ustxtxb_obs_1957_10_18_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

DREAM OF TEX OF POWER DAMS AUSTIN Water, water, everywhere, and hardly a drop for power. This is the hidden explosive in “the water problem.” You cannot amass millions of tons of water in one place without storing there also turbine-turning power, power that can make a man who owns it rich, or all the men and women and children who live within the valley of its pulsing thrusts better off, power that can cut the costs of industry drastically and give whole cities and towns cheap lights and wallplugs and things wallplugs plug in to. Our public men are debating now merely the dimmest outlines of water and power in Texas in the year 1975. It is still necessary for there to be a fight over whether the state will even plan the intelligent uses of its water on a statewide basis. Some states’ righters who would have resented the federal gov’ernment’s expenditures on its invaluable studies of Texas watersheds had federal engineering chief Harry Burleigh not been so effacing about it still are not ready for a state water agency tc perform this very responsibility. Happily Governer Daniel is not among these. If one has difficulty berating the mistresses of history for having failed so far, to bring us a forward-dated judgment of Daniel, it is because of the curious disjunction between the levels on which he operates’ as a politician and as a Governor. The one is substantially lesg prepossessing than the other. , He has, for example, lent his hand to the stealing of a party convention, and he was not above using demagogic symbols to get elected. But here and now he has brought the Patriotic Leaders To the Editor: … the “metropolitan” press of Texas is filled with segregation arguments, many of them violent and inflammatory, to such an extent, one would infer that our whole state is overwhelmingly segregationist. Such is ‘ not the case. Many of our school districts are now completely desegregated or proceeding to become so under the rules laid down. by the Supreme Court; and in not a single instance of desegregation that has come under my notice has there been even a ripple of trouble. …. What Texas needs now is a patriotic statesman in each of its major offices instead of a petty politician intent only on his personal fortunes. And for the information of any in the latter category, may I suggest that in the very near future the segregation label may become a Millstone around the neck. MILLER HARWOOD PO Box 144, Taft ‘Pickled’ Again? To the Editor: Back in 1952 we had a “splinter group” of Democrats who opposed Eisenhower for President. At that time Price Daniel joined in with Shivers to “Ike” the Democratic Party of Texas. In an effort to come back from this crushing blow two years der, the Democrats of Texas ral legislators together, at considerable state expense, and despite considerable criticism, to enact not only a statewide plan for water, but also a bill to control and register lobbyists and another, in effect, to regulate legislators who try to coerce state agencies in their capacities as private lawyers. In the past the Governor flubbed on taxes, taxing the poor more heavily than the rich; and he signed two patently unconstitutional race bills, one of which even the Dallas school board is taking into court. But he also had passed a probation and parole system for ex-prisoners, he increased the state’s welfare se.vices, and now he has decided to refrain from Faubusing Texas by using the police powers to keep Negroes out of schools to which federal courts have ordered them admitted. Mere mortals find it difficult to be categorical in remarking about Daniel in general, so one can understand the diffidence of history’s mistresses. Friday at his press conference Daniel was caught by a question that somewhat startled him. as it was addressed, not to what the Comptroller said who could spend, but what Daniel envisions for the future of Texas in 2000. What, pleaded a reporter confused by the weltering interests tugging and wrenching at the water program, what is his vision, what is the pattern in his mind, for the control and use of water in Texas in the future? “I would want to see a lot of it in dams and natural reservoirs,” he said. Studies need to be made now to determine present, shortrange, and long-range needs, giving humans and domestic livestock and cities first priority, but also assessing needs of small towns, agriculture, future industry. “How much do we need, pro lied behind Ralph Yarborough, but to no avail. This time Allan Shivers “Pickled” the Democrats with stories of the Port Arthur type. Again the Democrats lost. Again the “splinter group” is being harassed by the same “Pickle” with such high sounding phrases as “dollars for Democrats” \(or is it nickels for Pickle We must keep courage. The “splinter group” has elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate and the sky is clearing. Right is might! J. J. BATES 402 Medical Arts Bldg., Waco Blindfolded Mule To the Editor: It’s usually a chore to renew a subscription, but this time it is a genuine pleasure. A number of years back I remember J. Frank Dobie saying that anyone who tries to find out what’s going on by reading Texas newspapers is just about in the position of a mule blindfolded down in the bottom of a coal mine. Ever since there has been an Observer, we have all been able to get out of the coal mine for only the price of a subscription. Keep up your much-needed work! RABBI DANIEL E. KERMAN PO Box 1268, Kilgore \(Rabbi Kerman leads Congregation Beth Sholom serving Kilgore, Longview, Henderson, jected to 1975 … 2000 … Then I we can tell just every place we have the possibility to build a dam. We can be trapping water to flow into the underground sands. Generally that’s what I have in mind.” He is going to ask the legislature to transfer about $1,024,000 from other purposes to a state water studya “master plan,” it has been called. That such a plan will be opposed by some people with vested interests in the way things are now is foregone. That they have a right to oppose it is not at issue. But with more than four-fifths of the state’s water and therefore of its power, its The place was the district courtroom of an oil-soaked East Texas county. The year was 1937, and the members of the bar had met to save the dignity and power of the Supreme Court of the United States. “That man in the White House” had begun a movement to prevent the complete destruction of his legislative program by the now famous “nine old men.” Fervent speeches on the sanctity of the judiciary, and the need to keep it independent, brought forth a heated resolution that by the eternals the last guardian of property rights and the sanctity of contracts should not be attacked, or its judicial powers questioned. Telegrams , hit the wires for Washington, and a