ustxtxb_obs_1957_08_23_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

BANG, OLD JOHN! BANG! Masters Brags On Council In Texas …. Dr. B. E. Masters, race supremacist theorist who is president of the Citizens’ Councils of Texas, writes in the August issue of “The Citizens’ Council,” published in Jackson, Miss., that councils are organized in all of the larger cities of East Texas except three. He reviews the segregatiOn fight of the last legislature and notes that “to our surprise a great number of West Texans” voted for segregation. …. Don Politico of the San Antonio Light forecasts more than usual voter interest in 1958’s legislative races. The Don’s reasoning : “With fairly quiet races for governor,’ attorney general and U. S. senator in prospect as Price Daniel, Will Wilson and Ralph Yarborough. seek second terms, the voters will have more time to no The Listening Post tice the legislative races, which generally escape them in the dust clouds of a governor’s race.” Dallas conservative Democrats led by ultra-conservative Ed Schwille plan to organize “independent Texas conservative voters” to combat what Schwille called the spread of “moderation, socialism, and communism.” The new movement calls itself CIVICSConservative Independent Voters Information Centers. …. The Gallup Poll says VicePresident Richard Nixon is the oddson favorite of GOP voters to succeed President Eisenhower. A poll conducted among Republican voters gave Nixon 48 per cent, Sen. William Knowland 12, and Harold Stassen seven. Independent’s gave Nixon 35 per cent, Stassen ten, and Knowland nine. …. The Christian Science Monitor’s Bicknell . Eubanks says it was federal rather than state action that pulled down the walls of George Parr’s “Duval Duchy.” …. South Texas friends of Sen. Ralph Yarborough plan a big barbecue-rally in his honor for sometime after the current congressional session ends. Probable location : Falfurrias, in Brooks County, always a Yarborough county. Sen. Lyndon Johnson also will visit South Texas this fall. He’s accepted an invitation to speak to the South Texas Chamber of Commerce at its next convention: Oct. 21 at Corpus Christi. …. The Texas State AFL-CIO News, eyeing the railroad brotherhoods and postal and other government workers, editorializes : “It is high time that unions which hitherto have overloked or ignored the state AFL-CIO organizations pitch in and help present a solid front which will help provide the greatest good for the greatest number of Texas people.” …. The Tulia Herald’s outspoken editor, H. M. Baggarly, spoke out this week on civil rights : “Democrats everywhere can be proud of Senators Lyndon Johnson, Ralph Yarborough, Estes Kefauver, the necessitythe absolute necessity of being realistic …. “Neither Lyndon Johnson nor Ralph Yarborough have been known as desegregationists. Both were reared in areas of the state where desegregation has never been popular. But unlike Eastland or Talmadge, they have shown their ability to make the best deal possible, to give a little and take a little in trying to find a solution to a difficult problem, one to which no perfect solution exists.” …. Ex-Rep. Maury Moverick, Jr., passing through Austin, noted Sen. John Kennedy’s’ ascension in the es AUSTIN Self-immolation apparently is the inevitable common fate of all who sally into San Antonio aflame with the crusader’s fire. There was Old Ben Milam who, as everybody knows, went into Bexarand promptly was scragged, for all his noble passions and patriotism. And then there was Old John White. Old John went into Bexar, too, last week, tall in the crusader’s saddle, bent, nay, intent, like Old Ben, on rescuing San Antonians. Almost as promptly as Old Ben bit the Alamo Plaza dust, Old John dropped. There was a small and meaningless difference : Old Ben was shot by somebody else. Old John shot himself, walking, apparently, into the trajectory of his own guns. This is how it went with Old John : On Aug. 1, the City of San Antonio abolished its weights and measures divisionthe city office charged with protecting consumers from butchers with heavy thumbs, and grocers wont to weigh the beans on phony scales. Then, the city invited Old John, whose Agriculture Department is charged with enforcing a state law against such shennanigans, to come into Bexar and take over. Old John came, too. He brought 23 men with him \(canceling his own vacation, he let the press of San Antonio know, in order to take personal them over San Antonio with orders to find the rascally scoundrels with the outsize thumbs and the larcenous scales. And what did they find ? Let Old John tell us : WASHINGTON This column recently reported the amazing manipulations by which Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas masterminded the passage of civil rights bill and secured adoption of the jury trial amendment. I now find that I owe Senator Johnson an apology. I underestimated his political prowess. Here are some of his additional backstage moves which I did not know about. teem of Democrats and remarked: “I’d like to see less of his profile and more of his courage.” …. In its newsletter of last month, the state Democratic executive committee remarked with a “chuckle” that a veteran newsman had said “the ‘liberal-labor’ Democrats” in Texas are really mad at Eisenhower because “Secretly, they approve of Eisenhower’s large budget, civil rights bill, veto of the natural . gas bill and the soil bank. But they can’t afford to say anything about it.” The same newsletter observes editorially, “the effect of oil imports upon Texas production is a serious matter, demanding the attention of our public officials.” …. The committee reports it has turned over $1,398 left from the 1956 Stevenson campaign to the national Democratic party, that it will co-operate with the “Dollars for Democrats” program Oct. 4-5. Legacy they’re proprietors of the place. \(We run this show, can’t you get that A sport out here said he called up a college librarian and told her, “Margie, honey, get up a list of all the books on politics, government, sociology, and economics. The board of directors want to look them over.” Margie was silent for half a minute. “You don’t mean it ?” she said. She was really frightened. What a legacy Shivers and Daniel have left Lubbock for tomorrow R. D. “We have found the most deplorable situation I’ve ever seen. The