Public Policy: The Underdeveloped U.S.

The honorable gentlemen of Japan could hardly be blamed if seen tittering behind their fans last week. On the front page of Tokyo's top financial daily, Nihon Keizai, appeared the startling news that the Kennedy Administration was pleading with Japanese industrialists to build plants in such "underdeveloped" areas as Kansas, North Carolina and New Jersey. "This request by the U.S., hitherto leader of the free world in the development of less advanced countries, came as a surprise to the Japanese Foreign Office," crowed Nihon Keizai.

Indeed it did—and to Americans as well. Growled Republican Congressman William Avery of Kansas: "Wichita...