Business: Business in 1958

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that as yet knows no bounds, and for an economy growing enough to absorb its enormous production. Every businessman knows the long-term statistics: an exploding population, already past 175 million, that will grow to 190 million by 1965, and will probably surpass 200 million by the year 1970. By 1965, say economists, gross national product will hit a fantastic $600 billion, and beyond that they dare not hazard a guess.

The U.S. can already see the future in capsule form on its own West Coast. In 1958 the migration of 500,000 people to California alone was an economic jack that meant money in the bank, houses on the hill. Along the mist-shrouded shoreline of San Francisco, Retailer Levi Strauss is finishing a $1,000,000 face lifting, and Strauss executives have moved into their penthouse suites alongside the employees' new cafeteria and sun roof; half a block away, the $10 million Crown Zellerbach building is getting a concrete coat for its 20-story steel skeleton; across the bay in Oakland, a $45 million Kaiser Center building reaches for the sky. Off the new freeways, snorting earth movers rip away the brown hills to continue the march of suburbia. Business activity in the Bay Area for the year broke all records; construction was up 17% to $633 million in the first ten months alone; and for the whole of California, personal income at $36.25 billion topped 1957's record by a fat $1.1 billion.

No wonder Pacific Gas & Electric Chairman James B. Black could look around and say, "It would be difficult indeed not to be encouraged. We will have a population of 39 million for our Western region by 1975, some 14 million more than at present. There are only ten countries in the world with a greater number of people. Only six countries have a greater area, and possibly fewer still have greater natural resources. We still have far to go. But our industrial horizons are broader than much of the nation yet realizes."

What Chairman Black said about the West could also be said of the entire U.S. The nation is only just beginning to understand its new economic strength. Some time in 1959 the U.S. will undoubtedly send a rocket to the moon. But when it gets there, the Bull may well be on his way to Venus.