FOREIGN DEVELOPMENT: A Plan for the King of Kings

Like many another oriental potentate, the late Reza Pahlevi, Shah-in-Shah (King of Kings) of Persia, combined forthright admiration for Western social and industrial progress with a darkly suspicious opinion of the men who make it. As a result, he brought his 628,000-square-mile empire (about one-fifth the size of the U.S.) some mixed blessings. When the old Shah wanted railroads, for instance, he got railroads—but not always where his foreign advisers thought they would do Persia the most good.

After the old Shah was deposed in 1941, and his son, Mohamed Reza Pahlevi, ascended the throne, things were put on a more businesslike basis. A year ago, the young Shah hired Overseas Consultants, Inc., an eleven-member combine of U.S. industrial consultants and engineering firms,* to blueprint a seven-year plan to develop and industrialize Persia.

Point Four & Plan. The combine was first organized 2½ years ago at the suggestion of the U.S. Government to conduct a survey of Japan. Named as president was Clifford S. Strike, 46, president of Manhattan’s F. H. McGraw & Co., which built, among other World War II projects, the $36 million Bermuda air base. Last week in a green-carpeted office on Manhattan’s East 42nd Street, O.C.I. President Strike and Board Chairman

John R. Lotz, chairman of Manhattan’s Stone & Webster, announced the plan for Persia. In five bound volumes of 1,250 pages, O.C.I, provided the King of Kings with a blueprint for economic revolution, and U.S. and Western European businessmen with a guide to a vast new area of relatively untapped markets.

Although started long before President Truman’s Point Four program, the big-scale plan might well serve as a model for Point Four planners.

Soap & DDT. By U.S. standards, Persia is an incredibly backward nation. Its population of 17,750,000 is riddled with disease (an estimated 5,000,000 cases of malaria annually and at least 7,000 cases of leprosy). Its infant death rate is estimated at more than 50 per 1,000 live births. Its schools are few and poor. Of some 125 million acres of potentially arable land, only one-tenth is farmed and that with primitive tools.

O.C.I, will start eliminating this abysmal misery not with steel mills and hydroelectric plants, but with cheap soap and DDT. Among the report’s specific recommendations for the first year: spray DDT in barns, homes, under sleeping quilts and on the Persians themselves; hire 200 vaccinators and send them out to the villages; begin immediate instruction in elementary midwifery. At Karaj, where the old Shah wanted to build an integrated steel mill, O.C.I, recommends instead a small blast furnace and foundry to produce the pipe which Persia will need during the plan’s first phases.

Bulldozers & Textiles. Persia will build or renovate 7,122 miles of roads, buying bulldozers, dump trucks, motor graders and portable rock crushers. Later, she will be in the market for other communications equipment, 18 diesel locomotives, 30 passenger cars, $2,250,000 worth of switch stands, signals and rails. She plans to set up modern, automatic telephone systems in 14 towns and cities, build six radio stations. Textile mills at Behshahr and Shahi will be renovated; Teheran’s brick plant will be mechanized and three small cement plants (capacity: 200 tons daily) are proposed. Not till a network of small plants for building materials and consumer goods is well established, does O.C.I, recommend hydroelectric plants on the northern slopes of the Elborz mountains, national reforestation projects, and irrigation programs in the desert regions of Lar and Jajirud basins and in. the Zayandeh Rud (see map).

To achieve her plan, Persia proposes to spend a total of $650 million, an estimated 35% to 40% of which will be spent abroad. The bulk of the development cash will come from Persian government royalties from the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. Anglo-Iranian last year paid Persia some $35 million in royalties, but a new pipeline to be built from Abadan on the Persian Gulf to Tripoli in Lebanon, under a deal between Anglo-Iranian, Standard Oil (N.J.) and Socony-Vacuum, is expected to let Anglo-Iranian boost output and raise royalties to as much as $50 million next year.

Would the plan work? O.C.I., which has signed a contract to supervise the plan, was convinced that it would. U.S. State Department officials also felt “pretty optimistic” about it. And other Middle Eastern countries have been impressed enough to start dickering with O.C.I, for similar plans to develop their lands—with soap, DDT, and all.

* American Appraisal Co.; Coverdale & Colpitts; Ebasco Services, Inc.; Ford, Bacon & Davis, Inc.; Jackson & Moreland; Madigan-Hyland; F. H. McGraw & Co.; Sanderson & Porter; Standard Research Consultants, Inc.; Stone & Webster Engineering Corp.; J. G. White Engineering Corp.