ustxtxb_obs_1960_05_13_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

‘Oh, It’s Great Fun. First a Bromide Bath, Then We Get Fleeced.’ tie d 14\\ it “r I i I “1*\(4\\iir Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer What Is Wasn’t If THE TEXAS OBSERVER u otaND Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON What otAff _74,o? “Things are in a real messand I shudder to think of the things that can happen to us-:–coming out of such chaos.” So writeth a knowing liberal from North Texas. Senator Johnson can doubtless enjoy his ac complishment, so demoralizing the Democrats, the Republicans may assure him the Texas delegation to the Democratic convention ; meanwhile, let us try to ascertain what the facts are, for the time being without the guidance, if not confusing, at least’ dazing, of the Texas daily press. Resolutions instructing delegates to support Johnson for the Democratic -nomination were passed, we are advised reliably but tentatively, in 47 of the 266 Harris County precincts; 46 of about 150 Tarrant County precincts ; about 35 of the 169 Bexar. County precincts; and 45 of the 187 Dallas County precincts. Senator Johnson has clearly won a majority of the precincts in Travis, Nueces, and evidently in Lubbock, Wichita, and El Paso counties, and in most of the rural counties. In the four big-city county conventions Saturday, his poor grass-roots showings may, by processes of trade for aid, be converted into instructed delegations to the state convention. The fact firmly remains that of about 792 precincts in the four major counties, only 173, or about 22′ percent, instructed their delegates to support Johnson for President. When one considers the thunder tn ele, io The best paid schemes of wealth and Weatherred aft gang a-gley, the signals from Adolphus Tower did not command the folk. The Burris-PIPEs beneath the democratic earth were crushed by voters marching over them. As good men We congratulate Governor Daniel on his re-election, and trust he noted that his oppOsition to taxes which bear heaviest on the poor alienated from him not only Allan Shivers andin a double-talking waythe Dallas News, but “the. people who elected him” when he was crusading against Ralph Yarborough, AFL-CIO, NAACP, and other assorted horrors. We were pleased that upon coining into gingerly contact with the public, Lt. Gov. Ramsey sensed that they do not want a gener’al sales tax and announced he was leading them, where they are going anyway. We trust that his appointments to the tax conference committees of 1961 will not again be five-to-nothing for sales taxes, but perhaps four-to-one, in concession to Don Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. MAY 13, 1960 Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Sarah Payne, Office Manager Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity prices available on orders. ous symphony of praise for Johnson in the Republican newspapers of the state, the only Christian attitude with respect to their evident ineffectiveness with Republican voters in the Democratic precincts is sympathy \(or, to use a word the senator, for in these four big cities, many, or most of the right wingers were saying nothing or no. When one further assays the evident reluctance with which many loyal and liberal Texas Democrats the drums for the senior opportunist from Texas, we must add to the. many wonderful, mysteries of Texas underground caves, East Texas, Price Daniel, just how the Angel of Goliad persuaded the Mexican general that night to let some of the Texans go freewe may add, to these, w l e say, the daily press, who, like Cardinal Bellarmine, conclude that “a wise man hag no need. to correct his judgment, for his experience tells him plainly that the Earth is standing still and that his eyes are not deceived when they report that the Sun, Moon, and stars are in motion.” Finally, in dealing with the Johnson people,, we are confronted with the same problem Galileo bore from those “who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope. What shall we make of all this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?” Neitt rn3 fell in Houston and the pines others rose in Bexar and Campbellton. If it needs a sage to understand history, a scholar to find form, a pundit to see the trends, it needs no more than a democratic man to save his heritage. “A -free soul, thank God, can help himself.” Yarborough’s 600,000 votes and his own gallant reconciliation to the public will. Atty. Gen. Wilson is now mounted firmly on his gubernatorial charger, confident that having defeated two candidates most citizens had never heard of before with two percent to spare, he can continue to say nothing and fight vice, quacks, and thieves, for which a grateful people will of course appropriately reward him. We are tentatively convinced, by Justice Calvert’s Overwhelming victory over Judge Hughes, that the Observer does not yet dictate the outcome of Texas elections ; but we are coming along. Congratulations sir. The legislature won’t be the same without Jerry Sadler but then, neither would anything else. