Markets

SONORA AND MEXICO'S RICH WEST COAST STATES OFFER UNLIMITED HORIZONS IN ARIZONA MARKETING MARKETS

Executive Assistant, Central Arizona Light and Power Co.

Nine hundred years before the Pilgrim fathers landed on Plymouth Rock and more than 1,000 years before this great industrial nation was "conceived in liberty," skilled artisans carried on a lively commercial trade in the area now known as Arizona.

That these early inhabitants of the desert were skilled is indisputable. Today, hundreds of years later, evidence of their craftsmanship remains in various sections of the statemute testimony to their industrial ingenuity. Witness the ancient Casa Grande ruins, the cliff dwellings at Montezuma Castle and Tonto National Monument, and an ingenious irrigation system, one of the most elaborate in the world today, that had its beginning before 700 A.D.

There is evidence, too, that the ancient Hohokams, the desert farmers of that period, engaged in trading with other Indian tribes over an extensive area, exchanging products derived from irrigated lands. Here, then, is where marketing and artisanship of the highest order had their inception on the North American continent, truly the flower bed of the New World's civilization.

From that early beginning and through the centuries to the modern Arizona of 1948, this area has lived up to those high cultural and commercial standards set by the Hohokams. It could have been no other way.

Why?

The world's best all-year climate makes it possible for a man to work every day in the year, indoor or outdoors. It is only in keeping with a basic law of nature that the healthful sunshine and invigorating desert atmosphere, a panacea to those wearied by ill climes elsewhere, should have attracted men from all walks of life, from every section of the country. With them came their skills in their particular profession and trade, adding to an already versatile manpower pool.

But, people cannot eat sunshine. They cannot build homes out of perfect climate. Manpower must have an outlet for its creative genius lest it be dissipated by stagnation. Endowed with a strategic central location in relation to the great Westward Migration, it is only natural that Arizona's manpower and marketing strength should expand. The small bartering markets of the pre-Plymouth Rock inhabitants of this southwestern land today have grown into gigantic fields of business activity. Their potentiality is unlimited because Arizona is situated much like the hub of a great wheel, spokes leading in every direction to large and promising markets.

California, the far west's great population center and one of the fastest growing regions in the country, is only a proverbial stone's throw from Arizona to the west. Oregon and Washington, rich in natural resources and still another of the rapidly-growing areas, lies to the northwest within the outer rim of this large industrial wheel that spins around Arizona. Directly to the north are Colorado, Utah and Montana, expanding like California, and to the east are New Mexico, experiencing new growth, and prosperous Texas.

But, it is to the south across international boundaries that broad, unlimited horizons in marketing are open to ArizonaMexico and its fabulous West Coast. A virgin area whose industrial pulse-beat is just being felt in the neighboring republic, the west coast is the fastest-growing region of Mexico. Enormously wealthy in natural resources, its great expanse corduroyed by great rivers, all of its western edge, running 1,000 miles from north to south, washed by the waters of the Gulf of California and the Pacific ocean, this area, because of its proximity to the United States, must look north to Arizona for industrial nourishment. Because Arizona's southern border entirely blankets the northern channel into the west coast states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Durango and Nayarit, everything moving south must come from this state. Although rich in raw materials, this newly-discovered section that claims already one-fifth of Mexico's 22,000,000 inhabitants, is distressingly poor in the technical equipment and construction material that go into building new industrial empires. In the last few years since the area abandoned its cocoon and made its presence evident in Mexico's industrial future, millions of dollars annually in equipment have moved southward from Arizona.

Manpower is the vital factor in capturing and successfully operating these markets. Arizona's working element, large even in the early days, grew with the westward migration that carried millions across the continent.

The outbreak of world armed aggression saw the state's manpower ranks swell into unprecedented proportions. The War Department, with an eye to carrying on a swift training program uninterrupted by bad weather, chose Arizona to quarter thousands of troops. Here in Arizona the Army Air Forces established one of the largest concentrations of air units in the country because it was possible to fly almost every available daylight hour, every day in the year.

When peace came, a new migration to Arizona was born. Skilled mechanics, trained office personnel, executives, engineers, chemists, laborers, college students with their future still in the making, shed their uniforms and came back to this land of sunshine and new industrial horizons. Today they make Arizona's manpower force easily the most diversified in the southwest, a pool where every possible labor specification can be found.

And there still is another advantage: where a particular skill may be missing from these ranks, it is a simple step to import it from the east, north or west. The advantages offered to labor by Arizona's climate, its attractive setting and bright future alone form an irresistible invitation. Wealth in manpower and accessibility to large markets assure a firm foundation for industrial development. Arizona has both.