The Little Guy

By W.F. Cramb First Published January 15, 1942What distinguishes this country from the other great nations of the world? There are many possible answers to that question. And here's one of the best: “The United States is the country where the little guy is boss--where the little guy doesn't have to bow and scrape to anyone.”Little guys made this country. They came here from everywhere to establish freedom and escape tyranny. They landed in a wilderness. They were often cold and hungry. They seldom became rich. But they kept the faith. They built the homes and cleared the land and raised the children. They fought the wars of the past, just as they are fighting this war.The little guys were proud and strong and confident of the future, and the great land in which we live is their gift to us, the little guys of the present. Little guys built the industries of this country. They saved a few dollars and put them into a store or a bank or a factory of some kind. They took chances. Much of the time they lost, but that didn't dismay them. They saved a few more dollars and took new chances.They didn't laugh when some visionary came along with an idea the wiseacres said was obviously insane—the telephone, for instance, or the automobile, or a plan for lighting homes with electricity. There might be something in it, they thought, and they played the long shot.For the visionaries with the ideas were the same kind of people—little guys trying to get ahead, little guys trying to build and create. And some of them went from shacks to mansions in a year or two, and a year or two later were back in the shacks starting again.They always started again. It was in their blood, their bone, their character. The little guys didn't give up.All of this country is a monument to the little guy. All of our industries, our farms, our homes, our resources: the little guys did the work. They went into the oil fields and brought out the black gold. They dug in the earth and gave us our coal and metals. A few became famous, but the millions remained unknown, They worked and died in obscurity, but this country is an everlasting monument to their deathless spirit which lives on. That is the ideal we Americans must always keep in mind—America must be a place where the little guy is king. Free enterprise is the little guy's kind of enterprise—he can go into any business he wants, invest his savings in whatever he wants, and lick the competitors to a frazzle if he is able to. The government belongs to him, he doesn't belong to the government.The little guy made America, and today he is perpetuating America. And tomorrow he must be the symbol of America, too.

Robert Schmidt

Think Like a Nebraskan

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