The Pacific Northwest Light Metals Industry

Abstract

THE Pacific Northwest has suffered a war-change as have so many other regions of the United States. Unlike most industrial communities, however, the increment of war orders has not only been disproportionately heavy but the entire load has been largely superimposed upon a prewar industrial pattern which has remained essentially unchanged except for some expansion. In contrast with Detroit, for example, where the old industry of automobile making was cut off or greatly modified and a new industry of tank and aircraft and other war production substituted, in the Northwest the old businesses of lumber manufacturing, farming, and fishing, continued or were expanded and, in addition, aircraft, shipbuilding, and an entire new light metals industry were added. To be sure Boeing's was in existence before the war, as was the United States Navy Yard at Bremerton, and a few shipyards which built small craft and repaired larger ones. But in comparison with the war peak operations the activities of these institutions were very limited.