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The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau Orxas 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 Newspaper Vol. 50 TEXAS, MAY 23, 1958 10c per copy Number 8 ‘Chemical Age’ Risks Controlled Baptists on Race AUSTIN “The Division of Occupational Health is ambitious ! We expect to see Texas’s local health departments ‘exercise the leadership required’ to meet occupational health needs.” So exclaims Dr. W. L. Wilson, director of the state health department’s occupational health division, in outlining the division’s manydirection programs to reduce the dangers of the chemical age in Texas. The division has promulgated regulations affecting all Texas employersestablishing minimum health standards for all working environments, regulating the conditions of industrial homework, limiting toxic materials at workplaces, and prohibiting shoefitting fluoroscopy. Recently Dr. Wilson noted that Houston has established an occupational health division headed by an engineer, with three industrial hygienists and three sanitarians; Fort Worth has hired one full-time industrial hygienist. But, he said, “We regret that no more official local occupational health programs can be listed in Texas at this time …” The division has furnished the Houston and Fort Worth health departments radiation testing equipment, and the department’s own lab for occupational health survey analysis has been expanded with $50,000 worth of new equipment. Dr. Wilson and his associate director, Martin C. Wukasch, summarize, in a publication discussing possible radiation dangers, some of the complications which have increased occupational risks in a state once wide-open range country. Increased use of insecticides, defoliants, and chemical fertilizers on the farm or economic poisons on ranches now cause “a greater share of acute and chronic toxic exposures than ever before.” The new chemical and manufacturing establishments present problems involving exposures to fumes, vapors, gases, dusts, mists. “Our whole environment has become one of ever increased exposures due to our ‘chemical age’,” the public health workers conclude. WARY CABALLEROS AUSTIN The “Gay Caballeros,” whose music will be an important part of Sen. Henry Gonzalez’s campaign for governor, are four San Antonio Latin-American musicians who play often at dances and celebrations. Their leader is Lorenzo Caballero, guitar, and the others are Tommy Moreno, accordion, Johnny Viesca, base fiddle, and his brother, Frank Viesca, drums \(“but we can mix it up,” The musicians wanted to know if the Observer reporter was going to cover their campaigning in East Texas. “We want you to protect us,” Caballero saidlaughing. Oil Accidents In crude oil production, accidents can result from tools, moving equipment, falls, fires, explosions, and exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas, “which has too frequently taken its toll among oil well drillers.” Problems in petroleum refineries include exposures to carcinogenic compounds, volatile hydrocarbons and combustible products. Chemical plants must combat air pollution problems and exposures to acids, alkalies, toxic fluorine, sulphur compounds, and other substances. Hazards in auto assembly and manufacturing plants include injuries from spray painting and welding. All industrial operations, but notably marine transportation plants, have problems associated with illumination, ventilation, temperature, and humidity. Aircraft and missile manufacturing operations involve noise control and “the occupational conservation of hearing.” Radiation dangers result also from machinery operations on magnesium-thorium alloys and experimentation on nuclear propulsion. All these problems,. the Texas experts remark, have developed in swiftly industrializing Texas, especially in the cities. The state now has 18 counties with cities of populations of 50,000 or more; there are nearly 11,000 manufactories. Dallas leads Harris county in the total number of establishments, but Harris has more peo ple working in its plants. HOUSTON, AUSTIN The Harris County Democrats’ DOT county caucus Tuesday night endorsed U. S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough for re-election, ex-Sen. George Nokes over Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey, and J. Edwin Smith and Sarah Hughes in their candidacies for the state Supreme Court, but not State Sen. Henry Gonzalez for governor. The same night the Bexar County DOT meeting endorsed Yarborough, Gonzalez, and Nokes, and the Dallas County Democrats decided to send a delegation not instructed about candidates to DOT’s state convention in Austin May 30-31. The Travis County DOT caucus did not consider candidates, but the Travis County Social and Legislative Conference Thursday night endorsed Yarborough, Gonzalez and Nokes. DOT’s position on the candidates will depend on the steering committee May 30. The constitution of DOT provides that the convention cannot act on candidates without a recommendation from the committee, on which each county has one vote. At the Houston meeting, attended by several hundred, Miron Love, reporting for a co-ordinating committee which considered HOUSTON Acting by a large majority, the Southern Baptists in convention hereupwards to 12,000 “messengers” representing the Southern Baptists’ 31,000 churches with 9,000,000 memberscondemned “social usages that create fear and intimidation” and “deny the basic American freedoms” to any citizen. They called for stronger “fellowship with people of every race” in a resolution entitled “a call for racial reconciliation.” Rev. Montague Cook of Georgia objected: “The words fellowship and integration are synonymous.” He read dictionary definitions of these words and said the report would be misconstrued by the press. Adiel J. Moncrief of Missouri, chairman of the Christian Life Commission which made the report on race, replied: “We are endeavoring to follow the Bible rather than the dictionary or press reports.” elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, favored adopting the report, saying, “We must adhere to the ministry of reconciliation.” In his conventionopening talk to 13,000 Baptists, Hays said, “there are proven and accepted ways by which Southern Baptists may express their Christian concern for the minority’s welfare and progress,” such as a program for ministerial training of Negroes in Mississippi. But, he added, he did not mean only accepted ways should be used. A “lift the Negro race up” speech by Rev. W. 0. Vaught, Jr., pastor