Too Many Strikes Against Ingenuity
A not-too-unusual success story appeared in a recent issue of the publication, AUTOMOBILE FACTS, issued monthly by the Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. If was the story of four brothers who started a tool and die shop in Detroit, literally with their bare hands. They built their own shop and equipped it with machine tools which they obtained on the used machinery market. “Today,” the publication says, “they hold the well-earned position of being one of the automotive industry’s largest tool and die suppliers. They employ nearly 200 workers.” This prosperous and thriving enterprise was started in 1922.
Could a similar business starting out under the present Federal tax laws meet with the same success?
We think that F. S. Blackall, Jr., President of the Taft-Pierce Manufacturing Company, had the answer to this question when he stated in a recent talk before the machine tool industry meeting at Hot Springs, Va.: “If America is to remain a land of opportunity, men of ambition and enterprise must be able to go into business, form companies which grow progressively larger and in due course employ more men. In past years this has been the way in which America progressed.”
“Our present Federal tax laws must be amended to provide reasonable incentive for taking business risks. This nation should be full of new, small businesses competing and striving to grow larger as used to be the case. But, under our tax laws today business success is penalized rather than rewarded. Not until Federal tax laws are changed can we regain that normal interplay of competition and opportunity which is so vital to our industrial economy.”
Today the automotive industry is supplied by more than a thousand firms specializing in automotive parts manufacture. The majority of them started in a very small way, many in one room shops. If it hadn’t been for the availability of used and rebuilt shop equipment, we wonder how many of them could have made a start.
There are probably more business opportunities now than there were in 1922, but the framers and supporters of our present tax structure put too many strikes against the ingenious and enterprising young men of today.