ustxtxb_obs_1967_03_31_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

quired a vote on a more valid objection to the bill. Schwartz had been holding the floor in support of an amendment to delay consideration of the bill until after April 6 \(by which time, more would be known about the contents of the general approfertilizer sales under any city sales tax. Wilson offered a substitute amendment which the protestors felt would be a more valid issue to require that a local option election could be held on a city sales tax only after a city assesses its property tax on 65% or more of market value. Austin’s 62% is the present high. “This was a more legitimate amendment to the bill,” Schwartz said afterwards. “The question then became how long Wilson could stay on his feet.” At 10:42 p.m. supporters of the bill moved the ptrevious question, a motion that carried by 17-13. As the marathon moved past midnight, the filibuster supporters began what Schwartz calls the second part of their plan, moving off the floor one at a time to break the quorum; 21 of the 31 Senators must be present to maintain a quorum. Wilson and Patman were left on the floor with the backers of the bill Wilson to continue talking, and Patman to raise the point of order about a quorum not being present. It was only the second time in more than 30 years that a quorum had been broken during a Senate filibuster. The doors of the chamber were locked so none of the 20 who were present could leave. The sergeant-at-arms asked the help of state and local police to find the missing 11 Senators, ten of whom opposed the bill. Meanwhile Wilson got to sit down for four hours, beginning at 2:40 a.m., while the search went on. When, at 6:45 a.m., Sen. William T. Moore, Bryan, showed up, a quorum was again present. Moore was ill but had been summoned by fellow supporters of the bill to make a quorum. At 6:30 a.m., Schwartz advises, the absent senators got word that came out of hiding and returned to the Senate. It still is not known where they holed up. Wilson rose and resumed talking. He lost the floor a bit later on a technicality when he turned his back momentarily on a questioner, Miss Jordan. “I don’t mind,” he said later, “because I knew it was a lost cause when the other side still had their 17 votes there at 6 in the morning.” THE BILL PASSED on second reading, 18-9. Final passage came last week, with some of the filibustering Senators, Schwartz among them, voting for it. “I’m going to give the cities what they want,” he said, having carried the futile stand against the bill as far as it could go. “But,” he says, “the message has, been conveyed to the people and to the Establishment: there is a group in the Senate which can stay together. And there are issues down the line on which we might change some votes this way. “In spite of what everyone says that there is no cohesiveness of the minority, this. is what the Establishment likes to believe the minority won’t follow the leadership. This has been displayed to ourselves, first of all, and to our supporters over the state. . . . More important, the Sellate is learning that it’s no longer a one-sided game in which the gavel plus 17 votes will get the results.” ‘G.O. : : ; : 1 Ambassador Clark in Austin `Needed: More Than Vilification’ Austin “I have literally walked with Kings and sat in the seats of power,” Ed Clark of San Augustine, Texas, the Ambassador to Australia, told Texas lawmakers last week, “but to a Texas boy can come no greater thrill than to be invited to stand on this podium and address the most august body in the world the Joint Session of the Texas Legislature.” Thus began the legislature’s second instruction this year in American Vietnam policy, the first having been administered by Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Clark recalled the years when he was an assistant attorney general under the late James Allred, “God Rest His Soul,” and expressed wonder that he should be addressing the legislature that had heard “such patriots and statesmen as Houston, Hogg, and Allred.” From 1939 to 1965, Clark recalled, he practiced law in Austin, and the legislature’s actions “were part of my life, one of my main interests” \(he was as influential a lobbyist as there was he said, “here I stand, happy, proud, still a Texan who feels like that great and distinguished compatriot, Governor William P. Hobby, who once told me, ‘Had I the choice, I’d elect to be a life member of the Texas Senate there I feel I could be the greatest influence for the good of the whole U.S.A.’ ” 4 The Texas Observer THE AMBASSADOR’S speech was deeply felt, and could not have been written by anyone else. Afterwards he told the Observer he had written every word of it in longhand, and no one at the State Department had seen it in advance. “When I was in Perth and stood by the edge of the Indian Ocean,” he said, “I was as far away from Washington, -D.C., as an Ambassador of the United States can possibly be, and I found myself thinking, ‘Can this be me, Ed Clark of San Augustine, standing here?’ It was like Rupert Brooke, poet of World War I, saying, `If I should die there’ll be some corner of a foreign land that is Forever England’ if they should ever have to bury me abroad God ‘forbid there’ll be a corner ‘Forever Texas.’ “I have often been accused,” Clark continued, “of being not the Ambassador of the United States, but the Ambassador of Texas. Like the man who threw the rock at the cat and hit his mother-in-law, I say, ‘Not so bad after all.’ “. . . [M]y home yesterday, today, and tomorrow is San Augustine. San Augustine in the First Judicial District, 7th Congressional District, 3rd Senatorial District, District 4 of this House, Cradle of Texas, where Houston, Henderson, Rusk, Sublett, Blount, Horton, and Roberts hatched their hopes of Independence, licked their wounds, and literally founded the Republic of Texas. San Augustine between the towns of Nacogdoches, Texas, and Natchitoches, Louisiana, founded by the twin sons of the Indian Chief . “At 16, I boarded the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe for Georgetown, Texas, and old Southwestern University. I’d never met. a foreigner or had a drink of anything stronger than blackberry wine.” Forty years later, he said, “when I. buckledon striped pants and top hat to present my credentials to the Governor General” in Canberra, “those brave Aussies were speaking in a brand of English that Ben Ramsey and I couldn’t understand. I was startled when the’ dogwood flowered in October.” As for “the matter which is in every heart and every mind, namely, Vietnam, that ill-starred little country,” the Ambassador said: “Of course war is sinful. Of course people get hurt in war. Of course men lose their lives. Of course errors occur in intelligence and reconnaissance, and in aiming of shells and bombs, with resulting casualties among civilians. It is all terrible and frightening and deeply disturbing. It is all grim and ghastly. . . . God grant an early ending to it all! “But one cannot but long for some cons tructive alternative suggestions from those earnest, well-meaning critics and from the Vietniks and the professional protesters as well who constantly and bitterly denounce our government for the