Togetherness
Page 3
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
EW people really trust definitions. Edmund Burke had "no great opinion" of them. Disraeli said forthrightly: "I hate definitions." The 16th-century scholar Erasmus opined that: "All definitions are dangerous." In the face of such dignified pronouncements, how can one define that ubiquitous operator known as "the small man "? It is a very ambiguous term. In what respect is he small? What is to be the yardstick?
Whoever he is, the small man has a permanent place of eminence in the growth and continued development of road transport. In December, 1961, the R.H.A. secretary-general asked whether "the day of the small, rugged individualist" might not be beginning to pass. Other people have expressed similar opinions. In this issue Post paid. a contributor asks: "Is the small haulier doomed?" Many of what are termed "smaller fleets" were castigated on Tuesday in an I.R.T.E. report on diesel exhaust smoke.
Poor little small man, events seem to be catching up with him. Now The Commercial Motor wishes to say this: Transport will always remain an industry of individualists—that is its strength. Not even the Socialists can change that. But if the small man is wise he will band together wherever he can, and on as many fronts as he can. Single sticks can be snapped at will. Bundles of sticks cannot. It is as simple as that.