ustxtxb_obs_1961_08_25_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The Texas Observer An Independent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper A Window to the South Volume 53 TEXAS, AUGUST 25, 1961 15c per copy Number 21 ‘Tex’ Fighting Again UT STUDENT PRESIDENT A c9 H%,.. Seamen Forcingee ,-Ao’ Holds His Ground Legal Showdo GALVESTON On October ’25, one of the most significantand to employers, one of the most infuriatinglabor cases in recent years will reach .the appellate court in Austin, but that will probably be only a layover on the case’s trip to the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue is the question, What court has primary jurisdiction over strikes in interstate industry? The National Maritime Union, the strongest seaman’s union operating on the Texas coast and the central protagonist in this legal fight, says that anti-picketing injunctions must be issued only by federal courts. Ship owners, who obtained anti-picketing injunctions from district courts during the June 16-July 3 seaman’s strike, claim they were correct in doing so and that they will continue to patronize the district courts. Unions claim that district courts are more easily swayed by the complaints of industrialists and are prone to hand out anti-union injunctions as freely as if they were soap coupons. The unions’ anger over what they consider interference from malleable district courts is nothing newthey have been angry about it for yearswhich makes it all the more noteworthy that the issue is finally coming to a head, thanks solely to the cataclysmic personality of one man, S. D. “Tex” George, Galveston port agent for the NMU. George is considered to be one of the toughest men in Texas unionism, but since Texas unionism is hedged in and intimidated by a dozen state statutes that prevent development of toughness, this rating of George doesn’t mean much. More significant is his national reputation as a nose-buster, a reputation dating back to the 1948 counter-revolution within the National Maritime Union in which for the first time in half a dozen years men suspected of communist leanings were driven from controlling positions within the union hierarchy. The uprooting took more than a vote of the union rank-and-file, although it took that too. George was among the new officers elected that year. He won the post of NMU agent at Galveston; he was then 25, the youngest agent in the union’s history. When George arrived in Galveston he found, he recalls, that “some of our boys who didn’t agree with the communists were really getting worked over. Oh man, this was one of the communists’ strongholds, down here. Some of our honest rank and file were getting beat up bad. It was really a vicious thing.” He told of one anti-communist member who was attacked on the docks by a group carrying ballbats, chains, “and what-not.” George knew how to play that game. “About t’ after I took o s to hit two fellows ii with the butt of my .45, Ad, grin ning modestly. What ,To fellows? “Oh a couple of fellows who were tailing me and obviously looking for trouble. Guts Appraisal Shortly after that, George was sitting in his office in the old union hall talking with some of his NMU friends, and they were gigging him about not doing more to get the left-wingers under control. George recollects, “All right, I told them all of a sudden. Let’s see how much guts you’ve got. And I walked into another room where a union patrolman by the name of Von Schmidt was sitting he was sitting on a deskand I knocked him off the desk, and he jumped up and run into the agent’s office to keep me from catching him, and then he jumped cut the windowwe were on the second floorand swung off the awning onto the sidewalk, and lit out running for the police station. “Well, a friend of mine was standing across the street and he saw all this happen, and he figured what was going on, so he whipped out this pistol he was carrying and went after Von Schmidt. My friend chased him right up , the police station steps, trying to get in line for a shot, but Von Schmidt got inside. AUSTIN Beginning Friday, September the first, Texas consumers must pay a sales tax of two cents on the dollar when they buy things such as these : Furniture, radios, TV sets, pots, pans, dishes, knives and forks, kitchen appliances from stoves and refrigerators to coffee pots, lights, gas, and electricity, garden tools, hand tools of all kinds, paint, supplies and parts used in auto repairs and home repairs and improvements, toys, baby furniture and supplies, books \(except newspapers, magazines, shoes, clothes \(except certain outer garaccessories like purses and wallets, soft drinks, restaurant meals including all drinks, ice, candy. Fruit juices, drugs and medicines bought without a doctor’s prescription, hearing aids, shaving supplies, grooming and beauty supplies, soaps, writing paper, pencils, pens, artists’ supplies, musical instruments, window coolers, fans, air conditioners, heaters, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, brooms, bicycles, sports equipment, boats and boat motors, cameras, photographic supplies, commercial pictures, camping supplies, clocks and watches, jewelry, pets, flowers, luggage, and caskets. Roughly 180,000 Texas retailers must obtain permits to do busi AUSTIN he University of Texas Joard of regents have found a tough adversary in Maurice “Mo” Olian, 22-year-old president of the UT student body. When the regents decided this summer that racial integration on the main campus had gone far enough branding student and faculty efforts for desegregation of housing and varsity athletics as the work of “a vocal minority” ‘Olian minced no words. He called the regents’ policy “narrow-minded, backward, and hypocritical.” Board chairman Thornton Hardie, an El Paso lawyer, promptly fired off a letter to the student president demanding an immediate public apology. Olian maintained an appropriate diplomatic equilibrium, but he held his ground: “I am sorry for any personal degradation,” he replied, “as such was not intended on my