ustxtxb_obs_1958_05_16_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The one great ride of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. An Independent-Liberal Weekly A ewspaper Vol. 50 TEXAS, MAY 16, 1958 10c per copy Number 7 Economic Education Labor Indicates Its Preferences AUSTIN Reports that organized labor, at its Committee on meeting in Austin last weekend, was wary of backing Sen. Henry Gonzalez of San Antonio for governor do not appear to be well founded. The facts, of which the Observer is unimpeachably apprised, but which were not part of COPE’s press statements after its closed sessions, are that the political policy arm of AFL-CIO in Texas formally resolved to commend U. S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough, State Sen. Henry Gonzalez, and ex-Sen. George Nokes for their records in public life. The resolutions did not endorse candidates, but in each case they commended only the candidates named for their public records and resolved to study, reproduce, and distribute their records, records of the other candidates in each of the races. AFL-CIO members were urged in each case to make their decisions on the basis of the records. AFL-CIO thus will be distributing to its members analyses of the voting records of each of the major candidates for U. S. senator, governor, and lieutenant governor. The Observer firmly understands that the unions will be supporting Gonzalez as well” asYarborough and Nokes in the primary. At the same time, union spokesmen have been cognizant of the possibility of an O’DanielDaniel runoff and have urged Gov. Daniel not to make labor an issue in the campaign. Hank Brown of San Antonio, educational director of the AFLCIO in Texas, made a strong and much discussed speech for Gonzalez in the COPE meeting, the Observer understands. In COPE’s announcement, it was stated that COPE decided to make no recommendations on candidates in the three major state races but rather to distribute candidates’ records to union members with the recommendation they vote for those with the best records. Union labor in Texas traditionally has not endorsed candidates outright. No reference was made in the announcement on what action, if any, was taken in any other races. COPE in Texas consists of about 200 elected representatives of local and area COPE organizations, the executive board for Texas AFL-CIO, and members at large from among union leaders in .the state. AFL-CIO’s executive board urged union members to support seven of the nine constitutional amendments to be voted on in November. Not recommended: four-year terms for city officials, and prohibiting district, county or precinct officials from running for another office when a year or more remains of their terms. Recommended especially was the amendment for annual sessions and annual pay for legislators “so that,” AFL-CIO president Jerry Holleman said, “small businessmen, farmers, and working AUSTIN Economics, the dismal nonscience, provides frameworks for most of the fundamental issues of society, yet, says the Texas Economic Education Council, only “perhaps a sixth” of the Texas high school graduates who go on to college have had economics instruction.,”in Texas,” says the council, “primarily due to the lack of teacher training in economics, only a handful of the high schools offer a course in the subject.” The council is making one of several attempts to augment high school curricula on economic problems. With an executive committee including educators and labor and business leaders, the council has sponsored and financially assisted economic workshops since 1951 and is now sending economic discussion teams of four speakersfrom business, labor, agriculture, and education to public schools which request them, The speakers pay their own way. Originally the council was supported by the Better Business Bureaus but took a blow when the BBB official in charge of the bureau’s connection broke it off. Inactive for a time thereafter, the council is renewing its work. The official, Bob Lawrence, is now assisting the Texas Bureau for Economic Understanding in its economic education program for the schools. J. G. Umstattd, chairman of the department of curriculum and in AUSTIN Young Democrats, who, for years in Texas, have disputed volubly from their divided camps, came t og et her “united” on the same hotel mezzanine and disputed even more volubly last weekend. The’ liberals held fast on the track, outvoting the growing but still-a-minority Price Daniel faction on every issue and every officer, but not without one threat of fisticuffs 3 :30 Sunday morning in the resoutions committee. As usual, the YD’s disputed with fanatical intensity on extraordinarily tedious matters of little or no moment; the largest principles evoked the least debate. “We get provoked over the littlest things,” sighed a delegate from Dallas, “with much controversy on everything but issues,” said a young lady from Houston, so that “it’s not who’s liberal or conservative but who’s liberaler,” said a young man from Houston. Since the Daniel group had no chance of electing officers of its own, the liberals decided, in a the night before the voting, they would have out their own differences about officers in the open convention. This they did, a Dallas-Austin-San Antonio liaison defeating a Houston-Fort Worth coalition in bed, for the nonce, with the Danielites. The triumphant new officers made their way to the rostrum for their acceptance speeches amid the clatter of breaking crockery; for even though the delegates exhausted struction at the University of Texas, is executive director of the council. In an Observer interview he said: “This is an attempt at an objective study of economics with equal opportunity for discussion being given to business, agriculture, labor, the place of the government, and the place of education in our economy, with recognition that each one will have its bias.” Umstattd comments that a nonobjective group might have more success financially but that he would not be associated with it. The council’s annual budget now is small, about $20,000 a year; the money is raised by dues and contributions from members. The Texas AFL-CIO financed publication of a report of the council’s 1956 conference on economic education in Austin which included reprints of speeches by Umstattd, a United States Department of Agriculture area conservationist, Fred Schmidt, AFL-CIO state secretary, and Joe Wells of the Austin National Bank. In its brochure TEEC says it does not propose any economic program, promote any group, engage in propaganda activities, or try to influence legislative actions. The Spectrum