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Show Under The Capitol Dome By Harry Marlowe Last Saturday's special session of the Utah Legislature brought out some salient points, with at least one aimed in the direction of the people from the so-called farm bloc. Three of these points we would like to discuss a little. First, the Saturday session once again demonstrated the latent evil in legislating too hastily, with tempers and time short. Second, it brought out sharply the shortcomings of a system of calling a special session for one purpose and not including more items, if and when needed, even at the cost of changing the session ses-sion date at the last moment or the conditions under which the session was called. Thirdly, the trend was clearly shown, stronger than ever, toward to-ward extending to agricultural labor la-bor the same governmental regulations regula-tions in existence in other industries. indus-tries. Let's look at these three a moment. mo-ment. There is little doubt in anyone's mind that, had Gov. J. Bracken Lee included the milk price war on the session agenda that a bill would have been passed to peg prices. ' There is just as little doubt that the temper of the legislators being what it was, that a 35-page bill patterned after California's law would have stood a very good chance of being enacted into law. This is not to state that this measure is or is not a good bill. Its own backers were quick to admit that they knew very little about it. That bill held out machinery ma-chinery for price fixing on every level producer, distributor, and . retailer. In such an atmosphere, with emotions running high and a powerful pow-erful lobby right on the. premises, the chances for poor legislation are as good, or better, than the chances for good legislation. It demonstrated once again the governor's disinclination to be swayed by pressure and, it also was a victory for the time-honored and often successful, system of negotiation as a means of settling sett-ling differences. At the same time, however, the milk war problem flared into the open in plenty of time for preliminary pre-liminary studies to be made and then the matter included on the agenda of a slightly enlarged session ses-sion if there had not been so much distrust between the executive and legislative branches of government.. govern-ment.. A session called to correct one inequity is a good thing. One called with the intention of correcting cor-recting two oversights is even better. bet-ter. But if more matters than this can be. handled, that is even better. bet-ter. Lastly, farmers are being backed, back-ed, whether they like it or not, into a situation where workmen's compensation, social security and other, items are being moved into agricultural fields. In settled industries, where jobs are more permanent, this is a good thing. In the farm labor field, the entire matter should be studied with greater care than by patch-work amendments raised on the floor of a legislative session. It is a point for agricultural representatives to bear in mind. Perhaps such a study would help clear the air. |