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In all, Carpenter says they have raised close to $1,500,000, got a promise from RFC to lend them an equivalent amount when the money has been spent. As Lone Star representatives were meeting with WAA in Washington this week, to get final approval to buy Lone Star, happy Mr. Carpenter predicted that Lone Star would ship its first iron in a matter of weeks. For Texans, the new homegrown heavy-metal industry was symbolic; it was the capstone to five years of growth which has changed the face of the state. Texas was still a wheat, cattle and oil state. But it was also a state of textiles, tires, leather goods, clothing, paper, furniture, glass, processed food, machinery, coffins and hundreds of other products. Most of all, there were the newer products of the burgeoning Age of Chemistry. Texas was well on its way to becoming the chemical capital of the world.
Revolution in Twelve Years. Texas had long had almost everything it needed to take its place in the industrial sun—a great variety and amount of minerals, plus unlimited quantities of natural gas for cheap, clean fuel. But not until American Cyanamid Co. came from the North in 1934 to build a $7,000,000 alkali plant in Corpus Christi did the industrial revolution begin. With a surfeit of raw materials (lime, sulphur, salt, seawater, gypsum, etc.) there, others were soon attracted to the Gulf Coast area. They poured in investments running into tens of millions.
On top of this came the synthetic-rubber industry and war expansion. War's end brought no decline. (Last week the Government decided to keep synthetic plants operating permanently.) Du Pont spent some $60,000,000 on new plants, Dow over $35,000,000, Monsanto $11,000,000, Celanese Corp. $7,000,000—for all industries, a thumping $600,000,000. Counting $300,000,000 more which will be spent in the next few years on chemicals, industrial investment in Texas will have grown since 1940 by more than $1,500,000,000.
Hats for Harry Truman. Even huge Texas is not big enough to absorb all this without a radical change in appearance. The complex equipment of modern manufacturing has spread its twisting tentacles all over the once wide-open spaces. Orange (pop. 35,000), a sleepy little sawmill town before the war, now has a new $52,000,000 Du Pont nylon salts plant. In the past five years Taylor (pop. 9,200) has developed one of the largest bedding factories in the U.S.: and Mineral Wells (11,000) has launched a $500,000 silk hosiery mill. Borger (15,000) has become the nation's No. 1 producer of carbon black, and the Byer-Rolnick Co. at Garland (4,889) makes hats for such customers as Harry Truman, Toots Shor, Senator Claghorn.
In the spirit that now characterizes all Texas small towns, the 14,000 citizens of bustling little McKinney (feed, textiles) last fortnight called on an industrial analyst to answer their biggest problem: how could they expand to 20,000 by 1950?