Postwar Industrial Planning on the Pacific Coast

Abstract

THE Pacific Coast as a region and California as a State have been affected by wartime distortions of their economic structure earlier and to a far greater extent than any comparable region or state in the nation. Population shifts, manpower shortages, housing shortages, transportation problems, food shortages and other wartime developments have appeared sooner, and have been felt more intensely than in most other sections of the nation. This has been due in part of the fact that the vast expansion in shipbuilding and in aircraft manufacture was well under way here before other industrial centers of the country had begun to convert their facilities to the production of war materials; partly to the fact that this region is a heavy producer of food, fibre, lumber, petroleum, and mineral raw materials needed in the war effort; and partly to the fact that in addition to being a training place for all branches of military service, it is in a potential combat zone, with its ports and bases serving as points of embarcation for the men and materials moving into the fighting fronts in the Pacific. The latter suggests also the possibility that some of these wartime conditions may continue to dominate the economy of this region for a longer time than in other parts of the nation in the event the war ends in Europe a year or more before it is brought to a close in the Pacific.