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Show TRUMAN BLOCKS MINTING OF CENTENNIAL COIN Legislation authorizing the coinage coin-age of a Utah centennial half-dollar and five or six similar bills, went out of the window Friday as Pres. Harry S. Truman sent a letter let-ter to the senate banking and currency cur-rency committee stating unequivocally unequiv-ocally that he was opposed to the issuance of any and all such coins, and inferentially serving notice' i that if such bills should be passed by congress they would run into a presidential veto. When the banking committee met Friday morning it had the president's letter before it, and with very little discussion the Utah and five other commemorative half dollar bills were referred back to the subcommittee. This action was tantamount to saying that the full committee was not disposed to report those bills to the senate in light of the president's objection. Pres. Truman repeated to the committee the same objections that had been raised by the mint bureau at the time hearings were held on Feb. 10 : that the issuance of such coins would lead to confusion; con-fusion; would increase chances for successful counterfeiting; that the practice of issuing special coins was all wrong anyway, and that only coins of standard design should hereafter come from the mint. The president ' suggested if congress wants to to do anything it can authorize the mint bureau to turn out medals to commemorate commemo-rate such events as would be honored hon-ored . by the pending . half-dollar bills, the medals to be coined under un-der contract with several states or organizations. Sen. Arthur V. Watkins and Rep. Wm. A. Dawson, in light of what happened Friday, will ascertain ascer-tain whether the Utah centennial commission would be interested in having a commemorative medal turned out by the U. S. mint. Even authority for that would require legislation. |