But the Small Business Committee is neither Democratic nor Republican. We are all what we call an all-Amercian committee trying to help the people of our great country. Mr. Burton has been diligent in attendance, decisive in his questioning of witnesses, and altogether helpful in assisting to define the goals and objectives of these hearings. I have heard much from your Congressman about what he assures me to be the outstanding congressional district in the country. I look forward to receiving your testimony this morning. The Chair will now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Horton. Mr. HORTON. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Burton, and ladies and gentlemen of Brigham City, I too want to say to you how happy I am to be in your city and to have an opportunity to hear from you with regard to problems of small business in your community. I might say to you that we are a subcommittee of a larger committee, the Select Committee on Small Business. This is a special committee created by the House of Representatives to investigate the problems of small business and to assist in their solution. In the 89th Congress I had the privilege of serving on this committee and this subcommittee with our chairman. We held hearings in larger metropolitan areas to learn about the problems of small business in the larger urban areas. As a result of those hearings, which lasted over a 2-year period and included hearings in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Rochester, N.Y., my home community, New York City, Atlanta, and other places, we were able to come up with recommendations which I think are now benefitting the small businessman in the large urban areas. I might say to you that at the outset of the 90th Congress, after this committee was organized and created again, this subcommittee, under the able leadership of our chairman, decided that we study the problems of the small businessman outside of the large urban areas to see what his problems were. We held several hearings in Washington. Those hearings will be printed. I'm sure, after all of these hearings are completed, many of you would like to have copies of them. I'm sure my good friend Laurence Burton, will be able to make them available to you. To show you the importance of these hearings, we had, consecutively, three Cabinet officers testify before our subcommittee, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Each of the Secretaries gave us the benefit of the thinking of their Departments with regard to these problems. It was imperative that we travel to the "grassroots," so to speak, and listen to the small businessmen in "Small Town, U.S.A." That is why we are here now at the request of your Congressman. He, as a member of this subcommittee, told us there were problems here and that these would be good examples of the problems across the country. Our hearings in the 89th Congress were sent out all over the country. Many people today are reading and studying those hearings. Chambers of commerce and business people are studying those hearings and learning from the problems and solutions to them of other people throughout the country. That is why we are here today, to listen to you and hear what you have to say and to learn what con tribution you can make. Perhaps some of you have solutions to some of the problems we face here. When we finish these hearings, we will be going back to Washington, taking this information back to the full committee and then, in turn, to the Congress of the United States, making recommendations, trying to be of assistance. Whatever contribution you make here today can be very valuable to the overall consideration of these problems. Larry, I want to say to you how happy I am to be here and to say to our chairman how glad I am that he has made the sacrifice to bring our subcommittee here. I know that we are going to have some very valuable testimony. Thank you. Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. Let the record also show that the majority counsel of our subcommittee, Gregg Potvin, and the minority counsel, John J. Williams, are present. I am happy that Congressman Horton has mentioned the three Cabinet officers who appeared before our committee. They are very much interested in small businessmen and have their representatives here. Mr. Potvin, will you, for the record, give the names of those who represent the various Federal agencies? Mr. POTVIN. May the record show that Mr. William Bruhn, regional director, Small Business Administration, Salt Lake City and Mr. W. R. Thornock and Mr. Grant Evans of his staff are present. Also with us are Mr. Douglas Simpson, director of the Farm Home Administration for the State of Utah, and Mr. Maurice Sorenson, director of the community action program for northern Utah. We are also fortunate in having with us again today Secretary Freeman's observer, Mr. Richard Fernstrom of the rural community development service. The reporter who will be serving the subcommittee today is Mr. Cecil Tucker of Ogden, Utah. Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. Thank you, Mr. Potvin. I want you to know that we have outstanding representatives of the Federal Government here with us. We are here this morning because of your great Congressman. Let me introduce to you your Congressman, Mr. Laurence Burton. Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to extend my personal welcome to you and Mr. Horton and members of the staff to the First Congressional District of Utah. I am pleased that you accepted our invitation to come to Brigham City because this is a beautiful little city, as you can see, and I think one of the choice rural cities in America. It is named after Brigham Young, the founder of our State, our first Governor. It is a city that has had in recent years some economic problems. As you know, the latest issue of Dun & Bradstreet lists Utah as having more small business failures this year per capita than any other State in the Union. It's appropriate that the House Select Committee on Small Business come to this State to hear suggestions and recommendations that might reverse this trend. Once again, I am happy to have you, Mr. Chairman, in our congressional district. Ladies and gentlemen who are present, I would like to say that Chairman Kluczynski is a man, as you may observe this morning, who is without political rancor or partisanship. He is one of the best beloved men in the House of Representatives. He is a confidant and personal friend of Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. He is also one of the best friends the Speaker of the House, John McCormack, has. He stands high. He is a man who has been in public service most of his life, served in the Illinois Legislature for 20 years and now in the House of Representatives for 18 years. In addition to being chairman of this subcommittee, he is also chairman of the Subcommittee on Public Roads, and one of his big projects for the last few years has been the highway beautification bill. We are proud to have you here, Mr. Chairman. Someone of your stature adds dignity to the proceedings. My colleague, Mr. Horton, from the city of Rochester, N.Y., was elected at the same time I was. He is now serving his third term—a man of great ability, and you will see that demonstrated here this