Albert Lea and Peace

Albert Lea, Minn, is a clean, wide-avenued lakeside city* of 12,000, a hundred miles south of Minneapolis, smack in the middle of the rich northern dairyland. It won the honor of being Freeborn County's seat about 80 years ago in a horse race. But Albert Lea is about to become something of a household word. Reason: it has made such an excellent and meticulous study of its postwar prospects that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a 55-page pamphlet, is holding up Albert Lea as a good example to all the U.S.

Tom's Idea. A top-notch Minnesota banker, greying, heavy-set John Cameron Thomson, had the idea. "Tom" Thomson, 53, heads the Northwest Bancorporation (consolidated assets: $800 million), an 82-bank Midwestern outfit that ranks second to the Giannini Transamerica Corp. among U.S. bank holding companies. Thomson is also vice chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Economic Policy Committee, and one of their powwows last spring set him to thinking.

Thomson got some business and University of Minnesota friends to help him form the Northwest Research Committee. They picked Albert Lea as their guinea pig: it represented a neatly balanced war-busy industry and farming. Last June, under the spur of N.R.C., 46 Albert Lea citizens began to examine their city and county. The U.S. Chamber's pamphlet tells what the Albert Leamen and N.R.C. found out.

How Many Jobs? Albert Lea's planners took as their objective "a [postwar] job paying a living wage for every worker who wanted one." The eleven biggest industries in the town (meat packing, machinery, etc.) were asked to write down their employment and business volume for 1940 as against 1943, and their hopes for the first year of peace. The eleven, encouraged by a 125% war expansion, figured they could employ 60% more people after the war than in 1940. Hearing this, the city's 442 other employers upped their own payroll estimates by 15%.

After figuring out how many soldiers would come back, how many war workers would leave, etc., Albert Lea calculated the exact size of its postwar unemployment problem: 593 workers, out of a total labor force of 6,571.

How Much Demand? Meanwhile, 130 "Victory Aides" canvassed three out of every ten city families, mailed questionnaires to a sample group of the county's farmers, to find the demand for durable goods (from autos to alarm clocks) in three different income groups. Examples of returns:

> A solid market exists in Freeborn County for 2,296 new cars, for 646 refrigerators, 578 furniture sets, 442 new city homes, 360 barns, 360 silos, 780 tractors, 810 prefabricated small farm buildings (Albert Lea has a factory that makes them), 986 vacation trips at an average cost of $176.

> Freeborn farmers expect to pay for 50-75% of these goods out of current income. City families went in for heavier borrowing.

> The total two-year market for goods after the war added up to $12,374,900.

> City and county officials figured they could spend $405,000 on useful public works.

How Much Money? Two other groups went to work on the county's income and liquid assets.

A farm-committee poll concluded that the first postwar year would put $19,416,000 into the farmers' jeans, 165% above 1939 and only 4% below booming 1943. A banker's committee discovered that the 75% increase in Albert Lea's liquid assets in 1943 over 1941 was enough to pay outright for 55% of the new cars, homes, etc.

Where Do They Go from Here? Albert Lea's planners did not think they were anywhere near through when the last figure was added up. Said their report: "If jobs are not found for Albert Lea's 593 unemployed and for the men in the Albert Leas all over this country, private enterprise may lose its stake in the national economy. . . . Albert Lea is at work on that job."

*Its name came from an Army colonel who fell in love with its lakes and forests a century ago, wrote a pioneer book on Minnesota.

*The U.S. Chamber's similar estimates for the U.S. as a whole: an immediate postwar demand for $3.3 billion of automobiles for 3,675,000 families; 1,540,000 new homes ($7.2 billion worth) plus $7.5 billion in improvements and repairs; $1.2 billion of appliances (2,625,000 refrigerators, 1,085,000 kitchen mixers, etc.).

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