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Turquoise and Turboprops

Andrew Needham

in Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest

This chapter examines how manufacturing passed agriculture as the Phoenix's largest economic sector. By 1960, manufacturing employed thirty thousand people and generated income of $435 million in ... More

This chapter examines how manufacturing passed agriculture as the Phoenix's largest economic sector. By 1960, manufacturing employed thirty thousand people and generated income of $435 million in Phoenix, compared to fewer than one thousand employees and income of $5 million twenty years earlier. It also remade the landscape. In Phoenix's industrial boom, the “clean” factories of companies located operations outside of Phoenix's traditional industrial areas south of downtown, creating a landscape labeled “industrial garden”—a booster dreamscape in which “neighborhoods and factories, workers and managers, homes and highways were to coexist in a delicate balance.” The demand of “clean” industries for ever increasing amounts of electricity grew at double-digit rates annually from 1950 to 1965. This demand represented not only the manifestations of a new industrial landscape, it also reflected the increasing political power of Phoenix's boosters and others like them across the West within the postwar American political economy.Less

A New Mobilization: The Redemption of the Planning Ideal

Scott O’Bryan

in The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan

This chapter examines the concerted efforts by former wartime planners to resuscitate and redeem the ideal of planning in postwar Japan. It begins with a discussion of planning dilemmas faced by ... More

This chapter examines the concerted efforts by former wartime planners to resuscitate and redeem the ideal of planning in postwar Japan. It begins with a discussion of planning dilemmas faced by individuals in and around the bureaucracy as they began to set their sights on the postwar economy. It then considers the principles of planning laid out by the Special Survey Committee that self-consciously recast planning in terms of a new democratic and scientific humanism, and specifically as science “without compulsion.” It also discusses the efforts of Inaba Hidezō to mobilize the ideal of humanistic technocracy to articulate a new vision of planning deemed more appropriate to a “new,” open Japan.Less

Conclusion

Simon Partner

in Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer

This chapter explains the emergence of the Japanese electrical goods industry, and explains that this industrial growth was part of a continuum stretching back to the beginning of Japan's modern ... More

This chapter explains the emergence of the Japanese electrical goods industry, and explains that this industrial growth was part of a continuum stretching back to the beginning of Japan's modern history. Japanese leaders unwaveringly supported the development of electronics and communications technologies. The chapter also clarifies four major themes that brought prosperity to business leaders and entrepreneurs: media, technology, domestic market, and low-cost labor. It furthermore discusses the factors that set the postwar period apart from the prewar, and explores the various paradoxes experienced by the Japanese people during this period. The chapter evaluates the role of the Japanese government in the postwar Japanese economy and examines the significance of electrical goods in Japan's postwar history.Less

Restoring Vacations after the War

Diane P. Koenker

in Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream

This chapter takes up the story of vacations and tourism in the postwar years. This period offered new opportunities to expand and reshape not only Soviet vacation opportunities but the entire ... More

This chapter takes up the story of vacations and tourism in the postwar years. This period offered new opportunities to expand and reshape not only Soviet vacation opportunities but the entire direction of the Soviet project. But the victory over fascism could also serve to validate the Soviet system as it had developed by the end of the 1930s. The chapter shows how the greatest challenge for tourism and vacations in building on the patterns established before the war was to recover from the economic devastation of wartime, and how little energy or effort was expended on reimagining the structure, content, or meaning of these vacations.Less

The Turning Point

Mark Metzler

in Capital as Will and Imagination: Schumpeter's Guide to the Postwar Japanese Miracle

This chapter offers some interim conclusions about the successes of inflationary reconstruction, the end of the great inflation, and the beginnings of the “Schumpeterian boom” that followed. It ... More

This chapter offers some interim conclusions about the successes of inflationary reconstruction, the end of the great inflation, and the beginnings of the “Schumpeterian boom” that followed. It discusses how the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 resulted in international economic recovery. This was also when full economic stabilization came to Japan, fueled by Korean War spending by the United States. By the end of 1950, Japan had regained its position as the world's number one exporter of cotton cloth. The government's store of foreign-exchange currency more than doubled. Imports remained highly constrained. Price levels rose sharply, especially for producer goods. Against this overall movement, the relative stabilization of food prices adversely affected farmers, who on the whole had gained greatly in the inflation years. By the same token, it stabilized the livelihoods of consumers.Less

Pens, Planes, and Politics: How Race and Labor Practices Shaped Postwar Atlanta

Joseph M. Thompson

in Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power

This chapter combines political, labor, and cultural history methodologies to compare the Lockheed aircraft factory in Marietta, Georgia, and the Scripto pen and pencil factory in nearby Atlanta. ... More

This chapter combines political, labor, and cultural history methodologies to compare the Lockheed aircraft factory in Marietta, Georgia, and the Scripto pen and pencil factory in nearby Atlanta. While the mostly male employees at Lockheed, a majority-white plant, enjoyed the job security delivered by defense contracts at the height of the Cold War military-industrial complex, the Scripto workers, the majority of whom were African American women, faced the more capricious turns of the market. Many of the disparities between these factories stemmed from their common management history found in the career of attorney, businessman, and civic leader, James V. Carmichael. Although situated within close geographical proximity, Lockheed and Scripto helped create disparate racial, political, and cultural worlds in the mid-twentieth century. The tale of these two factories uncovers the stark contrasts between the ways race, gender, and government intervention shaped different sectors of the postwar southern economy.Less

Baby Boom

in Of War and Men: World War II in the Lives of Fathers and Their Families

This chapter examines the sharp increase in the birth rate in the U.S. after the war, a trend which continued throughout and 1950s and 1960s. There were several reasons for the baby boom, including ... More

This chapter examines the sharp increase in the birth rate in the U.S. after the war, a trend which continued throughout and 1950s and 1960s. There were several reasons for the baby boom, including the healthy postwar economy and couples' yearnings for stability and the glorification of family. This chapter also provides evidence that some men in the postwar era at least planned to be active caregivers and talks about how some fathers-to-be attended maternity classes.Less

Bridging Transatlantic Divides: Bringing Consumer Modernity “Back” to Europe

Jan L. Logemann

in Engineered to Sell: European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism

This short segue contextualizes the role of migrant knowledge and emigre transfers within the broader notion of an "Americanization" of postwar Europe through consumer marketing and advertising.

Crisis Manager

David Farber

in Everybody Ought to Be Rich: The Life and Times of John J. Raskob, Capitalist

This chapter describes the risks posed by continued investments in the growth of General Motors. In 1919 and then into 1920, Billy Durant, with Raskob's full support, spent around $79 million, ... More

This chapter describes the risks posed by continued investments in the growth of General Motors. In 1919 and then into 1920, Billy Durant, with Raskob's full support, spent around $79 million, betting on GM's future. While some of the investments were expensive but brilliant long-term moves, others were a colossal waste of money. Regardless of their strategic value, the acquisitions and internal investments stressed to the near-breaking point GM's financial position. By the summer of 1920, when the postwar economy took a hard turn, GM lacked the capital flow to service its debt and meet its obligations to its legions of creditors. It share price, which had already fallen to under $40 a share in the spring of 1920, began a long slide. Under Durant's hand, assisted by Raskob, GM was falling apart, again. Between November 1920 and April 1921, Raskob was immersed in GM's financial affairs.Less