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Big cities have changed even more. For the first time in Texas history, urban population had become bigger than the rural. Biggest change—and growth—is in Houston, smack in the middle of the chemical wave that has swamped the whole Gulf Coast. Before the war, greater Houston was already the crowded center of oilfields and refineries. War brought it 20% of the nation's synthetic-rubber plants and 145 major chemical plants. Postwar expansion completed the jam, with scores of new installations. Now, the skeletons of new skyscrapers fill the skyline.
In the scramble for space, Houston's ship channel to the Gulf has become almost as crowded as the Hoboken waterfront. There big new chemical plants are going up. Along its 50 miles of shore are concentrated $6 million worth of plants. Houston's population is up from 510,000 in 1940 to a jampacked 700,000; employment is greater than at war's peak.
Welcome Invasion. Some diehard conservatives look balefully on all this progress. Caught in a midtown traffic jam one day, Geologist Emmet Tatum, a Houston resident for 17 years, cried: "Progress, hell! I wish every one of the bustling so-and-so's would go back where they came from."
But Texans by & large are for it because 1) it has given them something new to brag about and 2) it will make them richer. They do not mind that more than 90% of the new investments have so far been made by outsiders. But Texans would not be Texans if they let that situaation alone. With their profits from oil and cattle, many of the state's well-heeled citizens are now turning into newfangled industrialists.
An example of this new type of Texan is Dallas' Glenn McCarthy, a brawny oilman who started out as a roughneck in an oilfield. He made a fortune wildcatting, added to it with a string of oil companies. One of the few to foresee the revolution a-coming, McCarthy poured his oil profits into a natural gas company, set out to sell it to industry. Six months ago, he started a $3,000,000 plant to produce chemicals, hoped to show the way for other Texans to follow.
McCarthy gets along well with "the invaders from the North," many of whom are among his best customers. Most Texans are learning to do the same, with the same view of self-development and profit. As Carl Estes, publisher of the Longview News and Journal put it: "I'm in favor of bringing those know-how Yankees right on down here. I married one and brought her here and she turned out all right."