ustxtxb_obs_1957_05_07_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

Roberts, Rogers, Secrest, Smith, Willis, Wood. Senator Hardeman, San Angelo, then declared the bill passed to its last reading by voice vote. The Senate adjourned for one minute to avoid the need for a four-fifths vote to take the bill up for final passage; on a new day, two-thirds is enough. But there were two surprises on the motion to take the bill up. In. the first place, Senator Smith, Lubbock, voted no, after having o p p o s e d the Kazen amendment. Lane turned to him on the floor and said, “You change your mind?” Smith replied to him, “You’ve got enough votes.” But they didn’t. The second surprise was Senator Floyd Bradshaw, Weatherford. Bradshaw ran on a segregationist platform, but he had been impressed by the arguments of the filibuster. He was truculent with Lane, complained about beings rousted from bed for the voting, and actually voted no on bringing the bill up. After the roll call the secretary told presiding officer Hardeman the vote was 15-9. This would have meant the bill was not brought up, since it lacked the two thirds. The opponents of the b ill popped out of their seats all around the chamber and called out, “what’s the vote, Mr. President, … What’s the vote, Mr. President?” Hardeman would not announce it. Lane explained to Bradshaw about the meaning of the vote; he said, “the next step will be final passage.” “You mean, the next step will be conviction,” Bradshaw replied. Bradshaw then said he had not understood the vote and changed his vote from no to aye. The bill was taken up 16-8. An amendment by Lane correcting a typographical error passed 18-5. At 2:16 Gonzalez announced he I had a “bona fide” amendment, and Hardeman help up the prof ceedings while he made the nec’ essary two copies of it. The amendment provided for public Ihearings of the local school boards on pupil assignments. \(“It would be possible to have secret meetings under the present wordfor a no vote. Gonzalez won a majority, 14-10, but two-thirds is required for an amendment when a bill is on final reading; so it failed of passage. Voting aye on the Gonzalez amendment: Ashley, Bradshaw, Gonzalez, Herring, Hudson, Kazen, Owen, Phillips, Reagan, Roberts, Rogers, Secrest, Smith, Willis. Voting no: Aikin, Colson, Hardeman, Hazlewood, Krueger, Lane, L o c k, Martin, Moffett, Wood. So, after 36 hours and 25 min! utes of continuous debate, House Bill 231 was finally passed. Hari deman refused to permit a record vote. \(Senator Willis, Fort Worth, I demanded one, but Hardeman told him sharply: “I’m running this, set down,” and slammed ‘ vote passage, Hardeman permit! ted the recording of the no votes. Again there was another surprise: Hardeman himself voted no. Recorded against the bill on final passage: Ashley, Gonzalez, Hardeman, Herring, Hudson, Kazen, Owen, Reagan, Smith. Also present in the chamber at the time of the vote: Aikin, Bradshaw, Colson, Hazlewood, KrueEfer, Lane, Lock, Martin, Moffett, Phillips, Roberts, Rogers, Secrest, Willis. Wood. Reported absent at the time of the vote: Bracewell, Fly, Fuller, Moore, Parkhouse, Ratliff, Weinert. WILSON WARNS GALVESTON ON CRIME would just raid and count the number of people gambling. The operator would pay a fine the next morning on that basis. Wilson said the next question that came up was the problem of how often the city was going to raid. It was finally set at twice a week. Since the operators were inconvenienced with having to come down to court twice a week to pay fines, it was finally decided that the oficers who made the raid could just take $5.00 a head.. At the time Wilson took over as district attorney, Dallas was collecting “about a quarter million dollars a year” from gambing fines. He said when he put a stop to it “it caused a little heartburn at city hall.” One of the gambling places decided to go ahead and operate. “We raided the place and got their books, and it turned out that the money they claimed they had been paying to raiding officers as fines didn’t coincide with the amount some officers had been turning in,” the Attorney General said. He pointed out that one of the gamblers closed down was Benny Billion, ex-Texas operator who now has a casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. “He , was about as well organized financially and otherwise as anyone in this part of the country, then and now,” Wilson meaningfully pointed out. Wilson discussed the gangland ble. He explained that a “vital part in gambling operations is the shill.” He goes out and gets his customers and friends to go up to a gambling joint and lose their money. Later the operator gives him a percentage of his winnings from the shill’s friends. Wilson said the Noble trouble started from an argument over shills. The syndicate had a set