Address in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Governor Crane, Senator O'Mahoney, Mr. Mayor, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

It is a real pleasure to be back here in Cheyenne again. When I was here before, it was on a Sunday, and I didn't get a chance to talk with you. You gave me a hat, which was a grand hat, and I have still got it, and I still wear it.

I am more than pleased at the cordial reception which I have received in the great State of Wyoming. I appreciate most sincerely the courtesy of your Governor in coming to Casper to meet me, and escorting me up here to the Capitol Building.

I am most happy, of course, to see Senator Joe O'Mahoney. He and I served in the Senate. I was there for 10 years, but he was there sometime before and has been there since.

And I also have two public servants on the staff of the Government of the United States whose homes are in Cheyenne; that is, Dr. Clark who is on the Economic Advisory Board, and Mrs. Ross who makes all the hard money that is circulated in the United States--the Director of the Mint. They are both fine people, and both good public servants.

The last time I was here was in June of 1948. You most kindly invited me to come back for your famous "Frontier Days" celebration.

Someday I'd like to come back to the old "Frontier Days." I have been hearing about your celebration for many, many years. But my schedule never seems to come out just right for that purpose.

Nevertheless, the spirit of the frontier is exactly what I want to talk to you about today.

Some people believe that the American frontier vanished forever when the 48th State came into the Union.

That is nonsense.

There are still frontier days.

This Nation has never stopped growing in wealth and strength. It has never stopped finding new horizons of invention, technology, and production. It has never stopped blazing trails in finding better ways to use our resources for the well-being of all the people. These are today's frontiers.

There are some people who don't believe there are frontiers yet to be conquered. While I was on the Appropriations Committee of the Senate, we were hearing a certain appropriation for the Patent Office, and we ran across a document in the Senate files where the Commissioner of Patents in 1843 had made the statement that the Patent Office should be abolished because there wasn't anything more to be invented. The greatest inventions of the age have been patented since then. We have got a lot of people like that still alive.

And today's frontiers call for the same pioneering vision, the same resourcefulness, the same courage that were displayed by the men and women who challenged our geographical frontiers a century ago.

We proved in war that we have lost none of our strength and courage. We are proving again, since the war, that this country still moves boldly toward the future. Our peacetime production and our standards of living are moving toward new high levels. And we are thinking and planning for steady development and improvement.

Our watchword is not "holding our own."

Our watchwords are "growth," "expansion," "progress."

This is because there are now, as there have always been, more Americans who look ahead toward the broad horizon than who look backward toward times and places left behind.

A steady growth in the standards of living of the American people is a goal well within our ability to attain. There are some who still look upon the goal of an ever-expanding economy as a pipe dream. They still believe in the inevitability of boom-and-bust.

They are still living among those in the past. This country used to have a boom-and-bust economy. You can think back a little over 20 years and recall when the last big bust took place.

But that disaster taught this country a great lesson. We learned from that experience that we cannot leave the forces of a huge and complicated economy to take care of themselves.

We learned then that the people had to use their Government as a means of mobilizing the resources of the whole country to restore the economy and start it moving upward again.

That same lesson about the role of government still applies today. The people, using their Government as an agent, found the means to lick that depression. Now we are employing the same means of well-designed Government programs to help strengthen and steadily expand the national economy.

Earlier today, at Casper, I talked about one kind of governmental activity by which we are creating new frontiers of opportunity every month and every year. This is the conservation and full use of our natural resources.

The opportunities that can be created through the development of our natural resources are immeasurable. Our rivers, out soil, our forests, our minerals can form the physical base for a steady expansion of real incomes and living standards, if they are developed and used in the right way.

This afternoon, I want to talk about another kind of activity through which we can create new frontiers of opportunity.

This is the program to stimulate and strengthen small business which I recommended to Congress last week. Small and independent businesses are important to the growth of the economy. They are a constant source of new ideas. They are a constant source of new jobs.

New businesses are also important to the health of the economy. In their effort to grow by serving consumers better, they provide the vigorous competition which is the heart of our private enterprise system.

Every one of you knows somebody who has had a new idea and has built it into a business. He has not only made money, but his business has also provided jobs and income for the whole community in which he lives.

Our country has been made great by the boldness, the daring, and the inventive genius of the men like that. Our Nation would suffer a slow decay if men with ideas did not have every opportunity to build new businesses and create new wealth.

The task of economic expansion requires using all the resources of this great Nation. Of the nearly 4 million business concerns in our country, more than 90 percent are usually classified as small. These small concerns provide jobs for over 20 million people--roughly half of private, nonfarm employment. If we are to have an expanding economy, small business must provide its share of the additional jobs needed. In doing so, it will not only create new payrolls for workers; it will also enlarge markets generally for other businesses and for farmers.

