ustxtxb_obs_1955_12_07_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

CL, MUILINAX WELLS ANNOUNCE THE REMOVAL OF THEIR OFFICES TO Suite 1610 I.C.T. Building Commerce and Ervay Sts. . Dallas, Texas Phone: Riverside 9051 AND THE OPENING OF A BRANCH OFFICE 905 Littlefield Building, Austin, Texas Phone: GReenwood 7-6830 OTTO B. MULLINAX L. N. D. WELLS, JR. CHARLES J. MORRIS HOUSTON CLINTON, JR. OSCAR H. MAUZY DEC. 1, 1955 AUSTIN The 68-member Texas delegation to the White House Conference on Education in Washington last week filed a formal dissent of “unalterable oppo4ition to federal aid to public schools”1and a dissent it was, both from the two-to-one opinion of the convention and from the immediate promise of the Eisenhower Administration to ask Congress for more federal assistance for classroom construction. In the final conference ‘report, representing a “concensus” of the views of the 1,800 delegates, it was stated that of those favoring federal aid, an “overwhelming majority” approved the use. of federal money for school construction. The delegates divided almost evenly on use of federal funds for operating schools \( paying teachIt was agreed “almost unanimously” that there should be no “federal oartrol” of the schools. Administration of f e d era 1 aid Money “should be through the appropriate, state agency for education,” the report said. “Federal aid should never be permitted to become a deterrent to state and local initiative in education.” In his message to the conference, President Eisenhower said that the federal government will have to step in if necessary to prevent “a lack of schools in certain important areas,” but that “if we depend too much on the federal government, we will lose independence and initiative.” Marion Fo 1 so m, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, told the delegates at week’s end that the Administration will ask for more federal aiel Tjor classrooms. The nal report of the conference said a substantial majority felt that some states do not have sufficient financial resources to take care of their schools’ essential needs ; a majority agreed that all states and territories should ., eligible for federal funds “ony _on the basis of demonstrated needs.” “`A. very small minority was opposed to federal aid for education in any form,” said the reportand -there was a story. IN THE ORIGINAL conference call to the states from Washington, it was specified: “Governors or their designated officials will determine the composition of state conferences.” Local meetings were held in Texas: AUSTIN The official voice of medical doctors in the South*est, is now on record for a campaign against smoking and “even an abolition of the use of tobacco.” This is the first time an official medical journal has taken a stand against smoking. An editorial in the December issue of Southwestern Medicine, official journal of the Southwestern Medical Assn., condemns tobacco as.a cause of many symptoms in the lung and cardiovascular system and .a factor in “cough, hoIrseness, sore . throat, nasal discharge, dizziness,, deafness, visual disturbances, and a hos t of other -complaints.” Statistically “it has been shown,” said the editorial, that any man past 50 years of age who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day has 50 times as much chance of developing cancer of the lung as a non-smoker and that “in 700 cases of lung cancer, only nine were non-smokers..” The editorial continues : “Cancer of ‘the lung causes four times as many deaths in men, and two times as many in women as it did 20 years ago,,and .in 1953 . it caused 22,000 deaths in this country: “It has. been estimated that the risk of cancer of the lung from five to 15 times greater in the_ sinoker than in the non-smoker. With` all this accumulated evidence, how can we as phy, THE AID cities to select delegations to the Texas Conference on Education. In Houston, bitter contention occurred at the local meeting. Opposing delegations were elected. However, before the state conference, State Rep. Ben Glusing, who was a legislative leader for Gov. Shivers’s program last session and a member of the steering committee of the Texas conference, said that anyone who came to the Texas conference in Austin could attend. The 70-member’Texas delegation in Washington was announced by Dr. Edwin Rippy, conference chairman. It was appointed, not elected. Statements by its members last week from Washington confirmed that it was “90 to 100 percent against federal aid to education.” In his address to the conference, Shivers said : “I have never seen federal aid given without some measure of control. Federal control in the field of education would be disastrous … Help from the outside should come only when … every possible source of revenue has been examined and deyel-oped.” Thomas B. Ramey, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, said in an address: , “I agree with the statement made by Governor Shivers If \( federal and if an institution as important and indispensable as our . public schoDls should become a suppliant at the door of the Federal Treasury, then I fear greatly fOr the preservation of that kind of democracy which we have cherished …” The “Citizens’ Workbook” for the Texas conference did not mention the possibility of federal aid in its discussion of the issue, “How can we finance our schools?” However, this sum-up on the issue appeared . in the preliminary report on the discussion groups of the state conference: -“School support should be provided by local districts and -the state. By far the majority of opinions expressed on the subject of federal aid was favorable to the idea of Texas caring for its own, educationally speaking. Any_ ., federal aid. voted for the schools should be without federal control.” In the final concensus of reports from state senatorial district . confer sicians still feel that the tobacco habit is innocuous! Nicotine is an alkaloid, one of the most toxic known. It increases blood pressure; it increases pulse rate; it contracts peripheral vessels ; it reduces . gastric motility, and undoubtedly has many other detrimental actions. It is obvious that cigarette smoking