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Life Insurance Company in Texas with $1,000,000 Capital and Surplus Paid in Cash Prior to writing business August, 1954. To set a World’s Production record of over $33,000,000 in its first year. Over $43,000,000 LIFE INSURANCE IN FORCE AS OF DEC. 31, 1955. ST ST And Now Three Grand Juris Hit Officials Waco Group Says Commissioners Negligent; Others Scored from Austin and San Antonio lege o:f lawyer-legislators lative sessions so flag continuances would be left to the discretion of the judge. In a resolution, the committee took “cognizance of the publicity given to attorney-legislators receiving fees for the representation of clients directly interested in pending legislation and for the representation of clients before administrative bodies of the state” and added: “It appears that in some instances such fees may not have been legitimate attorneys fees, and such publicity reflects upon the moral integrity of the entire membership of the State Bar of Texas.” The group agreed that each lawyer and organized bar must co-operate “in purging the profession of the unworthy.” T.P.A. Changes Ad Handling “Herb Doctor”? LONGVIEW Did Matilda Clayton think a Harrison County”herb doctor” had her ‘ hexed with magical powders, he gave her ? Eighteen of the deceased 85-year old Negro woman’s heirs think so, and they are basin. -b their effort tobreak her will on the possibility. The strange case came to a head last week when Gregg County Judge E. Earl Sharp ruled the woman had been of unsound mind and refused to appoint the “doctor’ Rufus Williams, tempoary administrator of the estate. He said the woman had signed the will in the office of a Dallas attorney, with Williams present. Mrs. Clayton had an annual income from oil royalties of about $27,000. She left $7,000 to Williams in her will. AuSTIN The Insurance Commission, the Texas ‘Liquor Control Board, and influence-peddling in the Legislature were criticized in reports from grand juries in Waco,. Austin, and San An tcinio last week, McLennan . County’s grand jury re -turned two indictments against A. B. Sh,oemake, former head of U.S. Trust and Guaranty, charging him with the without a liCense after Sept. 6, 1955. The jury also said the insurance commissioners were “negligent” in not stopping such sales. Shoemake . ‘ engaged in “a definite pattern” of hiring legislators for “legal counsel or services,” said the jury, and most of the legislators so hired by company branch managers and paid by check earned their money. But the same might not hold true for Sens. .Carlos Ashley of Llano, Gus Strauss of Hallettsville, and William Shireman of Corpus Christi, said the jury. “These men were employed in Austin, Texas, and were paid in cash:All were retained during December , 1954, and January, 1955, just prior to or daring the legislative session,” the jury’said. Although it had “not been able to determine whether the payment of money to the -senators and legislators affected their action” on bills affecting Shoemake’s companies, the jury said, it concluded that in the’ case of the cash payments to the senators, “the senators admitted they did little or nothing to earn this money, and in some instances branch managers in their senatorial district were not even aware that the senators had been retained by Mr. Shoemake.”, Ashley got $10,000, -Strauss $4,600, and Shireman $3,000. Strauss had denied being employed by Shoernake to the Observer. Strauss is not running for re:election. Shirernan is. Ashley :doesn’t have to this summer. The Waco jury said of the Insurance Commission : “Whether or not the Texas Insurance Commission could have prevented the failure of U.S. Trust & Guaranty Co. and its allied corporations is problematical.” But the commissioners were ,”negligent in their duty to the people” when they did not stop the sale -of U.S. Trust draft certificatessafter Sept. 6, costing the investors perhaps 800,000, the jury .said. In San Antonio, a grand jury called “for padlocking of 300 “trouble making taverns” and commented: “We do not excuse the Texas Liquor Control Board of past laxness of enforcement.” AUSTIN The Texas Press Assn. will not handle political ads this summer, Vern Sanford told the Observer. Instead, Texas publishers have formed Texas Press Service for a clipping and adplacing service. Sanford, general manager of T.P.A., will hold the same position with the press service, he said. “We wanted to start a press clipping service,” he said. “The advertising phase will go to Texas Press Service. It’s not a new thing. When your volume gets so big you have to do something about handling it,” he said. Sanford faces two indictments from Waco’s grand jury charging he made unlawful campaign contributions to the campaign funds of Ben Ramsey during the 1954 lieutenant governor’s race. One charge is that he spent $41.25 in McLennan County July 25,’ 1954, and another that he spent $35 for Ramsey on June 25, 1954. Max-__ imum penalty would be ten years in jail and a $10,000 fine. The Texas Election Code makes it unlawful for any person other than a candidate , or his campaign manager or assistant manager to spend more than $25 for the candidate. Ramsey said under oath he did not know who authorized placement of t’he Ramsey ads in all T.P.A. newspapers, and that he did not do so. Sanford testified he had thrown away the records