We need big business in this country as well as small business, of course. We all benefit from the tremendous output at low cost of large, efficient enterprises. But the stimulus of new and vigorous competitors is necessary to keep the old enterprises efficient, and to bring the greatest benefit to consumers and to the public.

Since the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act 60 years ago, we have sought to keep monopoly from stifling the growth of new business. The effectiveness of the antitrust laws has varied over the years with changes in our national administration. Right now, the antitrust laws are being enforced as actively as at any time in our history. But at their very best, they are only a limited and a negative approach.

We will keep on using the antitrust laws and will enforce them vigorously, of course.

But we must supplement that approach-and we must act soon--with measures which will challenge the power of monopoly, not in the courts but in the marketplace. The force of vigorous, effective competition is the best way in the world to prevent monopoly. If the man with new ideas has a fair chance to put his product on the market, the buyer will do the rest. We must, therefore, take measures to assist the man with new ideas, the small enterpriser, as he starts out to challenge large, powerful, and established competitors.

The recommendations I have made to the Congress rest upon three simple principles. They are that the small businessman needs long-term credit; he needs venture capital; he needs technical assistance.

These things are needed so that the independent businessman can do more for himself. They do not involve Government controls. They will cost the Federal Government very little money.

What they will do is to give the man who wants to be his own boss a better chance to use his own initiative and energy.

In the field of credit, I propose that we should insure bank loans to small businesses, such as drugstores, filling stations, retail stores. The local banks would decide whether or not to make the loan in each case and would share some of the risk. But on the major part of the loan the bank would be insured against loss. This means that banks will be able to make safely, good loans which they now find too risky.

Thus, bankers would be able to give greater consideration to the human element in deciding whether or not to help a hometown businessman pull through a tight place. They wouldn't have to be quite so hard boiled in demanding gilt-edged collateral.

You know, a lot of people say, when they find out what kind of collateral they have to put up for a loan at the bank, that if they had that kind of collateral they wouldn't have needed a loan in the first place.

Now, I don't think bankers act like that just because they want to be mean. It's because they have to be careful. This insurance would make it possible for them to do what they would like to have been doing all the time.

This proposal is similar to the insurance that has been provided for years under Title I of the National Housing Act for home improvement loans. In that case it has helped the banks, helped the home owners, and the Government has made money from it. I think it will work just as well for small business loans.

Furthermore, I propose that special investment companies be set up to make venture capital and long-term loans available to help small businesses expand when they have proved their ability. This would provide a way to pool the savings of people who cannot individually make such investments, but who can, through investment companies, put their savings to work in growing businesses.

This proposal is generally the same as that incorporated in a bill introduced several months ago by your fellow townsman, and my good friend, Senator Joe O'Mahoney.

In addition, I propose that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation be given broader authority to handle cases which offer a good chance of success but cannot obtain private financing on reasonable terms.

These credit proposals are designed to make banks and other private sources of funds more effective in meeting the needs of small and growing businesses. They have been proposed by bankers and other private citizens who understand the problems of the small businessman. I hope the Congress will soon enact these provisions into law.

In the field of technical assistance, small businessmen are often at a serious disadvantage. They cannot afford to hire specialists and put them on their payrolls to keep up with the latest developments in accounting and management. They find it difficult to learn about the latest research developments that affect their businesses.

Under these circumstances, I propose that the Department of Commerce should expand the work it now does in providing technical and research assistance to small business. Thus, we would provide independent businessmen with the same kind of research assistance and skilled advice which we have provided successfully to the farmers for many years.

At the same time, I propose that we should make the Department of Commerce the central Government agency for small business, as well as other business, just as the Department of Agriculture is the central agency for all farm activities. This would mean that the independent businessman could go to one place and obtain the advice and the services that he needs.

These proposals to help small business .to obtain credit, risk capital, and technical assistance should do much to increase effective competition. They should result in more independent enterprises, striving more effectively to provide goods and services that the people need. As such, I believe these proposals will contribute to the strength and stable growth of the whole country.

I suppose it is inevitable that this small business program will meet with determined opposition. Those who fear the rise of new competitors will not be slow in imagining danger to their privileged positions. They will hide their selfish alarm by attacking what they call "Government interference" with the economic system.

But the Government is only an instrument in the hands of the people, an instrument we use to help maintain a free, competitive and expanding economy. This is the kind of economy that everybody wants.

More abundance for everyone, without the dismal cycle of boom-and-bust, is something that this Nation can have, and is something the Nation must have. To bring it about demands dynamic private enterprise, and it demands also a dynamic Government program, too.

All of us, working together, can build a strong and prosperous America. And keeping our own Nation prosperous and strong is the best assurance that our struggle for prosperity, peace, and freedom in the world will end in victory.

Thank you very much.