ustxtxb_obs_1963_05_30_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

newed a point made three weeks before, that local property owners would have to pay it if the voters did not. Rep. Gene Fondren, Taylor, upheld the final report, explaining the 25-cent fee “as a matter of compromise . . . to defray the cost of registering.” As the members voted finally on the measure, the chamber was filled with gutteral demands to vote aye or nay and a muttering hum of the kind heard at wrestling matches. The bill was passed with the 25-cent fee, 84-61. Rep. Jake Johnson, San Antonio liberal, quipped, “I believe Br’er Fox just threw us in the briar patch.” THIS LEFT the one issue, poll tax abolition in 1963 or 1964, still to settle. Speaker Byron Tunnell’s five conferees were divided, three to two, in favor of a startling proposition: the three’s condition for submission of a state constitutional amendment on poll tax abolition was the writing of annual registration into the state constitution in the same constitutional amendment. They would not yield. But for this development, the conferees would almost certainly have returned a 1964 election date to the legislature. At this point, however, as Kazen says, he had but one choice: forget the conference corn The Texas legislature gave serious attention to foreign policy this year. While no treaties were signed, the legislators exorcised an undetermined number of communist demons and exercised ninety three sets of vocal chords. A poll of Observer contributing editors confirms that Texas flags are flying a little higher as a result of the labors of the stout Texas patriots of the fifty seventh. \(Or was it What follows is a straightforward account of the legislature’s deliberations in this area. However, the reporter feels constrained to say that he is not qualified to give foreign policy subjects the expert handling they deserve, being as he has been covering the ‘Texas legislature too long. THE FIRST MENACE of which the legislature disposed was disarmament. Rep. George Macatee III, a’ Republican from Dallas, introduced a condemnation of any “surrender of sovereignty of the United States to the United Nations.” The Democrats in the Texas House have been loath to let Republicans among them get credit for anything, so two Democrats, Reps. Bill Clayton, Springlake, and Hudson Moyer, Amarillo, stole Macatee’s scene mittee and accept the House versionthat is, the 1963 election dateor give up the idea of a Texas repealer altogether ; for had the conferees returned with 1964 abolition and annual registration hooked together, Kazen figured the proposal would certainly have been rejected. The three conferees who held out for the repealer-annual registration hookup were Reps. Ben Jarvis, Tyler, Bill Parsley, Lubbock, and Hefton. Reps. Bob Hughes, Dallas, and Honore Ligarde, Laredo, were willing to go along with a 1964 date, without the annual system becoming part of the constitution. In the ensuing Senate debate, Sen. Galloway Calhoun, Tyler, spoke against the abolition of the poll tax. Its repeal, he said, “is something that has been foisted on you by people from the outside . . . from the northern states.” Kazen at this point accused Calhoun’s Tyler colleague, House Speaker Byron Tunnell, of opposing poll tax repeal, too. “He’s helped put the block to this bill,” Kazen said. But the Senate accepted the 1963 repeal proposal, 23-7. Thus it is that Texas, one of the last five states with the poll tax, will decide next November whether they shall charge themselves $1.75 to vote or 25 cents. with a resolution criticizing the U.S. arms control and disarmament agency. That agency, created by congress in 1961, has, according to the Clayton-Moyer resolution, “supported and promoted the U.S. program for general and complete disarmament in a peaceful world.” This, the resolution said, “could result in complete disarmament in the United States in less than ten years.” Only in military strength can a free people achieve peace, the resolution continued ; “Khrushchev has sworn he will bury us, but he intends to bury our freedom, take our children, and place us in slavery.” Therefore, the Texas House would “go on record in opposition to the disarmament policy of the U.S. arms control and disarmament agency.” Clayton told the House the U.S. has a plan to disarm the U.S. gradually over a ten-year period and then place remaining forces under the U.N. Rep. Charles Whitfield, Houston, retorted that the plan provides for reducing U.S. forces from 2.3 million to 2.1 million, and this only if Russia followed the same steps. Rep. Joe Chapman, Sulphur Springs, stirred the House to applause when he said, “I feel the president needs advice from someone other than from Harvard.” Rep. Charles Wilson, Trinity, a graduate of the U.S. naval academy, led the opposi tion, suggestingeven insistingthat state legislators are hardly equipped to give advice on military policy in a nuclear age: “It’s completely silly.” Furthermore, he said, U.S. military affairs are run by President Kennedy, “and it is important for all good Democrats in this House to support our Democratic president on this.” Two Democrats, Reps. Bob Johnson, Dallas, and Bill Hollowell, Grand Saline, were not to be affected by such a consideration. They persuaded the House to add a declaration that “the sovereign state of Texas will never release her state military forces to any international organization.” Hollowell, an officer in the Texas National Guard, exclaimed: “We’re going to retain our right to bear arms. I will never fight against the people of Texas, no matter who orders me out.” The resolution was adopted by a vote of 124 to 17. Then it was sent to the Texas delegation in Washington and to the vice president. Cong. John Dowdy, Athens, a Democrat, said he thinks the resolution represents the vast majority of public opinion. Sen. John Tower, who is not ‘a Democrat, placed the resolution in the Congressional Record. REP. W. T. DUNGAN, McKinney, introduced a bill to require high schools to teach a required full term course in the ways in which capitalism is better than communism. This “capitalism vs. communism” bill was opposed by some educators, although largely in private, on grounds that they do not need to be required to teach this subject for a term, that they already teach aspects of the subject in many other ways, and that it would not be wise for the legislature to tell teachers that it is their job to propagandiie. Dungan said that as chairman of the House textbook committee, he learned that a lot of state textbooks “tend toward so Rep. Dungan, here reading a House committee report stating that his sale of copies of a state textbook committee report for $2 a copy was contrary to state policy. May 30, 1963 7