Show dielsi Us S plans simpler aid 1 I to business in future reduction in forms would be relief hope to acquaint small operators with vital general trends by BAUKHAGE news analyst and commentator service union trust building washington D C when the mysterious ninth army suddenly rose full armed on the western front and the first army beside it started general eisenhowe ers winter offensive there was one question on most peoples lips will peace come in europe before spring in washington on the lips of many thoughtful people there was another question too it if it comes or for that matter when it co comes e S will we be ready tor for it in one of the many compartments of government which must be prepared tor for the ordeal of sudden peace preparations are now going forward which I 1 belte believe e are both significant ant and hopeful specifically I 1 am thinking of a report made by the director of the budget harold smith a summary of which was passed along by senator murray chairman of the committee m attee on small business for the consolation so 1 atin it might bring the director of the budget believes that information on needed by the government and valuable to small business is going to be obtained while the statisticians who obtain it are at t the same lame time going to cut down on n the number of forms which the sm small a 11 businessman will have to fw fill out ibling filling out forms especially the income tax blanks Is the subject of considerable jesting these days but there is a more serious side to the process tf 0 we accept form fill all fagout fag ing out as a symbol of the growing part which government plays in regulating our personal and business affairs that Is why this promise coming from the bureau of the budget is significant especially when it is considered side by side with two trends to which my attention has been called this week and to which too few people have paid sufficient attention expect government to take lead one is the tabulated result of a pon poll made by the national research center expressly tor for factory magazine a mcgraw HUI publication and the other is a statement which I 1 heard recently it was entirely unofficial and surely an expression of his own view set forth by a british diplomat the question which factory magazine had asked of men earning hourly or piece wages only no supervisors per visors or formen was this who do you think will do the most to solve the job problem after the war the government the labor leaders or company heads forty seven per cent of those interviewed looked to government 24 per cent looked to company he ids ads 14 per cent to labor leader 4 5 per cent undecided the opinion expressed by the d diplomat ap was this after the war we can look toward a united kingdom where considerable sid erable government control is exercised ownership of railroads utilities mines a sort of socialistic monarchy both these opinions together indicate a trend in the thinking on both sides of the atlantic along parallel lines the american workman feels that the american government will take the responsibility for employment after the war the british official feels that the british government will take over several of the nations important industries mor forms to make out if you 1 will I III which brings us back to small business committee chairman murray and budget director smith and the promise of more help tor for business with less forms to make out and symbolically we hope less actual domination of business by government small business measure of enterprise I 1 chose this particular example because I 1 believe that the relationship of small business to government is vital the people who have made the most careful studies of the subject agree that the measure of small business is the measure of the whole system of private enterprise ter prise that if small business Is crushed in the process of all private enterprise will eventually be stultified and not only those great semi semipublic public institutions like the utilities and the mines wll win suffer the tate fate predicted tor for then them in england but eventually all enter prise will find itself in government hands let me say at this point however that some industries have already alread reached the point where they have forced government operation ir in other democratic countries and even some very conservative minds la in this country are beginning to tc fear ear that similar conditions are being created by certain businesses themselves here but it Is the purpose of those persons in government and out of it who are struggling with the problem of preserving small business to give it the aid it needs to preserve its independence in order to provide this aid it Is essential that some compromises be made on the part par of at the businessmen they cannot expect the government to provide them with help they have havet to have to get them over the hump of without making certain sacrifices government officials cannot spend the public money without establishing some gome checks and balances on the institutions which are thus bene fitted rilling filling out forms Is one of the minor afflictions which government comforted economic flesh is heir to however it Is refreshing to read mr smiths report to senator murray in which he tells us of how according to his custom he has considered the requests of numerous government agencies for surveys and has turned them down his lob job Is to save the peoples money by preventing duplicate effort of government agencies he announces that statistical services of the government are going to be revised and overhauled iri id order to produce a rounded program to supply the basic industrial statistics needed n not 0 t only by the government but by industry as well most of the failures in little bustness business are due to ignorance on the part of the proprietor of the one thing he ought to know most about his own business in the first place he know whether he Is making money or losing it because he keep hit his books properly and he know enough about the conditions in hit hi line of business outside his immediate ken to guide him this is the type of information which the government wishes to collect and nd in turn place at his dis dosal one of the plans already worked out is a census of manufacturers m of 1944 covering a wide field of data which it Is not my intention inte ution to enumerate here for that is not the purpose of these remarks the purpose is to note hopefully the tact fact that here Is evidence of a trend which in some measure balances the other two mentioned at the beginning of these columns the trend toward government control that Is why I 1 quote the following paragraph not mer merely ely for the hope it brings to weary fillers out cut of forms but because it looks like a hopeful sign in an otherwise somewhat cloudy sky an analysis made by one war agency of the need of present informational needs thaws shows that about half such material would still be required by that agency after victory of the remaining half about two thirds would be discontinued entirely and about one third continued by other agencies railroads are now handling about 2 times the amount of freight traffic and more than tour four times the volume of passenger business that they did before the war the association of american railroads reported 1 they are carrying the report added virtually double the lead of the first world wai wa and thy are doing it with a fourth fewer freight cars about a fourth fewer ger train cars and a third fewer locomotives than in 1918 the reduction in freight cars alone amount sto about units BRIEFS B R I 1 E F S by baukhage A london transportation company Is experimenting with a central entrance bus with a pneumatically operated door and central staircase twelve ships a day are now sliding down the ways in this country according to rear adm frederick 0 crisp director of the navy division on shore establishments and civilian personnel cubans saw their first snow when boxes of it were flown all the way from new hampshire to havana last winter sunflowers Sun flowers may surpass the soybean which now brings in a return of annually sunflower oil sells for 14 cents a pound and the meal has a 53 per cent protein content |