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Show ARE OUR EYES OPEN What would the people of the United States say if individuals or a political party began to agitate to do away with one of our most treasured constitutional constitu-tional possessions namely, the right to the private ownership of property? Instead of advocating such a policy in plain English, there are well-meaning people in this nation who propose plans which would accomplish practically practi-cally the same result in a modified form under the guise of government ownership, owner-ship, public ownership or municipal ownership of various lines of business and industry. ' It is a generally understood fact thai our government was originally founded to relieve the people from exorbitant taxation demands to maintain officials ism and the divine right of kings. In America the new government was to exist for the people, rather than the people existing for the government. Thomas Jefferson laid down a cardinal principal when he said: "That government govern-ment is best which governs least." It makes little difference what excuses ex-cuses are offered for putting the government gover-nment into business, the net result is that each act destroys the right of some individual or group of individuals to own and operate private property under our fundamental laws. What is the use of blinding ourselves to the fact that no matter how honey-coated honey-coated with words and promises the proposition for public ownership may be, when the government goes into business it drives its private citizens and taxpayers out of the same line of endeavor because there can be no private competition with tax-free government gov-ernment undertakings. This brings up the question of taxation. taxa-tion. One of the arguments of propon ents of public ownership of industry is that such projects could furnish service ser-vice more cheaply than private enterprise enter-prise because of being tax-iree. But what is tax-free? Proponents of public ownership measures do not attempt to claim that taxes would be reduced by this type of ownership of industry. As a matter of fact, they would undoubted . ly be increased if the records of the past can be taken as a guide for the future profits are not essential to public operation and deficits can be charged to the taxpayer.Any taxes which private industry would pay and which public ownership would destroy, would simply be added to property which was not publicly owned These are facts which cannot be escaped The big basic principle for all citizens to consider is whether or not they wish to change our form of government which heretofore has encouraged private pri-vate initiative and enterprise and private pri-vate ownership of property, for an ancient form of government which destroys des-troys rights and privileges of the individual in-dividual Shall we go back to European practices prac-tices from which we escaped some 150 years ago? Shall the government become be-come a competitor with' private citizens instead of exercising its present functions func-tions of regulation and control? As a people we cannot afford to be blinded to this real issue which confronts con-fronts us It is not a matter of partism politics but it is a great quesiton involving in-volving the personal rights and liberties liber-ties of ourselves, our children and their children to come If the people wish to change their form of government, the majority will eventually decide, but let the decision be based on an understanding of the facts |