ustxtxb_obs_1958_09_19_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

An Editor the Sheriff Missed RALLS Out here in the lonely whistling spaces, on the main road to Lubbock, sits Ralls. It has a red-brick main street and a cafe to drink coffee called Jack Rabbit’s. It also has Ernest Joiner, who edits the Banner and who gets quoted more than most newspapermen on the mass circulation dailies. In the daily and weekly output of grey matter that constitutes Texas journalism, of journalistic oasis. Its editor is a man of raw courage, a thorough non-conformist, and an idealist. Beneath the eccentricities of his weekly column, “It Says Here,” a sensitive social conscience is at work, ridiculing political greed, jousting with religious dogma, lashing unkindness and inhumanity and pettiness and whatever else he thinks ills the human race, 2000 of whom have chanced to band together in this tiny community on the plains of West Texas. Ernest Joiner at his Desk Let ’em Get Off the Subscription List The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. THOREAU Trxas hstrurr 1 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, SEPTEMBER 19, 1958 10c per copy Number 25 Oilmen Clash ith Teachers \(Related stories on Pages 5 and AUSTIN “I walked into the orchestra section, then unoccupied by the press, stepped on a chair and on to the stage, some 20 feet from the west wing. Just as I got on the stage, Jake Jacobsen ran toward me shouting, ‘Don’t come up here, Senator Joe, get down, don’t come up.’ I was already up. That was the last I saw of Jake. Three police emerged from the -wing at a dead run …” Joe Hill talkingstate senator from Rusk County, in East Texas, between 1935 and 1943, and a very conservative Travis County delegate to the state Democratic convention in San Antonio on Sept. 9. “They seized me … With a great degree of violence they pushed, pulled, and shoved me into the wing, where two more were waiting, and then they threw me on the floor, where happily there was a throw rug which served as sort of a sled while they yanked me across the floor. An unidentified delegate helped them while the ghouls, the press camera men, who would snap pictures without even undertaking the rescue of a drowning child, a burning woman, or an entrapped motorist, snapped merrily away … “I did not again see Jake Jacobsen. Apparently he remained in the rear .. Another Jake was very much in evidence. Jake Pickle was very vocal in his de TEXANS POLLED LEAN TO DEMOS AUSTIN After two trips into Republican country to support Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, Texas is firmly back on its Democratic home ground, according to the latest Belden poll. By a firm majority, Texans prefer all prominent Democratic hopefuls over VicePresident Richard Nixon, the likely Republican standard bearer. Senator Lyndon Johnson runs the best race, favored by 69 per cent of those polled against Nixon’s 21 per cent. With 10 to 15 per cent undecided on each race, here’s how the poll showed Texans leaning on other possible 1960 pairings: Stevenson 55 per cent to Nixon’s 32 per cent; Kennedy 55 per cent to Nixon’s 28 per cent; Kefauver 51 per cent to Nixon’s 33 per cent. mand that the ghouls with the cameras cease their picture-taking because of the effect it might have on the public. “Before I was ejected a sixth officer, the most venomous one of all, joined the five. When I grabbed the fire latch of the exit door with my left hand, he made the threats that caused me seriously to believe that he was anxious to ‘polish me off.’ I challenged him to carry out his threats. At last, I was outside. It took six big-muscled men to do the job.” Stand Aside! Most of the delegates to the convention became aware, about midafternoon, of the altercation onstage which Joe Hill above described for the Observer. The convention was in recess, and Hill says he was seeking to get to Jacobsen to ask him for permission to address the convention against the resolution on Lyndon Johnson for President. He had been outraged when he had been cut off from debating the resolution in the committee, as reported in last week’s issue, and proceeded then to try to get past the policemen guarding the door to the backstage. “The convention was at ease, delegates milling about, many going on and off the stage,” Hill said. “I approached the northwest stage door where I was recognized by a delegate, who with three policemen barred the door. I was told that I could not enter; that this privilege was to be accorded only to certain delegates, selected by the self-designated masters … “I told these men, who barred the door in solid phalanx, that there was no rule to the effect that delegates were not to have free access to the officers; that the convention was at ease; that I knew of no provision whereby delegates were to be classified, whereby some were to have privileges and immunities denied to others. “I asked them to stand aside and told the three police that they were acting in excess of authority in denying me free access to a part of the public building; that I was violating no law and merely pursuing my clear right as a delegate to have access to the chairman. “I told the delegate, who barred my way, to stand