The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1962-01-26
By EDITOR JOHN FISCHER, In HARPERS

scientific and other white-collar work
ers are almost impossible to organ
ize. For another, wage costs aren't
decisive. What is decisive is the quail
| ity of the product-plus constant
innovation of improved or entirely
new items. If a production team can
come up with a better silicon diode
or a more efficient process for MAX
ing antibiotics, management isn't in
clined to haggle about salaries.
6. Their one critical requirement,
therefore, is brain power. If they
hope to stay ahead of the COMPETE
ton, they must at all costs attract
(and hold) really first-rate scien-
lists, technicians, and executives.
1t is interesting to note the places
where such industries have, in fact,
chosen to locate. Although some are
scattered in many parts of the coun-
try, they have tended to gravitate
toward two great concentrations: one
in Southern California, the other in
the Boston area. In the Latter, they
have spouted thickest along Route
128-the semicircular expressway
built few years ago through what
was then open countryside to bypass
the traffic-choked metropolitan area
of Boston. According to DIR. F. Leroy
Foster, director of the Division of
Sponsored Research for Massachu-
sets Institute of Technology, more
than four hundred plants are now
turning out electronic components
or associated products within 20
mile radius of the Charles River
Basin, the center of the area. Vir-
tually all of them have been estab-
lished since the war, and most within
the last ten years.
The comparable concentration in
Southern California covers a wide |
area, and has been even more spectac-
ular in it's rate of growth. San Diego,
for instance, increased it's factory en-
ployment by Sd per cent between
1854 and 1859, while Los Angeles
reported Fl per cent gain.
TAX INCENTIVES NIL
Why have such plants sprung up in
these two places-rather than in say,
Mississippi, or upstate New
York, which need new industry much
more desperately? Certainly not be-
cause California and Massachusetts
lid a better promotion job or offered
bigger tax and wage incentives; their
promotion has been negligible and
heir tax incentives nil.
LII 1
areas did offer two powerful at
fractions:
/. A pleasant environment to live
in
2. Great universities.
These often turned out to be the
decisive considerations for manage
nent which was worrying about the
recruitment of key personnel.
To begin with, many of the people
hey wanted already had their roots
Iown in these communities. They
we're faculty members or graduate !.
tudents at NIT, Harvard, Boston /
Brandeis, or at Caltech,
stanford, or one of the many cam
uses of the University of California.
Indeed such people frequently start
factory themselves. NIT alumni
ave organized seventy-five new
in the Boston area since
lie war. And the firm which eventual
grew into the Raytheon Company
as originally founded by DR.. Vanne-
ar Bush-wartime director of the
ffice of Scientific Research and De-
two friends, who
anted to make a special kind of
ermostat. Raytheon now employs
1000 people-the great majority
twenty-five plants near Boston,
Moreover, other scientists can
silly be persuaded to move to an
ca which has a complex of good =
liversities. There they can keep in
UGH with the research under way
the best laboratories. They can
insult whenever necessary with the
aiding minds in their fields.
Above all, they have company. In
g evenings they can visit with
lends who share their interests and
TX their language. And not merely
tn other scientists. These people
equently are true intellectuals, with