Evening star., 1942-07-14
War Business Boom
Hits and Misses in
All Sections
Like Kansas Tornodo,
1t Cuts Rugged Troll
Across Nation
BY JAMES MARROW and
WILLIAM PINKERTON,
Wide World Business Writers

Inc war economy mas TaCeO across
America like a Kansas tornado, hit
ting here and skipping there with
no apparent reason.
Across America, towns bulgine
with war workers and booming with
war business sit beside towns full
of vacant homes and vacant shops
Both the boom town and the war
time ghost town are found in every
region. There are towns, too, that
are getting along'-no boom, nc
depression, just business as usual
The business has changed-the shoe
factory turns out Army boots, the
metal shop makes gun parts-but
the town goes along about the same
The boom is not limited to big
cities and the depression hits not
only in the small towns.
This is the overall picture seen in
confidential reports from Govern
ment field agents.
Big Centers Busting.
Hits: The big centers of bustling
business are pretty obvious-the
steel mill towns of the North and
the South. Detroit with its con-
verted automobile plants, Lower
California's aircraft centers, the
machine tool sections of Ohio and
the shipbuilding GEN.
ters along the coasts, the old Army
arsenal towns. With these go hun
dreds of small cities whose shops
were fit for conversion, whose loca-
ton was right for subcontracting
Less -obvious regional industries
have given a boost to business in
other places-the lumber industry
of the West Coast, with growing
backlog of untitled orders. Mime
sofas iron range, the copper mines
of Utah and Arizona, the chromite
and manganese centers in Califor-
mia, the centers of electrical manu-
facture in New York State and New
shoe towns and textile
towns adapted to filling orders for
the armed services.
Add to these the overnight bo-
nanzas where Army camps or naval
training centers have given business
a sudden push.
Despite the shortage of farm labor,
there is general agreement, too.
that towns which buy and sell from
the farms are mostly doing all
right. The farmers income has in
creased, and transportation bobbles
are forcing him to do more shopping
near home.
New York City Quiet.
Misses New York City, financial
capital of the Nation. is reported
There are few war in
dustries In Manhattan. The city's
argest industry-the 200, ,000-man
apparel-cutting and needle trade
has slowed up for lack of materials.
Foreign trade, life blood of the
great exporting and importing busi-
ness, has been cut to trickle. In
The merchandising centers, the out
look seems grim. The bulk of white
collar workers have not shared the
Dig pay increases of the wage earn
ers in factory towns.
Smoke -wreathed factories in New
Jersey, Connecticut and upstate New
York may take up some of the slack
in New York City's employment
The hard-coal mining region of
Pennsylvania, which lost many men
to the war industries around it, has
had its troubles, but the outlook is
not bad for the duration.
The distressed industries of the
South are the cast-iron pipe and
stove works and the silk hosiery in
dustry. For technical reasons, they
find it difficult to adapt their oper-
ations for war work.
Tourist Trade Hard Hit.
All along the Atlantic Seaboard,
of course, are industries suffering
from the transportation jam, caused
largely by the submarine marauding
on East Coast shipping. Chief
among these is the tourist trade.
which stretches along the coast
from Maine to Miami. The Army
and Navy have helped some of these
towns-dimmed out and quiet-by
training centers in their
once -swank hotels.
Other industries, too, have hit
the transportation snag-the sugar
refneries of the northeast, for in
stance, which used to get their raw
product direct from Cuba by boat.
In New England, they say: Sew
ing machines and stamping presses
are a dime Dozen"
In the Middle West, sluggish
areas often house factories built
for sheet metal work, metal stamp
ing. automotive trades, miscella-
neous wood products or gray-iron
foundries-industries which seem
likely workers but which are
equipped only for limited jobs in
the war drive.
Compared with the miners who
are digging the vital metals of
war-iron, copper, chromite, nickel
the gold miners of South Dakota
and the gold and silver miners of
the Far West consider their posi-
ton none too good. In the midst
of mining rush they are prac-
tically in the doldrums.
Wherever farmers till the soil the
promise of good prices is encourag-
ing, but the nightmare of good
crops without farm hands to gather
them is everpresent. Harvest days
will show how successfully this
shortage can be met.
That is the broad-brush picture.
Not every boom and bust of the
war is in it, but it gives you an
idea, perhaps, of the things that
wars necessities are doing to
America.