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOVSTON OFFICE: 1010 Dennis, Mrs. R. D. Randolph. 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. AUSTIN When the Observer reports on several hundred pages of newsprint that private groups are trying to steal the public schools, bankers the common`wealth, or lobbyists the brass railings in the Senate chamber, the daily’ papers usually maintain their bleak, cluttered calm and say nothing. Imagine my surprise, then, when, in return for a brief little item that I might skip the Democratic primary this year rather’ than be pledged to Senator Johnson for president, I am suddenly showered with their attentions. Sam Wood, _in a column about “old friend Dugger,” says he really will miss me in the Democratic Party, a solicitude I would have appreciated more had he not so hastily proffered it. The Dallas News says that my decision, “interesting if nothing else,” is my own fault, and not required by the million Texans who voted for Eisenhower. Rather than suspect old friend Sani and the News of harboring a covert desire to discourage liberals from participating in Democratic functiOns, I concluded that they were, indeed, glad to see me go, but could not find a principle they had ndt rejected to cite in their celebrations of my departure. Assisted by their kindnesses to reconsider my decision, I began to’ weigh what my other friends advised, and remembered the argument that one vote elected or defeated Abraham Lincoln at some point in his career. ,Searching for a Lincoln in the May 7th Texas elections was not rewarding, but I voted anyway. Alack ! I cannot foresee the vagaries of my lights, and, besides, I enjoy confusing the Dallas News. When first I considered that the ballot pledge in the Texas primary involves support only for the nominees “of this primary,” I thought the point a niggle, but duly, the night before election, became convinced that this was a proviso Texas conservatives had intentionally slipped into the pledge to exempt the nominees of the national convention, and concluded mySelf released from that implication of voting in the primary. Saturday morning, an old friend and I went fishing on Lake Travis. While baiting and rebaiting our boys’ hooks, we concurred furthermore that as long as a person who believes himself a -emocrat \(even an independent in a Democratic precinct convention and does ‘not undertake a representative party capacity, he has a sound personal right to reserve judginent about the final nominees of the process there initiated. We agreed that once a person becomes a delegate for others, he becomes more and more subject to the final decisions of the process. Thereupon I voted ; and, striking all candidates in several races, devised, \(for, though following my . beliefs, I was beginning to feel somewhat sophisrespect to the nominees of the primary,: if, in a’ race where I do not think any of the listed candidates are acceptable, 1 simply strike all of them whO are listed, thereby removing my weight as a Democratic voter from that race, I have laid a: moral basis -for an exception to the’ ballot pledge in that race in November \(which the pledge should be amended to suggest, I think, by adding the words, _ “in all My precinct’s convention that night was a howler. Johnson’s people could not believe a number of us were really pushing an Adlai Stevenson resolution ; and when we asked for a roll -call, sought to ignore us ; but when we persisted, ,called a voice vote on whether to have a roll call ; and when we then demanded a roll call on whether to have a roll call, granted it ! I report with pleasure that Cecil Rotsch .and other fair-dealing reactionaries voted with us on the roll call that we should, indeed, have a roll call ; but the others, including Jesse Kellam of the Johnsons’ .KTBC, firmly recorded their votes against recording their votes, and we lost, 93-29. I was not invited to be a delegate, but would have declined, not only because I would then have felt bound to Johnson if he were to become the nominee. but also because I did not understand those strange people in my precinct. Dave Shapiro wrote me from Korea, “In 1904 and 1924 the conservatives were victorious at Democratic national conventions. In both periods it only took the liberals four years to reorganize, rally around a leader, and regain control . . We are the party . . . Why should we let the conservatives have both major parties merely because they won a temporary victory at a national convention?” That’s shrewd enough for me. Laying aside now all hope for the gene of consistency, glad for ‘my new found friends and grateful for the older ones, I pause in confusion. R.D. gentlemen. A if