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I 1-0 ,2,-SP,i. .c rx ,9 A 4:5Qe 4 e-r tdent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper Observer 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. The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau A A Window to the South Vol. 52 TEXAS, DECEMBER 9, 1960 15c per copy No. 36 Consolidation or Separation? Library Squabble Gambler Carries the Day Red Berry: Campaigner With a Purpose AUSTIN, WACO A controversy has developed on the six member Texas library commission and in library circles over a proposal to re-organize the library system by consolidating the federally-financed rural program with the state library extension service. Last Saturday Guy B. Harrison of Waco, commission chairman since 1956, resigned during a commission meeting after a proposed budget embodying the re-organization program had been defeated, 3-2. Harrison said the job had been “nothing but grief and a pain in the neck.” Stanley Bank Sr., prominent San Antonio lawyer, was immediately named to succeed Harrison and summoned another commission meeting for Saturday, December 10, to reconsider the reorganization program. It will be held at 9:30 a.m. in the House of Representatives reception room in the Capitol. Five positions would be eliminated by the consolidation. The most important of them is the directorship of the rural library service, now held by Mrs. Bess Ann Motley. A large number of letters and telegrams were received from county officials in rural areas prior to Saturday’s commission meeting by various state officials, including commission members, protesting against any cessation of the federal rural program, which has included the bookmobile service. Commissioners have emphasized, however, that the federal program for rural areas will continue. The issue is whether it will continue under Mrs. Motley in the rural library service or be consolidated under the extension service. Interview with Harrison In the study of his home in Waco Wednesday Harrison, who is director of the Texas Collection and professor of history at Baylor, said the bookmobile service and other rural library programs financed by the federal library services act would be expanded. “Nothing was ever said about AUSTIN Hamstrung by a last minute federal court order forbidding it to take any final action at Thursday’s session, the State Board of Canvassers \(composed of Gov. Price Daniel, Secretary of State Zollie Steakley and Attorney General Will Wilson nevertheless went ahead despite Wilson’s protests and he arguments on a recount of the general election ballots. Hardy Hollers, Austin attorney and spokesman for the legal battery representing the Republican electors who want the recount, fought an uphill fight all the way and it was evident \(despite Daniel’s sympathetic, “I’d like to see a recount made for various reasons, .same of which you have not order or no court order, the issue was settled in the board’s mind in favor of the Democrats. abolishing the program,” he said. ‘We planned not only not to abolish it, but to expand it. “A certain person who has made horrible misrepresentations,” Harrison said, “quoted me as saying I was going to hack this program \(the federal rural anything like that.” He did say, at one time in the summer when Texas congressmen had warned the commission that legislation to extend the library services act another five years would not get out of a House ‘committee, that “if it isn’t passed we’ll have to bring the bookmobiles into the regular extension service and go to the limit of the funds the state legislature would grant us to continue the work.” ‘Harrison said some other members of the 1 i b r a r y commission said Saturday “they hadn’t heard anything” about the re-organization and the dismissals. At a commission meeting Nov. 21, he said, the matter had been fully discussed. Re-organization matters had also been discussed and decided upon at a Sept. 24 meeting, he said, but minutes on the important parts of the session were not kept because the recording secretary was not in the room. “That’s why I dian t approve the minutes of that meeting,” he said. Harrison described the other members of the commission as “good people” who often “don’t have time, aren ‘t interested,’ .’ or don’t know much about libraries. Of Mrs. Albert R. Cauthorn, a member of the commission from Del Rio, he said, “She’s extremely active in library circles. I learned long ago I could depend on her opinion.” William K. Peace, acting state librarian, sent out letters to commission members on Oct. 26 describing the proposed changes and accompanying dismissals, Harrison said. “I can’t understand why some of them say they haven’t heard anything” about re-organization, he said. Harrison said the commission discussed combining the rural library service with the extension division “after urgings on the In a compromise move, Hollers offered to stand or fall on the recount results in six counties which the GOP would specify for the sample. He said if the count in those areas did not move at least 2.8 per cent In favor of the NixonLodge ticket, he and the GOP would not ask that the recount be made ‘statewide. Hollers said that a hasty GOP survey showed in 94 counties that 59,886 ballots were thrown out, and another attorney at the GOP table, J. W. Goode of San Antonio, added that in one precinct the discards ran as high as 54 per cent. Daniel, with a grin on his face, asked: “Aren’t you just assuming they were thrown out? Maybe the folks just didn’t vote for either major presidential candidate. I noticed that thousands didn’t vote in the governor’s race. \(Laugh SAN ANTONIO “Come, sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week . . .” FALSTAFF professional gambler, tavern keeper, social roustabout will wrap the mystical mantle of a lawmaker about his shoulders in January when he takes his seat in the Texas House of Representatives. Bob’ Sherrill Big Red Berry is the latest and probably the flashiest of Texas political thespians who are all things to ,all men but who specialize in being one-of-the-boys, who know the siren appeal of