Three Other Cities Join in Great Hold-up.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20360, 18 July 1934, Page 7

Three Other Cities Join in Great Hold-up.

SAN FRANCISCO'S FEARS. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyrigh t. (Received Julv 18, 2.30 p.m.) SAN FRANCISCO. July 17. The general strike spread across the Bay to Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda to-day, 27,000 unionists voting to join the 100,000 men already out here. Nine thousand National Guardsmen have reinforced the San Francisco police and there was no resumption of yesterday’s violence.

The strikers relaxed their grip on the city to permit the partial resumption of the tram service and the movement of food in limited quantities.

The ferry boat service between the trans-Bay cities and San Francisco was disrupted, keeping 500.000 persons of the metropolitan total of 1,300.000 from their work and businesses here. The nineteen restaurants designated by the Strike Committee proved woefully inadequate and the committee opened more places to-day. San Francisco spent an uncomfortable, but reasonably quiet night. Such services as water and telephones remain normal, but hot w2ter and other! comforts of a highly-mechanised society were available only on a much reduced scale, since such materials as coal, fuel oil and so on were running low\ Bread, milk and ice deliveries continued almost uninterrupted. The San Francisco County Medical Society stated that the strikers had kept their word in assuring that all necessary foods, fuel and medical supplies for the hospitals, orphanages and other similar institutions were available. Physicians and nurses, having proper cards, were assured of sufficient petrol supplies, although thieves have been syphoning petrol from doctors’ cars while they were parked in front of hospitals, offices and the homes of patients. It is interesting to note that greater than the actual tie-up due to the strike was the psychological effect of the fear that food and other necessary supplies would not be available. It is conceded that above 10,000.000 dollars’ worth of food and other essential supplier were available in warehouses within the city limits and there are more than ample troops to convoy such supplies to the necessarv distribution centres, yet rumours of food shortage continued to be circulated. Actually, the city has suffered more from fear of suffering than from veritable lack.