My dad is a bass fisherman.  A really classic Joe American type, Johnson motors bass-fishing boat, fish-finder, the works.  He can affix a lure in his sleep.  And growing up, virtually every good-weather weekend in Ohio, I'd be out there with him at Hoover Reservoir, or Alum Creek, dropping the line and taking whatever we could catch.

I bring this up not because of its homey associations for a lot of folks, but because in fishing, you have to appreciate a very simple principle: small does not mean unimportant, and in fact it is the majority that is made up of the seemingly insignificant that in fact supports the entire ecological structure that makes those "big catches" even possible, let alone probable.

Small business has been the lifeblood of the United States since practically its inception.  Capitalism is bandied about as a dirty word in a lot of circles today, but the fact is that trade based on supply and demand, on quality and pricing that are subject to a free enterprise competitive structure of laissez-faire operation, has been one of the real supporting structures for this nation throughout its history.  In even its seemingly lowest economic periods, it is hard work and dedication to the principles of an interconnected, interdependent economy that have gotten us back into prosperity.

And like the reservoirs and lakes where my father would take me to fish, you can't have the big corporations, you can't have the massive megaliths of the financial and industrial world, without the 'small fry' there to help feed it.  And not, as you might readily jump to assume, because the small fry are there to simply be eaten, swallowed whole in the appetites of Big Business interests and lobbying.

My dad always taught me to respect what I was doing when I fished with him.  You don't leave your trash in the water.  You wipe down your boat and gear when you leave the lake so as to prevent corrosion to your equipment.  Essentially, you take care of what you enjoy and more importantly you take the care to appreciate and help sustain that very subject of enjoyment. 

Small fry, the little crappies and perch and bluegills out there, clean the waters.  They feed on the wastes of other animals in the water.  They help sustain and control the growth of weeds, algae and other necessary but nuisance-risking components to the whole system.  Sure, occasionally they succumb to the predations of a larger animal, but overall they are more valued for what they do in living than in how they give sustenance to others in dying.

The American small business is getting treated like small fry, but without the respect for what that really means.  They're being treated with the back of the hand, with a flip of disdain from the larger beasts trolling their shores.  And when we, the people who are served best by their presence, stop noticing them or writing them off as 'obsolete,' 'out-dated,' 'an old-fashioned idea' like some Rockwell painting of a quaint but gone bit of Americana, we are discounting something that has fundamentally served our nation from the first days it shakily took its steps as a new country.

Small business accounts for the majority of commerce and manufacturing.  Your tailors, your little corner grocers, your coffee shops.  They're still out there, despite what many cynics and PR people would lead you to believe.  They're still out there, and they still help keep the waters clear, the growth solid, and yes, even the larger corporations still operating as a form of healthy check-and-balance competition.

And let's remember that such disregard is a good portion of why we have the troubles we have now in our economy.  We've starved and driven out so many of these 'small fry' businesses, now suddenly the mismanagement and gluttony of the larger fish is leaving them gasping, getting thinner, dying out themselves.  We stare and wonder openly "How could this have happened?" without realizing that nothing starts out big.  It starts with the small fry.  Every time.

Bring back the supply.  Re-stock the waters, this time with a mind to tending and sustaining the entirety of the system, not just the large and easy-to-see big fish we all want to net.  Bring back small business with an eye to the future that they are as important as any other part of this economic structure.  Give the small fry a break, quit over-fishing them with heavy, convoluted tax structures and unfair advantages to the bigger fish.  Let them breathe, let them breed, and let them continue to grow and do what they've always done best.

We can still enjoy the fruits of a large catch every now and again, it's not an either/or proposition I'm suggesting.  There are examples of famous "big fish" that lurk in various lakes throughout America, being caught over and over again by one generation after another of new fishermen and -women. 

But the big fish don't stick around ten, twenty, thirty years...without the small fry there to keep the waters warm and the sustenance plentiful.  Just because you've gone out and haven't spotted anything but a few little bluegills doesn't mean it heralds a lackluster future for the whole lake, or that they're not worthwhile catches in their own right.