percentage it had agreed to pay shills, but Noble started paying one shill a bonus on the side and “another gambler named Loudermilk objected.” He said one thing led to another and one evening one of Noble’s men got out of his car and stepped into a fatal shotgun blast. A few days later Loudermilk GALVESTON Dapper, g r a yi n g, Sam per-echelon chief of the Maceo gambling syndicate, maintained a characteristic poker face as Attorney General Will Wilson branded isle gamblers as “professional criminals” and said their operations would have to stop. Peering f r o m behind dark glasses and leaning forward occasionally as though to listen more intently, Serio gave the impression of a man attending a Rotary Club luncheon in which he was really interested. Reporters were unable to learn whether he enjoyed it; he was quickly lost in the crowd when the session ended. He was not, however, among the more than 50 who rushed to the speaker’s rostrum to shake the Attorney General’s hand. A standing-room-only crowd of more than 500 jammed the Galvez Hotel banquet room to hear Wilson advise islanders to secure local enforcement of state gam, bling laws or else he would. Later in a hotel-room press conference with Sheriff Paul Hopkins present, Wilson said county gambling could be cleaned up in a “period of six or eight months.” Hopkins made no comment, but he and Chief Deputy Sheriff J. B. Kline went into a closed-door session with Wilson as soon as the press departed. Wilson was introduced by Owen D. Barker, veteran isle attorney who nearly 30 years ago served a single term as a crusading Galveston County attorney. He described Wilson as one of the most able men to appear on the state political horizon in many years and predicted “he’ll go even farther, if he wants to.” The Attorney General got a laugh with the the statement he had come “to speak on the more or less non-controversial subject of law enforcement.” He elaborated: “My purpose is to try to convince you that it is to your interest in the city and county to install and put through a program of law enforcement by local peo AUSTIN The record votes on the House bill permitting ocal boards to assign pupils by any of 17 different factors are important in that they indicate some members had some reservations about the bill’s passage or the procedures of its pas sage, although they finally voted for it. Senator Kazen held the floor 15 hours, and then Senator Gonzalez took over. At 5:31 the afternoon of the second day of the filibuster, after 27 hours and 31 minutes of continuous debate, Senator Lane moved the previous question. This motion was meant to prevent Kazen from taking the floor again after Gonzalez stopped talking; it was no motion to stop Gonzalez’s speech. The vote was a tie, 12-12, and Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey announced it: “Therte being twelve ayes and twelve nays, the chair votes aye. The previous question is ordered.” Voting yes: Aikin, Bracewell, Bradshaw, Cols o n, Hardeman, Hazlewood, Krueger, Lane, Lock, Martin, Moffett, Wood; the Lieutenant Governor. Voting no: Fly, Gonzalez, Herring, Hudson, Kazen, Owen, Phillips, Reagan, Rogers, Secrest, Smith, Willis. Present, not voting: Roberts. Absent: Fuller, Moore. Senator Gonzalez continued to hold the floor until 2:02 the next morning. Three minutes after he sat down the Kazen amendment striking the bill’s enacting clause It failed, 17-7. Voting aye: Ashley, Gonzalez, Herring, Hudson, Kazen, Owen, Reagan. Voting no: Aikin, Bradshaw, Colson, Hardeman, Hazlewood, Krueger, Lane, Lock, Martin, Moffett, Phillips, stepped into a similar blast, and “then his friends started on Noble. They kept trying to kill him. … finally injured him enough to send him to the hospital and then tried to shoot him through the hospital window,” he said. Noble was finally killed when a booby trap bomb was wired to his mailbox. “Dallas,” the Attorney General said, “has a lot of good, clean people, just like Galveston. But it happened there and it can happen here,” he warned. Wilson called on Galveston city and county residents to insist on gambling law enforcement. “Encourage your officers to enforce the law. Do it on election day and do it on the street by the way you look an officer in the eye, and in the jury box.” mer Chamber of Commerce president who advocates stopping Galveston’s “bad publicity” not by cleaning up gambling and prostitution but by removing incumbent M ay or George Roy Clough Wilson said Clough was “a fool.” Clough openly defends the open city. Wilson in his press conference said as far as he knew Galveston “was the only city where the mayor said he was going to permit violation of the law.” He charged it was “an untenable moral position to put on any man who takes office, that he will tacitly ignore the law of the state.” The