MAKING A LIVING IN ARIZONA

MAKING A LIVING IN ARIZONA A chapter from ARIZONA: A Guide to Easier Living* by JOSEPH STOCKER

Let's assume, for the moment, that you aren't one of those fortunate people who can live without working. Your problem, then-assuming also that you've decided to move to Arizona-boils down to one or the other of the following:

Let's talk about jobs first.

As foregoing chapters already have suggested, Arizona isn't an economic paradise. Job opportunities are neither so plentiful nor so diversified as in the heavily populated and heavily industrialized states of the Midwest and East. This, of course, is generally true of areas lying within America's health-and-sunshine belt, Colorado and New Mexico likewise being notable examples.

Another economic characteristic of these areas is the fact that wages in certain lines of work are somewhat lower than in related endeavors elsewhere. It's the age-old story of supply and demand. Lots of people are attracted to the health-and-sunshine states. That means a labor surplus in some fields. When there's more than enough labor to go around, and employers don't have to bid against each other to fill job openings, wages take a beating.

Still another characteristic is a limitation on types of jobs to be had. A skilled automobile worker from Detroit, for example, needn't expect to find a job making automobiles in Arizona. And a slick magazine editor in New York won't find any slick magazines to edit in Arizona. One must look for something else.

It all adds up to this: You may (and I emphasize the word “may”) have to sacrifice some small measure of your economic security in exchange for health and sunshine, Arizona style. Or you may have to take a job which isn't quite to your liking because the job you really want simply isn't to be found.

Such a compromise has confronted numbers-although by no means all-of Arizona's newcomers. Some found the price too high to pay, and went back where they came from. The rest decided it was a fair swap, and stayed.

There are many others, however, who have had to make no sacrifice of any kind. Besides sharing the bene-fits of Arizona-style health and sunshine, they've landed jobs as good as the ones they left, or even better. If their letters home are more lyrical than anything the chamber of commerce could think to say about Arizona, it's understandable.

Whether at good jobs or bad, at high pay or low, Arizona obviously has been assimilating vast numbers of new people into its burgeoning economy since World War II. For the three-year period ending December 31, 1952, the state led all the forty-eight in percentage increase in nonagricultural employment. The gain was 35.1 per cent, compared to a national average of only 11.2 per cent.

Where are you most likely to find a job?

In geographical terms, Phoenix and Tucson are your best bets, since, of course, they're the biggest cities. If you're avoiding the big city, Mesa and Yuma are your next best bets. They're the fastest growing of Arizona's smaller communities.

"ARIZONA-A Guide to Easier Living" by Joseph Stocker is a new book published by Harper & Brothers, 49 East 33rd St., New York 16, N. Y. The price is $2.75, and can be purchased at all book stores or direct from the publisher. In this book, Stocker, a regular contributor to ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, attempts to answer such questions as: What is Arizona really like? What are the true facts about the climate and its effect on health? How much does it cost to live in Arizona? What are the job and business opportunities? He discusses these and other important questions about life in Arizona for the benefit of prospective visitors and residents. Himself a resident by choice, the author describes living conditions in the major cities and in towns typical of each important section of the state. He also gives temperature ranges, elevations, points of interest, types of businesses and possibilities for recreation in each area. Prospects for employment are evaluated.

So far as specific types of employment are concerned, it would be patently futile to set down any detailed information. Such data likely would be out-ofdate long before it reached your hands, for employment conditions change almost with the rapidity of newspaper headlines.

As you start thinking about Arizona job prosAspects, however, keep in mind the four major economic activities of the state: agriculture, mining, manufacturing and tourists. Remember, too, that manufacturing in Arizona means, for the most part, light manufacturing. With a few exceptions, such as in the defense plants and in steel and aluminum fabrication, Arizona industry is far removed from the heavy, mass-employment industry familiar to other parts of the country. A typical manufacturing plant in Arizona is one which turns out a small product and employs anywhere from a dozen to a couple of hundred people.

Bear in mind also that in two of Arizona's major economic fields-agriculture and the tourist industryemployment tends to be seasonal. To be sure, there is agricultural activity the year around, since the growing season is twelve months long. But employment ebbs and flows with the harvests. There are lots of jobs to be had when the lettuce is being crated, the melons gathered and the cotton picked. In between, the "No Help Wanted" sign goes up.