part. I do not, however, retract or apologize for any part of my previous statement, which was made with all the sincerity of my firm personal convictions.” Olian says the critical letters he has received \(overall, he says, the response has been about 3-1 asked what part of the north I’m from.” He is a native Texan, son of a dry-goods merchant in Bryan, on the fringes of East Texas. And his campus credentials are impressive: he is a member of Friars, the highest men’s honorary at the University, and has been given the “Outstanding Male Student” award by the ‘UT Dad’s Association. ness from the Comptroller and file quarterly returns on the sales taxes they collect. The Comptroller, Robert Calvert, has locked in his staff to write the necessary forms and regulations. Calvert confirms that the new “limited sales, excise, and use tax” does not fall on services or real estate, but solely on tangible personal property, which the law defines as “personal property which may be seen, weighed, measured, felt, or touched, or which is in any other manner perceptible to the senses.” The basic rate of tax is one penny per 50 cents of the retail sales price, that is, two percent. “The tax hereby imposed shall be collected by the retailer from the consumer,” states the law. The use of tokens or stamps in collecting the tax is prohibited, and retailers are forbidden to tell their customers in any way that the tax will not be added to the retail price or will be absorbed or refunded by the retailer. This is the sales tax on “each retail sale”: A dark, good-looking young man with the thickest of Texas accents, Olian is a journalism major who begins work this fall on a master’s degree. “I know this may sound funny after the last week or two,” he said, “but I plan to go into public relations.” In a university where the sometimes strained relations of student leaders with their regent over ‘Mo’ Olian … ‘What Part of the North?’ seers have been public enough to provoke statewide controversies, the central campus issue these days even overshadowing the perennial issue of censorship of student publications is racial. There are no official figures on the number of Negro students at the South’s largest university One to 24 cents, no tax; 25 to 74 cents, one cent; 75 cents to $1.24, two cents; $1.25 to $1.74, three cents; $1.75 to $2.24, four cents; and another penny tax “for each additional fifty cents of purchase, or fraction thereof.” Utilities are given special permission in the law to bill their customers “in one lump sum covering the utility sales price plus the tax.” Every other retailer is required by the law to give every customer a receipt for sales or use taxes paid. Citizens may include the amount of sales tax they pay in itemized deductions on their federal income tax forms, just as they may now include, in their itemized deductions, state gasoline sales taxes. This is the only way they can reduce their federal income tax on account of the state sales tax. “We have been having all-day conferences ever since the thing was passed,” Calvert told the Observer. “They worked on it eight months and gave us a week. But we are going to do the best job we can.” He said “everyone that sells anything” retail must have a permit from his office to do so, including wholesalers if they sell to the public. His office is now preparing a mail-out, including forms and a short summary of the law, to those 160,000 per’sons now registered with him under the old chain store tax. He be range from a low of 125 to a high of 250. Classroom facilities and intramural athletics are integrated, as are a number of private boarding establishments. But the barrier remains, after five years of undergraduate integration, in dormitory housing and intercollegiate sports. National publicity in the last several months has centered mainly on student efforts to integrate movie theaters on the University Drag. ‘Majority Agree In their summer meeting, the regents unanimously approved a resolution which said “majority opinion” in the state would not support more advances. Why did Olian decide to attack the regents’ decision? “I guess you could boil it down to a twofold reasoning,” he said. “First, my personal convictions, which are quite strong on this subject of equal rights. Second, I believe, as president of the student body, that a majority of students at the University agree with me. “I’ll admit I had serious doubts about student opinion until the election for president List fall.” There was no proof at the time, he said, that majority opinion favored further desegregation. But it was a hard-fought election “and this whole issue was aired in a series of campus-wide debates. At the time I thought that if any issue would cost me the election, it would be this.” Olian missed whining in the first primary, over two opponents, by only 100 votes out of 6,000 cast. In the second lieves another 20,000 or more persons will need to come forward to his office and apply for permits to sell goods retail. “If they don’t, they can’t sell,” he said. Calvert is certain his office will not prescribe a singleform for receipts to customers. “We’ll hold that any type receipt will suffice cash register, shop ticket, or regular invoice.” But he confirmed that the law requires “some kind of receipt for every sale.” The new tax law, House Bill No. 20, is a gallimaufry of exceptions, exemptions, red tape, penalties, and procedures for prosecution and collection not only of the sales tax, but also an additional franchise tax, $10 a year on coin-operated machines, increased drivers’ license fees \(from $2 to on producing gas as a severance beneficiary. The sales tax will raise most of the moneyabout $320 million of the estimated total, $360 million, for the next two yell’s. Exemptions are specified for some kinds of consumer goods, some kinds of business and agricultural purchases, some elements in sale prices, and some kinds of buyers. ‘Consumer exemptions: “Food products for human consumption” are exempt. However, this does not mean all food. What Is Taxed, What Is Exempted