ustxtxb_obs_1960_08_05_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

‘Not Oil,’ Says LBJ: Candidates Parry, Ready for Lesion BARBECUE IN BLANCO inated for the top spot instead of the second.” He was with Johnson when he made his decision to accept the vice-presidential nomination. Johnson “felt it was his duty.” He said great service can be rendered by the vice-presdent these days, on the cabinet, the National Security Council, and in other areas. “If I had no other reason to support it than that a Texan was on it, why I’d be workin’ for it all the way.” Daniel said he would oppose part of the party platformnot in November, but when the proper time comes. “What we have here tonight,” Daniel said, “is a Texanjust like your boy could be when he growS upwho is running for the second most important office” and who may help make a better and more peaceful world. Mrs. Johnson, who was visibly touched, was invited to say hello. “Lyndon and I’ve been from the foggy coasts of New England to Nashville to the Midwest in the last few days,” she said, “and tonight we’re right back where we started from, with the people who helped us start.” In 24 years of marriage, Blanco has been “a dear place in our hearts.” McKinney, introducing Johnson, said “This is a wonderful country to allow a poor, barefoot boy” the chance to achieve such an important position. He said twelve years ago he introduced Johnson during a campaign and remarked then that he would be president someday. “Each year he’s come closer,” he said. “For days I’ve searched my mind and my limited vocabulary, but feelings can come only from the heart and soul. The honors in my life have been limited, but this is the highest honor of all,” McKinney said. Johnson at Home Johnson was greeted by much clapping and shouting. His tall figure completely dominated the rostrum and the crowds of people who swarmed around it. Flash bulbs p o p p e d, TV cameras whirred and clicked. The great sea of faces extended far back into the shadows. He thanked almost everyone on the platform individually. He especially praised Thornberry, “the only man in this district who I think’s made a better congressman than I did.” Speaking slowly, with many pauses, and in a heavy Texas drawl, he said Thornberry came by almost every day to play dominoes with him when he was in the hospital after his heart at, tack in ’55″and he’d always let me win. That had a lot to do with my being here tonight.” Referring to the cowhands who escorted him to the barbecue, he said “I’m proud there are still some of ’em I can call by first names.” He recalled an episode when “some of the boys from up East” were at the ranch. One of the visitors asked a cowhand if Lyndon could still ride. ” ‘Yessiree,_ or Lyndon’s rode before,’ the cowhand said. Well, about that time a calf knocked the left boot out of my stirrup, and the cowhand said, ‘but not lately.’ ” “My grandfather practiced law here from 1887 into the 1900’s. My mother spent her girlhood days in this townshe was always the greatest influence in my life,” Johnson said. “Every time I make a decision affecting millions of people I think ‘Would Mama agree with this’ or ‘Would Daddy think it wise?’ They were good people, they never sought power, but were just friends of human beings. “Just because I was born in this state, I’ve asked ’em not to hold it against me. I’m proud to say Jack Kennedy, didn’t.” Back in one of his early campaigns, “I got more votes in Blanco County than I expected.” He asked a neighbor why, and the neighbor replied, ” ‘Well, in the south end of the county we voted for you because you’re Miss Rebecca’s boy, and in the north end because you’re Sam’s son. Tonight . I’m here on my own, without either one, and very grateful.” He turned to the core of the speech. He said the United States today “has fewer friends in the world than ever before, and more enemies with more population and strength than ever. “One-third of the world is atheistic, communistic. They have no God, they worship no God. They know it takes six of them ‘to do the work of one free man. They’re out to dominate the world.” He told how Pres. Roosevelt called him one day in 1940 to tell him he had made an engagement for Johnson to speak to the Young Democrats’ convention, and had even written the speech for him. Roosevelt advised him, “Tell them to be as fanatical for democracy as young Germans are for Nazism.” Those Hungry Stomachs One-third of the world, he said, are fanatic atheists, one-third Christians, .and one-third hardworking_ : people “like you” who are uncommitted to either side. Waving a hand at numerous small children in the crowd, some in mothers’ arms, he said, “The children in these uncommitted lands are a lot the same, the only difference is they have tapeworm, and leprosy, and eczema and their daddies make