ustxtxb_obs_1958_07_04_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

ETHICAL ISSUES Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON ‘You Can Sit On the Fence, But Let’s Keep the Gate Closed’ 50-Cent 2iJaoter Governor Price Daniel is now on record against a 50-cent minimum wage for farm workers. In El Paso last week he signed a telegram with the governors of New Mexico and Arizona protesting the Department of Labor’s minimum of 50 cents an hour for 90 percent of the members of any given bracero crew as a “grossly unfair” standard which will “bring economic disaster to farmers.” Apparently it did not occur to Daniel that even 50 cents an hour is economic disaster to a working man with a wife and children to support. Or if this did occur to him, he decided behind the genteel latticework in his mind that he is more upset U. S. Senate candidate William Blakley’s insurance company giving money to three state senators, two of them when they were chairmen of the state insurance committee, is so outrageous, it is difficult not to become strident about it. Blakley, the owner of the bulk of the stock, the chairman of the board, and personally present at the board meetings when these payments were approved, was responsible. The Observer first exposed the facts to public view last month. Eloquent silence greeted the story. Then the El Paso Herald-Post con AThe April issue of the Texas Medical Journal carried the parting editorial of outgoing president Denton Kerr, who is also, incidentally, a big-shot in the Texas Citizens’ Council. Kerr, venting again his fear that America is about to slip into the abyss of slavery, commended to his readers seven “sources of conservative information,” including such stuff as the “Dan Smoot Report.” Said TMA’s president, “May every doctor in Texas avail himself of some of this literature and carry it in his pocket until he has finished each publication.” On the TMA’s reading list was “Economic Council Letter, Empire State Bldg., New York 1. \($10 per folded-sheet of the National Economic Council, Inc., of which the president is Merwin K. Hart. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith brands Hart as “a known and long-time anti-Semite” and says that the Economic Council Letter has been “overtly anti-Jewish.” We trust TMA officials will not again commend to Texas doctors literature more reminiscent of Buchenwald and Belsen than love and healing. Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. JULY 4, 19SK a z tSlf by reduced farmers’ profits than by undernourished farm workers’ children. Loyan -Walker, director of the West Texas Chamber of Commerce, protesting the same 50-cent minimum, said the U. S. Department of Labor is making an all-out effort to raise the pay scale of the braceros from $75 to $125 per month. Too long our politicians have been permitted to neglect the needs and rights of farm workers. Gov . Daniel ought to be repudiated by Texas voters who do not believe $125 is too much pay for a month’s back-breaking work in the open fields, planting and harvesting the food and fiber the people must have. eluded “Blakley Won’t Do” because of the payments. This week the Fort Worth Pressvaguely quoting “Yarborough supporters” asked Blakley “Say it ain’t so, Bill.” Bill said it was so : the payments, he said, were “for legal services and not influence. … We hire a lot of attorneys, and I feel confident that these payments were just nominal retainers.” Why then were all three of the paid-up senators members of the Senate insurance committee when they were getting the greenbacks? What legal services did they perform? Why weren’t these “nominal retainers” given to other lawyers? Blakley’s companies’ paid Blakley’s law firms and Blakley himself $580,519.24 for legal services from 1945 through 1957: what was his Guardian International doing paying thousands of dollars to senators when it had such high-priced legal help already? We do not know, of course, no one knows but the people involved, what the money was for, why it was paid, whether it was for legal work or for “influence.” But we do know that this episode casts most serious doubt on the fitness of Blakley to serve as United States Senator. Perhaps it did not matter to Allan Shivers, who appointed Blakleydid not matter to the Shivers who presided without shame or apology over the most corrupt period in the history of Texas state government. But it matters now; it matters n OW that the people have seen the state humiliated by revelation after revelation of senatorial fees-for-in 7 fluence. Don’t let the atomic age give you the giddies, science has an answer for