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They created what is still today virtually regarded as four different states. In the rugged but temperate north, they built San Francisco, a swashbuckling port city that reflected equally the liberal influence of Europe and the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.; hence the light touch of cosmopolitanism that suffuses the town. Those who populated the rolling, semitropical south—especially in the years during and following World War II—were mostly the staid Midwesterners and Southerners who came to buy so many square feet of sunshine, and the blue-collar workers who filled the factories; hence the heavy strain of conservatism that characterizes the region. The third state, running the length of inland California, is largely agricultural and might as well be East Texas with mountains. The fourth state, defying all maps and imagination, is Hollywood.
The Nation State
Taken together, all the component parts have generated a mighty economic machine. California's gross "national" product keeps pushing upward, is now calculated at an annual rate of $108.8 billion, placing the state sixth in wealth among all the nations of the world. Its $4.3 billion agribusiness turns out 200 farm products.
The history of California's business enterprise reads almost like a parody of a chamber-of-commerce oration. In 1904 an immigrant's son, Amadeo Peter Giannini, founded a poor man's bank in a San Francisco saloon. Today the Bank of America is the world's largest, with assets of $25 billion, 952 Stateside branches and 94 overseas, and a creditcard system used by 25 million worldwide subscribers. Another poor boy. Charles B. ("Tex") Thornton, who started out as a government clerk, is one of the pioneers of the conglomerates with his Litton Industries. It was California that sent the aerospace industry rocketing; today companies like Lockheed and North American Rockwell command a major portion of the market.
Electronics, oil, food processing, insurance, Savings and Loan associations, construction—all have been added to the spectrum of California's economic life. Not the least of the benefits of this vitality is the workers' share. California's wage earners constitute a mass aristocracy that takes home about $1.5 billion every week; their per capita income ($4,111) is higher than that of any other state or any country on earth. Here too, think tanks like the Rand Corp. have evolved and become indispensable. With extraordinary skill —and hubris—their staffers tackle virtually every problem in America, from campus riots to noise pollution. Think tanks by the score have attracted an intellectual elite to California. Robert Hutchins, president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara, observes that the San Francisco-Los Angeles university axis has become "an intellectual flyway."
In their pursuit of cultural enrichment, Californians, notably in the Los Angeles area, have created an institutionalized culture of enviable proportions. The County Museum of Art clocked an attendance of 1.25 million people last year. The Los Angeles Music Center provides an abundance of good music and drama. The U.C.L.A. concert and lecture series offered 575 events last year alone and drew an audience of 340,000 people.