ustxtxb_obs_1959_09_04_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

Endorses Lyndon Daniel Reappoints Tech Firings Figure Rayburn / Speaking to reporters in Ada, v Okla., Speaker Sam Rayburn said Sen. Lyndon Johnson is not an announced candidate for president, “but if he were a candidate, he would certainly by my choice,” the AP reported. / The Dallas Times-Herald prey dieted that Johnson’s presidential ambitions preclude any anti-Butler move by Texas party officials over the loyalty oath issue. “One reason is the reluctance of Texas to become too rigidly aligned with the South because such alignment can only hurt what ambitions Sen. Johnson may harbor,” the paper said. Speculation about a third term for Gov. Daniel, the cur rent favorite sport in Austin, got another rehashing when the Gov ernor’s office announced his mail is “running heavily against” a January special session call to enact the Hale Aik in recom mendations. Should Daniel not call a ses sion, “a p a y raise for tea chers” could be come a basic platform plank Daniel for a third term campaign, scotchingat the same timethe persistent charges by some of Daniel’s opponents in the legislature that he had made a “deal” with the teachers for a pay raise this year. 7 Editorial response to Gov. v Price Daniel’s veto of the home for senile patients: Dallas Times-Herald, “The Governor is correct in believing that the aged should be put into private homes, but if nonstate agencies do not rise to the occasion and meet the need, it will become necessary, sooner or later, for the state to fill the gap. Some governor in the distant future will find himself agreeing to an appropriation In Jacksonville, two women dharged with embezzling $130,000 from a Jacksonville bank, drew five-year prison sentences after entering special mercy pleas with the judge. Mrs. Weldon Connor, 34, said one of her two adopted children had 104 degrees of fever and she feared he had polio. Her husband later said he thought it was only a virus. The other defendant, Miss Yola Renfro, 59, cnce voted Jacksonville’s outstanding business and professional woman, said she had suffered greatly in emotional stress and loss of reputation. The women told police they had taken the money over a period of eight years and covered the shortages by pulling out records of inactive accounts. They said they had spent the money for living expenses. OIn Houston, David A. Hamil, president of the National Rural Electrification Administration, told delegates to the state convention of Texas Electric Cooperatives that the time has come for the co-ops to pay their own freight as to interest rates. He said the present two per cent rate at which rural co-ops borrow from the REA is too low and represents a subsidy from the taxpayers. In Washington, Texas Republican congressman Bruce Alger charged REA with making THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 8 September 4, 1959 many times larger than the one Governor Daniel has vetoed.” Austin Report, the weekly newsletter, said Daniel’s reasoningthat the hospital board was not responsible for senile patients”was amazing. The hospital board, with 5,000 senile dementia patients sent to it by the courts, was likely stunned to learn it isn’t responsible for senile patients. It was not requested in the original budget submitted in ’58, but when legislators toured the Confederate Home and were shocked by the risk involved in housing 800 aged patients there, the supplemental request was made and granted,” the newsletter said. 7 The Fort Worth Star-Tele gram editorialized against “deplorable” housing and other conditions of migrant laborers in “the Northern states.” “The re formers might clean up the con ditions in their own cities, includ ing the worst forms of exploita tion of poverty, before sending their missionaries to the South and meddling with problems there,” said the Fort Worth paper. JCorpus , Christi Caller again scored state indifference to the water problem and suggested Texans “may be rightly envious of Californians who sometimes not only talk big like Texans but, unlike most Texans in water supply matters, think big’ and act big.” After reviewing California’s huge, largely state-financed $2 billion Feather River project, the Caller asked, “When will a similar sense of urgency prompt Texans to think big and act big about water? … An overall water plan seems as far away today as it was two years ago.” The Caller had one more “thought provoking question” to ask: “Would Texans, accustomed as they and other Americans are to federal aid, dig down into their own pockets to finance the Gulf Basin water Proposal suggested by the U.S. Reclamation Bureau? … The project would cost approximately two billion dollars.” “ill-advised loans” and condemned what he called “the REA planned economy in my state.” Amid reports of “some pro gress but no final agreement,” meetings continued in Austin between disputing cities in the longstanding Trinity River water controversy. Both Houston Mayor Lewis Cutrer and Ben Carpenter of Dallas, president of the Trinity River Authority, issued cautious “progress” statements. If no compromise is worked out between Dallas, Fort Worth, and TRA. on the one hand and Houston on the other, the controversy will go before the State Board of Water Engineers, beginning September 15. The dispute is principally over whether the TRA or the city of Houston will build and operate proposed water reservoirs on the Trinity and how much water Houston will be able to obtain from the river. OThe once-prosperous, once scandal-ridden veterans land program has been sharply reduced because of lack of funds. Processing of applications of veterans requesting state loans to purchase farms and ranches on long range low