ustxtxb_obs_1958_01_24_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau W e will serve no group or party, but will hew hard to the iruth as we find it rind the right as we see , it. _in Independent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper Vol. 49 TEXAS, JANUARY 24. 1958 10c per copy ‘ No. 42 50 Cents WESLACO In the terms Of government reports, the wetback invasion was “phased out” and the legal bracero program was “phased in” ‘during and after the round-up summer of 1954. Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley were in a fury. The government was depriving them of pliant workers to whom 30 cents an hour had seemed like big money. Had the farmers been willing to pay U.S.-level wages they could have replaced the wetbacks with domestic workers, but the U.S. and Mexico offered them an alternative: legal, for-farmworkonly migrants from Mexico at “prevailing wages” or a minimum of 50 cents an hour. In Texas that meant 50 cents an hour. Reluctantly the farmers accepted braceros. But Mexico now meant to protect her own: she insisted on decent treatment of her nationals Ronnie Dugger at work in the United States. In a migrant labor agreement between the two countries, the braceros were forbidden to work in areas in. which Mexicans. “are discriminated against,” and the farmers were required to hire them for periods of at least six weeks, guarantee them work at least three-fourths of the time, aind pay their transportation and subsistence from the U.S. bracero centers to the farms. For its part the U.S. Government required that the braceros be given health and security checks before they enter the country. More fundamentally, Mexico reserved the right to blacklist farmers. A system of inspection was set up under which Mexican AUSTIN 0. Douglas Weeks, chairman of the Department of government at the University of Texas, endorses $7,500-a-year salaries, annual sessions, better research and staff, and greater authority for the governor in an essay entitled “Toward a More Effective Legislature” in a recent issue of the Texas Law Review. He also suggests the constitu tion of the state be unburdened of its many provisions which ought to be part of the statutory, not the fundamental, law. On annual salaries he writes: “Thirty-three states now pay their legislators annual salaries, and 14 of these also provide supplemental expense allowances. Texas is among a minority of states which pay only a per diem while the legislature is in session. It is the only state among the ten states of highest ranking population which has not adopted legislative salaries. Salaries in the other nine most populous . the Texas Legislative Council … indicates that the average Texas legislator is left with a deficit of at least $3,157 after each biennial session.” The raise, to be voted on in November, “is a most needed and worthy innovation,” he says. “In an Hour consular authorities in. the United States check bracer working conditions, including housing, sanitation, and wages. The governments agreed on a standard work contract under which: The employer provides, free to the bracero, “hygienic lodgings” not inferior to those provided for domestic farm hands; “overcrowding” is forbidden; sanitation must be adequate; The employer provides, at cost to the bracer, insurance for “medical, surgical, and other necessary care and treatment;” whether work-connected or not; The employer provides without charge all “the tools, supplies, or equipment” for the bracero’s work, plus free water and fuel for him; The employer cannot charge the bracero more than $1.75 for three meals, and the bracero has the right to buy his food anywhere he can. The contract is not the kind an American labor union might negotiate: it says, for example, “Neither shall the Mexican worker be paid : for New Years, July, 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, or Christmas unless he performs work on those days.” But it insists on conditions much better than those of the wetback days, and there is even Article 14, which says: “The employer shall not practice social or economic discrimination in conditions of employment against the Mexican worker.” The Valley Reacts When the bracero program was taking the place of wetbacks in. 1954, Valley farm interests protested again and again. The Valley’s American Agricul view of all the hue and cry that is raised periodically, and more loudly recently, in regard to retainer’s fees and various other questionable practices involving legislators in ‘connection with interest groups, there can be no doubt that adequate salaries and expense allowances are imperamakers of higher caliber, who will be more willing to make careers of legislative service.” “Adequate aids, services, and staff’ should be afforded to legislative officers, committees, and indleidual members on both technical and clerical matters, he said. Annial sessions \(also to be voted government as large as that of Tex2s, he said. “Leadership is the crying need of tie Texas legislature if it is to be teed from its excessive submisson to the demands of pressure groups and local interests fron without and of logrolling convinations from within,” Dr. Werks \(citing the Observer’s May 23, 955 report on the Austin lobcontitutional revision to “insure greter leadership from the Govemir by making him the responsib?. head of the state administraon with real authority to spek for it and to coordinate its actvities in. proposing and furthang needed legislation.” Junketeers From Texas WASHINGTON The year 1957 goes down in tourist history as the year in which the first Congressional junketeer reached the South Pole and barely half the lawmakers were willing to stay at home. Official businessand a handful of personally financed pleasure tripstook 222 Congressmen out of the country during 1957, a check by Congressional Quarterly showed. Forty-six Senatorsthree short of a quorumand 176 Representatives journeyed from American soil during the year. As usual, all but one member traveled under the cloak of official secrecy. Congress draws around its members’ junketing expenses. The exception was the venerable Sen. Theodore Francis Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Green last February filed his customary accounting of his travels during the prior year on a six week tour of Africa. Green and his aide spent $5,848, including $23.20 for cab fare and $2.84 for stamps and phone calls. Most Congressmen, however, preferred to keep the cost of their travels secrta. When Rep. Willast July, to shed some