Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

registration was 4.97 million in 1950 and 3.1 million in 1940. There is keen competition among railroads. The Southern Pacific, Santa Fe and Union Pacific all serve the state and all are spending millions on facilities expansion and improvement. California has nearly 10,500 private airplanes, many for industry and farming, representing 1 1 % of the U. S. total. The state has 447 airfields with Los Angeles International and San Francisco International handling the greatest traffic and Burbank and Oakland not far behind. A dozen major airlines use San Francisco while 10 operate at Los Angeles. The impact of military installations on California's economy is considerable but difficult to measure since accurate data is hard to find. Hardly a major community in the state doesn't share in the pay and procurements of nearby bases, some of which have substantial civilian employment as well as military. Of the $2 billion spending program announced by the Defense Dept. a fortnight ago for new worldwide building, California got the biggest share of any state, $169.7 million. The big allocations included: Navy air station, Alameda, $2.7 million; Marine Corps supply center, Barstow, $3.4 million; Navy amphibious base, Coronado, $5.6 million; Marine Corps air station, El Toro, $6.8 million; Navy ordnance test station, China Lake, $6 million; Navy air station, Miramar, $8.8 million; Marine Corps auxiliary air station, Mojave, $12.5 million; Navy air station, Lemoore, $5.6 million; Navy magazine, Port Chicago, $23.4 million; Navy shipyard, Long Beach, $6 million; Edwards Air Force Base, Muroc, $5.5 million; George AFB, Victorville, $3.1 million, and March AFB, Riverside, $5.2 million. Defense Dept. figures show pay to civilian employes in California ranged from $400 million in 1949 to $740 million in 1952. To the geologist or geographer, California has 11 distinct provinces, but to the man in the market there are only two — north and south. They are based upon the two principal wholesale distribution centers of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The half-way point between them, where rail and motor truck rates are equal, is a line which bisects San Luis Obispo County just north of San Luis Obispo, runs through Hanford and northern Kings County and through Tulare County north of Tulare and Exeter. In many state business and economic statistics, this area division is modified to designate Southern California as the 14 southern counties, including the four lower San Joaquin Valley counties of Fresno, Kern, Tulare and Kings, while the remaining 44 counties comprise Northern California. While both sections excel in certain aspects of the state's phenomenal postwar growth, Southern California is the area of the more spectacular expansion overall in population, industry and the things that go with them such as retail sales. It claims 10 of the nation's top 25 farm counties, with total farm income of nearly $1.5 billion. Here is where you will find the cult of outdoor living by patio and pool most ardently practiced, the barbeque pit an altar. Here there are more automobiles than total families, restlessly wheeling them from Page 78 • January 30, 1956 home to office, to massive suburban shopping centers, to beach or mountain and back again over the world's biggest, most complex maze of freeway and highway. In round figures, Southern California has 70% of the state total of factory workers and manufacturing payroll, over 60% of the total population and over 70% of the total civilian income. It spent $2 billion last year in new construction, accounting for 70% of the new homes. It bought more automobiles than Delaware, Idaho, Arkansas, Arizona, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and Vermont combined. "One good index of the expansion here in Southern California is reflected in the 14.5% jump in retail sales last year over 1954," says Conrad C. Jamison, vice president and manager of the research department of Security-First National Bank of Los Angeles. "It went up to $10.89 billion according to our calculations, with metropolitan Los Angeles accounting for $7.66 billion." His research assistant, Edward Sholtus, noted retail sales volume on a per capita basis "climbed to levels never previously approached." The $1,335 per capita average last year was 10% over 1954 and 5.5% greater than the previous high in 1953. LOS ANGELES Drive south on La Cienega Blvd. from the Sunset Strip in Beverly Hills and try to make up your mind whether to have dinner at Lowry's Prime Rib, Tail of the Cock, Captain's Table or any of a dozen swank restaurants. You will suddenly wonder where all the people come from to support so many fancy eating places in just a few blocks. Spend a weekend at the Santa Monica beach and rubberneck along the Miracle Mile of smart shops on Wilshire Blvd. where modern landmarks include Carnation Co.'s headquarters or Prudential Insurance Co.'s mountain of light by the La Brea tar pits, or tour the residential areas at La Canada or San Marino, and you will sense the stir of great growing and adjusting. Head toward Anaheim in Orange County and you will find rows of new houses replacing rows of orange trees. See the new industry rising in Long Beach, Pasadena, Torrance. Let the crowds press you at International Airport, Union Depot. Creep along in the Hollywood freeway jam at 5:30. Look at the jets, six miles high, slowly painting the blue sky with white vapor trails. Count the big ships in the harbor. Visit the huge suburban shopping centers. Stop at the markets which never close, jammed with swing-shift shoppers in the middle of the night. Here is the heart of California's great boom. • Metropolitan Los Angeles (Los Angeles and Orange Counties) since 1950 has swelled 25% to more than 5.5 million people, accounting for 43% of the total population of the state. It has swallowed a population as big as Baltimore's in five years. • Now the nation's third greatest metropolitan area, Los Angeles is crowding Chi cago (5.9 million) for second place and may win it by 1960. • Los Angeles built more new houses last year (105,500 units) than any other area of the country. Building permits topped $1.3 billion, 20% over last year. Home construction has averaged more than 90,000 units yearly since 1950. • Los Angeles is spread out more than any ether big city, with more than 150 major incorporated and unincorporated areas, each a distinct market as large as big cities elsewhere in the nation, blending into one great mass. • Here is a city on wheels, where 2.5 million cars are driven over 17 billion miles each year. They use nearly 5 million gallons of gas each day, double prewar consumption in the basin area. New car sales exceed the combined totals of 13 states. • This is the land of the freeway, nearly $400 million worth of concrete and steel sinews which since the war have grown to 165 miles, linking strongly the city's scattered communities. New millions are expanding the freeway system to an eventual 535 miles. The Hollywood Freeway to the San Fernando Valley, designed to carry 100,000 cars a day, handles nearly double that total now. • Here some 2.3 million workers in 14,500 industries produce goods valued at over $5.2 billion. A record 700,000 are in manufacturing, taking home weekly paychecks totaling over $60 million. Since 1947 the Los Angeles manufacturing force has nearly doubled, adding the equivalent of the entire factory employment of Cleveland. • Los Angeles has passed Detroit as the third industrial center in the U. S., with 32 different industries in the $25-million-andup category. It is second only to New York and Chicago, moving up from fifth place in 1947 when it was also behind Philadelphia. • With 57 of the nation's top 100 blue chip industries represented here, Los Angeles ranks first in aircraft production, motion pictures, canned sea food (tuna); second in auto assembly and women's apparel, more recently electronics (possibly first as a research and development center); third in over a dozen other fields, including petroleum refining, furniture, rubber. • Manufacturing in metropolitan Los Angeles accounts for 60% of the state total and over 40% of all manufacturing in the 11 western states. • Capital investment in new and expanded industry last year hit a record $249 million, creating 26,500 new jobs. Since 1950 some $1.3 billion has been invested, 25% greater than the entire World War II decade. • Even with industrial growth and population spread, Los Angeles County still ranks fourth of all U. S. counties in value of agricultural products, about $210 million last year. For 40 years before 1950 it was first in the U. S. It still is tops in dairy products, exceeding any county in Wisconsin. • Los Angeles is challenging San Francisco as claimant to the title of chief financial and insurance capital of the West. Bank debits for the city of Los Angeles Broadcasting • Telecasting