ustxtxb_obs_1958_02_14_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

for a Worthy Cause?’ Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer GOP Facts of Life lit &leas Mhstrurr Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON Tan I Interest You in Dying Jive Unemployment men without work, families with empty cupboards and creditors repossessing is now the number one problem in the United States and in this particular member of the United States. In January alone 1,120,000 more Americans were thrown out of their jobs, so that now five million persons cannot find \\vork in this country ! Perhaps 200,000 Texans are out of work. Where, now, Governor Shivers, Governor Daniel, is the ballyhooed “right to work” law what right, what work? We’ve hardly heard a squeak out of Price. As the year began he was proclaiming how defense of the oil tidelands is the “biggest” Texas problem in 1958. Even though unemployment was at record levels already a month ago, prophetic Price was saying, “Texas is continuing its spectacular growth, and we are in the ‘golden age’ of industrial development.” Now he is ratting around the state talkng about juvenile crime while the social crime of unemployment more immediate, and much more his responsibility is being repeated a couple of hundred thousand times in his own bailiwick. We hear a lot about states’ right9 when the right-wingers want a favor for the oil industry, a free new RS At last the fundamental issue of civil rights now in the United States has been clearly posed for legislative action. Sixteen U.S. senators, D.-propriate $12.5 million a year for five years for federal aid to states and municipalities in developing community understanding and plans for school integration, plus another $40 million a year for districts that want to’desegregate but might then find their funds cut off by the state. Should efforts . to achieve voluntary compliance fail, the secretary of health, education, and welfare could draw up school integration plans ; if these were ignored, the attorney general could seek federal court orders’ to enforce compliance. This is tough, as tough it must be if the adamant defenders of a corrupt social fabric are to be shaken from their local suzerainties. Unless Lyndon Johnson succeeds in converting the bill into an iron-clad protection, complete with court papers and federal padlocks, of the Negroes’ right to breathe, we shall now learn whether the Congress is yet prepared to protect and extend equal educational opportunities for all citizens. Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. FEBRUARY 14, 1958 Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Lyman Jones, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Dean Johnston, Circulation-Advertising EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: 1012 Dennis, Mrs. R. D. Randolph, Dean Johnston. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. otteJ6 hand for a public utility like the gas industry, or a 25 percent income tax limit for the millionaires. We hear nothing about states’ rights when it is time for the states to act on behalf of the pressing needs of their citizens. Apparently states’ rights means the protection of business, not the citizens. That is why the people have so often turned to Washington. But the Republicans are in control there now, and they won’t do anything either. Where is the nation’s leadership ? $100 54.5.1 Texas Republican -chieftain Jack Porter’s letter to Republicans telling how good old Joe Martin has to get 65 percent of the House Republicans to support the natural gas bill, and then urging “substantial” money-raising at the Houston dinner for Martin, has, of course, killed the natural gas bill. Natural gas is so manifestly a natural utility, and the Harris-O’Hara bill to ease the industry out from under federal control is so patently a special interest scheme to load higher prices on U.S. consumers, any such episode as this detonates the Capitol sky-high. But we in Texas have to live with these Texas Republicans, and at this point we are more concerned with what happens to that $100,000. Jack Porter indicates the Texas Republican Party will use the money Eisenhower, Hagerty, and Alcorn have rejected as tainted by the unethical suggestions in Porter’s letter. Are Texas Republicans going to accept and use it? If so they’d better pick up some new language techniques that don’t use the righteous terms they have been flinging around about the wicked ways of the one-party state. Arthur DeWitty, a leader of the Negro political community in Austin, writes in the Houston Informer that “the time has come when the Negroes can trade their own votes with all groups on the basis of what will be done for this deprived Minority ; there is a constantly growing market for such trading. We must have some real benefits for our participation in politics.” This is precisely the kind of bloc-oriented thinking which makes independent citizens distrustful of political movements. The vote of each citizen is private to himself and cannot be “traded” by any leader unless the leader actually has control of the voter and his vote. Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity prices available on orders. We will serve no group or party but will hew to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. AUSTIN What’s all the fuss about ? So Jack Porter, the state’s Republican ringmaster, did tell the oilmen they’d better put up or they might not get that nice gas bill. Gas-bags will gas away, and it would have been an insupportable strain on Porter’s nature to expect him to suppress such an obvious deduction. The egg has been laid in Washing ton, where Republican chairman Alcorn and Republican frontman Eisenhower have righteously refused to touch a one of the ten million pennies Porter raised by his gas-’em-up appeal. \(“Not one cent of that money is going into the Republican National You’d think it comes as a surprise to the Republicans upstairs that Texas oilmen sand-bag the GOP with sacks and sacks of lucre because the GOP in Congress returns their investment in multiples of millions. What, after all, did oilman Porter write to the oilmen who bought those thousand tickets at $100 apiece? 1. That Joe Martin, the Republican leader in the House, has always been a friend of “the oil and gas producing industries” and “mustered two-thirds of the Republican votes in the House each time the gas bill passed” relieving the gas industry of federal . limits on how much it can soak the consumers. 2. “It will be up to Joe Martin to muster at least 65 percent of the Republican votes in order to pass the gas bill this yearhe has to put Republican members from Northern and Eastern consuming areas on the spot politically …” 3. Good old Joe Martin will be the victim of an appreciation dinner, $100 a ticket, right here in our own Houston. 4. “The dinner must raise substantial amounts of money for the Republican Party as part of these will go towards the election of Republican Congressmen and Senators.” Now what did Porter say wrong? It’s true Joe Martin \(like Lyndon industry errands in Congress. It’s true Joe would have been in charge of producing the GOP votes for the gas bill. It’s true he was speaking at a dinner in Houston. All Porter did was remark how propitious it would be if “substantial amounts of money” were raised at the dinner. No, we cannot detect in that letter enough explosive to account for the new national funk -against the gas bill. When Superior Oil tried to give Senator Case $2,500, perhaps one could understand the indignation \(even though it was only a campaign ton Post really believe anyone in the East still doubts that Texas oilmen contribute their millions to the Republicans, and to -selected Democrats, for any primary reason other than their own further enrichment ? These provincials pass me. They need to come down here to the tap-roots of civilization and learn a thing or a few hundred million. Then, if they still insist on burrowing along their ‘narrow little Pennsylvania Avenue furrows, perhaps they can be brought to maturity by the angry common sense of a member of the British Parliament, Anthony Lewis, in a letter to constituents who had complained of the budget for the year 1714: “Gentlemen :” he wrote, “I have received your letter about the excise, and am surprised at your insolence in writing me at “You know, and I know, that I bought this constituency. You know, and I know, that I am now determined to sell it, and you know what you think I don’t know, that you are now looking out for another buyer; andI know, what you certainly don’t know, that I have now found another constituency to buy. “About what you said about the excise : May God’s curse light upon you all, and may it make your homes as open and free to the excise officers as your wives and daughters have always been to me while I have represented your rascally constituency.” dress another letter to his Republican oilmen. “Gentlemen :” he can write, “You have heard the furore about my earlier letter, and are no doubt surprised at the insolence of the cornmon press in desecrating free enterprise correspondence. “You know, and I know,. that we oilmen buy legislation. You know, and I know, that we are now determined to buy a gas bill, and you know what our chairman thinks I don’t know, that if we cannot buy enough Republicans, we will buy as many Democrats as necessary, and I know, what our Great Leader certainly doesn’t know, that we have about run out of constituencies to buy. “About what the radicals now say of the fate of the gas bill: May God’s curse light upon them all, and may it make their homes as open and free to our gas-bill collectors as Texas politicians and Washington Republi cans have always been to me while I have represented our rascally party.” R.D.