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Show URESIS PRODUCERS DF NEWSPRINT PAPER Senate Committee Files Report Re-port and Recommends Operation Op-eration by Government. WASHINGTON, ' Oct. 7. A report recommending rec-ommending government -operation of the print paper and pulp industries during the war and arraigning what it calls the defiant de-fiant atytude of print paper producers was filed "today by tihe senate printing committee. It will await action at the December session. The report says the federal trade com. miss-ion's findings "show beyond any question ques-tion that the print paper industry, in its greed for excessive profits, had imposed a most unjust burden on the American press, which faces a serious disaster if relief cannot speedily be had from the oppressive prices now exacted' for print paper."" It adds that t.he commission, in its recent, investigation, exhausted every resource at Its command to obtain relief for the publishers, but has been able to get only a small measure of relief, owing "to the defiant attitude assumed by the principal producers of print paper and lack of authority of the commission to enforce its finding' as to a fair and reasonable price." , , Under a resolution introduced by Senator Sena-tor ymith (Arizona) and reported by the committee for passage, the trade commission commis-sion would be empowered to control the production and distribution of print paper and mechanical and chemical pulp in the United States. All print paper and pulp mills and agencies would be operated on government account and their products pooled in the commission's hands during the war emergency and equitably distributed distrib-uted at a price based on production and distribution cost, plus a fair profit per ton. Provision is made in the resolution for co-operation with the Canadian government govern-ment and for limiting imports into the United States during the war to shipments for government account. The fommittco report points out that as a result of Ihe commission's investigations seven leading news print manufacturers have been indicted for violating the Sherman Sher-man anii-tru.i law, and the commission has entered formal complaint against the book paper manufacturers' bureau of statistics sta-tistics and twenty-three member companies com-panies of that burea u, but that tip to this time neither the indictments nor the complaints have afforded any measure- of protection to the publishers. Most of the newspapers of the-country, the report says, are now up to tlit- point where they must soon renew contracts, and if aderjua te relief Is to bt- h:id it must lie without waiting for the prosecution prosecu-tion of the indictments and complaint. k "The com mi tlec," it concludes, "sub- mits to the senate whether It is better to safeguard the continuance of a free press in this country by assuring it an adequate supply of print paper at a fair and .reasonable price or whether to permit per-mit a further increase in the excess profits of the paper industry, which the federal trade commission declares is about to exact $17,500,000 more in excessive profits from the American publishers, who are loyally and patriotically supporting their government in this fateful hour." |