and didn’t remember. Saturday the board of directors of T.P.A. expressed “complete confidence” in Sanford’s execution of his duties. . Sanford went Sanford Indicted in Waco Over Ramsey Ads Payment again last Wednesday afternoon for three minutes, explaining to D.A. Tom Moore he had “something more” he wanted to say. The indictments were returned anyway. Sanford’s bond was posted by W.S. Foster, publisher of the weekly Waco Citizen, and Don Thomas of the Austin law firm of Looney, Clark, and Moorhead. Dean Abner McCall, foreman of the Waco grand jury, was chairman of a committee of attorneys that drafted .the present Texas Election Code. C. T. Johnson, who has filed a civil suit against Ramsey, Sanford, arid T. P. A. for more than $36,000 damages, alleges that Sanford placed ads for Ramsey in Texas papers and paid out about $11,500 for them. \(The Waco indictments were based on the Johnson went before the Travis County grand jury in this same connection. Emil Hahn, the foreman of that jury, said last week that Johnson’s appearance was “just politics” and was not taken seriously and that is being done to help Texas farmers, Daniel said. On the floor of the senate, the senior Texas senator said Texas farmers complain they’ve been “Bensonized. He said farm prices have fallen from 94 percent of parity to 82 percent of parity since 1953, crop and livestock prices have dropped 14′ percent, and net farmers’ income has fallen from $14 billion in 1952 to $10.3 billion in 1955. Added Johnson: The Secretary of Agriculture has reacted characteristically to these facts. At first it was denied that there was such a thing as a farm problem. It was said those who talk of a farm depression are misinformed. Then, after acknowledgment that such a situation exists, the trouble was said to have been inherited from ‘the previous administration. Then it was blamed on surplus, on incentives, on labor unions, and then, incredibly, on the farmers themselves. It was suggested that perhaps there are just too many small farmers, that many of them are simply not operating efficiently. This, then, was the , theTy of natural selectiona sort of survival of the fittest code. Mr. President, there are plenty of `fit’ farmers and ranchers in Texas, and many of them are just barely surviving. A friend of mine writes from south Texas that 80 percent of the ranch people are not making operating expensesthat all hog raisers lost money. in 1955. THE TEXAS OBSERVER MARCH 7, 1956 PABE 4 Administrator Coke Stevenson has agreed not to renew the licenses of the ZOO taverns complained of, the jury said. It called for tightening of state and city liquor laws. And it added : “We must include laxness, whatever be the cause, of other enforcement alkencies.” The Travis County Grand jury did not return any indictments ,after its lengthy hearings on U.S, Trust, but it recommended stiffer penalties for insurance law violations, a thorough study of lobbying abuses, and a code before the grand jury Home Office : 5011 Fannin, Houston, Texas AGENCIES THROUGHOUT TEXAS Affiliated with Western Indemnity Life Insurance Company of ethics as a guide for the personal and public behavior of all public servants. The jtitcy was “very close” to enough information fox indictments, jury foreman Emil Hahn said after the report was filed. Meanwhile, grievance committees of the State Bar called for a local committee crackdown on lawyer-legislators who may have taken fees they didn’t earn. Meeting in Austin, the lawyers also called for amendment of the mandatory case continuance privi WASHINGTON Senator Johnson recited a jingle to the Senate last week, not much as poetry, and therefore not reproduced, but ending with the observation that the Benson farm program “flexes only one way.” “And that one way, Mr. President, is down,” Johnson said. Johnson and otherDemocrats continued pushing for fixed. 90 .percent of parity price supports, which the President has indicated he may veto. Senator Daniel received a group of Texas Farmers Union representatives and told them he would continue advocating 90 percent price supports on barley, oats, rye, and grain sorghums, provided that cultivated acreage is reduced one-fifth by farmers of these crops. “Everything humanly possible” he, Hahn, thought Johnson was trying to strengthen his ‘civil suit. Russell Bryant, head of T.P.A. and publisher of the Italy News Herald, said the charges against Sanford -are “ridiculous and without foundation.” He blamed ‘the vindictiveness of a disgruntled, defeated candidate” who took his case “to another county, where he is not known, and to a politically ambitious individual,” before he got “serious consideration.” Sanford acted merely as an agent for candidates, Bryant said. He did not spend any of his own money for Ramsey. Johnson said he resented any implication that D. A. Tom Moore was motivated by politics. \(The Waco grand jury noted at the end of its report that Moore had been “free of political ficult” for him to see how the Lieuten:ant Governor didn’t see any of three ads placed in state papers on his own behalf. “The big boys who have been buyin.g elections will think twice before they do it again,” Johnson said. “The criminal part is what is rough. No one wants to go to the penitentiary.” He said his own motive was clean , government. He announced he will run again Sunday \(see page TEXAS ON FARM BILL