Small and medium-sized enterprise

“ Small factories, small shops, small processing plants attracting the ingenuity of individuals and the enterprise of small groups, are economically essential and socially desirable. I recommend that we establish, perhaps within the framework of a general Rehabilitation Authority, a small business division, the sole task of which will be to encourage and promote small business. ”

“ He is calling on Congress to quadruple support for the Manufacturing Extensions Partnership —increasing the involvement of minority-owned and rurally-located small- and-medium-sized enterprises in technological advancement. Increase access to capital for domestic manufacturers. ”

“ In this respect, a large enterprise invariably enjoys advantages of every kind over a small or medium concern. They may range from a saving in premises or instruments, in the application of more efficient means of production, in extensive replacement of manual labour by machinery, down to a speedy exploitation of a favourable turn of the market so as to acquire raw materials cheaply. Within very wide limits, these advantages increase in direct proportion to the expansion of the enterprise. ”

“ The small business community constitutes the single most important segment of our free enterprise system. It accounts for forty-eight percent of our gross national product, more than half of the American labor force, and continues to be the major source of inventions and new jobs. 'Small business is truly the backbone of the American economy. ”

“ With unparalleled commitment and determination, they keep us at the forefront of innovation and help fuel our economy.
During the past decade, more than 600,000 new firms have been created annually. Indeed, just last year, more small businesses were created than at any time in our country's history. ”

“ It encourages the competition that keeps our free enterprise economy vigorous and expanding. Small business, because of its flexibility, assists in the rapid exploitation of scientific and technological discoveries. Investment in small business can absorb a large volume of savings that might otherwise not be tapped. ”

“ He also will call for the creation of a new financing program to support debt and equity investments for manufacturing to strengthen the resilience of America’s supply chains. Create a national network of small business incubators and innovation hubs. Almost all manufacturers (98 percent) are small- and medium-sized firms. Furthermore, small business ownership is a cornerstone of job creation and wealth building. ”

“ These small industries should be promoted, both to fill the gaps in our industrial structure and to encourage the growth and spreading of entrepreneurship. Accordingly, we are directing the Department of Commerce and Industry to pay particular attention to the problems of small industries. ”

“ This association, organized by twenty-eight poor weavers with a capital of twenty-eight pounds, at first as a distributive enterprise, is now a rich and flourishing institution, which adds manufacturing to its distributive interests. ”

“ It is true that the same amount of capital can be raised by bringing together many small sums. But this (besides that it is not equally well suited to all branches of industry) supposes a much greater degree of commercial confidence and enterprise diffused through the community, and belongs altogether to a more advanced stage of industrial progress. ”

“ The manufacture being a strictly private enterprise, its owners find it advantageous to have all the branches of a given industry under their own management; they thus cumulate the profits of the successive transformations of the raw material. And when several thousand power-looms are combined in one factory, the owner finds his advantage in being able to hold the command of the market. ”

“ In the countries in which there are the largest markets, the widest diffusion of commercial confidence and enterprise, the greatest annual increase of capital, and the greatest number of large capitals owned by individuals, there is a tendency to substitute more and more, in one branch of industry after another, large establishments for small ones. These are almost always able to undersell the smaller tradesmen, partly, it is understood, by means of division of labor, and the economy occasioned by limiting the employment of skilled agency to cases where skill is required ”

“ The ability and integrity of the men who control the policy of the company and the efficiency of the operating officials are the principal factors [71] in the success of an industrial undertaking. Vacillating policies, weakly executed, will ruin the most promising enterprise. This is particularly true in the case of small companies. Every man of business experience will understand the importance of this factor and be guided by it in the selection of industrial securities. ”

“ Manufacturing in Corporations and Associations.—Back of all organization and legislation lies a real [307] national unity, through which the nation exercises indirectly an economic function. In spite of a popular jealousy of big business in the last decade, there is a pride in the ability of American business men to create a profitable world commerce, and middle-class people in well-to-do circumstances subscribe to the purchase of stocks and bonds in trusted corporations. Without this general interest and participation such a rapid extension of industrial enterprise could not have taken place. ”

“ There are three classes of establishments by which industry is carried on—those that are the property of an individual, those which belong to partnerships or firms of unlimited liability, and those belonging to corporations of limited liability. The usefulness of the individual system is of course limited to small undertakings, where but little capital and credit are necessary; this form of organization still dominates the field in agriculture, in the small retail trade, and in the repairing industries. ”

“ Here, too, is joint venture on the part of the Community just as much as on the part of Labor, Capital, or Management. What is 99 per cent. of the expenditure of government in normal times but outlays in the nature of investment in industry: investment in property and services of one kind or another, which alone makes possible the vast co-operation and co-ordination of effort which is the very life-blood of industry? The vaster industrial organization becomes, the more it depends, in a multitude of directions, upon the investments of the Community. ”

“ This view of the development challenge underlines in each and every case our basic economy policies, particularly those governing the role of private enterprise in the economy. There have been questions raised as to the role of private enterprise. ”

“ In other words, the businesses amenable to joint-stock enterprise are those where skilled management can be reduced to a minimum, and where the scale of the business or the possession of a natural monopoly limits or prohibits competition from outside. ”

“ Collective industrial enterprises owned the balance of 1.4 percent of the assets, employed 11.2 percent of the workers, and contributed 9.9 percent of the industrial output. Small private enterprises, mostly artisan shops, accounted for only 0.4 percent of the industrial output. ”

