ustxtxb_obs_1958_12_19_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer A NEW COALITION Let those flatter who fear, it is not an. American art.JEFFERSON `Gee, He’s for Real!’ i f:lobe/ay ..fieticon With our confrere to the East, Franklin Jones of Marshall, we do not, no do not wish to be mistaken as grouches against the Christmas spirit. Jones, the terror of the trial court, offers as proof of his holiday euphoria an heroic couplet : “Hark, the Herald Tribune Sings, Advertising 1Vondrous Things!” For our part we shall prove our our good Nvill toward merchants, givy-givy, and TV \(before which we recently were transfixed, as the car had broken down and we couldthe mellifluous advice of the voice on Alcoa Theater to give aluminum giftsAlcoa, aluminum giftsfor Christmas \(“S t a r Light ! Star Bright ! 0! MyGift’s Alum’ Tois only a short drive ; we are sure the baby girl can find some use for an aluminum ingot. We may get the wife a boiling pot, which is sure to set the starlight bubbling in her eyes. For Mother we plan an aluminum gravy pan, for Dad retractable ciee a o t. This four-page issue serves three purposes. First it permits the editor to recoup the four days he spent as a captive in Huntsville, as he will recount next issue. Second it leaves us all a little time with our loved ones. Third it fulfills the requirements of the postoffice for continuity of publication. ,_Cichening How can anyone regard Gov. Daniel’s apparent intention to abandon the Hale-Aikin recommendations for school improvements with anything but a sickened disappointment ? Hundreds of thousands of us heard him say last summer, We must have a first class school system, paid for by Texas People with Texas Money. Now that he is called on to deliver he quakeS before the corporate powers which elected him and says, “Maybe we can have better schools later onafter I get off the hot seat.” It is pitiful. The legislature must pass him by. 5urnaiout The man who served seven years for a theft of which he has now been cleared, upon his release went back to the filling station attendant who swore he did it and “created a disturbance.” When a cop tried to take him in again, he popped him one. Well, seven years stolen from his life, wasn’t he entitled to create a Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. DECEMBER 19, 1958 Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Larry Goodwyn, 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. Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on re And now, a final note from our sponsor : patronize our advertisers, and Buy in Your Home Town, especially if it’s more expensive. disturbance? They could give him up to two years on the present case. We suggest they charge it against his seven years’ credit. 6,,eciatt y The Democratic National Committee’s o v e r whelming endorsement of Paul Butler and his civil rights stand that the South can take or leave, and the subsequent action of ,the Democratic Advisory Committee in going far beyond Lyndon Johnson’s twelve mild points for the next Congress, is proof again that the people are far ahead of their leadersespecially their congress sional leaders from Texas. ,9nJurance So, the Insurance Commissioner says he is disturbed because some insurance policyholders “have been induced to forfeit, surrender, or lapse existing life insurance policies and replace them with others of different form,” and he’s going to investigate ! Well now, good ! Let’s hope he also investigates where a man’s money goes when he buys permanent insurancehow the major companies build up such fantastic profits and surpluses why, when you have the so-called “cash values” in insurance, you can’t have the cash without canceling your insurance and you can’t borrow your own money without paying interest. No, he’s going to investigate people who change their policies for “others of different form.” What is whose business? 10 quest. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity prices available on orders. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. 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. 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. MARSHALL From now through the 1960 elections, families of voters may find their privacy more disturbed than was that of the brickmakers by Mrs. Pardiggle and her unwilling companions. To the activities of labor’s Committee on Political Education are to be added those of the National Assn. of Manufacturers, FIA, TMA, and the Texas Personnel and Management Assn. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and COPE should be gratified by the rush of the American Dinosaur group to become political activists. They should be known as the Dinosaurs on Political Education, or DOPE ; naturally they will embrace all of the named associations. This is not to say that there will not be differences of opinion and approach among the DOPEs. There will be the hard sell advocated by FIAshock ’em and sock ’em, while fanning their fears. Then there will be the soft sell of Texas Personnel and Management Assn., which insists that corporation presidents and chairmen of the boards procure do-it-yourself kits and frolic about pushing door bells. One thing is certain: DOPE will move to the left, and briskly, before 1960. It may continue to insist that “liberals” be referred to within quotation marks or with the epithetical prefix, “socalled,” but the fire of the old contempt toward movement in any direction will be lacking. This has already been manifested by the discreet burial of the great crusade for the “right to work,” which `NAM slipped like arsenic into the Republicans’ cup of tea. In fact, rumors come that NAM is foring trial runs by its boon squads, which must persuade the voters of the benefits of petrification and privilege in politics and life; that as the GOP high command shivers back from its November Moscow, it has put it on the line to DOPE until NAM, et al, can show they are willing to out-sell, out-organize, and out-vote COPE, they are going to be in the desperately crowded Republican doghouse with Sherm Adams and companions. The leftward march proceeds apace as Tricky Dicky Nixon looks the other way when asked about his telegraphic advice to congressional candidates to call the Democrats radicals. Our vice president is the Republican counterpart of our own Lukewarn Lyndon in the field of political barometer reading and we may assume he did with his usual cunning select the secretaries of labor and welfare for a clandestine conference said to have been called to try to liberalize the forthcoming State of the Illusion message of St. Ike. Indeed, if it was anyone other than the 1952 defender of himself, his family, and his dog, one might feel sympathy for the veep, or sleek. He sees a luscious bosomy liberalism radiant in the political ball room, but the barren and bony hag that paid. his . way through political collegethe Republican Old Guardwill not release her tight and deadly grip on his arm. We are left to pleasant speculations on the door bell approach of the proponents among the DOPEs of the soft sell. Take the car pool arrangements, for example. DOPE could form two teams, one captained by “Tex” Colbert of Chrysler, and the other by Charley Wilson of G. M. Tex would promise rides to the polls in a Chrysler Imperial, and Charlie would counter with an offer of a Cadillac for the trip. Naturally the diffident voter would have the alternative of a Chevy driven by Dinah Shore or a Marx. Won’t this be fun? Think of the utility presidents we can invite in for a piece of our mind on the subject of. rates and monopolies! The hard sell boys may be less welcome. Pale images of McCarthy, they will flourish a while, as did the senator ; but even at adolescent slumber parties the goose pimples created by the ghost stories of the night seldom last through the dawn, and so it will be with the fear mechanisms of FIA, et ilk. In the meanwhile, we may have some amusement. Suppose, for example, the unhooded Ku Klux organization known as the White Citizens’ Councils shotild begin organizing a precinct where FIA had already started beckoning the residents backward. Why, we would have a red hot jurisdictional dispute, as we had when the United Mine Workers \(as stripdairy workers. If a voter chose to fear socialism or New Dealism instead of racial equality, then the councilmen would bomb his house. On the other hand, if he decided he is more afraid of racial equality than a portrait of FDR, FIA would slash his tires and pour sugar in his gas tank. All in the name of DOPE. Yep, 1959-’60 is going to be fun. FRANKLIN JONES aluminum teeth, for Brother in the Air Force a brand new set of aluminum dogtags, for PeeWee an aluminum drum, and for the wife to give us, a share of stock in Alcoa Aluminum. Meanwhile, Joy to the World, etc., and May Each and Every One of Our Readers, etc. Nor could we close without a contribution to the holiday helicon : The belled and tinseled spruce in the corner augurs truce For an evenin’ and a morn front grub and pace, Sure the shops o’ercharge with ease and will later dump the leaves And the adsongs glory in material grace, But at home among your own on the eve an’ at the dawn There’s a warm, a laugh, a loving in the place. gr31103 Mbstrurr