ustxtxb_obs_1960_01_22_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

LABOR RELATIONS TALKED A Quiet Envelops Texas Politics AUSTIN A pregnant quiet settled over state-level Texas politics this week. The major line-ups seemed to have taken formGov. Price Daniel challenged by Jack Cox, Atty. Gen. Will Wilson challenged by retiring House Speaker Waggoner Carr. Sen. Lyndon Johnson and Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey were so far unchallenged. As the Feb. 1 filing deadline neared, there was an increase in meetings and talk about candidates. Marshall Formby was soon to make his decision on whether to run for governor, lieutenant governor, or anything. Discussions were proceeding in the liberal camp. Sen. Bill Moore, Bryan, decided not to oppose Ramsey Wednesday night. Carr, making his 78th speech in 95 days, predicted a major battle between Wilson and him. “I’m sure I’m going to win,” he said. “The issue will be the matter of a man holding office only for his own political ambitions.” John White, announcing for his sixth term as Agriculture Commissioner, advocated “a fair economic return for our farmers and ranchers in parity with other lines of industry and labor” and said Texas under his period in his office has moved from seventh to first among 14 Southern states in expansion and enforcement of protective farm legislation. With the state’s deficit as of Jan. 11 nearly $70 million, Gov. Price Daniel told the Texas Manufacturers’ Assn. conference in Dallas that the state’s finances will be in “relatively good shape” if the courts uphold the new gas DOTC To Hear Sen. Morse vr Sen. Wayne Morse of Ore gon will be the principal speaker Feb. 20 in Houston at the convention of the Democrats of Texas Clubs. fror “Texas Businessman,” the newsletter, muses that by failing to oppose Gov. Daniel after he has fought them on many issues since 1957, “Texas business has seldom looked so impotent politically . . . Politicians may remain business friendsbut they won’t fear it.” Political Intelligence goor Daniel has been endorsed for reelection by Jacksonville Daily Progress, Abilene Reporter-News, El Paso Time s, Huntsville Item, Kilgore News Herald \(which said his position and Journal, Lubbock AvalancheJournal, Marshall News-Messenger, Temple Telegram, and Tyler Morning Telegraph. frir Ex-Gov. Allan Shiver s, speaking at a banquet of the chamber of commerce in Brazosport, said businessmen and homeowners should become active in politics with the financial problems of government becoming more and more acute. g o Or El Paso Herald-Post guessed that the state insurance hear ing was “packed with people who would make money out of the new laws made by the Board,” said the plan . would “punish a Texan for a harmless traffic violation that happened three years ago,” and said Daniel should demand the resignation of the board members. pipelines tax. This indicated Daniel’s line for the 1960 campaigns on the persistence of the deficit even with the 1959 tax bill passed by the legislature. “Despite deficits and so-called financial crises,” Daniel said, “we are meeting our responsibilities better than a lot of states with the ‘broad base’ taxes.” Although state ‘highway engineer DeWitt Greer said the state’s highway system can be brought to full adequacy by 1975 with present revenue sources, Dr. J. W. Edgar, state commissioner of education, said the cost of public schools will increase in Texas more than $133 million in the next five years to an annual total of $775 million. He estimated there will be 420,000 additional pupils needing 16,788 new teachers by that time-1965. Beckville formally filed against Comptroller Robert S. Calvert. “It’s time for a change in. this office,” Ramsey said. Dallas Dist. Judge Sarah Hughes announced for re-election, which meant also that she would not oppose Supreme Court associate justice Joe Greenhill, who has announced for another term on the high court. Rep. Bob Wheeler, Tilden, announced through Dan Struve of Campbellton that he will not run again. Rep. Bob Strickland and ex-Rep. Glen Kothmann have announced against Sen. Henry Gonzalez, who is seeking re-election. Rep. Oscar Laurel, Laredo, is re, tiring from the House. Spending reports from the Senate race in the Galveston district showed these totals: Maco Stewart, $10,431; Schwartz, $3,275; exRep. Sam Bass, Freeport, no report; Rep. Jerome Jones, $3,081; J. L. Wilcox, $245; Ullman Kilgore, no report. AUSTIN Some 200 Methodist ministers and laymen attended the first conference on labormanagement relations ever held in Texas under sponsorship of the Methodist Church at the University Methodist Church here. Among those on the conference program were Tilford E. Dudley of Washington, D.C., director of AFL-CIO speakers’ bureau; Charles A. Kothe, New York, vice president of National Association of Manufacturers; Dr. Douglas Jackson, Perkins School of Theology, S.M.U., Dallas; and Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke, resident bishop of the Pittsburg area of the Methodist Church. Participants in a panel discussion of “Problems and Outlook in Texas Industrial Relations” included Jerry Holleman, State President, A.F.L.