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Show Meddlers Drop Case After five years of expensive meddling med-dling in an effort to find something wrong with the metnoa of newspapers news-papers and advertising agencies, the Federal Trade Commission re ccntly gave up the task and dismissed dis-missed its complaint against the publishers and agencies. The utterly useless and futile proceedings pro-ceedings cost the newspaper and advertising industry more than $100,00 and no ones knows how much it cost the government. The Commission dismissed the case because be-cause after five years it decided that it had no jurisdiction m the matter to begin with. In the opinion of the New York Sun the case was dismissed on account ac-count of a recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that the Federal rade Commission has no right to file a. complaint a-gainst a-gainst anyone unless there is a special and substantial public interest in-terest involved in the mater a issue. is-sue. The Sun further says: "If the court has checked the Trade Commission's costly interference interfer-ence with business a lot of good has been don.e The commission has given some wonderful examples of the way to keep bureaucracy a-iive. a-iive. Now it investigates the du Font company's investments of surplus earnings. Again it sub-phoenas sub-phoenas 700 witnesses to give give their definition of castile soap. In the present instance we see thousands thous-ands of dollars wasted, all for the preservation of bureaucracy." It would be interesting to know whether in its 14 years of operation the Federal Trade Commission has ever performed a piece of work which did not cost more than it wasw orth to the public |