By Millard C. Faught
Committee for Economic Development
(Published January 1945)

Contents

Introduction

Hometown, U. S. A.

• What has the war done to things?
• Are there more changes to come?

Can postwar planning be humanized?

• Is job planning the key?
• Is local planning the best way?

Job and community planning

• Is there enough community spirit?
• How can Hometown help?

Where do your own plans fit in?

• Will you want more changes made?
• Do you think you haven’t changed?

What’s new under the sun?

• Will Hometown shrink or grow?
• What if it does grow?
• Won’t the good people still be there?

What are some towns doing?

• Albert Lea, Minnesota
  • Forecasting the future
  • Putting the facts to work
  • “Jobs Incorporated”
• Richmond, Virginia
  • Richmond business clinic
• Bradenton, Florida
• Franklin Square, Long Island
  • The concrete results
• Worcester, Massachusetts

Big cities also look to the future

• “Go west, young man”
• And still farther west
• Back across the country
• So what?

Organizing your discussion

• Reading
• Discussion techniques
• Questions for Discussion

For Further Reading

Introduction

There’s no place like “the old home town.” It may be just a whistle stop or it may be a mighty metropolis. But to the men in uniform who used to live there it’s a very important place-and every community in the United States big enough to call itself a town or even a village has some-one from it in the Army.

The chances are that everyone in the Army talks a lot about his home town and dreams about how it used to be. Chances are he or she wonders if and how it has changed during the war and wants to get back just as soon as possible when peace comes.

But many people, including those who stayed home as well as those who have left, are doing a lot of thinking about the future of their home communities. They recognize that wars change places as well as people. The question “What will my home town be like after the war?” is equal in interest to the question “What should it be like?”

You may be hoping that your home town will be the same as it was when you went away, that you can take up where you left off and forget about the war. There are many who share your hope.

Or you may hope just the opposite. You may feel that because war is a time of great change, and because a new future lies ahead of us, now is the time to attend to a lot of things in the town that have “needed fixing for years.”

Thus when you get back you are almost certain to run into a hot and heavy argument about almost anything from whether there should he a new airport out by the ball park to the need for a city manager instead of the “old-fashioned” town meeting type of government.