ustxtxb_obs_1962_06_15_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

with much more intelligence. At the same time, the lobby is more theoretical. The leaders of the lobby work out their strategy as if things were more relative, more established. An intelligent person in the legislature can outguess the lobby, but it’s getting more difficult. Legislators want prestige, creature comforts, women, but primarily what they want is votes at home in the next election. The lobby that D. B. Hardeman was competing with didn’t realize this importance of votes at home. The lobby today does.” The Three Roles Of all the liberal legislators Eckhardt has seen at work in the last four years, he believes Sen. Franklin Spears of San Antonio and Rep. Don Kennard of Fort Worth, the Democratic nominee for the Senate from Fort Worth, have the greatest talent and the most promising futures. “Kennard knows the forces that motivate a legislature. Spears knows the political organizations within a community. They’re good liberals. The test, isn’t it, is how they vote and how they act?” Eckhardt, a pragmatic thinker and philosophical doer, sees three major ingredients in modern American liberalism. “First, altruism. Second, pragmatismthe kind of experimentation and modification that was implicit in the New Deal. Third, respect for individual freedom and dignity a kind of broad tolerance for individuals. In that sense, I consider myself a liberal. I believe in respect for the individual as an individual. I don’t think everyone who calls himself a liberal necessarily accepts all these ingredients, but I’d say the caravan of American liberalism does accept all of them.” Similarly, Eckhardt sees three broad roles for the American liberal today. The first is what he calls the “panzer troops of the liberal movement, like the old Spectator and the present Observer, setting down a conscience, a directive. this is the most palatable role “To a large extent, I suppose, this is the most palatable role for me. You ultimately can’t fail to succeed, but your position is in line with the whole direction of Western civilization. But at the same time, you don’t really succeed personally, and you don’t win. The victory is somewhere in the future.” The second role he describes as that of the “political organizer the position of the Frankie Randolphs. It holds people’s feet to the fire, it demands people’s respect for people and groups, it puts conscience into direct action.” Finally, there is the role of the politicians. “The politician, if he stands for anything at all, needs a thread of philosophy. He needs to stand for something, to believe in something. But there are certain inevitable pressures. When he runs for public office, those who support him expect him to win. He’s got to try to win. “It’s honorable and necessary for the panzer troops to set a standard to shoot at, and for the political organizer to devise a platform worth winning on, but the man in the position of the practicing politician has got to have at least the practical possibility of winning his race. He misrepresents his role unless he thinks he can win.” Inevitable Drift What, then, is Eckhardt’s view on the future of liberalism in Texas? “The short-haul view, I suppose, is bleak. We’ve just lost in all the qtate races. “But the longer view is always in favor of the liberal. The liberal candidate may not win, but the conservative candidate has got to become more liberal. The drift of humane society is in that direction. “The liberal trend is inevitable. But it would be hastened, I be lieve, if Texas liberals had a greater tolerance, a humaneness, toward fellow liberals in their differing roles. With more toler ance and less ill-feeling toward one another, we would hasten that development; and we would enjoy much more personal satisfaction. W.M. ‘THE DRIFT TOWARD LIBERALISM’ Thinker and Pragmatist in the Texas House a voter told her: “We’re favorably inclined toward your son, but we’re worried about his stand on this race issue.” She replied: “Oh, I’m afraid that’s my fault. I raised him to be a Christian.” He has a long line of political forebears. His uncle Harry Wurzbach was Republican congressman from the staunchly German 14th District. His father’s uncle, Rudolph Kleberg, succeeded Wurzbach from the same district under Teddy Roosevelt. And a cousin, Richard Kleberg, was Democratic congressman from there during the New Deal; Lyndon Johnson was his secretary. Richard Kleberg, Eckhardt’s great-uncle, was the original King Ranch Kleberg. Bob Kleberg, the present King Ranch man, is “a first cousin once removed.” Eckhardt’s German ancestors Klebergs, von Roeders, and the others–came to America in the great 19th Century Germanic influx as “political exiles protesters against the monarchistic