Speakers at its workshops have included Edwin G. Nourse, the first chairman of the President’s council of economic advisers; J. C. Dolley, vice president of the University of Texas; Richard most of their ebullience during the Friday night credentials committee meeting which sagged to an end 8:30 Saturday morning, they were not inclined thereafter to forego the conventional means to convention joyousness. Let it be said in defense of the ladies, however, that one youngish outof-town visitor returned , to his home state loudly spreading abroad insults, or, as the reader may see it, compliments about the Ronnie Dugger friendly but chaste beauties thereabouts. “In my state,” he said, “we mean business.” Daniel forces, guided to some extent by Jake Pickle, organizer for the state executive committee, have been forming clubs in many small counties. Since the YD’s state executive committee membership is based on senatorial districts, such new clubs have affected the state committee, which would now stand only 13-12 liberal but for the fact that the six state officers selected at the convention are also members, making the division 19-12. In the convention itself delegates were divided about 240 liberal, 170 conservative, one savvy source said. The new president, Maco Stewart, who resigned as assistant attorney general preparatory to en tering law practice .in Galveston, says the new officers will get busy organizing their own clubs in small counties. Gonzales, vice president and treasurer, Humble Oil; and Watrous Irons, president, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. John Rasco, public relations adviser of the Texas Manufacturers Assn., has assisted in selecting business spokesmen, Schmidt in selecting labor spokesmen, Umstattd says. TEEC’s executive committee includes the principal of Amarillo High, R. B. Norman, president of the committee; Walter Gates, Austin lawyer; Jerry Holleman, AFLCIO state president; W. W Jackson, vice president, American Hospital and Life Insurance Co., San Antonio \(and vice chairman, H. West, secretary, Texas Farm Bureau, all vice-presidents; and, as members, an educator, an endowment firm president, an agricultural representative, and Schmidt. Dr. Carey Thompson, associate professor of economics, University of Texas, is the council’s consulting economist. Originally the Joint Council for Economic Education, financed by funds from the Committee for fostered the Texas agency. Three-week workshops attended by 70 or so teachers and administrators were held at Concordia Lutheran College in Austin in 1951 and 1952. Other workshops. were held at the University of sultative assistance for workshops `Economic Equality’ The most dramatic division developed over the civil rights resolution, not over its militantly liberal contents, but over whether it could be voted on. Convention chairman Sam Houston Clinton of Austin ruled it could not, since it had not been submitted by a specified deadline; apparently the intelligence escaped the Daniel forces that after this ruling, it was a simple matter to override Clinton by majority vote, whereas bringing the resolution up by suspending rules would have taken two-thirds, which might not have mustered. By a vote of roughly 172-148, Clinton was overruled, and the resolution w adopted by voice vote. All citizens, said the civil rights resolution of the official youth branch of the Texas Democratic Party, are “equal before the law,” entitled to “equal opportunities for education for economic advancement, and for decent living conditions.” “United efforts” were pledged against “illegal discrimination of all kinds.” “The Jim Crow system in all of its forms must be destroyed. We also advocate the abolition of the poll tax …” The YD’s resolved to promote “economic equality for all races. We will endorse measures to create an employment policy that will guarantee the right of every individual to be em Steel Strikers Win in Ruling But Arbitrator Says No Back Pay Is Due HOUSTON A formula for restoring more than 2000 employees of Lone Star Steel Co. to the seniority status they occupied before a wildcat strike last September has been placed before the company and the United Steelworkers of America in an arbitration decision being studied here and at Lone Star. The exact and complete meaning of the provisional award by Arbiter Peter M. Kelliher, in terms of men put back to work, will take some time to become apparent. The decision is designed to unsnarl the situation that arose when the company balked at fill Al Hieken ing temporary job vacancies in the way the union believed re quired under their contract. Because the terms of the award are complex, and because at this time layoffs have reduced the Lone Star working force very sharply, it will take a long time before all those entitled to restoration of their jobs and their seniority are back in the plant. But the door has been opened. ‘From Lone Star came word; however, that although some 2,600 workers were fired during the. strike, many had been rehired, leaving only 900 to 1,000 affected by the decision. A spokesman said that the company is studying “what recourse there may be.” -He said factors that will affect the rehiring of former strikers are the relative seniority of the strikers and persons now on the payroll and the fact that only 1,500 people are now working at the Damngerfield plant, as against 3,500 at the time of the strike. Kelliher ruled, in effect, that the great bulk of Lone Star’s working force was not responsible for the wildcat,. strike; that only a comparatively small number-200 or lesswere “instigators” or “leaders.” If the company can identify the instigators and leaders, it can dis .charge them, but, he said, it was “totally unrealistic” for the company to punish almost everybody, especially since the majority of those who stayed off the job in the wildcat strike had “justifiable fears” about going through the picket line and the company “did indeed” lull its employees into the belief that they need not immediately present themselves at the plant after notices of their suspensions were mailed to them. Kelliher ruled that the company erred when it decided to apply . the loss of ‘seniority as a penalty against its workers who failed to return to their jobs within a three-day time limit. Those employees who haVe since returned to work or accepted employment anew with the company and were “on the payroll” as of the date of the award, May 9, are to be considered -fully reinstated with full seniority rights, Kelliher’s decision said. But Kelliher put one big . condition in his award: there is to be no back pay of any kind to any. SOME LIVELY HARMONY