“ The role of government corporations in the realm of economic development lies essentially in undertaking ventures in new and untried fields where the risks involved may inhibit private enterprise.
In this sense, therefore, government corporations play a pivotal role in the attainment of our development objectives, particularly in the areas of production and industrial development and social amelioration. ”

“ We have now to inquire whether production upon a large scale is in turn to be supplanted by single consolidated enterprises, by those combinations of capital known as trusts. Under one of these three conditions industry must be carried on; few people wish to revert to the stage when production was carried on in small establishments, but warm controversy and difference of opinion still exist as to whether centralized management by a single company or combination offers superior advantages to production by independent competing establishments. ”

“ Will the present standards of management, skill, workmanship and factory discipline be improved? Will the consumers benefit? Will people save? i. e. Will sufficient fresh capital be forthcoming for the further developments of industry? ”

“ Thus the present desire to simplify life and the present dissatisfaction with the flimsiness of the average factory-made article, which create a demand for a smaller and better product, combine with improved means for transportation, for communication, and for transmission of power to make it practicable for small workshops to take the place, to a certain extent, of large factories, and to make it possible for the producer of household stuff to become a desirable neighbor. ”

“ The independent workman with his own tools was superseded by the factory, the small producer has given way in turn to the trust. With the introduction of expensive machinery it became necessary to organize capital on a large scale. Corporations with limited liability were organized for the manufacture of goods, the exploitation of mines, the building of railroads, and the carrying on of trade. As methods of production improved industry became more and more concentrated, and finally huge trusts took over the operation of combined plants. ”

“ We have reduced the burden of unnecessary regulation on small businesses, and we have passed much needed incentives for investment and new equipment, which will help our small businesses grow and create high-paying jobs. ”

“ It will be noted that this plan promotes steadiness in work, stimulates to industry, and adds a most valuable element of hopefulness to labor. As a business enterprise for the owners it is sound, for it makes every workman an interested party in increasing the profits of the firm—interested not only in production, but in the marketableness of the thing produced. ”

“ It is in the industrial corporations that this capitalization of good-will is seen to the best advantage - including, under the term "industrial corporations," railway companies, iron and steel concerns, mines, etc., as well as what are known in the stock market specifically as "industrials." The corporation is, of course, not the only form of business concern in the industrial field, but it is the typical, characteristic form of business organization for the management of industry in modern times, and the peculiarities of modern capital are therefore best seen in these modern corporations. ”

“ The corporation aggregate, which is but a mode of substituted service, is one of the great forces of civilization. It is the prevailing form of the associated energies, the money, enterprise, and intelligence of society. It is particularly adapted to those branches of business like salvage and wrecking, which require a permanent organization, costly appliances, trained services, and considerable capital, which is content with slow or uncertain returns. ”

“ Large corporations, which can afford the best machinery; which control abundant capital, and which can plan with scrupulous economy all the details of producing and selling an important product or service, are actually able to reduce the cost of production to a minimum; and in the cases of certain American corporations such results have actually been achieved. The new organization of American industry has created an economic mechanism which is capable of being wonderfully and indefinitely serviceable to the American people. ”

“ The Growing Field of Action by Corporations.—Until recently there has been comparatively little production in the hands of corporations great enough to be exempt from the same economic laws which apply to a blacksmith, a carpenter, or a tailor. Individual enterprise and generally free competition have prevailed. The state has not checked them and the great aggregations of capital to which we give the name "trusts" have not, in this earlier period, been present in force enough to check them. ”

“ Many corporations have upon their boards of directors the leading business men, merchants, bankers and financiers. In this way, the investing public has the assurance that the enterprise will be conducted along business lines, while the business men on the board have an opportunity to get in on the "ground floor."
The corporation has a permanence, a stability, and a breadth of financial support that are quite impossible in the case of the private venture or of the partnership. It does for business organization what the machine did for production. ”

“ It was hard for individuals and firms to compete with corporations, and hard for small corporations to compete with large ones in the same line of business. For many years the steady accumulation of capital tended to flow into these expanding units, a process veiled by the use of parallel and “holding” corporations. ”

“ Factories are incorporated, and are owned in shares; and every one that has any part in the management of their concerns, from the purchase of the raw material to the sale of the manufactured article, is a part owner; while every one employed in them has a prospect of becoming one, by the use of prudence, exertion, and economy. Charitable associations exist in large numbers, and all are incorporated. ”

“ The system, in fact, is a gigantic one, and its professors are legion. It is as thriving an industry (save the mark) as any in the world. It is as perfectly organised in every department as any legitimate business. Its markets are regulated by the same inexorable laws of supply and demand, competition and coöperation, which govern the development of every branch of commerce. It has its manufacturers, its wholesale houses, its canvassers and retail dealers, all in regular form. ”

“ COÍPERATION IN PRODUCTION.—The three forms of co÷peration which we have been considering seek to eliminate unnecessary middlemen from industry. In producers' co÷peration, on the other hand, the attempt is made to get rid of the entrepreneur, or managing employer. A group of workmen get together, subscribe or borrow the required capital, purchase tools, materials, and plant, and set up as producers. They seek markets for their product, direct the enterprise either as a group or through salaried agents, share the profits among themselves, and accept the risks of the enterprise. ”