tyranny. “Old Robert J. Kleberg was detailed to guard Santa Anna at San Jacinto,” Eckhardt says. “It might’ve been because he was a rather civilized man and not likely to kill his prisoner.” Young Gentlemen Eckhardt went to the University of Texas in the ‘thirties, majoring in zoology as a pre-med undergraduate, then going on to law school and graduating in 1939. In 1937 he edited the Texas Ranger, the humor magazine, and began earning his reputation as a satirical cartoonist of the first dimension. \(He began drawing at 5, using limestone on sidewalks. Later, in the ‘forties, he authored the famous full-page cartoons in The year he edited the Ranger, he defended Daily Texan editor Ed Hodge, who got into the usual censorship troubles, Eckhardt recalls, over an editorial on Cong. Buchanan entitled, “Leeches Don’t Like Light.” He won a national cartoon prize for one of his drawings of the country-bumpkin Hobbs Boys. The cartoon showed these lantern-jawed hillbillies showing up at a dance in tie and tails down to the navel, naked from there on. The caption read: “We understood this was to he a semi-formal.” At UT he became “something of a student of Shakespeare,” and read fairly extensively in Dickens, Burns, and Keats. He also helped organize and was a luminary in the Young Gentlemen’s Coffee Colloquiam and Yacht Club, which met daily at the PK Grille in the 3 to 4:30 p.m. interim when coffee was served free. The Young Gentlemen were not uninfluenced by the intellectual conflagrations of the ‘thirties. Bean’s Taxes The grand jury charged Bean with willful failure to file returns from 1956 to 1960. The statute of limitations prevents criminal prosecutions for the years 1953 to 1955. R. L. Phinney, district director of the Internal Revenue Service, said the indictment resulted from an IRS investigation launched in September of last year. The indictment claims that Bean’s total gross income from 1956 to 1960 was $53,296. If convicted, Bean could be sentenced to a maximum of one year in prison and $10,000 fine on each of the five counts. Neither. Bean nor his lawyer, Charles Herring of Austin, would comment on the case. “There were First and Second Internationale people, Trotskyites, Fascists, and New Dealers,” he remembers. “Every political viewpoint was at least accepted from the standpoint of polemical discussion. “There were those who said FDR was like a man trying to fix an old T-Model Ford with rusty wire and didn’t want to disturb the rust and grease for fear it wouldn’t work. They wanted to overhaul the old machine and change it altogether. “I defended the New Deal. I’ve always been a political pragmatist more than anything else. If it’s working I want to patch it up and keep it going. I don’t believe anybody knows what will happen when they completely overhaul it.” He and Creekmore Fath, a UT classmate, opened up a law office in Austin in 1939, which Eckhardt now describes as “just about the most unlucrative law practice anybody could ever have.” He particularly remembers their defense of the Red River Mining and Milling Company, involving a mineral lease on land owned by a fellow named Silberstein. A Negro named Benton and an itinerant preacher named McGill were in conflict with Silberstein over the lease date; McGill and Benton were building a silver mine under Silberstein’s privy. An old man named Deace had used a witchstick and told McGill and Benton there was silver there. This, Eckhardt recalls, confirmed a story told McGill by one Juan Lopez, who had heard from his grandfather that 30 Mexicans, with 30 burros laden with silver, had put the silver there “at some indeterminate time in the past.” The lease called for mining of “minerals, metals, and substance of any kind.” There were, Eckhardt says, “all kinds of substances of any kind because it was under Silberstein’s privy, but the only thing they found was a rusty old .44 and a couple of fourbit pieces.” When the case closed, McGill got permission from the judge to end with a prayer. He prayed: “0 Lord, in thy infinite wisdom embrace this honorable judge and court and tell them Juan Lopez’ grandfather at the time of this lease brought 30 Mexicans with 30 burros upon this property and put silver in this hole.” They lost the case. Then Politics After a homefront stint from 1940 to 1944 with the Air Force, Eckhardt returned to Austin as general consultant for the Good Neighbor Commission under Coke Stevenson”probably the first official organization any place in the South which addressed itself to the problem of local minoritiesand it did a damned good job.” In 1948 he began representing the Communication Worker s, which he still does. He moved to Houston, and after a time in the office of Dixie and Ryan, began his own private practice in 1954. From ’47 on through part of