. But for these words Mr. Wilson, who, as a government worker; comes under the Hatch Act, was suspended from his job for 90 days \(economic being an American citizen and moreover a Texan has properly appealed to the courts ; and an injunction has been granted him which keeps him in’ hi4 job pending a judicial review by the Civil Service CommiSsiorr. Now comes Professor Prendergast and quotes . the Hatch Act ; not what somebody says the Hatch Act is, but the very Hatch Act itself, towit: “All such persons shall retain the right to vote as they may choose and to express their opinions on all political subjects and candidates.” Selah and so mote it be. Let thwe flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON oveatter 4th A t I