ustxtxb_obs_1957_12_20_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau Olv Mhstrurr We will serve no group or party, but will hew hard to the ,truth as we find it find the right as we see it. An Independent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper Vol. 49 TEXAS, DECEMBER 20, 1957 10c per copy No. 38 Unem loyment Pits Face of Texas AUSTIN The face of Texas this week five days short of Christmaswas pocked by the unpretty pits of unemployment. More people were out of work this week in Texas’s n o n agricultural work force \(and in the na -the 1949-50 “recession” which preceded the June, 1950, beginning of the Korean War. And, in the cautious officialese of the Texas Employment Commission in annual and monthly reports things looked as though they would get worse before they got any better. Said TEC fiscal ’57 annual report: “The situation \(as fiscal ’57 the same as it was in the census year of 1950, when August unemployment was 106,700 \(as compared with the August, 1957, total potential exists, however, between now and seven years ago. In August, 1950, the Korean outbreak had just taken place and the Texas economy was on the verge of a strong upward movement, stimulated by increasing military activity. Now such activity is declining. It is still on a vastly larger scale than it was in early 1950, but curtailment and not expansion is the immediate prospect.” “In other words,” a TEC statistician told the Observer, “we won’t say at the end of December that things will be a whole lot better come February and March, like we’ve always been able to do. We just don’t know this time …” The words of the report, written last August, were prophetic: By last month, total non-farm unemployment in the state’s “17 major labor markets,” was 137,000, as compared with the 121,700 WASHINGTON Atty. Gen. William Rogers says the views of the President and the Justice Department about Texas tidelands rights are consistentboth hold the Supreme Court must decide the Texas boundary. But, says Rogers, he believes President Eisenhower would urge a new law giving Texas 10.5 miles if the high court rules against Texas. The Justice Department suit claims the Texas boundary is three miles. The President believes it should be 10.5 miles. Rogers explained the allegation of the suit as merely the basis for a court decision. Rogers said that when briefs are filed in about two months, the U.S. will give the Supreme Court all the historic background about the Texas admission to the union, treaties, and statements the President has made on behalf of a 10.5-mile Texas boundary. He said Texas has a better case for a 10.5 mile boundary than Louisiana. “The only reason Texas is in this suit is that the court requested it,” Rogers said. for the same date in 1956. This was the breakdown: City Unemployed Abilene 1,450 4.5 Amarillo 2,170 4.2 Austin 2,750 3.7 Beaumont-P.A. 3,425 3.7 Corpus Christi 3,070 4.5 Dallas 8,900 2.5 El Paso 2,900 3.5 Fort Worth …. 12,900 6.2 Galveston-T.C. 3,050 5.8 Houston-Baytn. 16,000 3.5 Longview-Kl-Gl .. 950 3.5 Lubbock 2,200 4.7 San. Angelo 1,225 5.0 San Antonio 7,700 4.0 Texarkana 3,150 9.2 Waco 1,675 3.3 Wichita Falls 1,500 3.8 The trend as 1957 drew to a close was still downward: A TEC spokesman said that the agency’s monthly newsletter, “Texas Labor News” \(chided in an Observer editorial column last week would say “bluntly” that unemployment conditions are “bad.” The spokesman cited the plans of a Houston industrial plant for COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS, AUSTIN It began quietly, this ap -peal by a son and family for a father’s release by Christmas, but with a man’s liberty and a society’s betrayed trust the issues, it ended contentiously, emotionally. Pat Bullock, Jack Ross, and A. C. Turner, the board of pardons and paroles who last April decided that the convict must serve out the full three years and seven days of his six-year sentence, less credit for good behavior, sat within the arc of a table and listened. In a letter to H. J. Porter, Eisenhower said the Supreme Court had ruled that the orderly determination of the Louisiana case “requires” that Texas and the other Gulf States be made parties thereto. “So the Attorney General was compelled by the Court itself to bring Texas into the litigation,” said the President. Eisenhower repeated his belief in the Texas 10.5 mile claim and added: “I must say it is regrettable that Congress did not follow the Administration’s recommendations for making this clear but instead left the law ambiguous so that the matter had to be litigated.” Gov. Price Daniel, co-author of the 1953 bill in question, explained to the legisature he did not spell out the Texas 10.5 mile claim that then-Atty. Gen. Brownell advocated because this would have lost the bill votes. In the Texas Senate Sen. Dorsey Hardeman, San Angelo, has called this a blunder. Daniel said .he was shocked by the criticism .nd that Texans ought to stick togi then laying off 2,100 workers over the next six months at the rate of 350 a month and called attention to the temporary layoff of 700 workers at the Houston plant of the Sheffield Division, Armco Steel Corp, for what a company official said was “overdue main-,enance” of several of the plant’s mills. The layoffs are effective Lyman Jones for all of Christmas week and possiby longer. At Lufkin., as the Lufkin Foundry and Machine Co. prepared to pay Christmas bonuses totaling about $200,000, Vice-President Ed Trout said some of the bonus money was to be paid to 135 former employees laid off over the last several months. `Further Dip’ At Dallas, local TEC director F. E. James estimated mid-December unemployment