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Show I ' Links in Chain of Business "Where does 'small business' end and 'big business' begin?" asks an article in The Exchange, a monthly magazine mag-azine which is published by the New York Stock Exchange. That's a good question. We are constantly hearing talk about big business, and much of it is derogatory. Yet it is impossible to say precisely how big a business must be before it falls into that classification. More important still, a good many people seem to think that big business is a thing apart from other and smaller business, and that, to a large extent at least, the interests and aims of the two are strongly opposed. The magazine cites a concern which few people outside its area know of the K. William Beach Manufacturing Company of Springfield, Ohio. It is a manufacturer of engine gaskets and has but 35 employes. That certainly makes it a small business in the ordinary view. Yet it buys materials and services from 25 supplier companies, some of which are larger and some smaller than itself, and all of which are partially dependent upon it for their existence and well-being. And it sells its gaskets to Delco Products, which is a large employer. t Delco, in turn, is a division of one of the biggest businesses busi-nesses on earth-General Motors. GM employs more than 500,000 workers and sells its products to thousands of independent in-dependent distributors, some of which employ only one to 10 or so people. They make their living by selling those products to the tens of millions of consumers who want them. This brings up the article's big point. It says: "If at one end of the line the Springfield plant stops turning out gaskets, or if at the other end consumers stop buying cars, then all busincss-'big, 'small' or 'inbetween'-inevitably feels the chain reaction. Regardless of size, all are mere parts of a machine which transforms raw materials into finished products for the consumers-and keep the economy healthy. "Yet the term 'big business' continues in popular usage. And around it a myth has been created by those who can't or won't, see that American business is really a finely-balanced machine of many parts and sizes--ali interlocking and interdependent." The Exchange uses GM as an example of that interdependence. interde-pendence. GM grosses some $10,000,000,000 a year in sales. Of that huge sum, the employes get $2,750,000,000 and spend it for groceries and hair cuts and rent and everything every-thing else they need. Taxes account for $1,250,000,000 and a large part of that goes to thousands of small firms which have government contracts. Then $5,250,000,000 goes to 21,000 independent businesses, many small, which supply GM with needed goods and services, and are scattered all over the country-and 80 per cent of this money ultimately finds its way into pay envelopes. Around $333,000,000 is paid in dividends to GM's 500,000 share owners who, like the employes, spend in barber shops and retail stores and all manner of other places. So the chain goes, on and on. The story would be the same in principle for any of the other corporations, and which are dependent on thousands of small firms and millions mil-lions of people for parts, services and sales. And the stocks which represent ownership of those corporations, incidentally, inci-dentally, are the property of legions of people, many of very moderate means. To quote The Exchange magazine once more, "Who can tell how many corner grocers are involved when a freight load of gaskets leaves Springfield, Ohio bound for Detroit?" |