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Show mi SMALL PAPERS FACE DISASTER IF BILL FAILS I WASHINGTON, Dec 1." Dtween 2500 and 3000 small newspapers face -ii pt n-ion if not extinction unless the situation is soon remedied. Representative Represen-tative Anthony, Kansas, (old the house postoffice committee today in urging favorable action on his bill to limit to 24 pages daily new-papers and periodi cals using the second class mail privi j lege. Th present acute paper shortage, j he said, is due to the large size of the! big cit dailies and some magazines. I I The larger newspapers, he added, I could eliminate 60 or more pages of 1 : feature, comic and magazine matter puDUBoeq in hunuay eaiuons, wmioui loss to the public. The volume of advertising should be drastically reduced during the present shortage, he said. Representative nlhony said that he had heard some advertisers bad great ly increased their expenditures for ad vertlslng to avoid payment of excess profits' tax, but he attributed the bulk of the increased adertising to the post-war resumptlton of normal commercial com-mercial activities. "The present shortage of news print paper," he continued, "is due largely to the rapacity of the great publishing companies which are buying buy-ing up every pound of news print they can lay their hands on The country and small city publishers cannot meet this powerful competition." Mr Anthony read a letter from former for-mer Representative Charles F. Scott, publisher of the iola (Kan.) Daily R gister, who declared that while a few great newspapers might find it a hardship to comply with ihe Anthony j bill, more than 2500 smalj papers face' extinction unless some such legislation were passed. "The situation is all but tragic," the letter said. "The small papers are UBl B8 important to the people of ihe United States as are the great city dailies." |