interest terms, have been cut from 350 to 50 per week to conserve dwindling funds. The land board has authority to sell $62.5 million in bonds but can find no takers at the three per cent authorized maximum interest. JH. M. Baggarly, editor of the Tulia Herald in West Texas, tossed out some figures on the pay scale of Texas teachers: “Texas ranks in 31st position among the 50 states in average salaries … Oklahoma on the east pays an average teacher salary $490 above the Texas average. New Mexico on the west … $825 above. Arizona, a little farther west … $1,118 above. We’ll not even bring up California where the average is $1,940 higher than Texas or New York, $2,040 grbater than in this wonderful land of oil wells and Cadillacs. We all know how wages have risen since 1957yet a teacher’s salary in Texas has risen .4 of one per cent during that time,” Baggarly said. / Dallas loyalist leader Dan Patton charged GOP chairman Maurice Carlson had abandoned “all pretense of building a strong Republican Party distinct and separate from the so-called conservative Democrats.” Patton said Carlson’s “enthusiastic endorsement of Nixon is aimed at discouraging Rockefeller Republicans from putting up a fight. This will free Nixon Republicans to work with Nixon Democrats against honest Democrats in. their primaries and conventions.” Replied Carlson: “Only two customers will buy that kind of baloJoe Bailey Humphreys.” 7 Austin Negro leader Arthur DeWitty, writing in the Hous ton Informer, says Texas Negroes, “who have set the pace and the standards for those of us who live in the South,” have done little to mount an effective Doll tax campaign. “Texas could easily qualify 500,000 Negroes if it would only organize and put forth the effort.” / Land Commissioner Bill All corn has officially announced for re-election, becoming the first state-wide official to announce his 1960 intentions. Senator Ray Roberts, reported as a possible opponent of Allcorn, has made no announcement. 0 An AP survey showed no presently segregated schools in Texas planning new integration this September except one at Burkburnett being built on federal property. AP said 101 of the 1,646 Texas school districts are integrated. AUSTIN Governor Daniel has reappointed one of the Texas Tech directors who played a center-of-the stage role in the dismissal of three professors without charges or public hearing. He has replaced two other members of the board whose appointments expired. The terms in question expired Feb. 19, but Daniel did not announce his reappointments until Aug. 14, when the legislature was adjourned. Senate confirmation would have been required before the new directors could assume their duties had the legislature been in session. Re-appointed to the board, for his first full term, is Jim Lindsey, managing editor of the Midland Reporter-Telegram, who served out two and a half years of an unexpired term. Designated for new six-year terms were Manuel DeBusk, Dallas lawyer, secretary of the conservative Dallas County Democratic executive committee, and businessman, and Wilmer Smith of Wilson, an executive of growers’, ginners’, and oil mill associations. DeBusk replaces W. D. Watkins, chairman of the board, and general manager of Western Cotton Oil Co. of Abilene. Watkins was a prime mover in the dismissals. Smith replaces P. C. Callaway, rancher and businessman, who did not figure prominently in the public discussions. In July, 1957, the Tech directors dismissed Dr. Byron Abernethy, professor of government, Dr. Herbert Greenberg, assistant professor of psychology, and Dr. Per Stensland, professor of education and head of the adult education program at Tech. The directors gave no reasons for their action. In August, facing demands from the professors and others that they give reasons, the directors decided against a public hearing. Lindsey, vice chairman of the board of directors, confirmed to Abernethy’s arbitration of labor disputes had ‘been “an item of information” and that “copies were obtained” of Abernethy’s income tax returns. Federal law prohibits any private citizen obtaining personal income tax returns except the Governor, and in Austin, Jake Jacobsen, then a Governor’s aide, said Daniel had not made any request for Abernethy’s returns and had not handled them in any way. The Observer asked Lindsey in Lubbock if, as an abstract matter, he thought teachers in state colleges should express controversial political opinions. “No comment,” he said. However, he stated later that the fired men had been wrong in expressing “controversial” views and the granting them a hearing in public view would prolong the controversy. Six members of the board which fired the three professors are still directors. They are C. I. Wall, president of Pioneer Natural Gas Co., Amarillo; J. Evetts Haley, rancher, cowboy, writer, and gubernatorial c a n d i d a t e; Harold Hinn, president of Harvest Queen Mill & Elevator Co. of Plainview; Douglas Orme, vice president in charge of traffic for the Cosden Petroleum Co.; Floyd A. Wooldridge, oilfield service company employee; and Tom Linebery, rancher from Kermit. Lindsey was formerly managing editor of the San Angelo Standard-Times and assistant managing editor of the San Antonio Express. Smith is vice president, Plains Cotton Growers’ Assn.; former president, Texas Cooperative Ginners’ Assn.; president, New Home Cooperative Gin; president, Plains Cooperative Oil Mill; and a director, Central Bank for Cooperatives in Washington, D.C. Abernethy now conducts a research and analysis service in Lubbock. Stensland and Greenberg have gone on to other colleges. BRAINPOWER IS OUR MOST VITAL. RESOURCE! You can’t ‘dig education out the earth. 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