Pappy's Panacea

At 6:45 one sunshiny morning last week a dimpled, strapping radio entertainer and his hillbilly band trooped into a broadcasting station in Austin, Tex., whooped and whanged in the style that has made them the Lone Star State's biggest air attraction. The studio audience of 200 noisily demanded encore after encore. But presently the band and its leader, Flour Salesman W. Lee ("Pass the Biscuits, Pappy") O'Daniel, had to leave to perform before a crowd of 70,000 that packed the University of Texas stadium.

There the hillbillies and 37 other bands tooted in turn for five hours, and 10,000 school children raised their voices in chorus. At last Crooner O'Daniel stood up to take his inaugural oath as Governor.

As he was sworn in by Chief Justice Cureton of the State Supreme Court, Governor O'Daniel made a grave face. Said the showman Governor: "I pray that glamor and color will be eliminated from our legislative session and that seriousness and dignity will reign supreme.

"I pray that the poisonous pens of selfish interests and their hirelings which, since the primary elections, have dipped into the well of venom for the purpose of embarrassing and humiliating some of us folks chosen by the people shall run dry. . . .

"It was the teachings of my hardworking, religious mother that prepared me for a happy life of service based on faith in God. ... At this very moment there are gathered around her grave some of my relatives who were unable to come to this ceremony and for me, in her memory, they are tenderly laying on her grave a cross of fresh flowers. . . ."

Next day the Governor appeared before the Legislature to tell how he proposed 1) to reduce his State's $20,000,000 deficit, and 2) redeem his campaign pledge to provide 830 monthly pensions for Texas' needy old folks. Stony-faced sat the legislators as he began reading his message, which he had typed out sitting on an apple box in his dismantled house while the O'Daniel family moved into the Governor's mansion.

Stonier-faced were they when he finished, for the O'Daniel panacea turned out to be a repeal of the State's present ad valorem tax in favor of a 1.6% tax on "transactions," a transaction being grandly defined as "any dealing of any kind whatsoever between two or more persons." Such a tax, replacing the State's present ad valorem tax, would net $25,000,000 annually, thought the Governor, to help pay for State old age pensions up to $15 a month (another $15 to come from the Federal Government).

The Governor seemed hazy on details, but it appeared that his pyramided sales tax* would have to be paid at least three times on a sack of flour, by manufacturer, jobber, retailer. Its other complexities he suggested when he proposed some exemptions : salaries, wages, professional fees (where it would be an additional income tax), interstate transactions, first sale by producer of agricultural and livestock products, street car fares up to 10-c-, street sales of newspapers, charitable and church transactions.

When he finished reading his message, the legislators, who balked at a general sales tax for Texas when it was last proposed, sat in stony silence.

*A similar tax was proposed by Dr. Francis E. ("The Plan") Townsend to pay his nationwide pensions. Closest approach to it in actual practice is Hawaii's "gross income" tax.

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