CITIES .& STATES
Lawyer-Soldier Moses Cleaveland, a square-chinned Yaleman (class of 1777), and his associates in the Connecticut Land Company thought they had a good speculation. For $1,200,000 (mostly in notes) they bought about three million acres of post-Revolutionary Connecticut's Western Reserve lands, away out in the wilderness. Thanks to that Yankee gamble, the nation's sixth largest city celebrates its 150th anniversary next week.
On July 22, 1796, Moses Cleaveland and his band of a dozen nosed their little craft into a winding stream and decided that there, where a river met the lake, would be a good place for another town site. The Yankees built a couple of log cabins and left one family—Job Stiles and his wife—to hold the franchise.
Modern Clevelanders who grumble at their smoky, sprawling city's hot and humid summers, and its wet and windy winters, agree that Moses was smart; he returned to Connecticut and never came back to the town site named for him.*
But Clevelanders respect the memory of Founder Moses for something else: he was the first man with a Cleveland Plan—and Clevelanders dote on Cleveland plans.
This week Ohio's metropolis buzzed happily with plans for making its Founders' Day a memorable sesquicentennial event. Up the twisting, industry-fouled, rat-grey Cuyahoga (rhymes with buy a toga) River, now edged with iron and steel furnaces, oil refineries, factories, warehouses, docks and long ore, coal and grain ships, a small boat will bring Leading Citizens to re-enact the landing (complete to an Indian greeter). There will be the inevitable Civic Luncheon (Clevelanders love anything with the word Civic in front of it). That night in the spacious downtown Mall there will be carnival: floats, a four-stage circus, hours of entertainment.
Happy Days. Clevelanders had something more to celebrate than a mere milestone. Their town had developed massive productivity and prosperity in the war years. Now it was still booming along. It had had a tremendous expansion—at the wartime peak employment .was up 99% over 1939's. Unlike many a war-factory town, Cleveland had suffered no serious letdown. Employment had snapped back and was still climbing—it was well over 155% of the prewar rate. If there had been no national strikes, Greater Cleveland's industries by now would be employing many more than the 225,000 they did on V-J day.
Cleveland had even better news. More jobs were in the immediate making. In the last year 50 industrial companies had decided to locate new factories in the Cleveland area. The $100,000,000 they were spending would spill out into about 25,000 jobs. The prize catch was a whopper: two General Motors plants (to produce the new light Chevrolet) that would cost upwards of $50,000,000, make jobs for a minimum of 10,500 men.*Cleveland was working on more factory prospects, with about 25,000 more jobs as the prizes.