ustxtxb_obs_1957_06_14_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

71r “fic, ,,..W.1gvar AgirMoripoplft ‘ 4101.10404,4wf4r. A VERY RISKY STRATAGEM AUSTIN By now perhaps it has tacked its way into the labyrinthine intelligences of the state’s “secret bosses” \(to use the phrase of the liberalwas their stratagem to have the Texas Senate increase the proposed pay hike for legislators to $7,500. Underfed members of the House of Representatives set the sum at $4,800. Liberals who have never been known to order a $2 steak when paying their own bills voted against $7,500 a year ; and they expected the Senate to come back with something like $3,000, so maybe a compromise of $4,000 could be worked out. The Senate, by a vote of 18 to 12, decided on the higher figure. Probably the House should have insisted on $4,800, the voters being as leery as they apparently are ; but the prospect of a living wage so overwhelmed them, they accepted the Senate amendment. Considering the complexion of the august upper chamber \(Carlos Ashley of Llano, president pro temtion of its uncommon generosity is Machiavellian. We have therefore since adjournment posted in the Forest Rangers’ tower and scanned the horizon forclues. ‘The first one came from Houstcn, where Gov. Price Daniel, although committed in advance to annual sessions and annual salaries, implied he might not “campaign” for the amendment in 1958 unless the October special session passes certain other reforms. This is a tenable position for him to take, all right. If the legislators won’t require themselves to register when appearing, appropriations knife tucked unobtrusively under the belt, before state boards and agencies, why should they be given a pay raise? If they won’t require the lobbyists to reo -ister and tell what they spend, why should they be rewarded by the people? Or so, apparently, went the Governor’s thinking. There is, however, a discrepancy. The point of annual salaries is not to reward the legislators ; it is to protect the legislators from the lobbyists who are so willing to supplement their salaries. The point of annual sessions is not to bring the legislators into Austin to peddle influence ; it’s to give them time to think their way out of the miasma the influence-peddlers diffuse. One wonders, therefore, on second, or third, thought, whether DREW PEARSON on The WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND WASHINGTON To most city people, farm parity is about as important as last year’s baseball scores. However, Sen. Lyndon Johnson of Texas recently issued some figures on paritythe relation between a farmer’s income and his outgo coststhat may help to explain tooth-gnashing in the farm belt. The Texas senator noted the folcowing price increases to farmers since 1947, the first back-to-normal peacetime year after World War II : Gasoline is up about 19 per cent ; autos, 56 per cent ; tractors, 40 per cent ; ten-gallon milk cans, 70 per cent ; steel fence posts, 48 per cent ; 4-point barbed wire, 51 per cent ; poultry netting, 54 per cent. Senator Johnson then pointed out the following price declines \(since Wheat is down 25 per cent ; corn, 45 per cent ; potatoes, 41 per cent ; hogs, 42 per cent ; beef cattle, 20 per cent ; eggs, 30 per cent ; milk, 8/ per cent. DREW PEARSON Daniel’s hesitancy is not the whistling before the hurricane. Now CO MES Sam Kinch of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The amendment might save money on annual budgeting, but it would cost $1.7 million a year, he muses. It might tempt legislators to stay in town peddling influence ; it might even cause some ne’er-dowells to run for office! “Many,” says Kinch, “fear the $7,500-a-year salary may encourage those not worth that much in any other endeavor to spend full time campaigning for the . jobs; That might mean defeat of some of those present members who consider service in the legislature an honor not measurable in dollars and cents.” In other words, dear friends, plain people might run for office and, worse luck, win. What .then would become of the Austin Club set who “consider service in the legislature an honor not measurable in dollars and cents” because they’ve …. Atty. Gen. Will Wilson may now be considered the No. 1 prospect for opposition to Gov. Price Daniel next summer. He has been cagy about this, but he has also \(in his decision against the bill to register integration advocates and his considerable attention. Reliable reports drift into the Observer office that Congressman J i m Wright, Weatherford, may also be considering the race ; he would have Lyndon Johnson’s blessing. The Dallas News said Daniel told a closed meeting there last week he has no ambitions beyond his present job. …. The News, incidentally, said Wilson’s Galveston crackdown was “overdue,’! continuing : “As long as the laws are on the books they ought to be enforced. Texas can’t haYe one set of vice statutes for 253 counties and another set for one.” …. Who will run against old Ben Ramsey ? The assumption now is that the Lieutenant Governor will seek his fifth term. \(The News hints now that interim Sen. William Blakley may be urged to opup as possible contenders for Ramsey’s job have included Sens. Bill Fly, Jarrard Secrest, and Ottis Lock, but their consideration was predicated primarily on the idea that Ramsey wouldn’t seek re-election. More realistic speculation involves Sen. Charles Herring, Austin, and Rep. Barefoot Sanders, Dallas. Herring, visiting Yarborton, was asked about his plans and said : “I am only running to be a private citizen although I have enjoyed my work in the State Senate.” Sanders hasn’t fed any fuel into the flames, but he is “coming due.” He is a conspicuously successful legislator on. his own terms, and the question is, where does he go from here? …. With the legislators gone, parking spaces. on the Capitol ground have been reassigned. Price Daniel got one space ; Ben Ramsey got three. For actual power over the legislature, that’s about the right ratio between the jobs the two men hold. …. Elton Miller, writing in his