-C.I.O., Austin; Rep. Ronald Bridges of Corpus Christi; Robert Childers, president, Childers Manufacturing Co., Houston; and Charles Caddigan, industrial relations manager, Eastern States Transmission Co., Houston. While the Austin conference was the first in Texas, scores of such conferences are held regularly throughout the U.S. under the direction of the Methodist Church’s general board of social and economic relations. Robert F. Kennedy of Washington, D.C., accepted an engagement to speak at the conference last October but canceled out one week before it began. He gave notice through a Dallas law firm that. he had been “irrevocably committed to engagements in behalf of his brother Jack’s campaign.” When conference leaders suggested his cancellation might have political repercussions in Texas, he telephoned Rev. W. F. Hathaway, Jr., conference chairman and Methodist pastor in Columbus, Texas, and later sent a lengthy telegram of apology. “Brother Jack’s” office also helped secure as a substitute speaker Irving Ferman, executive vice chairman of the President’s committee on government contracts, but Ferman’s plane was fogged in on Saturday, when he was to speak. Victor G. Reuther, director of the Washington office of United Auto Workers, was unable to attend due to an eye operation stemming from an injury received some years ago when he and his brother Walter were shot by opponents to their labor politics. Press Chided Newspapers in general came in for some chiding from Dr. Douglas Jackson of S.M.U., who said they tend to play up only the strife and struggle in labor news and ignore the peace and harmony often attained. He accused some of sometimes deliberately eliminating news and comments contrary to established editorial policy and gave as an example Dallas papers omitting a column by Victor Reisel which was favorable to labor, although Reisel, generally, is “more conservative and more laissez-faire than N.A.M.” The Church’s concern for industrial relations goes back a long way, Jackson ‘stated, but “the church today is not too concerned, and sometimes it is out of touch with reality, with what is going on.” Churches ought to send their ministers into industrial plants for six months so they can find out what’s going on, Charles Caddigan, an Episcopalian, told the assembled Methodists. Continue paying the ministers, he suggested, but let the laymen run the churches while the clergy are discovering “the fear, the terror, the Methodists Give Ideas insecurity, the pressures working men are subject to.” They might also discover, he added, that the men who are so pleasant to talk to on official church boards can cuss and lie as well as the next fellow out on their jobs. Caddigan ‘and Robert Childers, supposedly representing management’s viewpoint on the panel on which they participated, surprised some delegates and State A.F.L.C.I.O. president Jerry Holleman with their attitudes. Caddigan suggested management. should “show ’em the books” when there is a dispute with labor and told of an instance when his firm had done exactly that. “If management and labor do not trust each other, you cannot get anywhere,” he said. “If they do trust each other and tell the truth, you can get somewhere.” Ethics of Industry Childers, who preceded Holleman on the panel, spoke of the need for integrity in labor-management relations and cited as contrary examples the railroads which oppose federal aid to education while accepting federal aid to the railroad’s. He also ‘referred to doctors “who have the tightest union known anywhere” but support the right-to-work laws. He said that as his business expands and his profits increase, he hoped he would be willing to share them with employees and the public. Holleman, following Childers, said he had hoped he might find something in his predecessor’s remarks to disagree with so he would know what to say, but found himself in complete accord with everything Childers said. He indicated he wished management in all of Texas was like that represented on the panel. Holleman did say that the “adversary” system of labor-management relationships which has existed in Texas over the past 20 years shows signs of abating. There is a “growing willingness to sit down and talk together,” he said. A few ministers entered into a minor debate with Holleman during a question period after the panel concerning remarks he made with reference to the strike which