GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

74THE POLITICS OF AIR POLLUTIONinvestments and operate just like a mutual fund, presumably selling itsshares of a new corporation’s stock when it became profitable. It would thenbe free to reinvest these funds in new local ventures. In such a manner, thecorporation would help to boost Los Angeles’ industrial growth.Foster goes on to explain that “nothing developed from the initial organizationalmeetings” of the Greater Los Angeles Corporation. Nevertheless, its“plans were significant insofar as they revealed the desires of the city boostersto create a comprehensive and fully integrated promotional campaign”involving both national publicity and material aid to prospective industrialinvestors (27–28).While the effort to attract industry to Los Angeles through the GreaterLos Angeles Corporation came to naught, the city did become a nationalcenter of aeronautic investment during the inter-war period (Lotchin 1992;Hise 1997). The actions of local growth advocates played a key role inattracting this investment and making the region a leading manufacturingcenter of airplanes. Roger Lotchin (1992), in explaining why Los Angelescame to dominate the U.S. aeronautic industry through to 1960, points outthat a “critical factor in the seduction of the aircraft industry [to Los Angeles]was... the efforts of its promoters to build a great city” (68). In his book,Fortress California: 1910–1960, Lotchin describes how, along the lines suggestedin the Greater Los Angeles Corporation proposal, the financial, physical,labor, and scientific factors necessary to entice aircraft investment to theregion, and to ensure its success, were provided, in large part, by Los Angelesbusiness leaders. Lotchin, in the following, summarizes some of his findings:If the plane makers desperately lacked capital, Security Pacific, Brashears,or some private Southland investor provided it when San Francisco or NewYork City would not. If the industry profited from its proximity to severalof the foremost centers of military aviation technology, the boosters hadearlier secured these assets. If [plane manufacturers] Douglas, Lockheed,North American, Consolidated, Vultee, and Ryan wanted a cheap anddocile labor force, their booster friends did their best to develop and prolongits presence. ... If the increasingly technological character of theaeronautical industry demanded easy and ever-growing access to both thematerial and intellectual resources of the scientific community ... [theCalifornia Institute of Technology in Los Angeles] would eventually provideits own airplane testing facilities and then be called upon to manageboth the Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel and the JetPropulsion Laboratory. (130)Lotchin adds that “if an industry largely dependent upon the government fora market [in the form of military contracts] cried out for political influence(and who can doubt that it did?), [southern California] urban politicians from