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In September, International Harvester, the city's second-largest employer, decided to reduce production drastically, scuttling 1,500 jobs over the next year. But the loss was a "cloud with a silver lining of great depth," insists Mayor Winfield Moses, who helped launch a spirited campaign to diversify the city's economy, save and expand existing businesses and lure new industry. Moses created the city's first economic development department. Taking advantage of publicity about the flood, the department has begun inviting companies to locate in "the city that saved itself." Bids are soon to be let on a $24 million convention center. The local Chamber of Commerce is planning a five-year marketing strategy to create new high-technology jobs. Says Moses: "This was really a status quo community for the past two decades. We've got to change. We're trying to do something about it."
MILWAUKEE. In this city, 1982 will be remembered as a black year. Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous, was no longer brewed in town. The company shut the brewery in 1981 because of falling demand. Then Schlitz left town for good when the Stroh Brewery Co. of Detroit acquired it. The loss of the hometown brewery was a severe psychological blow. Another Milwaukee tradition, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle company, has been outgunned by Japanese competition. Until this recession, Milwaukee (pop. 636,000) had prospered through fair economic times and foul. Its unemployment rate, along with Wisconsin's, was historically lower than the national average. Now it is higher: 13.4% for the city (11.5% for the state). Layoffs and plant closings in the city, which used to call itself the "machine shop of the world," have left residents bitter and dispirited with 50,000 out of work.
More than 20,000 people lined up in 20° weather last week to apply for 200 jobs at an auto-frame factory. The growing number of previously middle-class families who now need public assistance has prompted strapped Milwaukee County to consider programs to discourage people from going on welfare. One proposal, known as "two hots and a cot," would have provided welfare recipients with a place to sleep and two meals a day instead of cash grants. More than 80 food pantries where the needy can get emergency food have sprung up throughout the city. Says Barbara Notestein of Milwaukee's hunger task force: "We've never had the kind of demand for emergency food that we're experiencing now." In 1982, the only highlights were the opening of the city's snazzy $70 million glass-and-steel downtown mall, and the pennant-winning performance of the Milwaukee Brewers. Alas, or perhaps predictably in this down year for Milwaukee, they lost the World Series.