There are still a few sunny pockets of prosperity to be found in the U.S. despite the deepening shadow of recession afflicting most of the nation. One of these is Wichita, Kans. (pop. 262,000). Here the news remains almost too good to be true: in October unemployment dropped from 3.2% to an even 3%, less than half the national average. The board of education recently approved a $30 million school-building program, and a $14 million city hall is under construction. Along Topeka Street east of the Little Arkansas River nearly every one of the turn-of-the-century houses is getting a face-lifting. TIME Correspondent Barrett Seaman traveled to Wichita to find out why. His report:
Wichita has known more than its historic share of booms. Back in the 1870s the town was a major overnight hitching post for cowhands who were taking their Texas longhorns north over the dusty Chisholm Trail. Signs posted outside the self-proclaimed “cow capital” declared: “Anything goes in Wichita. Leave your revolvers at police headquarters.” Thirsty cowpunchers, ranchers, Indian scouts and gamblers filled the barrooms and dance halls, earning Wichita a reputation as “the noisiest town on the American continent.”
Carry Nation. After a brief decline, Wichita boomed again in the late 1880s, this time as a grain market and milling center. During harvest, carts and wagons loaded with wheat lined its streets in columns ten blocks long. Sober homesteaders built schools and churches instead of taverns, and Carry Nation carried her cause into the local saloons. The discovery of large oil reserves in 1915 produced another upswing and catapulted Wichita into the 20th century, attracting men like Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman, who turned the city into the “air capital of America.”
In the years since, Wichita and aviation have had a reputation of running on a steep boom-and-bust cycle. Explains Beech Aircraft’s Bill Robinson: “When the rest of the economy coughed, general aviation got the first cold.”
When the last bust cycle hit in 1969-70, the people of Wichita decided to do something about it. The city and county governments and the Chamber of Commerce joined with community leaders to recruit diverse businesses to take the burden of employment—and stability—off the aircraft industry. During the ’60s about one in four employed Wichitans worked for either Beech Aircraft, Cessna, Boeing or Gates Learjet.
Bicycle Paths. Wichita used income from the sale of industrial bonds to draw such national firms as Metropolitan Life, National Cash Register and J.I. Case Co. Early next year Western Electric will open a new plant on the western outskirts. In the past year every one of the city’s meat-packing plants has either completed or begun major expansion programs. A giant retail shopping center and hotel-convention hall will open this spring on the east side of town.
In addition to its own funding program, Wichita has received more than $27 million in grants since 1969. Some federal money is being used to develop six mini-city halls, one of which is already in operation. Scattered around the city, they will provide recreation facilities, meals for the elderly, library services, medical assistance, job team training and water-and electricity-bill-paying centers at the neighborhood level. When a survey showed bicycle paths to be a top priority, 86 miles of them were added to Wichita’s parks.
With economic troubles in hand, Wichita is attending to its quality of life.
Says Mayor Gary Porter: “We’re talking about putting a couple of hundred thousand dollars into the arts, theaters and museums. You can’t do that when times are hard.” The city is building a new zoo, an agriculture coliseum, a $3.5 million art museum, a $2 million Indian culture center and a planetarium.
“Short of a first-rate meal,” says History Professor Martin A. Reif of Wichita State, “you can get just about anything you want here.”
The city is slightly swollen with pride and somewhat torn between shouting to the world that it is not a hick cow town any more and keeping all the hordes east of the Mississippi out of their beautiful country. When asked what they like about their city, most Wichitans cite intangibles such as the sense of community and quality of life. Grover McKee, the budget director who engineered the industrial-development program, came back to Wichita after ten years on Wall Street. “When I was in New York I was spending $200 a month commuting two hours each way. Now I’m 14 minutes door to door, and I live on a farm.” Adds Mayor Porter, who in a neat reverse moved to Wichita from Southern California: “It’s the kind of community that can be stimulating and still be Midwestern enough to be concerned about things like honesty and being nice to old folks.”
Smoke Signals. Wichita is also well aware that its present heady prosperity is partly a matter of luck and geography, of being relatively uninvolved in those sectors of the U.S. economy that are in trouble and of participating heavily in those that are still flourishing. As a major regional market and processing center for the farm belt, it is riding with wheat and other farm products in their continuing record prosperity and with Kansas oilmen in the higher prices for their petroleum.
Above all, the aircraft industry, still supplier of over 15% of the area jobs, is holding strong. Cessna is projecting an increase of 32% over last year’s $416 million record sales. Gates Learjet, which has added 650 employees to its payroll since the beginning of the year, would hire another 200 if they could find enough skilled workers. To explain the sustained health of the private-plane business, industry executives point to reduced automobile speed limits, air-schedule cutbacks, small propeller planes capable of getting up to 18 miles to the gallon at a speed of over 150 m.p.h. as well as growing overseas markets. That is not to say that the aircraft makers and the city in general feel immune from the ills of the rest of the nation. But so far, all is happily well in Wichita, with only a slight sense of foreboding. Says Lear President Harry Combs: “It’s sort of like seeing Indian smoke signals in the distance, but we can’t figure out where the attack will come from.”
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