MORE MEN OUT

Wairarapa Age, 19 July 1934, Page 3

MORE MEN OUT

SAN FRANCISCO STRIKE SPREADS. DISRUPTION OF TRANSPORT SERVICES. CITY IN STATE OF NERVES.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 17. The San Francisco 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. Some 9000 National Guardsmen reinforced San Francisco’s 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 half a million persons of the metropolitan area’s total of 1,300,000 away 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. SANE SERVICES MAINTAINED. San Francisco spent an uncomfortalble, but reasonably quiet night. Such services as water and the telephone remain normal, but hot water and other comforts of a highly-mechanised society were available only on a much reduced scale, since such materials as coal, fuel oil, etc., are running low. Bread, milk and ice deliveries continued fairly uninterrupted. The San Francisco County Medical Society stated that the strikers had kept their word l in assuring all necessary foods, fuel and medical supplies for hospitals, orphanages, and other similar instiutions. Physicians and nurses having proper cards were assured of sufficient petrol supplies, although thieves have been siphoning petrol from doctors’ cars while they were parked in front of hospitals, offices and the homes of patients. It is interesting to note that more effective than the actual tie-up due to the strike was the psychological feeling of fear that food and other necessary supplies would not be available. It is conceded now that more than ten million dollars’worth of food and other essential supplies were and are available in warehouses within the city liimts, and there are more than ample troops to convoy the same to the necessary distribution centres, yet .rumours of food shortage continued to circulate. Actually the city has suffered more from the fear of suffering than from a i veritable lack of anything. ISSUES IN DISPUTE; It is safe .to say that the great majority of San Franciscans have little or no idea of the actual causes of the longshoremen’s strike which precipitated the present difficulties. A careful study indicates, however, that the dispute which flared into warfare has been of fourteen years’ standing, when it is alleged that shipping lines compelled; longshoremen to belong to company unions. The N.R.A. Code, with its provision for the representation of labour outside company unions, is said to have given the longshoremen the impetus to strike, not only, for higher wages and better working conditions, but also 1 ‘labour solidarity ’ ’ with other maritime unions and the Central Labour Council. The Industrial Association of San Francisco, representing the great majority of employers, is determined at all costs to maintain freedom against picketing and the right of employment of non-union labour. It is generally conceded that the N.R.A. more than anything else gave the stimulus to fighting out the issue between Labour and Capital in the form of a strike, and is held responsible for precipitating issues not only here but throughout the country.