the ’50’s he represented labor as a lobbyist before the legislature. In 1958 he was elected to the House, was re-elected in 1960, and again re-nominated in 1962 without trouble. He now lives in north Harris County with his wife Nadine. The Austin Lobby What was his most durable first impression of the legislature? “How little you really understand it from the lutside. I’d been pretty close to it for ten years or Ho, but I didn’t have the slightest inkling of the intricate human e lations that exist within the legislature itself. “I don’t think the lobby will ever understand the legislature and that’s the only real hope for it, I suppose. D. B. Hardeman \(leader of the House liberals in when he took the legislature away from the lobby back in ’51 and passed the gas-gathering tax. “But the lobby in the last session was catching up again. The lobby used to assume that every -one could be bought offbought off either for money or entertainment or prestige. It used to be a crass sort of approach. “Most members of the House, remember, are in their first or second term. They’re usually rurally-oriented. The House is a fairly moral bodynot corrupt. Especially in the 1947-1953 period, the lobby really didn’t concentrate on the House, rather on the Senate. “Nothing has changed about the House, but the lobby has changed. It’s not relying on crass, corrupt means to influence the House. It operates now like a kind of foreign service, with its ambassadors in Austin representing the business interests in Houston and Dallas and elsewhere. It’s become less a purveyor of beef and bourbon than an ambassador for the local chambers of commerce. It now has more money, with more paid representatives at home and in Austin. In many ways the lobby has taken a leaf from the schoolteachers’ notebook. It encourages a lot of letters, visits to Austin, giving legislators the impression that such-and-such an interest represents a large and powerful element in the home electorate.” ‘Making Things Work As a ranking veteran of two legislatures, and as the outside observer for some years before, Eckhardt, most political insiders say, has perhaps the keenest perception of the forces at work in Austin legislative politics of anyone in the House. To Eckhardt, this is how the legislature really works: “Most people who have a strong interest in legislation,” he says, “are principally concerned with making things work. In its broadest terms, this becomes mostly a matter of passing a tax bill large enough to finance an appropriations bill. It’s not particularly ideological; it’s mechanical. The main interest of people, for instance, like Daniel and Turman, is not that the corporations be protected, or the people be protected, but that the mechanism works, that it gets us through. “With this attitude prevalent, the lobby sits down to work out its technique. The Citizens for a Sales Tax last session utilized that impulse to make things work; they went into great detail. Jim Turman’s change of vote from being against the sales tax in the regular session to being for it in the special session was a perfect example of this attitude. Most members of the House also have that feelingyou ought to come out with something to solve the immediate problem. “On the other hand, there is a competing feeling in the House to cast a ‘good’ vote for the people at home and to hell with the people who have the responsibility for solving the immediate situation. This is the way the ‘no tax’ bloc in the House views things. It’s this kind of feeling in the House you won’t understand unless you’re in it. “The House doesn’t operate intelligently. The lobby operates Meyer Arsht, who is Jewish. Mrs. Arsht is well known as a conservative who has had an affinity for the John Birch Society. The leader of the Fish would never have been known perhaps, had not one of their Houston leaders come forth to deny GOP statements that his organization was a politically ultra-consevative group. The man who came forward to deny the criticism was Rev. T. Robert Ingram, pastor of Houston’s St. Thomas Episcopal Church. Rev. Ingram said the Fish “is a symbol worn to profess individual faith in Jesus Christ according to articles of belief.” It is being worn in Houston and elsewhere in the nation by a “number of people” who “decided they wanted to identify others who believed as they did in opposition to any fad or popular deviation from the Faith.” Rev. Ingram did not mention what he opposed specifically, but he is a well-known adversary of his bishop, Rt. Rev. John E. Hines and his “modernist” approaches to theology. Ingram said The Fish came into being after the Episcopal General Convention In Detroit, Mich., last year, when opponents of the National Council of Churches were repudiated. Ingram has long been an active