aside and permit me to pass. He refused. I extended my right arm, when the police re UPI Photo fused to budge himor themselvesand undertook to get passage by him. Thereupon, the police seized meall three of them and thrust me away from the door, and I mean thrust …” Hill was not precise about when he used what terms, but he said that at various times he addressed certain impeding officials as a stinking bunch of cowardly dogs and lousy loathesome skunks. “I went to my seat nearby, reflected, returned, and repeated my demand, which was refused,” Hill said. “A police captain and a sergeant joined the three privates. I was then fully outmanned and outgunned …. I protested the officers laying hands on me, and then, for the first time, demanded that I be arrested if I was in violation of law, or otherwise get out of my way and keep their hands Ernest Joiner is a stern critic of the times. “We have no angry voice to challange this era of passiveness,” he once wrote. “Here and there some minister of the Gospel addresses empty air from behind the Mexican border in a tone of anger, but the tone is a stage prop, more than likely and his aim is economic security for himself. There is no Thomas Paine to fan the flames of revolution, stir the imagination of Americans toward human rights and national independence; no Tom Paine to strike fear into the hearts of dictators, both clerical and lay. Gone are the Robert Ingersolls, W.C. Branns, Voltaires, and Victor Hugos whose anger stirred men to justifiable action. AUSTIN Divided into two groups characterized by one spectator as the “educators” and the “capitalists,” the Hale-Aikin Committee plodded through a two day session this week that brought into focus the educational problems besetting Texas. With unanimity rare, the Committee of Twenty Four approved reports by two subcommittees on Finance and Teacher Supply and directed a third to compile a final draft for submission to county education committees across the state. The committee split badly on all basic reforms with each side having its moments. One faction, led by Stone Wells, lobbyist for Tennessee Gas Transmission Company, and Charles Simons, executive vice-president of Mid-Continent Oil and Gas, achieved passage of a proposal calling for the state to “discontinue the practice of accepting federal funds for the reimbursement of vocational education and school lunch and milk expenses.” The committee also approved Simons’s proposal that ‘ the state “should withdraw completely from the field of ad valorem taxation” in order to make additional tax resources available to counties and local school districts. The second group, led by Dr. J. W. Edgar, State Commissioner of Education, Judge Thomas B. Ramey, chairman of the State Board Nobody emulates Jesus, who in anger, whipped moneychangers from the Temple. Just give us for 1958, God, some thoroughly angry men.” “I think a man can be judged by his enemies just as he can by his friends,” Joiner once said. Willie Morris “and I’m proud of my friends and my enemies.” He has his share of both. In 1952, when his shop burned down, a group of hometown people raised $1,000 for a new building. He also was a target for a bullet once–fired by a sheriff he had caught in the act of bootlegging. The bullet missed and the sheriff became the only of Education, Dana Williams, superintendent of Corsicana schools, and Mrs. Rae Files Still, teacher and former state representative, won committee approval of across the board salary increases for teachers, with a minimum of $3,800 for nine and one half months’ service and $4,000 for ten months’ service. Wells and Simons persistently but unsuccessfully opposed the pay increase proposals. Simons said there was no teacher shortage, “only a problem of geography. Some cities have more than enough teachers, other less desir Larry Goodwyn able areas have a shortage,” he said. “It is the same with doctors and lawyers.” Simons said Dr. White, superintendent of schools in Dallas, had told him “Dallas had 1602 applicants for which there were no jobs.” Wells was more direct in his opposition to pay raises: “Where are we going to get the money?” He looked over at the press table and a reporter from a metropolitan daily grinned and said, “From you, Mr. Wells gas gathering tax.” Mrs. Still conducted a verbal duel with both Simons and Wells through the long first day on teacher salaries. At one point she asked Simons, “Don’t you think one-term sheriff in the history of Crosby County. He once wrote of the school board, which was conducting secret meetings: “These little dictators, lacking only a small balcony for their strutting, take pride in saying, as one member certainly did say, “We run this school business the way we want to run it.” And later he wrote, “Once upon about ten years ago this newspaper criticized the local school board for what it considered light-of-the-moon activity. And for just as many years one board member has nursed the conviction that the editor should drop dead, which seems a fair punishment for exercising \(Continued The Scene at the Convention Platform Entrance Ex-Sen. Joe Hill Tried to Pass, But They Had Their Orders ‘THAT WAS THE LAST I SAW OF JAKE’ Three Policemen at a Dead Run