ustxtxb_obs_1956_07_25_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau Ot.loto Ohotrurt 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. An Independent Liberal Weekly Newspaper Vol. 48 TEXAS, JULY 25, 1956 10c per copy No. 14 State Offices on Line Saturday AUSTIN The Democratic voters of .Texas go to their school .houses and fire stations SatUrday to ‘vote for the men they want to run Texas government and politics for the next two years. Precinct conventions will decide whether the loyalists who won the Presidential conventions of May. or the forces that have been led until recently by Allan Shivers will control ‘the..Texas. Democratic Party. In .the backgrourtd is the question of the replacement of the Shivers-appointed State Democratic Executive Committee at the Septeiriber ,state convention. At the stake in the first primary is the direction of the state government DALLAS The Observer has learned that Joe Belden sells his “Belden Poll” on the governor’s race to private interests, including politicians, and will not publish another one before . the election. It is also understood here on good authority that the last BeIden Poll, completed about two weeks ago, showed Ralph Yarborough first, W. Lee O’Daniel second, and Price Daniel third.’ A reporter quoted a Daniel sup porter as saying that a Belden Poll privte party and showed Daniel first, Yarborough second, and O’Daniel third. Joe Greenhill, Daniel’s campaign manager, said Daniel didn’t buy it, and he, Greenhill, knows nothing about it. . The Observer understood that this poll was offered to some daily newspapers and was rejected for publication, but Belden has an entirely different explanaticin. Belden says categorically that he Drouth Aid Awaited AUSTINFarmers and ranchers across .Texas are waiting’ to see what U.S. Department of Agriculture officials will do about a drouth :relief program for the state proposed by the newly appointed Dropth Emergency. COmmittee. . Kenneth L.. -Scott, U. S. D. ‘A. director of agricultural credit service, is ‘studying the:plan’ Which calls for aid to TeXas farmers . in purchasing feed and roughage. The prOposal is that certificates for .$1 or More be granted for each 100 pounds of feed or -roughage needed, with county corn-. mittees -todetermine those eligible and their needs. . The proposal was sent to Scott by Agricultural Cornmissioner John White with a letter saying that “longrange emergency credit is needed deSperately…..we need more than just enough to keep our livestock alive. The farmers and “ranchers must have extended credit and loans or they can’t . afford to participate in any program,” White wrote. Karnes County Judge W. S. Pickett,’ chairman of the D.E.C.; charged that grain and feed dealers associations are principal opponents of some drouth aid programs. “Their objective is to keep us from receiving anything . free for’ fear that it might cause them some :loss of sales,” Pickett declared. in areas of public ethics, labor-management relations, state taxation, social welfare, states’ rights, and integration of the schools: Most voters have probably made up their minds, but the candidates -let fly With last-minute -sensations, nonetheless. J. Evetts Haley charged that Price Daniel flew into Austin in a “private corporation” plane and conferred with Governor Shivers at the Mansion, leaving the ‘same night. has not offered the poll to any newspapers in the last three weeks and that whoever buys it is prohibited from publishing it. “Two months before the election we stop doing anything publicly,” Belden told the Observer. He said the newspapers can’t pay enough for it, and “there is a great demand for it commercially, and a greater opportunity for a profit.” He said he sells it to candidates or people interested in candidates. “Weye done lots of work for Allan Shivers in years past and for Senator Johnson … they’ve bought it theinselves.” Had Senator Price Daniel bought it this year ? he was asked. “We’ll have to let him tell you ‘yes or no’,” Belden replied. . AUSTIN For four years Ralph Yarborough warned the people of the Austin corruption. At some points even his friends thought he was too insistent, too persistent… The veterans’ land and insurance scandals, permanent stains on the history of Texas, have finally convinced all right-thinking people that Ralph Yarborough was right. When the people went to their conventions last May, they had to choose between Allan . Shivers and his corrupt . administratiOn on one hand and Lyndon Johnson and the loyal Dernocrats of. Texas on the’ other. They rejected Shivers and all his cohorts by a margin some say was ten to one. Standing. with the people in this decisive verdict was one, and only one, of the six gubernatorial candidates. His name again was Ralph Yarborough. We have been close students, of the governor’s race here at the Observer. We have personally interviewed every candidate; we have followed every important issue; we haVe trailed the major candi 7 dates around on the stump. It has almost gone out of fashion to be for “the