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Show ALLOCATIONS ON UNFAIR BASIS ! That Utah is in desperate need of relief from merchandise allocations allo-cations based on the 1940 census, was revealed in a recent report made to Ins board of directors by Exra J. Fjeldsted, secretary of the Ogdeii chamber of Commerce. Com-merce. Mr. Fjeldsted's study of a state-wide condition of scarcity scarci-ty grew out of a printed appeal his office made several months ago to national manufacturers in behalf of the distressed merchants merch-ants of the city of Ogden. Following Fol-lowing is an excerpt from the secretary's comment: "Results we have had from an illustrated bulletin titled, Ogden Has Growing Pains', mailed to several thousand sources of merchandise, as well as to government gov-ernment agencies, has convinced this office that a concerted appeal ap-peal made by all interested parties par-ties in the state would multiply the benefits to be obtained. While it is true that Ogden represents 'scarcity' (in its most exaggerated exaggerat-ed form, it is equally true that the distress is by no means localized. lo-calized. The point is that congestion con-gestion in the several Utah defense de-fense areas has not resulted mainly from shifts of population within the state, but rather from the influx of new residents from other states. "As of November-December, 1942, the Industrial Commission of Utah established that 18 per cent of persons employed in the congested defense areas came from outside of the state, while only 6.4 per cent came from counties in Utah. The defense areas studied were Salt Lake, Tooele, Utah and Weber-Davis. This means, to put it in another way, that Utah's total population popula-tion has been greatly expanded perhaps in excess of 10 per cent since the 1940 census. Yet 1940 is still used as a basis of allocation of merchandise and manufacturing materials. This situation not only gives an unwarranted un-warranted surplus to states that have decreased populations, but it tends to make the shelves of Utah merchants emptier. What good are ration coupons when there is too little merchandise? Think how much more shopping time is required going from store to store to buy essentials and all the more wasteful since our population is primarily engaged en-gaged in war work. "It's essential, too, that Utah manufacturers be allocated the materials to manufacture more than they did in 1940, so that they can supply at least some of the needs of the state's swollen population. Manufacturing this added percentage of goods in Utah would also eliminate some of the cross-hauling of items in the over-crowded East-to-West freight trains. "No national increase in civilian civil-ian production is necessary to help Utah achieve a war-time equality with other industrial areas. Some parts of the country have lost population and production produc-tion because of the war, yet these depressed areas still enjoy allocation allo-cation that is disproportionate." o |