| This dissertation examines the federal government's policies toward small business between 1936 and 1961. These policies varied over time. During the Great Depression, congressional concern with the fate of small business resulted in the passage of anti-chain store legislation, including the Robinson-Patman Act (1936) and the Miller-Tydings "Fair Trade" Act (1937). Later, Congress created Small Business Committees (1940-41), and temporary small business agencies during World War II and the Korean War. Finally, during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's second term, Congress created a permanent Small Business Administration (SBA).;Congressional champions of small business embraced an ideology that had its roots in Jeffersonian republicanism. Like Jefferson, they believed that a widespread distribution of wealth ensured the survival of democracy. In their view, a propertied middle class provided the social basis for democratic capitalism, and therefore they described small business as the "backbone" of democracy and free enterprise. Congressional small business advocates secured legislation by appealing to this ideology. They also justified federal aid to "free" enterprise by resorting to crisis rhetoric, arguing that competition from big business might lead to the extinction of small business. The persistence of small business, however, belied their repeated prophecies that "the end is near.".;Throughout, I emphasize several themes: (1) the importance of political entrepreneurs in Congress, (2) their use of ideology and crisis rhetoric as a substitute for an organized pressure group of small business owners, (3) the disparity between the intended and the actual consequences of their legislation, and (4) the persistence of small business despite the shortcomings of the government's small business policies. My dissertation shows that advocates of small business misread economic trends and underestimated small business' ability to compete in a modern marketplace; yet, economic ignorance alone cannot explain the outcome of public policy and the workings of political economy. The politics of small business also involved bureaucratic rivalries, interest-group maneuvering, and bitter partisan debates over the merits of small business legislation. Ironically, this political process produced compromise measures which offered little real aid to small business and sometimes worked to the detriment of small firms. |