weekly White Rocker in Dallas, says Sen. George Parkhouse “has voted against the people on just about everything that came up in the Senate.” …. Rep. James Turman, Gober, who pushed the teachers’ pay raise through the House, has accepted a forgotten the value of a dollar, to say nothing of a cent ? You see ? It’s dawning on them. Good Old Sam nevertheless concludes, “In all probability, the final answer is worth $7,500 a year in salary, plus expenses for a 120-day session in odd years, a 60-day ‘session in even years, and 30 days for any special session.” If you read carefully, you will detect an approving sniff of the idea at the nose of the shaggy dog. But Sam’s rather cool walking-around of the idea is another lift in the gathering storm. ADOPTION of the annual salary amendment would be a much more fundamental reform than the defeat of Ben Ramsey, the passage of the lobbyist control law, or the incarceration of Bascom Giles. Able men could run for the lawmaking offices without fear that their ‘financial losses would disable them and their families. The lowpay bias in favor of wealthy men who don’t need to worry about job as assistant to the president of Texas Women’s University \(forof philosophy in educational administration, will be back for the special session but won’t seek re-election. Rep .. W. S. Heatley, Paducah, a floor leader for Speaker Waggoner Carr, is also reported quitting the legislature. …. Rep. Joe Pool, Dallas, will run against GOP Congressman Bruce Alger if he gets any encouragement. Rep. Leroy Saul, Kress, The Listening Post plans to run against Sen. Andy Rogers, Childress. …. Sen. Henry Gonzalez, San Antonio, says he commuted a total of 23,000 miles between his home town and Austin during the last legislative session without missing a day. He is considering opening an import business, possibly boning up on his law books and taking the bar exam he skipped after graduating from law school. …. Lyndon Johnson’s June 5 newsletter to constituents begins : “If you want to have a friend, be one.” …. Business Week’s startling cover feature on George and Her man Brown of Brown and Root \(“In front as builders, backstage as broth and books for the family would be reduced. The extra 60-day . session in even-numbered years would give the legislators the time they need to conduct their own studies of state taxationa prospect which paralyzes the TMA with dread and sets Ed Clark off to talking engagingly of what a mess Eisenhower’s making of it and wouldn’t it be nice if the labor boys would begin behaving like gentlemen … We have lately been treated to the best performances of the state’s “modern conservatives,” Texans all, men who want “No Help from Washington” \(except for drouth and floods and things like that wondering whether their conservatism isn’t getting a little bit too modern. We mustn’t start treating the legislators like ordinary citizens they are, after all, or ought to be, well-bred sorts, like Lord Shaftsbury, devoted to the people in a genteel sort of way. We fear that George Brown, and Herman Brown, and Judge Elkins, and their agents in the legislature, will have to be “dragged shrieking into the Twentieth Century” like the “modern Republicans” themselves. R.D. review of their business interests ; but politics was handled gingerly. They have “actively backed and financially supported” Allan Shivers, Democrats for Eisenhower, some conservative Southern s en at or s; “they have also backed Lyndon J ohnson.” “Every Texas governor for at least the past 20 years has sought their counsel and support,” said Business Week. ….H. M. Baggarly, tough Democratic editor of the Tulia Herald, says that the new Secretary of the Treasury, Bob Anderson of Vernon, called himself a “conservative Democrat” and was highly critical of Roosevelt and Truman, changed to a “Democrat for Eisenhower” in 1952. When Eisenhower appointed him Secretary of the Navy it was called “bipartisanship,” just as when Oveta Culp Hobby was named wel fare secretary. Then, moving to Connecticut, “he registered as a Republican !” Baggarly explodes. “Why .didn’t he pose as a ‘con servative Democrat’ in Connecticut as he did in Texas ? …. It isn’t that he changed his political philosophy, two political parties in Texas as long as the Republicans can participate in Democratic primaries, conventions, and otherwise sabotage the traditional party of the state.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 June 14, 1957 AUSTIN There has fallen into our hands \(curiously, immediately after the appearance of the June 7 issue containing Mr. Sherrill’s article on ble research document, “Survey of Teachers Salaries, 1956-1957,” published by the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, in Chicago. This document, most of which is made up of tables and graphs, is a state-by-state, city-by-city survey of teachers’ pay patterns. It notes that while only ninetenths of one percent of U.S. teachers make $10,000 a year or more, the figure for physicians and surgeons is 41 percent ; for lawyers, 28 percent ; for dentists, 25 percent ; for architects, 18 percent ; and for a category called “authors, editors, and reporters,” 10 percent. Teachers in big city high schools “should be paid $9,400 a year in order merely to have the same buying ames Pop Up in Political Pot On Teachers’ Pay power that their salaries had in 1904,” says the study. Big-tity rates in Texas \(before the $399-a-year ton, $3,400 to $5,700; Dallas, $3,500 to $5,900; San Antonio, $3,450 to $5,525. National income per capita has increased 55 percent between 193940 and 1953-54, but the average teachers’ salary is up only 12 percent for the same period, a graph records. The number of teachers teaching with substandard certif icates last fall in the U.S.: 89,400. Texas teachers might not be able to join the American Federation of Teachers, if they would, because of the absence of a law securing teachers’ tenure rights in Texas. Many of them also apparently feel that teachers as professional people ought not to join unions like ordinary working people.