CRISIS ON THE WEST COAST
Neuberger, Richard L.
Crisis On The West Coast By RICHARD L. NEUBERGER Seattle, Wash. THE WAR is ended. A miracle of science has brought Japan to defeat. Men in laboratories, probing at elemental forces and cosmic...
...in addition, the Bay region was declining as both a population center and marketing area before the war began...
...No such hopeful prospect encourages the Far West...
...If lumber is to be maintained as a permanent industry, the rate of cutting must slack off rather than be accelerated...
...Wrhy cannot the Federal Government, or perhaps the 11 Western states, establish a central, coordinating unit to have these plants build equipment needed in the West...
...What about the light-metals industries — aluminum, magnesium...
...What else is there...
...Roosevelt had run American foreign policy...
...The war has demonstrated that...
...Yet all Kaiser's ventures have not always succeeded...
...Roosevelt had authorized ?2,-000, 000,000 for the researches into the atomic bomb...
...Yet, ironically enough, the worst dislocations of the reconversion period are certain to shake the Coast to its economic foundations...
...Of Portland's industrial payroll 74 per cent of the men are in shipyards, in San Francisco 53 per cent, in Seattle 36 per cent, in Los Angeles 17 per cent...
...When the new President entered the White House, he pretty much followed policies begun by Mr...
...Only the United States tolerate industrial empires so vast and powerful that each of them has the investment, power and authority of a dozen or so states...
...The war against Japan always took precedence in the minds of the people who live along the shores of the Pacific Ocean...
...Roosevelt had promoted Bretton Woods...
...Roosevelt...
...The reconversion period Is a Truman problem...
...THE West Coast has gained more greatly in population during the war than any other section of the country...
...WHAT ABOUT the lumber industry...
...This work has waited completion until the war ended...
...Well, Lyle Watts of the U. S. Forest Service points out that during the war the nation's trees have been cut too fast...
...Along the Pacific slope there will be scant reconversion...
...About 1,600 commercial planes were in operation in the United States before the war...
...San Francisco will not be far behind...
...These industries employ few workers...
...The gain has been approximately 17 per cent, an enormous increase...
...How will the unemployed be absorbed...
...Manpower is of minor importance in the production of the light metals...
...A few minor public works might absorb other workers...
...First and foremost, the Coast itself could actually do something about decentralizing industry...
...One is the clearing of land, the installation of pumps and the digging of canals for the huge irrigation network at Grand Coulee...
...The durable-goods factories will turn out vast quantities of merchandise now that the war is ended...
...The new President is on his own...
...BUT, by and large, the situation on the West Coast will test the new Federal regime to the utmost...
...At least 15,000 men would find work in this project, too...
...Men in laboratories, probing at elemental forces and cosmic riddles, have proved more speedily effective than military strategists...
...What, then, are the alternatives...
...Press agents have touted him as the builder of Grand Coulee Dam, but his connection with urand uouiee was tenuous and unimportant and he in no sense developed or planned the great undertaking...
...Roosevelt had called the United Nations to San Francisco...
...The West Coast will be the critical test of the reconversion policies...
...Portland will probably be industrially flat when the war orders are shut off...
...But these factories are all in the East...
...The industrial capitals of the East face a temporary hiatus...
...His magnesium project was a failure...
...What if various parts of the locomotives were manufactured in the West and then assembled at a central point...
...Not necessarily, for the plan has been followed in Switzerland and other countries...
...The Bonneville Administration has under consider ation plans to electrify all the Far Western railroads...
...Rarely has a shipyard ever been converted to anything...
...Ivan Bloch, industrial development director of the Bonneville Power Administration, is advocating the organization of a small-manufacturers' committee in the West to channel Western industrial orders into the plants in the region...
...Now approximately 550,000 get their pay-checks from this work...
...None of these industries exists on the Coast...
...Henry Kaiser has talked vaguely of helicopters, but there are no specific plans...
...Elsewhere in the country, a backlog of both industrial and retail orders will provide employment as soon as reconversion is finished...
...This would employ 10,000 men, as did the Al-can Military Highway built farther inland...
...What will happen on the Coast...
...A handful of men can operate a huge aluminum plant...
...Manchester Bod-dy, publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News, has been waging a persistent campaign for the spreading out of American industry—for breaking vast manufacturing empires into smaller regional establishments...
...For the first time since 1931, when the Japs began their long march of aggression, there is no fighting on earth...
...Nor are many Americans likely to be in the market for helicopters right away...
...President Truman is considering another highway to Alaska...
...The West Coast is probably the American region most jubilant over the speedy surrender in Tokyo...
...Two big undertakings also might employ large numbers of men...
...For example, the Milwaukee Railroad requires several new electric locomotives for its Rocky Mountain division...
...Impossible...
...But even these vast undertakings leave plenty of West Coast workers on relief...
...Well, there are numerous small machine shops, iron works and manufacturing plants along the Pacific seaboard...
...Now that the fighting has ceased, at least 15,000 workers might get jobs performing this vital task...
...The work is done by electric power...
...These locomotives cost $500,000 apiece...
...Before Pearl Harbor only 17,600 men on the Coast were engaged in shiprepair and shipbuilding...
...But now Roosevelt is dead...
...Matching this figure—even though it be expanded many times—with a wartime production of 100,000 aircraft would try the ingenuity of even the inventors of the incredible atom bomb...
...The policy of sustained yield has been abandoned...
...To what will the Coast turn...
...Ordinarily, the order would go East, to West-inghouse or General Electric...
...This will be the great test of the Truman Administration...
...Full details on this idea are expected to come forth soon...
...Many people place great faith in Henry Kaiser, whose shipyards have done so magnificent a job...
...These are not large industrial units, but they are competent and efficient...
...But the war plants in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Erie will convert to automobiles, radios, electrical appliances, telephone equipment, refrigerators, tractors, and stoves...
...But the Coast will need help immediately...
...Incidentally, if the nation's leading industrialists believe as thoroughly in democracy as they claim, they might do something about decentralization...
...You don't convert shipyards, and the airplane plants at Los Angeles, Burbank and Seattle will manufacture only a fraction of their wartime output...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 35
