National Reports
SHELDON, BICKNELL EUBANKS, COURTNEY R. & VOTAW, ALBERT N.
National Reports Shivers and the Texas GOP By Bicknell Eubanks Dallas Theories of political science are being rewritten in Texas. It is probably the only time in American history that the state...
...This is what Montgomery Ward & Co...
...1919, by John Dos Passos...
...Their zeal is somewhat increased by the predicted closeness of the national race for the House of Representatives this fall...
...Any additional Republican seats from the Bay State likely would give Massachusetts Republican leaders greater influence in the national GOP...
...If this is to come, extensive leadership at every governmental level within the state must be developed, and it will not come very soon from a bolting leadership of the Democratic party...
...His new appeal to Democratic conservatives stands squarely athwart the road to Republicanism...
...A Rage to Live, by John O'Hara...
...If the Republican party is to attain major proportions in Texas, it must offer candidates for every office from President to constable...
...The state library system falls under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State, an elected official second in patronage power only to the Governor...
...The would-be organizers, whose suit pointed out that union membership at Ward's had dropped from 4,000 to 70, would disagree only with the qualifying adverb "nearly...
...Senator Leverett Saltonstall, up for re-election this year, undoubtedly would rather have his campaign turn on other issues...
...The award (if a company appeal is turned down) comes too late to help the union, in whose collapse Avery's intransigence played an important role...
...Unless the Texas GOP can get out of his shadow, it cannot prove attractive to Texas voters...
...If anything, this is more grotesque than the shape of the salamander area carved in northeastern Massachusetts under Governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812, which high-school history students know well...
...From Governor Allan Shivers down, Texas Democratic leadership is in the hands of political figures who actively supported General Eisenhower in 1952 and put Texas into the Republican column (for the second time since the Civil War) without giving up their Democratic party posts...
...In his decision, Judge Hermes said that, through "loss of membership by the union as a result of wrongful issuance of the injunction," Ward's "nearly succeeded in destroying the union...
...There are growing signs that a twentieth-century gerrymandering in the state where the practice earned its name can become a decisive issue in this fall's Gubernatorial and Senatorial election...
...Miss Rogers could only reply that, in her search for guidance, she had read the dictionary definition of "obscene" to Carpentier and had been told to go ahead...
...The court has simply declared that right lay with the union and upped the price of success for union-busting employers...
...Having succeeded in their announced purpose of defeating Mr...
...Kingsblood Royal, by Sinclair Lewis, and a book on sex education which was recommended by the Girl Scouts...
...The Democrats have often threatened to recast Congressional district lines to their own advantage at the first opportunity...
...With Mr...
...It all started when a downstate sheriff wrote a letter to the Secretary of State, complaining that the mother of a teen-age girl had found her daughter reading an "obscene" book obtained from the state library...
...3. Some close advisers of Republican Governor Christian A. Herter are disturbed over the prospect of undermining a perennial GOP campaign claim—that Republicanism in Massachusetts is synonymous with integrity and fair play in government...
...In fact, they are so emphatic about it that they are on the verge of running away from their Republican playmates...
...A House Is Not a Home, by Polly Adler...
...None of the candidates for state office and none of those who were defeated in the Democratic primary gave the slightest suggestion of any such intent...
...If anything, the results of the 1952 election represent a strengthening and not a weakening of the Democratic party in Texas...
...New Gerrymander in Massachusetts By Courtney R. Sheldon Boston Four months ago, Massachusetts Republicans redrafting Congressional district lines were convinced that their opposite numbers in the Democratic party were the only ones watching...
...must pay Local 20 of the United Mail Order, Warehouse and Retail Employes Union in what the union calls "the largest award of injunction damages ever given in a labor dispute in the United States...
...Most of them regard redistricting as just the give-and-take of political play between two parties, victors and vanquished...
...The order was not published...
