ustxtxb_obs_1957_11_22_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

‘Seasoned Senators’ in Control Din Moody was slated for the President’s commission on civil rights, but a very reliable report says Sen. Lyndon Johnson nixed him. SMU Dean Storey was selected instead. VMrs. R. D. Randolph, chairman of Democrats of Texas, toured West and East Texas on separate tours recently, stirring up Democrats for the forthcoming fight with the state committee-Jake Pickle operation for state convention control in ’58. There is a report Sen. Blakley actually is running for the Senate, but that wiseheads felt he was being pushed onto the target range too fast. Bob Bray, of the Yarborough staff, wishes it to be known that he says Blakley scares the Yarborough camp to death as a very formidable Walter Hall, Dickinson banker, continues to be mentioned as a possible loyal Democratic candidate for governor. Former Gov. Allan Shivers and Blakley made political speeches last week. Shivers, in Houston, asked : “Where else is there for conservatives to go ?” if not to a third party. Blakley, in Dallas, attacked high-interest rates and “unreasonable restraint of credit.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram commented on the new tidelands suit : “Once again, it appears, Texas must fight to preserve its tidelands from the clutching hand of the federal government.” Speaker Sam Rayburn and Ma’ jority Leader Lyndon Johnson were patted on the backs by the Houston Press and the El Paso HeraldPost for their attitude toward Eisenhower in the Sputnik-Muttnik crisis : “They have, wisely and apparently purposefully, left the initiative with the Presidentan initiative the President can retain to the degree he provides leadership.” Johnson, recall, is chairman of the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee. \(This appeared Nov. 14 in The Alamo Messenger, the Catholic SAN ANTONIO The Governor has called a special session of the Texas Legislature to consider the infamous Troop Bill which would authorize either the governor or independent school boards to close schools if troops were sent in by the Federal Government to insure integrationsuch as recently happened in Little Rock, Ark. Are we to assume then, that Governor Daniel or local school boards are planning to use the contemptible tactics of Governor Faubus in creating racial trouble in Texas as he did in Arkansas ? It would appear that such is the purpose of the second consecutive special session of the Texas Legislature. The pitiable thing about the Texas Legislature is that it will probably follow the purely political expedience through which Governor Daniel apparently seeks to regain his waning political following. In an obviously political tradeoff, Governor Daniel sought to buy East Texas votes for his lobby-control, water, and crime commission legislation while proinising a Florida-type law to close down any school to which troops were sent as a means of enforcing integration. Governor Daniel, a notoriously weak governor anyway, further would reintroduce a bill committing the attorney general of Texas to defend in all segregation questions arising out of attempts to integrate the public schools of Texas …. The attorney’ general handed down an opinion that the proposed bill was IThe Dallas News’s “Weather Vane” says : “Conservative Dallas Democrats are deeply disturbed about the political future of Gov. Price Daniel. Many profess disappointment over the special sessions of the legislature he has called.” One day last week Gov. Price Daniel addressed t h e “East Texas Club”the House segregation blocand wondered if they might not finish up that troop bill by the end of the week. He seems very anxious to get the boys out of town. It has, after all, been rough. When the House state affairs committee sent Daniel’s troops bill to the Attorney General for a con Political Intelligence stitutionality ruling, they were slapping Daniel across the cheek. Rep. Bill Heatly, the committee chairman, has not been friendly with the Governor since he suggested Heatly was dragging his feet on the lobby bill. “The Texas Businessman” says Gov. Daniel will continue to get “a brutal working-over personally” in the legislature. “The old businessmanconservative majority is dissipating, losing its zest, becoming engrossed in cross-purposes, internal in-fighting … Leadership of state government is now in a void,” said the business letter. “The alienations developing are personal, among political pros …. The situation here is very close to slipping out of control, and that could be a serious matter for you.” This week the letter said Daniel batted 1.000 on his last day but paid a high price in William Harrison’s rejection. “The power in Austin rests for the moment in the hands of a small but seasoned bloc of state senators,” says the letter. Rep. Howard Green, Fort Worth, in a column for his home county newspapers, says : “Rep. Robert W. Baker is considered a likely candidate for the new congressional seat in Houston. Former Rep. Jamie Clements of Crockett is expected to run against Congressman John Dowdy of Athens …” probably unconstitutional. Governor Daniel now has the temerity to reconsider such legislative putrescence. We sympathize with the adversaries of troop callouts to protect integrating schools. We dislike as much as does anyone else the necessity for armed forces patrolling the campus of any of our public schools. It is a national and an international disgrace. But it had to be done. There was no other alternative if law and order were to be preserved . Obviously at the back of the feeble minds of some East Texas legislators is the impending integration of the public school systems of the , state’s two largest cities, Houston and Dallas, in that order It is our contention that the authorities in Dallas and Houston, and San Antonio and Pleasanton and El Paso, for that matter, know a great deal more about their localities than a governor who is notoriously akin to the segregationists in his thinking. To put into the hands of this Governor or independent school districts the right to close the public schools of Dallas or Houston or anywhere else because of integration rulings is unthinkable political Faubusism We are not content to appease East-Texas legislators no matter what the Governor says. West and South Texans consider their own problems of equal importance to East Texas problems and bitterly resent the Governor’s continued dalliance with legislators whose record for legislative integrity is woefully lacking. DICK MESKILL