morning. So, without further adieu, Mr. Chairman, with your permission I would like to introduce a friend of mine, and a friend of all the people who are here today, and that is the mayor of Brigham City, Utah. He is a small businessman himself, and we are going to hear from him on that score later on. Right now he appears in his official capacity as mayor. TESTIMONY OF HON. OLE ZUNDEL, MAYOR, BRIGHAM CITY, UTAH Mr. ZUNDEL. Congressman Horton, Congressman Burton, and Mr. Chairman: I want to express our gratitude for your coming to Brigham City today, and we are specially grateful to our Congressman for asking you here. We think a lot of Laurence, and we feel that he is doing an awfully nice job. Now, I have a little part on the program later on, so I won't take much time except to just say once again that we are very happy to have you here. Now, we have a little gift that we would like to give you, Chairman Kluczynski, and members of the subcommittee. This is a replica of our gold spike of Box Elder County. There is a little story behind it. We have a Box Elder County Industrial Commission, and one of our members went out along these railroad tracks and picked up all of these spikes and finished them and made them into these little tokens, and we give them to visitors that come in our county, and we hope you accept these and that they will give you something to remember us by. We won't give one to Congressman Burton, as he already has one." Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. Thank you. I want you to know that it will be placed in Rayburn Building where I have a beautiful suite of offices. I assure you that this will be placed there as a remembrance of Brigham City, Utah. Mr. ZUNDEL. I would just like to assure you that you don't need to have this underscored, but this is a real heirloom because a few miles from Brigham City is where the two railroads were joined, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific when the golden spike was driven by the Governor of California, Governor Stanford, and these spikes that you have on your plaque are the original spikes. Later on different track was laid and much heavier spikes were used, but these were the ones that were put down by the old gandy dancers that went out there, and we are going to have a centennial here in a couple years, in 1969 on May 10, celebrating the 100 years "driving of the golden spike." So I can't think of anything more appropriate that you could have received from the mayor of Brigham City, Utah, than this golden spike. Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. I really appreciate it and hope I can be with you. Our first witness will be Mr. Veran N. Boothe, secretary-manager of the Chamber of Commerce of Brigham City, Utah. Mr. Boothe, do you have a prepared statement? Mr. BOOTHE. I have some notes only. Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. Please proceed, and if you have any further statement that you want to put in the record, we will hold it open for 30 days. TESTIMONY OF VERAN N. BOOTHE, SECRETARY-MANAGER, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, BRIGHAM CITY, UTAH Mr. BOOTHE. Honorable Chairman, Mr. Kluczynski, Honorable Mr. Horton, and Honorable Mr. Burton: Gentlemen, I would like to just tell you a little history of Box Elder County from the time it was settled in 1861, and its growth and development since then. It was an agricultural community, small grains, alfalfa, cattle, and sheep are the things that people were making a livelihood from. Fruit raising grew to be a large factor in the economy around Brigham City. It reached the proportion of several hundred carloads per year shipped from this area. Fruit growing gradually declined mainly because of price and selling building lots in Brigham City to the Thiokol employees when they moved in. In 1916 a sugar factory was built at Brigham City and operated through 1924 when curley top hit, which wiped us out as far as raising sugar beets in this area was concerned, at that time. The factory was inactive in 1926 and 1930 to 1937; it was closed in 1937. It was dismantled in 1943. Even though it was here 27 years, it only operated for 12 years. The closing of the Brigham City sugar factory hurt our economy very much. Bushnell Hospital was started in 1941. It operated until 1947. Then it was closed 2 years. So our economy suffered from that. Of course we didn't mind that because that ended the war, and we were very happy because of that. Intermountain Indian School took over Bushnell in 1949. As you probably know, there are upward of 2,200 Navajo schoolchildren attending that school. The payroll is about two and a half million dollars a year. So this is helping our economy. Thiokol started in 1957. I would like to read you these figures. I'll leave them with you, but I think they are important enough to show what happened when Thiokol came in. In the year 1957 they had 115 employees with a payroll of $209,091. In 1958 the employees reached 1,119 with a payroll of $2,747,646. In 1959 the employees reached 3,149 with a payroll of $13,949,462. In 1960 the employees reached 4,000 with a payroll of $21,586,366. In 1961 the number of employees was 4,530 with a payroll of $33,053,838. In 1962, which was the peak year, the employees reached 6,200 with a payroll of $43,038,628. In 1963 the employees reached 4,527 with a payroll of $45,010,283. Now, you will note there is approximately $2 million more money in payroll there and fewer employees. The reason for this was because there were more engineers at that time and fewer unskilled laborers. In 1964 the number of employees dropped to 2,900 and the payroll went down to $34,345,817. În 1965 the number of employees dropped to 2,250 with a payroll dropping to $22,774,071. In 1966 the number of employees dropped to 2,000 with a payroll dropping to $20,519,847. In 1967, as of June 1, the number of employees was 1,715 with a payroll through that period of time of $7,459,759, with an estimate of this year of a $15 million payroll. Also, I would like to show the building boom reached a peak in Brigham City in 1959 of $6,988,000 valuation. In 1960, $5,762,000 valuation. In 1961, $6,012,000 valuation. in 1962, $5,487,000 valuation. 1963, $1,058,000 valuation. 1964, $1,000,853 valuation. In 1965, $924,000 valuation. 1966, $926,199 valuation. As of June 1, 1967, $90,280 valuation. Thiokol has been a godsend to many of our farmers. I'm not going to dwell on that. Mr. HORTON. Mr. Chairman, may I interrupt Mr. Boothe to ask a couple questions? Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. Yes. Mr. HORTON. Mr. Boothe, could you furnish for the record the population of Brigham City for those years that you have given so that there will be a relationship between the employment by the corporation and the number of residents of the city for each of those years? Mr. BOOTHE. Yes, Mr. Horton, I think we reach a peak of about 16,500, and we are down to about 15,000 now. Mr. HORTON. If you will give us a detailed figure for each of those years, it will be helpful. You don't have to do it now. Mr. BOOTHE. I can give that information. (The information referred to follows:) LAURENCE J. BURTON, BRIGHAM CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN BURTON: The following figures are the ones requested by Frank J. Horton: |