...But, whether they do or not, the Republicans will have to consider the possibility that this unjust act may strike independent voters as a decisive factor in November...
...No doubt, a two-party system would improve the politics of Texas, and probably economic and social change will eventually bring about the full development of such a system, but the road is long and rough...
...That is, all but Agriculture Commissioner John C. White, who said he had originally been elected as a Democrat and wanted to remain one...
...Professor O. Douglas Weeks of the University of Texas comments in his survey of the 1952 election, published by the university's Institute of Public Affairs: "Support for General Eisenhower in the Presidential election tightened the hold of the conservatives on the Democratic party organizations of the South...
...Carpentier explained that some of these were rare or expensive editions...
...4. Other factors, such as local issues and the popularity of candidates, may foil Republican plans in individual Congressional districts and leave the GOP nothing but a tarnished reputation for fair play...
...An anonymous aide charged Helene Rogers, the assistant state librarian, with "making his original intention appear ridiculous...
...It is probably the only time in American history that the state organization of a major party has been dominated by men who actually worked for the election of the opposition's Presidential ticket...
...Some would prefer merely to cooperate with conservative-moderate Democrats with a view to winning Presidential elections...
...In 1952, it cheerfully accepted the help of the Democratic organization and endorsed all the state Democratic nominees for office...
...Illinois literates have been sadly buffeted of late...
...At the convention of the state's Young Democratic organization, Mr...
...Sheriff Jesse Shipley added his comment to the effect that the book appeared to have a "Communistic intent," that is, it attempted to lower the morality of American boys and girls...
...My Gun Is Quick, by Mickey Spillane...
...he went on to be elected Vice President of the United States under James Madison...
...The proposed change would, it is widely predicted, enable the Republicans to capture two seats now held by Democrats and thus increase their margin to 10 to 4. 2. Letters-to-editors columns indicate a stir of resentment among independent voters, who are often the key to Bay State elections...
...As long as this grip is maintained and Southern conservative Democrats get what they want from either a national Republican or national Democratic administration, the Republican party will not become a permanent refuge for them...
...Savage putting the state Republicans in their accustomed place of playing second fiddle to the Democrats, and Governor Shivers reassuring his conservative backers of his party independence, Texas voters will have little choice but to go into the Democratic primaries if they want their ballots to count...
...Paradoxically enough, the man who helped the Republicans most in Texas in 1952, Governor Shivers, is now their most potent foe...
...And today their control of the Lone Star Democratic organization is so strong that they even threaten the existence of the Texas Republican party...
...Secretary of State Carpentier promptly ordered the state library, which acts as a central book-lending agency for schools, to screen its books and withdraw from circulation the offending volume and all those similar to it...
...No member of the legislature no district or county officials are Republicans...
...Ward's was not granted, however, the $1 million in damages it sought...
...Gerry was defeated in the election after the gerrymander, but the local protest over gerrymandering did not affect him nationally...
...That this majority played the principal role in bringing about Eisenhower's victory does not mean that it, or any great portion of it, is on the verge of shifting permanently to the Republicans...
...In the wake of this uproar came more news from the state library...
...Presidential Republicans' do not make for a state Republican organization...
...Opponents of the 1954 gerrymander have thus far not come up with a damaging new catchword...
...It was a case of dramatic timing...
...This would give the Republicans in two adjoining districts a chance to overturn Democratic incumbents...
...It will take more than just another great victory, such as General Eisenhower scored in 1952, to split the Texas Democratic ranks again...
...The system took a little time to work out, he added, and his library staff was not large enough...
...In the furor that followed, Carpentier blamed the "overzealousness" of subordinates...
...But, if the views of some of his closest advisers parallel his, he is hoping the redistricting bill, in its present form, never reaches his desk...
...Following this, he brought the union's counter-suit, on which hearings began last January before Judge Joseph B. Hermes in Municipal Court, Chicago's "poor man's court...
...It would be difficult to find in American politics a sadder plight than the Texas GOP faces...
