The Daily Tribune

PARCELS POST OPPOSED.

When the directors of the Colorado Manufacturers' association passed a set of resolutions last week against the proposed amendment of the postal regulations to permit the carrying of much heavier packages at reduced rates through the mails they fired another gun in the campaign that the Manufacturers' association is now waging to encourage patronage of home industry by Colorado and Western people and to prevent further encroachment by the large Eastern mail order houses on the legitimate business of the small merchants of the Rocky mountain region.

The harm that can be done to the business men in the small cities and towns of the West through the proposed changes in the postal laws is immeasurable and every Colorado citizen who wants to see his or her state grow and prosper should protest against the threatened danger and emphasize their protests to their representatives in congress before whom agents of the mail order houses will soon appear in organized effort to make Uncle Sam an instrument in the ruin of hundreds of thousands of small dealers throughout the entire country.

The reason that the Colorado Manufacturers' association is against the mail order houses, and therefore against a more liberal parcels post, is that the mail order houses take Colorado earned money and Western earned money out of the West and never send it back. The members of the association are pledged to keep Colorado dollars at home and will fight tooth and toe nail any proposition that draws Western money away from the West without proper return.

Every dollar that is in the West today is needed here to further develop the state's vast resources and to further build up its magnificent industries. A dollar spent with an Eastern mail order house will never do the West any more good and the temptation to spend a dollar with these overgrown mercantile establishments who do their soliciting with a highly colored catalogue would be made greater were the privileges of a broader parcels post extended to them.

The express companies of the country have things much their own way and have numerous faults, but the deeper evil of the mail order house should not be overlooked in attacking the express companies. The public should not jump from the frying pan into the fire by throwing down the bars for such a parcels post as the mail order houses are seeking. Regulate the express companies but kill the attempt to make freight trains out of the government's mail cars and to eat up the country's revenues.

Another thing that the Colorado Manufacturers' association is determined to prevent in the West is the sale of convict made goods. There is a law against the sale of such goods in Colorado unless the goods are marked convict made but violations are being reported to the association and they will be rigidly investigated.

It is very well to employ the inmates of penal institutions at some profitable labor to assist in their maintenance and to discourage idleness, but when the product of such labor comes in open competition with the output of the factories owned by citizens of the state and tends to take the bread out of the mouths of the free workingman, it is time that vigorous measures were passed and enforced to keep such merchandise out of the market.