dedicated group of attorneys from Texas converged on the Capitol to plead with congressmen not to pack the court. Two decades later, some who were there, and many who shared NO BEER ADS, PLEASE To the Editor: Please hold down the liquor and beer advertising lest you lose your independence. MRS. W. S. CLEAVES 8141 Joplin St., Houston 17 / Asking “Will it become as dangerous for a Southern white man to be a Republican as it was back in 1870?” the Amarillo Daily News ran a headline with a new twist on the segregation question: “We Need Not Laws, But Men.” The Palestine daily, in an editorial called “We’re Lucky Here,” revealed: “The other day negroes \(spelled with a lowering to discuss social problems. The gist of the thinking expressed at that meeting was that negroes should refrain for any action that would be criticized. They should not stir unrest, they should be courteous at all times, and they should perform on their jobs in such a way as to prove the right attitude.” The whites and Negroes should “keep their troublemakers under control,” said the paper. Archer Fullingim in the Kountze News is making hay of the fact that Allan Shivers and Price Daniel supported Eisenhower. The Republican Party “that Shivers and Daniel once es electricity, its generative force sliding to the sea unclaimed, a master plan we must have. If the state is to grow in some intelligent way, if we are not to waste the might that is within our re NOTE Editorial columns on this page this issue are usually found on pages 2 and 3. sources forever more, we must plan, map water sheds, spot dam sitesand then, decide. A plan now does not settle the decision then. The great Northwest has been rent by public versus private power fights so long their views then, are hysterically \(crying out against the independence of the same court. If, as Mr. Dooley said, the U. S. Supreme Court follows the election returns, it may well be added that its evangelists and detractors follow its decisions. In 1894, the use of federal troops to break the Pullman strike in Illinois over the protests of Gov. Altgeld was held constitutional by the court. The writer wasn’t around then, but research will likely show that the prototypes of the most virulent critics of the present court were then looking heavenwards, while sanctimoniously intoning that order must be preserved first, and that we should thank our Maker for a strong president who was courageous enough to put down this labor rebellion, and an independent court wise enough to declare his actions constitutional. Another parallel is found in the somewhat tardy howl that the fourteenth amendment was never legally adopted anyhow, or nohow. During the period when a court of a different bent was preventing the common people from trampling on the rights of private corporations, by curbing state regulations found to be violative of the fourteenth, not even a Southern corporation president or his legal mouthpiece entertained any thought that the amendment was inoperative or unjust. So long as the former slaves, for the protection of whom it was in tended, did not get fresh and invoke the amendment, it was dandy for fostering corporate growth. Today, well today, it’s different. the Civil War and its Reconstruction tyranny,” he says. The Dallas News predicts that during the special session the capitol will “buzz with the chief issue of the day,” probably ‘the chief domestic issue of the century so far,” segregation. “Compared to that, lobbying and the evils of lobbying are but passing peccadillos,” says the News. ,1 Atty. Gen. Will Wilson is be ing criticized in East Texas quarters for failing to intervene Political Intelligence on the side of Marshall in the swimming pool suit. This is behind the drive for a bill to require the attorney general to defend segregation suits. Dawson Duncan writes in the Dallas News: Owners of irri gated farms, particularly in the Panhandle, are working hard to get a tax depletion allowance on water. The case now has been taken to aWshington. The farmer s that a candidate is judged on that issue above every other. In a decade or so the same will be true of Texas. But there will be no significant conflict at all until the state government forces the private utilities into competition for serving the public welfare. Where are the dams the private companies could have put up, had they the will? They are not. The water rushes downstream unimpeded, spending its force rounding boulders and cutting out bluffs and baring tree-roots. It is time we did something, and there is no time like a special session. RONNIE DUGGER The dictatorship of the judiciary is actually attempting to apply the egalitarian principles of the fourteenth amendment to colored people, instead of the fictional “persons” that enjoyed so many advantages under it in the past. This won’t do, for the amendment was never legally adopted. Besides, it had no wording about schools in it. This brings up another phenomenon that only the cosmic heaving incident to integration in the South could produce. Everybody, just everybody, is now an expert in the field of constitutional law. Ah! had we only had it so easy in those dear dead college days when we wrestled with the judicial interpretations of our basic document. Could we only have picked out the bare words of its immortal principles, and told our fool professors that it was there to see, why didn’t they read for themselves? The truism of Charles Evans Hughes, that the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, has given ground to a new conception: it is what the segregationists say it is, and the back of a hand to the mouth of one who disagrees. These times have their advantages. Not only have the erstwhile reactionary supporters of an independent judiciary turned topsyturvy for a curb on the court, but the worshippers of St. Ike have demanded his impeachment. Ah, fellow iconoclasts, and we thought we could chunk bricks! FRANKLIN JONES An editorial writer for the Beaumont Enterprise, Hilliard Henson, says Southern newspapers are missing a fine opportunity for public service by failing to prepare the people for “the inevitable compliance” with desegregation. H. M. Baggarly, in the Tulia Herald, asks, ‘Are we naive enough to think we can continue to segregate 10 million Americans into cabins and shanties on the basis of color?” But Baggarly adds: “More despicable than \(Orell whose vision is limited to the number of votes for the GOP he can pick up.” / Texas Businessman says Texas Tech’s academic troubles “will follow the predictable course, bring eventual censure from outside.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 6 Oct. 18, 1957 Fervor, Vintage Lobby Evils ‘Peccadillos’ News poused” “has not changed since claim that underground water is a resource which can be depleted just like oilleaving the property less valuable than before.”