Word: puerto
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...small, densely populated country such as Belgium can maintain a decent standard of living without a self-sustaining agriculture, because it has a high-geared industrial plant. But Puerto Rico is too poor in minerals and natural resources ever to support heavy manufacturing. It can and must develop light and medium industry. The alternative would be a future in which only an ever-increasing dole from the U.S. could prevent starvation. That is why Muñoz Marin, applying the self-help principles of the Marshall Plan, has enlisted Puerto Rico in the uphill struggle...
Golden Bullets. In that struggle, money -i.e., private investment-is as basic as hard work. Since 1898 the U.S.-which was first indifferent and then embarrassed about the poor child on its doorstep-has spent over a billion dollars in or on Puerto Rico. Last year the Federal Government, in one way or another, spent $101 million in the island...
...Marin, once a Socialist, knows now that government-spending alone will not solve Puerto Rico's problem. If the island is to build a sound economy, and to live without the crutch of federal handouts, it needs private industry and old-fashioned capitalist help. Says Muñoz: "I am out to increase production by any possible means-private, public, or mixed, as the case may be." To describe his government's part in industrial development, he coined his own neatly tailored phrase: "venture government." As Muñoz sees the problem: "Somebody's got to take...
...chief government agency in the drive for production is the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Corp., set up in 1942 under the wartime governorship of Rexford Guy Tugwell. PRIDC, which has spent about $27 million to establish new industries (the new island budget allots $1,700,000 for the corporation), started the ball rolling by setting up five factories to make cement, glass, paper board, shoe-leather products, clay products. Later, it began a hard driving campaign to sell private companies on Puerto Rico as a place for business...
...industries Puerto Rico now offers tax exemption for twelve years. Even dividends are tax-free if collected in the island, for Puerto Ricans pay no federal income tax. Other PRIDC selling points are the island's abundant labor supply and the fact that wages tend to be lower than the 30?-an-hour minimum in the U.S. To supply skilled workers, the government has built an industrial school equipped to train 3,500 workers at a time in 55 different trades...