The Big Change

The nation's expansion altered the face of the land so fast that anyone who had been away for as long as ten years would scarcely recognize his home town. Unlike the Government-financed expansion of World War II, virtually all new plants were paid for by private industry, with no other incentive than the right to write off most of the cost in five years instead of the usual 20. And though the arms program was responsible for the start of many of the plants, most of them, e.g., the great new steel, aluminum and chemical factories, were a net gain to the economy for civilian production.

"The fastest-growing little town in the country" became the cliche of the year. The population of Pomona, Calif, jumped from 38,000 to 42,300 in a year as aircraft plants (Lockheed and Northrop) rose among its walnut groves. Livonia, Mich, increased in size (from 17,000 to 25,000) as the result of Ford's $50 million tank plant, a new General Motors plant, and other industries which came in their wake.

In the Savannah River Valley, the $1.5 billion hydrogen-bomb plant caused Barnwell, S.C. to quintuple its population (from 2,500 to 13,000). A mobile city of 1,200 trailers sprang up almost overnight. In nearby Augusta, Ga., whose population shot from 71,040 to 150,000 in two years, it was easy to forget the plant's grim purpose in the flood of new jobs it brought. When White's Department Store hung out a Christmas sign, "Santa Claus Is Here!", Reporter Esther Young of the Augusta Chronicle cracked: "Why, everybody knows that Santa Claus is over at the H-bomb plant's pay windows."

The South continued to boom. One of the nation's biggest chemical centers sprang up in Alabama's tiny farming hamlet of Mclntosh, lured by its abundant salt deposits. In Decatur, Ala., Monsanto Chemical and American Viscose began building $133 million plants for Chemstrand, their jointly owned subsidiary, to manufacture Acrilan. All the synthetics --notably the new fibers like Dacron, Orion, Dynel, etc.--were growing so fast that Australian sheepherders worried that they would lose their wool market, as the Japanese had lost their market for silk.

The new petrochemical industry, based on the immense natural gas resources of the oilfields, seemed the fastest grower in 1952. In Texas, where new multimillion-dollar plants were no rarity, some Texans predicted that petrochemicals would outstrip oil as their biggest industry. But Texas and the Gulf Coast had no monopoly on petrochemicals; California was giving it a race, and in the Great Plains' great new oil province of the Williston Basin, North Dakotans were predicting that their own petrochemical industry would soon arise.

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