In addition, the region is an important producer of pulp and paper, commercial fish and fish products, and nonmetallic minerals such as phosphate and phosphate fertilizers.

A region such as the Pacific Northwest, with a huge resources potential, but a small population, inevitably has special types of employment problems. When an economy is comprised disproportionately of resourcebased industries, its employment patterns strongly reflect seasonal factors and the sharp fluctuations that are characteristic of the market prices of raw materials. Moreover, the timber and mineral resources of the Northwest are depletable. This poses an additional problem for the region, since new job opportunities must be created to replace declining employment in industries based on dwindling supplies of raw material. To some extent the creation of new job opportunities occurs in the normal course as technological improvements bring more intensive utilization of the raw material resources. But on the whole, special efforts are needed to overcome the basic economic disadvantages from which underdeveloped regions like the Pacific Northwest suffer.

Although the Pacific Northwest has growing population centers in the cities of Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, Portland, and Spokane, these population centers have not developed to the point where they constitute big enough markets to induce the location of new businesses seeking large-scale outlets. This situation in the Northwest contrasts sharply with the economic pattern which has developed in California. There the large population centers of the San Fran

cisco Bay area and the Los Angeles area have led to the establishment of countless new plants and industries producing materials to be consumed in those markets.

Moreover, it is difficult to develop new industries in the Pacific Northwest designed to serve the Nation's Middle West and Eastern markets, in view of differential rail freight rates which exact a much higher charge for shipping fabricated materials East than for shipping raw materials. Where large local markets exist, such as in California, these freight rate differentials have served as a kind of local protective tariff, encouraging the expansion of new local industries and employment. But in the Pacific Northwest, expanded employment opportunities can, under present conditions, be expected only from more intensive utilization and more extensive exploitation of the natural resource advantages which the region possesses.

Other than its timber resources, the Pacific Northwest's most outstanding resource has been its hydroelectric potential. Heretofore, the Federal Government has made huge investments in tapping this potential and in harnessing the water resources of the Pacific Northwest for purposes of reclamation and irrigation, recreation, navigation, and flood control. Such world-famous projects as Grand Coulee and Bonneville have produced the Nation's lowest-priced kilowatts, which have served to attract stable, yearround industries of the new electroprocess variety.

Foremost among these new electroprocess industries has been the aluminum industry. As has been pointed out above, the Pacific Northwest now produces over

35 percent of the primary aluminum manufactured in the United States. Such electroprocess industries have made a major contribution toward stabilizing employment on a year-round basis.

Unfortunately, until substantial secondary manufacturing and fabricating facilities are established, the actual volume of employment furnished by these new industries is relatively small. However, while only 33,000 new jobs have been created in the region by the new aluminum industry itself, these new industrial payrolls have produced secondary employment in trade and service and other industries to the extent of 52,000 jobs as estimated in a recent study of the Stanford Research Institute.

The region's growth in population and labor force in the past 15 years has tended to reflect the amount of Federal investment poured into the region for water and land resource development. Thus, from 1940 to 1950 the region was one of the fastest-growing in the Nation, with a 33 percent increase in population and a 35 percent increase in the labor force. This contrasts with a 14.5 percent increase in population and a 15.3 percent increase in labor force in the Nation as a whole during the same period.

Beginning in 1952, the rate of growth in population and labor force in the Pacific Northwest began to decline rather sharply. By 1954 the rate of growth in the labor force had declined so much that it comprised only a .3 percent increase over 1953. Thus far in 1955 there has been no perceptible growth in the region's labor force over 1954. This contrasts with the steady growth in the Nation's labor force, averaging approximately 1.2 percent per year.

The seasonal pattern of the region's employment is

clearly illustrated in the chart titled "Insured Unemployment in the Pacific Northwest." While the volume of unemployment is greater or less each year, depending on general business conditions, the basic pattern of unemployment during the course of the year remains the same.

Unemployment always goes up substantially in the fall months, as seasonal construction, logging, foodprocessing and mining operations are forced to close, and reaches a peak in the months of January or February, depending on weather conditions. In general, insured unemployment in the Pacific Northwest is four times as great in January of any given year as it is in June, July, August, or September of that year. These employment problems-that is, severe seasonal variations, sharp fluctuations based on market conditions of raw materials, and undue dependence on industries facing a dwindling raw-material supply-have naturally led to an intense interest on the part of the business and labor communities of the Pacific Northwest in the region's potentials for employment and industrial development. Because of the local market deficiencies and the freight rate problems referred to above, there has been perforce a concentration on natural resources development as the source of the new jobs and business opportunities which must be created.

In view of the particular problems involved in expanding job and business opportunities under such circumstances, there has been an understandable recognition on the part of the States of the Pacific Northwest that no one political jurisdiction is in a position to work out its own economic salvation.

Toward a More Enduring Prosperity

Thus, the Columbia Basin Inter-Agency Committee a group comprising the Governors of the Pacific Northwest States and the regional heads of the principal Federal agencies, including the U. S. Department of Labor has long carried out a role which has more recently been assigned to similar bodies in other regions of the country. To the CBIAC are brought problems of regional resources development and coordination and within the framework of its subcommittees are developed new programs for utilizing the abundant resources for creating a more substantial and enduring prosperity for the region. Through the Department of Labor representative on CBIAC, the State employment security agencies make their contribution in the form of labor market information, employment and unemployment forecasts, and analyses of special economic problems which are reflected in employment and unemployment trends.

