Seattle is the largest city in Washington state, and the industrial center of the Pacific Northwest. The closest large American port to Alaska and the Far East, it is a major center for exporting (wheat, lumber, apples and beer) and importing (Japanese consumer goods and Alaskan oil). Seattle is also a major fishing, lumbering, and railroading center, but since World War II the biggest industry has been aerospace. Boeing dominates the Washington industrial scene, at one time employing eight percent of the state's labor force. When Boeing slumped in 1970, sixty-two thousand people were laid off, and thousands left the state. Boeing has begun to regain strength since the late 1970s, but the state's economy remains weak. Like the rest of industrial Seattle, Boeing is centered on the Rainier Valley, a flat plain that slides into Puget Sound south of downtown. This is the blue collar district of the city, and most of Seattle's small black, Chicano, and Pacific Asian population live here in the hills surrounding the valley.

This report is part of the collection of scanned historical documents available to the public.