cannot but aggravate coronary heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, such as thrombo-angiites-obliterans; and last but not least, it certainly cannot help an upset indigestion ; but we as physicians .still continue to smoke. “… Day. in and day out we preach cancer prevention. However, when we realize that, when we simply paint the shaved backs of mice with tobacco tar, we produce epidermoid cancer. in 44 percent of the mice,. how can. we rationalize our own use of tobacco, our practice of condoning the tobacco habit in our patients. “… It has been adequately proved that tobacco can really do us no good from a physical standpoint, and that tobacco’produces only harmful effects. It is time that the medical profession becomes at least consistent and begins to exert preSsure to bring about a decrease and even an abolition in the use of tobacco.” DEBACLE ences, two statements were published. Statement One, page five : “Mixed reactions were received regarding federal aid. None of the conferences wholeheartedly endorsed federal aid. Several of them were absolutely opposed to federal aid, except in areas that have large enrollments because of the nearby location of feder ally connected installations.” Statement Two, page eight : “Nearly all conferences recomneeded.” The week before the White House Conference, the convention of the Texas Classroom -Teachers As’sn., with 19,000 members, called for federal aid for emergency public school construction with its administration under the’regular educational authorities within the states. .The Texas State Teachers Assn., with 60,000 members, adopted a committee report that included the statement.t , “… school construction should be a local project unless there can be federal assistance without restriction.” W HEN THE TEXAS delegation arrived in Washington last week, it decided to write a resolution against federal aid to education, period. Dr. Rippy handed this resolution to the conference chairman just before the final session. He asked that it be included in the proceedings and be made a part of the final report. This statement read, in part: “We are unalterably opposed to federal aid to public schools. Under the traditional American system of education, the administration and control of .our .public schools are state and local ‘community functions. Likewise, the support of the schools is a state and local community ,;-resRonsibility. “Under this tradition, -our nation has developed the foremost educational system in the world … “It is inevitable that federal aid to schools will, seriously diminish the power of states and local communities to control and administer their own public schools. At the same time, dependence upon federal aid will inevitably reduce the incentive of states and local communities in maintaining direct responsbility and interest in the education of their children. “We believe that if ‘the several states and local communities are enabled and encouraged to utilize their full potential for the support of their public schools, there will be no need whatsoever for federal financial assistance to them. We are confident that if federal aid is not thrust upon them, the states and local communities can and will fully assume their responsibilities.” This report was written by a Rippyappointed committee of which Ramey, the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, was chairman. The others : Rep. Glusing, Kingsville; Mrs. Maybell McDaniel, Fort Worth, president of the Texas Classroom Teachers Assn. ; Dr. W. T. White, superintendent, Dallas Public Schools; Read Granbery, executive assistant to Gov. Shivers ; Judge Earl Sharp, Longview; and State Sen. George Moffett, Chillicothe. The Texans noted that educators drafted the final report with the federal aid recommendations and the “very small minority” comment about those unalterably opposed to federal aid. \(The two who wrote the final concensus were Mrs. Pearl Wanamaker, State of Washington school superintendent and a former official of the National Education Assn., which has been attacked by conservatives; and Dr: Edgar Fuller, executive secretary of the Council of Chief State Some of the Texans thought the conference had been “infiltrated with educators.” Mrs. Earl Maughmer, parliamentarian of .the .Houston P.-T.A., said the educators outnumbered the lay people three to two and that the meeting was “rigged” for federal aid. Dallas school superintendent W. T. White said. he didn’t think it. was rigged. “I just feel that anybody felt different about it from the way we \(the Texas -Dr. Rippy Says Integration Of Schools Is . Inevitable AUSTIN Dr. Edwin Rippy, board president of the . Dallas schools and chairman of the Texas delegation to the White `House Conference on Education, said in Washington last week that school integration is inevitable. “I clOn’t believe anything is going to can take either of two courses. It can conclude that our schools should be desegregated. Or, it can sit and do nothing until foreed to do so by the courts. It seems to me that the first course is the preferable one to follow. ‘Then we’ can see that the transition is made in an orderly fashion.” Umlauf Complimented _ AUSTIN New York critics have compli.: mented Charles Umlauf’s one-man exhibition of sculpture at the Vassadoit Gallery ‘of New York City. Umlauf, a University of Texas art professor and acknowledged as the state’s leading sculptor, installed the show and attended its opening earlier in November. Howard Devree wrote in the New York Times that Umlauf’s latest work has greater emotional impact than his earlier pieces. Devree found “Entrance . Into Jerusalem” . one of the most convincing modern statements of a Biblical theme that he recalled, “with something of the simple dignity, of paintings by the Sienese primitives.” Among Umlauf’s animals, Devree said his -“Steer” reminds one of “some of the magrrificent Cretan sculpture of antiquity.” Carlyle. Burrows of the New York Herald Tribune said the show was impressive. DOCTORS OPPOSE SMOKING The Texas Observer Page 5 Dec. 7, 1955 Texans at White House Conference Oppose Federal Aid To Education; Report Calls Them ‘Very Small /Minority’, ti