Proclamation 3835—Small Business Week, 1968

Today the United States possesses the strongest, most dynamic economy in man's history an economy created by wise use of the system of free, competitive enterprise.

Throughout the development of our dynamic marketplace, the small businesses of America have been the building blocks of our economic structure. The creative abilities and diversified commercial efforts of small businessmen have fostered the innovative genius that has always been the hallmark of American economic progress.

Today there are more than five million small businesses in the United States, supplying many of the goods and services of our communities while providing a variety of job opportunities to local citizens. Perhaps even more important, small business continues to offer the citizen who has the talent, the will—and the chance—a means of fulfilling his dream of taking a meaningful, productive role in our national life.

Your Government has recognized the importance of each of these contributions of the small businessman, and through the Small Business Administration:

—offers counsel and economic assistance to owners of small businesses;

—provide financial assistance and guarantees rental payments to energetic citizens seeking to bring more business and more jobs into poverty-locked ghettoes;

—aids small firms in competing for government contracts;

—seeks ways of protecting small firms against criminal acts.

These programs, as expanded by the Small Business Act Amendments I signed last fall, help insure that small business will continue to provide a reservoir of economic opportunities for our nation. It is appropriate that all citizens share in an expression of our national appreciation of the present, and the historic, contributions of the small businessman to our economic development.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week beginning May 12, 1968 as Small Business Week, and I urge industrial and commercial organizations, chambers of commerce, boards of trade, and other public and private organizations to participate in ceremonies recognizing the significant contributions, past and present, of small business to our land, our culture, and our ideals.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON