ustxtxb_obs_1956_11_21_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer Daniel as Governor Zir Touts Milarrurr 6 Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON `Well, Back to Being a Democrat!’ For . more than four decades Texas has accepted the moral responsibility of making sure that workers hurt on the job are protected during their ensuing helplessness. In the . beginning, in 1913, the Legislature guaranteed the workers 60 percent of their weekly salary. But -as years wore on, the legislators forgot. Today, with six to nine hundred deaths on the job every year and .a quarter million injuriesthe average disability payment required by the state is only one-third of the weekly salary. Now you take a man with a wife and kids, lay him on his back, send him doctor bills, keep his wife home from her job to care for him, and It has been a difficult season for Price Daniel, for he has at once had to make excuses for .his failure to perform on,a solemn promise to the’ voters and keep GoVernor Shivers from appointing a Republican to the Senate seat. Had he resigned firmly early enough to assure that Shivers would not appoint. .the. senator before. thT organization of the new Senate, he would have given Shivers a chance to call the election for Nov. 6, when the Republican candidate would have had his best chance. Had he resigned anytime after this possibility had become moot, he would have invited Shivers to call a tardy election and appoint the Republican,. or semi-Republican, who would have denied the Democrats their Senate majority. So he has been hemmed in, and he is now bound to try to Snatch from Shivers the right to appoint his successor. .He should get himself sworn iriat one second after the midnight chimes of the fifteenth so Shivers,. a possible candidate himself, won’t have a chance to appoint the successor. We are glad Daniel will still be the senator January seventh to cast his crucial organizational vote with the Democrats. Not, however, that it makes a great deal of difference for the destinies of the Republic. Senator Johnson is only slightly less alarming than Senator Knowland, the Republican leader, and while the Democratic leadership in the Senate includes some enlightened men, it also elevates to committee chairmanships a padk of Southern bigots and backwards who ‘do not even remotely approximate the, temper of the country. , Incorporating The State Observer, combined with The East Texas Democrat NOVEMBER l i956 Ronnie Dugger, Editor and General Manager Bob Bray, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager OBSERVER MAILING ADDRESS 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE SJA Associates P.O. Box 2246, Capitol Station, Austin, Texas 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 8, 1879. Staff correspondents: Ramon Garces, Laredo; Clyde Johnson, Corsicana ; Mike Mistovich, Bryan ; Jules Loh, Central Texas; Jack Morgan, Port Arthur ; Dan Straw -n, Kenedy ; Al Heiken, Houston ; and reporters in San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso, and Big Spring. Texas Baptists in convention in Corpus Christi this month backed up this recommendation : “We urge our people to seek a true interpretation of the teachings of the Bible pertaining to race, rejecting those misinterpretations of certain Bible passages which are used to justify race prejudice.” Yet it is true that some of the areas of deepest race prejudice in Texas are coincidentally areas of the Baptists’ greatest strength. We hope the Baptist ministers in those areas have the strength to preach what they profess, so that their communicants will practice what they preach. Staff contributors: Franklin Jones, Marshall; Minnie Fisher Cunningham, New Waverly; Rob -ert G. Spivak, Washington, D.C. John Igo, San Antonio ; Edwin Sue Gorse, Barnet ; Drew Pearson, Washington, D.C. ; and others. Staff cartoonist: Don Bartlett, Austin. Cartooniats : Bob Eckhardt, Houston ; Etta Hulme, Houston. 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 spirit. MAILING ADDRESS: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. EDITORIAL AND ‘BUSINESS ‘OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Atustin, Texas. TELEPHONIC in Austin : GReenwood 7-0’740. HOUSTON OFFICE: 2601 Crawford St, Houston. Mrs. R. D. Randolph, treasurer. AUSTIN Shed for the year of the wearying dodging and dissembling of the political candidates, people given to fond visions of a better Texas can turn now to the hard work of helping’ the Legislature confront the state’s real problems. We hope liberals will let recent storms abate enough to see what kind ,of governor Price Daniel is going to make and ,what kinds of things he is going ‘to stand for. If we had to limit our expectations to simple projections of the campaign oratory,,the outlook, while not entirely bleak, would be disheartening. There were vague promises to fight integration, even ‘where the school districts want it. Daniel the candidate declared .war on union labor, orthe very least that can be saidthe chilled customers running his campaign rattled the saber at his side, and he did not unstrap it. But we nurse the hope that Daniel, like Beauford ‘Jester, will rememb6r the people when it most matters that he remember them. If it is possible to separate the .symbols from the substance of his campaign \(that is, to pitt aside, dow that the fight is over, his unfair tactics, and look steadily at find a prospedt fora kind of admin. `astration that will be remembered, not as liberal, but as progressive, in just about the same way the Jester administration is remembered. In his opening speech in March, Daniel mounted forthwith the ignoble symbols ridden to a dead sweat by his predecessor. “Certain out-of-state leaders of , the ADA and NAACP” were threatening Texas, he said. The “‘other ,pressure groups” of that gambit became “the CIO” as his campaign f altered. But look at what Daniel also said in that speech : That he wants a strict lobby registration law, listing of legislators’ retainers and tither income sources, and prevention of legislators from practicing law before state boards and agenciesa determination that is turning lobbyists against him now, because he has not backed down from it; That he wants school ‘improve, ments, including new construction and teacher salary and retirement increases, “with’Texas money,” a qualification some of us think impossible of fulfillment, but which will put Daniel and the states’ righters on their mettle to perform or shut down the organ stand ; That he is for stricter regulation of corporations endowed with public interest, especially insurance, loan, securities, and investment firms, a promise which, if carried out, could clip the wings of the vultures of desperation finance, end the era of legalized loan sharks through “credit insurance” and “investment” certificates; That he is for continued improvements in the . state ‘hospitals, whose still subhuman standards this newspaper will survey ‘presently; That he is for a program of better industrial safety, which could mean an end to the state’s callous neglect of the rights of injured workers and , the need to correct the conditions that lend to their injury; That he wants higher pensions for the aged in actual need ; a water conservation program, with, federal aid; and “simple honesty and moral integrity in the halls, of government.” In the course of the campaign he refused to give his .tax, plan except to say he will “tap some untapped resources and cut out some waste in government.” Surely he cannot think of consumers as an untapped resource; the people, through sales taxes, pay half the state’s revenue now. What, then is he thinking of ? A careful readi ng of the tax, laws suggests he is thinking of industries not now taxed. To be sure, he takes the traditional provincial stand on the ‘depletion allowance, oil imports, and state-supported monopoly prices for crude oil through the Railroad Commission. But. what Texas politician doesn’t? So, let us wait and see. A man cannot erase from his record appeals to the prejudice of fearful whites and the avarice of unionhating employers; but he can build a record that makes the blots . seem smaller. We wish Price Daniel well in’this. We hope you do. RONNIE DUGGER Pit t nui :kit his pay two thirdsand he loses the family savings, then the car, borrows money, and sees his family degraded before his eyes. It is not “socialiStic” to insist the state has a responsibility ,in such casesthe Texas Legislature said -so 46 years ago. If it has any responsibility, then it has a full responsibility to protect. such workers from poverty and defeat. .. There are two routes for such protection : 1″ First, the compensaton maxi mum must be raised to 60 percent of the worker’s wagesabout’ $45. Second, the state Must adopt a meaningful s t ate industrial safety program, with heavy penalties for offenders. Obviously, to raise the maximum payments involves increasing the insurance premiums the employers must pay. But raising these payments and at the same time undertaking , a real safety program, with an adequatelyfinanced agency to enforce it, would simultaneously help the workers and the employers. Finally, the Industrial Accident Board, in some ways the most farcical state agency in .Austit3,must be adequately financed and its members replaced or reformed. As it is, , it is nothing but an administrative arm of the insurance companies. The disgraceful overt partisanship of its members in their pro-com-. pany “awards” and callous denials , of the claims of injured workers is part of the philosophicall ,corruption of the government as third party, as the choSen agent of the public good, which we have been suffering in Texas for years. i njured WorherJ