The State Printing Fraud

The Robert Smith Printing Company, of Lansing, is one of those concerns which is always using organized labor to pull its chestnuts out of the flre. It has for years enjoyed a practical monopoly of the state printing and for an equal term has systematically robbed the state treasury. Last year when the bids for the state printing were opened it was . found that the Adventist printing house at Battle Creek was many thousands of dollars lower than the Robert Smith Co., while the latter company's bid was even higher than its previous one. Then the Republican state government was between the devil and the deep sea. The tax payers would kick ïf the contract was not let to the lówest binder. But the lowest bidder did not employ unión labor and the union men are a considerable factor in elections. So a scheme was hatched by which the Robert Smitb Co.got the jobatasufficient advance over the non-union bid to enable the contracting company not only to pay the union scale but to give its employés a nine bour day as well. But, now that the contract is secure, the Robert Smith Co. proposes to repudíate this part of the contract and pocket the excess allowed it for the concession of a nine hour day. As a consequence all the employés of the state printing office are on a strike and they should have the sympathy of every fair minded person in a demand for that which is justly theirs. The public printing business is a steal from start to .finish. People have become accustomed to being robbed in that particular and they don't mind it any longer. But they will not sanction the appropriation by a rich and influential Corporation of that share which justly belongs to its employés. We need not be surprised if, under cover of war excitement, congress has taken some liberties with the public purse which it would not have taken had the public been at liberty to have given its actions a closer inspection. The National industries commission bill, which passed in the closing houi's, was of this character. It provides for a commission of 19, ten of whom shall be named by congress and nine by the president. The salary is $3600 and expenses. The ostensible purpose of this legislation is to gather statistics, encourage industries and prevent strikes. lts real purpose is to dissipate the public f unds and créate positions for a few of those whom the president had promised "something equallj as good." Those who are in a position to know say that the name of Louis J. Lisemer will be presented to the second district convention as Washtenaw's candidate for the Democratie congressional nomination. Editor Lisemer, af ter having become the proprietor of a daily paper, manager of an opera house and main guy in a telephone company, feels that he can leave the allied octopi for a time and round off his career with a term in congress. Justice Brown of the United States supreme court said in his dissenting opinión on the constitutionality of the income tax "that the time might come in an hour of national peril when this decisión would rise up to paralyze the arm of government." The Democratie national convention of 1896 suggested that if an income tax is not now lawful the constitution might be so changed that it would be lawful. The people when they are paying the present war taxes will take note of this.