ustxtxb_obs_1955_12_28_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Bartlett Appears Exclusively in The Texas Observer Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. -1-JEFFERSON ‘Mustn’t Tell the Passengers–They Might Lose Faith in the Ship’ Superviied .7feecing -Information the Observer has leads us -to believe it imperative that grand juries convene immediately on the failure of U.S. Trust & Guar.” anty. Ralph Yarborough is correct in asking that citizens’ juries, instead of political committees, investigate this latest fraud on the people of Texas. It will be well remembered that the letter proving Congressman John J. Bell took large fees from veterans’ land deal promoters was in the hands of the Senate Inyestigat-. ing Committee last session and would have been suppressed had the Observer not dug it out of the file in which it had been re-buried. There are many shocking asspects of the U.S. Trust Case. The Insurance Commission was told by state auditors twenty months ago that the company was probably insolvent. `\\,\\Thy did the commissioners let thousands of Texans pour $\(I,800,000 into the company after that warning? -Why did they let the owner of that company talk them out of a state audit that year ? Why did they not insist the companybe closed down after they formally found it insolvent and its records falsified in Ttine, 1955 ? \\Vhy didn’t the Attorney General bring. suit against the company in July, fully informed as he was at the time that it was broke and surely knowing that Texans were giving it $20,000 of their savings every day? \\\\Thy , after finding Cause to revoke its permit to, operate in June, did the Insurance CommissionerS fair to revoke. it at the announced Jtfly hearing ? . AA/flyafter finding its advertising entirely falsedid the Commissioners not call in the Federal Trade Commission at once? Why did the commissioners not tell the public ? Why was nothing done between July 5 and September 15 of this year ? The .commissioners failed to “inform reporters of a private audit and proposed n e w management ‘agreement for U.S. Trust between July and September. Why did. they keep this under wraps? Was there something wrong with it that made them want to hide it? It is now clear that the State of DECEMBER 28, 1955 Incorporating The State Observer, combined with The East Texas Democrat Ronnie Dagger. Editor and General Manager Sarah Payne, Office Manager 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-class 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 Texas has. supervised the liquidation of the savings of thousands of Texans. _Drew .PearsOn is ‘responsible for the trust many people put in “U.S. Trust.” He should never have rec, omended a _security = an investment AV1I1101.1t being absolutely sure. The Observer warned him .in May that the company was shaky and had “retained” senators, as the saying .goes, but Shoemake satisfied him the company was good. Pearson made a tragic error. But it is not for Insurance Commissioner Garland Smith to rebuke him. What incredible incompetency on Smith’s part ! and the other commissioners! To have an insolvent company, .to see it taking in millions of dollars from trusting innocent people, to have full authority to close it at any time, and to let it go until $6 million is investedthat is, at least, negligence that defies understanding. And the senators ! Paid by Shoemake, and defending him from bank examinations ! Paid by Shoemake, and supposed to be representing the people ! Carlos Ashley of Llano, Jep Fuller of Port Arthur, and, as the facts prove out, every other senator -Shoemake retainedliberal or conservativeshould be thrown out of office for this flagrant violation o , f public ethics. We know there were others. Their names will come out. A hundred and fifty thousand Texans will see to that. ear oi .7ruth This has been the Year of Truth. for Texas state government : a year of the land scandal, the Giles bribes, the “fees” for a Congressman and state senators, the lobbyists’ expos; ure, the insurance failures, the gifts extracted from state employees by their department heads, now . the failure of a bank-like Texas firm with m Or e investors than any Texas bank. It has been a year of dismal revelations about dismal public ethics. Let each public man work that 1956 may bring to the people a government of honor and honesty, pride and .scruple, a government that does something for the people instead of to them. 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 Goree, Burnet; John Igo, San Antonio; Franklin Jones, Marshall ; George Jones, Washington, D.C.; J. Henry Martindale, Lockhart ; Dan Strewn, Kenedy ; Jack Summerfield, Austin : and others. Staff cartoonist: Don Bartlett, Austin. Cartoonists : Neil Caldwell, Austin ; Bob Eckhardt, Houston : Etta Hulme, Austin. MAILING ADDRESS : Drawer F, Capitol Station. Austin. Texas. EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICE: 604 West 24th St.. Austin, Texas. Phone 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: 2501 Crawford St., Houston, Texas \(Mrs. R. D. Randolph, director, subWHAT THEY \(This was written during the last session of the Legislature but was not published then. Instead the Observer sought to document the feeling in the lobbyist issue of May 23. Here, at end of the year of truth for state governmenl, is AUSTIN I think back now on what they taught . me at Bonham elementary and Thomas Nelson Page junior high and Brackenridge and I realize that the schools of Texas cheated me as they are cheating my younger brothers now: They taught me about good old Stephen . F. Austin, Davy Crockett, the War with Mexico, and then somehoW my remembrance of what they _ taught me trickles. off into nowhere.’ No Jimmy Allred. No Pappy O’Daniel. ‘No Texas Gulf Sulphur. No Humble Oil. No Coke Stevenson. No ‘Texas Regulars. No Hother Rainey.. No Brown and Root. No nothin. How many: Texas school’ children come out of their schools knowing What goes on in Austin ? Do you know ? I will tell you, thenlet me be your ‘teacher for a time. I tell you that here in this city of beauty and charm and. fine Texas Mexican -foods men are bought and sold like cattle in Fort Worth, wornen’s furs in Dallas and women -in veston. I tell you that a senator sat at dint ner the other night and told me of the time ‘two years, ago when an industry known as oil paid $75,000 trying to get a bill passed and they paid it to_sena… tors. Twenty-One of them, the lobbyist told the senator. I tell you that men come to this Legislature and work here for prominence and stay up late at night with lobbyists for the sole purpose of be-; coming lobbyists themselves. I tell you that our laws are written in oil company towers and insurance, ..company offices and loan sharks’ back rooms and committee hearings are farces and the votes a dance of strings. I tell you these things because they keep talkitag in the Senate when they’re a little drunk about passing a fairtrade law for bribery to stop the members from selling out too cheap. I tell you these things because your teachers should have told you and they didn’t because the booksellers and bookbuyers and superintendents and businessmen, on the schoolboard would not let them tell you. What a lousy stinking. place _this . beautiful city is when the Legislature is in ‘town. R.D. Death Blow? …. The Huntsville Item endorsed Jimmy Phillips for governor and said Price Daniel should stay in Washington. …. The El Paso Herald-Post opposed a proposal to puta “highway use tax’ on El Paso cars with the argument that Texas oil should yield enough tax income largely from nonTexans who use. it to pay fo highways and other things. “But the oil -‘owned Legislature would never allow such imposition on foreigners, instead at its last session it voted ‘a penny 4 gallon, 25 per cent, increase in the gas tax which is paid by Texans. The Oil Administration in Austin recommended that and the oil.; owned Legislature weitt along, -naturally,” said the editorial, …. Gov. Shivers’s appointMent of land scandal crusader Wiley CheatBarn as 24th judicial district D.A. “has pretty well silenced” his critics who say he has tried to cover up. the scandal, thinks the Corpus Christi Caller. .,… The Dallas News says Jimmy Phillips is right that every detail of the land. scandal must be cleared up. “Possibly someone will question why charges . until he became a candidate for governor,” said the News. But, “ff the new investigating committee is not on the job, it should get on the job.” Trxas Ohorrurr I DON’T TEACH