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Show Fight Is Begun Against Measure Soon Up For Vote The opening gun in the campaign cam-paign against the proposed "death tax" on chain stores, No. 2 on the Novemher ballot was fired this week, when the Citizens' State Committee Against No 2 charged that the drastic proposal would cost thousands of Utah families an average of $120 a year in higher high-er living costs. The charge is contained in a booklet titled "No. 2 Is A Tax On You", published by the committee with funds contributed by chain store employes and stockholders. Copies are to be sent to libraries, newspapers and other agencies for public information. According to the booklet, driving out low-price chain store competition, competi-tion, through the device of an extra tax reaching in some circumstances circum-stances up to $5,000 a year per store, No. 2 would at once raise the cost of living and lower the standard of living of all Utah people, whether customers of chain stores or not. j Discussing the tax in terms of its effect on specific groups, the booklet declares that: I 1. The extra chain store tax j would seriously affect companies that now annually buy millions of dollars' worth of Utah agricultural agricul-tural products, much of this for sale in their stores in other states. 2. It would gradually bring about the closing of stores which now produce good rental and tax values to the communities and would thus hurt all property values. 3. It would destroy jobs, a fact which would be increasingly serious seri-ous after the war. 4. It would force upon other taxpayers the burden of carrying the- tax load now borne by chain stores. The chain store tax, now referred refer-red to the public through an unprecedented un-precedented petition bearing 54,000 names, is directed again a group of only 123 stores out of the some 6,000 retail stores in Utah. The stores whose destruction is sought by this discriminatory legislation, according to the book, are the fol lowing: J. C. Penney (30 Utah stores), Sears, Roebuck (4), Wbolworth (5), Adam Hat, Chandler Shoe, Lemer, Montgomery Ward, National Na-tional Shirt, J. J. Newberry, Owl Drug (each one); Safeway Stores (44), Baker's Shoe, Gamble-Slcogma, Gamble-Slcogma, W. T. Grant, Thorn McAn, National Dollar, United Cigar (2 each); S. H. Kress (5), Sprouse-Reitz (5), Walgreen Drug (8), and Western Auto Supply (5). The booklet recalls that the chain stores asked for a postpone, ment cf the referendum until after the war, so that all merchants could devote themselves to a united unit-ed war effort, but that this proposal pro-posal fell on deaf ears. v |