(See Cover)
"There are no boll weevils in the tourist crop," the sages say in Florida. Last week Florida was harvesting its biggest crop of tourists. In limousines and trailers, by airline and boat and railway (at lowest fares ever), they spread through all the long reach from Jacksonville on the north to Key West in the south (see map). They went to fish for sail, marlin, tarpon on both coasts; to peer at fish on display at Marineland and Silver Springs; to watch their favorite ballplayers at Orlando, Clearwater, Sarasota; to hear the Bok Carillon at Lake Wales; to see Seminoles and alligators and flamingos and orange trees; to have fun.
They settled at St. Petersburg (up 15% over 1938-39); at snooty Palm Beach and plebeian West Palm Beach (up 20%); at Fort Lauderdale, "fastest growing city in the fastest growing county in Florida," (up 20%); at Daytona Beach, Key West, St. Augustine, Tampa (up 20%). And by uncounted thousands they were diffused in trailer camps, autocamps, hamlets, roadside inns. By April 1, when the winter season wanes and the smaller summer crop begins to bud. the calculators figure that upwards of 3,000,000 will have come and departed, left $365,000,000 in Florida pockets.*
The place to see the tourist crop at its verdant best and worst was along a patch of the Atlantic coastline, 350 miles down from the Georgia border, 145 miles up from the southernmost Florida Key. There lies the "Miami area."
Seen from the air, this go-square mi. patch looks like one sprawling bailiwick, set in the flat expanses of citrus groves, bean and pepper and tomato fields that extend southward to the swampy Everglades. Actually it is divided into three parts. There are 1) the residential suburbs: Hialeah, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, South Miami (where many a homeowner last week had moved into his garage-apartment, rented his house for the winter season); 2) the city of Miami, lovely in segments but raw-ugly in sum, with its own tolerant government and its flamboyant, perennial "reform" Mayor E. G. Sewell; 3) Miami Beach, with its own City Council, its Mayor John Hale Levi. The city of Miami is a city, much like other booming U. S. towns; Miami Beach is a unique U. S. phenomenon.
In Mayor Sewell's thriving city of Miami last week:
> Slack-chinned, dull-eyed Crackers from the back country thronged the narrow streets, along with vacationers in shorts and halters, blue-red-yellow slacks, astrologers, hackies, pimps, and the solid, trading, homeliving folk of the city.
> The News (which at the height of the Florida Boom led all U. S. newspapers in advertising lineage) headlined G-Man John Edgar Hoover, ineffectively sounding off against the local toleration of gamblers, gangsters, brothels; and Governor Fred Cone in Tallahassee, effectively commanding Miami politicos to close down the gaming.
> At Hialeah, three dog-tracks and one jai-alai (Cuban handball) fronton in the Miami gambling area, betters on a single "poor Monday" last week wagered $800,000; since the winter season opened had poured in a record $25,000,000 (including the takes at both Hialeah and Tropical Park horsetracks).