ustxtxb_obs_1959_05_23_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

Over $1 20 Million In Pomo ce Jnetemtkieo INSURANCE COMPANY P. 0. Box 8098 Houston, Texas An Historical Note Refinements In Texas Politics \(Charles Ramsdell, historian and writer, has published numerous articles on Texas history. His book San Antonio is due to be published this fall. He is currently at work on Highlights of Texas History under contract to The typical Texan of 1827 is described by Henry Smith, who became, in the revolution against the tyrant Santa Anna, our first Anglo-American governor. Smith had barely crossed the border into the Mexican state of Texas when he was greeted by a pioneer colonist “who thought what he pleased and spoke freely and boldly what he thought.” Smith was delighted, of course: his words would apply just as aptly to himself. Indeed, they would apply to most of the Texans who lived in the rude, unrefined days of the past century, including the politicians. Let us riffle a few pages of history and see how simpleminded our forefathers were, even the successful politicians among them, how far we have advanced in the refinement of political techniques. II “Sam Houston!” The voice of the presiding officer, at high noon, March 16, 1861, paralyzed each member of the secession convention in the crowded hall of the state capitol building. Would Old Sam back down? That was the only reasonable thing for him to do. What else was left for him but political ruin, ostracism? The old man, in the darkness of his basement office, sat and rocked. With a pen-knife he whittled a piece of soft pine. “Sam Houston!” The convention, silent, scarcely stirred. Now was Old Sam’s last chance to take the oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, his last chance to keep his office as Governor of Texas. The old man sat in the dark basement and whit t le d and rocked. He had stood before threatening crowds, and he had said: “Some of you laugh to scorn the idea of secession and jocularly propose to drink all the blood that will ever flow in consequence of it. But let me tell you what is coming on the heels of secession. The time will come when your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded together like sheep and cattle at the point of the bayonet, and your mothers and brothers and sisters and daughters will ask, where are they? And echo will answer, where?” “Sam Houston!” The old man sat in. his chair and rocked. He whittled trifles out of soft pine: crosses, garlands of roses. Two years later he was dead. He did not wish to see his prophecy come true. On the opposite side of this conflict, no less uncompromising than Houston, stood Thomas H. Reagan, who became postmaster general of the Confederacy. In his youth he had Houston’s blessing; Old Sam praised his “genius,” his integrity. From prison in Boston, at the close of the war, Reagan wrote to the people of Texas an open letter of counsel, which he hoped would help them to find a smooth way through the snares and pitfalls of reconstruction, which he foresaw. The state, he said, was in the position of a conquered nation. Its government would not be restored until it adopted a policy acceptable to the will of the conquerors. “A refusal to accede to these conditions would only result in a prolongation of the time during which you will be deprived of the civil government of your own choice, and will continue subject to military rule.” In order to avoid this danger it was necessary to recognize the supreme authority of the United States government and its right to protect itself against secession, and to recognize the abolition of slavery and the right of freedmen to the privileges and protection of the law. The response to this disinterested appeal was a storm of abuse as furious as any that had howled around Houston. Reagan returned to his farm near Palestine and ploughed his fields for a scant living. There the Republicans came to offer him high office, which he rejected with scorn. He wrote another open letter to the people of Texas, urging qualified suffrage for the freedmen, and wider privileges for them in the courts. This letter received the same abuse as the first one. Not until his warnings Charles Ramsdell were proved valid by the horrors of reconstruction was Reagan forgiven by the people and allowed to resume his political career, as congressman and as senator. In the early ’90’s he was chosen by Governor James. S. Hogg for the first Texas railroad commission; there, in his old age, he fought against and defeated the power of the railroad corporations that were preying on the state and corrupting its legislature. IV It was Governor Hogg who said, “Either the people will rule the corporations, or the corporations will rule the people.” In choosing Reagan, who had been in his youth the protege of Sam Houston, for his adjutant in the war on predatory railroads, Hogg affirmed his faith in. a tradition. That tradition had a few simple tenets. One was that the paramount concern of the politician was to safeguard the freedoms, economic as well as civil, of the people as a whole. A corollary was that the politician, once having resolved on the course of action best calculated to protect the people, should follow his course fearlessly, without regard for political expediency or even for personal safety. There was no place in this tradition for favored classes. Hogg, sympathetic to the grievances of the farmer, tried to adopt the program of the Populists insofar as it did not conflict with the general interest. But his bitter opposition, in the ’90’s, was from the new urban class which was just growing up, and with a taste of wealth and a smattering of what passed for education in that day and place, was already beginning to preen itself with the assurance of, being the Best People. It was this classto which everybody hankered to belong, even college professors, even newspapermenwhich dominated the political scene after the great influence of Hogg and his friends had spent itself in the early 1900s. What was good for the Country Club set was good for the country. The idolatry of wealth that this creed implied soon made it easy for the corporations to rule the people. The regency of big business