Letter from Los Angeles

This—Is California

If the rulers of the Ford Foundation ever get tired of financing cranks and nuisances, and would like to try something useful for a change, they might investigate the smog of Los Angeles. You see it most mornings from the hills above Sunset Boulevard, an ugly brown blanket motionless on the central city all the way to the horizon. By ten-thirty or eleven it has usually spread to Pasadena, and out to Beverly Hills as well. Its cause, experts agree, is an atmospheric suspension of industrial wastes, the smoke of home trash burners, and the exhaust fumes from millions of automobiles. Its effect, besides cutting off the Southern California sunshine, is to make one’s eyes smart and to irritate the membranes of the nose and throat. Far beyond the joking stage, smog has come within reaching distance of the point where it could make this frantically growing city uninhabitable. Everyone from cabman to bank president agrees that “something will have to be done.” But when, and by whom, no one quite seems to know.

FF

About the Author

Finis Farr

Featured Tags

This—Is California

If the rulers of the Ford Foundation ever get tired of financing cranks and nuisances, and would like to try something useful for a change, they might investigate the smog of Los Angeles. You see it most mornings from the hills above Sunset Boulevard, an ugly brown blanket motionless on the central city all the way to the horizon. By ten-thirty or eleven it has usually spread to Pasadena, and out to Beverly Hills as well. Its cause, experts agree, is an atmospheric suspension of industrial wastes, the smoke of home trash burners, and the exhaust fumes from millions of automobiles. Its effect, besides cutting off the Southern California sunshine, is to make one’s eyes smart and to irritate the membranes of the nose and throat. Far beyond the joking stage, smog has come within reaching distance of the point where it could make this frantically growing city uninhabitable. Everyone from cabman to bank president agrees that “something will have to be done.” But when, and by whom, no one quite seems to know.