As an example of how the CBIAC operates, important subcommittees comprising Federal and State. agencies and interested groups of private citizens have recently been appointed to deal with certain conflicts of interest that have developed within the region. A subcommittee on the fisheries resource has been appointed to attempt to reconcile the "fish vs. dams" argument, so that continued progress may be made

in harnessing the water resources of the region without destroying the annual fish runs which have important commercial and recreational value.

Similarly, a subcommittee on recreation is currently inventorying these outstanding resources of the Northwest, which serve, at present, as the base for a billiondollar-per-year tourist industry, but which are being threatened by the uncoordinated development and exploitation of the region's land and water resources. In addition, the CBIAC has a number of other subcommittees dealing with problems of land and water management, power development, and other questions intimately related to the economic welfare of the region.

on

Despite this understandable concentration regional solutions to regionwide economic problems, the States of the region have undertaken more intensive employment and industrial development work on their own account. Oregon was the first State in the region to establish a Development Commission, which has a legislative charter authorizing it to tap the knowledge, skills, and facilities of all other State agencies in promoting community employment and industrial development within the State. The Oregon Unemployment Compensation Commission and the regional office of the Bureau of Employment Security were instrumental in preparing the legislation to create the Oregon Development Commission and in developing an awareness of the need for such a program.

This year the State of Idaho enacted legislation creating a Department of Commerce and Development. In the State of Washington a statewide Industry Utilization Committee, established and operated

by the Employment Security Department, has recently intensified its efforts. In each of the three States, the employment security agency is playing a vital role in the activities of the development agency, and the managers of the local employment offices are performing with growing effectiveness their role of educating the local community to the need for and the direction to be taken by employment development programs.

It is safe to predict that, when the full implications for the future prosperity of the region represented by the subnormal rates of growth in recent years in population and labor force are understood by the people of the region, intensified efforts to expand the economic base and increase job opportunities will be undertaken. The current high levels of employment in the region are in part based on a commercial construction boom and expansion in residential construction predicated on past periods of rapid population growth. But unless there is a comparable expansion in industrial payrolls, increased activity in the construction industry and the expansions in trade and service industries cannot be maintained.

Before such a slowdown comes, it is likely that business, labor, and governmental leaders of the region. will formulate plans for economic development designed to restore the dynamic qualities which characterized the Pacific Northwest's economy during the previous decade. In facing this task the region is fortunate in having established a pattern of cooperation among business, labor, and governmental leaders whereby regional economic problems may be analyzed and resolved.

ANFORD- a community of just over 11,000 inhabitants is located in York County, the southernmost county in Maine. Within a radius of about 35 miles are many of Maine's most famous beach areas, two large ports, some 23 lakes and ponds, and many other features which make it an ideal place in which to live, work, and play. A broad coastal plain flanks the town on the east while to the north and south the country becomes gently rolling and pleasantly wooded. To the west, the terrain becomes

hilly and dotted with numerous lakes and ponds. The entire area is shaded with maple, elm, pine, and other conifers.

In such a setting, a community grew and in it was developed an important industry-Goodall-Sanford, Inc.-makers of Palm Beach cloth, cloth for automobile and furniture upholstering, carpeting, and other high-grade woolen cloth. This establishment employed an average of 3,600 people; most were highly skilled, all were dependable, efficient, and reliable.

In June 1954, this community was thrown into an economic tailspin when it was publicly announced that its largest industry, Goodall-Sanford, Inc., was being sold to a Southern textile firm and that production of all lines except Palm Beach cloth would be discontinued. Less than 6 months after this announcement, the mills were closed entirely and the buildings were up for sale.

The situation existing in Sanford resulted in the payment of $1,133,488.50 in unemployment benefits during 1954. This was a tremendous factor in maintaining some semblance of economic stability in the town. The purchasing power of these unemployed workers, although being continued on a somewhat reduced basis, did enable them to procure most of the necessities of life for themselves and their families. Most of these workers had been high salaried employees and they were able to draw maximum unemployment benefit payments.

It was a terrific blow to Sanford. But the first to

November 1955

realize that, although it was a most serious blow, it need not be fatal, was a group of Sanford's young businessmen. They immediately formed the SanfordSpringvale Chamber of Commerce, dedicated to encouraging new industries to locate in the town and utilize some of the modern and well maintained buildings that had become vacant because of the sale of the Goodall-Sanford interests.

Articles soon appeared in the newspapers stating the objectives of the group. A coupon appeared on the front page of the local paper asking all unemployed individuals to fill it out, giving their name, address, age, telephone number, and occupational qualifications and to return the coupon to the Chamber of Commerce.

Duplication of Effort

It was all valuable information but the new Chamber was learning a lot of things the hard way. A Field Supervisor of the Maine Employment Security Commission, on seeing the coupon in the local paper, realized that the local group was carrying on a duplication of effort. He visited the local group and explained that at least 90 percent of the Goodall-Sanford workers were already registered at the local office of the Employment Security Commission and were classified by occupational title and code. He ex

17