ustxtxb_obs_1960_06_10_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

He Pivoted from South on the Poll Tax Issue favored the submission of a con stitutional amendment to abolish it, which the Senate agreed to. Johnson promptly told the West ern states Democratic conference that the Senate had passed a bill to eliminate “the feudal poll tax.” The 1957 Bill Johnson is generally credited by columnists with the passage of the 1957 civil rights bill, the first one to pass since Reconstruction. As finally passed, it was designed principally to guarantee voting rights. Johnson voted to eliminate Part III, which would have given the U.S. Attorney General authority to institute civil actions i n cases under the 14th Amendment. He also led the drive to require jury trials in all cases of criminal contempt. He voted against an amendment by Sen. Case which would have given district courts permissive authority to protect the right to vote without regard to whether administrative remedies had been exHe did not sign “the Southern Manifesto.” It was explained by friends that he could not, as Majority Leader, this leaving the implication that ordinarily he would have; the fact remains, he did not. Elaborate debates have ensued about Johnson’s role in the defeat of three anti-Supreme Court’ bills in 1958. Liberals vigorously opposed letting them come up, but on this Johnson reportedly yielded to Sen. Richard Russell, scheduling them. When Sen. Douglas proposed an amendment to specify full congressional endorsement of the desegregation decisions. Johnson was faced with a Southern filibuster before any action could be taken on the bills. He worked skillfully for and is credited with achieving the 41-40 voterecommitting the first of the bills, after which the others were throttled principally by the desire for adjournment. In his 1959 i civil rights bill, Johnson proposed federal conciliation of racial disagreements. It was the weakest civil rights bill introduced that year, but Johnson reportedly had real faith in the conciliation idea. He was also proud that he, a Southern senator, was introducing civil rights bills. His 1960 billsoon lost in the grindprovided for voting referees, anti-bombing, education of children of military personnel if Southern schools are closed, and preservation of voting records. Part III and federal support for integrating school districts were omitted. Sen. Douglas says that while Johnson’s measures “may provide a helpful approach to some other rights, it is doubtful that they %you’d result in any perceptible progress in meeting the desegregation problem.” Defends Filibustering Johnson has never modified his defense of the filibuster and opposition to the invoking of cloture to bring civil rights issues to votes when Southerners will not stop talking. In 1949, 1950, 1953, 1957, and 1959 he voted against moves to end or limit the filibuster. When Sen. Clinton Anderson moved in 1957 to challenge the filibuster, Johnson, the Majority Leader, made the motion to reject the Anderson motion, though the Democratic platforms in ’52 and ’56 had endorsed majority rule in the Senate. He and Knowland, the Republican leader, cosponsored a proposed return to the pre-1949 rule that the fili THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 2 June 10, 1960 buster could be ended by a vote of two-thirds of the senators present rather than two-thirds of the total Senate. \(When Sen. Wherry had proposed to abandon the pre-1949 rule for two-thirds of the total Senate in 1949, JohnIn 1959 the Senate agreed to the slight Johnson Knowland modification in the filibuster rule, under which not a single filibuster was broken in the Senate from 1917 to 1949. Johnson assumed the major responsibility for the defeat of the liberals’ 1960 motion to end debate after 15 days by using his prestige and skill to collect votes against it. In doing this, he again helped cancel any hopes the liberals had of passing a bill touching on school integration or providing federal enforcement powers against civil rights violations. In the 1960 debates, Johnson again opposed Title III and voted to table an amendment to toughen the House bill by providing a combination of court-appointed referees and presidentially appointed enrollment officers ‘to assure Negro voting rights. A Congressional Quarterly count of 19 amendments to the civil rights bill showed that Johnson voted with the South on 13 of 19 issues. The 1957 law was principally a voting rights bill, but evidently , it was not adequate to guarantee voting rights, since the 1960 bill was also a voting rights bill. What Does He Believe? What ‘does Johnson believe, himself, about segregation? In Washington Johnson’s -children have been attending Alice Deal junior high, which is integrated. In a rare statement on school desegregation while campaigning on TV in Texas in 1956 for state party control, Johnson said he was against “forced integration.” In Raleigh, N.C., in 1957, Johnson said all citizens, North and South, must “give up the idea of crushing the other fellow and ramming our own pet ideasno matter how nobly motivated down his throat.” In San Angelo in late 1958 he said again he is against forced integration,” but added “we’re a little late in our section in recognizing that all men are created equal.” During a recent presidential tour of New York, Johnson was quoted as saying, “As long as I’m here, we will have no ‘secondclass citizens.” In a. Washington speech he opposed “bigotry of race, religion, or section;” a theme he has used a lot since he became a presidential candidate. Asked in Houston by an Observer reporter if he favors’ a strong civil rights plank in .the 1960 Democratic platform, Johnson replied, “I think we have passed an adequate civil rights program.” despite the powerful backing of the Kerr bill, Olds courageously opposed it in the spring of 1949. just three months before ‘his renomination came before this same committee. The supporters of the Kerr bill accordingly believed that his removal from the FPC was essential to the passage of the measure.” Johnson was chairman of the subcommittee on Olds’ renomination. All seven members of the subcommittee favored the Kerr bill; they all, except one who died in 1949, voted for it in 1950. Rep. John E. Lyle of Corpus Christi, a friend and supporter of Sen. Johnson, started the attack based on certain writings by Olds 25 years before when he was industrial editor of a news service sold to the labor press. The writings .were used to support the charge that Olds was either a communist or fellow traveler and had bitterly attacked capitalism. Lyle had himself introduced a bill to relieve gas producers of federal price regulation in the 81st Congress, and he accused