for his city at 10,800an increase of 1,900 over November’s figure. James His sons, Rogan of Austin, and J. B., of Houston, his wife, his five sisters, and ministers, lawyers, reporters, and townspeople sat in the courtroom listening. One hundred sixty miles away in Huntsville, Bascom Giles convicted of accomplice to theft, Ronnie Dugger bribery, and consenting to accept bribes under 13 various indictments involving $115,675, and sentenced to 75 legal, but only six real and three good-behavior years in prisonwas listening, too, with his feelings and his secrets. Rogan Giles said “Dad paid back fully the amount the Attorney General asked … He never had any trouble before in his entire life. On the contrary he had led a highly useful life. The entire family and the community are ready and waiting to receive him back …. This may seem to be a little bit hammy, and I don’t pose as an expert on Shakespeare, but Mark Antony said, `The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones’ … The state auditors have been in the books of the General Land Office and found not one irregularity of any time with the administration of the General Land Office itself there were hundreds of millions of dollars literally handled. “If this board assumes a hard, unrelenting attitude ….it means that murder, rape, and kidnaping are less serious than a breach of the public trust …. It seems to me that you gentlemen are putting a higher value on money than on human life, as for instance a man who has raped a defenseless girl …. prison, stripped of his prestige …. My father has suffered unusual punishmentit was not cruel, but it was unusualin that he was stripped of honor, pres told the Dallas News he expected a “further dip” in unemployment by the middle of January. At Houston, as Harris County Commissioners debated the addition of $40,000 to their next year’s budget for the purchase of surplus agricultural commodities for distribution to the needy, officials of two charitable organizations said they faced the highest case load since the 1930-40 depression decade. Major Glenn. Stovall of the Salvation Army said: “We’ve never seen the welfare load quite so heavy. We’re running 20 percent over normal in our welfare deapartment and there seems to be no end in sight. At the same time, some of our programs are as much as 100 per cent over normal.” Stovall said currently his organization is handling 1,100 cases as compared with the summer “average” of 500. The Salvation A r m y’s “Harbor Light” emergency food and overnight shelter program, Stovall said, has reached a record of 200 individuals nightly this month. tige, position. Whether he deserved it or brought it on himselfthe fact is, it did happen … Our formal prayer is that you recommend the parole of Dad.” Err for Mercy Dr. Marvin Vance, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Austin, said Giles was a dynamic chairman of the church’s buildMg committee. “He has been punished tremendously …. That that perhaps never will be removed …. At his age you don’t rightly write off a year of your life …. I hope when you look back on your service here, if you have erred you have erred on the side of mercy, for there, if you made a mistake, it would not be too grievous.” A letter was read from Dr. Carlyle Marney, pastor, First Baptist Church of Austin, saying Giles had earned eligibility for parole but that “the emotional reaction of the public makes him receive punishment” greater than normal. Dr. Blake Smith, pastor, University Baptist Church, said parole would let Giles “show his reformation …. He has the highest motivations for this that are known to men, and that is his family …. I could not imagine any motive that would cause a man to try to make amends for his sins than to cast a belated glory on his son …. If this be denied to him, is it not possible that the public might believe that even justice has not operated but rather public passion and pressure?” Father Francis Duffy, pastor, St. Mary’s Catholic Church of San Antonio, was prison chaplain when Giles arrived at Huntsville. Giles was “the model prisoner,” he said. “He has always kept his place, showed respect for ‘authority . helped many other inmates.” Clint Small, Giles’s lawyer, but Stovall added: “This is not unique to Houston. It appears to throughout Texas. We don’t know what the future holds.” Colonel John Fuller of Houston’s Colunteers of America agency said his welfare case load had increased this month by 20 percent. He said: “Perhaps one of the places we most notice the current condition is in our program of providing employment for released prison inmates. Normally we have some 20 of these fellows to place. Now the figure has increased to 75. And there’s also an increase in the number of physically handicapped persons who are unemployed.” Both Stovall and Fuller said they believed there would be a “levelling off” early next year. TEC’s district director at Houston, Homer Jackson, also was optimistic. He said the heavy unemployment at Houston was “more than offset by a force of 445,900 ord.” appearing as a personal friend, said he told Giles “there was no legal defense for his conduct” and that he didn’t think any per son “could have suffered more humiliation o r more punish ment.” “He’s done a very fine service f o r that penitentiary,” he said. “He went down there to Milk ‘Monopoly’ Sued in Dallas DALLAS A federal court is the latest battleground in a milk “price war” during which the cost of milk has dropped as low as 57 cents a gallon. Beverly Hills Dairy last week brought a $1 million damage action, alleging violation of federal anti-trust statutes, against the Borden Co., Cabell Minit Mar