housewives of San Antonio ought to know what’s going on. I’ve never seen it so bad. When you never find an error in the consumer’s favor, it isn’t Cheating intentional cheating apparently had been going on, Old John said, since-1935. Some 41 percent of all pre-packaged meat \(like the checked h a d been short-weighed. White’s inspectors weighed 1,470 packages of meat. More than 600 weighed less than labeled. A quarter of . all grocery store scales checked were inaccurate. San Antonio stores the inspectors found `consistently overchargin ,b on pre-weighed foods.” There would be, said Russell Koontz, Old John’s chief inspector, many complaints filed in San Antonio’s corporation court. And Old John hied him off to San Antonio’s city hall to discuss prosecutions with the city fathers. The latter were happy and agreed that violators ought to be prosecuted. In fact, they demanded violators be filed on and tried. THEN THIS WEEKand this is where Old John shot himselfthere was a press release from Austin, a curiously revealing document, saying far more, it has to be accidentally, than it was meant to say “The attached letter is being sent to 246 San Antonio merchants, serving notice that no degree of tolerance from labeled weight … will be permitted … “Commissioner White points out It was young Senator Frank Church of Idaho who broadened the jury trial amendment to include, among others, jury trials for labor unions in case they violated labor injunctions. This won the potent support of the Railroad Brotherhoods, United Mine Workers, and postal emL ployees. Senator Church has now received his reward. He and Mrs. Church have departed for Rio de Janeiro, then on to Buenos Aires to attend the Pan American Economic Conference as part of the American delegation, all expenses paid. As one of the youngest members of the Senate, the attractive senator from Idaho would not ordinarily rate such appointment. Many older sena Drew Pearson tors would like to take this nice trip to South America. Senator Johnson, however, threw the reward to Church. Ouick Judgeships A lot of people wondered why Senators Schoeppel of Kansas and Butler of Maryland, both staunch Administration Republicans, deserted the Administration on the jury trial amendment. These people, like this column, underestimated Lyndon Johnson. Here is the inside story of what happened: Both senators have wanted extra federal judges appointed in their states. On January 7, Senator Shoeppel introduced a bill to provide a new U.S. district judge in Kansas. On January 17, Senator Butler introduced a similar bill for a new judge in Maryland. These bills went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chairmanned by Senator Eastland of Mississippi, bitter foe of civil rights. There they gathered dust. No action was taken. Suddenly, three days after the jury trial amendment was adopted by the Senate \(and after both ,$choeppel and their two bills were reported out of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Aug. 7. Two days later, they were reported to the full Senate without a some tolerance in weight had been allowed on certain commodities by the old San Antonio weights and measures division. In practice, the tolerance apparently had been applied to all pre-packaged commodities in the year between 1935 and until recent months … “The state law does not, and will not in the future, permit tolerances… “Since the inaccuracies were so widespread in San Antonio, I have only two choices : file complaints against almost every retail meat outlet checked in the city, or, issue notifica-L tions as to change of .policy and continue the investigation to determine repeat violations. “Since … it is almost impossible, at this stage, to separate the unintentional from the. deliberate violators, the second course will be taken. “Repeat violations of the law will be vigorously prosecuted …” IN AN ASIDE to a San . Antonio newspaper inquiring as to how come no prosecutions after all the big talk, Old John said: “-There’s nothing I would rather do than file on them, but we have to take into consideration they have been operating that way for a long, long . time.” The press release quoted Old John, finally, as saying: “I wish to thank the press; radio and television services for their excellent coverage of the investigation. The spotlight of news focused on the problem will save San Antonio house wives many thousands of ‘dollars in the weeks and months to come.” Bang, Old John. Bang! -LYMAN JONES single comma or semicolon changed. Senator Eastland, chairman, h a d taken the cue from Lyndon Johnson. Similar bills were introduced in the last Congress but got nowhere. This time, however, Senators Butler and Schoeppel voted for the jury trial amendment and immediately .got their reward. Apolo g ies to Lyndon for underestimating his backstage ability. Speaker Rayburn’s Sponge Shortly before much-loved Speaker Sam Rayburn threw in the sponge for the natural gas bill at this session of Congress, Rep. Torbey IVIacDonald of Boston came to see him. “Is the gas bill likely to come up for a vote before Thursday, Mr. Speaker?” asked MacDonald. “I want to leave town until Thursday, and I wanted to be on deck to vote against it.” This was bearding the lion in his den, because Mr. Sam has been one of the chief backers of the gas bill. However, Mr. Sam. also believes in the democratic principle of letting every man vote. He blinked a bit, then .re : plied: “It won’t be brought up before next Thursday.” Shortly after that, Mr. Sam publicly gave up on the bill until next year. The reason was the efforts of some _young, vigorous congressmen led by MacDonald of Boston, John Dingell of Detroit, and Charles Vanik of Cleveland, all Democrats, all first or second-term congressmen. Backing up their efforts were such important organizations as the Alabama League of Municipalities and many of the mayors of the United States. A dozen or so big city mayors came to Washington to testify against the gas bill, while Ed Reid, head of the Alabama League of Municipalities, wrote to every Alabama congressman asking them how they planned to vote on the gas bill, received word , from every Alabama legislator except Frank Boykin of Mobile that they would vote against the gas bill. Boykin was out of town. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 August 23, 1957 SENATOR JOHNSON TRADES AGAIN