Proclamation 4553—Small Business Week, 1978

Small business has been the economic backbone of American life since the earliest colonial days. Traders, craftsmen and merchants spurred the economy and played a vital role in the Nation's westward movement and growth. They helped create the multitude of opportunities that distinguish our free enterprise system-the system which has made American progress the envy of the world.

Of the 14 million businesses in the United States today, more than 13 million of them are small, including some three million farms. Together, they provide employment for over half the business labor force and account for more than 48 percent of the gross business product. America's prestige in the world today could never have been achieved without this outstanding productivity.

Now, Therefore, I, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning April 30, 1978, as Small Business Week, and I urgently call on every American to join me in this very special tribute.

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

JIMMY CARTER