ustxtxb_obs_1963_03_07_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

3C 3C 3C 3 Since 1866 The Place in Austin Immortalized in Bill Brammer’s THE GAY PLACE 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4172 7 C an acquaintance when he heard this. Eckhardt also noted that Yancy had said he was sending copies of the bill to the Texas safety assn. and various businessmen so they could “prepare testimony against them.” He excoriated the lobby for thus intending “simply to fight safety bills” rather than to correct or improve them. Eckhardt then quoted Yancy from the story : “You know, it is hard to testify against safety bills. It takes an expert. You know what the other sides triesthey’ll have four chairs for witnesses, with a woman in one and two children in two others, and one empty. And they’ll point to the empty chair and say, “if old John, who was killed by the hoist, were here today, he’d tell you how bad we need safety laws.’ ” “I must say this,” Eckhardt said: “statistics are not just cold statistics, and if Mr. Yancy thinks there’s any joke about it, I take a leaf from Mr. Yancy’s book. Maybe he knows more about how to conduct a hearing than I do. I do have the widows of people killed so that you’ll know that this is a matter of flesh and blood and bones and not just statistics.” Proposing to prohibit storing dangerous substances in large quantities near public highways, he introduced Mrs. Ruby Shepherd of Houston, widow of a worker killed in April, 1962, when a tank at Sinclair refinery became overheated and ignited. As she rose, he said she “is there with a group of ladies and is standing in black.” He _noted that a girl and her boyfriend, passing near the same explosion in a car, were burned, and died a few days later. Eckhardt also proposed state prohibitions to prevent vessels’ leaking inflammable substances into waterways or catching fire in other wayt, mentioning for cases in point the Amoco-Virginia fire in the Houston ship channel in which a fireman died and the Teicas City disaster in which thousands died; he prOposed prohibiting the dangerous storage or release of noxious gases, referring to the recent LaPorte phosgene scare; and he backed up his proposal to prohibit putting tanks or conduits under excessive pressure by introducing Mrs. Mildred Lee, widow of one of the two workers killed in an industrial explosion so caused in the Harris County area. Then some of the victims of such injuries testified. Jack Phillips, a Houston worker at Sheffield Steel, said he had been working repairing an electric circuit when gas that was leaking from a fixture about which safety warnings had been advanced eight times in the preceding two and a half years, without resulting in repairs, ignited. Two men were killed, and Phillips suffered 30% burns and 35% disability for life. “In the particular area where I work, five men have been killed, two by moving equipment and three by explosions,” he said. Mrs. Josephine Morgan of Houston said her husband was dismantling a boon on a crane when “it collapsed on him.” Mrs. Viola Tillery of Houston said her husband was killed when a compressor exploded. \(“We went to court. The jury thought they’d given us $92,000, but because of something, Blair of Houston said her husband fell 70 feet on a construction job and broke both his legs and also his back in two places. Eckhardt also introduced Mrs. Willie Bell, “whose husband was electrocuted at Sheffield Steel.” An older lady, she stood in a cloth coat over her black dress. FOR THE UNIONS, Roy Evans, Texas A.F.L.-C.I.O. secretarytreasurer, charged that industrial accidents in Texas, running at eight percent of the work force a year, are “twice the national average.” He made the provocative charge that companies profit from industrial accidents. “You have bargain rate butchery in this state, and the figures reflect it,” he said. Hank Brown, the state labor president, concentrated on construction workers’ injuries. He said that in a study of 600,000 job accidents reported in the last three years to the industrial accidents board, 167,000 of them turned out to involve construction workers. “One out of every five construction workers this year, going to work, knows that he’s going to be hurt,” Brown said. “A survey of the Associated General Contractors showed that only 10% admit to having a planned safety program of any kind.” Yet, he said, a five-year study of four industrial states with job safety laws showed that employers saved 51% in money over and above the programs’ costs, “in addition to savings of lives.” A. N. Slough, speaking for the Texas industrial union council, said many employers are safe, but others “try to cover up accidents.” He called for “some protection against those employers who don’t care.” In a release he handed out, he said, “Texas is, and has historically been, a conservative, employer-dominated state. . . . The `conservatives’ . . . have decreed that the working citizen is expendable .. . giving employers a carte blanche permit to maim or kill at their discretion.” The chairman of the workers’ committee for the 6,600-member oilworkers’ local 4-23 in Port Arthur, Kenneth C. Lewis, said that since last April, four of the union’s members have been killed, three by refinery fires at Texaco’s Port Arthur plant and one because of a condition in a vessel at the Gulf refinery in Port Arthur. He said the three workers killed by fires perished in two separate accidents caused by the same March 7, 1963 13 CLASSIFIED FOR SALELarge type Wisconsin dairy calves, delivered on approval to your farm at the following prices: 3 to’6 weeks old,$36 each; 4-‘8 weeks, $42 each; 3-6 weeks old beef type calves, $42 each. Minimum order 10. Vaccinated for shipping fever. Richard Everts, R3, New London, Wis., phone 1463R2. A PEACE BOOKinternational peace/ disarmament directory is a 96-page, pocket-sized booklet, available March 1, containing about 1400 organizational addresses and data on more than 350 periodicals, including the Observer, in nearly 80 countries around the world. $1 a copy; enclose envelope and postage for four ounces. 327 Dayton St., Yellow Springs, Ohio.