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AFL-CIO Merger firth of a Giant The cue great rule of coenpasition is to speak the truth. Thoreau Vol. 49 Orxr ’19 CA hstrurr An lir . Weekly Newspaper’ \(;.x AS, JULY 26, 1957 We will serve tw group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. Number 11 10c per copy LUCEY SPEAKS R LOWLIEST The Archbishop of San Antonio Has His Holiness, the Pope of Rome, Qone Socialist? AUSTIN After more than 20 years of separation, the AFL and CIO are about to become one labor movement in Texas. This week the state councils of some of the trades were holding their preliminary meetings. Next week about 1500 workers’ representatives take over the Austin hotels and the city Coliseum to weld together a state labor council that is to be known as the Texas State AFL-CIO. Al Heiken The event is pregnant with significance for the industrial, political and social institutions and customs of the state. Affective Aug. 1, the Texas labor m ovement undergoes a change and the echoes of that will be heard in the board rooms, in the union halls, across the campaign trails and under the capitol dome in Austin. Nationally, the fusion of organized labor’s two elements took place almost two years ago. State ‘by state, merger has continued since then. Bringing together two large, disparate and complex organizations and preparing them for organic union has been a tough and tedious job. The final operation, beginning with separ GALVESTON James A. Piperi, the attorney who once rose as a “friend of the court” in the defense of bartender “Chicago Joe” Slemensky, may Bank Fuss Nod To Come Aug. I AUSTIN Banking Commissioner J. M. Falkner thinks no decision is likely in the politically-potent Houston bank charter contropending before the Banking Board before Aug. 1, date of the board’s next regular meeting. Falkner said it may not be possible to arrange a meeting of the board’s three members, himself, Treasurer Jesse James and Atty. Gen. Will Wilson, before then. Two Houston banking groups, one led by Judge James Elkins, one by Harris VIcAshan, have asked the board for a charter to operate a branch bank in Houston’s new Meyerland Shopping Center. Lawyers for both groups filed briefs in support of their position with Falkner this week. ate conventions on Monday of the Texas State Federation. of Labor and the Texas State CIO Council, and concluding in the three-day merger convention, ought to be worth anyone’s close inspection. Labor unity is not just a grand generality. It is a product of a variety of specific adjustments, negotiations, agreements, tolerances. It involves at least some admirable sacrifices, in position, in pride and in advantage. It calls for a realization on the part of many that things aren’t going to be the way they used to be, that this is, indeed, a “new beginning.” By the terms of the merger agreement, the present State Federation received the privilege of nominating from its leadership the man who is to become the full-time, paid president of the Texas State AFL CIO. TSFL chose its executive secretary, Jerry Holleman. To the State CIO Council goes the right to’ nominate one of its top men for secretary treasurer of the new state labor organization. Theoretically, the choice will not be made until the council decides July 29. Practically, it would seem unthinkable for the CIO group not to nominate Fred Schmidt, its executive secretary, who has been one of the ‘key min in working out the state merger plans. Schmidt, however, is very careful to insist that the convention has yet to act and that, until it does, nobody has ittexico Suspects Yanqui-Oriented MEXICO CITY Behind t h e beaten tin masks of festival in the shops of Mexico is a hurt and hostile face. Down with the grngo, and rather particularly the Texas gringo, is still a first principle of successful MexiCan politics, even if it is now muted for the sake of the country’s annual tourist income of $400 million. One of the issues in the construction of the new American embassy here, we are advised by a smart young Mexican politician and social scientist, is whether the American library and the embassy should have the same, or separate, entrances. It is all right for a self-respecting Mexican politician to go to the library, but if it might seem he is also going to the embassy, he probably will not go at all. A people’s, attitudes have many levels and on each level many aspects, but in Mexico at least two levels are obvious. As a tourist the visitor finds few traces of Air Force Told Smyrl May Talk SAN ANTONIO A possibility that Col. James Smyrl of Lackland Air Force Base may get the public inquiry of Lackland’s recruit training center he seeks developed here and in Washington this week. Smyrl was relieved of his as chief of the only Air Force enlisted men’s training unit in the nation, at Lackland, by Major General H. L. Grills, Lackland C 0, because, he charged, Grills ordered him to pressure trainees into being paying customers of civilian concessions on the baseand he demurred. When relieved, Smyrl asked for a court of