mayor was ready with views on Wilson’s speech. “I was disappointed. I thought he would come . up with a solution. Things aren’t so bad here. All I can say, if they had all that crime in Dallas they must have had a hell of a police department.” Clough said that he didn’t “beclose up every beer joint and dice table in Texas. As far as the gambling is concerned, I don’t condone it but I inherited it.” So far as selling Galvestonians on the idea of changing their “open town” philosophy, the mayor said, “If they change their point of view I naturally would go along. Until that time arrives I’ll go along with the mandate the people have given me. “It would be unwise for him to send the Rangers in. You know there is gambling all over the state. It still flourishes in Dallas,” rapped the Mayor. Operating full blast as though blissfully unaware that Texas even has an Attorney General let alone that he was on Galveston Islandwere all the gambling joints in the county. As near ‘as interested newsmen could discover, not a single gambling hall, saloon, or bawdy house paused in honor of the occasion. A veteran gambler, asked if he was worried whether Wilson was going to stop gambling, explained, “Buddy, if I had got worried every time a politician announced he was gonna close down Galveston. I would have died of a heart attack 25 years ago.” AFL-CIO Rates e e ega ion AUSTIN The Texas State Committee on Political Education of the AFLCIO is circulating to Texas labor leaders a voting record of the Texas delegation for the first three month of the current Congress. Cong. Wright Patman, Texarkana, gets the best totting up from the union standpoint with 18 “right votes” and two “wrong.” Worst record, says labor, was recorded by Rep. Bruce Alger, GOP man from Dallas, who had “0-20.” Among “right” AFL-CIO votes were these: Cut vets’ reemployment rights, no; cut employment security, no; cut state unemployment comp funds, no; cut public assistance funds, no; adopt Senate version of Mid-east resolution, yes; investigate national money and credit policy, yes; cut other government programs, no. The AFL-CIO tallies, “right” votes first, “wrong” second: Beckworth 14-6, Brooks 12-8, Burleson 7-13, Dies 4-13, Dowdy 5-15, Fisher 5-15, Ikard 9-11, Kilday 11-9, Kilgore 6-14, Mahon 713, Patman 18-2, Poage 7-12, Rogers 6-14, Rutherford 3-17, Teague 7-12, Thomas 2-18, Thompson 1010, Thornberry 11-9, Wright 12-8, Young 12-8, Alger 0-20. May 7, 1957 ple to eliminate the organized criminal element.” He charged that Galveston has “become a symbol of defiance of the law.” Wilson says he doesn’t believe in or want central police power, but that he wanted to make it clear that “the right of local selfgovernment doesn’t give the right to set aside state laws. As Attorney General, it is my duty to see the law enforced. I’m not here to discuss or consider the matter from a moral standpoint. I’m speaking as a state official.” Wilson then attacked what he termed the “open town myth,” which is “the foundation stone of organized crime nationally. This is a ruinous myth for every city where it has been allowed to exist has soon or late paid a terrible price,” he warned. He traced briefly the history of syndicated gambling in New York, Atlantic City, Chicago, and Bob Bray Kansas City, and the rackets’ un dermining of democratic process es of local and state government. Allowing organized gambling to exist, he said, “brings in a class of *professional gamblers, and any one who makes his living by illegal pursuits is a professional criminal by legal definition.” He stated that of all the cases where gambling had been allowed to exist, there was no example of its being successfully regulated and controlled. As a former crusading D. A. in Dallas he related how gambling had been out of control in Dallas County before he took office. He said that in 1946 two gambling syndicates were operating in Dallas with a total of 27 gambling spots. The city had “tried various licensing schemes,” periodic raids, and then fines in corporation court, with each fine based on the number of people who were gambling in the establishment at the time of the raid. “This caused a good deal of trouble,” Wilson recalled, “to take all those people to the station.” It was finally decided that officers THE RECORD VOTE ON H. B. 231 The Attorney General Look Out, He Said The Attorney General offered “to any and all officers whose heart is in law enforcement the power of ‘my office. I want to commend your sheriff, Hopkins. I think he’s a good officer and his heart’s in the right place.” He called on Hopkins and other officials and judges” and all citizens to “fix it where the community of Galveston doesn’t have a percentage of professional criminals.” In attacking the theory of an “open town,” Wilson said that only a small part of the money