California in the 1950s and 1960s was quintessentially Pacific Eldorado, a coastal land whose citizens enjoyed the good life, which was found in the mushrooming suburbs, especially but not only in the Southland. Job opportunities in the aircraft and other industries ensured a high level of consumer spending.
Agriculture led the state’s economy, and California’s farmers led the nation in crop productivity. In 1970 farm products exceeded $4 billion in value. In addition to the usual fruits, nuts, vegetables, and animal products covered in earlier chapters, winemaking gained international attention, thanks in part to vinicultural researchers at UC Davis, whose graduates included some of Europe’s leading vintners. The state’s more than 250 wineries began producing varietals, that is, wines made from particular grapes and named for those grapes, for example, Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignons. In a prestigious blind winetasting competition in Paris in 1976 Napa Valley Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon wines bested for the first time what were reputed to be their elite competitors in France.
The industrial sector of the state’s economy hummed. Oil wells pumped 350 million barrels annually. Los Angeles was second only to Detroit in tire manufacturing and automobile assembly. Aircraft and aerospace enterprises accounted for an even larger share of California’s jobs and prosperity. America’s wars across the Pacific, first in Korea (1950-3) and then in Vietnam (1964-75), boosted the state’s economy as 25 percent of all Pentagon spending, amounting to $50 billion between 1952 and 1962, came to California. This was twice what any other state received. In 1953 California surpassed New York, becoming the nation’s leading recipient of military appropriations. By 1963 40 percent of the Pentagon’s research and development budget of $8.5 billion went to California.
Naturally, defense spending at such a high level produced numerous jobs, especially for engineers and scientific researchers. Mare Island Naval Shipyard in San Francisco Bay built nuclear-powered Polaris submarines. Santa Clara County, where Lockheed’s Aircraft Missile System division was located, flourished economically. Aerojet-General, the nation’s leading producer of rocket engines, was headquartered in Azusa and employed 33,500 workers from California to the East Coast, many living in the Southland. Convair Astronautics employed 25,000 workers at its San Diego plant. The Aerospace Corporation, Hughes, Lockheed, North American, Northrop, and Douglas - all headquartered in southern California - provided most of the 400,000 well-paying jobs that went to both blue - and white-collar defense workers in the 1950s. In short, one out of every 15 California workers owed their employment to federal military spending, which buoyed the Golden State’s growing economy through consumer purchases and the payment of taxes.
The civilian-based commercial airlines industry also expanded during this time. Statewide air travel doubled in volume during the 1960s as the flight corridor between the Pacific Coast cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco became the most heavily trafficked in the world.
Maritime enterprises such as transpacific trade, shipbuilding, passenger voyaging, fishing, and surfing constituted a major sector of the state’s economy in the 1950s and 1960s. Transpacific trade was given a significant boost by the advent of containerization that would lead to California’s domination of American seagoing commerce in the near future. “Containerization” refers to the use of portable, tamper-proof compartments to store and transport goods on ships. At docks containers were lifted by large cranes from vessels for transfer onto trucks or trains, as well as hoisted by cranes from wharves onto awaiting ships. Containerization saved time and money: whereas before this innovation a crew of 16 to 18 longshoremen could handle 8-10 tons per hour, this change enabled a five-man crew to handle 450 tons per hour! The turnaround time for a ship was thereby reduced from 10 days to 36 hours. Oakland, like Los Angeles in 1950, surpassed San Francisco in cargo shipping by adopting containerization, which the City by the Bay had refused to do. Matson Navigation Company introduced containerized shipping to the West Coast at Los Angeles in 1958. Oil was exported in huge quantities by seagoing tankers, while gargantuan shipments of lumber entered the port. By the late 1950s the bulk of the port’s trade was with Japan, whose economy would soon be second in the world only to that of the United States. The Pacific shift of America’s economy heralded by Governor Brown was well under way. Accordingly, Japanese automobiles began arriving at the port; among other items, Los Angeles sent consumer electronic goods to Japan. In the early 1960s, Todd Ship-
Figure 12.1 Cranes like that pictured in this photograph taken at Los Angeles Harbor were instrumental in ushering in the containerization of maritime trade. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Harbor Department.
Yards won three contracts totaling $84 million to build five container vessels and guided missile frigates for the navy. Ocean fishing (particularly for tuna, a $30-million-a-year business in San Diego in 1950); transpacific passenger voyaging via Matson liners to Hawai’i, the South Seas, and Asia; recreational sailing; and surfing added greatly to California’s bustling economy. Of these Pacific-related enterprises, surfing in the 1960s began its ascent into a multi-billion-dollar industry by the century’s end.
The prosperity of the times, much of which was generated by Pacific-related enterprises, was reflected in the movement of Californians to the suburbs. Most of the state’s 10,586,223 residents in 1950 lived in densely populated cities and towns. For the remainder of the century, however, both newcomers and others - especially middle-class whites - moved to the suburbs, which sprang up on the peripheries of such coastal urban centers as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, as well as in Orange County, in the form of housing tracts, or subdivisions. California financiers like Howard Ahmanson, who headed America’s largest thrift (a business that holds money deposits and offers credit to individuals) - Home Savings and Loan - extended attractive loans to middle-class families to purchase tract homes. Often schools, shopping centers, and parks to serve the new communities were still
Under construction as houses were being built. In many instances, especially in Orange County, citrus orchards had been cleared to provide the land for new construction. Drawn by the prospect of escaping what many regarded as Los Angeles’ urban blight - crowding, choking traffic, crime, and air pollution - rapidly suburbanizing Orange County’s population soared from 220,000 in 1950 to 700,000 a decade later. In short, urban congestion led to suburban sprawl, especially along or near the coastal sections of southern California from Santa Barbara to San Diego.
The new suburbanites had the incomes to consume discretionary goods and services. They bought cars, new furniture, television sets, household appliances and gadgets, sporting goods equipment, and power tools. In suburban San Fernando Valley, where $2.6 billion in wages was paid in 1959, 45 percent of the families owned two automobiles, and Anthony Brothers swimming pools graced the backyards of thousands of middle-class residents. With growing numbers of women entering the workforce, fast-food outlets, like McDonald’s (founded in San Bernardino in 1940 and franchised nationwide in the mid-1950s), spread throughout the state. Selling precooked, 15-cent hamburgers to busy commuters on their way home from work in city offices, warehouses, and factories fit neatly into the emergent suburban California lifestyle. As throughout much the rest of America, consumption became an ever more important generator of profits in the state’s burgeoning economy.
World History