inquiry to which he could subpoena, and at which he could question, witnesses. This was refused. He was ordered not to discuss his relief publicly. And he was offered a board of inquiryto which he could not summon witnesses in place of the court he had asked for. Later, he was formally asked by a board of generals to show cause why he should not be discharged. However, James F. Gardner, Smyrl’s San Antonio attorney, after a trip this week to Washington, said there is now a possibility of investigation by a Senate subcommittee. The Observer was told by Washington sources that Gardner has said, in effect, to the Air Force officers now looking into the case: “If we do not like your conclusions, we will take the case before the subcommittee and we will make Smyrl available to the press.” Smyrl has refused to talk to reporters about his difficulties, although other Lackland officers, hostile to him, have done SO, SAN ANTONIO His Excellency, the Most Rev. Robert E. Lucey, S. T. D., Archbishop of San Antonio, is one of the most extraordinary citizens of the state. His is the only voice heard in Texas in recent years that speaks insistently for the organization into unions of the state’s 1 o w l i e s t workers farm hands, bus boys, yard men. He beat the United States Supreme Court to the draw by ordering integration of Catholic schools in San Antonio a month before the court’s 1954 decision. He has crusaded against slums Ronnie Dugger in San Antonio, loan sharks in Texas, sweat shops in Los Angeles, and isolationists in the country. He is a fighting Archbishop who fears none, but his God and serves him mightily. He works quietly at the chancery office here, a three story converted home of yellowed limestone with a small gallery over the plain front door and a long portico on the right side. Palm trees stand in the yard, shielding him from sounds of the meandering traffic of downtown San Antonio. His office is simple, with a few photographs of the Pope and other dignitaries on the walls. He does not hesitate or blush when he speaks of the “common people.” He thinks a great deal about inequities and injustices but he has not become pessimistic at all; he sees progress everywhere even if he does not often It it qualify his social criticism. He feels Texas has too many dishonest legislators and that the first things the state needs are “better representatives.” “In this state if you have moneyed interests in an election behind you, you . have money for billboards and television and are almost certain to swing the election,” he said. . “On the whole the Texas people are very tolerant. They have stood up and fought like they should. There are always some voices in the wilderness.” Asked about the social welfare program of protestants the Archbishop replied: “There are many fine people among non-Catholics and many are my friends.” How does it came to pass that a Catholic prelate ranks among the state’s foremost liberal ideologists? Archbishop Lucey himself began his social work as director of the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Los Angeles, with 55’ social workers under him. “I found so many poor people who needed help, it came to me that relief is a crutch for a cripple, and that ‘it would be better if we didn’t have so many, cripples,” he says. Ever since he has talked for the organization of labor into unions. Surely he is the only Archbishop in. the world who is an honorary member of both the hod carriers and stone mason unions. But more people will wonder how it is that the Catholic Church “permits” such liberalism within its heirarchy. The answer seems to be that it fosters it: “Our concept of society requires not only the practice of social jus tice and charity but also the or ganizing of working men’s unions and employers associations. Hu man beings are not natural ene mies of one another; they are children of our heavenly Father; they are brothers under God. \(Continued on Price Has Isle Pickle; Who’ll Be New Judge? become Galveston County’s new district judge. The balding bespectacled, buddy of isle gamblers is being considered for appointment to the 122 district court judgeship by Governor Price Daniel. In trying to decide whether to name Pipepost, the Governor apparently finds himself skewered on the horns of political dilemma. Both Piperi and Godard were Daniel campaign workers both want the job, and both have influential friends. Godard, in the isle vernacular before Attorney General Will Wiison cleaned out gambling, is an odds-on favorite among the lawyers. His brothers at the bar \(Galveston County Bar Associafavor of Godard over Peperi. But reports are that Pipepri has gained considerable strength among those people not in the law business, except frequently as defendants. In one respect, there is no denying that Pepperi is peculiarly qualified to be a judge in Galveston County. He has had sub stantial experience working with the isle’s best known litigants with cases which often. came up here. For example, “Chicago Joe” ex-convict, saloon keeper and bawdy house operator. He holds \(Continued