people,” but when one “He was driven to the back door of the Governor’s Mansion that night. He conferred with the Governor was flown out of Austin. Shortly thereaftcr he announced for Governor I know this because the man Who took him told me so,” Haley said. The Observer contacted Haley at Odein, and he said he was certain that the report was correct. “Daniel still has plenty of time to deny it, but all Texas knows by now he hasn’t got the guts,” Haley said. Ralph Yarborough spoke to 1,500 followers’ at Fort Worth and was interrupted 15 times for applause. He noted the Daniel billboards advertis–Mg the “junior senator” as “b9st for Texas.” “They made a mistake there,” Yarborough said. “They Should have said ‘best for the Texas Company’.” Daniel said at Kerrville that “Walter Reuther and the northern and Eastern . CIO” are trying to elect their candidate for governor,” who, he said, “is the. same one the CIO supported last time.” He also showed his workers in Kerrville a photograph of Reuther presenting a check for $75, 000 to the N.A.A.C1P. Yarborough charged Daniel has a $1,250,000 fund with which he is blanketing state radio and television the last week. Daniel said the figure was incorrect and is actually $12,500. Daniel had Fess Parker, the Texas actor who played Davy Crockett in the movie and on television; on a sifts through the stacks of notes and cliPpingS. for the essential element,, a real love .of the people is -still the best, decisive trait in a candidate. Never, at any pOint since the race took form, .has.,there been the faintest doubt that Ralph Yarborough is the people’s candidate. Price Daniel, who joined Shivers in . supporting the Republican nominees in 1952, says he is “best for .Texas’,”. and Yarborough. quite accurately insists that he should have said, .”best for the Texas Cotnpany.” W..Lee O’Daniel says he’s’ the “Cointhon citizen’s candidate,” he who tried to burden all the people of Texas with’ a two perCent sales tax on everything they bily, he who voted Republican in the Senate more often than any Democratic .senator from 1942 to 1948. Reuben Senterfitt wants the support of the oil millionaires but can’t get it, since Daniel has it. J. Evetts Haley is as candid an Arnerica-firster and an extremist right-winger as’ O’Daniel is a devious one. About the only good that has come out of the clatter from these various contestants for the Shivers mantle has been an occasional quite startling revelatiOn. Just last week, Monday night television program that was presented on stations all over the state. W. Lee O’Daniel boasted he’d win without a runoff. “When I sell thein they stay sold,”. he said “I learned that ixi the f tour business.” Daniel asked hoW “a man” \(O’Dan-, Golden Rule”, and then “seem to be’ trying tomake it appear that . I’m still a member of the Veterans’ .Land Board.”, 0 Reuben Senterfitt charged’ that Daniel “sold out” Texas conservatives to get the backing of Lyndon Johnson by avoiding “any mention” of the May or July political conventions. Senterfitt said he had been approached by agents of the highestget him out of the race. He said he refused. J. J. Holmes said he knows ‘who killed Sam McCollum III in the carbombing at Brady. He also said he is for integration of the schools. Contacted about this at Mathis by the Observer, he added : “But I’m not trying to be the candidate of the nigger race.” Several Rotarians walked out on Haley at Beeville when he . said the Supreme _Court integration decision is “pure blasphemy.” Others applauded. The head of the Young Democratic Clubs of Texas, Rep. Edgar Berlin, announced the group asked all candidates for governor if they would support the DemOcratic nominees: “Ralph Yarborough was the only gubernatorialcandidate who gave us an unqualified pledge,” Berlin said. \(See pages 4, 5, and 8 for other for example, Historian Haley, who knows a fact frorn a fancy and does not confuse them, revealed that Daniel .flew into Austin in the .dead of night to confer with Shivers, sneaking out of town the same night a n d announcing shortly thereafter. Daniel is , the approved Shivers candidate,there is no doubt about that. This isia time for Texas.citizens to right, at the ballot box, the wrongs that have .been stored up in their Austin government. They cannot do it by voting for the Shivers-heir Or the demagogue O’Dan,iel. In this hot and dusty summer of 1956, Ralph Yarborough, a Christian gentleman,’ the only steady Democrat in the race, a friend of workers, farmers, and small business, the champion of a fine, progressive program f o r Texas, is the symbol and the personification of this state’s future. He lead into a runoff’ by a good margin and win going away. We will vote for him proudly vote for him to return to Austin a sense of the public honor, a responsiveness to the general I,N-elfare, and a simple love of and membership with the people which have been lacking here for woe, these many years. Shivers-Daniel Meeting, Money, CIO’s . Role Are Hotly . Debated Belden. Sells His Poll Ral p h W riorough, An Editorial