ustxtxb_obs_1958_03_14_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

`You Wouldn’t Pick on a Mother With a Small Child, Would You?’ Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer Eat Hearty, Men AO, Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON Something Ahew What is the trouble with Texas liberalism? Something is askew; the policies of reform are not proceeding as simply as they should from clear perceptions of real maladjustments. We here in the free state of Texas are not inheritors of anyone’s limping leftist legacy : we have no excuses. Our humanitarians, our liberals, are fresh and on the scene. We cannot plead that mere ideas are not strong enough to overpower the elements with stock in the past. Scandinavia, Britain, New York, California : areas and nations attest that the ever-young strength of the free way of life is its responsiveness to ideas. “NI o war saps us of the capacity for sustained attention; no police authority knocks on the doors of the damned at 4 a.m. ; nor has this vibrant still-open country grown undergrowths of gnarled experiment. We think of ourselves yet as a Republic. We merely cooperate with Americans ; we negotiate with Mexicans ; we boycott the United Nations. We preen ourselves a culture and feather it with neglect. If a thing has not been thought of in the East, well, we do not venture. If a thing has been done in the East, well, it’s already been done. So we do nothing. Worse, we say nothing. Do county Democratic chairmen have no responsibility to speak out against the arms race ? Do liberal churchmen have no responsibility to demand Christian principles be applied through foreign aid to the needy of the world? How long does Democrats of Texas think it will hold the attention of the people with a dessicated program of party reform ? With a sales tax threatening ; with the danger of serious disorder in some school districts in September ; with several hundred thousand Texans out of work ; with Senator Johnson needing support for his public works program ; with Senator Yarborough needing support for his income tax exemption bill ; with Nixon opposing any public works program; with Ben Ramsey running for re-election for term number five in the state’s most powerful jobsurely it is time soon for DOT to come forward with ideas. Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. MARCH 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. Judge Sewell touched in Houston on _the desperate needs of our public schools. But have we really understood how desperate those needs are ? We have not ; we have not. . We do not have a clear idea of how much more money the state government will have to spend on education if the schools are to receive and train well the growing numbers of children coming of school age each . year ; we suspect no-one really knows. But the need is a magnitude of many tens of millions, and there is no reason why the state government should” not put it up. If we believe the figures we read and the warnings and importunations of the well advised we know we are criminally neglecting our children’s educations. But the fact that Gov. Daniel has done a dramatic nothing, \(to discount a marginal assist to teachers akin to his skinflint increase of $2 for the aged’s wing hounds’ bound at ‘federal aid to education he has left the school children packed into classrooms, somehow has not evoked from liberals, citizens, parents, a response, an attitude, much less a program, commensurate to the disaster. Really, do we not care if our children are poorly educated ?if they do not get enough personal attention because there are not enough teachers, and not enough classrooms ? Really are we not willing to spend what we must to give our children knowledge? We do not hear enough from the intellectuals of this state. They are all very busy with their gardens ; or their offices ; or their organizations. Here the liberal people have paid their poll taxes as never before. It is the liberal year in Texas politics no doubt of it. We are not even sure what we want to win for. Whose fault is this? Ours ? Certainly. The fact we are “provincials”? Possibly; possibly we are eight million, or nine million, strong, but not bright ; loud, but not original. The fact our political leaders find symbols more successful than matters of substance? The fact our political gatherings are more and more blocked-out and partisan, with the responses so habitual we have long since dispensed with the cheer leaders ? 10 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 I used to believe \(along with Howard Keck and Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson and Ralph Yarborough nifiicently underdeveloped sense of political timing in Texas belonged to Elmer Patman. But I’ve changed my mind. I now feel that this honorif that is what it isbelongs to the fertile-minded genius who dreamed up the idea of holding a “Texas Food Conference” in Austin Feb. 25, as part of a national celebration of “Food Comes First Week,” As of that date, if we may have faith in the Texas Employment Commission and the Texas Department of Public Welfare, approximately 180,000 Texans were out of work and an additional 109,000 were eating from federal breadlines. Bearing these figures in mind, read this from the organ of the Texas Farm Bureau and see if you do not agree that Patman has more than met his match: “While Americans are blessed with the finest food supply on earth, many of our citizens are actually undernourished because they eat without plan or purpose,” Gov. Price Daniel told the Texas Food Conference Feb. 25 in Austin. The conference was a highlight of “Food Comes First Week” in Texas, Feb. 23-March 1. It followed by one day the national conference at which President Eisenhower spoke on the need for better balanced diets. Farm Bureau was in charge of coordinating the “Food Comes First” activities on state and national levels. Many county Farm Bureaus in Texas, as well as over the nation, also sponsored the event on the local level. Gov. Daniel explained that the state and national conferences had an identical objective: “… to stress, to our people the need for a balanced mealtime dietnot only for the sake of each individual and family, but also for the sake of our state and nation which depend so much upon a healthy and vigorous citizenship.” Other speakers at the Austin conference were Agriculture Commistor of Public Health Education L. E. White pointed out that staple foods are lower priced now than at any , previous time in the history of our nation, based on numbers of hours of work required to buy groceries for one week. “Isn’t it strange then,” he asked, “that many of our citizens are going hungrynutritionally speakingin a land of plenty.” The agriculture commissioner declared that modern methods of processing and merchandising foods sometimes take essential food values out of things we eat. He said that because owners of pets demanded a truly healthy product for their pets to eat, the manufacturers of pet food concentrate on producing just that. “Therefore, when the housewife reaches up on the shelf and takes down a can of food for the dog and another for the childrenchances are that the dog is getting the best of the deal,” he stated. White said that if all people in the United States ate an adequate diet, “there would probably be no surplus of farm productsand we would have a healthier nation.” Bracy told the group that to get the essential nutrients one should have milk, meat \(dried peas, and beans or or cereals. “Good nutrition promotes normal growth, maintains the best of health, gives greater resistance to disease and has a leading role in restoring the ill to better health,” he said. I know what my Welsh grandmother would have said of Messers. Daniel, White, et al. Do you know how the Welshman curses those who misdirect him: “May they wander stage by stage Of the same vain pilgrimage, Stumbling on, age after age, Night and day, mile after mile, At each and every step, a stile ; At each and every stile, withal, May they catch their feet and fall ; At each and every fall they take, May a bone within them break ; And may the bones that break within Not be, for variation’s sake, Now rib, now thigh, now arm, now shin, But always, without fail, THE NECK.” LYMAN JONES Zip Zrxas nistrurr