Employment fluctuations in general are less severe now than they were before the war. Air conditioning has taken much of the slump out of summertime and made Arizona more of a year-round state than it ever was. Much of the heat has been taken out of Arizona's hot summers.

Generally speaking, they're highest in mining and construction and lowest in retail trade and agriculture. An inexperienced clerk starts at around $40 a week. Beginning wages for good stenographers and secretaries run at $200 to $250 a month. At the upper end of the scale are skilled craftsmen in the building trades who have been able to draw down wages nearly as high as those in any other state, and often higher.

A random comparison: As of October 1, 1952, the union scale for bricklayers in Phoenix was $3.50 an hour, compared to $3.07 in Buffalo, New York. For carpenters, it was $2.52 in Phoenix compared to $2.81 in Buffalo. For electricians -$2.75 and $2.90. For painters-$2.44 and $2.58. For plasterers-$3.30 and $3.04. For plumbers-$2.50 and $2.90. For building laborers-$1.87 and $2.11.

In Arizona, veering sharply to the right along with many other states, adopted several highly controversial labor laws in the years following the war. So far they have not affected wages. Whether they will do so in the future, as competition gets stiffer, remains to be seen.

Is it possible for you to negotiate a job in Arizona by correspondence, before leaving home? Possible, but not probable. If this were an extremely tight labor market, as southern California has been, for instance, with employers hard pressed to find enough people for all available jobs, you might be able to write a letter, outline your qualifications and land a job. But the labor market is not quite that tight, except for boom-year shortages in such things as the building trades, engineering, machinists and tool-and-die makers. Workers are fairly plentiful and employers fairly choosey. Moreover, Arizona's population tends to have a slightly transient quality, and employers want to be sure they're not hiring someone who will be off to California next Tuesday. And so the average boss or personnel manager prefers to do his hiring on the spot-and on the basis of a personal interview.

There are, however, certain advance explorations and preparations you can make. You can write to the Arizona State Employment Service for general-and perhaps specific-information about job possibilities. You can subscribe to a newspaper published in the community in which you hope to settle and watch the "Help Wanted" columns. And you can obtain a copy of the telephone book in the Arizona town of your choice and check through the classified section for firms in your field of work which might be prospects for you.

If you have to come out to Arizona in person before you can nail down a job, it might be well to heed this bit of advice: Come out by yourself, ahead of your family, if at all feasible-during your vacation, perhaps. Find a job and a place to live. Then send for your family. You'll save a great deal of expense, in hotels and restaurants, and spare your family a lot of discomfort.

As for opportunities in the professions: Medicine: Some opportunities still available in the outlying residential areas of the big cities and in a few of the small towns. But, by and large, the situation is tight. Doctors by the dozen have poured into Phoenix and Tucson during the boom years, and many have prospered, drawing patients from among the battalions of health seekers. Meanwhile, however, a high degree of competition has developed.

Law: The lawyer newly come to Arizona may find the going rather tough, too. In the first place, since Arizona is not extensively industrialized, the opportunities in corporate law are more limited than in other states. Second, while Arizona has no medical or dental school, it does have its own law school annually disgorging a class of brand-new graduates to compete in a field that is already intensely competitive.

Dentistry: A shortage of dentists at this writing, largely brought on, I suspect, by discriminatory practices of the Arizona dental profession itself. It has shown a distinct disfavor, for instance, toward those from outof-state. Lately, with pressure being brought from various quarters, the situation has improved somewhat. (There is no discrimination against out-of-state people on the part of the other professions, so far as I can determine. The Arizona bar appears scrupulously fair to all applicants for admission to practice, whether new graduates of the University of Arizona or practicing lawyers moving into the state from somewhere else. The

but never expected much of anything to be done about it.

Now that something is being done about it, these same business leaders have gone to work to expedite the process. Besides campaigning strenuously to tempt new industry into the state, they've succeeded in getting various taxes on manufacturing whittled down by way of bait. Legislation has been adopted to:

"Arizona," as one writer put it recently, "is doing everything it can to turn sandy ranges into green fields for out-of-state manufacturers."

