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Show St. George Committee Organized To Fight Chain Store Tax No. 2 The organization of the St. George committee to fight the chain store death tax No. 2 on the November ballot has been announced an-nounced by H. C. Thomas, chairman chair-man of the committee. "This committee," said Chairman Chair-man Thomas, "is made up entirely of volunteer citizens who have associated themselves together, because be-cause they look upon the threatened threat-ened chain store tax as a death sentence for such stores, which will raise the cost of living through the elimination of compe tition. "The committee includes the employees of some of the chain store companies, who are participating partici-pating strictly as individuals and not in any way as representatives of the employing companies. They realize that their jobs are at stake and know that the public generally would suffer through enactment of the chain store tax. "When the tax was lobbied through the legislature last year by a very small but well organized organ-ized pressure group, more than 54,000 registered voters of Utah signed petitions to refer the matter mat-ter to the people for final decision. de-cision. That action was especially important because it assures the public an opportunity to study all the facts and reach a decision based not on the selfish interests inter-ests of a minority, but upon the democratic interests of the majority. ma-jority. "No. 2 would accomplish its price-raising purpose by putting a special tax of $500 a store per year on such stores at J. C. Penney. Pen-ney. More important than that, it would prevent any of the major chain store companies from ever opening a new .store in any Utah community, because to do so would bring down upon it a special spe-cial tax of $5,000 a year. This tax would also be imposed on any of these chain stores that might want to move from one building to another, no matter what the circumstances. "From all this it is quite clear that the purpose of the bill is to- destroy low-price chain store competition so that prices gen erally can be raised. We of the committee recognize that such legislation would hurt business generally and would particularly hurt Utah consumers and producers produc-ers who now benefit through the modern and economical distribution distribu-tion of goods by Utah chain stores." |