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SHINE ON, SHINE ON HARVEST I AIN’T HAD NO LOYINI SINCE E Senate Gets Its Man Price Daniel’s “anti-troops” bill, as originally drafted \(with an assist self, was more naughty mischief than nasty. It would have served Daniel and the legislature’s racists well next summer, probably, as campaign ammunition in East Texas. But its value as legislation with meaning, real meaning, could haVe been measured in f o millimilligrams. It wasa grain of sand in the shoe, a tiny irritant like’ the single fly abuzzing about the; house as winter draws in. Even the integrationists in the legislatur,e planned only a kind of conditioned reflex opposition to it. .Furthermore, the bill says school boards “may” close schdols; as a practical matte r, the legislature would be recommending to school boards, “Close your schools ! You don’t have to keep them ;open” any more.” That is what it really means. What is happening to the Houston schools really raises the deepest issues of politics and public education. The school children of Houston are being brain-wa,shed by teachers who knuckle under or get out. Too simple a statement, yes ; o n Succoo I Surveyors of these coldmns will be amused to learn that tie Texas Senate, having thwarted ‘adequate lobby controls, has furthrFr cavalierly demonstrated its ifn=perviousness to public wrath by elevating Senator Bill Moore of iryan to president pro tempore for the second special session. Sen1iority is seniority, and neither Seri. Carlos Ashley’s $10,000 fee he did hot earn and when discovered returned to U.S. Trust nor Sen. MoorL’s unrivaled experience as legal counsel to bankrupting Texas insurance companies can justify an exception to the System. Recently a writer in this newspaper suggested Ashley and Moore should be retired from the’ Senate. Obviously he didn’t understand the customs and standards of that body. If, like William Harrison,, the insurance commissioner, you do your duty day in and day out, if, like William Harrison, you help make public the objective truth! about their senators’ when a Senate committee tells you to, if, like William Harrison, you stand firm against pressures and work hard andiinspire confidence and give your life to the civil service, you are not acceptable. Obviously the way for a mad to rise in Texas is get a law degree, run for the Senate, get on as many payrolls as possible, and wait for his turn as president pro tempore. We would not ask the senators to reconsider about Moore ; it’s going to be a short special session anyway. But if they don’t want the people to believe they are on the side of the bounders and the scoundrels of the insurance industry, they’d better get with it on William Harrison. But the bill Daniel submitted is not the bill introduced in the House by Rep. Jerry Sadler and the Senate by Wardlow Lane. Lane and Sadler grafted on a whole new section demonstrating they are willing to subvert the public schools. Section 5 requires the state to finance “out of class instruction” for students of closed schools. “You could hold school in the home, in a barn, anyplace you wanted to,” said sponsor Sadler. The Daniel bill seemed to do little more than underscore the existing powers of local boards to close the schools. There was an uneasy feeling this encouraged school-closing but what-the-devil, everybody’s tired was the feeling. Implicit in this attitude, as Dr. Frederick Eby told the senators Monday, is eventual destruction of the public school system of Texas. but see page six and reflect upon the state of affairs. The voters of Houston who thought they were electing “conservatives” when they elected their last school board have now in hand a .board led by a knownothing isolationist named Mrs. Earl Maughmer w h o crusades against “one-worldism” and “social studies” and has succeeded in striking all social studies from the first seven grades of school and replacing world history with a second year of Texas history. “Conservative” ought to mean devotion to the intelligent, informed conservation of the best in the human heritage and society of the daynot denial of the heritage, refusal to study society ! It is terrifying to , think that the way Houston’s young people think, and what they are discouraged from thinking about, is now being decided by the ignorant and bigoted extremists on the Houston school board. The Loopholes for Lobbyists Law is, as Gov. Daniel saliently points out, Something. It does require some lobbyists \(those hereafter dumb enough to “argue” with cal matter, rather to be safe than sorry, the pros are going to line up and sign. Reporting of expenditures will be next to meaningless, the likely-deliberate fouling of the caption may make the criminal penalties invalid; but Daniel deserves credit for calling the session and then, after very costly bungling, for insisting in the last half-day of the session on certain minimums. Had it not been for Speaker Carr’s. deliberate sabotage of the bill by his appointment of a four-to-one anticontrol conference committee, it might have been more meaningful. On the whole, the lobby and also the water and anti-influence bills were worth the while. Something is not only more than nothing; something is a beginning. AUSTIN The Texas Senate is willing, nay, eager, to talk reform, when that reform is just talk, when it’s swisscheese holey, like the lobby bill the Senate forced the House to swallow in the just-ended special session. But real reformwell, that’s as popular, apparently, as the wood’s colt at the family reunion. What other conclusion can fairly be drawn from the Senate’s refusal to confirm the appointment of William A. Harrison as the state’s first commissioner of insurance? The Senate’s action was taken in secret, as the law provides. This is convenient for the nay-saying senators, but it has not and will not obscure what was probably the chief reason why Harrison was turned down. Harrison, the Senate probably hoped nobody would remember, was the assistant state auditor who investigated the U.S. Trust and Guaranty debacle, among Other insurance failures. In the course of these, Harrison found direct financial ties between the companies and members of the Sen-_ ate, some of whom still sit in that body and were, therefore, able to vote on his confirmation. Any hope that Harrison’s turndown will stir no public resentment is foolish and futile. Already the stupidity of the action has negated much of the good, if good there was, of the new reform legislation. Already it is known how the Senate voted numerically \(15 for Harrison, 14 against, one absent, one present but not votPublished by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. NOVEMBER 22, 1957 Ronnie Dogger Editor and General Manager Lyman Jones, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Dean Johnston, Circulation-Advertising Published once a week from Austin, Texas.. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per tors being humanand political humans, at thathow they voted individually. Nearly every reporter in the Capitol’s press rooms is hard at work compiling a list. Senators who are not ashamed of the way they voted on Harrison ought right now to say how they voted, for the public good and in their own defense. Senators who are ashamed of the way they voted may keep silent and will have to bear the accusations of their silence. The people of Texas are entitled to an explanation. If they do not get it, they are entitled to think as they please about not having been given one. And the Harrison incident ought to make it clear that the time has come, as it came some years ago to the U. S. Senate, to forbid the holding of secret sessions on appointments. The public good weighs far heavier than the possibility of damage to an individual reputation. U. S. senators have to take the consequences of actions like this in public. The same ought to be required of state senators. And the demand will be made, ‘if not actually as such, then at the polls when the present members of the Texas Senate come up for reelection. The public memory may be short. That of potential political opponents seldom is. Who knows ? Bill Harrison may. yet indirectly help to rid the state of the senators whose dubious connections he helped uncover. I think this is called poetic justice. LYM A N JON ES 10 annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity prices available on orders. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: 2501 Crawford. ‘ Mrs. R. D. Randolph, Dean Johnston.. Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON Owe the ,Schoor avats Obstrurr