Probably the most conspicuous characteristic of this manufacturing development has been its extreme versatility. Scarcely any two of Arizona's new factory owners are turning out the same kind of product, or even anything similar. Their products range almost the whole gamut of human needs.

In Phoenix since 1948, for example, new plants-small ones, for the most part-have sprung up to produce such a variety of things as venetian blinds, fertilizers, insecticides, wooden crates, trailers, neckties and even parachutes.

If there's any common denominator in this new and mushrooming field of small-scale manufacturing, it's to provide goods for which there is a local market. The manufacturer of venetian blinds can aim the bulk of his product at the thousands of new homes being built in Arizona's growing cities. The producer of fertilizers and insecticides can do business with Arizona's farmers. The man who makes wooden crates can hope to sell them to the men who run the big produce packing sheds. The trailer manufacturer knows that trailer living has become a very big thing in Arizona and he's doing his utmost to make it even bigger.

But production for local consumption isn't the sum total of it. If some of Arizona's manufacturers depended entirely on local consumption, they wouldn't be able to make a go of it, such is the nature of their products. Witness the case of a Phoenix firm (it consists of a father, son and son-in-law) producing barbecue grills. A certain few of their barbecue grills are ending up in Arizona back yards and on Arizona patios. But the bulk of their production is going into out-of-state markets and is having to compete with the best that is being produced elsewhere. Evidently it is competing successfully, for the youthful firm, having started out in a rented warehouse, recently built a brand-new plant.

One of the major motivations behind Arizona's new manufacturing development likely is the very thing that makes Arizona something less than a jobseeker's heaven -the limitation on types of jobs to be had. As a leading banker explained, "People have come out here from the East with certain skills that they couldn't find a market for. So they set up businesses of their own to apply those skills."

This indeed may account in substantial part for the growth of a new industry which is the last thing anybody expected to see in Arizona. It's the garment industry.

As garment industries go, it's nothing sensational yet-perhaps thirty firms scattered around the state, mostof them small to middling. But it's making a tangible contribution to Arizona's economic welfare. It's provid-ing an outlet for skilled garment workers, newly arrived from other parts of the country, who otherwise might have to sell real estate or drive taxicabs for a living. And it's bringing something new to the nation's apparel market-desert fashions.

Success stories? Sure, lots of 'em.

In Tucson a young man and his wife started making aprons in a twenty-five-foot trailer. Now they've branched into general women's wear, have their own plant and are so busy that they're farming out some of their work.

In Prescott a World War II veteran began producing Western sportswear in 1945 with seven thousand dollars in borrowed capital. Today he's the largest garment maker in Arizona, with scores of employees and a branch plant in Nebraska to help meet production problems.

Out east of Phoenix, in the little resort town of Scottsdale, an ex-flier cast a critical eye on Indian jewel-ry. Much of it was pretty junky, he thought, and not very imaginative. He reasoned that native Indian skills, given proper guidance and modern application, ought to be able to turn out fine quality products. And so the ex-flier hired some Indian craftsmen who, under his management, are producing fine Indian jewelry, trinkets, spoons, handbags and what not, and have more orders than they can handle.

The problem of financing is one that usually confronts an Arizona newcomer bent on going into business for himself. Risk capital isn't as plentiful as it might be. The reason, as one banker explained it, isn't so much the timidity and caution of Arizona's banks as simply a lack of capital itself.

"We don't have enough working capital in Ari-zona," he went on. "What we need is people who will come out here, bring their money with them and deposit it here so we can have capital to make jobs for people. Too many newcomers leave their money in banks at home-it's just habit, I guess. But if they're going to be a part of their new communities and their new state, they should bring their money with them. It's one of the things that make the world go around."

If what the banker says is true, and if it's true because some of Arizona's new residents doubt the solidity of our banks, perhaps a word of reassurance is in order. Arizona hasn't recorded a bank failure since 1932. There are three large, multiple-branch banking enterprises in the state-Valley National, First National and Bank of Douglas-with suboffices in numerous towns and suburban areas. There are also several smaller banking chains and a number of independent banks.

So you don't have to slip your money into a tobacco can or under the mattress, or leave it with good old dependable Chase National, when you come to live in Arizona. Bring it with you and let it work, even as you're working, to build a new and better life for yourself.