everything,Y. Witness this head line in the Dallas Times-Herald: “What To Do in A-Bomb Attack? Seek Shelter, Expert Says” 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 be overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the We are now in the swirling midst of a Madison Avenue style “hard sell.” “Bill Blakley, Cowboy and Texan” is the brand name. Republicanism is the product. A legion of speech writers and former Shivers aides are the hucksters. The July 26 Democratic primary will be the marketplace. Daily newspapers have rolled up their ethics and gone to work The Fentress papers, in articles widely re-, printed, used their news columns to discredit the loyal Democrats organized into Democrats of Texas. Editorials for Blakley pour forth like colored wrappers from a printing press. “Blakley” this, “Blakley” that, “Blake” this and that. In keeping with the rules of the trade, the cowboy-hat symbol has been agreed upon, and stains at the sweatband are ignored. The morning of the Longview rally last week, for example, the Longview daily announced the “free barbecue and musical entertainment preceding the Blakley address.” If 8,000 ate barbecue, as the caterers carefully estimated, the barbecue and drinks alone cost Blakley “friends” at least $7,000 or $8,000. The speech was broadcast over 12 TV and 35 radio stations, costing about $9,000. Then there were “the beautiful television singing star, Alice Lon ; Jimmy Martin and his Sunny Mountain Boys of barn dance and recording fame ; a folk-dance team demonstrating the newest steps and formations; and a giant fireworks display.” Who can estimate the money value of the eight-column headline in the Longview News that morning, “Giant Rally for Bill Blakley is Slated Here Tonight,” or the vote value of the fact-distorting editorial on the same page ? Blakley, said the editorial, is “a staunch Democrat,” and not only this, but “a full-fledged regular Democrat.” Nowhere in the paper that morning could the reader find mention of Blakley’s open support of Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, his refusal to say whether he still supports Eisenhower, or his refusal in Plainview to say whether he will support the Republican presidential nominee in 1960.. Many weeks have passed since the Observer revealed that Blakley’s insurance companya company he owned, controlled, and presided over paid “fees” to three state senators, all of them Senate insurance committee members, two of them chairmen of that committee when they got the dinero. Finally Monday the Fort Worth Press asked him about this and published his denial. The facts were not congenial to the myth, the strong upright-in-the-saddle cowboy riding along the morning skyline., No Texas daily newspaper has yet taken interest in the $7 million federal subsidy Braniff Airlines has received since 1954, although Blakley, a 25 percent stockholder of Braniff, opposes federal subsidies to farmers and school children. No, rather, say Wick Fowler, Jimmy Blundell, Roy Grimes, and all the local hucksters on the payroll, what we have here is a genial cowpoke, a Texan, a country boy who made a little money, true, but loves the people to their dying day. Braniff ? Guardian ? Girardian ? Girard ? Exchange Bank ? $200,000,000? Wha’s that? Bill Blakley’s just a states’ rights-lovin’ Democrat who hates federal subsidies. The issues of the YarboroughBlakley campaign are ethical more than political, philosophical more than economic. The voters’ answers will be fundamental remarks on the vitality of democracy under the onslaught of massed wealth and subservient mass media. Can $200,000,000 buy a U.S. Senate seat? Will a man be sent to the Senate whose guiding principle on federal aid is personal selfishness? Will the people elect to highest office a man who admits his insurance company paid “fees” to three state senators at the time, and only at the time, when they had great power over insurance legislation ? Will the dailies’ labor scare, parroted by Blakley, cause the people to forget that mostly they are working people themselves? Is a cowboy hat more persuasive to the voters than a voting record consistently in their interest? Will they elect_ a radical rightist, a hypocrite. about federal subsidies and the Democratic Party, and a giver of gifts at least as shady as any Sherman A.dams took; or will they re-elect Yarborough, a Democrat who believes with and serves the people in their hopes and needs ? R.D. elaUe .geeo alp illexas Mitarrurr Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Willie Morris, 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. ignoble in the human spirit.