Trouble with Texas

Texas' handsome Governor Allan Shivers drove up to the executive mansion in Springfield, Ill. one morning last week, doffed his broad-brimmed straw hat, and hurried in to talk to Adlai Stevenson. He wanted a straight answer to a question that looms mighty big in Texas: What is Stevenson's stand on tidelands oil? Should the states or the Federal Government control the oil deposits in the tidelands, the submerged strips between low-water mark and the offshore boundaries?

The two men talked for 4 1/2 hours. In mid-afternoon Shivers came out smiling, said he was going to mosey around and might look at Abe Lincoln's tomb while Stevenson thought the matter over. (He never did visit the tomb, instead called at the office of a Texas insurance man.)

When Shivers returned to the executive mansion, Stevenson handed him a statement: "The base from which I must necessarily start is the Supreme Court decision (in 1950) holding that the paramount interest in oil discovered beneath these submerged lands is vested in all the people of the United States" (i.e., in the hands of federal agencies). "I accept and abide by this ruling in common with all Supreme Court decisions." Shivers read the statement glumly, said: "This is going to be rough in Texas. I don't know what's going to happen."

Tidelands is as fighting a word in Texas as Alamo was more than a century ago. Texans feel that the U.S. Government is rustling them out of their birthright. Texas was a sovereign nation which entered the Union voluntarily, and by the terms of the annexation agreement of 1845, she was allowed to retain control of her public domain, which, Texans say, stretches 10 1/2 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. Other coastal states claim the offshore oil under general provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The fact that Texas tidelands as yet have produced practically no oil did not lessen Texans' fury against President Truman this year, when he vetoed a bill which would have handed over tideland oil rights to the coastal states. With the Texans it's not the money, it's the principle of the thing.

At week's end their fury was turned against Adlai Stevenson. Back home in Texas, Shivers said he would not vote for Stevenson. Price Daniel, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator, followed through with the announcement that he would not actively compaign for Stevenson. The Republican platform flatly declares in favor of tidelands control by the states. This issue, added to Ike's popularity in Texas, may be what the Republicans need to get the state's 24 electoral votes.

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