ustxtxb_obs_1960_12_16_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

For the Man Who Has Everything .. . But the Truth About Texas SPECIAL CHRISTMAS GIFT RATES. Send the Observer to a friend for Christmas. First gift subscription, $5. Second gift, $4. Each subsequent gift, $4. The Texas Observer 504 West 24th St. Austin, Texas Gentlemen: Please enter the following Christmas gift subscriptions. I understand you will notifyeach recipient of the sender of the gift in a note from the editors. wermilimmorimmumummaimusw. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Address City, State Name Name Address City, State Over $133 Million l In n s ,u :a :: e ail Jote4\(44 INSURANCE COMPANY P. 0. Box 8098 Houston, Texas HAROLD E. RILEY Vice-President and Director of Agencies WASHINGTON President-elect Kennedy not the Federal Reserve System should control money policies and interest rates, Rep. Wright Ptman, the congressman from Texarkana, told the national and state bank divisions of the American Bankers Assn. in an evening speech at the Mayflower Hotel here. Many of the financial big-wigs of the country were presenttop bankers, all seven members of the Federal Reserve Board, the Comptroller of the Currency, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and two members of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Patman has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U. S. Senate from Texas in 1961 and indicated to the Observer he looks favorably on the idea of running As the new Administration takes form, Patman told the potent group, two questions are much in the public mind, the gold question and control of monetary policies. “On the subject of gold, a cat can look at a king, so perhaps a politician can amuse a distinguished gathering of bankers,” Patman said, then heaping analytical contempt upon the recent gold crisis, “faith in gold,” and “the ancient superstitions abotit gold . . . this relatively useless metal.” Patman endorsed a proposal by the chairman of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. that the government cease to be required to store some fraction of gold in proportion to the government’s currency and deposit liabilities. This, he said, “was never anything more than a psychological nest-egg” and was never needed, since “the value of the dollar rests, not on gold, but on the fact that it is the money of a great industrial nation.” “The dollar is not on the gold standard, but gold is on the dollar standard,” Patman insisted. No western nation in several cen turiets has had a quantity of gold or any other commodity with which to convert, more than a minute fraction of its money in circulation; banker s, meanwhile, “have been creating mon e y against pledges of all varieties of valuable assets,” Patrrian said. “The money supply must be decided on the basis of what seems appropriate to the volume of goods being produced and distributed not on the basis of the quantity of any one commodity which we happen to have stored away.” The summoning of the National Security Council to Augusta, ordering home families of our troops abroad, and urged missions to the governments of Europe, Patman thought, had little effect on the flow of gold, but temporarily undermined confidence in the dollar. He p r o p osed giving foreign sources as much gold as they want in exchange for their holdings of federal debt obligations so that the U. S. might reduce its $400 million annual interest payments to foreigners. Patman accused the Federal Re-, serve authorities of overruling and opposing programs of Congress which were designed to make more credit available to small business and to stimulate home building. He opposed “two governments” in Washington in 1961, the Kennedy Administration and “an independent Federal Res e r v e,” which conservatives are hoping will be kept relatively free of the Kennedy influence. The Reserve’s authority to decide monetary policies “has evidently been acquired through divine right,” since it was never stated in legislation, Patman told the bankers. The President-elect has the authority for deciding monetary policy and Should use it, Patman said, suggesting a committee of the Cabinet officers and other top officialsincluding Federal Reserve officerswhich would recommend monetary policies to Kennedy. \(Bill Hunter, news editor of the SMU Campus, student newspaper at Southern Methodist University, wrote a story describing some of the needy families who could use some Christmas cheer from affluent SMU students. \(Later the same week, however, Hunter wrote a second story, headlined, “Skeptical Attitude Toward Helping Needy Seen Among Students in re-Holiday Season.” \(The Observer reprints Hunter’s second story as a contribution to DALLAS An attitude of skepticism toward helping needy families prevailed this week among SMU students. How can we be sure that providing cash to families suffering from “hardship, illness and poverty” will be used to ease their problems? “How can we be sure that money given to the parents of 14 children, whose father is an alcoholic, will not be used to buy more alcohol, and thus cause ari even more acute problem?” These were typical questions asked after students read the page-eight story on needy families in Wednesday’s Campus. “We’d Like to help,” a fraternity spokesman said, “but we feel that if we just give money to these families, the cash may never be utilized for the purposes intended.” ..”Why don’t some of the children go to work? Why must they leech off charity?” These are additional questions asked by students in regard to Wednesday’s article. “If we’re going to help, why can’t we furnish what they have indicated as needing rather than providing the money?” students asked. “We have learned from experience that to rehabilitate people we must deal with their dependent personalities or the attitude of dependency as well as the fact of material needs,” Jesse Clements, case-work ‘supervisor for the Dallas County Department of Public Welfare, said