WATER CUT OFF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22769, 1 July 1937, Page 12

WATER CUT OFF

DYNAMITE EXPLOSION

PENNSYLVANIA TOWN

STEEL PLANT CRIPPLED

6000 HANDS MADE IDLE 33y Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received June 30, 7.15 p.m.) NEW YORK. June 20 Two explosions to-day cut off the main water supply of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation's plant at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and forced the suspension of operations in the middle of the "back to work" movement, which the company claimed had restored operations to normal.

Strike leaders denied responsibility, and said they deplored the incident. Two hundred soldiers have been assigned to. guard the highways and to search all motor-cars. A military investigation was ordered in the plant, which is expected to bo shut down for .a fortnight.

..The investigators later said dynamite apparently-had been placed under tho stone water tunnels in the mountain's a few miles from the city. The explosion shattered windows in homes ,«over a radius of quarter of a mile. .Nobody was injured.

Tho corporation announces that GOOD employees have been thrown out of work. It has offered a reward of 10,000 ■dollars for tho apprehension of tho dynamiters. Tho Mayor, Mr. D. J. Shields, telegraphed to President Roosevelt saying: "It seems preposterous that the leader of the Committee for Industrial Organisation, John Lewis, has your support in his ruthless activities. If Lewis does not withdraw his highly objectionable representatives the people of Johnstown may take the law into their own hands."

At an emergency meeting of the City Council to'which James Mark and C. Jones, leaders of the steel and railway strikes, wore summoned, they ■were warned that they remained in Johnstown at their own risk.

MANY PORTS AFFECTED

WOOL HANDLERS' STRIKE

CONSIGNMENTS TO BOSTON BOSTON, June 20 The strike of 700 members of the Wool Handlers and Marine Warehouses' Union for the "closed shop," which is now - affecting the entire Atlantic coast, has spread to the Great Lakes and Gulf of Mexico ports, where longshoremen have been instructed not to handle wool consigned to Boston. Six public warehouses and 25 dealers' houses have closed at Boston as the result of the strike.

Four major shipping companies are refusing to accept further wool shipments marked for Boston.