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Show REPORTERS BARRED FROM GOVERNMENT ENVELOPE PLANT Senate Post Office Sub-Committee Visits Dayton to Investigate Investi-gate Conditions and to Get at Source of Propaganda Flood WASHINGTON, April 3. The true source of the propaganda behind the anti-publisher attack in the inspired hostility to Senate bill 1752, the Oddie bill, was clearly revealed to members of the investigating committee of the senate in conferences at Dayton, O., on March 23, by the officers of the Ohio Newspaper Association. The officers of this association, one of whom was traveling as a reporter for the N. E. A., accompanied the senate sen-ate committee to the Middle West Supply Company's plant in Dayton and met Howard Marsden, the general manager. The request of the Ohio newspaper men, indorsed by the senators making the investigation, for permission to accompany the senate committee on its tour through the plant was denied. The general manager man-ager of the plant informed the committee com-mittee that permission would not be accorded representatives of the press to join in the inspection of the place because "it is a government plant." It was learned afterwards that visitors vis-itors had been and are allowed to go through the plant on permission of the general manager. Mr. Marsden, the general manager. Mr. Marsden, ncwever, refused newspaper men permission to go through the plant because it is the property of the federal government. This denial of a courtesy which his allowed al-lowed representatives of the press is almost unprecedented. Newspaper men always accompany investigating agencies agen-cies of the government and are always al-ways welcomed at governmental institutions, such as the government printing office, the bureau of engraving engrav-ing and printing, and the treasury department, de-partment, which governmental departments depart-ments are operated by modern methods meth-ods on a business basis, paying standard stand-ard wages to employes, not as a cutthroat cut-throat proposition run in direct competition com-petition with all private printing offices of-fices in the United States. This is only another instance of the high handed methods adopted by this printing outfit under government supervision. su-pervision. At the informal conference with the investigating committee a director of the Ohio Newspaper Association explained ex-plained the results of the recent investigations in-vestigations into the activities of the Middle West Supply Company, which, it was brought out, had been using the signature of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce, whose signature appears on the hundreds of thousands of letters sent to users of printed stamped envelopes en-velopes and discussed the propaganda proposition. The Dayton Chamber of Commerce was opening charged with espousing the cause of the government contractor in misrepresenting the Oddie anti-envelope printing bill to congress and the country-as a whole. The secretary of the chamber of commerce admitted sending out thousands of letters to bankers, lodges and other groups, asking ask-ing these citizens to boycott the local publisher unless he discontinued his advocacy of the Oddie bill. The proposed legislation against the government printing of envelopes will not prevent the manufacture of these envelopes, but only effects the printing print-ing work. It was also brought out that these letters had been .sent from the printing concern's office and at the government contractor's expense. According Ac-cording to members of the newspaper association the government contractor spent $50,000 in a few weeks for a propaganda campaign in an effort to retain their printing contract. The post office department and the Middle West Supply Company have contended contend-ed that the printing of these corner cards would meanoru73oooo to the printers and publishers L' country. However, in order to 1 this printing contract it they spent between fifty and ' thousand dollars for propaganda f ' poses in a few weeks. It is common knowledge amor tt, who have taken the trouble toi gate that the so-called ''govern' envelope plant" is controlled bvT" street bankers, that it is rotten core and has no place in AJ.lil! business. 1CJ5 |