Wednesday. “The most valuable service we can give to such individuals is to Prof’s Lament DALLAS , Whatever the academic atmosphere at Southern Methodist University, at least one professor there thinks it could improve. Posted on a bulletin board at Dallas Hall on the S.M.U. campus is a memo outlining college rules about late withdrawals from courses, incompleted courses, and late-work penalties. Leaving out the procedural rules, this is what it says: “To Students Whom It May Concern “From J. H. Kultgen, Sometime Associate Professor of Philosophy, S.M.U. “Subject Affirmation of policies necessitated by present lamentable state of academc irresponsibility. “. . . Strict practices seem needed to control the epidemic procrastination on our campus. “Something is know of the conditions under which particular students workstate of health, outside jobs, University extra-curricular activity, academic load, stage of despair, etc. . . . Some excuses can justify taking makeup work with penalty, but none for attaining credit or a grade level without doing all that is required of other students.” Litt their felling of self-respect and personal adequacy,” he added. “One method of doing this in our money culture is to demon trate that we respect their judgment by giving them cash instead of material assistance.” Clements pointed out that any child who is not in school and is old enough to work is expected to work either part-time or in the summer. ff there is a free-loader in the family, case workers usually find out. It is agency policy not to assist adults who could be employed, but have not taken the initiative. Emphasizing families with initiative, the case-worker supervisor pointed out additional examples and their needs. CASE THIRTEENA 33-yearold mother of five children formerly suffered from TB. Though her disease has been arrested, her two-year-old son has an active case of the illness. An eight-yearold daughter has the symptoms. Among the five is a 7-month-old baby. Once a month the family receives $71 from the ADC \(Aid to CASE FOURTEENA 28-yearold mother needs money for a “INHERIT THE WIND”: Movie and Book. COMMERCE Dr. W. A. Criswell of First Baptist in Dallas probably doesn’t like this, but the Theory of Evolution is being promoted in Dallas, the_ buckle on the Bigotry Belt. For five weeks now, the screen version of “Inherit the Wind” has been “held over” at the Esquire, sometimes playing to S.R.O. The movie is based on a play which is based on the intainous “money trial” of Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. In that unusual courtroom drama, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow battled over the right of a young science teacher, John , Thomas Scopes, to teach Darwin’ theory Bryan and Darrow over Darwin made effective drama; it became the case of Jonah’s Whale vs Science. Within the conflict, there was some fine wit and philosophy with a liberal cast, i.e., “The right to think is on trial.” The authors, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, have stated that the play is a parable, dealing with the issue of whether man has the right to inquire, to think, and to speak. They feel some effort is needed to keep “bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States.” Dallas was the birthplace of the play. The late Margo Jones brought it to life in Theater ’55 against the advice of a New York agent who thought “it would be very daring to do in the heart of the Bible Belt.” Miss Jones made the play a success, with help from critic John Rosenfield. It then THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 6 Dec. 16, 1960 serious operation. She has six children. The eldest son has impetigo. A five-year-old girl is attending clinic for a large cut in her foot. The three-year-old son has an eye infection. The two-year-old daughter also must have an operation. She, too, has an eye infection and impetigo. Their needs: blue jeans, shirts, socks, dresses, sheets, ` table knives, four kitchen chairs, pots and pans. CASE SIXTEENThe 39-yearold father of seven children is an unskilled laborer who works when he can find it. His wife is suffering from eye trouble. Two of their children have muscular dystrophy. The eldest may not live. The couple living in a small tworoom house, have already lost two children from muscular dystrophy. Their needs: a refrigerator, clothing, sheets, blankets and a gas heater. “If we’d have known about these cases sooner, we might have been able to help these people,” one sorority member said. It’s not too late to help these people, though. It’s not too late to share Christmas with them. It’s not too late. went to New York for a long and successful run. Sometime after the Dallas production, there came from the largest pulpit in that city a series of sermons like echoes from Dayton, entitled “God or Gorilla,” “The Dubious Defense of Darwinism,” etc. Now the movie version is in Dallas, and it is strongly slanted toward what that preacher \(who was most recently heard from during the presidential camterialistic evolution.” The movie might make an interesting evening, if you haven’t seen the play. Just to mention a few Hollywood absurdities, the fundamentalist preacher wears a turned-backward clerical collar, dancer Gene Kelly mumbles and grunts the witty lines written for a newspaperman modeled on H. L. Mencken, and a loud woman’s voice out of nowhere sings “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” as umphantly out of the courtroom. In a word: See the movie, but don’t cheat yourself. Buy, the play in pocketbook \(Bantam, 1960, JAMES BYRD An Addendum SAN ANTONIO With reference to Lois Burkhalter’s remark, in the Observer’s story on the MeNay and Stewart Rickard art galleries \(Obs. Dec. San Antonio News is a “sort-of” art critic, it might be amplified that Ashford is not an art specialist, but is also a writer on music, movies, plays, recordings, and books for the News and is assistant city editor as well. Patman Scorns Gold ‘Crisis’ Christmas Cheer a SMU