The Texas Manufacturers Asso ciation’s “not for publication” newsletter views with alarm the poll tax paying campaigns of unions, comments : “Organized labor is making a bid to persuade their members and friends to pay their poll taxes preparatory to the 1958 elections … some people are working. How about you ?” The new lobby bill drew lots of editorial comment : Said the AFL-CIO News : “Responsibility for the de-fanging” of the lobby bill rests with Speaker Waggoner Carr and Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey. Carr and Ramsey “had loaded the conference committees, and nothing could be done about it.” Elton Miller’s White Rocker : “It’s a weak bill, but it’s a start. Perhaps Governor Daniel will pull himself up to the great heights of statesmanship and do something about it later.” San Antonio Express : “… there are some obvious weaknesses in the lobby-control bill in particular.” The Houston .P r e s s said -that though Daniel had a good word for the bill, it is “a sham and a fraud,” “hypocritical nothings.” The Kerrville Times, in a page one banner headline : “Mild Lobby Bill Is Passed .4 .” Fort Worth Star-Telegram : “…. No one expects a new lobby law to bring about the millenium. All that can be expected is that it work an improvement …” Gov. Daniel will probably be re elected, writes Jon Ford in the San Antonio Express, no matter how the special session records look. “The average voters,” writes Ford, “cannot be expected to distinguish between reform measures with a real wallop and 4 those whose captions merely proclaim them as such.” , H. M. Baggarly of the Tulia Her ald says Price Daniel “could go down in history as a great man and a good governor,” if he would say to the people of Texas: ii Ladies and gentlemen, I made , a jackass of myself back in 1952 when I punctuated every one of Allan Shivers’ pronouncements with a ‘me too.’ … I made another mistake when I failed to insist on honesty in the .. . state Democratic convention last year at Fort Worth …. But I have seen the light. If the people of Texas will forgive me, I want a chance to prove to them that I am a new man. From this moment on, to the best of my ability, I will insist on honesty and integrity in the conduct of all party affairs. I will guarantee honest credentials committees at all party conventions. No longer will I tolerate the seating of bogus rump delegations … In cases where there are legitimate disputes between rival delegations, I pledge my word that the matter will be arbitrated in the truest tradition of honesty and democracy. I promise every Democrat in Texas the right to his personal convictions on controversial issues that arise within the party. I also guarantee majority rule as determined by honest voting. … As of this moment, I am a new man and a Democrat. I W. H. Curry in the Crosbyton Review editorializes that “from attempt to get the two factions of the party together is based on the premise that we’ll harmonize if you do what we tell you to, which just won’t work.” The Houston Chronicle, on page one Nov. 18, discovered the Eisenhower administration i s suing Texas for the tidelands. “Ike Turns Back on Texas in Tidelands Row,” said the lead headline. \(See Observer, Reflections On Candy And Cake MARSHALL The convulsions in the Lone Star area should not bring thoughts of candy and cake, but to the writer, they do. Without preservation of a bargaining unit in the steel industry there, we will have a repetition of the sordid labor history of the South : a large available labor pool whose members must work catch as catch can for what they can get .by the flimsy power of individual bargaining. Excusing some rare benevolent employers, this will be the lowest, common denominator in the profit equation. The soulshriveling effect of this on any corn: munity may be seen by a glance at unorganized industry in East Texas in the golden Harding-Coolidge-Hoover era. Our friend was a traveling salesman for a cake and candy company. He worked both sides of town : where the railroad shops and the employees’ homes were, and! where the box factory and the residences of its workers were. From the Outside there seemed to be little difference between the small neighborhoOd stores in the two areas, but there was a vast difference in the sales orders. On the shop side of town, where !the trade was from labor union members, our friend found a reasona.141e market for his entire line, fancy and staple, cake and candy as well as crackers. Among the poor creatures enjoying an untrammelled “right to work,” only the staples necessary fotr bare existence were ever sold, and these in modest quantity. The dinner pail of the shop worker carried a nourishing diet ; that of the unorganized laborer, too frequently sorghurn molasses and corn bread. Even with oranized labor, a town or area depen nt on one. industry may find at beSf an all-pervading paternalism, . and At worst a despotism, complemented b a grovelling degradation on the part of the rest of the community. Reitiove the stamina that reasonable job and income security give a worker, and the fear of jobloss at the whirr of the employer will make not only ‘ the worker, but the baker and the candlestick maker live on their knees. Some prosper in such an atmosphere. They are the toadies and close-ins. Fad they lived in days of meaningful ; royalty they would have been unable to achieve the purple, but would have become informers to the king. The strike-breaker may not have so black a heart. Many cannot see that when they take jobs made open only by disagreement between those whose seniority has given them some claim to precedent and the employer, they are taking fruits earned by the bargaining efforts: of others. For a while they may prosper, but in the end they will be victimized by the lack of bargaining power, even as those whose bread they have taken. It is hard to believe that organized labor will have a strong voice in the Lone Star area for a while. The economy of the community may not immediately reflect the situation, nor may immediate changes in the fiber of the residents be 6 noted: But mark it .well, a strike-break4 makes a poor citizen. There is something lacking in his moral make-up that sooner or later shows up in others ways. Ask the resident of an industrial community where a strikewildcat or otherwise has been broken. As the future unfolds we may well have to quote Marie Antoinette in reverse : “Let them eat bread.” FRANKLIN JONES THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 Nov. 22, 1957 Contemptible Tactics