The Cold War in the PNW

* End of WWII threatened a bust

- generally, wars end in downturns

- PNW very vulnerable with extractive industries

-> foreign farmers and materials producers recover

-> aluminum and timber in less demand in peacetime

- heavy shipbuilding and airplane industries also less in demand

* Luckily, for the PNW, in the short run, the Cold War loomed

- US and USSR were not happy bedfellows after war

-> Communism vs. Capitalism

-> Iron Curtain in Europe drew a threatening line for both sides

=> both sides arming, subverting, and threatening

=> we, of course, are the good guys, but our hands weren't

entirely clean

- nuclear arms race added tension

- need for bombers, subs, and missiles

-> Mutually Assured Destruction

-> created the "military industrial complex"

=> constant need for newer and better weapons

- Marshall Plan spending helped

-> reconstruction loans had to be spent on US goods

- jobs were cut back, but not catastrophically

* The key industries

- Boeing

-> 9,000 well-paid employees after war

-> built the B-52

- shipyards

- Hanford and the National Reactor Test Station

-> Richland's High School team's symbol was a mushroom cloud

- dams built up and down the Columbia and tributaries

-> lots of pork barrel projects

=> big public spending projects designed to secure votes on

unrelated issues or in trade for other big spending

projects

=> in 1960s, eastern Washington received 10% of federal public

works money but had only .4% of US population

- timber and pulp

-> beset by cyclical booms and busts

-> pulp for paper expanded with the US's growth of info/service

industries

-> clear-cutting the monstrous efficiency

-> steadily improving technology and competition making life hard

for workers

=> like "Sometimes a Great Notion"

- construction

-> good work building the suburban sprawl that spread near Boise,

Portland, and the Puget Sound