only about $200 a year.” These people “are faced with two salesmen. They wanta know what’s best for their families. Here’s what we oughta dosay to our great medical profession, give us one, two, three thousand doctors to go into these countries, nurses, sanitary engineers. “Let’s take some of that wheat stacked two miles high, and put some food in those hungry stomachs.” He urged also the use of surplus cotton “to help clothe ’em. Put some fiber on their bodies, food in their stomachs. That’ll do more than all the worn out tanks we’re sending. “I want a fellow who can sit there and when they tell about a mother and her hunggry child, I’ll be able to see a litle tear comin’ down his cheek.” Turning to the Republican opposition, he said, “I want every woman in this audience to watch TV and look real close at his face.” He said few women in America would vote for Nixon. He predicted an “ugly campaign. I remember those signs Texas for Ike, but I never heard of any Ike for Texas signs. I can’t visualize any Nixon for Texas signs either. He didn’t come to Texas to get advice. Rockefeller called him into the Waldorf-Astoria and kept him up all night. If Rockefeller can make Nixon take a flat 180-degree flip in one night, I hate to think what Khrushchev would do in two nights in a kitchen.” He offered to match poverty statements with Nixon, whom ‘he called “the barefoot boy from Whittier. The Cabots and Lodges haven’t exactly been on relief up there,” he said. Explaining why he took second place on the ticket, Johnson said, “I didn’t run for the vice-presidency. But I, never ran from anything in my life.” He said it was a fair convention, he finished second, and he felt in his heart his decision was in the best interests of the nation. He said the world situation also , played ‘a part in the decision. Complimenting Kennedy, he said “I knew he was an informed man who knew every state in the na tionof course, he’s spent enough time traveling around in ’em and he’s a courageous, able, diligent man.” He said Kennedy defended the Texas leadership in Congress when Hubert Humphrey attacked it in 1956. In ’57, “when they were tryin’ to take away trial by jury in the civil rights bill, you could hardly find a northern senator to vote against it. Two’ did, and Kennedy was one.” Took the Back Seat He said he could have “taken my baseball bat and gone home” after the convention. But he decided not to. The vice-presidency is a crucial post, he said. He said he would be sitting on the National Security Council with the chiefs-of-staff. Jack Garner didn’t sit on a security council, he said. “It’s not easy to try for first place and get second, and ride in back cars and everything.” But he started thinking about the responsibilities of the job, and the importance it now has. “I thought it took a bigger man to do it than to walk out and say no,” he said. He said we need a vigorous foreign policy, strong defense, lower i n t e r es t rates, harnessing of streams, increased minimum wage, medical care for the aged, “because we believe in the people, government of, for, and by the people.” “Could we get a park like this under Republicans? Why, it’d be ‘fiscal irresponsibility.’ Could we get REA, a co-op like the one you’ve got? No! I had enough trouble gettin’ it out of the Democrats.” Johnson got his biggest laugh when he told how he went begging to a government agency back in the thirties for a $1 million dam ‘on the Pedernales. He was stymied by the agency when it informed him that an area needed a “density” of three people per square mile to get a dam. He said he called FDR, explained his problem, and FDR said: “Go ahead and make that loan, because I believe those folks down in the canebrakes will breed pretty fast.” On the Catholicism issue, he cited the war record of the Kennedy boys, and said “all religions in this country are outnumbered 18-1” in the world. “What we’d really better do,” he said, “is look a man in the eye” and see if he has what it takes. “I’ve looked in John Kennedy’s eye more than any of you. I can tell you this: no huhian being in the world will dictate what he does.” Concluding, he said, “I started out right here 51 years ago. The only thing I want out of government is secure the wealth, happiness, and freedom you people are entitled to. I just want it said of me I’ll leave people better than I found ’em. “I’ll be watchin’ the Blanco County returns election night. As daddy saidI wanta go back there, because they know when you’re sick and they care when you die.” The band played The Eyes of Texas. Johnson grinned, waved, and retired again to the pavillion to isay hello to his high school classmates of the Blanco Class of ’24. MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 AUSTIN The two parties’ national candidates were dec id in g what to do to each other