the welldrawled ain’t and the well-plunked geetar, who strike their matches on the seat of carefully aged Neiman Marcus dungarees, and who spend thousands of dollars advertising their poverty. Berry joined the fraternity last month when he defeated Henry Catto Jr. for one of San Antonio’s places in the Texas House of Representatives. Catto, a youhg aristocrat, used to be a backer of Adlai Stevenson, but that was before Oveta Culp Hobby became his mother-in-law. Now he is a Republican. The Cattos are wealthy and Berry didn’t let the voters forget it. In fact, he dwelt on the Catto bankroll so stubbornly and moralistically that by inverse inference the voter was supposed to draw the ,conclusion that Berry is down there with the lunchpailer fighting for his existence. Berry lives in a $125,000 Edwardian palace \(which he, with mock humility, emphasizes has own private lake, and he drives a Lincoln Continental, with a Cadillac and a new Chevy in the garage to spare. If his estate, within the San Antonio city limits, is smaller than a kingdom it is larger than a barony, and he somehow squeezes enough from life reasons.” The board’s action will be , stymied until the federal injunction is withdrawn. Hollers had only one specific illustration of a bad ,count, Precinct 2 in Bowie County, which was originally certified to the secretary of state as having gone Democratic, 508-4. “I telephoned the county clerk in Bowie this morning and he told me that the vote shown for Nixon was a typographical error. It should have been 203, so Nixon received 199 votes fewer than he should have received in just this one instance.” To Steakley’s question, “What kind of recount do you want?” Hollers had a ,firm reply: “We are asking for the count of each and every ballot and for the counting of each ballot on the to pay his $500 a month taxes on the place. Texas liberals, with what some call a willing, naivete and others call the practicality born of seven lean years, are eager to accept the theory that as a man voteth, so is he; and since they are already counting Berry’s vote on their side, they are of course coincidentally labeling him as a liberal. Radio spots during the campaign mentioned, Berry in the same breath with Stanford Smith, Jake Johnson, John \(The Giant But if Big Red is a liberal, it escapes his notice. “I’ve been called so many things, I don’t know what I am,” he said the other day, giving the Observer an exclusive conversation. Red Berry . . . South of Pappy, West of Earl “All I know is, I don’t want no more taxes. I don’t care who they tax so’s they don’t tax me. I’m against a state sales tax_ and a state income tax. But if I had to take one or the other, I’d take the sales tax.” Championed Racing If liberals blanch at the thought of one of their inductees showing even a forced tolerance for the sales tax, some of them may take comfort in the assurance that at least with Berry they have the most colorful campaigner south of Pappy O’Daniel and west of Earl Long. Berry is a Falstaffian character “a goodly portly man, i’faith, and .a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye . . . and, as I think, . . . inclining to threescore.” More exactly, he is 61 and will be 62 come February 27. But one could not continue the quote, saying there is “virtue in his looks.” He looks to be what he is: a rambunctious bon vivant, a cool man with the odds, a rough-andtumble poltical tactician, a taker of calculated risks. “I have sinned, and I admit it,” he said with a shrug. “I haven’t said I’ve reformed. I’ve only retired from sinning.” Thinking on that a moment, he added, “And I haven’t retired completely. I’ll still gamble when I want to.” All San Antonio would be struck dumb if he said otherwise, for Berry’s entire campaign was based on the open desire to aggrandize gambling. He will come to Austin in January with the avowed object of putting legalized horse racing up for a vote as a constitutional amendment on the November 1962 ballot. Berry said his victory over Catto was “a mandate that the people want a race track in San Antonio.” But ‘any San Antonio cigar store bookie will give you good odds that a candid survey of the voters now would reveal they voted the way they did not so much because they were interested in racing as because they were interested in Redas just about everyone in San Antonio, even his enemies, calls ‘him with amiable inexactness, for his hair is pure white, and has been for years. “It started going white when I was about 25,” he said, “back when I first began to look to poker for a living. It was those big pots did it.” But if the virgin hues are long gone, the temper that was born with them remains, and it was this temper that first drove Big Red into politics. It was 1947. Berry was off in Louisville following the horses when P. L. Anderson, then police INAIVVVVVILOVVVVVVVVVVVVVV\\AAAAINIVVV% Commission Backs `Payroll’ Tax Plan AUSTIN Gov. Price Daniel’s financial advisory commission this week recommended a one per cent “payroll earnings” tax to the next legislature. The tax would be halved by employers and employees, with the first $1,000 of earnings to be exempt. In endorsing the new tax the commission was obviously trying to take the middle ground between an income tax and a general sales tax. Former Sen. John Redditt of Lufkin, chairman of the 36member commission, said the proposed tax was favored by a “substantial majority” of the group as “a reasonable compromise between opposing tax philosophies and is fair to all taxpayers.” The commission said that the tax would cost the average taxpayer and business less than a general sales tax or graduated income tax. Under the proposed plan, the tax would be withheld by the employer from the employee’s salary and paid quarterly to the state. The commission estimated the proposed tax would bring the state $106,900,000 during the 1961 fiscal year and $110,000,000 during fiscal 1962. These figures are based on an estimated three percent growth rate over fiscal 1959. The tax would cost a wage earner making $5,000 a year $20 annually, the commission said. An income tax would cost a worker with three de