attained a glorious apogee in the administration of Governor ‘Allan Shivers, to whom a Country Club was a holy temple. The name of Hogg was still magic in Texas when a silvertongued orator named Joseph Deldon Bailey began his rise to power. Bailey, a lifelong employe of the Standard Oil Company, taught a generation of fledgling politicians the priceless technique of diversion. He never talked about corporations: he talked about Home, Mother and Southern Womanhood. The peo ple revered him as a .spot,iesS idealist. V Later, in Jim Ferguson and again in W. Lee O’Daniel, politicians who were interested only in their personal fortunes, the farmers were persuaded, by arts familiar to us all, that they had found at last a successor to Jim Hogg. The antics of these charlatans were not approved by the Best People, whose position was so strengthened as a consequence of. the public revulsion that they were a b 1 e to defeat Homer Rainey and bring the administrations of Beauford Jester and Allan Shivers on the state. In those years, when money and power were a perfect equation, the technique of diversion acquired a new refinement. This was the myth of the Typical Texan, industriously built up by both Governors \(“Texans are a Texan of 1952 loved to see whitefaced corporations grazing at will on his broad unfenced prairies. He hated the old Federal government for trying to bring in branding-irons and barbed wire. It was about this time that the theory, still widely held, was set forth, that the Texas Revolution against Santa Anna was fought to prevent the Federal Government of . Mexico from interfering with the freedom of the Humble Oil Company. SINGER ELECTRIC Sewing Machine Five year guarantee Take up weekly payments $1.25 or Pay full balance $17.88 WILL DELIVER Greenwood 3-4479 York Sewing Center Pasadena Spunk Sirs: Will you please mail a marked copy of the May 16 Observer containing the article, “Delucement,” to Hon. Wayne Morse, Senate Office Bldg., Washington, and bill. I wrote him a letter commending his spunk ….” H. N. Harpin, 902 S. Murray, Victoria, Texas. Lonesome Democrats Sirs: I personally agreed in full with the letter written by Mrs. Moody. There are some of us “true blue, unlabeled democrats” who have no love and certainly can find no honor in or for LBJ. It is a disgrace to the people of Texas when our legislators pass bills to aid LBJ and refuse to give aid to the masses by defeating the minimum wage law. I admire those few, lonesome democrats in our legislature who had the courage to stand up and be counted against HB 158. Mrs. V. B. Cook, 1900 N. Nelson, Amarillo. Granite Shoals Sirs: As reported in Houston Chronicle, May 15, U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson buys 500 front feet on Granite Shoals Lake in Llano County. Now is this one of those tax financed, man-made lakes whose shores have been left in the hands of private own LEGALS NOTICE TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: Notice is hereby given that the partnership firm of Aero-Charter of Houston will be dissolved, and notice is also hereby given of the intention of said firm to become incorporated under the name of Aero-Charter of Houston, Inc. Witness my hand this 16 day of March, 1959. AERO-CHARTER OF HOUSTON By JAMES R. FISH, One of the Partners CITATION BY PUBLICATION THE STATE OF TEXAS To Lorane Atwell Williams Defendant, in the hereinafter styled and numbered cause: You are hereby commanded to appear before the 126th District Court of Travis County, Texas, to be held at the courthouse of said county in the City of Austin, Travis County, Texas, at or before 10 o’clock A. M. of the first Monday after the expiration. of 42 days from the date of issuance ers and developers to exploit, leaving Mr. Average Tax-payer out? Just wondering? Lewis B. Griffin, Sr., 7613 Edna, Houston, 17. Representation Sirs: You will agree that we do not always get true representation in our legislature at Austin. … Let me single out one of the many reasons: our neighbor’s son finishes his law course, passes the bar examination and has no place to “hang out his shingle.” So he runs for the legislature, hoping to rack up a few retainer fees. To whom does he look for his treasure? Whose interest will he likely protect with his vote? Since John Public needs no lawyers, he hires none. By the same token, he has no representation. The young lawyer gets his job and John Q. pays the taxall because we wanted to give a young man a chance. J. J. Bates, 3900 Sanger, Waco, Tex. Johnson vs. Nixon Sirs: If the Big Business Republicans succeed in their maneuvering to get Johnson vs. Nixon in the 1960 race, they won’t have to campaign as they will have it made, regardless of outcome. Mrs.. B. B. Terrell, 8547 Forest Hills Blvd., Dallas. hereof; that is to say, at or before, 10 o’clock A. M. of Monday the 29th day of June, 1959, and answer the petition of plaintiff in Cause Ntimber 112,326, in which Marguerite Connell Williams is Plaintiff and Lorane Atwell Williams is defendant, filed in said Court on the st day of December, 1958, and the nature of which said suit is as follows: Being an action and prayer for judgment in favor of Plaintiff and against Defendant for decree of divorce dissolving the bonds of matrimony heretofore and now existing between said parties; Plaintiff alleges cruel treatment on the part of the Defendant towards her of such a nature as to render their further living together as husband and w i f e altogether insupportable; Plaintiff furthur alleges that no children were born of said union and no community property was accumulated by the parties; Plaintiff further prays for the restoration of her maiden name of Marguerite Connell, and for the costs of suit and relief, general and special; \(Continued on mi CERTIFICATE NO. 16 COMPANY NO. 01-39600 STATE BOARD OF INSURANCE of the STATE OF TEXAS iAustin, Texas, April 30, 1959 s TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: This is to certify that a HIGH PLAINS LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY PLAINVIEW, TEXAS has according to sworn statement complied with the laws of IN Texas as conditions precedent to its doing business in. this state, and I have issued to said Company a Certificate of Authority