and the laws in Washington this month and settling in for a long summer’s campaign. Conferring at Hyannisport, Kennedy and Johnson agreed in a joint statement that the short extra session of Congress will take up a new big defense appropriation, medical care for the aged, housing, aid to education, mutual security appropriations, and the Minimum wage. New York Republicans de ma n d e d Johnson deliver on the Democrats’ civil rights processes. Reportedly Johnson told Kennedy”And no more.” Sen. Joe Clark, Pa., announced plans for a fight to change Senate filibuster and other rules. Sen. Javits, New York, was ready with other civil rights-oriented legislation. A Southern filibuster would be likely if a fight developed. Johnson chartered a plane and took 37 Texas newspaper people with him to Hyannisport. Kennedy sought and received a personal introduction to each of them. Kennedy said if elected vicepresident Johnson will “carry out the obligations of the office in the public interest better than any vice president in recent times.” Johnson told reporters Kennedy in 1952 and “this year he’ll go all the way with LBJ.” Johnson told reporters at Hyannisport that the Democrats’ platform does not, in his opinion, commit the party against the, oil depletion allowance, nor does it endorse sit-ins, merely saying they signal the existence of a problem to be solved. Kennedy revealed that Johnson sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense asking an accounting for $662 million spent over defense funds asked in the President’s budget. Saturday Johnson spoke before a Nashville rally attended by more than 8,000 persons. Four Democratic Southern governors from Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, and Kentuckyattended, with Lindsay Almond of Virginia canceling out for personal reasons. Johnson said he would speak to Americans as an American, and not to Southerners as a Southerner, whites as a white, or Protestants as a Protestant. He condemned “the young men with old fears in the Republican party.” He said the Republicans have shown hostility to the farmily farm, inability to distribute U.S. farm abundance, and inability to provide the country adequate education. On religion he said, “A fellow told me today that the last THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 August 5, 1960 time we voted against a Catholic we had a depression.” In a press conference, Johnson said the platform on depletion allowances “does not mean oil.” There are many depletion allowances, he said. “The platform pertains only to loopholes in taxes and I see none in ,oil,” he said. Thence to Iowa, Johnson spoke to a farmers’ rally of 10,000 and was interrupted for applause 61 times in 59 minutes. Informal, folksy, he rang bell after bell with slugs at Benson, Eisenhower, and Nixon on farm policy. He reverted to Eisenhower’s earlier promises about farm parity and said that under the GOP farmers’ total income has dropped from $15 billion in 1952 to $10 billion now. Kennedy’s headquarters home at Hyannisport was also the scene of assurances from David J. McDonald, steelworkers’ president, Walter Reuther, autoworkers’ president, Gov. Mennen Williams of Michigan, and Frank Reeves, the Negro who is national committeeman for the Democrats from the state of Washington, that Johnson is acceptable. Kennedy said he will campaign in Texas, specifically mentioning San Antonio; Nixon said he would visit San Antoniowould like to talk in front of the Alamoand his aides said he might make as many as three visits to the state. Naturally, partisans of both sides were claiming the state would go for their man. Woodrow Seals, Harris County Democratic chairman, said the GOP has bought 150 billboards in Houston and “we’ve got a big job to do and we can do it.” J. Ed Connally, state chairman, called off the five-state Dallas planning meeting, deferring to an eightstate meeting in St. Louis Sunday, to be attended by the official state party hierarchy and also by Sen. Ralph Yarborough. A poll by Rockefeller forces indicated Kennedy will carry Texas, 50 to 27 percent. The Dallas News poll for Dallas County said 44 percent think the Democrats will carry the county, 29 percent the GOP; while 59 percent think the Democrats will carry Texas, against 20 percent thinking the GOP will win. National GOP committeeman Albert Fay noted that the Republicans’ platform endorses depletion allowances, does not ask repeal of the Connally Reservation, and endorses Taft-Hartley and the right-to-work laws. The president of the Flight Engineers International Assn. charged Johnson crossed a picket line, aiding a struck employer. Johnson replied he had been aware of doing nothing of the kind. Johnson’s press aide, George Reedy, asserted that, in entering the air terminals in question, Johnson positively had not crossed