Olds of launching “a bitter and vicious attack” on such legislation and characterizizng it as “an attempt to mulct ultimate con -sumers of millions of dollars.” Presenting 54 photostatic copies of articles, Lyle charged Olds with attacking “the church . . our schools; he has ridiculed the symbols ‘of patriotism and loyalty such as the Fourth of July; he has advocated public ownership; he has reserved his applause for Lenin and Lenin’s system . . .” Although the Olds writings of the ’20’s had appeared in about 75 publications, Lyle took most of the articles he placed in the record from two communist publications. Olds said he still believed in the New Deal but had changed some opinions, including ones about Russia. Harris concluded: “Only by the most flagrant distortion, by lifting sentences out of context and by actual misquotation, was Rep. Lyle able to support his contention that Leland Olds was a communist at heart . . .” “During his testimony,” Harris continues, “Olds was asked by Senator Lyndon Johnson whether he had ever addressed the Trade Union and Educational League, sharing the platform with Earl Browder, to which he replied that he remembered once speaking before this organization, but could not recall where the meeting was held or who the other speakers were. Senator Johnson thereupon inserted in the record a copy of the Daily Worker of March 29, 1924, which he had at hand, giving an account of the meeting, at which Browder and Olds were the principal speakers.’ The appearance of Mr. Olds on the same platform, 25 years earlier, with Earl Browder was shocking to the senators . . .” Oil and gas witnesses, including some from Texas, united in testimony against Olds. Guy Warren, president’ of T.I.P.R.O., said his ideas amounted to “federal dictatorship of -business operations.” The Washington Post, on the other hand, called Lyle’s charges “preposterous and despicable.” President Truman wrote the subcommittee saying Olds is “a nationally recognized champion of ‘effective utility regulation. . . . We cannot allow great conporations to dominate the commissions which have been created to regulate them.” Sen. Johnson replied that the subcommittee “was shocked beyond description by the political and economic views expressed by Mr. Olds some years ‘ago. We cannot believe that a ‘person under our democratic capitalistic system holding such views is qualified to act in a quasi-judicial ‘capacity in the regulation of industry.” The subcommittee vot-. ed unanimously to reject the nomination. Sens. Morse, Langer, and Humphrey were among Olds’ defenders. Truman sought to make his confirmation an issue’ of Democratic Party regularity. Lyndon Johnson made the principal speech in opposition to Olds. He said his reputation was “a fiction” Olds himself had built up in the public mind, and said he would disprove “the myth of Leland Olds, the knight in shining armor, doing tireless battle with the dragons of ‘special privilege.’ ,” The first myth, he said, was ‘that Olds was opposed by the power lobby; not a single representative of the power interests had testified against Olds, Johnson said.. “Leland Olds’ record is an uninterrupted tale of bias, prejudice, and hostility, directed against the industry over which he now seeks to assume the powers of life and death. Never once in his long career has Leland Olds experienced, first-hand, the industries’ side of the regulatory picture,” Johnson said.. “In the twenties he scoffed at private property as just another myth; in the thirties he said our democracy had been made a sham,” Johnson said; “in the forties he ‘has intimidated his staff, discredited his fellow commissioners, fostered a smear on Congress, and taken the law into his own hands to substitute irresponsible confiscation for responsible regulation.” The Senate rejected Olds, 53 to 15. In 1950 the Kerr bill passed. Truman vetoed it. Johnson currently defends his role in the Olds case as proper and justified. Olds in 1949 stood by his writings of the ’20’s, it is maintained. Johnson has often boasted that he was able to deliver a solid Democratic vote for the Senate censure of the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, Wisconsin. On the other hand, he has been criticized for failing to speak out about McCarthy until the time of that vote, December, 1954. Evidently the closest he came to” doing so was a statement the preceding are not the party which daily and even hourly questions the integrity and motives of our nation’s leaders.” In Johnson’s explanation of his ‘own vote to censure McCarthy, he relied upon McCarthy’s criticism of the members of a Senate committee as “unwitting handmaidens of communism.” Johrison said this “shocked” him and that the words ‘belonged, not in the Congressional Record, but “on the wall of a men’s room.” “The real issues,” Johnson said, “is whether the Senate of the United Statesthe greatest deliberative body in the history of the worldwill permit abuse of a duly appointed committee seeking to carry out its will. It is just that simple,” Johnson said. On other civil liberties issues Johnson: Voted against an appropriation for the House Un-American Activities Committee \(the Dies cornVoted for the McCarran antisubversive bill, which some liberal organizations said violated Opposed a proposal by Sen. Lehman, New York, to make it a federal offense to kill, assault, or intimidate any member of the armed forces in performance of During the debate on outlawing the communist party \(agreed jority against referring to a commission on security the Administration’s request for authority to force dissolution of communist-infiltrated organizations, whereupon the authority became Voted to restrict defendants’ access to F.B.I. files in criminal Voted to table a Butler-Jenner bill to forbid the courts to pass on questions asked by congressional committees and to let state sedition laws operate and reverse a Supreme Court decision by ruling the Smith Act covered”theoretical advocacy” of the government’s overthrow; Voted to require employers to sign non-communist affidavits to get access to the National Labor Relations Board, and to retain a loyalty oath for union officials And opposed the repeal of the subversive-disclaimer required in the National Defense Education Act as a pre-requisite to getting A Farm Liberal A Farm Liberal Johnson’s voting record is profarmer by Democratic’ standards. For instance: He has supported 90 percent of parity for “basic” crops and was chosen by the Democrats to reply to President Eisenhower on a national network on behalf of this program in 1956; He votes for liberal funds for Johnson’s record on civil liberties is very spotty. His participation in the McCarthy-style attack on Leland Olds in 1949