light on one source of Congressional travel money counterpart funds the House balked him. Counterpart funds are the local currencies deposited by foreign countries receiving U.S. aid. Ten percent of these funds are reserved for American use, and a touring Congressman who has his committee chairman’s permission can obtain as much counterpart money in each country as he feels he needs. Dawson tried to amend the Mutual Security Act to require an acciunting of Congressmen’s use of the counterpart funds, but the move was beaten, 86-148. The decision came on a standing vote, where no individual’s stand is recorded. Dawson introduced a bill for the same purpose, but the House foreign affairs committee has given it no attention. Currently, counterpart fund use is reported each year on a committee-by-committee basis, with no individual figures given. The reports for fiscal 1957the year that ended last June 30do offer some interesting information, however. They show that, despite a long session of Congress, the political conventions and the necessity for campaigning in the Fall of 1956, Congressmen managed to spend $291,248 of the allies’ money in the year. Members of the House education and labor committee, whose concerns are primarily domestic, visited 17 countries during the year and spent $19.194 of counter-‘ part fundsmore countries and more spending than the foreign affairs committee reported. Italy, Norway, France, Germany and England were the most popular lands with the fiscal 1957 Congressional spenders. Hong Kong, noted for its bargains, was the only non-European area DALLAS The first of a series of meetings ordered by the 55th Legislature which will help determine who antes up to pay the burgeoning cost of state government over the next several decades was held here in Texas’s financial capital late last week. The meetingof the nine-member Texas state ,tax study commission, State Sen. William S. Fly, Victoria, chairman heard two major new tax sources, from opposite poles of taxing philosophy, recommended to it. Texas ought to levy, as 33 or 34 other states do, a tax on the net incomes of corporations, domestic and foreign, doing business within its borders, said the Texas AFLCIO. A levy of, say, four per cent, said the union’s presentation, figured on current level of corporate profits, would bring in approximately $60 billion yearly. But Texas ought not to levy, the union testimony said, any more sales taxes. . Not so, said the Southland Corp. of Dallas, ‘owner of some Texas ought to have is a retail sales tax to bring in, who knows how many millions? Speaking for AFL-CIO was AUSTIN Sales of poll taxestickets to 1958’s political dramas, which may turn out to be historic for the statehave been slow as the Jan. 31 deadline approaches. The Dallas News has complained of apathy among conservative voters. In Fort Worth conservative Democrat Hamilton Rogers said many voters seem to think 1958 isn’t important politically. In Austin Jean Lee, leader of the Travis County legislative conference, said the conference’s drive has dropped off drastically. In Houston Mrs. R. D. Randolph. Democratic national committeewoman and a loyalist leader. said “I don’t think it’s going too well” in Houston. And a news release from the Texas AFL-CIO in Austin said: “Reports reaching Texas State COPE headquarters here indicate that bad weather and low employment have kept many AFLCIO members from paying their poll taxes to qualify to vote in a crucial political year.” These are a few of the issues which will be decided by citizens who have paid their poll taxes by Jan. 31: Whether U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough is returned to office. or whether his almost certain opposition, who may be ex-Sen. William Blakley, will win. Whether Gov. Price Daniel will receive a second term, and possibly whether Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey will receive a fifth term. Whether the conservative Daniel group, or the Democrats of Texas led by Mrs. Randolph, will control the state Democratic Party in 1958 and the state committee until 1960 and thus be in a commanding position when Texas delegates to the 1960 Democratic state secretary, Fred Schmidt of Austin. Southland’s spokesman was former Dallas Mayor J. R. Temple, its president. Summarizing the union proposal fot “a fair net income’ tax on corporations,” Schmidt said such a levy would: Mean a “fairer and better” distribution of the tax load; not impede further industrialization “because most industrial states.. already levy such taxes”; be “relatively simple and inexpensive to administer”; make non-resident stockholders bear ‘a share of the cost of government under which their corporations have been protected and have prospered”; “be borne in large part by the federal government \(state taxes could be Lyman Jones deducted before payments of fedlaws are drawn to encourage state entrance into this field.” Temple’s arguments said a retail sales tax would:. “Be hard to evade”; be “most equitable” because “many incomes not now being taxed will be contributing to the cost of running our state”; mean “immediate and very constant” revenues; be “least painful” because it is paid in “small amounts” and ” with presidential convention are selected. Whether Texas legislators are to meet annually and be paid $7,500 a year. Half of the members of the state Senate, all of the members of the CANDIDATES *Rep. Barefoot Sanders. an-. nounced he will enter the Democratic primary \(against Rep. GOP Congressman Bruce Alger of. Dallas. He said he thinks the people of Dallas want to be represented by a “moderate conservative” Democrat who can work with other Texans in Congress constructively. On the race issue he said, “I would hate to .see the race issue made a political football. It is too serious a problem for that.” *State Sen. Searcy Bracewell, Houston, said he won’t seek re-election. Announcing immediately for his place: Rep. Bob Baker, a three-termer in the House; Rep. Carlton Moore, an eight-termer in the House; and, tentatively, Charles Murphy, formerly a state i epresentative, now a lobbyist for the Texas Manufacturers Assn. Rep. Dick White, El Paso, said he won’t seek re-election. DA Jim Bates and mayor 0. V. Bridges of Mission announced for the place vacated by Rep. J. T. Ellis, Weslaco. *U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough named Grady Helm, Fort Worth auto dealer, his Tarrant County campaign manager in Tarrant County next summer, but he didn’t say for what race. EXAMINED: STATE REFORMS Poll Taxes