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Show COUNTRY PRINTER PROTESTS. The Tulia, Texas, Herald of April 8, took exception to a legislative treasure proposed in that state to permit the state prison printing plant to fih' bids for Etate printing contracts, con-tracts, thereby permitting a tax-created tax-created and tax-maintained institution institu-tion to compete -with taxpayers. It f.:iid this would be a "dangerous law." "Private enterprises possibly would not have invested millions and millions mil-lions of dollars in Texas printing industries in-dustries had they any reason to expect ex-pect that the state would use tax dollars dol-lars to establish competitive printing plants, manned by men who would receive re-ceive little or nothing for their services. ser-vices. Private enterprises must pay printers and pressmen rather high wages for their services and the private pri-vate concerns could not hope to compete com-pete with the prison plants, as any lair-minded person can see." There, is art much logic and justice in a bill which would permit convict labor to use a state-owned plant to compete with private printers, as there is in the law which now permits the Federal Government to print return re-turn addresscss on envelopes and sell thorn at prices which small printers throughout the nation cannot hope to meet. ' In either case government property, proper-ty, supported bj- all the taxpayers, is used in a competitive manner to injure in-jure a particular branch of business which is itself taxed to establish or maintain tax-free competition with which it cannot compete. Regardless of all finespun socialistic and political theories, this doctrine is contrary to the fundamentals of our government and should not be tolerated in a free country. |