...The final decision on whether re-districting is jammed through the GOP-controlled legislature hinges on these developments: 1. Democrats are dramatizing the political fact that Massachusetts Republicans already have an 8-to-6 edge in representation in the U.S...
...It wanders through a narrow area across the center of the state, juts north almost to the New Hampshire border, then south to the Connecticut line...
...Some of them insist that the redistricting is simply an equalizing of the districts because of population changes...
...The request by Ward's for judicial censorship of the union's paper was granted in 1945, when a Superior Court judge ordered the paper to stop publication of matter tending to hurt the company's sales...
...And with Governor Shivers making conservatism almost his personal property, Texas Republicans will have nothing left to campaign on, should they decide to put up candidates for state offices...
...There is considerable evidence to the effect that these leaders are divided as to whether or not a permanent grassroots Republican organization should be built up...
...A month later, reporters discovered that some 6,000 books, representing 400 titles, had been taken from the shelves...
...Thus, the hoped-for two-party system in Texas once more has become a vague outline in the distant future...
...While many newcomers to Texas, whose Republicanism lay dormant before 1952, and some thoroughly disgruntled Democrats will somewhat enlarge the ranks of the Republican party, they will remain no more than 'Presidential Republicans' unless the new Republican leaders in Texas are able to keep them in line...
...Librarians, busy "flagging" certain books as limited to adult readership, had so marked copies of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen...
...Ultimately, Carpentier ordered the whole lot, including the original offender, something called The Boy Came Back, by Charles H. Knickerbocker, restored to adult circulation...
...Those removed included selections of stories by Erskine Caldwell and Truman Capote...
...And Democratic protests on ethical grounds could, of course, be ignored...
...No two-party system for a state can be constructed on such a basis...
...Governor Herter, recognized even by his foes as a capable administrator and popular Governor, has thus far kept on the sidelines...
...Now Republicans are no longer certain that the average voter is completely indifferent to arbitrary shifting of blocs of voters to give advantage to one political party...
...Less than two years after General Eisenhower whipped through the ballot boxes like a Panhandle dust storm, the state Republican party is weaker than it has been in years...
...No permanent Republican organizations for local purposes have been developed in the great majority of the counties...
...Stevenson because he was against state ownership of the tidelands, Governor Shivers and his leaders now show signs of becoming simon-pure Democrats again...
...The fight against redistricting is aided by the curious meandering of the proposed Third District...
...Studs Lonigan, by James T. Farrell...
...In Texas, there can be no doubt that the Presidential election of 1952 left the machinery of the Democratic party of the state more firmly in the hands of a conservative-moderate majority than it had been for some time...
...During the 1952 campaign, Governor Shivers, State Democratic Chairman Wallace Savage of Dallas, Attorney General Price Daniel (who was elected United States Senator) and other Democrats all emphasized that they were still Democrats, especially when it came to state politics...
...Illinois: A Union Busted, Books Banned By Albert N. Votaw Chicago Rambunctious Sewell Avery's fight against the CIO has cost him an additional $327,000...
...The GOP drafters put every available Democratic vote into this already-conceded Democratic district...
...Savage denounced the Republicans, while Governor Shivers re-emphasized his differences with the national leadership of the Democratic party...
...House of Representatives, despite the near-equal division of Republican and Democratic votes in the state...
...Not one of the all-Democratic Congressional delegation has left the Democratic party...
...Hatred for the vanished regimes of Roosevelt and Truman and enthusiasm for Eisenhower are not the stuff out of which such an organization can be permanently built...
...It is a case of the GOP being hoist by its own petard...
...These go-slow signs, however, are not deterring all Republican stalwarts in the Legislature and on the Republican State Committee...
...Union lawyer Francis Heisler, later joined by Urban Lavery, obtained reversal of the injunction by the state Appellate and Supreme Courts...
Vol. 37 • March 1954 • No. 11
