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Show THE AMERICAN WAY SMALL, COMPANIES 1)0 MOST OF COUNTRY'S BUSINESS ft-" George Pprh h -'1 : (Editor's Note: DeWitt Emery is President of the National Small Business Men's Association.) In spite of the mile long, or even five mile long plants, which some companies have, and in spite of the further fact that some of these companies employ tens of thousands thous-ands of workers, it is nevertheless also a fact that most of the business busi-ness in the United States is done by small companies. Tn 1939, the last year for which .businesses on a live-and-let-live basis, without having one or more tax-eating bureaucrat breathing down their necks all the time. And now that the small business men of the country are waking up to the fact that they are the strongest and most influential force in the United States, that's what they are going to have a chance to do business on their own, on a live-and-let-live basis. the statistical abstract of the U. S. has complete information, there were 184,230 manufacturing establishments es-tablishments in the United States. Of this total number only 2305 employed more than 500 wage earners, and out of the total of 7,886,567 workers employed in manufacturing, 64.7 were employed em-ployed by establishments which had 500 or fewer employees. In wholesaling, 76.6 of the total to-tal number employed were on the payrolls of companies doing an annual an-nual volume of less than one million mil-lion dollars. In retailing, 68.4 of the total number employed worked for stores doing an annual volume of less than one hundred thousand dollars. As the aforegoing figures show beyond any shadow of doubt, small business is the backbone of our nation, and unless national policies poli-cies are adopted which will permit per-mit thousands of small (businesses to be started and will also permit existing small companies to grow and prosper, one of these days, our entire economy is going to stall on dead center. I am personally acquainted with thousands of small business men scattered all over this country and I correspond with a great many others. I know that small business busi-ness men, as a group, do not want anyone the government least of all to hold an umbrella over them. They do not want, need, seek or desire any special privileges or considerations. All they want now, or, ever have wanted, is a fifty-fifty fifty-fifty break from their government. They want labor laws which are fair to them, also fair to labor and to the public. They want to bargain bar-gain with their own employees on the basis of conditions within their plants and the cost of living in their communities, rather than to have the government force them to abide by the terms of a labor contract negotiated by some big outfit with an international union. These small business men are perfectly willing to play their full share of whatever taxes may be necessary to run the government, but they are thoroughly fed up with being overtaxed so a hoard of unnecessary bureaucrats can keep their feet in the public trough mostly for the purpose of keeping the "ins" in! They deeply resent the gross inequalities in-equalities in the present tax laws which discriminate against them and force them to pay far more lhan their rightful share of taxes. I predict that not later than next January, the New Congress will be overwhelmed with a demand to give out whole tax structure the thorough overhauling it should have had years ago. Also, these small business men want the anti-trust laws enforced against all combinations in restraint re-straint of trade, whether these combinations are entered into by business organizations or labor organizations. or-ganizations. In short, what they want is a chance to conduct their |