included in a mail canvass to determine the specific ancestry of all owners. The specific groups identified on the survey form were Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Latin American. Classification of firms in terms of their ownership by members of these Spanish-speaking minority groups followed the same system used to identify the ownership of firms with black partners or owners. Use of the Spanish surname list in connection with other projects had shown that all Spanish-speaking Americans could not be identified through the use of a Spanish surname list. Such lists are not necessarily complete and some Spanish-speaking Americans have surnames that are not normally associated with Spanish ancestry. Therefore, a national sample was selected from the universe of all firms in order to provide an estimate of the number of firms owned by Spanishspeaking Americans with surnames not usually associated with Spanish ancestry. A mail canvass was conducted for both the Spanish surname group and the national sample to determine the specific Spanish origin of the owner, partner, or shareholder; i.e., Mexican-American, Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Latin American. An additional sample of firms selected from those businesses that were identified in the Social Security records as being owned by neither whites nor blacks was surveyed to determine the number of businesses owned by Americans of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Korean, and American Indian ancestry. Firms having paid employees are included in files obtained by the Census Bureau from the Social Security Administration for use in the preparation of the statistical report, "County Business Patterns" (CBP). The Social Security Administration authorized the use of these tapes in the minority-owned business project. By abstracting selected information from the 1969 CBP file, it was possible to assign to each business the Standard Industrial Classification Code (SIC), a geographic code, and the number of employees reported during the midMarch 1969 pay period. Business firms not included in the CBP list were then matched to 1967 economic census files of firms with no paid employees to obtain the geographic and industry code for such companies. Businesses not found on either list were generally companies which had no paid employees in 1969 and were not in business in 1967 or were classified in an industry in 1967 that was not within the scope of the 1967 economic censuses. Such firms were geographically coded based on the name and address included in the IRS file. The Principal Industrial Activity code used by IRS was converted to a comparable SIC code. |