Sin in Galveston

Herbert Yemon Cartwright Jr. used to run a diaper laundry service. Eight years ago he was elected mayor of Galveston, and set out to prove that cleanliness is for diapers, not for Galveston.

Texas law, as it happens, prohibits pros titution, gambling and sale of liquor by the drink. In Galveston* (pop. 65,000) all three flourish. When a state crime committee investigated the situation, Herbie Cartwright told the legislators frankly that the laws of Texas are vio lated in Galveston because Galvestonians think the laws are wrong.

Freedom of Religion. Herbie was backed up by other witnesses and heartily applauded by the cityfolk. Dominant public opinion in Galveston, concluded the committee, believes "that whether an activity is a 'vice' is a matter of purely personal philosophy; that a country that guarantees freedom of religion has no right to make laws about morals ; that public opinion is divided as to whether smoking, drinking, gambling and professional sex service are vices; that the church has the right to teach these certain acts are wrong, but has no right to prohibit them." This view is connected with the belief of many leading Galveston businessmen that sin is good for business; that the tourist trade would fall off if gambling and prostitution were sup pressed.

Two years ago a young West Texan lawyer named William Kugle, who moved to Galveston in 1950 and was elected to the state legislature without being asked his views on vice, tried to shut down the city's notorious red-light district on Post Office Street. Mayor Cartwright's police commissioner. Walter Johnston, at first resisted. Then he calculated that the doxies would fan out into the residential neighborhoods, setting up a counter-Kugle pressure from the citizenry to restore Post Office Street to its old game. Johnston acted, he said, "with great reluctance," for, in following the prostitutes to the neighborhoods, "we will be faced with insurmountable odds." Post Office Street was darkened, but last year, for his pains, Bill Kugle was defeated for reelection.

This year Herbie Cartwright came up for reelection. But Herbie had made the mistake of turning off George dough's water supply and firing him as city radio repairman. Reason: Clough (rhymes with rough) operates radio station KLUF, which had been accusing Herbie of overcharging for water and mislaying $18,000 in city funds. George Roy Clough, 64, and 24 years Herbie's senior, decided to run for mayor.

The issue between George and Herbie was not morals but method. Herbie stood for a "regulated city." George's platform was "clean but liberal." It soon became apparent that Clough was planning a wider-open city than Herbie had run.

"What do I mean by clean?" he asked, explaining his policy on bawdyhouses: "Keep the chippies (juveniles) out of the place. Don't handle dope in any way, shape or form. No showing of lewd sex movies." Above all, he added, reopen the old red-light district in Post Office Street.

Get the Girls. Clough's idea was that graft from gambling and prostitution would disappear if the mayor just made it quite plain that these activities did not need special "protection." Last week Galvestonians voted. By 6.406 to 5,649. it was a victory for Clough and cleanly liberalism.

Almost immediately, troubles beset Mayor George Clough. George liked the gamblers but the gamblers did not like him. Said one: "We can't support a man who won't take money. If you can't cut him off, he's liable to get sore and cut you off."

More pressing, however, was the problem of Police Commissioner Johnston, who was re-elected despite Herbie's defeat. (The only reform candidate for police commissioner ran sixth in a field of six.) In defiance of the new mayor, Johnston, onetime friend of segregated vice, declared: "The bawdyhouse district will never open again as long as I'm police commissioner." Retorted the new mayor: "I am going to order Johnston to get the girls back in the district.

"In a seaport town," said Clough, "prostitution is a biological necessity." Christ tried to stop prostitution and failed, he said, "so why should I?" One-armed piracy, however, is not a sporting thing, thought the mayor: "I don't approve of slot machines. Most of them are fixed so they don't pay off anything."

* Named for gallant Count Bernardo de Galvez (1746-86), Spanish governor of Louisiana and viceroy of Mexico. His motto, now Galveston's: Yo solo (I alone).

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