ustxtxb_obs_1956_03_21_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Bartlett Appears Exclusively in The Texas Observer OPEN LETTER Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON Please Beg Me od 01 Pa wry If it weren’t so funny we would take old nippy seriously. Wilbert Lee, as most Texans now know, is a second-string deinagog -ue who sold out the people he promised silver and gold. When:he was governor he worked for the sales tax and tried to get the people to write into their permanent law a ban forevermore on taxes on oil and gas. He was an original Texas laborbaiter, and he stacked a Board of Regents with know-nothings whose folly is still in harvest at the University of Texas. Then he lit out after Franklin Roosevelt and he went to Washington and disgraced the state. St eeper3 Lobbyists seemto be in a bad way these days. Ben Ramsey, former chief defender ‘of the special interest spokesmen, says he is for lobbyist regulation. Price Daniel; w’ho has never before, to our knowledge, demonstrated the slightest interest in the rampant special interest spokesmen in the Capitol, is now hot for lobbyist control. Of course the leading “outs” are for such reform, and it looks like it will be hard to stop. There is, however, still one factor in the formula that could prevent lobbyist reform : the lobbyists. James Hart’s careful and telling .dissection of interposition can not pass without comment. “I am a Texan born and bred . and I believe in that I have as much pride n Texas as any man,” he saidbut “Texas cannot go it alone, and neither can the South. We are and must be one united nation.” This is a time when all thoughtful Americans are worrying about the future for the union. William Faulkner goes so far as to ‘say that Southerners are ready to fight another civil war in the full knowledge they will lose. Men like Shivers,. Shepperd, and Daniel seem willing to risk a deep and lasting fissure in the national morale for their own political advancement and the preservation of an obsolete system of injustice. It is h time for speeches like Hart’s, a time for courage from every enlightened leader we have.. TEXAS, MARCH 21, 1956 Incorporating fhe State Observer, combined with The East Texas Democrat Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Sarah Payne. Office Manager Publisneu once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity orders available. hlritered 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 bard 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 an 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 It’s all in the record books. The old-timers remember. We of the younger generation, who know of Pappy’s biscuits-passing through the folklore of Our elders, have not lost the capacity for surprise when a man announces his personal ambition on a platform of the Ten Commandments. It. would’ be allright if he were Moses, but otherwise it takes a lot of gall to appropriate Christian doctrine to your own mangy aspiration. Still, O’Daniel brings to the elections this year ‘precisely the yeast they needed : a cornball, strictly from hunger. Who knows, he might win. Texas is a powerful strange state. p ore Reuben, All meh of kind heart and gentle spirit will pause a moment to share a sob with Poor Uncle Reuben from San Saba to the West. Two years ago the Speaker. sanncturiced for governor and they double-crossed him and ran -Shivers again, even after he had put every school teacher in Texas to the knife for them by opposing an adequate pay raise. Now he has to rtin against Senator Daniel, whom he finds to to so much like himself, he can’t stand it, so he says he isn’t at all like, him, either, only to have Daniel go out of his way to prove he is, too, like him, and now Uncle Reuben is in the very, very difficult position of explaining why he doesn’t like his likeness. Politics is so very cruel, and Reuben was so cruelly done! Verse Write Me a letter On whether you agree That I should come to Texas and Crusade like hell for me. Stingaree New Item for Platforms of Candidates for Public Office : The Legislature should pass a law permitting cities to exercise local self-government, which they are not now permitted to do if they want to co-operate with the federal government on an urban renewal-slum clearance program. 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 [go, San Antonio; Franklin Jones, Marshal] ; 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 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, subSUNDAY AFTERNOON Dear Senator Daniel : . I would have written sooner, but. it .didn’t seem to make much difference. I have always felt you were a man of good will. I have differed with you decidedly, as would most Americans, on your support of the Bricker Amendment and your opposition to foreign aid. I don’t think you displayedthe kind of sympathy for the underdog Democrats usually do when you opposed the public housing program. I don’t think you should have backed Eisenhower, but I wouldn’t doubt your right to do italthough yOu should have resigned as Demo.-cratic nominee for the Senate when you did. Now, however; I am somewhat shaken about your motives. Was it intellectually honest of you to paint yourself as the poor boy’s ca . ndidate the other . night? You and I know you fall heir to the millions that have backed Allan Shivers, and this, therefore, gave me pause. Was it intellectually honest of you to use the “ADA” and “NAACP” symbols? You know that liberals and Negroes are as entitled to ‘political expression as daughters of the American Revolution or Hugh Roy Cullen ; you know too that Shivers has used these same symbols to arouse race hate. This’ also gave me pause. Then you said, in. effect, that you .would fight enforcement of the Supreme Court decision in school districts that don’t want to live under it; that, in effect, you would give your loyalty to a school board before the United States of Aemrica. But you said before, about that decision, that we all should live under it. NOw that you want a new office, are you willing to trade the instinct of statesmanship for the votes of bigots? Senator, you tell us you want to be governor. I don’t think anyone would object to your having that , desire if you would resign your Senate seat and give everybody else a fair shot at it. Instead you are holding onto it, selfishly, it seems to me, while you run for another .office. How ‘do we know you don’t have some plan in mind to set up a Senate election or selection for Shivers or some friend of his? you say to us, I will . do my duty unless you tell me I don’t .have to. Then you act as though 25,000 letters would be a release from yOur duty to this state’s 1,500,000 voters. Finally you tell us that we must help the -School children of Texas “with Texas Money,” but you brag “about how you are trying to use federal money tv increase old Age pen sions. And you backed the federal -highway spending program. I can’t see anything in that but plain hypocrisy. Senator, I guess you feel you -owe it to Allan Shivers to save the state government from the Democrats. I guess you, or your public relations men, know what you are doing. But I don’t an-y more. Sincerely, THE EDITOR BLACKOUT \(The Austin American has dropped Drew Pearson’s column on orders from upstairs. This makes the Pearson blackout in Texas almost complete the Temple Telegram is the ‘only daily that still runs him, to our knowledge. To illustrate the shamefulness of this state of affairs, we reprodtice herefrom the New Orleans Item of March 18an extract from the Pear son ,column as a reminder to Texans what hat their daily newspaper pub lishers are regularly preventing them from The selection Of Senator John 1 1 cClellan Of Arkansas .as chairman of the committee to investigate the gasoil lobby was the secret play which the Republicans and .Senator Lyndon Johnson had up their sleeves all along. McClellan’s laW firm represents various oil companies. This is stated in the authoritative law directory, Martindale and Hubbell, which also lists McClellan’s firm as handling the “general practice of oil and gas titles.” In addition, McClellan is on friendly terins*with H. L. Hunt, one of the three or four .wealthiest oilmen in the world, who got his start at El Dorado, Arkansas. McClellan is also heavily obligated to LyndOn Johnson. For during his 1954 primary race against popular Ex-Gov. Sid McMath of Arkansas, Lyndon got up for McClellan a peti-. “tion signed by more than 40 senators telling the people of Arkansas how important McClellan was to the U. S. Senate. This was in violation of the accepted rule that Democratic Senators ‘do not become involved in Democratic primaries against other Democrats. As chairman of the select committee it’s not likely Senator McClellan w ill issue any subpoenas that will disturb either Lyndon Johnson or Sen. Styles Bridges, the New Hampshire Republican who was so anxious to block the probing of Tennessee’s Senator Gore. It’s much more likely that McClellan will turn toward the probing of labor contributions. .alirt Texas Miturrurr