Springville Herald | 1947-07-17 | Page 4 | It's your Business !

j It's Your business! In the late 1890's, a young bicycle bicy-cle repairman tinkered after hours with a horseless carriage. It was a screwball idea a smoky, sput-tery sput-tery contraption that couldn't work, everyone said. But a few of his friends figured maybe the thing could work and if it did, a lot of them could be sold and money could be made. So they took a chance and loaned the young tinkerer a few dollars to get going. And that was the beginning begin-ning of a huge industry the automobile auto-mobile industry which today gives employment to some seven million workers. America was built that way by men willing to take a chance, willing will-ing to invest their savings, a thousand thou-sand dollars or ten thousand dollars dol-lars or more, in some new product, some new business. Some of them never panned out. Many lost their money, and their shirts. But' the opportunity for making money was there. It was worth the gamble. . Small businesses grew to big . ones. The old established businesses business-es had to keep on their toes to meet the competition of the young ones coming up. And the people were the real winners, not only in more jobs and opportunities, but in better quality of products and more real earnings. earn-ings. (For instance, the average factory worker now is making 160 percent more money in terms of things he can buy for an hour's work than did his father in 190Q.) Today it's a different story. The little guy with big ideas can't get people who have money to invest to take a chance on him. Because of huge taxes, the odds are stacked against the investors in new products. prod-ucts. And without investment continuous investment everything bogs down, For when investment ,di'ops, production pro-duction drops. When production drops, prices go up, wages go down and jobs fly out the window.