ustxtxb_obs_1959_10_09_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Sheffield Stages Play “Socialism gives all power to the federal or central government. Communism begins when all power is in the central govern V Race. Voters in Goliad re jected school integration, 338 to 133. A third of the qualified voters voted.. Fifteen Negro high school, students, who had been attending school 30 miles away in Cuero, say they will drop out of school. In previous elections under the state law, Pleasanton and Bloomington integrated and Boerne stayed segregated. … Three NAACP attorneys filed a school integration suit in Fort Worth, and the school board said in a statement the suit will be fought. … Four Negro dentists sued for use of Sylvan Beach county park in Harris County near La Porte. “We weren’t thinking about anything but enjoying a happy evening on the beach” The Week in Texas when they were barred, said one of the dentists. … San Antonio LULACS are investigating charges that a high school teacher in LaCoste school, southwest of San Antonio, told a Latin girl she should not talk to white boys because she would “lower their standard” and “they were not of the same kind.” The superintendent says it was a discipline problem, not discrimination. Legal troubles. Alleging trial errors, J. Byron Saunders, former insurance commissioner, appealed his two-year perjury sentence. … Ex-Rep. James Cox, Conroe, convicted of agreeing to accept a bribe, left Huntsville prison Oct. 6 after serving eleven months, two days. He had been sentenced two years. … Bankrupt Texas Fire Insurance Co. creditors were awarded ten cents on the dollar. … Cty. Atty. George Morris of Montgomery Cty. was found not guilty of stealing oilfield pipe. … The F.T.C. charged 42 automotive products jobbers based in Dallas and Paris, Texas, with price discrimination. la Labor. About* 7,000 Texas dock workers were idled by the national longshoremen’s strike….. Production employees at Wynnewood Products, Inc., Jacksonville, voted for a union, 35-20. … The number of firths which have dropped Tex-Son products because of the San An THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 2 October 9, 1959 ment. Every vote cast by you or your representative that will give even a little more power to the central government is a stamp of approval for ultimate communism. When all power is in the central government, socialism is a fact; then communism begins. Whether this is done knowingly matters not; it serves the same purpose for the communist cause. “Communism demands control of the military, the vote, and the land, all in one spot. This control now rests in the individual states, in 49 different places. Our votes make up the force which keeps control in the states, or hands it over to the central government.” Nevertheless, Mrs. Liner welcomed a liberal reporter to the FIA convention. Introducing the Observer editor, she said he represented “The Texas Observer, a liberal publication in Austin. We’re glad to have you with us.” Glad to be there, he responded. tonics strike has increased to 200, the. union says. … 200 Houston machinists who, voted to end their Mission Mfg. Co. strike were turned away when they applied for their old jo4s. They went back on strike. … The workers’ death toll in the ‘ Evadale paper mill blast rose to nine. Business. Brown & Root has contracted to expand Longview News and Journal. …Richard Gonzalez, Humble Oil’s economist, will coordinate finance and economics in the new Jersey Standard-Humble firm. … Slick enterprises merged into a $25 million firm, Texstar, in San An tonio. Insurance. Board of Insur ance announced a plan effective Jan. 1 to give drivers without moving traffic violations the last three years a 20 percent auto insurance cut but those with moving violations up to a 100 percent increase. … David Irons retired as a member of the state board, and Joe P. Gibbs was reappointed in his place. . 6 Slums. Corpus Christi has scheduled an election on the theory of urban renewalwhether slums exist and whether they should be corrected. … A threeblock ” area in West Dallas has been selected for a “do-it-yourself’ renewal program. Fences on beaches. Atty. Gen. Will Wilson announced that Oct. 15 he will make an aerial survey to find fences on Texas beaches, give landowners ten days to get them down, then file suit if they don’t comply. The chairman of the Texas Beach Assn. said his group does not ,plan a legal battle with the state. Wilson posed with Sens. Baker, Houston, and Phillips, Angleton, looking at fences on Galveston’s West Beach. Utilities. Gas companies Won an increase in El Paso and applied for one . in Rosenberg. Southwestern Bell won an increase in Hearne; General Telephone Ca. sued Jacksonville for higher rates. Disasters. Still . unexplained: the plane crash near Buffalo, Texas, last week, which killed 34. … Floods caused $2 million damage, drowned several in the Hill Country with sudden river rises. HOUSTON Management leaders ‘ of Sheffield Steel in Houston endorsed Freedom in Action here during the third annual FIA conference, and about 20 of Sheffield’s management employees put on a two-act play on how conservatives can win Democratic precinct conventions. K. P. Campbell, Houston works manager of Sheffield, said the main reason for Sheffield’s program is “a little set of initials called COPE.” This is labor’ Committee on Political Education. Campbell told the FIA members assembled here during an afternoon session that a COPE booklet on citizen participation in politics is “one of the finest things I’ve ever read to stimulate action in politics.” “We who . believe in good government,” Campbell said, “have taken that same little book and changed a very few words and use it for what FIA stands for. “It’s very well thought out,” he added, “but it has one very bad feature. It is all directed to one lineand that is union officials.” The play was explained by Burke Huber of Sheffield’s industrial program. He related . that Sheffield now conducts a five-day seminar for employees on politics. “Monday morning,” he said, “we stick pretty close to the ma terial as outlined by TMA throughout the state for these discussions.” TMA is the Texas Manufacturers’ Assn. “We discuss some of the dangers,” Huber continued, “and also political and economic rights. We don’t always agree, naturally.” One of the guest speakers at the seminar was Hall* Timanus, a leader of conservative Democrats in Houston. Timanus told them, Huber remembered, that “the reason we are in trouble to HOUSTON This year, for the first time, Gov. Price