The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-11-05

1 highway cops
 stopped the load
 EdsOn and because it measured slightly over the O6-iuch maximum width limit of the state, the trucker was fined $13.B0. The to- tal delay in making the delivery was 2S hours.
 This pretty little story is told to keep fresh in mind that the old bogey of interstates trade barriers Is stifl cluttering up the country, and to emphasize that 1t has some new angles now which have partic- ular bearing on national defense.
 Every day in every way these con- hicting state laws on highways reg ulation are balling up the free flow of good from one state to another, providing @ bottleneck that can be attributed to only one thing - hu- man legislative stpidity. There is be- fore Congress now one law, spon- sored by Representative Warren c. Magnuson of Seattle, which would give the Interstate Commerce Com- mission power to regulate these state trade barriers, but there Is no telling what its fate will be or when. The law is based on Q three-year investi- gatlon by I, c. 0. to determine what might be done to relieve the situa- ton.
 THE oID
 KENTUCKY MOAN
 It isn't quite as bad as 1t was a few years ago, but it's still plenty tough. Kentucky's lS,000- pound load limit is regarded by truckers as the worst situation, Virginia, and Ore- gon laws are also regarded as un- necessarily restrictive. Texas repeal ed It's 7000-pound load limit Q4,000 pounds to Q railheaO during the year, raising the limit to the now generally accepted i8,000-pound axle weight. Missouri repealed It's law requiring all busses and trucks entering the state to take out Mis- souri permits. And so on.
 But the tendency of the states to set up laws restricting commerce across their borders has not yet been checked. A WPA marketing laws survey has been grinding away more than two years just to catalog all the restrictive regulations the states have set up against one another. When WPA gets through, 1t will have nearly 5000 separate statutes classified for the use of shippers.
 While the trend to pass more and more of these regulations may have been checked 10 degree, 1t is still a strong movement. Forty-three state legislatures met in l941. Col- lectively, they have had presented to them for consideration between 800 and 1000 new laws further restrict ing trade across state lines. It's too early to check yet on how many have been or will be passed, but the measures considered range all the way from bill to divorce meat mar kets from grocery stores in South Dakota, to bills in seven states lim- iting the length of railroad trains, and the prohibition of import of filled" milk into Florida. Filled milk in case you don't know, is milk from which the butter fat has been re- moved and another fat substituted.
 Whatever success there has been in subduing the legislative passion for passing all these bidding pro- htbitionS can in @ large measure be traced to two sources, the Council of State Governments in Chicago and an Inter-Departmental Com mittee on Interstate Trade Barriers set up by the Department of Con- merce in Washington. Ten federal agencies are included in this alter organization under the chairman ship of Paul T. Truitt, and their combined educational campaigns and reports to the Council of State Gov- ernments, which in turn tries to ad- wise state legislatures, has had some effect in checking the rash of new restrictions.
 SEEK TO GREASE
 WAX FOR OLEO
 Tn addition to the drive for uni- form highway regulation, one of the current problems the Inter-Depart- mental Committee has been working on is to free the trade barriers on oleomargarine, now limited by some 30 states and further restricted by the federal $6-a-year tax on stores retailing it.
 There is one law before Congress now to remove this tax in an effort to promote the sale of low-cost table fats to lower income families. The Navy is interested in a bill which would permit 1t to buy oleo for ships and stations that do not have re- frigeration facilities. Both of these proposals are labeled as defense measures. The first is part of the nutrition campaign to provide better diet for poorer families. Tn the case of the second, the Navy Gs interest," ed in feeding oleo to submarine crews and to marine expeditions which might have to be sent to the hot countries without iceboxes.