has been in progress at L. L. Sams & Sons since last July. Sams manufactures church furniture in Waco. Issues in the discussion centered around whether or not Sams’ pay scale should be compared only to similar competitive firms or to other furniture manufacturers generally and whether Sams does actually pay the low wages charged by Carpenters’ Local 2535. Bishop Wicke, in setting forth “Ethical Presuppositions In An Industrial Society,” said that ethical presuppositions in labormanagement affairs generally are no different than those in any other area of life. The Christian assumes, he declares, that “this is God’s world, we are brothers, and therefore every man as a child of the Creator has infinite value. No man has the right to advantage himself at the expense of another.” Industrial society must be managed to provide for every man the opportunity to realize his individual dignity, a home as his castle of intimacy for personal relations, a job which will give opportunity for creativity in something of cosmic worth, time and opportunity to share the cultural heritage of our world, and liberty with the freedom to exercise valid options, including the right to choose salvation or damnation. The Christian, he declared, must always be In rebellion against forces that make man only an object. He must help to keep open channels of communion and criticism. Labor problems in the light of automation were discussed by Tilford Dudley. With automation’s resultant increased productivity, he said, there is greater capital investment in machines but lower operating cost and hence more profit. Pointing out that this can be used to lower prices, pay higher wages, pay higher dividends, or increase business reserves, he said we must ask ourselves “What do we want to do with our productivity? That is our problem.” N.A.M.’s vice-president Kothe and the Austin American newspaper came in for criticism on the conference floor. The only item in the Saturday morning American referring to the conference was a series of lengthy quotations from a prepared press release which Kothe had given out on Friday afternoon, differing greatly from what he said before the conference. In his press hand-out Kothe asserted that “the monopoly power of labor” must be “outlawed” and Charged that labor’s “enforced” settlement of the recent steel strike was inflationary and helping to price American-made steel out of the market. He made no such statements before the conference. The press report also failed to say that anyone besides Kothe spoke at the conference. Hathaway said that Kothe had mimeographed copies of press releases on seven or eight different subjects spread out all over his hotel room bed and could have given out statements on a variety of subjects just as easily. Kothe had brought along a professional press agent. Some conference delegates said the press agent earned his fee in obtaining more local publicity for Kothe and the N.A.M. than the rest of the conference got altogether. A suggestion was made on the floor that delegates should write their disapproval of Kothe’s actions to him, the Austin American, and businessmen who contribute to the support of N.A.M. ‘Robber Barons Dead’ Contrary to his outspoken antilabor statements given out to the press, Kothe spoke to the conference about management’s responsibilities. Management has a responsibility to the public, he said, to manage its enterprise to earn a profit, not selfishly but to maintain public welfare. Profits are not pernicious per se, he declared, and larger problems will require larger profits. Appealing to emotions and stereotypes of a bygone era only confuses the issues, he said. The last of the robber baron profiteers “who fed their dogs better than their workers” have been buried. There really were very few of these to begin with, he maintained. Management has a responsibility to the employee as an individual, he continued, and generally places foremost value on his dignity as a human personality. Employers today voluntarily accomplish such things as safety measures and fac tors for human comfort, such as temperature and humidity control. Sharing with others the preser vation of human values is also a part of management’s responsi bility, Kothe declared. “Spirtual values must not be neglected even in an automated society, and a quasi-religious worship of tech nology such as is found in Rus sia must be avoided,” he declared. GUSTON H. BROWNING THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 January 22, 1960 Grant Continued In Sweetwater SWEETWATER Deciding not to follow the lead of the Abilene school board, the Sweetwater school trustees have voted to continue accepting $10,000 from the Texas Bureau for Economic Understanding to finance “the American Heritage” program in the Sweetwater schools.