of a Baptist church in Lit candidate endorsements, said that the committee decided there would be no recommendation for endorsement of any candidate to whom any group participating in the committee’s deliberations objected. The committee, he said, had been actuated by a “spirit of cooperation” in this regard. “In connection with our commitment, there are some statewide races in which there are no recommendations from our group,” he said, announcing the recommendations of Yarborough, Smith, Hughes, and Nokes, “and none other.” M. King Hubbert, a research man at Shell Development Co., asked “why we are not sponsoring a candidate fpr governor.” Love said the reason was “the spirit of cooperation and coordination that came from the meeting with the other political action groups together with the Harris County Democrats:” Hubbert commented, “The governor’s race is so important if DOT can’t get, off: the fence they’re gonna jeopardize their position in the state of Texas.” Without further discussion, the report was adopted with a light scattering of nos. Gonzalez’s name was mentioned several times in sporadic remarks from the floor, as when the chairman asked if anyone else ought to be introduced. \(Gonzalez was tle Rock, Ark., caused much discussion early in the convention on whether Southern Baptists may be reconciling themselves to desegregation. “No matter to what extent Arkansas people oppose integration, they even more’ vigorously oppose mob violence,” Rev. Vaught said. He proposed new evaluation of “the real meaning of true democracy,” new emphasis on “the value of universal education,” and breaking down of “walls of hatred” between groups, nations, and races. “The economically disenfranchised must be given equal opportunity for daily work,” he also said. A MISSISSIPPI Baptist leader, Chester I. Quarles of Jackson, was elected vice-president over two opponents. He said he realizes that segregation in the South impedes missionary work overseas and in this country “in our work with Negroes.” Identifying himself as a “moderate” on segregation, he said: “I am a segregationist. I do not agree that segregation is unChristian.” More than 1,100 Southern Baptist missionaries work in the United States in new areas and with minorities; 1,204 serve ‘in 38 other countries. Southern Baptists recorded 389,716 baptisms last year and have a goal of 485,000 for this year. The convention heard accounts of missionary work in China, East Africa, and Brazil. Dr. Baker Cauthen, executive secretary of the foreign missionary board, said many doors are still open for foreign work, especially in South America, but time is running out in other areas, particularly the Far East, because of communist influence. Dean Johnston, a candidate for the legislature, presenting a resolution for party registration, preceded his discussion with comments on the endorsement situation. He pointed out the liberal Democrats had just replaced conservative Presley Werlein as county Democratic chairman and have a firm majority on the county executive committee as a result of “organizational efforts and organization efforts alone.” “Sure he’s a good boy but I don’t think we ought to endorse him, because our job is to win th4 Democratic Party for the Democrats,” Johnston said. He cited “the necessity and sheer political beauty of organized strength.” He did not ask for endorsement in his own race, he said, because it is more important to him “that we continue to work to get control of the Democratic Party … in the hands of Democrats. Then we can start to work getting these people elected whom we respect and admire … our favorite sons.” \(Introduced were Rep. Bob Baker, a state Senate candidate; George Eddy, running for Congress; and Bill Kilgarlin, Roger Daily, Dean Johnston. Clyde Miller, and J. Charles Whitfield, candidates for the legislature. A list of 230 precinct chairmen “known to be Democrats” was read. The Rev. Vernon B. Richardson early told the convention that to win over the FarEast, “we must know where its troubles center.” He told of seeing, several years ago, a Chinese girl outside a bakery shop window;, “Her face was pressed against the glass … her lips unpassable inches from a piece of bread … she is hungry. She personifies the Far East today.” In a speech to the pastor’s conference of the convention, Dr. H. Wadell Waters of West Virginia warned of “a pseudo-socialistic national trend” infiltrating the thinking of modern Baptists. “One freedom after another has been stolen from the individual in the name of national welfare and economy,” he said. He criticized a Baptist state convention which.accepted $500,000 in federal money. He also criticized a “dearth of religious freedom even in Baptist colleges which could make our students nothing more than ecclesiastical parrots.” BAPTIST SPEAKERS also zeroed in on Roman Catholics. Dr. Waters said “Baptists need to take their stand and state, loudly and clearly, their objections to the many inroads being made into the public treasury by the Roman Catholic church.” Dr. Theodore F. Adams of Virginia said, “A very realistic Roman Catholic Church is out to win the world. Our own and other evangelistic missionaries are often denied full religious freedom because of Catholic practices and preachings.” Dr. Adams also declared: “We do believe in freedom from religion in the right of the individual of make his own choice to accept or reject Christ as the Lord of life.” caucus agreed on the party registration resolution and another on IN SAN ANTONIO, 124 delegates to the DOT county convention endorsed Yarborough, Gonzalez, and Nokes. However, some disagreement developed over endorsements for legislative posts. R, L. Reader, Franklin Spears, Leland Clare, Rudy Esquivel, Jake Johnson, and Richard Casillas were endorsed. Johnson’s designation was taken as a setback for Mrs. LaVerne Redwine, an active DOT member, and the convention’s decision not to endorse a candidate in a seventh race caused some reaction. Frank Greenwald and Charles Thompson, a Negro, both DOT members, are standing against Rep. Frates Seeligson. Mrs. Redwine said she felt Thompson had been bypassed by the steering committee because he is a Negro. G. L. Dutton, .a San Antonio Negro leader, left the committee meeting because, he said, the majority “didn’t see things as I saw them.” W. 0. Murray, Jr., DOT convention chairman and Bexar County campaign manager for Yarborough, had been quoted by the San Antonio Light as stating he would not back Gonzalez. Murray was represented as dissatisfied with Gonzalez for blocking the appoint