Daniel was not represented at Freedom in Action’s head table. Clyde Johnson,, a member of the staff of the proDaniel state Democratic executive committee, was very much in evidence during the meetings; he took a sheaf of notes. Jack Cox, FIA executive secretary, said Johnson was “representing the state organization.” But Johnson told a reporter, “I’m just an observer.” Gov. Daniel did not send greetings through him nor, evidently, through anyone else. FIA literature at the convention included a reprint of an article in the magazine American Mercury said: “The little publicized fact that commendation and personal participation have been given and Public Schools Used Recently FIA has held closed meetings in two Houston public schools. The invitation to one of these meetings contained the sentence, “This is not an open meetitng; it is by invitation only.” The word “not” was underlined. “If you are already a member,” the letter said, “then you know the importance of increasing our membership by the endless chain of meetings. Please invite any of your friends whom you would be willing to sponsor :.. Call our office and give the names and addresses of those whom y’ou have invited.” day is we no longer consider ourselves a constitutional republic we think instead we are a democracy.” At one of the sessions, he said, information is given on the individual precincts of the people in the seminar. \(He did not identify these, but presumably they included, over a period of time, the 800 management emformation is provided participants in the seminar on who controlled their precinct last, how many attended, “and any friends we happen-to know in their box.” THE MOCK PRECINCT conventions \(specified as Democratic about 20 management employees of Sheffield. In the first one, the well-dressed, orderly “outs” were in the majority, bid the rowdy, overalls type “ins” stole the convention. In the second one, two years later, the well-dressed “outs” took over. Introducing the production, Huber said in the second convention, “you’ll see the conservativesuh, I mean, the ‘outs’come back in.” There was considerable laughter, and someone said aloud from the audience, “He gave it away.” Later Huber again called the “outs” the conservatives. Among the offenses of the “ins” that is, the liberals in the play were intimidatinng “outs” at the door and turning them away on technicalities, letting “ins” participate though they hadn’t voted, rowdy yelling on voice votes, shouting down opposing speakers, slipping in illegal participants, and, finally, outright dishonesty in counting votes. The ‘ins” were characterized as working people. Some wearingATshirts, overalls, and work caps. After they had stolen the first convention one of them said, “Let’s go down to the beer joint and have us a beer.” The “outs” shared with Freedom in Action meetings by the three shrewdest Texas politicians Democratic Governor Price Daniel; H. J. Por . ter, Texas Republican National Committeeman, and former Democratic Governor Allan Shivers is very significant … When, at the end of 1957, three hundred Texans met quietly in Dallas \(at Former Senator William Blakley, former Governor Allan Shivers and s Governor Price Daniel exchanged advice and commendations. Each district chairman gave the tally of his district’s membership …” Daniel has not attended any of the open FIA conventions. Porter, Shivers, and Blakley have. FIA President Elwood Fouts told FIA’s first banquet in 1957 that Daniel, Porter, and Shivers “want us to succeed.” Jake Jacobsen, a Daniel aide, said for Daniel, from FIA’s head table, that Daniel agrees “with the principles espoused by Judge Fouts.” Jacobsen said, “I am happy to be a part of Freedom in Action and honored that I can sit on this same platform withh these great Americans,” who included Blakley, Porter, and Shivers \(Obs. Nov. 8, In 1958, Jacobsen, speaking for Daniel, unequivocally endorsed FIA, “I know from experience the fine work of this organization,” he told FIA that year. He said FIA had helped keep the Democratic Party from “following the party line of the D.O.T.” and added, “We’re proud also as conservatives that we do not have to be were quiet, polite, and orderly, except when they had to shout for recognition. Huber, commenting on this first act, said, “I don’t know what end of town you folks live in, but I personally have seen that sort of thing.” In the second act, a speaker for the business-suited side says, “We have here a majority who believe in Freedom in Action and subscribe to those principles:’ When they take over, the FIA chairman, saying “I’m as good as John Law in this convention,” makes the rowdies take off their hats in deference to the ladies. The . FIA chairman, in Sheffield’s production, also says to an opponent trying to get the floor, “State your business if you have any or sit down.” Chairmen for both the “ins” and the “outs” regularly recognized the people on their side first, without regard to who sought recognition first. And both sides’ chairmen in the play took only the votes favoring many of their propositions, saying “All in favor” and declaring the winner without taking the no votes. SAID HUBER: “There are too many profesSional folks, good, sound, American people, who will not go to their precinct conventionand I’m talking about the doctor, the lawyer, and so forth … the grocer, the dentist, and so forth.” He said in Sheffield’s program, “that’s the two things we stress elect the precinct committeeman and control the precinct con vention because that’s the grass roots that controls the whole thing.” Mrs. Cleo B. Liner, assistant to the president of FIA, said, when she was introducing Huber, that “numerous companies over the state” are putting on such political programs “inside their companies.” When the Observer asked Cox eternally defensive” \(Obs. Nov. who the main Texas figures would be at the Manion rally, he replied that “Weldon Hart and George Sandlin will be coming down.” Hart was Shivers’s press secretary, and Sandlin was chairman of the Eisenhower-supporting state Democratic executive committee when Shivers was Governor. They were noted conferring outside the grand ballroom before the Manion rally began. Cox also mentioned Abner McCall, vice president of Baylor University, who gave the invocation at FIA’s congressional breakfast here, and Lamar Fleming, member of the provisional executive committee of FIA who is often privately given a share of the credit for FIA’s conception. From the point of view of Houston politics, the most interesting appearances during the day-long FIA